December 2011
92 posts
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"I had an appointment at sunset, about three o'... →
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"Yet of course HE can write the autobiographical,... →
I haven’t read the ‘Marie Calloway’ essay that’s causing all the fuss in the literary wool basket, but this essay has a lot to say about ‘literature of the girl’ and the need for narratives of this kind (not necessarily of this manner) to continue to be made.
*Update (for Chris) apparently her essay - which is more like a slightly anonymous account of her...
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I'm a grown woman and I still love this - letters... →
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I just discovered Anthroparodie. Thought I'd... →
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The Return
This is the last house where I’d wish
to find myself;
the smell of dark timber, corners of dust-
discoloured grouse,
the bar bitty with glass
and drawn blood,
too many mirrors
pooling the hall’s windows
into refraction, and all through
to where the bridge straddles its weedpond
and the wind spits.
But we are here.
The barometer’s stopped
the grandfather’s tick
slowed to a drawl
the grate stubbed, ashes swept.
Haul us the bottle down
let us take it in.
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“[I couldn’t finish this novel, not that it wasn’t really good, but...”
– From Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, chosen by Alex Shakar for his Year In Reading (via millionsmillions)
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The Inner Condition: How I got my agent, in x easy... →
My first column up at The Inner Condition.
innercondition:
How did I get here? It’s three thirty in the afternoon. What little that can be seen of the outside from my living room – uneven stone, damp cobbles – is tiding rapidly towards darkness. Midwinter, Scotland. This time last year, I was living in a nineteen-twenties bedbug hell apartment,…
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Image (image, image, image), in various lights →
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Project 2012: 50ish Books, 52 Weeks
Since this year has been for me sort of a desert in terms of reading (I put the blame on trying to read Proust and the Tale of Genji and also the fact I moved a lot), I have decided to put down a good long list of books and attempt to read them all. Now, 50 is a rough estimate at the moment, but I do know some things I want to include:
1. Humanimals: A Project for Future Children by Banu Kapil.
2. A Classical book of Poetry (not Byron)
3. A book of poetry by a Female Scottish Poet, preferably early 20th c or before.
4. A non-fiction book (not lit theory)
5. The Years by Virginia Woolf
6. The Pure and the Impure by Collette
7. The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector
8. Ghosts by Cesar Aira
9. Molloy by Samuel Beckett
10. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
11. Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
12. Black Cat Bone by John Burnside
13. Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison
14. Vinland by George Mackay Brown
Any suggestions very, very welcome. Even if you've no idea who I am, just throw it out there. Especially if you know of a light hearted but compelling read, so I can wedge it in between some Zola or something.
I've also been snooping a list over here: http://booksidetable.wordpress.com/so-far/ since the reader has excellent taste. But I really want to be as diverse as possible.
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loving this like you can love a river that... →
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