School books

Also I don't think I linked here to the essay I wrote about why I wish I could read more novels set in classrooms, Crossfit boxes, etc,  I wrote this first as a talk about a year and a half ago (it was my literary classrooms talk) and I am pleased to see it now available to a wider readership!  There are so many things I didn't get to talk about there - Diana Wynne Jones's Magid committees for one which in my theory must have been strongly influenced by how many of her close friends and family were professional academics, there is nothing so much like my day-to-day work life as the administrative conversations in the great underrated Deep Secret!

Gibboniana

What makes a sentence great?  Thanks to Sam Haselby for inviting me to write this one!

Style book now in paperback!

Now in paper: READING STYLE: A LIFE IN SENTENCES, by Jenny Davidson (@triaspirational)! https://t.co/MNQfAh5Gyg pic.twitter.com/JF3zytjCym

— Columbia Univ Press (@ColumbiaUP) August 17, 2016

In bed with Raymond Williams

I was on the verge of writing B. an email earlier - "Getting into bed with Raymond Williams" - only I realized that what I really needed was a straight-up nap, not nap-pretending-to-be-reading-a-book! I have been remiss in not mentioning this here sooner - Facebook and Twitter leach energy away from this sort of announcement - but I've got a fun gig tomorrow night, joining Geoff Dyer (one of my literary heroes) and Nikil Saval (Columbia grad and author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, which I haven't read yet but which I sent a copy of last year to my father, longtime "cube" occupant) for a panel discussion of a new reissue of Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review.

At the Strand Bookstore, Thursday, March 26, 7pm (828 Broadway @ 12th St.).

Horn!

I am really excited about this review!

More books!

At the Columbia UP blog, five of the best books about hoarding.

Books books books

At the Columbia UP blog, ten of my favorite books about reading.

Self-promotional

First of four posts at the Columbia UP blog: I answer some questions about how I came to write Reading Style: A Life in Sentences:

Sentences are my obsession—I linger on them compulsively, it is the feeling of words in the mouth that got me hooked on literature in the first place as a very young child and I wanted to write a book that conveyed some of the magic of that way of reading.

Free samples

Taste a bit of the style book at the CUP site!

Self-promotional

This Kirkus review of the style book gives a slightly inaccurate impression that I basically just go through saying whether things are good or bad!

Untitled

Style book reviewed at Publishers Weekly!

(This semester is now officially kicking my ass - so tired I don't really know what to do with myself! Four more weeks - I think it can be done....)

Celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Columbia University Seminar on Eighteenth-Century European Culture this weekend - I have had no hand organizing it, but will preside over a graduate student panel and weigh in where appropriate.

Too lazy to log full list of light reading (I had a pile of YA paperbacks that I picked up the last time I visited the Bank Street Bookstore, have just ploughed through them due to dearth of mental attention for anything more challenging), but I did read and love two short books over the weekend, both highly recommended: Jenny Offil's Dept. of Speculation (good interview here) and Teju Cole's Every Day is For the Thief.

Teaching Emile tomorrow. It is a very strange book. To my chagrin, the edition I taught it from last time is out of print, and I haven't been able to lay hands on my own old copy - teachers know that this means my quite reasonable set of teaching notes is now virtually useless! Rectification of page numbers (and it is a different translation, too, alas - I was marking stuff with post-its as I reread in this edition, but it's going to be a pain trying to reconcile things) will have to wait until tomorrow, though. I got nothin'!

Closing tabs

Busy week, somehow. And excessively cold! My lungs are ready for spring.

I enjoyed many of the pieces in MFA vs. NYC, but Alexander Chee's essay was by far my favorite. Leslie Jamison's account of the book is good (via Chloe S.) - I have a review of Jamison's forthcoming essay collection in the next Bookforum, the book's a must-read if you are interested in the contemporary essay or the question of pain, female or otherwise.

Other light reading around the edges: two absolutely delightful young-adult fantasy novels by Sarah Rees Brennan, Unspoken and Untold. These books are perfectly to my taste (they would make a very good television series also) - only I have to wait until September for the next installment!

Stage Kiss at Playwrights Horizons is one of the funniest plays I have seen for a long time - especially in the first half, I was actually laughing uncontrollably out loud. (It was a matinee, so no outright feasting afterwards, but we did have a piece of pie at the diner next door - cherry for me, apple for G.) Between that and Antony and Cleopatra, it was a good weekend for theatergoing. Seeing No Exit tonight at the Pearl; 7pm curtain + short play = more realistic than serious mid-evening theatergoing for a school night.

