The World Is My Cubicle » reading list

My Ears Are Bent – Joseph Mitchell

tharris — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:34:57 +0000

Character sketches of freaks, strippers, and the down-and-out from NYC. Originally published in 1938.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004)

tharris — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 01:12:00 +0000

An amazing book that traverses generations, disparate characters, and settings. Mitchell moves from genre to genre seamlessly and it works incredibly well. Chapters set in the future are particularly good, where corporations have completely subsumed control of the planet and brand names have become common nouns. Brilliant.

Thousand Cranes (Yasunari Kawabata)

tharris — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 07:10:47 +0000

Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
Translated by Edward G. Seidenstricker
Published in 1959 in the US, 147 pp.

A beautiful book — stark, simple, and powerful. A tale of lost and misplaced love told through the metaphor of a Japanese tea ceremony. This is a novel that could never have been conjured by an American. Delicate and carefully crafted with a natural rhythm and flow. A good read for breakups.

Quotes:

pp 131: Well, most men wouldn’t let a girl get away while they were thinking what a nice girl she was. After all, there’s only one Yukiko in this world.

pp145:
Now, even more than the evening before, he could think of no one with whom to compare her. She had become absolute, beyond comparison. She had become decision and fate.

The Deptford Trilogy, Robertson Davies

tharris — Sun, 01 Sep 2002 04:08:29 +0000

This is another of Robertson Davies trilogies focusing on a cast of characters connected to a small town in rural Canada.