Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Happy New Year

I was hoping to post on interesting things during the nearly month-long hiatus between now and the last post, but for several reasons I did not; now, there are several reasons to post once again:

1. I just picked up Nick Hornby's new book Shakespeare Wrote For Money. It is the third collection of his articles for The Believer, an American arts magazine (and published by McSweeney's). He is interesting and colloquial and I feel that my life would be enriched by having a beer with him, mostly because I am convinced that he feels the same way about me. The book reads like a memoir, a memoir through books, as it were, and has created a wonderful segue to the next reason for posting after such an absence.

2. Through Hornby's new book I picked up his first volume of articles, The Polysyllabic Spree, which led me to a Google search of Gregory Corso's poem "Marriage" (a quirky poem which can be found here) which led me to an interesting lit blog called Literary Kicks. Literary Kicks is a lit blog - possibly the first - which I intend to read on a semi-regular basis. Which leads me to my next reason for posting.

3. Through Literary Kicks, I read a review of a review of Azar Nafisi's new memoir Things I've Been Silent About. This lead me to the review itself, which made me want to read the book, which reminded me that I was already reading book of hers, Reading Lolita in Tehran, which is subtitled "A memoir in books," leading you, dear reader, back to Nick Hornby, who reveals himself ever so slightly in each of his Believer articles about the books he's bought and read each month. Which, of course, leads me to the next reason for posting.

4. Nick Hornby is a good writer because he makes other people think they're good writers, too. His opinions are my opinions, written a thousand times better, but nevertheless leads me to thinking that I can write my own opinions just as good. And so, in my mind, this post is written as well as Hornby's assessment of his brother-in-law's new book. At this point, Bonnie calls from the other room, "you're a weirdo". In my mind, however, I am triumphant. Now to do just as brilliant a job on the dishes.

2 comments:

Bonnie said...

You did a fabulous job on the dishes. Excellent work.

Hutton said...

You're a weirdo