Fifty-Sixth Book Whatever : Michel Houellebecq
Serpent's Tail : 1998
Bought at Park Slope Books for $6.00+

Started 1.28.06
Finished 1.31.06

The Line: "The next morning I got up early, I arrived in good time for the first train; I bought a ticket, waited, and didn't get on it; and I can't for the life of me think why. It's all very unpleasant" (71).

I can't fit the word
"psychoanalysis" on
any other line.
  ¶ 17:48 0 comments

  Fifty-Fifth Book Murderers I Have Known : Marina Warner
Vintage UK : 2003
Bought at Strand Book Store for $3.50+

Started 1.26.05
Finished 1.28.05

The Line: "He has a kind of fresh briny smell as if he had been swiming in some sea before the motor car was invented, before the industrial revolution, when the word pollution merely meant ritual defilement, menstruating girls in temples, not soapy poisons frothing on the tideline and the river banks" (39).

A bowl of ice cubes
flipped upside down put the peace
in Medusa's laugh.
  ¶ 17:53 0 comments

  Fifty-Fourth Book Herzog : Saul Bellow
Penguin : 1976
Bought at Twelfth Street Books for $3.00+
Recommended by Michael Powell

Started 1.11.06
Finished 1.26.06

The Line: "The only truly interesting side of the matter was the intimate design of the injury, the fact that it was so penetrating, custom-made exactly to your measure. It's fascinating that hatred should be so personal as to be almost loving. The knife and the wound aching for each other" (189).

Should I feel guilty
for loving the ol' canon
as much as I do?  ¶ 14:21 0 comments

  Fifty-Third Book Riddley Walker : Russell Hoban
Summit : 1980
Bought at Strand Book Store for $1.00+
Recommended by Ben Ehrenreich

Started 1.4.06
Finished 1.11.06

The Line: "Then thay dogs begun tu tel uv tym tu cum. Thay sed, The lan wil dy & thay peapl wil eat 1 a nuther. The water wil be poysen & the peapl wil drink blud" (32).

A world where trees write
dictionaries, where stone smiles.
Get the idea?  ¶ 13:18 0 comments

  Fifty-Second Book Child Of God : Cormac McCarthy
Vintage : 1993
Bought at Twelfth Street Books for $4.00+
Recommended by Scott Heim

Started 1.2.06
Finished 1.4.06

The Line: "A crazed gymnast laboring over a cold corpse. He poured into that waxen ear everything he'd ever thought of saying to a woman. Who could say she did not hear him?" (89).

Thank you for this, Scott:
The living loving the dead
(Might have warned me though).  ¶ 16:31 0 comments

  Fifty-First Book Clumsy : Jeffrey Brown
2002
Bought at Strand Book Store for $1.00+
Recommended by Amanda Patten

Started 1.2.06
Finished 1.2.06

The Line:











It's a love story
told by an armadillo
who has lost its shell.  ¶ 11:44 0 comments

  Chapter Two The second chapter of the One Hundred Books project begins today with a quote from Franz Kafka: "A book should be an axe to shatter the frozen sea inside us."

Joining the project is Erin Dowding, who has pledged to read fifty books by June 30th, 2006. Looking forward to the new year, new books, new haiku, new readers, and the new you.

Affectionately yours,  ¶ 12:21 0 comments