Search This Blog

Thursday, February 01, 2007

This and That

This site covers some interesting information on Edgar Allan Poe.

Danteworlds
offers images, text, commentary, and explanatory notes for Dante's Divine Comedy.

Currently reading: The Physics of the Buffyverse (with a lurid cover) by Jennifer Oullete, The Haunted Bookshop by Christoper Morley, and Written in Bones: How Human Remains Unlock the Secrets of the Dead edited by Paul Bahn.

Which one will take precedence? The Haunted Bookshop, of course. It discusses many of the same things that Buzbee covers in his non-fiction The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, but in a fictional and fun way.

Oh, and one section that I really liked in Buzzbee's book was the part of the Ur-book. The book that really incites your love of reading. "An important book, it seems, does not have to be one universally judged great or memorable," Buzzbee says. Ur-books are books of influence, formative books, and may not be literary. An Ur-book might be Nancy Drew, books about horses, a book by Kurt Vonnegut, or Gone with the Wind. For many of us, it was a children's or young adult book. For kids today, it may well be Harry Potter.

The Physics of the Buffyverse is a review copy. From the little I've read, I think I'm going to enjoy it--although physics is not generally an interest of mine. The previous two review books received were books I thought I'd enjoy by their titles, but turned out to be books that I couldn't force myself to finish and so did not review them.

2 comments:

  1. The Morley sounds fascinating Jenclair, but I've just checked the Birmingham Library catalogue and none of his books are there. I shall have to scour round the secondhand shops.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ann - I loved Parnassus on Wheels and reviewed it in November. I've noted that some people liked it much better than this one, but so far, I'm loving The Haunted Bookshop! When I ordered these from Amazon, it took months to get them. My library didn't have them either.

    ReplyDelete