Booqlist

Infinite bookshelf

[the-final-sentence]

[If I could start over today, I would choose literature again.] If the answers exist in the world or in the universe, I still think that’s where we’re going to find them.

Elif Batuman, from The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

(via the-final-sentence)

I love this idea

[bookmania]

from The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

[millionsmillions]

Szerb is an adventurer on the page; the twists and turns of the plot challenge our sense of what a novel can and ought to be. But he is also an ironist. He shows us that our finest resolves are often motivated by shameful secrets or silly desires, and that by fleeing ourselves we end up more self-involved than ever.

Julie Orringer, “’The Whole Dreaded Terrorist Army of the Past’: Antal Szerb’s Journey By Moonlight” (via millionsmillions)

Julie Orringer on one of my favourite writers ❤

[nprfreshair]

More about Fitzgerald 

[bookmania]

Live all you can: it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven’t had that, what have you had?

Henry James, The Ambassadors (via bookmania)

[classicpenguin]

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Monday First Lines | Every Monday, we offer the opening sentences of a Penguin Classic to start the week. In honor of Banned Book Week, here are the first lines of Lawrence’s classic, declared obscene upon publication in 1928 and finally legalized as the result of R v. Penguin Books Ltd. in 1960.

(via classicpenguin)

[booklikes-blog]

A bookstore is somewhat like an ocean—it may look the same but it is always changing if you are a careful observer.

Paul Yamazaki (via booklikes)

[austinkleon]

Photographs of writers at work.

Note how many standing desks! See also a great book on the subject, The Writer’s Desk.

Filed under: work spaces

[yan-wo]

When you feel perpetually unmotivated, you start questioning your existence in an unhealthy way; everything becomes a pseudo intellectual question you have no interest in responding whatsoever. This whole process becomes your very skin and it does not merely affect you; it actually defines you. So, you see yourself as a shadowy figure unworthy of developing interest, unworthy of wondering about the world - profoundly unworthy in every sense and deeply absent in your very presence.

Ingmar Bergman (via sullenmoons)

[prokofiev]

The bonds between ourselves and another person exists only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (via prokofiev)

[booqlist]

Layers of history

  Review of The Art Restorer by Julian Sánchez

 The Art Restorer was the second novel set in Spain I’ve read this summer, just after Antonio Hill’s The Good Suicides, allowing me to virtually return to Barcelona, where I lived for some time and where Hill’s thriller is set, then to San Sebastián, the central location of The Art Restorer.

It is Sánchez’s second book that features Enrique Alonso, a writer-turned-detective, who becomes a bestselling author after he writes the story of his first case. Enrique now lives in Manhattan but in the beginning of the novel he returns to San Sebastián to attend the reopening of the San Telmo Museum and to catch up with his ex-wife, Bety, who gave up her university job to become the PR manager of the museum. He also meets Craig Bruckner, an ageing art restorer working on the biography of the renowned Catalan painter, Sert, whose mural paintings can be seen at the San Telmo Museum. When Bruckner, an Olympic champion swimmer is found drowned, Enrique and Bety smell something fishy and decide to investigate the death of the art restorer. They suspect that Bruckner’s murder is somehow linked to Sert so they start to make enquiries into the artist’s life and activities during WW2. This triggers the imagination of Enrique, who decides to base his upcoming novel on Sert’s mysterious actions, following leads from Barcelona to Paris.

Sánchez weaves the threads of his metafictional story very smoothly, blending facts of Sert’s life with Enrique’s intriguing speculations seamlessly. Metafictional thrillers offer readers smart and complex narratives and those who like stories with multiple layers and a strong historical background will particularly enjoy Sánchez’s book, not to mention the chance they are given to fall in love with San Sebastián. As I’m even more drawn to stories about books, I can’t wait to read the first adventure of Enrique and Bety entitled The Antiquarian.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Open Road Integrated Media for the copy of the The Art Restorer.

[iamnomes]

I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.

Haruki Murakami (via iamnomes)

[observando]

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

Zora Neale Hurston (via observando)

[strandbooks]

Highlighted passage, On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner, page 49.

[wordsnquotes]

I didn’t like having to explain to them, so I just shut up, smoked a cigarette, and looked at the sea.

Albert Camus, The Stranger (via wordsnquotes)

[nprbooks]

The excellent folks over at the Guardian have put together a handy guide for figuring out whether you’re reading a gothic novel: Scary eyed villain? Virginal, fainting heroine? Spooky castle? Ghost? YES PLEASE! Also, now I REALLY need to read The Mysteries of Udolpho.

— Petra

Image via Guardian Books

[guardian]

Thanks for sharing, nprbooks!

[booqlist]

Adorable guide

[acupofcoffeeandajournal]