Oscar Wilde’s tomb (which I have seen at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris) had been starting to degrade because of kisses! Apparently, it’s some kind of tradition to leave lipstick marks on the tomb, and that’s precisely what many tourists do when they arrive. But it turns out that grease from the thousands of lipstick [...]
I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to queue up any reviews for publishing, so I thought I’d take a moment here to talk about gift ideas. Since the holidays are only about 6 or 7 weeks away, it’s time to start thinking about what to get for the important people in your [...]
Plot summary (from the publisher): Zachary Mason’s brilliant and beguiling debut novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, reimagines Homer’s classic story of the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. With brilliant prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer’s original [...]
I’ve often wondered why there aren’t many coupon codes and so forth for the purchase of books. Sure, I know there are several online “superstores” that sell books for less than the publisher’s suggested price, but that’s not exactly the same thing. Not being able to find coupons for books is especially troubling now that [...]
Well, now that 2010 is a bit more than half finished, I thought it might be a good idea to trot out my Best and Worst list as it stands thus far. As of today, I’ve read 65 books this year. (I haven’t published that many reviews, though. I keep a bunch of them queued [...]
I have a few favorite reading spots around the house. First, there’s my leather recliner in the living room. This is a comfy chair that I can curl up in during the daytime, when everyone else is at work or school. I love sitting here because I can take advantage of the daytime sun streaming [...]
Before the Internet, anytime you wanted to do any research at all, you probably had to go to the library. I’m not only talking about research for school projects; I’m also talking about when you wanted to find out such things as what beauty experts consider the best eye wrinkle cream to be or which [...]
A couple of friends have been asking me about the best way to read digital texts. I mentioned the portable readers that are on the market, but they don’t want to pay several hundred dollars for a device that does nothing except read books. And, they can’t imagine trying to read on their phone screens [...]
Every time I go to the gym, I see people reading books and magazines while they’re exercising. I always bring in audiobooks on my iPod, but I’ve never tried actually reading a book while at the gym. But since I was almost finished with something on my Kindle, I decided to take this instead of [...]