(in case you were wondering about the title…) I made it to fifty-three books. So damn close. I’m too damn lazy to review all of them, so here’s the list. It wasn’t as good a year as 2010 (despite my also failing to reach my goal then too) where I finished fifty-nine books, started fifty-four [...]
Tagged books, French language, readingOr: the post where Gem bulks up on trade paperbacks and graphic novels to meet desired 2011 quota…yep, it’s over halfway through the year and I’m resorting to dirty means to try and make it to 60 books though according to Goodreads, only books begun and finished can technically be counted and they have to have an [...]
Tagged Anya's Ghost, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Ballou, Fables comic book series, graphic novel, Jamie McKelvie, Ken Follett, Kieron Gillen, Phonogram comic, poetry, Susan Coolidge, The Darwin Poems, The Pillars of the Earth, Vera BrosgolWhoops, I miscounted – I’ve read ten more books since my last post for a while and yes I am counting a poetry chapbook even though it doesn’t have an ISBN…sue me though it does have an ISSN. Anyway, here’s my next ten books that I’ve been trying to devour as making it to sixty [...]
Tagged Bill Willingham, book reviews, Fables comic book series, Frans Masereel, Geoff Lemon, Going Down Swinging, Jack of Fables, Jay Wiseman, Jessica Friedmann, Miriam Wei Wei Lo, No Pretty Words, Rachael Hale, SM 101, SmittenMy bad. For the two of you that actually pay attention to my book-reading habits, you can be forgiven for thinking I haven’t been reading at all. I haven’t been reading as much as I’d like because I’ve spent the last three or so months a. really, really unwell and b. apparently making up for [...]
Tagged A A Milne, Allen Ginsberg, Blood and Guts In High School, book review, Burnings, DailyLit, E H Shepard, Emily Dickinson, G, Gardens of the Moon, Just So Stories, Kathy Acker, Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder, Ocean Vuong, poetry, R L Stevenson, reading, Rudyard Kipling, short story, Steven Erikson, Treasure Island, Winnie the PoohA while back, I freaked out because I realised I had no access to a copy of one of my favourite albums (it’s technically an EP but whatevs) of all time. Not on CD, not on my laptop’s hard drive, not on an external drive or flash drive, not on Dropbox. I panicked. And then [...]
Tagged classical music, essential music, Gustav Mahler, hard drive crises, Johann Sebastian Bach, Kathleen Janna, post-punk, Radiohead, The FallI don’t have much to say about this. A treasured friend, for god knows what reason, gave me her copy of this and it sure as hell meant as much to her reading it as it did to me. I read a few poems from it on LJ good poetry communities (you laugh, but LiveJournal, [...]
Tagged Beer Wars documentary, contemporary American poetry, crush, good friends, LiveJournal poetry communities, medication side effects, poetry, Richard SikenI once knew an histrionic poet (a proper poet too, just not a very nice person) who used to nag me about reading Anne Carson. She very literally thrust three of her books at me to read and then told her mother and housemate these horrendous lies about me and then got her mother to [...]
Tagged ancient Greek, Anne Carson, Nox, poetryFor some weird reason, when I lived in the Philippines at the age of four, my auntie, then a teenager bought me Oliver Twist. It had taken me three months to become fluent in Tagalog (and steal the cheesy romance comics she was addicted to for my own reading pleasure) and she bought me bloody [...]
Tagged A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Christmastime, DailyLitPress Press currying favour, mark 2. Choosing this chapbook was an absolute no-brainer. An amazing poet powerhouse educator, Judith Rodriguez, takes a poetry workshop every semester at the CAE. If you have any interest in writing poetry, you really should go to her class. Meeting her and having the benefit of her knowledge and guidance [...]
Tagged Anne Elvey, chapbooks, Claimed by country, Council of Adult Education, Judith Rodriguez, Melbourne poets, monthly Yak Bar poetry sessions, poetry, Press PressAt the beginning of the last job I had late last year, I approached a small press called Press Press to see if they were interested in publishing some of my short, short poems as a chapbook. I sent three off, all of which had been shown as part of the Overload Poetry Festival at [...]
Tagged chapbooks, Melbourne poets, Ouyang Yu, poetry, Press Press, White and YuHere’s another gem that’s been on my bookcase for a few years that I decided to read. I like to read plays and poetry when commuting as normally the books aren’t thick and therefore they’re very transportable. My partner said the title sounded familiar, did the playwright pinch it off Oasis’ song? Nooooo, quite the [...]
Tagged John Osborne, Look Back In Anger, play, reading, reviewIt’s absolutely criminal that I picked this up for ten bucks at a big bookstore in the city. Criminal, I tell you! Don’t you people know who she is?! Dorothy Porter is definitely one of Australia’s most well-known poets, female or not. Sadly, she passed away a couple of years ago. She is particularly famous [...]
Tagged book review, Dorothy Porter, El Dorado, poetry, reading, verse novelA good friend of mine, Chris lent this to me while I was up in Sydney at the beginning of the year and ordered me to take it, read it and send it back to him. Good friends with good books are indeed a fantastic thing. I’ve read a couple of translations of Sappho’s work [...]
Tagged ancient Greek, Mary Barnard, poetry, Sappho, translationFrom my friend Claire: Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. I’ll put the books I’ve read in bold. Fellow booksluts, feel free to copy and paste your list into the comments. I was actually surprised I’d [...]
Tagged BBC booklist, books, literary classics, readingJennifer Michael Hecht’s poetry volume came from Tupelo Press in the same shipment as Sarah Hannah’s brilliant Inflorescence, which was one of my reading highlights this year so I had high hopes for it. The gold badges brandishing the cover also meant my expectations were high. I do like that Hecht’s lines are quite long, [...]
Tagged book review, contemporary American poetry, Jennifer Michael Hecht, reading, The Next Ancient World, Tupelo Press