I’ve told the story before and it’s true: One of my favorite professors at university announced to his class of aspiring young writers that Moby Dick is a novel; all the rest are just entertainments. While I agree with the sentiment of this, I might substitute Madame Bovary for the great white whale.
Yet there’s still a problem. Let’s face it, with few exceptions. all the rest are not really entertaining.
Continue reading “The End of Publishing”Flipping through long list of books I have yet to read and even a goodly number that I have already read I was overcome by a curious sense of urgency, possibly corresponding to my rapidly advancing years. It started in the Js and became stronger as I scanned through the Ks and Ls, becoming a visible trembling as I dipped into the Ms. Could it be?
Continue reading “Do You Like Starbuck?”When you discover and suggest a new book every day it never really affects you until at the end of the month when you gather all those suggested books together and realize that you want to read so many of them and that you probably never will. As I sit here with hundreds of books surrounding me on my new white bookshelves and thousands of books silently buzzing in my miracle digital readers, I am realizing more and more the horrific truth in that Arthur Schopenhauer quotation:
Continue reading “Another Month of Panic”To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.
A Celebration of Reading 