Sunday, January 13, 2008

Some Literary Blogs & Current Readings/Sightings

Blogger Jessa Crispin has done a great job of creating an interesting book-lovers blog at BookSlut.

But if you dislike the corporate ads and you need to attach and trust a literary critic, I highly recommend Laila Lalami's blog because she's personal, plus you can see a photo of her writing space. I like that. Maybe I'll add one of those here.

Me? I've recently reread Jonathon Swift's A Modest Proposal and caught myself wondering how satire might be used to get out of Iraq: a proposal to nuke the Middle East until it's one big hole in the ground? (I'm kidding.)

Saw the movie Byron today. British Jonney Lee Miller does a terrific job as the tortured, pleasurist poet who receives more than his share of society's disdain. My only gripe was not giving Mary Shelley and the famous horror-story challenge more of a place in Byron's life. Oh well. I do have new sympathy for Lord Byron. Now I want to revisit the movie Pandemonium about Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth as I'm having trouble remembering which came first: the radical Byron gang or the Coleridge trio (plus Dorothy Wordsworth).

Next on my agenda: Alexander Pope's mock-heroic poem "The Rape of the Lock." Also still reading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose which is a misleading title since it mostly focuses on a thorough understanding of the ego, but then, I'm not finished yet.

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