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Showing posts with label Italo Calvino. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Italo Calvino. Show all posts

Thursday, 7 January 2016

Books of the Year 2015

Books of the Year 2015

As  I have lapsed somewhat into inactivity on the book blogging front I hope to use this post to quell those pangs of conscience that niggle in the back of my mind when I think of all the books I meant to post about but never have.
I have also been reading less, even with the extra time I should have had due to the lapse in blogging. However I took up running and managed to lose three stone in the first few months of the year and have not put much back on since. Also my band has risen from the ashes, at least briefly. I guess I have a tendency towards single-mindedness and that means that when one thing comes to the fore, another slips back into its wake.
Another possible reason was the revelatory re-read of Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, which rather than having it's edge blunted by the passage of time had the same impact as when it ravished me a few decades ago. It is my book of the year and re-calibrated my sense of the excitement a book should stir if it is to become a true favourite.

Monday, 18 February 2013

If On a Winter's Night a Traveller


If On a Winter's Night a Traveller - Italo Calvino

"You know the best you can expect is to avoid the worst."

As I read I tend to make notes of quotes which seem particularly interesting and may help me in this blogging enterprise. The problem with If On a Winter's Night a Traveller is that it would take me days to type out the quotes that I have noted. If you are interested in the process of writing or reading, or both as they are inextricably intertwined, this is a kind of motherlode.

Calvino starts down one road, doubles back on himself, sprays red herrings with abandon and refuses to let us continue the wild goose chases that he sets up over and over again. But all the time he keeps certain questions to the fore: Why do people read? Why do people write? What do books do? What are words? What are books? How are we drawn into a story? Is our need to have complete narratives now outdated? etcetera...