February 2013
2 posts
4 tags
“I had utterly given up all attempts to understand San Francisco’s climate; aside...”
– Ellen Ullman, accurately, in By Blood (2012).
3 tags
“When Giroux suggested to Eliot that editors were mostly failed writers, the poet...”
– The Guardian
January 2013
1 post
4 tags
“One person’s purple is someone else’s violet is someone else’s indigo is someone...”
– Elizabeth Wurtzel, reflecting in New York Magazine
December 2012
2 posts
4 tags
“Let us say you are in a chamber, the windows sealed, you are conscious of the...”
– Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
4 tags
“Chivalry’s day is over. One day soon moss will grow in the tilt yard. The days...”
– Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
November 2012
2 posts
4 tags
“What is the nature of the border between truth and lies? It is permeable and...”
– Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
“It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them...”
– Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
September 2012
2 posts
4 tags
“A mountain you’re plannin’ on climbin’ ain’t the same as...”
– David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (2004)
4 tags
“‘Memory serves.’ Duplicitous couplet.”
– David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (2004)
August 2012
1 post
4 tags
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that...”
– Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)
July 2012
1 post
“Some said the world would end in 1533. Last year had its adherents too. Why not...”
– Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009)
June 2012
1 post
4 tags
“No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war....”
– Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009)
May 2012
1 post
3 tags
“The novel is the place you go to have all your certainties dissolved. You should...”
– Howard Jacobson on the BBC World Book Club, May 19, 2012.
April 2012
3 posts
4 tags
“Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives...”
– Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
4 tags
“Art is that thing having to do only with itself. Unfortunately, there are no...”
– Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated (2002)
4 tags
“There are only so many times you can utter ‘It does not hurt’ before...”
– Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated (2002)
March 2012
4 posts
2 tags
“St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing.”
– Anonymous medieval scribe writing in the margins of an illuminated manuscript he was assigned to copy (source: Lapham’s Quarterly)
5 tags
“It’s the hardest addiction of all…Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, that...”
– Edward St. Aubyn, At Last (2011)
4 tags
“Faith, the least exclusive club on earth, has the craftiest doorman.”
– David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (2010)
3 tags
“The magic of books, and the reason I think books are more intimate than any...”
– Jonathan Safran Foer on the BBC World Book Club, March 3, 2012.
February 2012
4 posts
4 tags
The Sense of an Ending
I saw a copy of Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending lying around at a friend’s house. Not having read anything by the author previously, I knew of the book only as last year’s Man Booker Prize winner. I borrowed it and read through it in two sessions over two days.
Told in first person by an aging narrator, The Sense of an Ending is a series of recollections and reflections of...
4 tags
“This may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we...”
– Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (2011). I find that at this stage in my life I regularly engage in both of these exercises.
4 tags
“History isn’t the lies of the victors…I know that now. It’s more the memories of...”
– Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (2011)
January 2012
2 posts
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world:
1. Those who understand binary
2. Those who don’t
3. Those who write all lists in base 4
10. Clowns
4 tags
“‘Someone once said that nothing costs more and yields less benefit than...”
– Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (2011)
December 2011
6 posts
4 tags
“There were some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the...”
– Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (2011)
5 tags
Video Games: Origins
Baten Kaitos Origins, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Dracula: Origin, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening, Dragon Ball: Origins, Dragon Ball: Origins 2, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, Final Fantasy Origins, God of War: Origins Collection, KrabbitWorld Origins, Lethal Judgment: Origins, Origin - Powered by EA, Phantom Mansion Origins, Pirates of Black Cove: Origins, Rayman Origins,...
5 tags
The Vault
Having never before read one of Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford novels, my only context for The Vault was as a sequel to the excellent non-Wexford novel A Sight for Sore Eyes. That novel, while billed as crime fiction, was a gripping psychological examination of generations of British families spanning class boundaries, threaded together with a series of meticulously plotted crimes. I would...
4 tags
“A difficult thing, being a cop. You never know whose stomach it’s safe to jump...”
– Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye (1953)
4 tags
“There is something compulsive about a telephone. The gadget-ridden man of our...”
– Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye (1953)
4 tags
“In an age of disbelief, or in a time that is largely humanistic, it is for the...”
– Wallace Stevens, “Two or Three Ideas”
November 2011
2 posts
4 tags
The Prague Cemetery
Umberto Eco’s new novel The Prague Cemetery is a fascinating fictional throughline applied to a fastidiously researched historical context. Amazingly, its protagonist, the venomous Simone Simonini, is its only major character who is a fictional creation.
(I consulted Wikipedia countless times over the course of the novel and was surprised time and time again to see the unlikely events of the...
4 tags
“A mystic is a hysteric who has met her confessor before her doctor.”
– Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery (2010).
October 2011
3 posts
4 tags
“There are moments that are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the...”
– John le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974).
4 tags
“All power corrupts, but some must govern.”
– Sam Collins in John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974)
4 tags
“As a good capitalist, I’m sticking with the revolution, because if you can’t...”
– Roy Bland in John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974)
September 2011
1 post
4 tags
“Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being.”
– David Foster Wallace (1993)
August 2011
1 post
2 tags
July 2011
9 posts
4 tags
“‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. You live in a great big...”
– Louis C.K., from season 2, episode 5 of Louie. Worth reminding oneself of.
Overheard in a Cambridge cafe
“What’s the almond raspberry muffin?”
“It’s a, uh, muffin with almonds and raspberries.”
“Oh, that sounds delicious.”
The Breaking News →
Videos of funny stuff happening on the news are pretty much my favorite things on the internet, so I made a Tumblr full of them.
4 tags
“Why is it so hard to be serious, so easy to be too serious?”
– Don DeLillo, Point Omega (2010)
6 tags
Chants that a guy on the Red Line attempted to get...
“It’s my money and I need cash now!”
“Read my lips! No new taxes!”
“Reaganomics! Reaganomics! Reaganomics!”
“I’ll have another Nutter Butter peanut butter sandwich cookie please!”
“Stop the bitching! Stop the bitching! Stop the bitching!”
4 tags
Game developers are nerds
As a fan of Looking Glass Studios (RIP), the venerable precursor to my employer Irrational Games, I know the Dark Engine. It powers Looking Glass’ Thief and Thief 2, and Irrational’s System Shock 2.
System Shock 2’s level editor is known as ShockEd. Sure. Thief’s editor is called DromEd. What? I never thought to wonder why before.
According to the Thief wiki, the name is...
3 tags
4 tags
While Mortals Sleep
Since Kurt Vonnegut’s death, there have been three volumes of previously unpublished Vonnegut short fiction. I didn’t bother with them initially, because I don’t gravitate to short stories to begin with, and on top of that I figured the posthumously published leftovers probably weren’t the cream of the crop.
But recently it struck me that we won’t be getting any more...
3 tags
June 2011
5 posts
A Quincy Moment
“Hey, you know that Dunkin’ Donuts that used to be the next town ovah?” “Yeah, the one Georgie burned down?” “Yeah—with Georgie’s father in it!” “Ya know, I kinda liked that Dunkin Donuts.” “Me too. Me too. But we can’t have nothin’ corporate over here.” “True.”
Overheard in a local Quincy,...
