dirksbooks' LiveJournal

I've been meaning to expand Dirksbooks into a real literary blog (for those of you who read them) for a few months now, so I've done it, All The News That's Fit To Steal.... Check it out, and tell a friend, and things...

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So, who wants to buy me this?

BTW, the quote I just posted is from Black Ram and Grey Falcon. It's an amazing book, really, sort-of a study into the character of the Yugoslav people, visa vis their history and customs. It's a helluva thick book, but I strongly recommend reading a little of it.

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"If one's existance has no form, if its events do not come handily to mind and disclose their significance, we feel about ourselves as if we were reading a bad book. We can all of us judge the truth of this, for hardly any of us manage to avoid some periods when the main theme of our lives is obscured by details, when we involve ourselves with persons who are insufficiently characterized..."-Rebecca West

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Take a gander at this inverview with Andrew Sean Greer, if you can. I only read half-of-it, but that's because I'm really interested in reading The Confessions of Max Tivolli pretty soon and, ergo, don't want to have it spoiled for me, too much (the conversation was getting a bit plotty).

I finished The Left Hand of Darkness and I'm so compelled by it that I might actually write a review for it and post it up, but yeah, scary-recommended.

I'm re-ish-reading a bit of Travels With My Aunt, right now (I was on a bunch of allergy-related steroids when I tried to read it it, the first time, so I remember precious little. I've also been nose-deep in The Collected Frank O'Hara, well, a different collection than the one I linked, but the same name and the same idea.

Have a good day, all...

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Recently Finished Books:

• Popular Music from Vittula
• The Character of Rain

New Books:

• Bend Sinister
• Vineland

Reading:

• The Left Hand of Darkness
• Black Spring

Found both new books at Catholic Family Resale for a combined sixy cents. I'm "stoked."

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!=read
*^=part of it
?=want to read/will read

(!) Beowulf
(!) Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
() Agee, James - A Death in the Family
(!) Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
() Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
(*^) Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
() Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
(!) Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
() Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights
(!) Camus, Albert - The Stranger
() Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
(?) Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
(*^) Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
(!) Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
(!) Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
(!) Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
(!) Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
(*^) Dante - Inferno
(!) de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
() Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
(!)Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
(!) Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
(!) Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
() Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
(?) Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
() Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
(!) Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
() Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
() Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
(!) Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
() Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
(!) Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
(?) Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
() Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
(?) Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
(!) Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
(!)Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
(!) Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
(*^) Heller, Joseph - Catch-22
(*^) Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
(*^) Homer - The Iliad
(*^) Homer - The Odyssey
() Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(!) Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
(!) Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
(!) Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
(!) James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
(!) James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
(!)Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(*^) Joyce, James - Dubliners
(!) Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
(*^) Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
(!) Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
() Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
(!) London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
() Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
(!) Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude
(!) Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
(!) Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
(*^) Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
() Morrison, Toni - Beloved
() O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
() O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
(!) Orwell, George - Animal Farm
(?) Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
() Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
(*^) Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
(*^) Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
(?) Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
(!) Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
(!) Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
() Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
(*^) Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
(!) Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
(!) Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
(!) Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
(!) Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
(*^) Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
(!) Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
() Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
() Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
(!) Sophocles - Antigone
(!) Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
(!) Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
(!) Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
() Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
(!) Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
(?) Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
(*^) Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
() Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
() Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
(!) Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(*^) Voltaire - Candide
(!) Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - George Bergeron
() Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
() Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
() Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
(*^) Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
(*^) Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
(*^) Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
(*^) Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
() Wright, Richard - Black Boy
() Wright, Richard - Native Son

This really proves that I start books, but I have issues with finishing them.

Also, I'm thinking of doing some vollunteer work for the Project Gutenberg. Comments...

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Just ordered three books from amazon:
Wonder When You'll Miss Me : A Novel
Popular Music from Vittula
The Character of Rain: A Novel

and I have 120 pages left in portrait of a lady...

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McSweeney's had this up on their site, but I thought I'd save you the trouble and copy it into my journal.

( an excerpt from the new stephen elliott novel )

I like his writing a lot, not extremely florid, but it's got a few subtle tricks up its sleve.

Also, got some more reading on Portrait of a Lady recently. One of the best books I've ever read, for realz.

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McSweeney's has a site of sestinas up here. My new life's goal is now to get a sestina published, there. And, yeah, if you haven't been on the McSweeney's site, yet, you need, too. Lots of free literary content and good things that I want to buy.

I also updated my Amazon wishlist (so buy me something) and checked Kundera's The Art of the Novel and The Derrida Reader out from the library. I'm more-likely to finish the former, really, but I'm not sure how wise it was to check out two books of literary criticism. Also, why do you start a "reader" with some of a philosopher's more unapproachable work (since the first essay "scribbling" refers to a secondary source the book doesn't provide).

Oh well, more on Mysteries of Pittsburg, soon, since I finished it. Good day, all.

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Interview with Arthur C. Clarke in The Onion

I'm suprised the guy is alive, much less still writing.

