In Her Last Communication Before She Was Crushed by a Pile of Unread Books...


Yes, that is my to-be-read stack. I always try to identify titles when I look at pictures like this, so for the sake of your eyes, here's a list:
Right now I'm reading Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. I'm only at the beginning, but I can already tell I'm going to have a lot to say about it, specifically on the subject of brain-dead Booker judges. Any thoughts on what to read afterwards would be very welcome.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I read the Bulgakov book in English translation a number of years ago, and found it ... strange.

Two of the works you mention have new translations which I liked. Here are the first few lines of each.

Rage: Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage,
Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades' dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus' will was done.

The Iliad translated by Stanley Lombardo (with that cool D-Day picture on the front cover)

To course on better waters the little
boat of my wit, that leaves behind her
so cruel a sea, now raises her sails,

and I will sing of that second kingdom
in which the human spirit is made clean
and becomes worthy to ascend to Heaven.

Purgatorio translated by W. S. Merwin.
August 16, 2005 7:16 PM
Dotan Dimet said…
Yamama is by Kobi Kamin, AFAIK.

This is probably not the ideal way to ask, but since I can't find your e-mail, would you consider writing articles or reviews for the Tenth Dimension? If so, please e-mail me (dotan at corky.net). Thanks!
August 16, 2005 7:20 PM
Dave said…
That's not a pile. I've got somewhere between three and five hundred books that I haven't read yet. It's due to this illness I have where I can't walk into a bookstore without buying things.
August 17, 2005 2:31 AM
Abigail Nussbaum said…
I've been feeling the first stirrings of that illness, Dave. Happily, bookstores in Israel are so lousy and have such miniscule selections in English that I am often able to walk out of one merely with a sense of profound disappointment. Between Amazon and used booksellers, however, I think I've amassed a respectable backlog - it's certainly as big as I'd like it to get, if not a little bigger.
August 17, 2005 9:54 AM

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