Gabriel García Márquez: New Readings (Cambridge Iberian and Latin American Studies)
Pajiba (Free subscription) | yesterday
Overall, I have to say that this was a wonderful book, and I can completely understand both why people claim it's their favorite book and that it's Márquez's best work. I can't say that I share that sentiment, but I...
The Millions (A Blog About Books) (Free subscription) | yesterday
Laura van den Berg’s debut collection manages to establish an equilibrium between concept and poignancy. It doesn’t appear she trained to be a realist, but she may end up a champion of the movement.
The Spanking Writers (Free subscription) | 22/11/2009
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s latest novel, “Memories of My Melancholy Whores”, has produced a fair amount of controversy. (Opening line: “The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.”) They’re filming it in Hollywood at the moment, and I’m wondering whether they’ll transfer the [...]
What's Left in the Church (Free subscription) | 21/11/2009
N.B.: This is a far more thoughtful response to Feodor's complaint about my remarks concerning Marcel Proust. If this doesn't satisfy him, well, I'll buy him a subscription to Dissent. One point George Scialabba made last evening with which I profoundly disagree (for obvious reasons) is the effect of the internet on literacy . I find this odd, in particular, since so much of what happens on the internet...
Valancy Jane (Free subscription) | 21/11/2009
The books currently rotating in and out of bed with me. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Given to me as a birthday gift by my friend Alex, with the story of how he bought his copy of it off the black market while growing up under Soviet rule. A Short History of Nearly Everything by [...]
Slog (Free subscription) | 16/11/2009
The 73-year old author has died . Donald Harington, who created a surreal rural mini-world in more than a dozen novels set in the fictional Ozark hamlet of Stay More, Ark., died last week in Springdale, Ark. He was 73 and lived in Fayetteville, Ark. I started reading Harington back in 2002 with his novel Thirteen Albatrosses , which I picked up because I was in a heavy political-fiction phase. I got...
LEMON HOUND (Free subscription) | 14/11/2009
“I know you’re very busy, Mr. Harper. We’re all busy. But every person has a space next to where they sleep, whether a patch of pavement or a fine bedside table. In that space, at night, a book can glow. And in those moments of docile wakefulness, when we begin to let go of the day, then is the perfect time to pick up a book and be someone else, somewhere else, for a few minutes,...
The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
Girls who make their own clothes, speak five languages, and are into communist poetry can be found sprinkled throughout the store. Hipster chicks aisle ten. Feigned bisexual sensibilities aisle five.
Literanista (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
I would like to propose a new book challenge for bloggers (perhaps for 2010?), based on "the compilation of the best literature every Latina should check out put together by Latina Magazine: 25 Books Every Latina Should Read" The "25 Books Every Latina/o Should Read" Challenge: The House of Spirits Isabel Allende One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez In The Time of...
西儒 ─ The Western Confucian (Free subscription) | 09/11/2009
First of all, condolences and prayers for the family of the child whose funeral altar is pictured above — Death of Actor's Child Linked to H1N1 Flu . Two children in my son's class have come down with suspected cases. Availability heuristic or not, one worries. Thus, for the family man, the answer to Bill Sardi's question is immaterial at this point — Why Isn’t the H1N1 Pandemic Flu...
Just One More Page... (Free subscription) | 08/11/2009
This month Wendy supplied us with a list of first lines and asks which books we’ve read and which would make it to our tbr list on the basis of the first line. Bold = the books I’ve read Pink = tbr pile 1. Call me Ishmael. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick 2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Jane Austen, Pride...
Isak (Free subscription) | 08/11/2009
Why is the originality so readily granted us in literature so mistrustfully denied us in our difficult attempts at social change? ... we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will...
The Independent (Free subscription) | 08/11/2009
The late Tony Wilson once told me, "I'm not the one who will have his life turned into legend, in the way that happened to Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud. It won't be me. It will be John Cooper Clarke." "Bloody hell," says the poet. That conversation took place 20 years ago, I tell him – when Wilson was still running the Haçienda; years before the release of Control...
Bookninja (Free subscription) | 06/11/2009
A novelist and friend of the late (but recently lit-knighted) Roberto Bolaño notes that all this myth building around him is getting to be a bit much. And worse still, the attention is giving a false impression of Latin America. Moya believes that, as the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez began to lose its luster [...]
Blogger News Network (Free subscription) | 05/11/2009
I’m not much into magic or magical anything. That eliminates most fantasy writing, a lot of video games and a host of other things. The one exception I do make is the novels and novellas of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the father of Magical Realism. Also, I like the Force and the mystical power that guides [...]
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