So . . . our first foray off of the Time Magazine list. And one which has some relevance to the book just finished: Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. But, to that in a bit . . .
Barthes is attempting to get at the idea of Photography or the Photograph (capitalized whenever used [...]
Category Archives: Books
The Book Project (the world's smallest book club)
People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
-Saul Bellow
Randy and I read lots of books. We read books that we shouldn't as well as those that deserve multiple readings. This project started out by the collective realization that of the so-called 100 greatest English-language books of 20th century, we had only read about a third. To fill that gap in our education we set out to complete the list. The progress is recorded in the The Book List and the discussions are chronicled in blog format here.
The readings completed to date for this project in chronological order (the last may not be finished) are:
- Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (finished before discussing on-line)
- Lolita
- Red Harvest
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Under the Net
- At Swim-Two-Birds
- The Adventures of Augie March
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey
- The Berlin Stories
- The Blind Assassin
- Camera Lucida
‘as if’ - uncertainty, speculation, (re)presentation
3 June 2008 – 9:57 pm
This is going to be a post that will be edited now and again as I go along with this idea, in part because I am still refining my thoughts on it and in part because I don’t have all of the materials in hand today that contribute to the critical frame from which I [...]
Story within a story, photo in both places
31 May 2008 – 2:33 pm
In the prologue of The Blind Assassin by Laura Chase, in The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, the ubiquitous photograph is described. Man and woman sitting under a tree, a hand cropped from the frame. The man’s face is shaded by a light colored hat, his hand outstretched (protecting himself, protecting her,) cigarette between his [...]
Calling Dr Simile
31 May 2008 – 10:21 am
The season is turning on its hinges, the earth swings farther from the light; under the roadside bushes the paper trash of summer drifts like an omen in the snow. [p222]
I’m totally at sea about the phrase, “drifts like an omen in the snow.” This is the chapter (The Imperial Room) where Iris talks about [...]
