My newest favourite blog is The Caribbean Review’s blog The Antilles. I’ve read very little of the journal’s offerings but The Antilles is proving to be one of the few blogs at which every single post is worth reading. Nicholas, the editor there, shared his many stacks and asked readers to participate. Mine would be too long an entry for comments so I’m posting it here.
I often literally sleep with books or journals. Sometimes it is too much effort to turn over and place them on top of precarious table piles so I simply push them aside and fall asleep. These are my reading group books, the April 5th issue of the LRB and a hand-stitched paperblank notebook. On the actual table are:
Hamlet (The Sourcebook edition) - Not nearly as good as the Arden editions but I do like the CD with audio excerpts of various scenes.
by Matthew Lewis - A Modern library edition with an amusing cover
Love in Excess by Eliza Haywood - I bought this at a local used store because it was 18th century — thanks to Dorothy I’m more interested in this period — and a Broadview edition. Since last summer I’ve become a fan of Broadview: my copy of The Good Soldier is one as well.
The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore - I pick it up ever so often to read a randomly chosen adventure.
by John McGahern - I hope to get to it some time in the summer
The Girl in the Glass by Jeffrey Ford - A few of the LBC group are a fan of his work so I mean to try it.
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris - This one is probably here because I have nowhere else to put it.
Mason & Dixon and Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon - We’ll see if my estrogen appreciates this manly writer.
The Paris Review No. 38 - 40 - Three old issues from the late 60’s that offer, among other things, interviews with Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter (Art of Theatre) and Jorge Luis Borges; poetry by David Shapiro, Ted Hughes, and Pablo Neruda; fiction by Christina Stead; and letters from e e cummings to Ezra Pound.
Rose of No Man’s Land by Michelle Tea - I heard about it on a blog last year, went into the store and saw it on the staff’s recommendation table at the local indie, so of course I had to get it.
The Plausibility of Life by Marc W. Kirschner et. al - All about evolution
Mercy Among Children by David Adams Richards - Richards is allegedly one of Canada’s great unsung writers. We’ll see.
Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual by David Treuer - This was the only book of his held in stock by any store here in Mennonite country (at an independent, of course).
Paradise Lost by John Milton - At the moment I cannot recall what finally persuaded to pick this one up.
The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay - I’m not sure why this one’s out. I do plan to re-read his books but not quite yet…
Witch Craze by Lyndal Roper - Who wouldn’t want to read about witches in the old days?
