Category: Reading

Probably written Late 90s? Just finished Girlfriend in a Coma. In some ways, this book seems to me like Coupland’s response to Microserfs. If Microserfs was saying,something is really friggin’ wrong here, but I can’t quite put my finger on it, Girlfriend represents Coupland’s having had time to think and cultivate a seriously good answer to…

date unknown but probably pre 2001 I’ve just finished reading The Archivist by Martha Cooley and I think I liked it. Whether or not I really understood everything that was going on is an entirely different question. The novel deals with some pretty heavy duty issues and does so in a creative, artful way by…

Haiku, by R.H. Blyth is a four-volume collection published in 1949. I don’t know all that much about Haiku and I know nothing at all about the author of this book other than that he (presumably he, though not necessarily) does a fantastic job explaining the nebulous network of traditions that gave rise to what can…

I just rushed through this book. All the time I was reading it I thought to myself that I would be doing both myself and Chucky B a tremendous disservice if I didn’t go back and re-read it a second time and take some notes. I heard this line the other day,I hear and I…

The Walking Tour Kathryn Davis Monday, January 15, 2001  The cover blurb for The Walking Tour leads you to believe that it is a story about two couples that go to Wales on a walking tour of the countryside. During that tour, so says the blurb, a fatal accident occurs. ItÕs not like the blurb lies about…

early 2000s? Not sure when i read/wrote this but definitely before 2002 I could be cynical as hell and say Hey, Annie! Ain’t this book already been written once by Hank Thoreau? But there’s little point in cynicism since it’s only really appropriate when the speaker has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about but is just…

Notes on Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf Wednesday, June 14, 2000 The story of Mrs. Dalloway unfolds against the metronome of Big Ben striking out time. Individual moments are made static against a fluid background of ever advancing time. And how does one reconcile the dissonance between memories of static moments against a reality that is…

Saturday, May 6, 2000 Padget Powell, Edisto This is my third read of Powell’s Edisto and my first time really even coming close to understanding what is going on in the book. The difficulty, I see now in hindsight, is that the book covers so many different subject areas that it took me several readings to…

11/19/1999 9:00AM It was around 10 o’clock by the time I got in last night. I was just getting back from a Moroccan cooking class, feeling full from several consecutive hours of North African feasting. The feverish flu that hounded me all day long was chased away by the distraction of food. Perhaps the cinnamon and…

Sometime early 1998 I don’t even know where to begin with this one. Getting my arms around it, I mean. I finished Sophie’s World on the flight back from Key West the other day. It’s difficult to even try to give a synopsis of this book, not to mention which of its various facets I…

Late 90s? So I just finished reading Microserfs. First off a couple of things amazed me right away: the book was written in the early nineties and yet Coupland manages to avoid the starry-eyed view of the information superhighway that was sucking everyone in left and right back then. He sees all the technology around…

June 5, 1998 After seeing this movie two or three times I decided it was finally time to read the book. I’d without hesitation suggest that if you haven’t already seen the movie or read the book you do one or the other or preferably both as soon as possible.  Lately I’ve been under a…

Richard Powers: Galatea 2.2  (not sure when I wrote this, late 90s?) I don’t really know why I read. Usually i don’t even remember half the stuff that happens in a book that i read. It’s not even like i read all that quickly either. it’s more like i read a book the way I…

probably read this mid-90s What follows are a slew of quotes by a book called Forgotten Truth it’s sort of like a grandparent of Power of Myth. I think what he’s getting at with all this stuff here is that we’ve got to believe that there is something bigger than us and that we are…

The Razor’s Edge Somerset Maugham Monday, February 03, 1997 Finished reading this one last night. At by the time I put it down, my opinion of the book had done a huge turn around—from thinking it was a weak, well thought but poorly executed book, to a book that really did have something to say.…