I read this book The Art Prophets, by Richard Polsky, which is a collection of art criticism essays that talk about dealers who discovered and promoted specific genres of art that weren’t necessarily appreciated straightaway. Like Ivan Karp with pop art, or Stan Lee in comics, Virginia Dwan with earthworks, etc. I read it during jury duty. I had a system. I’d read a couple of chapters of Ada, or Ardor, a couple of essays from The Art Prophets, and then I’d read a trashy novel (you don’t need to know details on the last part. Focus on how I…
14 CommentsReading the End Posts
More on this later, my dumplings, but for the moment I just wanted to alert those of you who don’t know: It is DWJ March once more! The lovely Kristen of We Be Reading is hosting. Readalongs of Howl’s Moving Castle and A Tale of Time City will be occurring in the first and second halves of March, respectively, so feel free to join in on that. As for me, I will be doing the former but not the latter, because I have my copy of Howl’s Moving Castle with me in New York (duh, like I could ever live…
4 CommentsToday we are (more correctly, I am) worrying about whether it is more important to have self-control, something I sort of pride myself on having, or to pursue my lifelong, but sort of ridiculous, quest for the One Best Copy of Every Book I Love. These exist and I do not need them because I own several of them already, do not like a couple of them, have not read several others, and would not exchange my current copy of In This House of Brede for anything. But these concerns are subsidiary to the very strong part of my brain…
26 CommentsTa-da! At last I have read this book and can proceed, like a year later, to Gone Girl. Seriously, it is almost a year later. You would not believe how long it takes for a hold on a Gillian Flynn book to get in at the library. Dark Places is about the only survivor of a massacre that killed her whole family. At the age of seven, Libby Day testified that she saw her older brother Ben murder her mother and two older sisters. Now she’s in her thirties, running out of money left her by sympathetic well-wishers, and searching…
15 CommentsI stealth-borrowed The Age of Miracles from my friend the Enthusiast on a day when he wasn’t at work and I forgot my Nook at home. The subway ride with nothing to read was so unbearably boring I wanted to rip all of my hair out of my head just to have something to do. The Enthusiast has one and a half shelves full of readable books at his cubicle, but I didn’t want most of them. I almost borrowed Coetzee’s Disgrace, but luckily Lil Liv Tyler, who sits at the desk across from the Enthusiast, warned me that (spoilers,…
34 CommentsI am pleased with myself in re: this book because I placed an e-hold on it before my library actually acquired an e-copy, which means I got to check it out as soon as their e-copy arrived. I don’t know how long I’d really have had to wait for it if I hadn’t done this, but I choose to believe it would have been, like, months. And that I am a genius for placing an early hold and getting my greedy paws on it early. But you are not reading this post because you want to know what process I…
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