Today's book haul from Harrisburg, PA's Midtown Scholar bookstore, one of my favorite bookstores in the US. It's huge, it's well-curated, it's labyrinthine, it's beautiful, it's reasonably priced (considering the excellence of the stock, anyway -- cheapskates may be loath to pay $10-20 for a UP book in perfect condition, but I know how much those books cost at list price, so I'm willing to shell out)... Oh, and its literary criticism section is amazing. Midtown Scholar also has multiple performance spaces, a balcony (!!!), comfy chairs and tables scattered throughout the store (depending on what level of quiet/privacy/comfort you're looking for), a children's play area, and 2 small cafes. I would have gotten WAY more today, but I was on a budget and I really wanted the Levinas and Medieval Literature book (it's seriously an awesome compilation and a terrific convergence)... but it was a little pricey. But--I found so many other amazing books today that I am super excited to keep looking for them elsewhere.

My husband and I go to Midtown Scholar every time we're in Harrisburg, which is usually about twice a year. It's thrilling every time.

I'm also very excited to read Derrida's "Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce's Ulysses," which is one of the most formidable essays of literary criticism I have ever read.

I'll be teaching Banana Yoshimoto's collection Lizard this semester, so I'm looking forward to reading her novel Kitchen.

Queering the Renaissance is simply an excellent collection. I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in queer theory and literary studies, particularly renaissance/early modern.

No idea if that's a good bio of Salinger. I've seen it around but I haven't read any reviews. Salinger studies is very tricky because it's hard to do him justice, he's often misunderstood, and his writing has such a weird role in American culture. We shall see.

Good haul all told. And a great way to start the New Year!

Books Read & Movies Watched in 2010

2010

Books
1. Little Kingdoms by Steven Millhauser
2. Endgame by Samuel Beckett
3. The Maker by Jorge Luis Borges
4. In Praise of Darkness by Jorge Luis Borges
5. The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges
6. Agamemnon by Aeschylus
7. The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus
8. The Eumenides by Aeschylus
9. The Book of Job tr. Raymond Scheindlin
10. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
11. The Cloud of Unknowing, tr. Clifton Wolters
12. Junk Bonds by Lucy Wong
13. Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles tr. David Grene
14. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
15. I Do Not Come To You By Chance by Adoabi Tricia Nwaubani
16. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
17. Philoctetes by Sophocles tr. David Grene
18. The Cocktail Party by T.S. Eliot
19. The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
20. In The Penny Arcade by Steven Millhauser
21. The Birds by Aristophanes tr. Moses Hadas
22. Little Flowers by Brother Ugolino
23. Orestes by Euripides tr. William Arrowsmith
24. The Bacchae by Euripides tr. William Arrowsmith
25. Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis
26. The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations by Carol A. Newsom
27. Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides tr. Charles R. Walker
28. The Story of a Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux tr. John Beevers
29. Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard tr. Howard Hong and Edna H. Hong
30. Repetition by Soren Kierkegaard tr. Howard Hong and Edna H. Hong
31. Playback by Raymond Chandler
32. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
33. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
34. Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It ed. Lynne M. Thomas & Tara O'Shea
35. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne tr. George Makepeace Towle
36. Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
37. The King in the Tree by Steven Millhauser
38. After Dark by Haruki Murakami
39. Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
40. The Barnum Museum by Steven Millhauser
41. Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams by Paul Hemphill
42. Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm by Alice & Martin Provenson
43. The Goat Lady by Jane Bregoli
44. The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing
45. Beowulf tr. Seamus Heaney
46. The Knife Thrower and Other Stories by Steven Millhauser
47. Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions by Neil Gaiman
48. Chronicles, Volume 1 by Bob Dylan
49. Oracle Night by Paul Auster
50. The High Window by Raymond Chandler
51. John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead
52. Apex Hides The Hurt by Colson Whitehead
53. Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan
54. The Devil's Dream by Lee Smith
55. Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) by Philip K. Dick
Books Reread:
1. Pearl
2. Oedipus the King by Sophocles tr. David Grene
3. Antigone by Sophocles tr. David Grene
4. The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
5. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
6. The Lais of Marie de France, tr. Robert Hanning & Joan Ferrante
7. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, tr. Simon Armitage

