The beginning: A woman called Rima, the last surviving member of her family, comes to live with her godmother, a famous mystery writer, in Santa Cruz. Addison was estranged from Rima’s father years ago, for reasons Rima has never known, and Rima has come to Santa Cruz partly to find out whether there was anything more than friendship between her father and her godmother. While living at Addison’s mansion (called Wit’s End), Rima becomes fascinated by Addison’s fans, whose online presence has given Addison’s fictional detective a life of his own. Damn, Wit’s End (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository)…
13 CommentsTag: books about books
Okay, I know you remember that I said no more books I can get at home. I know I know I know. I realize this post means that Diary of a Provincial Lady was not my last exception to the rule. Actually the rule was, I will only read books that I cannot get when I am at home, unless the author gives his or her name as two initials followed by a surname. Please do not be perturbed by my Orwellian alteration of a previously established rule. P.D. James, acclaimed writer of detective fiction, has a number of things…
35 CommentsThis is not so much a review, as a big political thing involving this book and the author of the last one I read. I decided to make it a separate post from the one about Iran: A People Interrupted. Mainly because otherwise the post would have been too disjointed; and because the stuff I want to write about right now is really about Reading Lolita in Tehran. See, Hamid Dabashi really does not like Azar Nafisi. Y’all, he really doesn’t like her – not in a box, not with a fox, not in a house, not with a mouse. …
8 CommentsAh, books about books. I read this because I can’t get ahold of Nick Hornby’s much-touted books about books. Anne Fadiman writes about all kinds of aspects of loving books: marrying libraries, loving your books, plagiarism – all kinds of things. I liked some of these essays a lot – the one about marrying libraries made me wince because I could picture myself agonizing over how to organize and sort out my books with someone else’s. I was interested to read an essay from the perspective of a woman who loves books and doesn’t mind destroying them. (I wrote, destroying…
9 CommentsRecommended by: Read-Warbler This book is about an American librarian who brings books to rural African places using camels. I’ll give you that again: She uses CAMELS to bring people BOOKS. There are no words that adequately express how sad I am that I wasn’t able to finish this book. It contains BOOKS and CAMELS. Bringing books to people via camels. I love books (obviously), and God knows I love camels more than my luggage. One time I went to a RenFest, and THEY HAD CAMELS there and I RODE ON ONE. Didn’t even remotely know that I cared about…
Leave a CommentTwo months before I’d had a high-profile job with an enviable salary, a sleek black German sedan on lease, an apartment in a fashionable downtown neighborhood, and a collection of not-so-inexpensive shirts and jackets hanging in the closet. Now, there were a few hundred dollars in my pocket, no job or prospect thereof, some clothes jammed into an old handbag, and a bed in a tattered bookstore to call home. All things considered, I couldn’t have been happier. Recommended by: Kate’s Book Blog I really liked the idea of this book. It’s a memoir written by a chap who went…
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