Reading

One of the most accessible and informative introductions to the critical subtleties of the measurement of human behavior.

Disregarding dreadful deeds done to Dolly, this is ode to obsession, an affair with alliteration, a novel Nobakov I knew and never noted. Exquisite.

A dark and brooding psychological tapestry of the hindrance of truth in the hands of careless alphas. Cartherine and Heathcliffe had an impossible future in mind and yet I don't think that was Emily's point: this was not a story of star-crossed love. This was an analysis of how blind we can be to those we love when in love.

A brief, unresolved meditation on the perils of temptation. At first I thought the character's thoughts of murder or suicide were antiquated, until I realized that people do the same today, the only difference being that it is not the temptation that drives them one it, but the guilt of having given in. Is the truth so difficult to swallow?

Camus exposes the charades of the immortal illusion through the eyes of a sociopath. What is the difference between death now and death later? What value is the past or future? By portraying the protagonist's extremes, Camus compels the reader to consider such quandaries lightheartedly.

A portrait of life as an unwitting translator between culture, race, gender, class. I feel like Walker is my neighbor in life at the seams of society, but in all different ways. I stand at the edge of white and yellow, young and old, parent and child, city and country, mother's house, father's house. In no way were my experiences as daunting as Walkers but I experienced the same moments. I know the particular flavor of self-censorship necessary to blend in, I know the words that reveal my Chinese and the inflection of my white suburban. I know these feelings and feel just as confused.

Life spliced at the peaks of omniscience. Petterson's narrator understands his experiences through the intense novelty of adolescence and the self-imposed monotony of an escape retirement. What captures the reader is Petterson's gentle walks through these moments of young and old, weaving recollection into one.

Broad and colorful, surpassing its gray scale with humor in synthesis. A must read artists, writers, readers, thinkers, designers, and consumers.

Life as impermanent, ephemeral, sensory. Reality as bleak sky, cracked earth, and unconditional love. Not a depiction or an illustration of the apocalypse, but the silence of an empty road riddled with fire and death. McCarthy's achievement is in aligning the scarcity of his world with blunt, meager prose. Most sentences are little more than fragments; no point in apostrophes or even names. The final pages brought me to tears and perhaps the deepest fear I have ever known.

My low expectations satisfied beyond measure, Earth Abides failed to capture my imagination.

Pessl pens precocious protagonist's perilous plot polar pretense.

A story is a journey through an emotional landscape, with no known destination but only a single possible outcome: that you eventually return home, heading in a different direction. Foer guides us through landmarks that are strangely familiar, but also incredibly new in their depiction, taking us to a place in emotional space that could only be reached by juxtaposing the extremes of guileless humor and graceful heartache. Truly a masterpiece.

The grisly Texas thriller, dissected, muted and maimed. A decapitation at quarter speed. A long reflective draw on a creaky porch, watching the world whiz by. I hear the adaptation screened at Cannes to great effect and I want.

What was lost in translation? Philosophy, especially classical philosophy can be so abstract, I wonder what connotations were lost in translating Sophie from Norwegian to English. The language was so playful and simplistic, which was perfect for the intent of the narration. But was it more or less simple? Was it playful in the original. These are things I cannot know. Learning and comprehending Norwegian as a native would is outside the possibilities of my existence.

One fascinating aspect of Capote's prose is how it saunters not only through real events, but through time and even people. He bounces from the present to the past to a different character's concern about the future, all without confusing the reader. There's always an ease about the pace of events in the novel and the omniscience of the narrator. This is more than journalism: this is the pinnacle of storytelling.

An outstanding exposition on the difference between intellectual and emotional age. Charlie, a full grown middle-aged man, lives from ages five and eighty within the span of a year, struggling to understand his childhood, his family, and his role in society. And what does he find? The mind isn't everything. In fact, its hardly anything when compared to his needs for emotional and physical intimacy.

