Literature-Map.com

Looking for a new author to read?

Say you like Raymond Chandler, Günther Grass, Tana French or Jane Austen or whomever.

Go to literature-map.com, enter then name of a writer you like and Voila! you’ll see an animated map of writers whose work is like that author. The closer the author’s name is to the one you like, the more people have indicated they like both writers.

So Carol Shields fans also have reported liking Elizabeth Berg, Alice Munro and Anne Lamott most often, but also like writers farther from the center.

Powered by AI, you can add to the data by going to gnooks.com, entering the names of three authors you like and then answering questions about how much you like other authors.

I find I can play with this site for hours.

 

Diary of a Mad, Old Man

Junichiro Tanizaki’s Diary of a Mad Old Man is just what the title says. Well, he’s not completely mad. The main character is an old man obsessed with his daughter in law, a former cabaret singer, whose husband’s grown tired of her.

The old man is sickly and most of his life is spent going to doctors and taking medication. His infatuation of Satsuko, the daughter in law who leads him on, but doesn’t let him do more than kiss her legs or eventually her neck, gets him to buy her jewels and later a pool. She’s got a lover and a fondness for Western fashion. It’s an interesting look at desire mixed with a battle against a failing body.

A quick read, the book provides an interesting glimpse of Japan in the post-WWII period when the Japanese were starting to prosper.

 

A Christmas Carol

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

December’s book club choice was Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. I’d never read the story, but had seen soooo many plays, cartoons and films that I felt I knew the story inside out. In fact, I do, but I was delighted by how Dicken’s prose is ever-fresh. Reading A Christmas Carol was pure delight. The words, characters and tone delight. Dicken’s immediately created an insider bond with me. Reading the book far exceeded the pleasure of any of the films or plays I’d seen, though each production entertained me.

Related articles

• Christmas Carol-a-thon 2012 Begins: the 1969 Australian Tv Version (glitternight.com)
• 6 Great Activities To Introduce Kids to Charles Dicken’s “Christmas Carol.” (loonyliterature.com)
• From Print to Screen: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (homeprojectionist.com)
• “Christmas Carol”- inspired by Charles Dickens. (loonyliterature.com)
• Family Christmas Movies – a List (rarestkindofbest.wordpress.com)
• Best Performances of ‘A Christmas Carol’ in Seattle (seattle.cbslocal.com)
• Charles Dickens is the REAL Father of Christmas: How the author defined our festive spirit (mirror.co.uk)

 

Theme Thursday: Mirror

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:

• A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
• Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
• Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
• It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
  Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”

This will give us a wonderful opportunity to explore and understand different writing styles and descriptive approaches adopted by authors.

The theme for this week is MIRROR Glasses, Spectacles, etc.

My THURSDAY THEME for MIRROR is below.

She got up and walked over to the mirrored door of the closet. . . . From the mirror to me: a sharp, mocking triangle of eyebrows, lifted slightly, to her eyebrows.

From WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin, p. 196

 

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (You don’t want to ruin the book for others.)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here’s mine:

From Michael Chabon‘s Maps & Legends:

A third innovative stroke of Conan Doyle‘s was to find a new way to play the oldest trick in the book, to revise the original pretense of all adventurers, liars, and storytellers–that every word you are about to hear is true.

Holmes was not only aware of his status as a subject of Watson’s “chronicles,” he resented it, and mocked it, even as he profited by the fictional version of the very real success that the stories enjoyed . . . .

From We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

It’s 21:30. The blinds are lowered in the room to the left of mine. In the room on the right, I see my neighbor: bent over a book, his bald patch, knobbly with hummocks, and his forehead, a huge, yellow parabola.

Related articles

• Teaser Tuesdays (July 31) (shouldbereading.wordpress.com)
• Teaser Tuesday 2 (timeforreading.wordpress.com)
• Teaser Tuesdays (July 31) (apaperbacklife.wordpress.com)
• An Early Peek at Michael Chabon’s New Novel, ‘Telegraph Avenue’ (theatlanticwire.com)
• Teaser Tuesday (timeforreading.wordpress.com)
• Teaser Tuesdays (July 24) (shouldbereading.wordpress.com)
• Teaser Tuesday (xingu2.wordpress.com)

 

What Are You Reading?

Welcome to It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading?  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

I’m reading The Devil in the White City, nonfiction account of Daniel Burnham‘s work creating the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and H. H. Holmes fiendish serial murders and Moby Dick. “Call me Ishmael.” Diving into this classic due to the promptings of my book club. Both are wonderful so far.

 

On Literature

“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.”

—C. S. Lewis

 

Theme Thursday: No

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:

• A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
• Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
• Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
• It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
  Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”

This will give us a wonderful opportunity to explore and understand different writing styles and descriptive approaches adopted by authors.

NO! don’t, not, negative etc

My THURSDAY THEME for NO is here.

“No, my dear, I think not. I have great hopes of finding him quite the reverse. There is a mixture of servility and self-importance in his letter, which promises well. I am impatient to see him.”

p. 79 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Related articles

• My Pride and Prejudice Week in Tweets (hometruthsfromabroad.wordpress.com)
• Pride and Prejudice (bacaklasik.wordpress.com)
• Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (missuswolf.wordpress.com)
• Emma (booksandreviews.wordpress.com)
• Persuasion by Jane Austen. Classic Novel Recommendation. (bookishtemptations.com)
• Jane Austen portrait on show at Bodleian Library for World Book Day (guardian.co.uk)

 

Don Quixote

My online book club read Don Quixote, Book 1 for March. I had seen The Man of La Mancha last spring and knew the outline of the story. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this light hearted comedy. Poor Quixote. The world he imagines is just so much kinder and more noble than the world he actually lives in. At times I wanted to shake him, but at other times I thought who wouldn’t want to live in his world?

There were a lot of fun, engaging stories embedded withing Don Quixote, that I felt could stand on their own, could be, say made into movies. Every day, I picked up the book, I had a smile on my face. Delightful. That in and of itself is a success.

I had read an excerpt in junior high and really found it meandering, but this time I loved it.

Melvin Bragg‘s In Our Time has a good broadcast of a discussion of Don Quixote.

What writing is coming out of Spain now, I wonder. Seems the most august Spanish language writers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, etc. are from Latin American.