February 2010
8 posts
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I read this book in Seattle a few years ago. Talk about a perfect title. You see it and instantly the heart of this book is communicated with a chuckle. I like travel stories, expat stories, lost in a big new world stories. This is all of the above, told by a young American woman in Paris with few cares and marginally more cash. This isn’t a Down and Out experience, necessarily, but on...
5 tags
Logicomix and Asterios Polyps were under the Christmas tree this year, so I’ve been trying to seek out other literary graphic novels to scratch a reawakened itch (Fun House and Gemma Bovary had me on this once ) when I saw that NYRB had just published this book by Dino Buzzati I knew I had found what I was looking for.
Written in 1969, and winning an Italian best comic strip award in...
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I treasure these books so much that I can remember where I was while reading each of them. I read this on my breaks during my first month as a waiter in a corporate chain restaurant a few years ago. This is, second to On the Yard, one of my favorite NYRB editions. Escapism is a beautiful thing.
The story takes place during the summer at a rich estate in the British countryside. The narrator...
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I saw this author speak at the University of Chicago in 2006 or 2007. He was pompous and arrogant about Americans and seemed annoyed about having this book republished (It was a major best seller in the UK throughout the 1980’s). However, the room was full of U of C literature students posturing and preening to be noticed. So, I can’t entirely hold some of his attitude against him.
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I read this book a few years ago, so it’s not the freshest response. Regardless, I can’t believe this name isn’t mentioned more in queer studies/LGBT history discussions. This woman, born a man, pretty much started the transgender experience.
The way she explains herself was both illuminating and frustrating. She was decorated British military officer, she went to the best...
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This is hands down my all-time favorite book. I think it started my obsession with NYRB classics as well. I wrote this description about the book on my other tumblr:
“The novel depicts a brutal prison and its all-too-human inmates. This is an environment Braly knew well, he spent somewhere upwards of 30 years in and out of jail.
He does everything in this book - authentic sounding...
9 tags
I picked this book up on Ko San road in Bangkok in November. I read it almost in one sitting the following day. It rang true for me for a lot of reasons - David Kidd’s experiences as a foreigner in China in the 1950’s are very similar to my experiences as foreigner in Taiwan today. The fast friendships, the sort of one foot out one foot in relationship to the government and culture,...
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I hadn’t heard of Richard Hughes before picking this book up, but that’s the point of NYRB. They keep adding authors to my favorite writer list. I’m on a serious adventure/travel/extreme story kick this month. I read four of the skinny but jam-packed volumes from Penguin’s Great Journeys series (Marco Polo, Herodotus, Ernest Shackleton, and Henry Walter Bates) and David...