So today’s Booking Through Thursday question made me smile: I saw that National Library week is coming up in April, and that led to some questions. How often do you use your public library and how do you use it? Has the coffeehouse/bookstore replaced the library? Did you go to the library as a child? Do you have any particular memories of the library? Do you like sleek, modern, active libraries or the older, darker, quiet, cozy libraries? Oh, how often I use my public library. I use my public library to cheer myself up whenever I am depressed. The…
6 CommentsAuthor: Jenny Hamilton
I love books about the Victorians. It’s Oscar Wilde’s fault for being one. And I like books about mental illness, as long as they do not do that stream of consciousness thing, which I absolutely can’t stand. So when I read about this on the other Jenny Claire’s blog, I was pleased as punch to read it; and yes, I did mess up my don’t-check-out-any-more-library-books thing in order to get this book. And, okay, yes, since I was at the library anyway, I may have gotten a few other books as well. An Inconvenient Wife is about an upper-class American…
1 CommentThe whole comics noir genre may just not be for me. Why, why, why is it necessary to write o’ for of? Why is it necessary to write sittin’ for sitting? IT IS NOT, MY FRIENDS.
5 CommentsI just cannot decide how I feel about this book. I read about it at Superfastreader’s blog, and it sounded so lovely I decided to break my longstanding but baseless boycott of Muriel Spark. This rarely happens with my baseless boycotts. Nobody has ever managed to make Gore Vidal, Philip Roth, Vikram Seth, or Iris Murdoch sound appealing enough that I will read their books. But I got A Far Cry from Kensington out of the library. I like to read books about London that talk about streets I know, so I was pleased when she mentioned the roads in…
3 CommentsBut the Royal Shakespeare Company is making a DVD of David Tennant’s Hamlet! YES THEY ARE. A DVD. And, okay, yes, Hamlet is not historically my most favorite one of Shakespeare’s plays. I have been known to say that Hamlet needs to for God’s sake DO SOMETHING ANYTHING EVER; I have been known to quote Oscar Wilde about critics of Hamlet; I have been known to tell the story of how my senior English class drove any possible liking I might ever have had for that play out of me by spending days and days and teacher-sanctioned days discussing whether…
5 CommentsI started out liking this book a lot, and then I liked it progressively less and less. Fie to Philip Pullman who thinks it is so wonderful – this is just the sort of book you would think he would like. Bah. I agree with GeraniumCat that it’s a really interesting and genuine depiction of the dead, but I didn’t like the book taken altogether. I got tired and depressed reading it, which I don’t think is the effect books are meant to have. Plus, although Tarot cards didn’t feature prominently, I often didn’t like the interpretations of the cards…
1 CommentSo, okay, admittedly I am having trouble facing the idea of human interaction these days on account of being totally down in the dumps, but still it seems excessive for me to have read all the rest of the Fables volumes since Tuesday night. It went like this: I got the fourth volume from the library near work on Wednesday, read that; went to two different libraries on Thursday to get one and three and read those; then on Saturday I went to Bongs & Noodles and read two, and that evening I went to the main branch of the…
1 CommentMy sister has talked so much about Fables for months (I mean, not ceaselessly, just when it came up), and yes, I mostly ignored her; and I also mostly ignored Nymeth, who has been saying how good Fables is (are?) for a while too. So now I am sorry that I ignored y’all, because I grabbed a volume the last time I was at the library – I really wanted Goodbye, Chunky Rice but they didn’t have it – and I read it last night. It was the fifth volume, which isn’t a genius way to start out a series. …
5 CommentsLook, I’m as fond of my home state as the next person – probably more than many – and this book is set in Louisiana. And although part of me was mad because I read a review that called Thursday’s Children “goopy treacle” and compared it unfavorably with The Dancers of Sycamore Street, and that part of me wanted The Dancers of Sycamore Street to be rubbish, I was mostly hoping that I was about to read an undiscovered gem, and not only would I enjoy it hugely, but I would also feel pleased and proud that it was set…
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