teenybooks

books

the diving bell and the butterfly

In Movies, People, Writing, books, culture, film, french on 14 July 2008 with 2 comments

Today while waiting the two hours and forty minutes to pick up my defective iphone, I had the great pleasure to read my second favorite gift from cover to cover The Diving Bell and The Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby. I’m sure by now everyone has heard of the excellent movie chronicling the former editor of [...]

written on the body

In books, found things, quote on 7 July 2008 with 3 comments

I always recommend this book and have been known to carry it around in my purse for sometimes months at a time, sharing passages with random people whenever I have the opportunity, its fantastically well written and it always speaks to me. I picked it up again because I loaned it to someone to use [...]

crazy love

In books, quote on 12 June 2008 with 3 comments

I’m crazy about this City.
Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it’s not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is shadow were any blasé thing takes its place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful [...]

untranslatable

In books, found things, personal on 12 June 2008 with 67 comments

In Happiness, there is a short section in which a character’s research of untranslatables is briefly described, words for which there are no mean in the english language. The whole point of the passage is to introduce to the reader the word mokita which becomes a central theme throughout the opening chapters. It means: the [...]

More Bolano

In books, letters, quote on 9 June 2008 with 8 comments

Still wading through The Savage Detectives tonight.  My favorite part of reading is coming a passage that you love so wholly it becomes impossible not to want to share it with everyone:
And then comes the funny part…they just stood there and asked me whether I wrote love letters. Everything, boys, I told them, setting the [...]

The Book

In books, poetry on 27 May 2008 with 9 comments

This was my favorite book of all.
My mother bought this big boy home around 1998 from her job. It was one of my constant companions through late night reading sessions, attempting to grasp concepts that I didn’t understand. There are still quotes written on the inside cover, barely there in pencil and pressed flowers from [...]

Savages

In books on 19 May 2008 with 331 comments

After a few hours of reading I’m nearly 100 pages into Roberto Bolano’s Savage Detectives. A mammoth of a book thats tearing into me rather quickly. I missed my train stop today (I actually woke up as if from a daze to realize I’d road two stops past) I was so engrossed. The first part [...]

The Hottest State

In books on 14 May 2008 with 8 comments

I’ve picked up Ethan Hawke’s book The Hottest State.
After checking out a few new performers, I got turned onto Jessie Harris* who wrote the soundtrack for the movie (performed by Feist, Norah Jones, Cat Power and more), watched a preview for the movie and decided that I needed to buy the book this afternoon.
Its not [...]

Shakespeare and Company

In Paris, books on 16 April 2008 with 8 comments

If you’re ever in Paris and happen to be as big of a fan of books as I am, visit the original Shakespeare and Company, opened by George Whitman:
The Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart
When Frances Steloff was president of the [...]

On Self-Respect

In books, personal, quote, writers on 5 March 2008 with 97 comments

I read this quote in September when is was published on Maud Newton from Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem, told myself to buy the book (and I would have today had I not had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.) I’ve referenced it more than once in conversation and today I [...]