Sybilla Oritur

As if the number of hours spent in my carrel everyday weren’t indicator enough… or the insane thrill i got when i was able to decipher an entire hand in Visigothic script earlier today… ZS sent me a link to the most awesome item ever!
BookBook: The laptop cover that makes your Mac look like a [...]

My love affair with Banana Yoshimoto’s work continues unabated. Somehow, her narratives, in which nothing really happens, distill a sense of loss and love into the perfect bittersweetness. Sparse yet still passionate.
I began reading Hardboiled and Hardluck back in November. The first novella kept me up until 3am on a weeknight - which wasn’t the [...]

I’ve had to institute a rule with respect to visits to The Book Thing of Baltimore. Only the number of books i drop off can be taken away. I am always enthralled by which authors show up the most: Le Carre, Mitchener, Grisham. Although DR was looking for a copy of Walden, we did not [...]

I haven’t been driven to buy an academic book “just because” in a long, long time. It was supposed to be skimmed for a paper, but as i couldn’t put it down, i ended up having to ask for an extension. I can’t recommend it enough.
Imperial City: Rome, Romans and Napoleon, 1796-1815 focuses on the [...]

Cover via Amazon

Ok. That’s it. I am tired of finding references to Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism in just about every article I read – in works ostensibly about the French Revolution, literary theory and even early modern witchcraft theory. It was going to be on the summer reading list – but it has just [...]

About three weeks ago, i ran into this very neat site - Bookmooch. The principle is simple - you list the books you are willing to give away. Someone asks for them and you send them. For every book sent you accumulate credits towards asking for books yourself.
I am TRYING to clean out my bookshelves [...]

Keegan, John. The Mask of Command: A Study of Generalship. London: Pimlico, 1987, 2004. 358pgs.
In my last year of high school, Mr. Goodman, my world history teacher, organized a formal debate lasting a fortnight in order to assess which countries were most responsible for the outbreak of WWI. Were it not for that experience [...]

After a phone conversation with Prof. Celenza at John Hopkins (eep!!!) i promptly logged on to the Chapters website and purchased his book. I also purchased two books to give as Christmas presents.
Then i found out that my Powerbook G4 was damaged beyond repair and ended up ordering a new MacBook despite a dire lack [...]

I first fell in love with Banana Yoshimoto’s writing in CEGEP when we had to read Kitchen as an international component of a Literature class. Actually, thinking back, the entire literature program offered by the International Baccalaureate was just fabulous. We also read Cymbeline, King Lear, WWI poetry by Owen, Sassoon and Rosenberg, Kiss [...]

Lisa Moore, Alligator. Grove Press: 2006. 320 pgs.
My last BMV Books trip with Veronica included the purchasing of some Canadiana by Lisa Moore. I am usually opposed to buying something just because it is written by a Canadian author (and my strong dislike of Margaret Atwood and Alice Munroe continues this trend), but the cover [...]