I’ve begun the process of back-filling my reading list here.
Oldest to newest. Going to take a while.
All posts tagged as: books-reading-writing
Photo by Valdemaras D.
The new version of this site has been up for a while now with the Reading page remaining empty.
My initial thought was to do a plain Markdown list of what I’m reading, what I’ve finished, what I thought, etc. It’s inline with a basic approach of simplicity first.
I’ve already moved my book list around a lot between Goodreads, StoryGraph, and now Hardcover. Micro.blog has a nice book tracking feature as well.
So of course I’ve decided to not do that and to add my reading history to my own database. It does fit the approach of POSSE, but I don’t get the benefit of simple Markdown portability.
Still, I like the idea of having more display flexibility with the information…
First Paragraph:
“The Salinas Valley is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay.”
—John Steinbeck, East of Eden
First Paragraph:
“Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was an officer in the Union Army. He stood six feet three inches tall and had a soldierly bearing. In later life, he loved to use military metaphors in his speeches and his conversation; he didn’t mind being referred to good-naturedly as Captain Holmes; and he wore his enormous military mustaches until his death in 1935, at the age of ninety-three. The war was the central experience of his life, and he kept its memory alive. Every year he drank a glass of wine in observance of the anniversary of the battle Antietam, where he had been shot in the neck and left, briefly behind enemy lines, for dead.”
—Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
First Paragraph:
“IN THE MYRIADIC YEAR OF OUR LORD—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!—Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.”
—Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth: Locked Tomeb 1
First Paragraph:
“When we were new, Rosa and I were mid-store, on the magazines table side, and could see through more than half of the window. So we were able to watch the outside – the office workers hurrying by, the taxis, the runners, the tourists, Beggar Man and his dog, the lower part of the RPO Building. Once we were more settled, Manager allowed us to walk up to the front until we were right behind the window display, and then we could see how tall the RPO Building was. And if we were there at just the right time, we would see the Sun on his journey, crossing between the building tops from our side over to the RPO Building side.”
—Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun
First Paragraph:
“First there was nothing. Then there was everything.
Then, in a park above a western city after dusk, the air is raining messages.
A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, as hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things, in words before words.”
—Richard Powers, The Overstory
First Paragraph:
“O anti-verdurous phallic were’t not for your pouring weight looming in tears like a sick tree or your ever-gaudy-comfort jabbing your city’s much wrinkled sky you’d seem an absurd Babel squatting before mortal millions”
—Gregory Corso, Gasoline
First Paragraph:
“To say the truth, it was not how I expected—stepping off toward America past a drowned horse.”
—Ivan Doig, Dancing at the Rascal Fair
First Paragraph:
“After all,” said the Duchess vaguely, “there are certain things you can’t get away from. Right and wrong, good conduct and moral rectitude, have certain well-defined limits.”
—Saki, The Best of Saki: Selected wtih an Introduction by Graham Greene
First Paragraph:
“There was once a boy named Milo who didn’t know what to do with himself—not just sometimes, but always.”
—Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Treats received today from my good friend Will Leathem. I read them immediately.
Books can have so many lives.
I wonder where this one has been.
All these acquisitions, and any that aren’t here but on the way, are justified by the fact that…I wanted them.
First Paragraph:
“Dypaloh. There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting. There were many colors on the hills, and the plain was bright with different-colored clays and sands. Red and blue and spotted horses grazed in the plain, and there was a dark wilderness on the mountains beyond. The land was still and strong. It was beautiful all around.”
—N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn
Joan Didion in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in April 1967. Photo by Ted Streshinsky.
One of the sexiest faces I’ve ever seen.
I imagine her attention falling to me, just for a moment, in this crowd, out on the street. I feel her size me up, a knowing critical gaze. Is she instantly writing my story behind those eyes?
She finds me…acceptable.
It’s enough.
Currently re-reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, champion of Beat Generation writers passed away this week at 101 years of age.
Here’s the last line of “I Am Waiting” from A Coney Island of the Mind (1958.)
”…and I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder.”
The Final Sentence website contains some riches. It’s handy if you are looking for something you’ve already read, but beware of spoilers. Use the search feature instead of browsing. Or not.
Photo by Molly Wright
“There is a kind of life that is peculiar to the land in summer—a wariness, a seasonal equation of well-being and alertness. Road runners take on the shape of motion itself, urgent and angular, or else they are like the gnarled, uncovered roots of ancient, stunted trees, some ordinary ruse of the land itself, immovable and forever there. And quail, at evening, just failing to suggest the waddle of too much weight, take cover with scarcely any talent for alarm, and spread their wings to the ground; and if then they are made to take flight, the imminence of no danger on earth can be more apparent; they explode away like a shot, and there is nothing but the dying whistle and streak of their going. Frequently in the sun there are pairs of white and russet hawks soaring to the hunt. And when one falls off and alights, there will be a death in the land, for it has come down to place itself like a destiny between its prey and the burrow from which its prey has come; and then the other, the killer hawk, turns around in the sky and breaks its glide and dives. It is said that hawks, when they have nothing to fear in the open land, dance upon the warm carnage of their kills. In the highest heat of the day, rattlesnakes lie outstretched upon the dunes, as if the sun had wound them out and lain upon them like a line of fire, or, knowing of some vibrant presence in the air, they writhe away in the agony of time. And of their own accord they go at sundown into the earth, hopelessly, as if to some unimaginable reckoning in the underworld. Coyotes have the gift of being seldom seen; they keep to the edge of vision and beyond, loping in and out of cover on the plains and highlands. And at night, when the whole world belongs to them, they parley at the river with the dogs, their higher, sharper voices full of authority and rebuke. They are an old council of clowns, and they are listened to.”
—N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn
Gotta read faster.
From Prospero’s Books Kansas City, The Dusty Bookshelf Lawrence, KS, and my Library of America subscription. The James Corey is a gift from my daughter Marilyn because she knows The Expanse is my favorite TV show.
First Paragraph:
“I was stunned by Mary Karr’s memoir, The Liars’ Club. Not just by its ferocity, its beauty, and by her delightful grasp of the vernacular, but by its totality—she is a woman who remembers everything about her early years.”
—Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
I found a copy of this book at The Dusty Bookshelf here in Lawrence, KS today. It’s reputation proceeds it but I would have purchased it on the strength of the epigram alone.
“When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever says he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.”
—An old Jew of Galicia
First Paragraph:
“It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy. Their bread, their work, their private lives began to depend on this or that decision in disputes on principles to which, until then, they had never paid any attention. In their eyes, the philosopher had always been a sort of dreamer whose divagations had no effect on reality. The average human being, even if he had once been exposed to it, wrote philosophy off as utterly impractical and useless. Therefore the great intellectual work of the Marxists could easily pass as just one more variation on a sterile pastime. Only a few individuals understood the causes and probable consequences of this general indifference.”
—Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind
What would stop you from reading?
The Long Room Of The Old Library At Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
Photo by Jonathan Singer
On the reading page for Terrible Ideas, the Currently Reading section now contains 9 books. The list doesn’t contain any books that I want to give up on, so it’s time to get moving.
The On Deck section, on the other hand, is completely ridiculous. I’m going to have to do some revising and reconsidering there. There are forty books “on deck” and for some of them, I should consider adding a “wishful thinking” section. There are also quite a few unlisted recent acquisitions that are trying to push for the top of that list. It’s time for a little planning and purging.
There’s definitely going to be more poetry read. Poetry increases strength and builds muscles.
What are the books on your list for 2021?