I read a book for work tonight, a travel autobiography about a woman who thinks she’s hilarious and that everything that ever happened to her in her entire life is fascinating. Guess what? It’s not. How do these people get published? I guess if you’re a woman, it helps to be really crude and vulgar. That’s what passes for feminism these days. Well, you depress me, Sarah Silverman and your ilk. Get a life. (Just don’t assume I want to know about it.)
I have had too much to read these days, and my brain is losing its ability to absorb what I’m reading. I’m hitting a saturation point and I can’t absorb Room with a View, which I’m reading for pleasure. This is obviously very depressing to me. All the little words are like grains of couscous spilled out on the counter. They’re everywhere, I can’t get them all in one place, and they’re useless for making anything from them.
An article in today’s New York Times on Louis Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read?, a best-seller in France that’s coming our way. Bayard says that his book is a satire, not meant to be taken seriously, though grounded in the truth that it is possible to fake your way through a conversation about literature without having read the book(s) being discussed.
Gayle over at Everyday I Write the Book blog also recently read Notes on a Scandal, which I blogged about last week. Here’s what she had to say:
A friend of mine and I were emailing about Robin Hobb’s Six Duchies books, and she wrote about why she liked them: Heroes aren’t all good. Love alone doesn’t conquer all. Women don’t pine away and die. Even the annoying characters can grow up and become really interesting. > This is why I read. This is what I’m looking for. One of my favorite techniques used by writers to create this depth is what I’m calling “deep cover,” after the Lawrence Fishburne movie where he…
I found this meme on Cam’s Commentary, and thought it would give me good fodder for a post for the work book I read last night. It was an awesome sports biopic about the only sport that makes me cry: the marathon. I hope it becomes a movie. I have 2 more books to read today for work so look for more posts. Below is the list with instructions for marking. ————————————————– Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize…
Tonight I had a book for work, so husband and I did not do the Valentine’s thing. I was in a rush to get it done tonight because we have friends in town from Austin tomorrow night. I succeeded in busting through the 384-page tome and got my report written in time for “Lost.”
Tonight’s work read was a book for teens that horrified me with how shallow it was. It made me fear for the souls of young readers until I reminded myself that I read the Sweet Valley High series up through something like number 60 and I turned out okay.
The book I read for work last night was pretty good, but it doesn’t appear to have been published in the US. Too bad, because it was lovely, with a sweet sense of humor and some indelible characters. I hate hate hate that Amazon thinks that different editions of the same book are DIFFERENT BOOKS!
Finished my last book for my reading job, and now I’m free! Until Monday morning, of course. I am in the middle of Zoe Heller’s Notes on a Scandal, which I picked up because I liked the movie so much. I mooched the book from someone in Iceland, which adds an extra frisson because I spent some time there a few years back, and love anything and everything from that country (except the rotted shark meat).