Category Archives: Books

Quote of the Day 2

“The search for meaning will fill you with a sense of meaning.  Otherwise life passes by in about seven weeks, and if you are not paying attention and savoring it as it unfurls, you will wake up one day in deep regret.  It’s much better to wake up now in deep regret, desperate not to waste more of your life obsessing and striving for meaningless crap.  Because you will have finally awakened.”

Anne Lamott, Stitches

My Yellow Brick Road

I would be heartbroken if yesterday’s bombing had happened in Boise or Birmingham.  But to have it happen in Boston is like breaking my heart and then stomping on it.

I grew up believing that I was incredibly lucky to be born an American and especially to be born a Bostonian.

If you were a bookish child in the 50’s and 60’s, especially a girl, Boston was a welcoming place to be.  Give us your near-sighted, your uncoordinated, your always-picked-last-for-sports…

I grew up not just in Boston, but in Dorchester, where Martin Richard was from.  It didn’t matter that I was poor because I knew that when I grew up, I would never again live in an apartment like my parents’.

When I passed through the doors of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square, where I spent many Saturdays between 7th and 12th grades, I wasn’t just  on my way to whatever research I was doing that day, I was on my way to my future life.   Boylston Street was my yellow brick road.

At the library, I did the research and analysis and writing that didn’t just get me into Wellesley and then Yale when it went co-ed, but also made it easy to excel once I got there.  I was a student at Girls’ Latin School, but I became a scholar at that library,  learning to use and value original sources, learning to think critically and draw my own conclusions.

To see death and blood and severed limbs right outside my library, this home to all the wisdom men and women have achieved, this sanctuary where the poorest of the city can enjoy the same resources as the richest, is unbearable to me.  My brain and body ache.

Quote of the Day

“A truly excellent writer, though, pursues her obsessions and allows them to dictate what form her work will take.  That sounds simple, but in fact it is hard for any writer to recognize what those obsessions are, to face them squarely when they are frightening or puzzling, and to shape them into persuasive works of art.”

J. Robert Lennon, reviewing Jamie Quatro’s I Want To Show You More, The New York Times Book Review

When Did Carrie Bradshaw Become Ann Romney?

Candace Bushnell (Carrie’s creator and alter ego) does dressage in Connecticut.*

So somehow Carrie has become Ann Romney?!

Or has Carrie gained a lot of weight, lost her taste in clothes, and become Hannah Horvath?

* “Carrie Bradshaw Died and Went to Connecticut,” Edith Zimmerman, The New York Times Magazine

Quote of the Day

“One of the drawbacks of working in a bookstore, something I did for many years, is that it can be like working in a small-town pharmacy.  You learn things about people you might rather not know.  What sort of face do you put on when your new girlfriend’s mother comes to the counter with a Newt Gingrich novel, a scented candle and a copy of ‘The Herpes Survival Guide’?”

Dwight Garner, Books of the Times, NYT

You put on your gotta-find-a-new-girlfriend face.

The $3.7 Million Joke

Gawker has posted what they claim is a copy of Lena “Girls” Dunham’s book proposal, the one that got her a $3.7 million advance from Random House.

It reads like a narcissistic and vulgar parody of what you’d expect Dunham’s book proposal to be.  If it’s a parody, the joke’s on Gawker.

But if, as I believe, this is the actual book proposal, the joke is on Random House.  It’s not funny, it’s not interesting, it’s just crap.  Very, very expensive crap.

The sad thing is I’m sure there’s something brilliant buried in the slush pile at Random House tonight that will never bring its overlooked author even $3.70.