Books

Your DFW moment for the night

03.29.2012
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The new volume from University of Mississippi press arrived today, “Conversations with David Foster Wallace.” You can expect a slew of quotations in the next few days. Here’s one from 1993: … managing to be a really alive human being, and also do good work and be as obsessed as you have to be, is [...]

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I’ll Miss These (Women) Poets

03.29.2012
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It’s been a rough couple of months for readers of poetry, my friends. Today we lost Adrienne Rich, last month, Wislawa Szymborska died at the age of 88. Here’s one of my favorites from each of these amazing women. Do yourself a favor, take a few moments, get inspired. Maybe read these to someone you [...]

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A few recommendations from my 2011

01.09.2012
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If you’re looking for something to light your fire, here’s a decent place to start. I used to spend a ton of time making big, long lists of my favorite everything – books, music, movies, etc. – and I took great joy in keeping those lists up-to-date. If you poke around on this site, you can [...]

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So Here We Are, Mr. Kindle (or, The Mean Joys of Having Things)

08.28.2010

So here we are, Mr. Kindle. I pre-ordered you the moment you were announced. You’re waiting at home for me, still not removed from your box. I currently own 26 books in the Kindle format, many of which I’ve greatly enjoyed reading on the iPhone. (Though I did regret a couple of those purchases, but [...]

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I Don’t Want to Read “Eating Animals”

06.04.2010

So, I’m sitting here staring at my brand-new copy of Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. In case you couldn’t guess, he’s not in favor of it. There’s a long quotation on the inside flap from author J.M. Coetzee, author of The Lives of Animals that ends like this: … anyone who, after reading Foer’s [...]

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The Painted Book

03.12.2010

Just some really big paintings of books. From an article in/on print. h/t – A Parker

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David Foster Wallace unpacked

03.09.2010

The Henry Ransom at U of Texas just got a million more subscribers to their blog. The Center just became the home of the tragically late David Foster Wallace’s archives, and they’ve unpacked his books, and started making a list of all the words he circled in his dictionary.

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New Yorker 2009 Best Lists

12.19.2009

The New Yorker is more than flush with great critical writing. Well, this is a list of lists (some are decade-spanning, too) from those wonderful writers. I’m trying to tell you it’s a dream come true. Get over there. Click around. Get lost for a few hours. In fact, to encourage you, here’s my list [...]

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the Rest Is Noise

11.29.2009

The Rest Is Noise is Alex Ross‘s big, fat book about 20th century music. Classical music, to be precise. It’s a huge book, in it’s scope as well as it’s impact. Politics, revolutions, the connections of wars and operas and prejudices and composers. It’s like opening my eyes to a world of relations of which [...]

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Sane Eating in Columbus: Part 1

04.07.2009

So, this quest for a better way of eating got kicked into high gear when I picked-up Mark Bittman‘s newest book, Food Matters. Bittman will be familiar to some as the author of How to Cook Everything, AKA in our house as the big, yellow cookbook with no pictures. Food Matters is exactly the book [...]

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