Book notes

what I’ve been reading lately:

  • Book-shopping in London

    In January I went to Cambridge (UK) for a few days for work: I arrived on a Wednesday, went in to the office for workshops with colleagues on Thursday and Friday, had pleasing dinners (including one at Alimentum), and did a little evening walking around town. Because transatlantic airfare is so much cheaper if there’s…

    (Read more)

  • Finishing The Captive, moving on to The Fugitive

    The rest of The Captive has been pleasing (though slow) reading. I last posted a quote from page 160-something; between there and the end there is: Albertine’s trip to the theatre cut short by the narrator’s jealousy, an afternoon carriage ride, Albertine’s visit to the Verdurins forestalled by the narrator’s jealousy, the narrator’s own visit…

    (Read more)

  • The Captive: the “litanies of small trades”

    Despite my initial ambivalence toward The Captive—picking it up then putting it down, picking it up and reading but feeling like it was going to be a tedious and claustrophobia-inducing recitation of jealousies— I’m now really enjoying it, and have been since around page 100. Part of this might have just been me getting back…

    (Read more)

  • More in The Captive: Gazing out of Windows

    Besides jealousy, what’s at the center of The Captive is immobility—perhaps not surprisingly, given the volume’s title. At the very start of the book we learn that the narrator spends most of his time in his bedroom, so that’s where we mostly are, too. Sometimes it’s claustrophobic (as is that squirm-inducing jealousy I wrote about…

    (Read more)

  • What I Read in 2009, Numerically Speaking

    Reading everyone else’s end-of-year posts, plus reading Jenna Freedman’s Lower East Side Librarian Reading Log 2009, made me want to make a wrap-up post of my own. In 2009 I did not read as many books that I own as I wanted to—though I hope that will change in 2010 with the help of the…

    (Read more)

  • More in The Captive

    Despite that early beauty, this book is shaping up to be sort of squirm-inducing: at the center of The Captive, even more than in previous volumes, is the narrator’s jealousy. It isn’t absolute—or, at least, he says it isn’t—but it’s consuming. It’s the in-between-ness that’s the problem, the hazy awareness, the knowing-but-not-knowing: “I should not…

    (Read more)

  • Returning to The Captive

    After just about a three-month-long break, I’ve picked up The Captive & The Fugitive again. I’m in Georgia on vacation right now, which means that my reading time is quiet time in the mornings or the evenings, not commuting time, which I think bodes well for getting farther along in this book than I did…

    (Read more)

  • Ghostwalk by Rebecca StottSpiegel & Grau, 2007 (originally Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007)

    I started reading this book the day after I learned that I might be taking another trip to Cambridge (England) for a few days for work in January. If this trip happens, it’ll be my third visit: the first time, in March 2008, I stayed for eight days, the second time, in October 2008, for…

    (Read more)

  • Bird Eating Bird by Kristin NacaHarper Perennial, 2009

    I like poems that are buildings of images; I like poems that are stories. Kristin Naca writes both those kinds of poems, and also writes lyrical poems, romantic poems, poems that play with language(s) and words. Sometimes the poems in this collection were too lyrical for me, or too language-focused, but others are just lovely,…

    (Read more)

  • TBR Challenge

    I read about Emily’s Attacking the TBR Tome Challenge over on Of Books and Bicycles, and it seems like a useful thing for me, though I suspect I am not going to participate in the not-buying-new-books part of it. These days most of my book acquisition isn’t actually purchasing books, anyhow: mostly, it’s picking up…

    (Read more)