Magnificent Octopus

More quotable bits from of The Doll , by Bolesław Prus, which I'm now done with and which I thoroughly enjoyed. P 208: Izabella loved...

A judge in Utah is sentencing people to read books , like Hugo's Les Misérables , not as a punishment, but as a tool. For example, F...

Eight days in the Carribean, hotel nights and plane flights on either end. Three ports of call, including one major 11-hour excursion. A par...

"It looks to me as if Wokulski is . . . in love, as it were." The doctor stopped dead on the pavement and, leaning on his stick,...

Some quotable bits from the first 205 pages of The Doll , by Bolesław Prus, with a few thoughts. P 10: At eight in the evening they close...

Official site . A bit of background . It's joyful and thought-provoking, beautiful, and even funny at times. It's a "docum...

Finally I'm reading The Doll , by Bolesław Prus. It stands as the Great Polish Novel (according to people who know better about these th...

Wisława Szymborska, 1923–2012 , whose poem "Love at First Sight" was put to song and used to great effect in Trois Couleurs: Rou...

Proud Beggars , by Albert Cossery, is a very funny book, and proved to be a delicious palate cleanser after having read a couple detail-inte...

The thespian side of Elizabeth's soul! Hunger for the awe lighting up visitors' faces when they reached her presence, having passed ...

Has anyone read X'ed Out , by Charles Burns? Can you explain it to me? I wish I'd known that this story was incomplete and was onl...

Graphic novels, comic books, whatever you want to call them, have never really been my thing. I've always been open to them in theory, b...

Back in December when I was wondering what to read next, I held up two books and asked Helena, the one about robots or the one about somethi...

"Why did you strike his so soundly?" "He needs that scholarly pride clouted out of him." "Like the man you spok...

Hamlet finally meets his maker in The Blast of War , Volume 2 of Kill Shakespeare (collecting issues 7–12). The first volume, A Sea of Tr...

My father's voice came back to me first: " The power of reason . . . breaking down fear and superstition . . . Kunstkamera is a tem...

I am surrounded by Tintin lovers. As much as we are sceptical of the translation of Tintin to the big screen, we are eager to see it. But ...

Trurl decides to build a machine that could write poetry... The program found in the head of an average poet, after all, was written by th...

Ma petite chandelle Est très belle Elle est décorée D'étoiles en papier Elle va me quitter bientôt Car je vais la donner en cadeau...

The differences among the children were startling, and yet, in the end, their faces mingled. Above all, the tapes revealed the furious anima...