Skip to main content

That Time of the Night

Now:

It’s a Saturday night and I’ve had my fill of morality plays and constructed subjectivity for one night. It’s been a while since I’ve written about books. I suppose that’s either because there’s no time or because I'm lazy. I'm not going to make a decision tree. I’m trying to sneak peaks at Brighton Rock in preparation for the Rowan Joffe film, and Alexandra Harris’ Romantic Moderns but without much continued success.

Book-Related:

A few weeks ago I spoke with Penguin Great Ideas superstar designer David Pearson in an interview for the Cherwell. I found a fellow-enthusiast in David; both of us fans of Penguin’s elegant volumes. In fact I’ve been a longtime Penguin groupie. (They have a good backlist and their visual art is impeccable. And the postcards...) I’ve begun a small collection of grande dames: Nancy Mitford, Rose Macaulay, Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark. My favorite title is one I picked up in Woodstock last December, Reading for Profit.



I hoped that it would spell a sure way to find a job that enabled me to read and get paid obscene amounts of money for it. Instead it is a series of lectures on literature given by an Allied prisoner of war during the Second World War. Close guess.

The Sweetness of Life now is:

Late night glass of red; Iron & Wine; A bout de soufflé tomorrow; remembering a small boy yelling on the street at the top of his lungs ‘Will anybody find meeeeeeeee somebody to love’ this afternoon; the prospect of running in the crisp misted parks tomorrow morning; visitors coming from Seattle this Thursday to nest in a warm attic -

Comments

Ann said…
I love those Penguins too, they bring back so many memories of when I was first buying books. 'Reading for Profit' is one I haven't come across though and I as I very much enjoy reading about books I must see if I can get hold of a copy. Thanks for prompt.
Gfulmore said…
Please don't stop writing about books - too few people do now, as we drift slowly away from the written word to the often inferior visual word..same late night glass of red - but cold blue-sky Alberta and Ride Nowhere reissue, Divine Comedy, Electric Eden and Tinkers for comfort - enjoy your blog, please continue on with literary adventures...

Popular posts from this blog

I’ve a short story in the latest edition of The Stinging Fly , which is a brilliant Irish literary journal. If you’d like a copy (or if you like Claire-Louise Bennett or Kevin Barry or Danielle McLaughlin or Colin Barrett, who’ve all been published by SF ) you can get it here Or, you know, go to Dublin.
Attention poetry mavens: any suggestions for good contemporary poets (either in general or particular collections)? Have sudden appetite but very little idea where to start. Any advice welcome!

The School of Hard Knocks

It is my current hope to go to graduate school for English literature next year: a certain school in a certain place, both a goal and an insurmountable challenge. Having been out of college for a year already, and having graduated as a music major, I am rusty. Trying to compensate, I googled “books every english major has read” but have had a difficult time finding a list that suggests what every (generalized) English major should have read by the time of (undergraduate) graduation. As a person who attended a high school whose meager syllabus prescribed the study of one novel, one play and four poems a year, and who could only scrape enough college literature credits for a minor, I feel woefully behind. Most American kids got a head start in AP English (seriously – who are those freaks who read Ulysses in high school?). American high schools may have their weaknesses, but a strong and ambitious push to read literature consistently is not one of them. There are gaps, and I fear that wh