Tennyson’s In Memoriam and Reading Old Editions
I read an old copy of an old poem. I was given this gorgeous anthology of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s work, an original Excelsior Edition published in 1880. The book is…
A River Runs Through It and USFS 1919
I read these two novellas back-to-back, in an anthology that also featured the wonderfully named short story “Logging and Pimping and ‘Your Pal, Jim’”. A River Runs Through It is…
Reading Log: Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley
At 58, John Steinbeck drove across America for a little over three months in a camper pickup with his elderly French poodle, Charley. The dog was not only a companion,…
(Aborted) Reading Log: Gone Girl and Why I Need to Give Up on Reading Books That David Fincher Makes Into Movies.
I gave up eighty pages in and skimmed the rest for plot (I always try to make it at least 50 pages in good faith with any novel-length reading endeavor).…
Reading Log: Paul Harding’s Tinkers
Tinkers by Paul Harding Tinkers is a short book, but it was hard to get through. One might be tempted to call the prose purple if it weren’t…
Reading Log: Thom Jones’s Cold Snap
Cold Snap is Jones’s second collection of stories, a follow-up to his acclaimed debut The Pugilist at Rest. Cold Snap borrows some of the characters from his earlier collection, and…
2014 Revisited, with Metadata!
I decided to go through the list of books I read last year, compiling data. I used the incredibly scientific method of thinking up some interesting categories on the drive…
Reading Log: John Gardner’s Grendel
Grendel is the first full-length John Gardner novel I’ve read. I’m blown away. Go buy this book and read it now. Gardner gives voice to the Other (here the oldest…
Reading Log: Kim Cooper’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (a 33⅓ book)
Kim Cooper’s 33⅓ entry on Neutral Milk Hotel’s magnum opus In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a good read for fans of the album, the band, or the alternative…
Why I Write This Blog, and What It Is
This blog is intended primarily to serve as a personal reading log, where I record my initial, raw thoughts on the books I have read. These are thoughts that may…