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Tag Archives: John Banville
Rejoyce. It’s Bloomsday.
Some men send flowers to commemorate an anniversary. James Joyce wrote Ulysses. Overachiever. On June 15, 1904, young James Joyce sent a note to Nora Barnacle, who was a waitress at Finn’s Hotel. Barnacle (what an apt name) was a … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce, On This Day, writers
Tagged Bloomsday, E.M. Forster, Edna O'Brien, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, Frank McCourt, George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, Ireland, John Banville, Katherine Mansfield, Stefan Zweig, Sylvia Beach, T.S. Eliot, Ulysses, Vladimir Nabokov, W.B. Yeats, William Carlos Williams
54 Comments
2015 Books Read
Even I am impressed with how much I read this year. Along the course of the year, occasionally I’d think to myself, “Good job, Sheila, with your Self-Imposed Reading Plan!” I’ve read a lot of new novels (not really my … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Alexander Hamilton, Baseball A Literary Anthology, books read, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Marlowe, Edvard Radzinsky, Elvis Presley, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Hannah Arendt, Hunter S. Thompson, Ireland, J.D. Salinger, Jeanette Winterson, Jincy Willett, Joan Didion, John Banville, John Wayne, Joshua Ferris, Lorrie Moore, Machiavelli, Margaret Atwood, Norman Rush, Patricia Highsmith, Paul Zindel, Rasputin, Rebecca West, Ron Chernow, Russia, science, Seamus Heaney, Vietnam, W.H. Auden, William Shakespeare, William Styron
22 Comments
2013 Books Read
It’s been a hell of a year. Devastating as well as redemptive. I started it out in Memphis, and end it here in New Jersey. And now my new niece Pearl has arrived! It’s been both a busy year as … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Anne Fadiman, Annie Proulx, Arthur Koestler, Balkans, books read, Darkness at Noon, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Edvard Radzinsky, Elinor Lipman, England, friends, George Eliot, H.L. Mencken, Henry James, Herman Melville, Hungary, Ireland, J.D. Salinger, Jeanette Winterson, Joan Acocella, Joan Didion, John Banville, Joseph Heller, Joshua Ferris, Lester Bangs, Lorrie Moore, Patricia Highsmith, Philip K. Dick, Russia, Sam Cooke, Stalin, Tana French, The Netherlands, The Only Game In Town, Thomas Carlyle, Victor Serge, William Shakespeare, Yugoslavia
33 Comments
2011 Books Read
Here is my annual roundup of all of the books I read this year. Not quite up to the pace I normally am (although 2009 was an all-time low), but movies and writing have become nearly full-time pursuits for me … Continue reading
“Although its atmosphere, at once lackadaisical and deeply sinister, is that of a nightmare, the book has the sheen of a wide-awake, hyper-real and terrifyingly definite experience.” – John Banville on Kafka’s The Trial
An interesting piece on Franz Kafka by John Banville, on “Kafka’s other trial”. (I get a thrill when I see Elias Canetti’s name, a strange phenomenon. But thanks, Mr. Banville, for that.) I like this part: “Miss FB of Berlin” … Continue reading
2010 Books Read
Round-up of the books I read this year, in the order in which I read them. I am nearly finished with one last book (a collection of stories by Miranda July, given to me by my sister Siobhan for my … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Andrei Tarkovsky, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Annie Proulx, books read, Dava Sobel, David O. Selznick, David Thomson, E.M. Forster, Elia Kazan, Ellen Terry, Emily Dickinson, Ernest Hemingway, Evelyn Waugh, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fred Astaire, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Bernard Shaw, George Orwell, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, Ireland, Jane Langton, Jaws, Joan Blondell, John Banville, John McGahern, Mark Helprin, Orson Welles, Oscar Wilde, Peter Bogdanovich, Rebecca West, Roman Polanski, Ron Chernow, Russia, Serbia, Shirley Jackson, Stefan Zweig, Sylvia Beach, Tana French, Tennessee Williams, Warren Beatty, William Shakespeare
37 Comments
“[Life] Is Like Being At A Tremendously Good Party. I Just Don’t Want To Leave.”
John Banville on death. It made me cry. “It’s just so good. It’s so exquisitely beautiful being here.” Meaning: alive, the world.
“The Sexiest Painting I Know.”
“An Allegory with Venus and Cupid”, Agnolo Bronzino So says John Banville who is, on occasion, the sexiest writer I know. Here is a great little interview with him. I liked this bit a lot: Which fictional character most resembles … Continue reading
The Newton Letter, by John Banville
Sir – Being of opinion that you endeavoured to embroil me with woemen & by other means I was so much affected with it as that when one told me you were sickly and would not live I answered twere … Continue reading