Category Archives: Sunday Salon
sunday salon || On to the canon, and other follies
And so I plod on with my own little ambitions—to amass as much of the Classics that I want to read, which involves reading a lot of the Oxford World’s Classics [oh, that unrelenting white spine] and amassing more of NYRB Classics, too [I’ve been shy-stalking the NYRB Classics group on Goodreads, and it’s a treat]. I’ve also just recently bought Proust’s Swann’s Way—partly because of the heathenhood factor, partly because I trust Lydia Davis’ translating prowess. I’ve bought this beautiful annotated and unexpurgated edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as yet another edition of Jane Eyre. I want to read Frankenstein, too, and Dracula, and Moby-Dick. I’ve bought Anna Karenina, and one of these days, I am taking a deep breath. I want more of Sherlock Holmes. And then there’s Raymond Carver and Richard Yates—we need reunions, we do—them, and Wilfrido Nolledo and Kerima Polotan. I want more of the books people have forgotten over time but are recently rediscovering—it’s not unlike being privy to a great secret, not unlike being part of a movement. I want more dead writers in my shelves, more people-characters that have grown timeless right in my head, were they justly belong. I just want more. [Continue reading.]
sunday salon || Choosing This Darcy
It was on the heels of watching Pride & Prejudice (2005) [starring Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen] that I decided that I would never read Jane Austen’s much-loved novel—at least, not in the foreseeable future. I’ve realized that, after a decade of dipping into the book and testing out the waters, I really do not want […]
sunday salon || Reading the Short Story
Short fiction is, quite possibly, my favorite genre. This is plain personal bias, and the fact that I have been studying the art form and its craft for school—I major in Creative Writing, and fiction is the genre-track I’d chosen. Yes, there’s a pleasure in reading the short story, but I also read short stories […]
sunday salon || A Resurgence of Richard Yates
On 01 November 2009, I put up a rambling post of my impression of Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road. The post itself ended quite abruptly, no doubt a result of posting it too soon after such an earth’s-axis-bumping read. I don’t think it did the book justice, it didn’t properly express how rattled I felt after […]
sunday salon || Are Some Books Too Personal? Are Some Books Truly Bad?
A couple of things for this week’s edition of the Sunday Salon: On “personal” books, on “bad” books. The technique of dubious-use-of-words-in-quotation-marks ahead, okidoki? Should I let you know about all the books I read? I received an email from a reader named Camille (and I am posting this with permission to quote her side […]
sunday salon || Taking Stock
A week or so before my twentieth birthday (last September), I settled down to read One Hundred Years of Solitude and Lolita. I stayed up all night with Marquez, and felt like less of a person because I couldn’t finish Nabokov. This year, I swear. But anyhoo, it was with reading these two books that […]
