Out of the Shadows
“Daniel arrived at the sprawling round hall, a virtual basilica of shadows spiraling up under a high glass dome. A labyrinth of passageways and crammed bookshelves rose from base to pinnacle like a beehive, woven with tunnels, steps, platforms and bridges that presaged an immense library of seemingly impossible geometry.”
This was The Cemetery of Forgotten […]
Map Quest
When there is enough of anything, a cluster pattern will appear. This is the case even if the anything is randomly distributed. Cows, clouds and coffee drinkers cluster or clump, depending on how many there are and how wet it is. So do books. Dewey knew this and figured there was a future for his […]
Picture Perfect
“Brevity is the soul of wit”, wrote William Shakespeare in Hamlet. It is also one of the key elements in making quotations…well…quotable. A quote is the literary equivalent of the 10-second sound bite. It has to be quick and, yes, it has to bite. If properly delivered, few get the chance to bite back.
So before […]
Take a Ride on the Reading
Alberto Manguel is an erudite and eloquent observer of the human condition. A Reading Diary (Knopf Canada, 2004) is his one-a-month, later-in-life revisiting of his favorite classics. Each book is a point of departure for philosophical musings and philological mischief. Each spins off quotes and anecdotes that lead the reader behind and beyond the text. […]
Descent into Madness
In Bee Season (Doubleday, New York, 2000), Myla Goldberg describes the slow disintegration of a dysfunctional family and the brave attempt of one little girl to keep it together. It is a coming-of-age novel entangled in the cobwebs of an obsessive compulsive mother coming apart.
The mother’s obsession with The Perfect leads her to collect items […]
