Category: Books & Learning

Murakami’s complex metaphysical tale of self-reflection, betrayal, connections and synchronicity resonates with the weight of the Japanese psyche and twines over itself with skillful precision, but still leaves a stain of emptiness in its wake. What we have is a series of elements: a wayward cat, a dull-as-dishwater–and inert–unemployed protagonist, an absconded wife, a brutal [...]

Both quiet and compelling, Groff’s imperfect but lulling multi-generational tale of a neurotic family in small-town upstate New York is charming if not a masterpiece. And the sea monster is sweet, if not profound (expect some bang-you-over-the-head symbolism). Despite frequently-updated family tree diagrams throughout the book, keeping the generations of the Temple and Averell and [...]

Is there an author that you find yourself drawn to in times of over-angst? Yesterday was one of those times for me when pressures and stress kept getting fed into me via a one-way valve until my psyche was bloated and taut. A minor situation involving a waylaid text message regarding a wedding shower and [...]

I participate in LibraryThing’s Tuesday Thingers group — a weekly blogging exercise. This week’s question: Today’s question: Cataloging sources. What cataloging sources do you use most? Any particular reason? Any idiosyncratic choices, or foreign sources, or sources you like better than others? Are you able to find most things through LT’s almost 700 sources? With [...]

This book nearly ruined me for all other books. Not from joy. Not from marvel. But sheer exhaustion. Its scope is so immense and foreign (to me, an ingoramus of Indian mid-century politics), its symbolism so constant and deep that instead of the thrill of discovery I turned furtive and avoided its clutches. I could [...]

I participate in LibraryThing’s Tuesday Thingers group — a weekly blogging exercise. This week’s question: Recommendations. Do you use LT’s recommendations feature? Have you found any good books by using it? Do you use the anti-recommendations, or the “special sauce” recommendations? How do you find out about books you want to read? Every few weeks, [...]

I participate in LibraryThing’s Tuesday Thingers group — a weekly blogging exercise. This week’s question: Here is the Top 100 Most Popular Books on LibraryThing. Bold what you own, italicize what you’ve read. Star what you liked. Star multiple times what you loved! As I own almost all of the books I’ve read, I’m not [...]

“Oxford Week” continues: I verify my word made it into the revered OED, I read a book about the history of the OED, I read two books in the “His Dark Materials” trilogy (partially set in Oxford), and even watched “Masterpiece Theater” last night, TiVoed from last week and set, again, in Oxford. Oxford, Oxford, [...]

You can mark this as one of the more exciting days of my life. Let me back up. I grew up in a household where one respected the Oxford English Dictionary. We had the condensed version, two enormous volumes with a special drawer to hold a magnifying glass with which to examine the shot-down copy. [...]

Interesting story in the New York Times this morning about gender role intrigue in an extremely isolated and rigorously traditional people in northern Albania: Albanian Custom Fades – Woman as Family Man – NYTimes.com: “For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a [...]