books_to_read Manny from the antipiracy commercials The Beach by Alex Garland Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger God and the New Physics by Paul Davies A Brief History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins 041122 ... slothisily A Seperate Peace - John Knowles 041122 ... u24 puremango.co.uk/cm_entertainment_61.php 041123 ... Sonya Memoirs Of A Geisha by Arthur Golden 060602 ... unhinged dharma punx by noah levine 060603 ... no reason the secret history by donna tartt 060603 ... unhinged reading lolita in tehran --- azar nafisi 060907 ... unhinged prague --- arthur phillips white oleander --- janet fitch siddartha --- herman hesse freedom in exile --- h.h. the dalai lama dharma punx --- noah levine 061026 ... raze too many. goodreads is helping in an organizing / motivating capacity, but still...too many. a selective list: infinite_jest (david_foster_wallace) blood meridian; suttree (cormac mccarthy) the heart is a lonely hunter (carson mccullers) the wind-up bird chronicle (haruki murakami) the savage detectives (roberto bolaño) the country between us (carolyn forché) the life of the bee (maurice maeterlinck) the whole stupid way we are (n. griffin) suite française (irène némirovsky) the handmaid's tale (margaret atwood) i am going to clone myself then kill the clone and eat it (sam pink) the battlefield where the moon says i love you (frank stanford) lulu in hollywood (louise brooks) omensetter's luck (william h. gass) journey_to_the_end_of_the_night (louis-ferdinand céline) the grapes of wrath (john steinbeck) dhalgren (samuel r. delany) the executioner's song (norman mailer) the recognitions (william gaddis) the glass castle (jeannette walls) + a pile of short_stories collections by john cheever, ellen gilchrist, joyce carol oates, andre dubus, raymond_carver, anton chekhov, and eudora welty + a pile of graphic_novels = a need for a new bookshelf, if i even have a place to put it. 131201 ... epitome of incomprehensibility (This is why libraries exist. But my Dorval Library is disappointing me because it claims not to have Branches de jasmin by Claude_Jasmin and when I gave it back I hadn't finished reading it. It's just a nice friendly collection of anecdotes about his grandchildren, but he is a brilliant writer, nationalism notwithstanding, and I want to improve my grasp on the Frankish language. I have four bookshelves in my room and they're all quite full too, though.) 131201 ... raze libraries are great things. i've just always had this funny thing where, if i see a book i'm interested in for sale somewhere, i have to buy it. i'd call it a compulsion, but it extends to empty composition books, and as we all know, wherever composition books are involved nothing can ever be compulsive. it's one of those unwritten laws of the universe. impulsive, then, maybe... 131203 ... raze more than a decade later, i *still* haven't read most of the books i mentioned above. ha! 250513 ... ovenbird I have a weird thing where if I buy a book it will likely sit on my shelf unread for a very long time because my brain thinks I have a lifetime to get to it. If I want to actually read something I need to borrow it from the library because the time pressure of having to return it provides the motivation to actually read it. What this means is that the vast majority of things on my bookshelves are yet to be read, but are possibly the things I most want to read. I've read a few of the books on the above list and two that stuck with me are The Glass Castle and The Grapes of Wrath. Both are very much worth a read, but the Grapes of Wrath in particular is one of the most powerful books I've ever read. 250514 ... ovenbird My Goodreads "to read" list currently has 777 books on it. There are over 100 on the to read list I have in my library app, which represents books the library owns that I plan to check out. Clearly I'm not going to read them all but it's nice to peruse all the things I would like to read. It works almost like a diary of where my interest has landed over the years at this point. 250514 ... raze no word of a lie — there are 760 books on my "to read" shelf on goodreads. twinsies? 250514 ... e_o_i I don't have a goodreads account, but I'm equally or greater-ly guilty of buying books and then not reading them for a long time. A large percentage of the books I have I haven't read, embarrassing as it is to admit. I think I have a collector's impulse to buy poetry and/or books by local authors because it's cool to get books signed and I don't think poetry gets enough love. Hug a poem today! But then I need to be less impulsive sometimes. (Like, you never know when a poem has thorns or burrs.) 250515 ... e_o_i Or, a different "twinsies" because I relate to this too much" (quoting ovenbird): "I have a weird thing where if I buy a book it will likely sit on my shelf unread for a very long time because my brain thinks I have a lifetime to get to it. If I want to actually read something I need to borrow it from the library because the time pressure of having to return it provides the motivation to actually read it." Yup. Not that I have late library books right now or anything (looks around furtively). 250515 ... ovenbird I have a weird dedication to the library that means I experience distress if I don't return my library books on time, even though there are no longer fines for late returns. It's like I don't want to damage my relationship with the library by not following the rules. This helps me to get things read on time. And now with the added grace of automatic renewals, I get to keep most books for 9 weeks if they're not on hold. I am very much in love with the library. 250515 what's it to you? who go blather from