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I finally finished Jitterbug Perfume, and I have to say, I absolutely didn't enjoy this book at all. I don't have a thing against modern (and even some pop lit), but this was honestly one of the worst "novels of ideas" I've ever read, just because it never really strays from the "ideas" and develop an actual plot or characters you care about. It's funny how I can read Ghram Greene and Henry James really quickly and with fervor, but it takes me months to get through a Robbins novel. For a better look at how to do a "novel of ideas," try The Book of Laughter and Forgetting rather than try to answer overarching questions with metaphor, it studies common questions we all have, then tries to answer them with other quesitons.

I also did a little impluse reaidng of Mrs. Dalloway last night because I was bored, tired of studying, and frankly, it never hurts anybody to re-read a bit of a book you love.

Next on my reading list The Mysteries of Pittsburg, Porait of a Lady, or something by Thomas Wolfe.

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I thought I might-as-well link to my only entry in 50bookchallenge because, I thought about joining it this year, but I dunno, it just seemed counterproductive, well me reading because I don't want to race through books (unless, of course, it's for a class or a loaner from a friend that I've had too long, not the library 'cause I still haven't managed to turn in a library book on time).

Trying to finish up Jitterbug Perfume, tonight. I've been spending most of this week reading Descartes' meditations and a lot of 17th century english and american lit (for that very class). I'm really loving the fourth meditation, just so many beautiful and hard-to-refute ideas about god with quite a bit of stringency. I'm not liking Jitterbug Perfume, too much, especially when I know it's keeping me away form reading better books. I loved "Fierce Invalids..." because, well, it had a nice little plot to it, but this book is, frankly, more concerned in being though-provoking than beautiful or clever. Of course, I should have expected it, the last Robbins book I read really damed up my reading timetable.

I'll give you my final thoughts on it, though, when I'm done.

Addendum: I found this brief biography of salinger after a conversation with tyson today where we both confessed we knew relative little about the man...take a look at it, it's great, I swear.

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Not much news, really. I'm still knee-deep in two books, Jitterbug Perfume and The God of Small Things. ( feelings on the books )

I've also been doing some updating of my amazon.com wishlist, which doesn't mean I want you to buy me things, I just want you to see what I would buy if I had any money. Sadly, I just spent about 400 dollars on text books (about 200 of which was given to me for my birthday or christmas by relatives who like to send me checks so they don't have to talk to me), so (buying) recreational reading's pretty-much out the window. I only wish the tech library had more modern books, or at least the winners of non-American book awards.

Found a wonderful new literary blog, too. Luckially, it's written by a more casual reader than some of the people who write these things, so it doesn't make you feel completely worthless.

Also, a happy birthday to schwarzbrille. I decided to write in this instead of my normal blog, bioproject. I just hope I didn't bore you to tears...

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I must add, I just finished the NY Times article on John Nagl. Sadly, I can't provide you with the text of it because they already have tomorrow's magazine up on the website. Needless to say, if any of you (lubbockites) want to borrow it from me, you're welcome to do so. It does sort-of a Kafkaesque thing (because I'm thinking Kafka, lately, you know), and presents you with John Nagl, counterinsurgency expert and then makes you form a variety of opinions of the guy and our counterinsurgency policy in Iraq. I have to add, even though it is a tad pessimistic, it's one of the closest things to an impartial article on our actions in iraq that I've ever read.

Also, here's a horrifying little article from the times: Wal Mart Lockins

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Not much to report. I lost my (borrowed) copy of Jitterbug Perfume, so I haven't really made any progress in that book (I think I'm only about 70 pages into it).

I've mostly been reading Descartes, lately, for class and Kafka for enjoyment. I have to say, I really like just sitting back and reading Kafka. The guy's been ruined by people who have over-interpreted and over-anylized that it's hard to read him out-of-context, but I'm doing the best I can right now. Anyway, short stories are really the only things worth reading between books.

I also need to finish last week's New York Times Magazine, so I can read tomorrow's guiltlessly.

Also, take a look at this article from the new issue of Granta. I'm so thinking about picking it up. Also, this article (from the same magazine, though published in the Guardian) is quite good.

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Well, this is my first entry in this journal (which I intend to keep as a log of the books and other things I read, as well as my thoughts on them), so I might as well talk about the last book I read:

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

This is really a great book and a good way to start of reading Greene ('cause I've been meaning to do that for years, but always end up passing on his books every time I go to a bookstore). The story's especially intesting because I just finished Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, both of which are wonderful stories about living in a world deprived of liberties (In Greene's case, religion, in Sijie's case, novels and education).

The later appealed to me more because I'm a reader and a dirty old agnostic, however, I was quite amazed at how The Power and The Glory affected me.

( plot summary )

I had a little bit about the whisky priest as a religious mystic and his enemy, the lieutenant, as an irreligious mystic, but it wasn't any good, so I promptly deleted it.

Also, john updike's first story is availble at Guardian Books, today.

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