Reading is like breathing; there is no life without it.
"A home without books is a body without soul."
So sayeth Marcus Tullius Cicero, and I am inclined to agree.
"I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy
not to care. Yesterday I counted twenty-six gray hairs on the top of my head all from trying...
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Reading is like breathing; there is no life without it.
"A home without books is a body without soul."
So sayeth Marcus Tullius Cicero, and I am inclined to agree.
"I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy
not to care. Yesterday I counted twenty-six gray hairs on the top of my head all from trying
not to care.... The
why of why we are here is an intrigue for adolescents; the
how is what must command the living. Which is why I have lately become an insurgent again."
--Lorraine Hansberry,
The Sign in Sidney Brustein's WindowA word about my ratings/opinions:
5 stars means I adored it and would read it again & again & again.
4 stars means it’s well worth reading.
3 stars means it was good enough while it lasted.
2 stars are reserved for absolute "cheese unqualified."
1 star leaves me wondering why perfectly good ink was wasted to print such rubbish.
Best Reads of 2008 (in no particular order):
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes
Passing by Nella Larsen
Silent but Deadly by Mark Tatulli
The Small Room by May Sarton
Black No More by George Schuyler
Caucasia by Danzy Senna
The Uncommon Reader: A Novella by Alan Bennett
O Ye Jigs & Juleps by Virginia Cary Hudson
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
Conjure Tales by Charles Chesnutt
A few things that delight me: being married; onomatopoeia; hot sweet milky tea; religious icons and rosaries; sequoias; NPR; ridiculous monsters; libraries and bookstores; Christ; Guinness and sherry; sick jokes; Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell; stinky cheese; shoes by John Fluevog; Spider Jerusalem and his filthy assistants; Caravaggio; theory out of practice; errata; iambs, trochees, and spondees; silence; Alistair Cooke's and Maya Angelou’s voices; sashimi, edamame, wakame and sushi; and a good hard belly laugh.
A few things I cannot abide: e-mail; globalization; extremism; small talk; split infinitives; people with no sense of narrative or history; tight spaces; practicing at theory; anti-intellectualism; prose masquerading as poetry; animal cruelty; Dan Brown and Nicholas Sparks; folks who disparage things they cannot do; grotty teeth; and rudeness.
I cannot abide and am delighted by Christopher Hitchens. Go figure.
Let's talk books. Or whatever.
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