Movies
1. Mary Poppins
2. Chaplin
3. Sherlock Holmes
4. Lilo and Stitch
5. Man On Wire
6. Heart and Souls
7. Whale Rider
8. To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
9. Los Olvidados
10. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
11. Inglourious Basterds
12. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men
13. How to Train Your Dragon
14. Defending Your Life
15. La belle et la bete
16. My Cousin Vinny
17. A Serious Man
18. The Secret of Kells
19. Yojimbo
20. Bull Durham
21. The Brothers Bloom
22. The Secret of Roan Inish
23. Micmacs
24. Love and Other Disasters
25. Toy Story 3
26. Raising Arizona
27. Wonder Boys
28. Rachel Getting Married
29. The Orphanage
30. Blade Runner
31. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part I
32. The Tempest
33. Man of La Mancha
34. True Grit
35. An Education
Movies Rewatched:
1. Let The Right One In
2. Peter Pan
3. Pocahontas
4. Sherlock Holmes
5. 101 Dalmatians
6. Clueless
7. Amelie
8. The Fellowship of the Ring
9. The Two Towers
10. The Return of the King
11. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
12. Princess Mononoke
13. Spirited Away
14. Whisper of the Heart
15. Drop Dead Fred
16. Drop Dead Fred
17. Heart and Souls
18. The Sound of Music
19. Cool Hand Luke
20. Beauty and the Beast
21. The Little Mermaid
22. The Lion King
23. In Bruges
24. The Song of Sparrows
25. Paper Moon
26. Inglourious Basterds
27. No Country For Old Men
28. The Brothers Bloom
29. The Secret of Kells
30. Holiday
31. The Sixth Sense
32. Drop Dead Fred
33. A Serious Man
34. Monsters, Inc.
35. Jumanji
36. Robin Hood
37. The Rescuers
38. Drop Dead Fred
39. Pee Wee's Big Adventure
40. True Romance
41. Amadeus
42. Sleepless in Seattle
43. Breakfast at Tiffany's
44. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
45. The Rescuers Down Under
46. Star Wars IV: A New Hope
47. Drop Dead Fred
48. Catch-22
49. Ghost World
50. Amadeus
51. Hannah and Her Sisters
52. The Sting
53. Cool Hand Luke
54. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I
55. Oliver!
56. Love & Death
57. The Big Sleep
58. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
59. It's A Wonderful Life
60. They Live
61. Wonder Boys
62. In Bruges
63. The Sound of Music
64. True Grit

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

-Steve Earle

back from hiatus?

so, I just finished Eliot's The Cocktail Party:


There is certainly no purpose in remaining in the dark
Except long enough to clear from the mind
The illusion of having ever been in the light.
The fact that you can't give a reason for wanting her
Is the best reason for believing that you want her.


It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
Resign yourself to be the fool you are.
That's the best advice that I can give you.
You will find that you survive humiliation.
And that's an experience of incalculable value.


We die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

He sank back into his black-and-white world, his immobile world of inanimate drawings that had been granted the secret of motion, his death-world with its hidden gift of life. But that life was a deeply ambiguous life, a conjurer's trick, a crafty illusion based on an accidental property of the retina, which retained an image for a fraction of a second after the image was no longer present. On this frail fact was erected the entire structure of the cinema, that colassal confidence game. The animated cartoon was a far more honest expression of the cinematic illusion because the cartoon reveled in its own illusory nature, exulted in the impossible--therein lay its exhileration and its secret melancholy. For this willful violation of the actual, while it was an intoxicating release from the constriction of things, was at the same time nothing but a delusion, an attempt to outwit mortality. As such it was doomed to failure. And yet it was desperately important to smash through the constriction of the actual, to unhinge the universe and let the impossible stream in, because otherwise--well, otherwise the world was nothing but an editorial cartoon.

-The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne
by Steven Millhauser

A list of the books I read, and the movies I saw in 2009.

Total:

45 books
114 movies

Books I Read In 2009
1. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
2. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
3. The Iliad by Homer (translated by Robert Fagles)
4. All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers by Larry McMurtry
5. Paradise Lost by John Milton
6. The Aeneid by Virgil (translated by Robert Fagles)
7. Middlemarch by George Eliot
8. Tao Te Ching (translated by Stephen Mitchell)
9. Pearl (unknown)
10. Death In Venice by Thomas Mann
11. A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
12. Watership Down by Richard Adams
13. Paterson by William Carlos Williams
14. Lanterns and Lances by James Thurber
15. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
16. The Nonexistent Knight by Italo Calvino
17. The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writings by Richard Brautigan
18. Horseman, Pass By by Larry McMurtry
19. Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
20. Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell
21. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
22. Silverlock by John Myers Myers
23. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazanktzakis
24. The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
25. The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler
26. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
27. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
28. Chaereas and Callirhoe by Chariton
29. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
30. The Republic by Plato
31. Politics by Aristotle
32. The Satyricon by Petronius
33. City of God by St Augustine
34. The Golden Ass by Apuleius
35. Yvain by Chretien de Troyes
36. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
37. The Sacred + the Profane by Mircea Eliade
38. Troilus + Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer
39. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette
40. Exquisite Desire: Religion, the Erotic, and the Song of Songs by Carey Ellen Walsh
41. The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible by David M. Carr
42. The Lais of Marie de France

