2010 was a good year of books for me – a good mix of fiction and non-fiction, novels and short stories and memoirs, by writers old and young, acclaimed and establishing. I am a little unhappy to have only read 22 books, even without comparing with the wastrelette Weinman, but I am ecstatic about the [...]
Posts under ‘Books’
A Letter to The New York Times Editor
To the Editor: There was a time when intelligent people used literature to think. That time is coming to an end. During the decades of the Cold War, in the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, it was the serious writers who were expelled from literature; now, in America, it is literature that has [...]
Where are you now, Scout?
To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the few works that I read more than twice, watched more than twice, read the book first and then watched the movie and still didn’t get disappointed. Harper Lee’s novel is also my default gift, the way some gift the Bible when they can’t think of anything else. [...]
Winding up the Millennium Trilogy
The last book of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy is not unpredictable. From the outset it is clear that the book will be about the final trial, which we know that Salander and her “Knights of the Idiotic Table” will win, despite the several new difficulties and dangers that the supporting cast face and survive from [...]
Another Way of Devouring Books
I have never been the voracious reader that I present myself as. I began reading very late in life and I remain a slow reader. In the best months I may read four books, but in most months I manage one. I am not in the numbers game. I simply wish to read more than [...]