Closing tabs:

Andrew Solomon on having the demons of depression exorcised - literally.

The inimitable Cintra Wilson watches the Oscars.

Excited about blurbs accumulating for my style book - official publication date is June, but I should have some copies by the end of May.

Last but not least, trilobite! (Time to reread Richard Fortey's book, I think.)

One more letter

Index is now sent. Have also rather haplessly written to see if I might be able to elicit a few blurbs, though the fact is that if all you have is someone's Twitter and Facebook contact information, it is relatively unlikely that they will respond! I have three already, notionally, so really that is enough....

My January spell in Cayman is almost at an end. On my return to New York, I am going to be plunged immediately into the thick of a very busy spring semester - next week will be frenetic, but after that I hope I will be able to settle in to a good work and exercise schedule.

The letter R:

Raymond, Derek, 57
reading, 92-94, 176; addiction to, 3; childhood, 4, 7, 35; developmental stages of, 8; at different ages, 68-70; ethics of, 1-2; “mouthy,” 27-28, 30; pathologies of, 3; for pleasure, 6-7, 8, 133; speed of, 3; voluminous, 7; as way of life, 8
realism, 15-16, 153
record-keeping, 126
rejection, 85-86
Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson, 140-41
repetition, 41, 56-61, 63, 172-73; and humor, 57-60
rereading, 9, 35-36, 69
revision, 71, 98; by re-typing, 122
rhetoric, 73; see also periods
Richardson, Samuel, Clarissa, 56, 84, 97
risk-taking, emotional, 171
Rousseau, Confessions, 109
rule-breaking, 180n4

Good enough to eat

Unseemly gloating, but - I just got the most amazing email from my editor at Columbia. This is going to be the cover for the style book! (Not yet available for pre-order, but it will be soon.) It is certainly the best book I have written to date, and I am pretty certain it is the best cover too....

In it

Did I ever link to this at the time? Anyway, some thoughts on immersion - in novels, in games, in water - following the publication of The Magic Circle.

4 shots

from Thursday's event at Books & Books. It is a truly beautiful store, you get a good glimpse of its glories here! (Thanks to Danielle Ebanks and colleagues for hosting and pictures - click for a bigger image.)

Dangerous games

Nice article from the weekend section of the Cay Compass - not available online, but here's the scan. Publicist for Books & Books has gone all out! (Not sure you can get a readably large version, but try clicking?)

Closing tabs

I read a very good book that slightly spoiled me for others, the first volume of Peter May's Lewis trilogy, The Blackhouse. It was a recommendation from my college friend and fellow recreational triathlete Jean-Jacques; it is an odd book in certain respects, and I am not sure the unusual formal choices are entirely justified, but it's an immersive read with an appealing main character and amazing settings. Alas, though volumes two and three of the trilogy exist, I can't get them until I get back to New York: I had this one from BorrowDirect (various libraries in that system collect UK crime fiction), but even the first one isn't released to U.S. markets until September. I believe there is an earlier series I can plunder in the meantime.

Near the end of the third installment of Daniel Abraham's Dagger and the Coin quartet, but slightly regretting the sheer length of epic fantasy - it is my own fault for reading them all in a week rather than over something more like a month, I am still liking them, but it is slightly over the top!

Also: Christa Faust's second Fringe novel, The Burning Man (the Amazon reviews are unduly harsh, I quite enjoyed it, but it's true that it doesn't fill in backstory in the conventional sense - I think it is a difficult situation writing for obsessive fans!).

I was interviewed on local television this morning, which was very enjoyable but required an emergency visit yesterday to Camana Bay for a colored top and some face powder, neither of which is really in my usual repertoire! A good interview in the weekend edition of the paper, too, but not online - I may post a scan if I can get it formatted correctly.

Closing tabs:

"Her own cats now assume the iPad exists for them." (Via Marginal Revolution.)

David Epstein's new book sounds highly worthwhile.

I want to read this, but even more so I want to eat a piece of one of the cakes! (Also - via Jane - cat donuts.)

10 questions for Wayne Koestenbaum, courtesy of Dave Lull. Much looking forward to the release of My 1980s and Other Essays.

Last but not least, Matthew Kirschenbaum on archiving digital media. (Via Glenn Hendler.)

Take five

Five facts about The Magic Circle. Thanks to Matt Staggs for the invitation to contribute!

The short list

For every author who ever lost a moment's peace of mind over an Amazon review!