Kindle Reading

Currently reading Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott) Saw it on another blogger's desk , and 2 minutes later I was reading it thanks to the Kindle. I'm just dipping into this one every few days, and already have learned a lot from Lamott.
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just finished reading:

Captain Burle , The Death of Olivier Becaille , and Fécondité (all by Emile Zola)

Zola is a favorite of mine, and I liked finding things I hadn't read yet. Kindle has good collections of classics at bargain prices, so I'm enjoying a lot of essays and short fiction as well as some novels I'd never heard of before. The short work "The Death of Olivier Becaille" was a good read, and very chilling ~ it leaves the reader with many questions and would be excellent for a book group to discuss.

Captain Burle is a cautionary tale, and Fécondité (translated as Fruitfulness) shows the sweetest side of Zola, the man who loved children and mother earth, the man who had hope. Of course historical facts, politics and social commentary are all mixed in -- it was eye opening as all his works are.

Magazine Reading

I'll take a quick look at any magazine that comes my way now, but in my youth I was crazy for magazines just as I was for encyclopedias, dictionaries, manuals, handbooks, catalogs and maps. I'd collect an alarming number of magazines, getting bundles of old ones at The Salvation Army Store for a dime apiece. Sometimes the clerk just wanted to get rid of the bundles and would ask me to take as many as I could carry for free. I had a long list of favorites that included Scientific American, Redbook, Life, Psychology Today, Ms., Cosmopolitan, Time, Business Week, Popular Mechanics, and many others. I'd read the short fiction in Redbook, the formulaic tales of woe in True Story, look at all the advertising in the old magazines from the 1950's, and read about shipwrecks and polar bears in National Geographic. If I was stuck on a slow subway train an essay on cutworms became fascinating.

October-November

Good old Ed Koch ! Koch was our mayor for many years and never a dull moment. (Click to enlarge newspaper image)

The Election was much on my mind and I couldn't concentrate on blogging. I was sick of reading that our next president would be McCain. I honestly did not believe McCain could possibly win, but I hated hearing he might. I thought Obama would just squeak by and win it (by just enough that no one could take it away from him.) What was I reading? Mostly magazines and newspapers and Cherie Blair's memoir, Speaking For Myself on Kindle.

August - September Book List

I was very busy in August and just re-read a few Jane Austen novels besides some mass market crap not worth mentioning.
In September I slogged through some biographies ... (Stalin, Mussolini) Read a few spy novels ( enjoyed The Charm School by Nelson de Mille.) In August I received a gift - an Amazon Kindle, which I was unsure of at first. I ordered some free samples, a load of classics, and a few bestsellers and began to use the Kindle.

Miranda July in July

A book can be a wonderful gift. This was especially wonderful because it introduced me to new paths to creativity and finding time to be more thoughtful and creative.


Go HERE to learn more about July and loving yourself more.



!

anita brookner

one of england's best fiction writers. a writer of formidable technique and intelligence. --the san francisco chronicle.


i enjoy brookner's works so much i was glad to find one i hadn't read in a used bookshop. this copy was inscribed from susan to claudia

claudia:
a short novel
for a long afternoon...
some summer
on the sunporch
soon.
ah, for the luxury
of that,
well-deserved!
susan
may 1990 spring.

What About Dorothy Parker?

Charcoal portrait of Dorothy Parker by Peggy Bacon.

One of my favorite photos of Dottie. 

At age 22, Dorothy Rothschild sold a poem to Vanity Fair Magazine. It was 1914, and she was on her way. (Three years later she would marry Alan Parker & continue on her career path.) She wrote plays, short stories, poems, and Doodads as she called them. Witty little phrases that people who have never heard of her are familiar with. Later she would move to Los Angeles and write screenplays. 

Investing in a collection of her writings would be a wise decision. You won't ever regret it.