Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. I will never stop sighing. Every time my eye falls on this book, I heave a huge sigh. Oh, expectations. I am your slave and you always make my life more difficult if you possibly, possibly can. Why are you like this? It has been ten thousand years since I read a graphic novel that made my heart sing. Yes. Ten thousand. That’s how many years it has been. I haven’t read a graphic novel that made my heart sing since the year 7990 BCE. Unless Gunnerkrigg Court and The Unwritten count. Just, like, no graphic…
57 CommentsReading the End Posts
How good for there to be a sweet little book about Christmas in New York City for me to read after my first Christmas season in New York City (the first of many!). I found this book for $1 at the Strand, which is all very fitting for a book that starts with its protagonist finding something unexpected at the Strand. I selflessly gave it to my mother and didn’t even read it before giving it to her because that’s the kind of angelic saintlike daughter I am. But then I swiped it from her two seconds after Christmas and…
43 CommentsBooks about perceptions of history and historical figures have abounded in my life lately, and I love them. Forever. Heather recently reviewed a book about how the impact of the Moses story on American culture, which I am planning to read soon; I got this book about how the treatment of various events in American history has changed in history textbooks over the years; and then there was Contested Will, which dealt with the history of the Shakespeare authorship controversy. In the few months when I thought I was going to write a senior thesis in college, it was going…
24 Comments2010 has been a year of change and good fortune. For the first time in my memory, I aced my New Year’s Resolutions instead of abandoning and forgetting about them two months into the year. 1. Eat more vegetables. Check. I started having spinach salad every day for lunch, and now it has become a habit. Sometimes I eat spinach as a snack, straight out of the bag. This is not disgusting. It’s healthy. I am like Popeye in a skirt (see 2). 2. Stop being so weird about my knees. Check. For years I wore almost no skirts, shorts,…
96 CommentsWell. This is not what I expected. Amanda reviewed this series, of which Blue Is for Nightmares and White Is for Magic are the first two, earlier this year, and they are boarding school books and the series is a bunch of books that are matching and color-coded. Y’all know I had to get some of that. How, you inquire, did I manage to resist for eight months? By my home library always having them checked out, that’s how! But I got the first two at Mid-Manhattan when I came into the city last weekend to see the statues at…
30 CommentsWhat is it about infighting that I find so enthralling? Siegel suggests that American culture has a fetish for girls (women) fighting, and that’s certainly true, but in my case I am just very interested in the distinctions people draw between the groups they belong to, and the nominally similar groups they insist they couldn’t be more different from. I am reminded of Lucas in Empire Records: “Some people say it doesn’t make a difference, but I say it’s the difference that makes it.” Lucas is talking about vinyl, but the principle is, I feel, a universal one. Sisterhood Interrupted…
22 CommentsSO. BOOK BLOGOSPHERE. I had this idea and I am curious to see what you think. I frequently discover that I have music tastes in common with people on my blogroll. I am always on the hunt for new music. I love, love, love making and receiving mix CDs. Would anyone have any interest in doing a book bloggers’ mix CD swap? I thought we could do it in the New Year, maybe in late February or early March (for Mardi Gras, perhaps?). My scheme is to set it up rather like Book Blogger Secret Santa (but not secret): you…
36 CommentsHave y’all ever seen the film Serendipity? I mean it’s not that great. I’m fond of Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack, and I still recognize that this film just isn’t that great. The premise is, they meet once, they have a great date, but Kate Beckinsale wants to leave it to chance whether they meet again. Chance doesn’t work out for them. A few years later, John Cusack’s about to get married or something, and he goes on a mission to track down Kate Beckinsale because she’s the one that got away. He really wants to find her but they…
43 Comments
Review: A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin
Phew. Finally. I was reading this book for a good, ooh, three weeks I guess, before I finished it at last. Now I know a lot more things than I knew previously about the formation of the modern Middle East, but still not a lot. As with Three Empires on the Nile, much of the information contained in A Peace to End All Peace went in one eye and out the other. (That’s a gross image but “ear” doesn’t work with reading, so, er, sorry.) A Peace to End All Peace is about the fall of the Ottoman Empire and…
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