It’s that time of year again. I’m 10,000 words into another NaNoWriMo project (I’m not calling it a novel because, well, it just isn’t and probably never will be) and already bumping into some kind of wall. Such fun! What’s not so fun is Laura Miller advising people against NaNoWriMo. Why? So people can read [...]
Being an Apple fan I have to admit I’ve always scoffed at the Kindle; why would anyone pay a couple hundred dollars for this thing when they could buy an iPod Touch for the same price or an iPad for a bit more and get so much more functionality in the bargain. Now, after seeing [...]
Point Omega by Don DeLillo My rating: 4 of 5 stars The book that made me finally see “Psycho.” The parallels between the film and the characters in this little novella are what make the book interesting. DeLillo is a prose master so there are some great little lines in there that make it worth [...]
Laura Miller Detective fiction’s legions of brooding sleuths have paid lip service to Nietzsche’s observation that if you look long enough into the abyss, the abyss starts looking back. In French’s novels, the person looking becomes the abyss. I absolutely loved French’s first two novels, In the Woods and The Likeness, so I’m looking forward [...]
From Kottke via Daring Fireball, quoting from pages 144-151 of Infinite Jest: Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her. A traditional aural-only [...]
I just finished reading Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse by Steve Bogira My rating: 5 of 5 stars. This was my second time reading this book. I read it first in about 2004 or 2005 while in law school, and recently picked it up again when I started [...]
Inappropriate Golden Books — what a great idea. I can’t choose a favorite. More here, including “The Big Lebowski,” “Seven,” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
John Krasinski, who is really probably the biggest star of “The Office” — I mean, wouldn’t you really rather watch him and Pam than Michael? — has made a movie adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s book, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Of course it will be painful to watch, and therefore, you must go see [...]
Roger Federer has fallen to Juan Martin Del Potro at the U.S. Open. I would have loved to have seen that match. But, of course, I can’t help thinking, what might David Foster Wallace have possibly written about this?
It’s a little bit funny that someone decided to do a big group read of Infinite Jest this summer because I just read it last summer (after first getting about halfway through it in about 1997 or 1998). I’m now dipping into it again and am surprised to find what a good friend it seems. [...]
