This is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz
I really enjoyed this one; read it in one sitting. Having read all the positive reviews that came out after its publication, I was pretty eager to get my hands on a copy. I was lucky to borrow one from Nic, who herself had it on loan from another friend (If the half-life of love is forever, I wonder how the rule applies to lent-out books?).
I think all the good things have already been said, but, man, his language is fabulous.
Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration, by Denyse Schmidt
Such a gorgeous book. I’ve read it in bed nearly every night for the past two weeks. My soaring quilting ambitions, let me tell them to you (and ever since running in to the folks from Zelinger’s at SAFF, they involve these).
I’m About Halfway Through:
The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell
Which I thought was an interminable text-wall of incest, Nazis, and vomiting–I mean, I could darkly discern some serious genius (or, at the very least, years of difficult research?) buried in the all too literal mire–until I read this article by Daniel Mendelsohn. It cleared things up.
That said, I still haven’t managed to get all the way through it. Not only are there the evil parts of the banality of evil to knock me down (and the atrocities and obscenities are absolutely as bad as can be), but then the banal parts are, by design, a slog.
Although that seduction-via-Phaedrus–that gets a gold star for humor (humor?).
On Love, by Alain de Botton
Maybe it gets better? I just–the Groucho v. Karl pun simply has not got enough humorous impetus to carry half a paragraph, let alone a 12-page chapter titled “Marxism.”
Someone explain it to me? Is it more than pedantry?
Just Acquired, via the Morganton flea market:
A Southern Garden, by Elizabeth Lawrence
which I’ve been wanting ever since reading her letters to Katherine White, “calm plotter of the resurrection.” I am very excited to read it this winter.
Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages, by Harold Bloom
I have also had my eye on this anthology for a while.
and, finally, the gem of the weekend:
Caroline and the King’s Hunt, by Jean le Paillot
STELLAR BOOK. I will have to make scans and show it to you sometime.
I am desperate to find out what happens in this one, another of the Caroline-the-Cow series.
