This is a tumblelog, kinda like a blog but with short-form, mixed-media posts with stuff I like. Scroll down a bit to start reading, or a bit more to read more about me.
Definitely scared shitless by this massive novel, but I’m up to the challenge. 979 pages, plus 100 some-odd end notes. 4 hours in and I’m not to page one hundred. Could be the intense vocabulary (I look up one to two words per page). Don’t believe me? This site contains a few of the words people tend to look up during their voyage through this satirical postmodern post-american science fiction magnum opus.
Not how I’d set up my bookstore but still pretty impressive.
I could spend days in used bookstores. Where is this one??
compiled & reviewed by Anaïs Escobar—this will be permanently in the links at the top of my main page below the writing archive if you need to find it in the future. reblog as needed.
1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, 2007
2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, 2001
3. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, 2003
4. The Road by Cormac McCarthy, 2007
5. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, 2006
6. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, 2005
7. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, 2007
8. Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales & James Andrew Miller, 2002
9. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore, 2009
10. Sailing Alone Around The Room by Billy Collins, 2001
11. Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, 2003
12. Invisible by Paul Auster, 2009
13. Livability by Jon Raymond, 2008
14. Lockpick Pornography by Joey Comeau, 2005
15. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
16. Captain Freedom: A Superhero’s Quest for Truth, Justice, and the Celebrity He So Richly Deserves by G. Xavier Robillard, 2009
17. Littlefoot by Charles Wright, 2007
18. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill, 2003
19. No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July, 2007
20. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, 2004
21. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, 2003
22. 30 Days in Sydney by Peter Carey, 2001
23. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, 2004
24. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, 2005
25. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, 2002
26. The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, 2000
27. Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin, 2007
28. The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel, 2006
29. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, 2005
30. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, 2009 (US)
31. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, 2000
32. Super Spy by Matt Kindt, 2007
33. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, 2008
34. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, 2003
35. The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, 2007
36. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, 2000
37. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, 2004
38. The Puppet & The Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity by Slavoj Žižek, 2003
39. Life of Pi by Yann Martel, 2001
40. Rose of No Man’s Land by Michelle Tea, 2006
41. Blonde: A Novel by Joyce Carol Oates, 2000
42. Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser, 2001
43. All Families Are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland, 2001
44. Inés of My Soul by Isabel Allende, 2007
45. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, 2003
46. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, 2003
47. The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl, 2003
48. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, 2009
49. The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan, 2001
50. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane, 2001
51. Cecil & Jordan in New York by Gabrielle Bell, 2008
52. Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It by Geoff Dyer, 2003
53. Bee Season by Myla Goldberg, 2000
54. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, 2007
In second grade I got my first pair of glasses. I thought maybe I had to keep them out of the rain, they were that precious to me. I thought maybe I could count the leaves on every single tree from clear across the other end of our yard. Sharp sharp clear. I have not had that clear new vision since.
Here’s what. Thursdays were library days, I always needed an extra bag. The library lady knew us all by name, the Mom with the book worm and fifty books each visit, five for her and forty-five for me. Sundays were for toast and peanut butter, books and milk. Do you know we used to use maybe 2 or 3 loaves of bread on Sunday mornings. When you are reading, bread and peanut butter slides down like nothing. Milk is cold and thick with sunlight and books are books are books.
Dad cutting my hair says If you brush your hair with your other hand while you reading, I would not have to work out these tangles all the time and then the dentist says If you’d brush your teeth with your spare hand all the time when you read, you would not have to come here so often. Silly Silly Silly. If I use one hand for my teeth and one hand for my hair, I will not be able to read. So I ignored them both and kept drinking in words. I wish I were still thirsty like that.
In the morning I watched the sky light up, cold bottom imprinted on a heat register. Dark to grey to white. I thought I could not sleep but really I was impatient, waking myself up. Here is Today! Here is Morning! Hello Hello Hello Here I Am!
“And I am sure that, as all pendulums reverse their swing, so eventually will the swollen cities rupture like dehiscent wombs and disperse their children back to the countryside. This prophecy is underwritten by the tendency of the rich to do this already. Where the rich lead, the poor will follow, or try to.” (John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley)
that tore right through me
Bukowski (via likesbears)
Alright, this totally sums up my childhood - library card, 45 books a week, einie meinie mini mo to stack them in order to be read, a book for the car, the bath, the bed, the dinner table. I’ve never lost my a(dic)(ffe)ction for the written word - in fact, now I have a college library as well of the local, which limits me to a 100 book check out. Yep. Booknerd.
(via infinitebutterflies)