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Books

• Books

  Recently Read

  10.28.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  The Dreamstone, C.J. Cherryh
  The Tree of Swords and Jewels, C.J. Cherryh
  Darwin’s Radio, Greg Bear
  Post-Mortem, Patricia D. Cornwell
  Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, Jonathan Eig
  The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, J.N.D. Kelly
  Old Man’s War, John Scalzi
  The Damnation Game, Clive Barker
  The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement, Susan Ferris & Ricardo [...]

• Books, Portland, Walks with the dogs

  Otium sine litteris mors est

  07.27.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Recent books read:
  We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin
  The Warden, by Anthony Trollope
  Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires, by Selwyn Raab
  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II (Modern Library Edition), by Edward Gibbon
   
  Today is muggy and I am logy but I still took the dogs (both the Resident [...]

• Books

  Fried

  06.29.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  It’s too hot to think today.  Instead, here’s a list of books I’ve read recently, before my brain was melted: Coltrane, The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff.
  The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler.
  Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee.
  On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
  The Birth of the Republic 1763-89 by Edmund S. Morgan.
  Reaping the Whirlwind by Nigel Cawthorne.
  Ladies and Gentleman, The Bronx is [...]

• Books

  Cette tristesse étrange

  05.01.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  Last night I finished reading J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.  In the last few paragraphs I kept repeating “My God, my God” over and over.  I won’t ruin the ending, but suffice to say that I can’t keep it out of my mind this morning.  Devastating stuff, and it’s making for a blue day. 
  Similar effects, I [...]

• Art, Books

  Two Women

  04.21.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  I’ve been reading through  John Updike’s collected early short stories.   From “Snowing in Greenwich Village”, we have this passage:
  Her face was pale, mottled pink and yellow; this accentuated the Modiglianiesque quality established by her oval blue eyes and her habit of sitting to her full height, her head quizzically tilted and her hands palm upward [...]

• Books

  No snarky title

  03.04.08 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  The writer Tim Pratt has posted about his son River’s upcoming surgery.  My thoughts are with them.  How horrible for parents to go through something like this so soon in their child’s life (or ever, obviously).  The odds in this case are good but meanwhile the strain is unimaginable to me.  One weeps at how many [...]

• Books, Music

  Thus a mind is wasted

  02.08.08 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  The greeting banner on my cell phone announces its name as “Vavatch Hub”.  This is a reference to Iain M. Banks’ Consider Phlebas, which is only one of the greatest SF works of our time.  I also have a download of this image of Galaxy M104.  Looks like an Orbital to me, if I squint right.  One day I [...]

• Books

  Buggrit

  12.27.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  I subscribe to the Discworld Monthly email newsletter, because I am exactly that kind of geek.  I confess that I have stopped buying each of Terry Pratchett’s books as they are published in paperback here, but only because of a sense that I needed a break from them and could return once a bountiful backlog [...]

• Books, General, Walks with the dogs

  Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?

  12.21.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  Various:
  I have a heavy bag and a speed bag set up in the basement.  It’s useful exercise to punch things that won’t hit back.  Yesterday evening I was rat-a-tatting on the speed bag when the internal bladder popped.  Reactions: ‘bladder’ is a funny word; I flinched and ducked like I was having a flashback to [...]

• Books

  N.B.A.

  11.16.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  I see that Sherman Alexie has won a National Book Award this year.  Good on him; it’s absurd but I feel a personal pride when a writer whose work I really like wins a major award.  I suppose it’s the same feeling that comes from backing a winning horse, minus the payout and the years of [...]

Gryffyd Eamonn Dempsey

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