Don't be sad...we haven't left the interwebs
We're just over here, at Jam and Idleness--come visit!
View ArticleWave goodbye
If you’re still following Bookphilia.com, bless you. This is, I believe, to be my final post here. On the fifth anniversary of this blog, I’m officially moving onwards and upwards to brighter and...
View ArticleFYI...
In about a month's time, I will be launching a new blog, with a broader focus. I'll post a link to it, along with one final Bookphilia post on the past year's best and worst reads. Thanks to all you...
View ArticleI'm making it official: Bookphilia is on hiatus
As it's been a solid month since I last posted, this will surprise no one; indeed, you may be wondering why I'm bothering to make it official at all. Well, I don't like to just disappear without saying...
View ArticleIn death they were not divided
I finished re-reading The Mill on the Floss tonight; I first read it in 1998-1999 when I had the pleasure of being in Rohan Maitzen's graduate seminar on George Eliot. I loved it then; I have a much...
View ArticleI miss those days of jam and idleness
My reading is all over the place lately; it's taking me a long time to finish things, in part because Autumn hasn't been very cold and I've been cycling like a fiend. I've also been working on the 4th...
View ArticleMo money, mo moustaches
It's almost Movember, friends, the month during which those who can grow hair above their upper lips do so to help raise money for men's health. My husband is participating, and there will be...
View ArticleAn unlikely trio
Another round-up, my friends! I'm looking forward to soon finding the time for writing round-ups of one. Today, three books that in no way belong together form the subject of my early morning musings....
View ArticleAutumn has well and truly arrived
This afternoon, I was wearing all black and riding my shiny black bicycle (with flash red panniers) when I felt autumn arrive. As I came around the corner on Annette Street by my favourite coffee shop,...
View ArticleWhy I must never, ever, ever read (auto)biography again
Just a (hopefully) quick post on what I've been reading, and what I ought not to be reading so that I can read other things I want to read. Anthony Trollope and I are going to have to have a duel,...
View ArticleMatthew "Monk" Lewis turns it up to 11
Matthew Lewis wrote his classic Gothic novel, The Monk (1796), when he was 19, and you can tell. He also completed the manuscript in a mere ten weeks, and that's obvious too. The book is really quite...
View ArticleA caffeine withdrawal-related miscellany
I have a complicated relationship with the noble coffee bean. I love coffee just for the taste, and that's normally why I forget the kind of headachey, sleepy, confused, and indecisive withdrawal week...
View ArticleDombey and Son - a novel without a hero?
As I was nearing the conclusion of Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son, it occurred to me that unlike Vanity Fair (which only claimed to be so), this might really be a novel without a hero. Paul Dombey,...
View ArticleThe mysterious Edith Granger
This, my second quotation-heavy post on Dickens's Dombey and Son, does give some plot details away, so be warned. I simply can't stop writing and thinking about this book—indeed, there's already a...
View ArticleThe house of Dombey and Son
I am currently about 240 pages (of 900+) into Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son. This is my third Dickens novel and fifth novel total of my Victorian Literature project. I would like to reiterate that...
View ArticleSlavish adoration
So, I had been planning to write my third and final post on Vanity Fair addressing, both ingeniously and in-depth, the way Thackeray constantly either draws attention to the bookish-ness of this book...
View ArticleThree by Sayers
There are three things you need to know:1) I currently have insomnia. I brought this upon myself by being unable to wake up before 11 am today (well, yesterday now. Sigh.) and insisting upon napping...
View ArticleOne of the best gentlemen Becky ever saw: more on Dobbin as Vanity Fair's...
All spoilers, my friendsIn my previous post on Vanity Fair, I discussed how in spite of Thackeray's claim that his novel boasted no hero, there was a clear candidate indeed: William Dobbin. Near the...
View ArticleWounded animals in their final death throes
David Golder, Irene Nemirovsky's first novel, begins with a confusing conversation about past and present endeavours, between two business partners: the titular David and Simon Marcus. Partners for 25...
View ArticleBeautiful, disturbing, exhausting: the fiction of Yoko Ogawa
Yoko Ogawa's The Diving Pool comprises a trio of novellas entitled “The Diving Pool,” “Pregnancy Diary,” and “Dormitory.” As in Hotel Iris, the writing and translating are stellar, and Ogawa's...
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