hey estela guess what

i wrote one paper about heart of darkness for a post-colonial/colonial lit paper. i did not like the book - way way too grim.

hey estela guess what

estela, plz guess! the suspense is killing me!

i guess not.

tsk

" "

but it wasn't that grim imo :(

i'm reading 'the selected works of ts spivet" - it's pretty good so far. not much about it on ilx except for one person who doesn't like it and some others who agreed that it sounds stupid.

not really a book that id expect ilx to like frankly

just finished:
veronica by mary gaitskill
duplicate keys by jane smiley

both v v good - mostly character-driven, introverted stories. the smiley was a sort of airport thriller, in terms of the basic plot outline, but was actually an interesting study of friendships and relationships.

jaq, what was the name of that kansas/republicans book you were talking about? i think i will read it.

What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank - it's kind of dated, published about 5 years ago.

i like 2 read

me 2

even tho the books i'm reading i am not loving

book about soccer formations
memoir about a guy's mom

i am almost done with go tell it on the mountain. i read so slow these days :(

i am almost done with the human stain

was disappointed by the meaning of the title. i thought it was about a man who was little more than a stain.

lxy: i finally remembered that author's name!!! it's MINETTE WALTERS

the human stain was bad btw, don't read it
now i am reading "memoirs of an anti-semite" and i like it

i read most of the human stain. wish i hadn't.

i kept reading it because i wanted to know what would happen but every time something happened i was like UGH WTF even though when things happened in that book i thought "what's the point of this happening"

i re-started that amelia earhart and was more into it this time but then i forgot about it again.
i am determined to read middelsex, which has gone from sitting near bed in ny to sitting near bed in seattle without more than 5 pages being read. gah. years i've been trying to read this book!

also really wanna read the james hamilton patterson stuff.

i am bad at reading :(

james hamilton patterson will be fumigated 4 u.

aw <3
feeling better?

I've upgraded to meh. Mr. Jaq is still deep in the viral clutches.

the used bookshjop on dixon gave me $15 credit for three books. good!

the clerks got in a funny discussion about carbon footprints and how not having a baby is the best way to reduce ur footprint. i snickered as i looked through the stacks

the thin man
the miracle of castel di sangro
what i loved

from 'what i loved'

Lucille's complaints were banal-the familiar stuff of joyless intimacy. I've always thought that love thrives on a ceratin kind of distance, that it requires an awed seperateness to continue. Without that necessary remove, the physical minutiae of the other person grows ugly in its magnification

still working on memoirs but it has 5 parts so i take breaks in between
reading because it is bitter and because it's my <3 by joyce carol oates

i really liked 'what i loved'!

i finished two alice munro short story collections (she is amazing, maybe the best short story writer ever, can't wait for the new book coming soon!), 'the things they carried' by tim o'brien (v v good kind of war-story vignettes), and 'bad behavior' by mary gaitskill. now onto a collection of essays by siri hustvedt and 'another you' by ann beattie.

i like that excerpt!

hey, if you're into a book, and read it before bed, how long after you wake up do you start thinking about it?

i hate (like) when i wake up on a saturday or sunday and pick up the book again right away and lay in bed for 2 hours being really hungry and really having to pee. i don't know the answer to your question but i think it is 0 seconds. i'm going to go read a book and drink rum drink in my bed.

sounds like the life

drink rum drink is fun to read

i really liked 'what i loved'!

closest i've come to crying @ a book in a looooong time

sandbox book club pick

crying because it moved you or crying because you hated it so much??

i think i mentioned this on an ILB thread, but one of my favourite things about hustvedt's writing is how she slips in all these really sinister events and stuff, but in the end they're really only marginal to the story - they're never what the plot revolves around.

i am very intrigued by this book.

if i still have my copy i will send it in yr care package that i still have not sent but will hopefully make it by xmas <3

i finished because it is bitter, etc. i liked the first 2/3 but the last 1/3 made me wanna barf. it was all about this girl's exquisite fairytale wedding. i wanted more disasters to happen to her instead.
then i read balzac - le colonel chabert. i wouldn't care if all the non-balzac books in the world got burned and only balzacs were left tbh

i am re-reading the half-mammals of dixie bc it makes me nostalgic by gently mocking while simultaneously appreciating my home state.

loving graham greene
the brief wondrous life of oscar wao
the fire engine that disappeared
exile on main st: a season in hell with the rolling stones
hell of articles

i dragged a file called "FUTURE READING" halfway around the world, to ab out the remotest place you can get, and i had the funny feeling of wait why did i bring this crap all the way here?

oscar wao in his speech reminded me of nedddddddd

i feel like i need to read that bc EVERY SINGLE PERSON on public transportation in the last year has been reading it.

tender is the night - fitzgerald (even the back cover calls it an immature work. yep)
i started but didn't finish a philip roth book about nixon. it was written in 71-72 and i'm sure it was 'incisive and hilarious' then but whatever it was boring.
1/3 of nostromo by joseph conrad. still carrying it around so i guess i'll finish it at some point.
brave new world. had never read it.
clandestine by james ellroy. i read it in a day.
just started snow country by yasunari kawabata. love the cover.

http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd118/embarchie/photo-5.jpg

what a beautiful cover!

i have just received the new (SIGNED!!!!OMG!!!) alice munro book from my lovely husband as a super early b'day present!!!