Twenty-Eighth Book
Wittgenstein's Mistress : David Markson
Dalkey Archive : 1997
Bought at Housing Works Used Book Cafe for $3.50+
Recommended by Shelley Jackson

Started 4.21.05
Finished 4.29.05

The Line: "Or perhaps it is only the past itself, which is always smaller than one had believed.
      I do wish that last sentence had some meaning, since it certainly came close to impressing me for a moment" (126).

Squeeze three thousand years
of art gossip into one
novel: fresh and tart.
  ¶ 23:21 0 comments

  Twenty-Seventh Book
The Red Cavalry Stories : Isaac Babel
Norton : 2003
Bought at Strand Book Store for $5.95+
Recommended by Ben Ehrenreich

Started 4.17.05
Finished 4.20.05

The Line: "The evening soared into the sky like a flock of birds and darkness laid its wet garland upon me. I was exhausted, and, crouching beneath the crown of death, walked on, begging fate for the simplest ability--the ability to kill a man" (163).

I want a saber
and a bayonet and a
war to call my own.
  ¶ 21:57 0 comments

  Twenty-Sixth Book
Rent Boy : Gary Indiana
High Risk : 1994
Bought at Housing Works Used Book Cafe for $3.00+

Started 4.15.05
Finished 4.16.05

The Line: "They gutted him, basically, and took out whatever they could use. So he really looked like a pile of garbage with a pretty face" (119).

You know that urban
legend about kidney thieves?
That started here, natch.
  ¶ 23:22 0 comments

  Twenty-Fifth Book
For The Time Being : Annie Dillard
Knopf : 1999
Bought at Symposia Bookstore for $3.00+
Recommended by Julie Shapiro

Started 4.12.05
Finished 4.15.05

The Line: "C.S. Lewis once noted—interestingly, salvifically—that the sum of human suffering is a purely mental accretion, the contemplation of which is futile because no one ever suffered it. That was a load off my mind" (84).

Why did I wait so
long to read Dillard? "Because
you're an idiot."
  ¶ 09:09 0 comments

  Twenty-Fourth Book
State Of Grace : Joy Williams
Scribner : 1986
Bought at Housing Works Used Book Cafe for $3.00+
Recommended by Scott Heim

Started 4.3.05
Finished 4.11.05

The Line: "I must admit I eat this garbage because I want to insult myself. We think as we eat. Our brains take on flavor and scope. What I want is to slow down my head and eventually stop it. I strive for a brain friendly as homogenized as sweet potato pie" (13).

Do you want to know
how many times the word "womb"
appears? No. You don't.
  ¶ 16:48 0 comments

  Twenty-Third Book
As I Lay Dying : William Faulkner
Vintage : 1990
Bought at Housing Works Used Book Cafe for $4.50+
Recommended by Scott Pierce

Started 3.30.05
Finished 4.2.05

The Line: "How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-strings: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls" (207).

To do this week: drown
mules, check; amputate leg, check;
bury Mom, uncheck.
  ¶ 20:57 1 comments