Ben Mines

I believe that's call masochism.

I wonder what the saturation point is for a 90 year old. But it would of course be indecent to ask her for the plot synopsis of, say, book 47.

For me, yes. Once my Mount TBR became over 60-books high, I resolved to conquer it, which I have done. I am now reading the last unread book and anticipating an entirely guilt-free shopping spree. Thus,

0!

The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov?

To me a book is like a vacation stopover. The worse it is, the sooner I want to leave and the faster, and less-attentively, I read it. Case in point: I spend a certain, single, teeth-clenchingly unpleasant Sunday last year rushing through Langdonville, but happily dwelt for over a month and a half in Bloomtown.

I read the introduction after I have finished the book, if I am reading it for the first time.

I finished Anna Karenina on Thursday. Splendid. The subtle foreshadowing of Anna's tragic fate in dreams and symbols (the shuddering train and the Russian peasant's mumbled words) prepares the way for a spine-tingling climax that I rate as one of the most incredible experiences I have had reading.

The Shakespearean Insulter. Just click, Insult Me Again, for more. Enjoy.

That's cool. I remember you saying you didn't really care for The Name of the Rose. Just out of curiosity, did you read it in the original?

What other language do you speak, BookJumper?

The Man without Qualities, the brilliant but unfinished novel by Robert Musil, can attain a rather weighty page-count of 1700, depending on the edition.

And none taken! I'm glad you corrected me. Actually, Nabokov wrote that in English, but, interestingly, later translated it into Russian just as he himself translated all his early Russian novels into English. What an annoyingly clever man! Yes. Like I said, I enjoyed her translation of War and Peace. But no doubt it is infinitely better in the original to which these Russian literary lights are comparing it unfavorably.

It did seem a pretty unfortunate name for a man.

You're right. Last time I checked Wikipedia she was a he.

^ Don't you mean Constance Garnett? If so, it might pay to bear in mind that his translations have been energetically panned by numerous distinguished Russian authors, including Vladimir Nabokov. According to Wikipedia, Still, I enjoyed his translation of War and Peace. But then I haven't read an alternative translation and so don't have a basis for comparison.

Only at page 27 and already captivated.

No prizes for guessing what I'm reading.

How about, By Robert Burton, published 1621.

I read nonfiction books on subjects that interest me: the brain, language, psychiatry, evolution, hell, art history, death, dreams, cosmology, mnemonics, literary criticism, etc. It probably accounts for about 10 per cent of my overall reading.

Thomas Lynch is an undertaker in small-town Michigan who moonlights as a poet (or visa versa) and The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade is a book that yokes these two oddly compatible occupations together: a sometimes grim, often funny and endlessly fascinating lucubration on death, funerals and grief written with the care and lucidity that you would expect of a poet and the inside knowledge of one who has worked for over thirty years as a funeral director. The human mortality rate holds steady at 100 per cent and, like it or not, this book was written for you. I recommend that you read it before it's too late.

I am a third person omniscient narrator.

I am now down to a perfectly negotiable 4.

My first copy of Don Quixote (Collector's Library Edition) squeezed Cervantes' momentous adventure into a mere 600 pages. The print was so ludicrously small that my eyes began to ache three pages into the prologue. I gave it to someone who owed me money I knew I'd never get back and bought the Penguin Classics edition which needed over 1100 pages to accommodate a sensible print size.

Last year I read Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel. Instead of saying "I said" he used "And I was like." Furthermore, men were invariably referred to as "dudes." Sometimes, both vexing usages occurred in a single sentence. I found this so unbearable that I could not wait to finish the book and vow never to read anything by him again. I guess I am, like, a totally pretentious dude.