filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com
Filed Under S for Smith: May 2010
http://filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html
Thursday, May 27, 2010. Confessions of a Temperamental Reader. There’s a moment in one of Anne Fadiman’s essays, in her lovely collection. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader,. When she finds herself with a painfully long wait ahead of her with nothing to do but read but a car manual. She dives into it with gusto. Clearly, she is more of a survivalist reader than I. Stuck on a delayed flight to Atlanta, I cursed my choice of reading material— Allegra Goodman’s,. The Family Markowitz—. I continue to...
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Filed Under S for Smith: Ode to the NYPL
http://filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com/2010/04/ode-to-nypl.html
Thursday, April 8, 2010. Ode to the NYPL. Call me a geek, but I’m proud to say that I know my 14-digit bar code that is my password to reserving books online at the NYPL. The libraries that make up the New York Public Library system are a vast and diverse gang—a quick count of 44 libraries in Manhattan (including Roosevelt Island). My neighborhood library for the 13 years I lived on 9. April 12, 2010 at 3:28 PM. Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom). From Bedbugs to Vietnam. Ode to the NYPL.
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Filed Under S for Smith: In Which I Complain
http://filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com/2010/02/in-which-i-complain.html
Friday, February 19, 2010. In Which I Complain. I don’t have anything to read. I know it shouldn’t be nasty-funny. I know because I read forty pages of the very readable. I’m far too impatient with everyone and everything right now to be engaged by a woman confessing to her dying husband in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. The problem is I don’t know what I. By Tatiana De Rosnay, awaits me at the library. But I’m skeptical. From what I know,. In case of dire emergency, I have. Oh, Jenny- I empathize...
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Filed Under S for Smith: Interlude 1
http://filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com/2010/02/interlude-1.html
Friday, February 26, 2010. I’m vamping. I just started Hanif Kureishi’s. The Buddha of Suburbia,. And, while I’m enjoying it, am not sure I’ll continue and/or have much to say about the first 35 pages. So… a brief interlude:. I wish I wanted to reread books I’ve loved. As a kid, I’d page through sections of Jane Eyre. Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. So many times to my brother that we finally got him the LP, so he could listen to it on his own) but now it holds no interest for me? Ask me what a book ...
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Filed Under S for Smith: The Children's Book
http://filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com/2010/04/childrens-book.html
Friday, April 2, 2010. Every once in a while I luck out with a book—. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Love in the Time. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Life and Death are Wearing Me Out. I inadvertently channel my 16-year old self holed up in my room, door closed, not putting down my book for dinner, for phone calls, for my little brother pounding on the door to tell me I’m going to be in. Trouble if I don’t come downstairs. The Children’s Book. After feeling engulfed by a book like.
filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com
Filed Under S for Smith: Novel Gigs
http://filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com/2010/05/novel-gigs.html
Monday, May 17, 2010. After more than two weeks of trying to write about my absorption in the huge role careers and obsession hold in Samantha Peale’s. The American Painter Emma Dial. And Allegra Goodman’s. I’ve nearly thrown in the towel. Clearly my dedication as a blog writer— perhaps soon to be a career to tick on the WNYC member survey— would not qualify me to even stand in the same paint-fumed studio or pipette-strewn laboratory with the characters in these two books. Is Cliff, the scientist who dis...
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Filed Under S for Smith: Pastries: Gourmet Rhapsody
http://filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com/2010/02/pastries-gourmet-rhapsody.html
Tuesday, February 23, 2010. If reading is analogous to eating (“I devoured that book”), and I thought I was starving for something big and filling, I’ve been happily surprised by the modesty and sweetness of Gourmet Rhapsody. Maybe I wasn’t hungry. Or not in the way I thought. Maybe I just wanted a really good pastry. Similar to Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgeho. The homeless man on the street, one of Pierre’s disciples, and many others. Half of the book is Pierre’s as he uses his las...Slipping Thro...
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Filed Under S for Smith: March 2010
http://filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html
Wednesday, March 24, 2010. Disclaimer: this post may contain opinions offensive to readers of all sorts. Are there talking animals? Is the protagonist a disaffected teenager or creature other than those known to inhabit Earth? Is the central storyline that of a marriage in deep trouble or of a character’s journey toward self-actualization or self-discovery? How about tribal cultures? Is the book a memoir or epistolary? Is it about writers? Does it feature anyone described as “adorable”? Eat, Pray, Love.
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Filed Under S for Smith: Turning Pages
http://filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com/2010/02/turning-pages.html
Friday, February 12, 2010. I’ve read two books recently,. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. In which, at the climax I just wanted to cut to the chase, or after the chase really, and happily skimmed those sections. If I missed an important detail upon which a major plot point depended, I’d go back and root around until I found the necessary detail and then skim, skim, skim. I’m not proud of this quality in myself, but I don’t believe the book is entirely blameless. I skimmed the last 75 pages of. I live in the...
filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com
Filed Under S for Smith: Confessions of a Temperamental Reader
http://filedundersforsmith.blogspot.com/2010/05/confessions-of-temperamental-reader.html
Thursday, May 27, 2010. Confessions of a Temperamental Reader. There’s a moment in one of Anne Fadiman’s essays, in her lovely collection. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader,. When she finds herself with a painfully long wait ahead of her with nothing to do but read but a car manual. She dives into it with gusto. Clearly, she is more of a survivalist reader than I. Stuck on a delayed flight to Atlanta, I cursed my choice of reading material— Allegra Goodman’s,. The Family Markowitz—. I continue to...
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