Literary Santa Literally

Will only need to worry about paper cuts...or maybe some sort of ipad version of Nintendo thumb.

I remember one Christmas I was extremely pleased because Santa brought me the exact book I had asked for: The Complete Sherlock Holmes Vol. I.  I was at an age where I would never admit that I still liked the mystery that The Three Investigators (I guess at even a young age I had a thing against the mainstream appeal of the Hardy Boys) provided, but I was moving into a fascination with things foreign and old that I have never really grown out of, thankfully.

So what books have you asked Santa for this year?  Or perhaps I should say what “titles,” since so many people now have kindles and ipads and such.  Or is an ipad what you want?  Are you sure it’s not just to play that game that involves battling blue jays and cantankerous cardinals?  Will you ask for something right off of the NYT best seller list?  Or maybe some Anais Nin or Armistead Maupin to make your family uncomfortable?

Spotted: Some Nice Light Holiday Reading

When I saw a fellow MUNI rider tackling The Fountainhead, I almost wanted to ask her if she picked it just so she could bury her head in it when she went home for the holidays and cause her family to think twice about bothering her before dinner.

SF Book Lovers Get a Little Grey Lady Love

This article about the San Francisco lit scene took a bit of the scenic route to find us here, having been written by a San Francisco author, appearing in the New York Times, and then forwarded to us by a friend originally from Arizona.  But the article does a great job at pointing out some of the great literary landmarks of our fair city.  Some I recognized as old favorites, but others I had never heard of.  I am intrigued by this Bolerium place.

This also appeared in the Travel section and as of right now is the most emailed article of that portion of The New York Times.  So we may soon be inundated by barbarian bibliophiles.  Not that there is anything wrong with that. 

This is my favorite bit:

“There isn’t an enormous publishing and entertainment industry in San Francisco,” said Jack Boulware, a journalist and author who is one of Litquake’s founders. “If you’re a writer here, you aren’t bound by restrictions you might find in other cities; you can express yourself and innovate and experiment.”

“And,” he deadpanned, “everyone is stoned and sitting in cafes in the middle of the day.”

 The few times that I’ve taken a day off of the day job to go hang out and read or write in a cafe, I am always surprised at the number of people who are there.  At 3pm.  On a Wednesday.   

A Book Lover’s San Francisco, by Gregory Dicum (The New York Times, Dec. 1, 2010)

Spotted: The Finkler Question

Well colo(u)r me impressed, as today I spotted a fellow Muni rider calmly sitting on one of several available seats squished up against the closed doors of the train by a mass of grumpy post-holiday humanity somehow managing to read a winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize!  Yes, we saw Howard Jacobson’s “The Finkler Question.” 

Being the culture-less yank that I am, I’ve never heard of it!  Any good?  I do like the title.  Very intriguing….suggests a complex problem that may or may not have a solution…like Poincare’s Conjecture…or Molyneux’s Problem…though hopefully less complicated.