Books Reread:
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky


Movies I Saw In 2009
1. Horton Hears A Who
2. Schindler's List
3. Doubt
4. The Long Goodbye
5. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
6. Wendy and Lucy
7. Coraline
8. Muppets Take Manhattan
9. Bob Roberts
10. Home Alone 2
11. The Fall
12. Psycho
13. The Sting
14. The Seven Samurai
15. The Adventures of Mark Twain
16. Nashville
17. Whisper of the Heart
18. The Apostle
19. Watership Down
20. Wilde
21. Star Trek
22. Up
23. Castle in the Sky
24. Ran
25. Next Stop, Greenwich Village
26. Cashback
27. A Bug's Life
28. Magnolia
29. Hamlet (Branagh)
30. Rashomon
31. The Godfather
32. A Fish Called Wanda
33. The Godfather Part II
34. The Wrestler
35. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
36. Training Day
37. Eastern Promises
38. Azur & Azmar: The Prince's Quest
39. Let the Right One In
40. Ponyo
41. Gran Torino
42. Gangs of New York
43. Matewan
44. Adaptation
45. Shortcuts
46. The Song of Sparrows
47. Chalk
48. Pierrot Le Fou
49. Columbo: Swan Song
50. Murder By Death
51. Julie & Julia
52. The Maltese Falcon
53. Anatomy of a Murder
54. St. Peter's Fair
55. Rock that Uke
56. MST3K: Laserblast
57. The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté)
58. The Life of the World to Come
59. Stand By Me
60. Ordinary People
61. The Sixth Sense
62. Election
63. Happy-Go-Lucky
64. The Big Chill
65. Where the Wild Things Are
66. Fantastic Mr. Fox
67. Cool Hand Luke
68. The Importance of Being Earnest
69. Grizzly Man
70. The Triplets of Belleville
71. 100 Feet
72. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
73. The Last Detail

Movies Rewatched:
But I'm A Cheerleader, Slumdog Millionaire, Gormenghast, Groundhog Day, Ratatouille, Say Anything, Lonesome Dove, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Strangers on a Train, City of Lost Children, Happy Feet, The Court Jester, My Fair Lady, The Long Goodbye, Doubt, The Sting, Bridget Jones's Diary, Love and Death, Empire Records, After Hours, Withnail + I, Wendy and Lucy, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Off the Map, Murder by Death, Murder by Death, Amadeus, Julie + Julia, True Romance, True Romance, Pan's Labyrinth, True Romance, Seven Samurai, Pan's Labyrinth, In Bruges, The Wizard of Oz, The Road Warrior, Bridget Jones' Diary, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Music Man

I have an idea that it was the obstacles which kept you so true to me.

Madame de Clèves knelt by the bed, and fortunately for her the light did not fall on her face.

-Madame de Lafayette, The Princess of Clèves

Desire is about wanting more than it is about getting. It is the hunger that highlights the food; the patience that heightens the faith; the arousal that anticipates the sex. The salt of a lover's lips or the sweet juice of grapes is not just pleasurable anymore: with desire, they become exquisite. Desire is the discipline to live on that edge between wanting and satisfaction. It is not for the timid or the fickle. [...]

Yearning itself may even come to be experienced as a pleasure. The Song is concerned with the provocative question of whether the exquisite sensation of wanting another could surpass in any realistic sense the pleasure of actual consummation. The surprising claim that it cann does seem to be the premise of the song, which stays focused on the experience of yearning, not its relief.


-Carey Ellen Walsh, Exquisite Desire: Religion, the Erotic, and the Song of Songs

I found this in a National Geographic:
The moon is beautiful, but I do not live on the moon.


And I've been trying to get my head around this, from Thomas Aquinas. I'm terribly suspicious, but it's also weirdly appealing on some level.
In things that have knowledge, desire follows knowledge. The senses only know being as it is, here and now, but the intellect knows it absolutely and for all time. Therefore everything that has an intellect naturally desires to exist forever. However a natural desire cannot be in vain. Therefore every intellectual substance is incorruptible.

More soon. It's Week 1 of the 3-week-long insanity I put myself through every semester: finals.

Books are like rocks. You hold one in your hand and look at it in various lights to get a sense of it, and then when you get a good angle, you throw it through a window to see what happens.

— John Darnielle