Tag: Books
Book Shelves #36, 9.02.2012
Book shelves series #36, thirty-sixth Sunday of 2012
Continuing the corner book shelf in the family room.
The bookends are tschotskes from a ¥100 shop; we bought them years ago in Tokyo.
Not particularly fancy but they have a sentimental value. (The big guy is a tanuki, if you’re unfamiliar).
The tin on the far left is filled with miscellaneous papers, old stickers, other small bricabrac.
Only four books on this shelf—the more-or-less complete works of J.D. Salinger, in gloriously ratty mass paperback editions:
Not sure if these are my wife’s or mine—probably a mix of both. I stole most of these from my high school.
The Catcher in the Rye was as important to me as any other book, I suppose. I wrote about it here.
Nine Stories contains some of Salinger’s most disciplined stuff.
It took me years to finally find the discipline to read Seymour, which is probably the best thing he wrote.
“In the Bedroom” — Gilbert Sorrentino
“In the Bedroom” by Gilbert Sorrentino. From A Strange Commonplace.
The Young Teacher — Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
Don Quixote — Will Eisner
(Via Hey Oscar Wilde!)
Attorney Reading — Honore Daumier
Malcolm Lowry’s “Big Books,” as Reported by David Markson
From “Malcolm Lowry: A Remininiscence,” the final chapter of David Markson’s Malcolm Lowry’s Volcano, a study of Under the Volcano:
His big books, however, would at the moment remain these: Moby-Dick, Blue Voyage, the Grieg, Madame Bovary, Conrad (particularly The Secret Agent), O’Neill, Kafka, much of Poe, Rimbaud, and of course Joyce and Shakespeare. The Enormous Room is a favorite, as is Nightwood. Kierkegaard and Swedenborg are the philosophers most mentioned, and in another area William James and Ouspensky. Also Strindberg, Gogol, Tolstoy.
Lifting a Maupassant from the shelf (nothing has been said of the man before this): “He is a better writer than you think.”
Young Woman with a Book — Edouard Manet
Reading — Ivan Kramskoi
Woman Reading — Edouard Manet
The Reading — Edouard Manet
The Missal — John William Waterhouse
Book Shelves #35, 8.27.2012
Book shelves series #35, thirty-fifth Sunday of 2012
Corner case in the family room. Today’s shelf:
The depth makes getting the shadow off the shot almost impossible without using additional lighting.
Note the use of mortar and pestle as bookend, a genteel move that screams respectability.
Volumes on this shelf include:
And:
As well as The Ivory Trail, inscribed by my the mother of one of best friends of early childhood (and attributed to him):
The Bath — Alfred Stevens
Crackers in Bed — Norman Rockwell
Woman Reading a Novel (Sketch) — Vincent van Gogh
By Reading — David Burliuk
Biblioklept