I'm currently wading through Salman Rushdie's Quichotte. Loving it, but I'm not making enough reading time available to myself, so it's not at great pace.
More importantly, I like to think I'm not gender-biased. But I do read more from male writer than from female ones. That said, I LOVE the books by Elif Shafak. I need to expand my reading. WIll work on that after finishing the one I'm reading now.
I will probably take some inspiration from the book I'm reading from now and then to my kids: Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls.
Impressive that you're reading Swedish now as well. Is that hard? I can sort of make sense of Danish as a Dutchie. But only the written version. The way the Danes pronounce their language confuses me.
Jan 21, 2023·edited Jan 22, 2023Liked by Lisa Bolin
Yes. The research is fascinating, and the book is well-written. Although every now and then I hit a paragraph that requires several readings. If you're interested in neuroscience and our amazing brain, I highly recommend it. I'm a little more than half way through the book. I probably need to squeeze a good fiction book in after this one.
I usually have several books going at all times, mostly non-fiction, but I’m trying to fit it more fiction and poetry. Beau Lotto’s, Deviate, has my full attention at the moment along with the writing and photography craft books (I revisit those often). Thanks for the recommendations and the photos of the beautiful library. Libraries are my favorite places to visit and “absorb” the sights, smells, and sounds of books and their people.
I’d seen Charles Portis’s name mentioned from time to time, but recently watched an interview where Joel and Ethan Coen talked about how they came to remake True Grit as a result of Portis’s novel, rather than the original movie with John Wayne, which they had seen as teenagers but not since. So I finally picked up a used miscellany of Portis’s writing, including early journalism and short stories.
Portis reported from the U.S. South during the civil rights struggles there in the early 60s, then served as bureau chief in London for the New York Herald Tribune, a job that he points out in an interview was basically the same one Karl Marx held in the 1850s. Portis then returned to his home state of Arkansas to write fiction.
I can see why the Coens liked Portis: the eccentric characters, the vernacular expressions, the humor and satire. Here’s a travel writing parody Portis published in 1992, “Nights Can Turn Cool in Viborra”:
When brain fog allows, I’m reading Nick Cave’s ‘Faith, Hope and Carnage’, which is great to just dip into because it’s 40 hours of transcribed interviews with Seán O’Hagan, and Ian McEwen’s latest ‘Lessons’, which really taxes my brain at times because it continually moves from different pasts to different presents!
I'm currently wading through Salman Rushdie's Quichotte. Loving it, but I'm not making enough reading time available to myself, so it's not at great pace.
More importantly, I like to think I'm not gender-biased. But I do read more from male writer than from female ones. That said, I LOVE the books by Elif Shafak. I need to expand my reading. WIll work on that after finishing the one I'm reading now.
I will probably take some inspiration from the book I'm reading from now and then to my kids: Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls.
Impressive that you're reading Swedish now as well. Is that hard? I can sort of make sense of Danish as a Dutchie. But only the written version. The way the Danes pronounce their language confuses me.
Yes. The research is fascinating, and the book is well-written. Although every now and then I hit a paragraph that requires several readings. If you're interested in neuroscience and our amazing brain, I highly recommend it. I'm a little more than half way through the book. I probably need to squeeze a good fiction book in after this one.
I usually have several books going at all times, mostly non-fiction, but I’m trying to fit it more fiction and poetry. Beau Lotto’s, Deviate, has my full attention at the moment along with the writing and photography craft books (I revisit those often). Thanks for the recommendations and the photos of the beautiful library. Libraries are my favorite places to visit and “absorb” the sights, smells, and sounds of books and their people.
I’d seen Charles Portis’s name mentioned from time to time, but recently watched an interview where Joel and Ethan Coen talked about how they came to remake True Grit as a result of Portis’s novel, rather than the original movie with John Wayne, which they had seen as teenagers but not since. So I finally picked up a used miscellany of Portis’s writing, including early journalism and short stories.
Portis reported from the U.S. South during the civil rights struggles there in the early 60s, then served as bureau chief in London for the New York Herald Tribune, a job that he points out in an interview was basically the same one Karl Marx held in the 1850s. Portis then returned to his home state of Arkansas to write fiction.
I can see why the Coens liked Portis: the eccentric characters, the vernacular expressions, the humor and satire. Here’s a travel writing parody Portis published in 1992, “Nights Can Turn Cool in Viborra”:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1992/12/nights-can-turn-cool-in-viborra/667751/
And who can forget Mattie Ross (from Yell County, Arkansas) in True Grit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK4FZ3ks17M
And yes, I agree that writing about books we like and just avoiding talking about books we don’t is a sensible idea.
When brain fog allows, I’m reading Nick Cave’s ‘Faith, Hope and Carnage’, which is great to just dip into because it’s 40 hours of transcribed interviews with Seán O’Hagan, and Ian McEwen’s latest ‘Lessons’, which really taxes my brain at times because it continually moves from different pasts to different presents!
Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland, the Annotated Alice!