Reading | Raging Biblio-holism

Roundup, November 2016

November 30, 2016 by Drew

The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers Rating: 4 out of 5 The Short Version: Optimus Yarnspinner, the legendary author, recounts to us his earliest adventure – a visit to Bookholm, a city of books and book-related people. But what begins simply as a quest to find an author ends up putting Optimus on the run through the catacombs of the city, fearing for his very life! WIll he survive? Will he ever write anything? Of course – the fun is […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Literature • Tags: Belgium, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Chris Holm, Dirty Snow, Fantasy, Fiction, George Simenon, Historical Fiction, Illustrated, Literature, Michael Hendricks, Nihilism, Reading, review, Short Stories, The City of Dreaming Books, Thriller, Walter Moers, World War II, Zamonia

A Cure for Suicide

May 2, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: An examiner arrives in a small village, where she is to attend to a man (a “claimant”) who has just arrived. The man is disorientated and seems to be learning everything all over again about living. What is this place? Who is this examiner? Why is this man here? The Review: I discovered Jesse Ball through the Tournament of Books last year, when Silence Once Begun was on the bracket. That strange novel – an outlier, I was […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: A Cure for Suicide, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Jesse Ball, Literature, Reading, Reviews

The Waves

September 25, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: A series of soliloquies or internal monologues, delivered nearly uninterrupted, across the lives of six acquaintances – three men, three women – from their childhood until their old age. The only intervals are a series of short vignettes detailing a coastal scene from early dawn to nightfall. The Review: I’ll be forthcoming and admit that this book nearly threatened the sanctity of the Ten Year Catch-Up project. Partially because, even though I’d had a very agreeable time with To the Lighthouse and […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Classics, Experimental, Fiction, Literature, Reading, Reviews, Stream of Consciousness, The Ten Year Catch-Up, The Waves, Virginia Woolf, Woolf 2015

If on a winter’s night a traveler

May 13, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: The reader picks up the latest novel by Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler – but a few pages in, his reading is interrupted because of a printer’s error. Flummoxed, he attempts to retrieve the whole book and falls into a strange, seemingly-never-ending pattern of getting the first bits of a story without anything more to show for it. The Review: I’ve known about this book ever since reading Cloud Atlas, largely because of David Mitchell’s […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Book Review, Book Reviews, BookClub, Books, Fiction, If on a winter's night a traveler, Italo Calvino, Literature, Metafiction, Post-modernism, Reading, Reviews, Writing

Selected Shorts: Welcome to Night Vale

March 19, 2015 by Drew

Cecil Baldwin reads from Will Eno / glows from his forehead third-eye If you’re an internet person – and, if you’re reading this, chances are good that you’re an internet person – you’ve heard of Welcome to Night Vale. The weird little-podcast-that-could following the goings on of a distinctly odd little community in the Southwestern United States has become a bonafide sensation: #1 podcast on iTunes, a touring live show, and a forthcoming novel from the creators. If you haven’t listened (or […]

Categories: Events, Features • Tags: Carlos the Scientist, Cecil Baldwin, Dylan Marron, Events, Fantasy, Features, Horror, Jeffrey Fink, John Darnielle, Joseph Cranor, Mara Wilson, Matthew Love, New York Neo-Futurists, Night Vale, Performance, Reading, Recaps, Sci-Fi, Selected Shorts, Shirley Jackson, Short Stories, Symphony Space, The Mountain Goats, Theater, Weird, Welcome to Night Vale, Will Eno, WNYC

Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

Tag: Reading