The Lost Art of Book Learning
Google searching is utilitarian, but it is not a substitute for the visceral fun of opening a random volume up to a random page and learning something new.
Tagged: books
Re-reading (And Not Reading) James Joyce
I know every single one of you is wondering whether and in what ways I appreciate James Joyce’s work. So…In praise of (and in fear of) James Joyce’s oeuvre.
Sunday Morning! “White Tears” & “Red Pill” by Hari Kunzru
This week I read two novels by Hari Kunzru, a modern magician of storytelling, though the tricks worked better in one of them for my tastes.
Sunday Morning! “Death in Venice”
The time felt right to reread Thomas Mann’s novella and watched Lucino Visconti’s 1971 film of desire and disease and our inability to quarantine either of them.
Sunday Morning! “The Summer He Didn’t Die” by Jim Harrison
In times of stress, it’s good to return to nourishing comfort food, which for me means Jim Harrison’s prose.
Sunday Morning! “Good Citizens Need Not Fear” by Maria Reva
While getting by in strange times, I read a book of short stories about how average Ukrainians got by before and after the fall of Communism.
Sunday Morning! “Ducks, Newburyport”
Our minds are messy places. This novel takes you into the very nervous mind of an Ohio mother, housewife, and pie baker over the course of a thousand pages and mostly through one very long sentence.
Sunday Morning! “They Will Drown in Their Mothers’ Tears”
A friend’s favorite book from last year, which describes a terrorist attack that either happened or did not happen, depending on which timeline we’re living through.
Sunday Morning! Beginning John Cheever
On a recommendation from a local poet, I have started reading the short stories of an American master of the form, and was greatly rewarded for the effort.
The Deification of Technology
We have fooled ourselves into perceiving our technology as neutral, detached from our own biased and irrational ways.
Sunday Morning! Balzac’s Wild Ass’s Skin
The Balzac streak continues with a supernatural tale built on the fantastical conceit that our energies can be used to fulfill our desires or squandered and lost.
Sunday Morning! “White Girls” by Hilton Als
Here’s a book that takes cultural essay writing to a whole other level.
Actually, the Film Was Better Than These Books
“The book was better” is not something I say very often, but it is no less true: books are a different medium and what works on the page my not work on the screen and vice versa.
Sunday Morning! On Reading (and reading and reading) Thomas Wolfe
On a posthumous novel by the great writer (and overwriter) from North Carolina.
Sunday Morning! “The Faraway Nearby”
On Rebecca Solnit’s 2013 collection of interwoven, digressive, personal essays about the stories we tell to make our way through life with each other.
Tenshot: The Three Body Problem Trilogy
I recently read this trilogy by Chinese science fiction author Cixin Liu
Sunday Morning! “Constellation of Genius”
About an extremely readable day book for 1922, a year in which culture changed absolutely.
Sunday Morning! “Killing Commendatore” by Haruki Murakami
On the most recent tour of Haruki Murakami’s imagination and an exploration of artistic creation itself.
