Posted by Kevin Donovan on January 28, 2013 · 4 Comments
Why is it we only get reading lists during the summer? With its short days and achingly cold nights, winter seems the far better season to pick over neglected bookshelves. But I don’t like to read just any book in the winter. Breezy romances set in SoCal climes? Ech. (Well, for me that kind of … Continue reading →
Filed under Off topic · Tagged with Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Emily Bronte, Ficciones, Henry David Thoreau, John Milton, Jorge Luis Borges, Native Son, New York Times, Paradise Lost, Reading list, Richard Wright, Robert B. Strassler, The Landmark Thucydides, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Recognitions, Ursula K. Le Guin, Walden, Western Canon, William Gaddis, Wuthering Heights
Posted by Kevin Donovan on July 5, 2012 · Leave a Comment
In a previous post, I argued that nobody reads Ralph Waldo Emerson anymore. I stand by that, sort of. As a literary milepost, Emerson has largely been overshadowed by his followers. He is The Hobbit rather than The Lord of the Rings. Disneyland instead of Disney World. Emerson fails to stand alongside giants like Herman Melville, Henry … Continue reading →
Filed under 1840s Literature · Tagged with Benjamin Anastas, Europe, John Locke, John Roberts, Nature, Norman Rockwell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance, The American Scholar, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, United States of America, Western Canon
Posted by Kevin Donovan on October 13, 2010 · Leave a Comment
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. This is a blog about books, about reading them and understanding the writers who write them. I remember a line that Stephen King (who makes it into this blog’s canon by a whisker) wrote … Continue reading →
Filed under 1970s Literature, If on a winter's night a traveler · Tagged with 20th century, Anna Karenina, At Swim-Two-Birds, Books about books, E. L. Doctorow, English Translation, Flann O'Brien, If on a winter's night a traveler, Italian, Italo Calvino, Meta-fiction, Present tense, Second person narrator, Stephen King, Western Canon