(It’s the one with the creeping cat on the cover)
I’ve been telling everyone to read “My Bird Problem” by Jonathan Franzen. He cleverly combines bird-watching, his relationship problems and fears of global warming. I like birds and some of my best friends are bird-watchers, but I do think there’s a lot of potential for comedy [...]
Archive for August, 2005
The New Yorker – Aug. 8 & 15
Posted in The New Yorker, books on August 30, 2005 | 2 Comments »
The New Yorker – Aug. 22
Posted in The New Yorker on August 30, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
(It’s the one with the yellow cover, two boys playing with a beach ball)
“Lone Star” by Dan Halpern is funny and irreverant, like the subject, a guy named Kinky Friedman who is running for Governor of Texas (one of his slogans is “how hard can it be?”).
Looking for some truth…
Posted in books on August 29, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
La vérité n’est pas faite pour consoler comme une tartine de confitures qu’on donne aux enfants qui pleurent. Il faut la rechercher, voilà tout, et écarter de soi ce qui n’est pas elle. –Gustave Flaubert
I switched over to Herzog for the weekend. I really like it. It’s so funny, as when he says he has [...]
L’Affaire
Posted in History, books on August 25, 2005 | 1 Comment »
Now I’m reading about the Dreyfus affair, which is the fourth section of The Proud Tower. Of course, I’ve heard of Dreyfus and I know Zola was involved and wrote J’accuse in response and that there was anti-semitism involved, but that was pretty much all I knew about it. The way it polarized the country [...]
Reading Tuchman
Posted in History, books on August 24, 2005 | 2 Comments »
I can’t believe I never read anything by Barbara Tuchman before this. Coming from a family of history majors who have all read all of her books many times over, it seems strange. I guess I was too busy reading Jane Austen! In any case, I am enjoying The Proud Tower. The first section, entitled [...]
An interesting website
Posted in books on August 23, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
I googled the Francis Bacon quote in my first post to see if I had the wording right, which as it turned out, I didn’t (I thought it was ‘speaking makes a ready man’ when it turns out to be ‘conference makes a ready man’). Anyway, as so often happens when googling around the Internet, [...]
Why blog?
Posted in books on August 23, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
There are probably a lot of blogs out there about reading, so why add another one? I guess I like the idea of a semi-public forum in which to express my thoughts about what I am reading. While it is probable that no one will read this, there is the off chance that someone will, [...]
