Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Book Addict

But 90 percent of us who buy books still get out of the house and go to the bookstore, to be among the books, yes, but also to be among the other book buyers, the like-minded, even if we might never say a word to them.
LEWIS BUZBEE, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop


Hanging out in a bookshop for hours,
I’ve discovered that every Tom, Dick, and Harry loves Jane Austen.
Her name rhymes with the smiling Joel Osteen
like those of Kafka, Kundera, and Klima, etc., etc.
Every prose writer according to the blurb is the best of his generation
and they all look cool on the back flop while poets are not.
Pamuk is the exact double of Rumi and Nabokov was also a poet.
Dave Barry is difficult to find (A Good Man Is Hard to Find).
I don’t understand why Billy Collins is on sale at 98% discount(no kidding)
and how in the world The God of Small Things a winner of the Booker Prize.
Where is the cool title 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?
Jason Boyett is not a professional theologian but his theological
grasp makes mine sound like a third grade Sunday School.
I thought that Joyce Carol Oates is the same author as James Carroll.
Pancho Villa is more popular than Jose Garcia Villa
(“Don’t compare Pascal’s Pensées to mine — his are flat, boring…”)
Not all black, green and orange are Penguin Classics but
red, white and blue are always the main characters of Marvel and DC.
The Oprah Book Club logo is ugly on the cover.
Cool names are not hyphenated: A.S. Byatt, A.E. Housman
C.S. Lewis, C.P. Cavafy, C.K. Williams, C.H. Sisson and where is C.H. Spurgeon?
Talking About Detective Fiction, I’ve also discovered that
P.D. James is not a boy but a girl.
Books are slow just like me.

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