Tag: books
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New (Old) Kindle
I bought a new Kindle, but an old Kindle. It’s actually a Kindle DX, the large-screen variety, which is long discontinued, but for some reason, Amazon occasionally has them in stock, through “Amazon Warehouse,” whatever that is. I am not really a fan of ebooks. I gave it an honest go back in 2010 or…
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Blast from the past: Morgenstern’s
Here is a receipt I found recently: Morgenstern’s was an interesting book store in Bloomington that came and went in the 90s, but was pretty central to my experience at IU. I don’t remember exactly when they opened, but it must have been around 1991 or so. There were no big box book stores then,…
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Generation whatever
On Saturday, I went to the big Barnes and Noble at the Third Street promenade in Santa Monica, which I guess is just a Barnes and Noble like the one by my house, but it’s got the weird art deco letters on the outside, and I always go there when I’m at the promenade, which…
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Jesus’ Son
I’m running out of things to read in the house, or at least I have the perception of running out of things to read. I probably have at least a hundred or two books that I haven’t read, so maybe I should say “things I want to read” or “things I should read”. I feel…
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Re-reading Infinite Jest, part 2 of 863
So I’m now just shy of 300 pages into my re-read of Infinite Jest, which is just over 25% of the way through according to the Kindle, although I think it’s closer to 1/3 done when you consider the last hundred-some pages are all endnotes. Here are more random observations as I continue: I think…
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Re-reading Infinite Jest, part 1 of ?
Okay, I gave in and started re-reading Infinite Jest the other night. I’m 8% finished as of last night, which is roughly like running the first two miles of a marathon. It’s enough that I’m getting some momentum, but so little that I feel like it could take me a while. I dug through my…
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Things I Remember About Infinite Jest
I first heard about David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest from the 1996 profile in Details. (I used to subscribe to Details for some reason; I’m not sure why.) I didn’t have a TV then, so of course I ran to the bookstore, bought the hardcover, and forced myself to read at least 50 pages a day over…
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And So It Goes
I just finished reading And So It Goes, Charles J. Shields’ biography of Kurt Vonnegut, and have mixed feelings and unchecked nostalgia. The mixed feelings part: the book was somewhat lopsided, but I liked it more than most of the reviewers. Like someone reviewed it “and so it goes – into the trash,” and I…
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City Lights Run
On Memorial Day, we decided to run into “the city,” although I hate sounding like one of those bridge and tunnel types that refer to San Francisco as “the city,” because I happen to actually live in A city, but not THE city. (More annoying than this: the show So You Think You Can Dance…
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Review: My War by Colby Buzzell
I wasn’t set to go down the military history wormhole and start reading books about Iraq, but while I was going through one of the Henry Rollins journal books, he mentioned Buzzell’s memoir, and I picked up a copy. Going into it, I knew nothing about it, none of the background, his history, and I…