MembreLisaCurcio

Nom réel

Lisa Curcio

A propos de ma bibliothèque

I use LT as a place to keep track of my reading--books that I have read and plan to read. I want to keep a list of books that I actually own, to try to list books I have given away (so I don't buy the darn things again!)and even keep a list of books I have borrowed and read so I can buy the ones I want to own and not buy the ones I have no interest in seeing again.

The list is, and probably always will be, a work in progress. I add books as I acquire them or read them, but I would rather read or do other things when I am not working than take the time to reconstruct a list of what I no longer have. The books in stacks around the house--I will get to them someday.

Actually, I have a problem with reading. Almost every time I pick up a book, I start out thinking it is just a little book--no harm in that. Next thing I know my "friends" are giving me more information about the book, or the history, or the area, or the culture. Then, it seems like a good idea to maybe investigate other books by the same author, or other books on the same topic, or other books of the same genre, or even history, anthropology, archeology related to the book I am reading. Keep following that path--now there is no time for work, so I won't have any money; I can't buy more books; I fall into despair.

It's not just a book--it is the bane of my existence!

" . . .the books are advancing silently, innocently through my house. There is no way I can stop them." The House of Paper by Carlos Maria Domingues

"I confess I have been a rake at reading. I have read those things which I ought not to have read, and I have not read those things which I ought to have read, and there is no health in me--if by health you mean an inclusive and coherent knowledge of any body of great literature." Robertson Davies

"(W)hat doubles the pleasure of reading is the subconscious feeling that I ought, most of the time, to be doing something else." The Buying of Books, Carl S. Patton, Atlantic Monthly, February, 1922

If you have never said "Excuse me" to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time. ~Sherri Chasin Calvo

Best of 2009

Brat Farrar, Josephine Tey
The Glass Palace, Amitav Ghosh
Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Christ Stopped at Eboli, Carlo Levi
Burnt Shadows, Kamila Shamsie
Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh
A Darker Place, Laurie King
The Given Day, Dennis Lehane
Resistance: A Frenchwoman's Journal of the War, Agnes Humbert
A Thread of Grace, Mary Doria Russell
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
The Leopard, Giussepe di Lampedusa

Best of 2010
The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
Midaq Alley, Naguib Mahfouz
The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
The Plague, Albert Camus
The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas
Chef: A Novel, Jaspreet Singh
Wizard of the Crow, Ngugi wa Thiong'o
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery

Best of 2011

Bleak House, Charles Dickens
The Cornish Trilogy, Robertson Davies
Venus and the Voters (The Alone to the Alone), Gwyn Thomas
The Cunning Man, Robertson Davies
Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess
Can You Forgive Her? Anthony Trollope
Summer Will Show, Sylvia Townsend Warner
Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens
Straight Man, Richard Russo

Best of 2012
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens (Reread)
Collection: Mississippi Writings, Mark Twain, including Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, Pudd'nhead Wilson

A propos de moi

I am one of those who reads the back of cereal boxes over and over if there is nothing else to read.

"The worst affliction of our age--stupidity.

Stupidity is not always easy to diagnose. The simplest form of stupidity--the mumbling, nose-picking, stolid incomprehension--can be detected by anyone. But the stupidity which disguises itself as thought, and which talks so glibly and eloquently, indeed never stops talking, in every walk of life is not so easy to identify, because it marches under a formidable name, which few dare attack. It is called Popular Opinion, and sometimes the Received Wisdom of the Race. It looks as though it came from some form of mental activity or spiritual grace, but it does not, and its true name is Intellectual Stasis. Robertson Davies lecture to doctors on November 18, 1984 at Johns Hopkins.

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can." Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Well, I doubt I would step into the street but I surely have wanted to knock people's hats off from time to time. And then it is time to go to sea.





What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm What Kind of Reader Are You?Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Lieu (géographique)

Chicago

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BookMooch

Auteurs favoris

Eric Ambler, E. F. Benson, Taylor Branch, Willa Cather, Winston S. Churchill, Robertson Davies, Tomie dePaola, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Alice Thomas Ellis, E. M. Forster, Amitav Ghosh, Dorothy Gilman, Victor Hugo, Roy Jenkins, Guy Gavriel Kay, Laurie R. King, Alex Kotlowitz, Madeleine L'Engle, Donna Leon, Naguib Mahfouz, William Manchester, Thomas Mann, David McCullough, John Mortimer, Eric Newby, Iris Origo, Elizabeth Peters, Tamora Pierce, Dorothy L. Sayers, Paul Scott, Georges Simenon, Wallace Stegner, John Steinbeck, Josephine Tey, J. R. R. Tolkien, Anthony Trollope, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Émile Zola

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AlexAustin, alphaorder, aluvalibri, anisoara, Arvoitus, BookAngel_a, callmejacx, gangleri, JeanLittleLibrary, joerrvt, Joycepa, kidzdoc, lahochstetler, lilisin, Macumbeira, pattilovesbooks, shakespearelibrary, tututhefirst

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appaloosaman, Belletrista, ChocolateMuse, jlelliott, Joycepa, kidzdoc, polutropos, usnmm2