What Next?

I have a book-buying problem. It might actually be worse now than when I worked at McBookstore, because then at least I had the option of borrowing books from the store instead of buying them (this was easily the best perk of working at a bookstore—better than the discount, even). I have tried to become [...]

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No Bean Spilling

But I did just finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
I’m exhausted from 6 1/2 straight hours of reading; my neck hurts, I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, and I’m going nuts without anybody to talk about it with. So please, if you’ve finished, let me know! (By email, since I don’t want to be responsible for [...]

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Snape: Friend or Foe?

If you are not a fan (or a reader) of Harry Potter, it’s probably best to stop reading this post now, as it won’t make much sense.
In The Sorcerer’s Stone, Professor Snape turns out to have challenged Professor Quirrell’s loyalties—not, as Hermione, Harry, and Ron thought, tried to get the stone for himself. It seems [...]

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We Knew How Violent Reading Can Be

I was trying to describe the ennui that follows the completion of a good book to Advisor, who responded by loaning me Hélène Cixous’ Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. Behold:
Not everyone carries out the act of reading in the same way, but there is a manner of reading comparable to the act of [...]

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To the Boy Who Lived!

Thus begins another cycle of rereading Harry Potter, which I fear I’ve begun too early. Every time a new Harry Potter book comes out, I reread all the previous ones, but I never time it quite right. And so again I’ll frantically reread bits and pieces of the first six books over and over as [...]

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Thirty Second Book Review

I’m still not done with Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, even though I’m probably less than two essays from the end. I keep thinking that if I put off finishing it, I’ll blog about it right when I’m done and it’s still fresh in my mind, but of course it’s no longer fresh anyways. So [...]

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An Odd Transaction

I’ve never been one to read (very thoroughly, at least) lengthy quotations in books. We talked about this during a course I took last year on writing biography—does anybody actually read lengthy passages of Samuel Johnson in the midst of his biography? The general consensus seemed to be… no, not really.
I take this a [...]

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The Tide is High, But I’m Holdin’ On

The first part of Barbara Kingsolver’s essay High Tide in Tucson is perfect. It’s the kind of essay you can read over and over again and discover some new truth each time. Somehow the story of Buster the crab, an accidental stowaway from a seaside vacation, becomes Kingsolver’s story, and our story. The gentle anthropomorphization [...]

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Meet the Author

I ventured to the Newberry Library one Saturday in early December, a numbingly cold morning that begged more for my down comforter than a jaunt downtown. While looking at the library’s website a few weeks earlier, I had seen a program called “Writing Chicago Childhoods” that featured authors Elaine Soloway, Billy Lombardo, and Frank Joseph. [...]

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How Many?

Read Roger linked yesterday to a list of 1001 Books To Read Before You Die. I agree with him that these lists are “specious as all get out;” it’s hard to place much stock in them. They quickly become competitions, sources of pride or embarrassment, even when we pretend otherwise. And as soon as a”Must [...]

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