sweetafton

"Nothing gives me the feeling of having been born several decades too late quite like the modern 'literary' best seller. Give me a time-tested masterpiece or what critics patronizingly call a fun read—Sister Carrie or just plain Carrie. Give me anything, in fact, as long as it doesn't have a recent prize jury's seal of approval on... more »

"Nothing gives me the feeling of having been born several decades too late quite like the modern 'literary' best seller. Give me a time-tested masterpiece or what critics patronizingly call a fun read—Sister Carrie or just plain Carrie. Give me anything, in fact, as long as it doesn't have a recent prize jury's seal of approval on the front and a clutch of precious raves on the back. In the bookstore I'll sometimes sample what all the fuss is about, but one glance at the affected prose—'furious dabs of tulips stuttering,' say, or 'in the dark before the day yet was'—and I'm hightailing it to the friendly black spines of the Penguin Classics.
--B.R. Meyers, "A Reader's Manifesto"

A guide to 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.

The current year's highest notes

With Ossie and Ruby: In this Life Together by Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee
Practicalities by Marguerite Duras
Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux (translated by Tanya Leslie)
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Best Reads of 2010

Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño
When I Was Mortal by Javier Marías
An Education by Lynn Barber

Best Reads of 2009

Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
Push by Sapphire
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer

Best Reads of 2008

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes
Passing by Nella Larsen
The Small Room by May Sarton
Black No More by George Schuyler
Caucasia by Danzy Senna
The Uncommon Reader: A Novella by Alan Bennett
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.

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