Books I've actually finished lately: 127

[S]pecialists possess the tremendous stupidity of the force of gravity.

- Friedrich Nietzsche (according to Geoff Dyer)

Books I've actually finished lately:113

The description [in Minima Moralia] of a short-order cook in a place like Teddy’s Cafe, as ‘a juggler with fried-eggs’ is Nabokovian, though in addition to seeing the cook as a juggler Nabokov would probably have put a spin on the eggs too. I thought of this as I made a note in my notebook...

- Geoff Dyer

Books I've actually finished lately: 109

Books I've actually finished lately: 103

After I publish a text on semiotics, I devote my time either to recognizing what was wrong or to demonstrating that those who did not understand it in the way I meant were misreading it. 

- Umberto Eco

Favourite footnotes: 10

This article was amended on 12 January 2016: in the picture caption, Matthew Collings was initially misidentified as William Boyd; the painting by Stephen Finer was wrongly attributed by the provider to David Bowie

- The Guardian (but of course), in a William Boyd article about an artist he and Bowie had made up

Thank fuck for Lydia Davis

If I went to an academic conference on literary theory, I would have been bored out of my mind! But a town meeting about potholes, that interests me.

- Lydia Davis, in conversation with Ane Farsethas

(Can't say I agree with her about the dictionaries, though. I like me a good dictionary.)

Bad Sex - ILLUSTRATED!

Hyssop!!?

Books I've actually finished lately: 93

Ellmann's biography of Wilde was one of the first big books I read (/finished), aged about 16.

From which event extends a trail of more-or-less predictable consequences...

Books I've actually finished lately: 91

Perfect operatic material. Y'know... If anyone's commissioning.

Books I've actually finished lately: 83

Books I've actually finished lately: 80

Because if you haven't read Tristram Shandy, you are not yet born.

Books I've actually finished lately: 79

Books I've actually finished lately: 76

John Jeremiah Sullivan

on winning a Windham Campbell prize:

True story

Today I wrote a poem, entitled 'Story', and labelled 'non-fiction'.

These things happen.

Books I've actually finished lately: 56

Books I've actually finished lately: 51

Men went to Catterick with the dawn,
Their ardours shortened their lives.

- Y Gododdin, c. 7th century

It was going to happen eventually

As in this month's Literary Review.

Things one is not typically asked

while trying to download a free PDF:

[Author's note: see following post.]

Books I've actually finished lately: 47 / Found in books - GUEST ENTRY

[Jacques] Guérin now held a sad, tattered book in his hands, a first edition of Swann's Way, printed in 1913. Inside, on an intact page that escaped Marthe's ruthless effacement of all traces of Marcel's name, Guérin discovered a dedication: To my little brother, a souvenir of lost time, regained for a moment whenever we see one another.

- Lorenza Foschini