Double-Stacked Bookshelves

I've figured out my guiding topic for the month!  I'm feeling very accomplished today.  This entire challenge will be focused on writers I truly enjoy or who have influence my readings/writings in some way.  I hope people will explore some of the authors/works I discuss throughout the month. For the letter B, I've got four stand out writers who have shaped my reading preferences:  Charles Baudelair, Jorge Luis Borges, Tadeusz Borowski, and Chris Bohjalian. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) A French poet, essayist, art critic, and Poe translator, Baudelaire focused on the industrialization of Parisian society during the 19th century.  He believed that it was art's purpose to capture the fleeting experience of life in the urban landscape.  Perhaps his most famous work, Las Fleurs du mal ( The Flowers of Evil ), published in 1857, highlighted themes of sex, death, decomposition, decay, metamorphosis, melancholia, and various vices.  The volume was ...

I don't think I've been this disappointed in a book for a long time.  That's saying something... Nicole Krauss' The History of Love follows the journey of a book written sixty years prior as it makes its way from Poland to South America to New York.  This book is a history--a history of the love one person has for another.  It's been hidden (or lost) for years, but manages to resurface in an unexpected way.  Told from the perspective of two people, the aging Leo and fourteen-year-old Alma, it is a testiment to just how far people will go to discover the truth in times of healing.  This book manages to bring these two characters together in a roundabout way that is both fitting and justifying.  Pretencious...overreaching...angering...rough.  Have I said enough?  I had such high hopes for this book.  The plot sounded intriguing.  The synopsis sounded good.  The characters sounded interesting.  Instead, I was left complet...

It's Tuesday...and that means it's teaser time.  This week's excerpt comes from Nicole Krauss' The History of Love .  This book was the one I received to distribute as a book giver for World Book Night US , a great organization to promote literacy and a love of reading.  I thought it sounded like a wonderful story, so I picked up a copy for myself. "The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces.  Or better to say, in my face.  Grammar of my life:  as a rule of thumb, wherever there appears to be a plural, correct for singular.  Should I ever let slip a royal We , put me out of my misery with a swift blow to the head" (86). This book sounds promising and I'm looking forward to reading it.  Hopefully it will be the light at the end of an otherwise dark and incredibly sad week...