I can’t read a novel without keeping notes, writing down quotes, and/or keeping track of themes throughout the chunky bundle of paper. Let’s just say it’s a fortunate–unfortunate side effect of reading literary studies, and literatures in English. Anyway, to at least make some good use of those notes, I’ve created The Canonical Notes. With [...]

Harold Pinter, Betrayal Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love Anton Chekhov, A Marriage Proposal Samuel Beckett, En attendant Godot Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina Jean-Paul Sartre, Huis clos Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet James Turner, Beaver and Steve

uneven numbers, except five, with special attention to three; pottery; people who do not appreciate dark humour; concrete cities; being given gifts; throwing myself into projects based on false information; contest shows on television, especially when it concerns singing; (literary) critics who don’t understand the fundamental difference between “realist” and “realistic;”

For nine months now, the Autobiography of Mark Twain has been staring at me from that place on my desk, day in, day out, continuously. The thing is creeping me out, to be honest; especially the Volume 1 part. It’s the longest, and most troubled, relationship I’ve ever had. Ah, well. I’ll start reading it [...]

Well, here I am, starting sentences with “Well,” and flooding them with commas. I don’t even know how to continue that paragraph. Honestly, I need a purpose. After two years of business school, one incredibly wasted year of cultural studies, and three years of English literature, I am finally finishing one long chapter of moving [...]

Siri Hustvedt, in this year’s issue of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art (No. 49), has written an excellent piece on reading and, most importantly, remembering literature. From her observation that “[v]arious texts call for different [reading] strategies” (122), to the fact that we as readers often unconsciously imagine things in literary works that [...]