Charity, despite all her innocence, seemed to have an instinct for how little she knew about the world. Somehow she was aware how large the world was, though she'd never seen it. And although her sense of wonder about the unknown was cliche, it was sincere and measured, rather than reckless. Wharton paints a truly unique perspective on the loss of innocence.

A beautiful reverie in romance and assumption. I found the most engaging part of Austen's story to be her delicate sketches of the characters' motivations, and her use of these descriptions to elicit conflict between the characters' knowledge and the readers'. Within the first few chapters, the reader knows the inevitable end; the matter of conflict and the substance of the plot is in how the characters will come to know it.

A comprehensive and incredibly detailed account of the way that ethics, society, and politics can shape science. Fausto-Sterling says, "I think that the language not only fails to illuminate the issues at hand; it gives us intellectual cataracts." I found this metaphor particularly enlightening. The idea that by labeling and categorizing things, we hide them, not only has a role in shaping our notions of gender, but in countless other scientific disciplines, including software engineering and HCI (think of the way that "user" and "end-user programmer" hide the amazing complexity and diversity of the people these labels represent).

"...yet with how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries." Luckily, most scientific inquiry does not animate Shelley's wretched, inhuman, and ironically eloquent monster.

What a horribly bitter, rancorous old hag. Does Cather want me to sympathize? Marriage is what you make of it. Expectations mean nothing!

Why does God compel humanity to curse and accuse his most beautiful and innocent of creations?

I'm not sure why people think of this as a children's novel; it's frightening and at times, terrifying. What these children endure in so short a time is unthinkable. The only reason it seems plausible is because the children are so exceptional. Charles Wallace is more than precocious. Meg is more than tenacious. And Calvin is unreasonably sensible given his circumstances at home. Does an exceptional plot call for exceptional characters or would L'Engle have it the other way around?

From my perspective, Postman makes the case that our lives are being overtaken by a glut of information, information that is questionable in its veracity and utility, but viewed from a cultural lens that blindly values such information gluts. Take, for example, 38% of journalist's love of uncited, unfounded, and likely meaningless statistics. When phrased in my words, I agree with his ideas. In his words, however, it's difficult to see through his obvious neo-luddite bias.

All those crucial moments in one's life, the ones you never anticipate, the ones you understand only in hindsight—Joyce illustrates these moments with a respectful and unbiased grace. Its through these literary gestures that we see these characters' lives the clearest, and come to understand how ones dreams can slip away unnoticed.

"Billy thrust it into the vat, turned it around and around, making a gooey lollipop. He thrust it into his mouth. A moment went by, and then every cell in Billy's body shook him with ravenous gratitude and applause." You guys go on without me. So it goes. Poo-tee-weet!

Man, denouncing his French aristocratic family, marries daughter of broken but freed Bastillite doctor who, coincidentally, was wrongly imprisoned by the family of said man long ago, leading vengeful St. Antoine's revolutionists to send said man to the Guillotine after freeing him shortly before due to the passionate pleas of the doctor.

Power corrupts, so much so, that pigs take to walking. "Four legs good, two legs better!"

Life is in the details, right there for you to see, so think of being simply human and life will simply be.

Surprisingly explicit in its delineation of rules, often dictating decision about everything from divorce to death with holy ratios.

My daughter often gets jealous when her friends make new friends and tells me, "but I love him, she can't love him too!" I tell her, "Honey, people can love as many people as they want. You can't run out of love." We all believe this, right? Then what's the deal with monogamy? We grow up and suddenly love is a finite resource, to be squandered by single individual? Hypocrisy.

Knowing ones self is an unassailable virtue, worth every moment of perilous pursuit.

A wonderful collection of oddly translated stories providing insight into nearly every facet of the human condition. Though I'm not sure how to interpret the line about throwing rocks at my disobedient children. That seems a bit harsh! And in any case, if they're being disobedient, it's probably my fault!

For once, the plot structure gets to make the decisions, rather than the silly characters. It's great fun imagining these two being pulled scene to scene, all the while spouting existential musings.

Did you know he had a HUGE train in the back yard of his house? This is my kind of man!