Stefanie's profile

79 ratings | 33 reviews
avg rating: 3.97

Stefanie's bookshelves

read (79)
currently-reading (1)

to-read (28)
favorites (14)

non-fiction (5)
to-finish-eventually (3)

must-read (1)

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Stefanie is currently reading

	07/29 Stefanie is currently reading: Gardner's Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective, Volume II (with ArtStudy CD-ROM 2.1, Western) by Fred S. Kleiner, Christin J. Mamiya bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
	Stefanie said: "this is the reason there's nothing new added to my 'currently reading' or 'finished' pile lately. " add a comment

Stefanie's recent updates (rss)

July 29

Stefanie is currently reading:
Gardner's Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective, Volume II (with ArtStudy CD-ROM 2.1, Western)
by Fred S. Kleiner, Christin J. Mamiya
bookshelves: currently-reading

my rating:

Stefanie said: "this is the reason there's nothing new added to my 'currently reading' or 'finished' pile lately. "

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April 27

New comment on Stefanie's review of The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

Stefanie wrote: "this is a fascinating and well-written book, and i can't think of a single person i know who has rea...more "

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April 26

Stefanie gave

to:
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (Paperback)
by Erik Larson

my rating:

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Stefanie marked as to-read:
Looking Glass (Paperback)
by James, R. Strickland (Goodreads author!)
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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April 22

New comment on Barrett's review of Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

Stefanie wrote: "i liked this book (and have it - signed no less), but smoke and mirrors, which i also have but can't...more "

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April 13

Stefanie read and liked Eugene's review of The Last Novel:

"this is a little strange: i saw markson read a month ago at the 92nd Y. i've loved him for a long time, partly out of a romanticized notion that these books portray of the long-suffering and isolated genius. i was a little surprised to see not someon...more this is a little strange: i saw markson read a month ago at the 92nd Y. i've loved him for a long time, partly out of a romanticized notion that these books portray of the long-suffering and isolated genius. i was a little surprised to see not someone who was particularly cranky, but someone almost describable as cheery... something struck me: that the protag of these books is definitely a character, perhaps an exaggeration (vonnegut evidently called up markson after the last one, concerned about markson's 'mental condition') but definitely something markson *uses* (as he may also don, of course, some role when reading out in the public) -- but my sense was that these characters are more just that, characters, than works of autobiographical fiction. ...on the other hand, the *rest* of the book is intensely autobiographical, the detritus and gems -- the graph, the mark -- of a reading life. so i discovered that markson is both more and less artificial than i had assumed...

i also realized *how much* he is editing and sequencing, even more than i'd thought -- they gave out a page of his heavily marked up manuscript -- to create his music(al) of the artist's life.

(i also had the thought, easily wrong and maybe silly to mention, that markson was not, had not been, at least in this last decade, critically or socially or financially ignored. at least not as much as i'd assumed. but that invitations to the right parties and publications (though maybe not grants) had indeed come his way, and that maybe out of stubbornness but more out of some form of integrity, he had refused them. and done so in some kind of shoulder-shrugging automatic way--kind of like how bunuel describes the morality of the surrealist, i.e. impossible to describe but very judging and very exact.)

reading THE LAST NOVEL has all kinds of pleasures: the stumbling on the familiar, the echoes of course, feelings of smugness and admiration for what respectively you knew and what markson knows, the terrible (and yet somehow expectedly so) difficulties of being an artist and of aging both. it goes by fast and can be happily reread.

(here's something: i'd once thought up a personal category of experience i dubbed the 'trivially profound' and had placed there things like sunsets and mountains, those experiences of the ineffable that are deep but with which you can do nothing. those experiences just are, almost impossible to even comment upon. then i realized maybe the word 'trivially' was both redundant and misleading. all profundity is un-useable in this way -- thus perhaps trivial, but still of course vital, foundational, basic... markson's work might be like this for me.) (what, of course, auden means too when he says poetry makes nothing happen.)

he said he had vowed after the last one not to do another--but did somehow anyway... that he had one more, at least, in him....less "

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Stefanie gave

to:
Demon Theory (Paperback)
by Stephen Graham Jones

my rating:

read in April, 2008

Stefanie said: "sigh. a really intriguing story that kept kicking you out because of the style. every time i thought i was fully in, comfortable and ready to flow, i would get bumped out - whether because the footnotes (which were interesting and begged to be read) ...more "

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Stefanie gave

to:
The Raw Shark Texts (Paperback)
by Steven Hall (Goodreads author!)

my rating:

read in March, 2008

Stefanie said: "this book very nearly hits the mark it's aiming for, and is almost as good as the most excited reviewers claim. a good read overall, and well worth the time if you like your fiction on the weird and metaphysical side of things. "

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March 29

Stefanie gave

to:
Slaughterhouse-Five (Paperback)
by Kurt Vonnegut
bookshelves: to-finish-eventually

my rating:

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Stefanie gave

to:
Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern (Paperback)
by Joshua Zeitz
bookshelves: to-finish-eventually

my rating:

add a comment

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Stefanie's friends (13)

	Icats 90 books 235 friends
	Laura 146 books 18 friends
	Steven 11 books 111 friends
	Tammie 179 books 7 friends
	Meiso 521 books 284 friends
	Barrett 241 books 23 friends
	Deana 63 books 10 friends
	Lehi 184 books 10 friends
	Michaele 104 books 12 friends
	Steve 58 books 10 friends
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	Nick 9 books 6 friends
	Bill 0 books 1 friend