my main issue with The Golden Compass

>>A fresh seal lay on the snow. The bear sliced it open with a claw and showed Lyra where to find the kidneys. She ate one raw: it was warm and soft and delicious beyond imagining.
"Eat the blubber too," said the bear, and tore off a piece for her. It tasted of cream flavoured with hazelnuts.<<


I know it's a fantasy book. But is anyone here fooled into thinking raw seal sounds really really good? Cream flavoured with hazelnuts? C'mon, Phillip Pullman.

the best of 2007 (as supposed by kaylen)

top ten favourite things read this year
10. the crying of lot 49 thomas pynchon

9. kafka on the shore & the elephant vanishesharuki murakami

8. here is where we meet john berger

7. murphy samuel beckett

6. the body artist don delillo

5. no one belongs here more than you short stories by miranda july

4. mere anarchy short stories by woody allen

3. new york trilogy paul auster

2. cosmicomics italo calvino

1. moby dick herman melville

honorable mentions: only revolutions mark danielewski; the object stares back: on the nature of seeing by james elkins; varieties of disturbance by lydia davis.

worst/most disappointing of 2007:
the brooklyn follies by paul auster (just disappointing...)
the copwriter's handbook
neverwhere neil gaiman
white noise don delillo
pale fire nabokov (just not what i was expecting)

favourite places to read 2007:
. originally, higher ground
. for a stretch of time, i really enjoyed reading on our front step (back when the pear tree was still lovely)
. my bed
. standing at the kitchen counter on saturday morning (if you haven't tried reading and standing in the kitchen: it feels wonderful)




* catch up *

acquired:
new copy of swann's way (lydia davis translation)
the stranger albert camus
invisible cities italo calvino
cosmicomics italo calvino
consider the lobster david foster wallace
selected essays john berger
+
handfull of mcsweeny's collections.
handfull of chapbooks from jonathan.

{i'm sure there's more to it than that, but i forget...}

read:
beowulf (re-read before seeing hte awful awful movie in 3D IMAX)
pig earth john berger
murphy samuel beckett
exile & the kingom & the plague albert camus
selected essays john berger
cosmicomics, invisible cities , numbers in the dark
& six memos for the next millenium italo calvino
how to make love to a negro dany laferrière
the insanity defense collection by woody allen
to begin (+ many more) by jonathan ball.
thumbscrews natalie walschots

plan to read, but who knows for certain:
satanic verses
wind-up bird chronicles
consider the lobster
re-read swann's way (lydia davis translation)
lilac & flag

a banville a day

i've never read a book as slowly as i have john banville's 'the sea.' if you knew me, or at least were familiar with my frequently visited places, you'd see me read a few pages - in some cases, a paragraph, or even a single sentence - and throw the book down in a sort of lingering, jealous disgust. banville's prose is thick. ridiculously thick. i haven't read most of his work.

it's really more like eating an incredibly sumptuous meal - i feel full after each time i sit down to read a piece of it, and i can go no further. loosen the belt a notch, sit back, look out the window, and sigh.

it's ridiculous how good this book is.

boxer's fracture

i sallied forth on november first, intent on writing 50,000 words.

on the fourth, i gave up.

on the sixth or seventh, i retreated into a rabbit-hole of total depression, got insanely drunk, and ended up fracturing my right hand on the side of my friend & roommate's face. he wouldn't leave me alone, you see. so now i have a cast on. makes it difficult to write. (point of order: he also broke his hand on my face - same injury! - though i'm sure he would like it elucidated that he hit me three times whereas i only hit him once.) plus, i have to find a new place to live. so i haven't had much time to read, but in the throaty interim, i've acquired:

the mysterious flame of queen loana (umberto eco)
the wooden sea (jonathan carroll)
blood meridian (cormac mccarthy)

& today:

the sea (john banville) - JUST because of the random line i read:

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

i'm nearly done with the wooden sea. nice little sarcastic, humor-y bit of scifi surrealism.

dying to read the new pynchon, since it's out in paperback. also dying to read the gunslinger graphic novel. there's also a new clive barker (mr b gone?) & a new alan lightman (ghost).

I HAVE NO TIME

(books i plan to read soon:

half-life (shelley jackson)
suttree (cormac mccarthy)
ghostwritten & cloud atlas (david mitchell)
the possibility of an island (michel houllebecq)
riddley walker (russell hoban)
god is dead (ron currie, jr)
varieties of disturbance (lydia davis)
against the day (pynchon)

)

a new personal record...

because i am a deeply disturbed girl with an unhealthy relationship with books (or maybe it is just my relationship to money that is so unhealthy)i have purchased more than $200 worth of books today. in under 15 minutes.


the booty

haruki murakami's the wind-up bird chronicles & my own edition of kafka on the shore

albert camus's the plague & exile and the kingdom

nabokov's pale fire

truman capote's music for chameleons, other voices, other rooms & breakfast at tiffany's (not a book i'd normally read, but i've watched the movie more than enough to warrant giving it a go-round. plus, obviously i was feeling indulgent.)

there are also others that will remain unmentioned, as they are gifts. and don't bother poking about in my room either, rhianna, they're not here.

death of a copywriter.

barring my ruthless love affair with doing laundry, i was likened to peg bracken by an ex today. he points me by way of her obits andd i had to admit to a degree of overlap. besides being bitter as widows and judgmental to boot, we're both ad copywriters. the difference? she's an ad writer who also wrote several books including THE I HATE TO COOK BOOK and an etiquette book, I TRY TO BEHAVE MYSELF.

Start cooking those noodles, first dropping a bouillon cube into the noodle water. Brown the garlic, onion and crumbled beef in the oil. Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.

— Recipe for “Skid Road Stroganoff"

The I HATE TO COOK BOOK has about 200 recipes, divided into chapters with headings like Potluck Suppers, or How to Bring the Water for the Lemonade and Desserts, or People are Too Fat Anyway.

of course her books are all out of print, but if you would happen across one, let me know. even though she uses some pretty hideous ingredients like crushed frosted flakes and embraces anything tinned, there's some charming reading to be had. so don't be a stranger to the cookbook section next time you're in a secondhand shop–you may just find my christmas present.

auster, calvino, auster, calvino, (borges?), cervantes

i have never read "don quixote." there are some things which i feel i have absorbed on a cultural level, or feel i know enough about in order to understand them without having read them. or, at least, this is how i used to feel. i don't know, so much, anymore. after having read borges' "labyrinths," and now, auster's "new york trilogy," i feel as though i'm missing something. but wandering into my favourite used book store yesterday & picking up a copy of the cervantes left me baffled. it's one of those books that just requires more effort than i have to invest in anything right now.

but i keep reading books that make me: A) never want to write again, and B) want to die. the latter feeling is nice around the edges - it's like total admiration, the kind of idolatry for the craft of words that makes me abase myself in front of it. some phrase from Auster - "he thought he would find himself in the words" - made me question why i even read books, or why i wrote, or why i really did anything. bastard.

so, next, then, and already a few in, a book of italo calvino's short stories - "numbers in the dark," which is already making me slightly crazy. i have no idea what's next.

also, i seem to have become oddly obsessed with the i ching.