Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do?? And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and…
I promise I used to have an attention span. And then I had a baby. I had all these high hopes of doing tons of reading while nursing. But I’m not, thanks to the internet. The day my daughter was born I set my laptop on the radiator cover right next to my nursing glider, where I have full access to the world wide web over WiFi. Thanks to the Boppy & a well placed ottoman, I can nurse and browse the web at the…
Synopsis: A collection of short stories set mostly among Indian immigrants in the US. Review: Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake was one of my favorite reads of last year, so I decided I needed to check out her much-buzzed about collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. It will surprise no one who has read these tales that I found them both simple and spectacular. I am not usually a fan of short stories, though now that I am short on time for reading I’m finding…
All other things (like price and storage space) being equal, given a choice in a perfect world, would you rather have paperbacks in your library? Or hardcovers? And why? I prefer trade edition paperbacks, for the most part, because I do a lot of my reading on the subway, and hardcovers get really heavy and unwieldy. They’re also better for reading in bed, especially when they have to rest on a pregnant belly! I also tend to prefer the way that trade paperbacks look, mainly…
The kind and well-read Walrus tagged me for the 123 meme. Thank you! I’m currently reading Renegade’s Magic by Robin Hobb, which is sitting at the top of the stack next to my nursing glider. Also in the stack: The Axe by Sigrid Undset, the New King James Bible (not that I have bothered to read it lately), and Lose Your Mummy Tummy. “Let me be forgotten by them. And what did I hope for myself? Hope. It seemed a bitter word now.” Here are…
I posted this today to a community mailing list, in an exchange sparked by the observation that there are no bookstores within walking distance of our large, densely populated urban neighborhood. We don’t warrant favor from the powers-that-be at Barnes & Noble, and independent bookstores can’t thrive. Someone talked about the need for “third places” in our community, and proposed the library. I responded: Libraries… now there’s a subject I’m passionate about. Libraries are not what they could be. They are designed like municipal spaces,…
As created by Eva, who will enter you in a drawing if you leave a comment on her post. Thanks for the, Sheila! I’m tagging Alissa, Terri, Megan, Rhinoa, and Ian–or Ian’s dad Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews? Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. I was in the midst of a horrific breakup while reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and I put it down halfway through and have not Chabonned since. In addition,…
Ian from Upper Fort Stewart has a good post about how he doesn’t love the library, and asks how others feel about this venerable institution. I love the library. It might be my favorite place in the world, in theory if not always in practice. I always feel immediately at home in a library, no matter where I am. I’ve never felt that comfortable in a bookstore. I have always been a library lover, going back to my earliest days. I lived for those all-too…
I finished a book on the subway this morning for my reading job. The only place in the world I can’t read is in the car. Train–fine. Subway–fine. Plane, bus, boat–no problem. But if I’m in the car and I spend more than 10 minutes looking at any kind of words, even on a map, I’m down for the count. When I was a kid, I figured out that I wouldn’t get sick as long as I couldn’t see out the window, so I would…