Books
-
I feel like I should like Dashiell Hammett more than I do. Back in the '70s sometime I discovered Raymond Chandler and pretty much fell in love with the kind of detective story that he wrote: "hard-boiled," but with a vividly poetic streak. And I expected to like Dashiell Hammett just as much. I think
-
My attempts to impose some kind of order and method on my reading never last, and the reason is usually that some stray impulse seizes me and I pick up a book that was not in line to be read, sometimes not even toward the end of that line but rather in the "someday" or
-
I'm reading The Portrait of a Lady (for the first time, and have no idea what is going to become of the heroine, so please don't put spoilers in the comments) and very much enjoying it. This passage has a striking contemporary relevance. Isabel Archer, the lady of the title, has come from America to visit
-
(Relatively minor SPOILERS) When I learned, some time ago, that there is a movie based on Hemingway's short story "The Killers," I wanted to see it out of sheer curiosity. There really isn't very much to the story, and almost nothing happens. Two menacing men arrive in a small town. They menace people in a
-
I've never been inclined to mourn celebrity deaths, especially in cases like that of Charlie Watts, who died this week at the age of 80 after a long and spectacularly successful career–and I hope his private life was equally successful. But I certainly don't feel any sense of personal loss. And anyway I lost interest
-
There's an interesting article by Art Edwards in (at?) Quillette about the difference between reading a book and hearing it read: Listening to Literature—What We Gain and Lose with Audiobooks. It's rather long for online reading, but worthwhile if you're interested. The author wonders whether listening to a book really counts: The one constant of
-
I have the local library to thank for my having read this invigorating little book. They took it out of circulation (or rather, no doubt, non-circulation) and put it on the giveaway shelf, and I, having heard a few things about Eagleton that sounded interesting, took possession of it. And I'm glad I did. The
-
John Darnielle, as you may know, is the principal in The Mountain Goats. In effect, he is the mountain goat, as the band seems to be (or at least to have been for some time), essentially a one-man project consisting of Darnielle and various accompanists. He's a brilliant (and astonishingly prolific) songwriter, and the great
-
Marianne gave us a sample of Jane Austen writing more or less casually to her sister: see this comment on the Emma post. Here's a somewhat more formal letter, from The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, a book which I bought back in the '70s and which has given me in enjoyment at least 100 times
-
There's a remark somewhere in Swift's writings to the effect that there is no quality that is a virtue in men that is not also a virtue in women. I seem to recall that he specifically mentions courage. And I think I recall, though this may be my own addition, that he says that the
Light On Dark Water 