Comments on: I Heart Free Books

By: Washington City Paper: News & Features: Blogs

Washington City Paper: News & Features: Blogs — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:06:41 +0000

[...] I like books as much as anyone else, and I love [...]

By: Washington City Paper: News & Features: Blogs

Washington City Paper: News & Features: Blogs — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 19:01:25 +0000

[...] and some books. And probably some other miscellaneous things. (Hey, who doesn’t like free stuff?) I appreciate the generosity, but I’m not sure how I can use unattached desk drawers [...]

By: Boy

Boy — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 15:10:12 +0000

About A Boy - new movie on http://www.dvdipodmovies.com

By: Washington City Paper: News & Features: Blogs

Washington City Paper: News & Features: Blogs — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:36:12 +0000

[...] Free books! Right this minute on Calvert Street! Get there before Jonathan York gets there first! [...]

By: emleaman

emleaman — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 19:36:30 +0000

i also heard about some free book exchange thing in baltimore. my friend told me about it. i think it happens on weekends…bring a book, take a book. don’t remember what it is called…anyone know?

By: Washington City Paper: News & Features: Blogs

Washington City Paper: News & Features: Blogs — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 20:56:16 +0000

[...] don’t have much money, and I don’t know how to cook. But during the month that I slept on friends’ couches in [...]

By: Wilson

Wilson — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:23:12 +0000

I find it interesting that Mark snarks on Nick Hornby books while he has only recently bemoaned the inability of Jonathan Lethem to translate a love of rock and roll into decent literature (http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/index.php/2007/03/02/kill-the-rock-novel-please/), a form Hornby has mastered. While high literature inspired by and evocative of rock music can be brilliant (see Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and T.C. Boyle “Greasy Lake,” for starters), high literature about rock musicians and their fans tends to suck (see the aforementioned Lethem book as well Rick Moody’s own bad rock novel Garden State, no relation to the bad rock movie of the same name). Hornby actually succeeds because he sees the limits of writing about rock music, basically post-teenage angst and wishy-washy nostalgia. You snobs should pick up About a Boy next time you have had a bit too much to drink and aren’t feeling up to the usual Pynchon or Plato. It’s the best literary reaction to Kurt Cobain’s death that I’ve ever read—not that it has much competition. On a related note, Lethem’s recent story in the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2007/03/19/070319fi_fiction_lethem_, which concerns film nerds on the Upper East side as opposed to rock nerds in L.A., is fantastic.

By: Jonathan York

Jonathan York — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:28:50 +0000

You will notel, Mark, that I used Nick Hornby’s first and last name, while I referred to the others by last name only. Some of them are great; Hornby is trendy. (Also, I picked him up for a friend. I’m not gonna read “About a Boy.”)

By: andrew

andrew — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 02:02:18 +0000

maybe relevant — more free books for trade (it’s a points system) in DC and elsewhere: http://www.bookmooch.com

By: JW

JW — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:39:37 +0000

I’m waiting for a Trekkie to pipe in with this kind of response:

“I have written well-research biographies for every fictional genius ever mentioned on ‘Star Trek.’ Your references to David Brumblemeyer and Ardath Spaetzlehoeuwer are equally as incongruous as the inclusion of Hornby on that list of authors. Everybody knows that Brumblemeyer was not a musical composer — he was a meta-quantum theorist (although he did dabble in quasitonal cosmology). And Spaetzlehoeuwer was not an author — he helped to develop the rare-earth psychotropic lenses that were used in early whole
-room holography projections.”

By: Mark Athitakis

Mark Athitakis — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 16:57:08 +0000

“Dostoevsky, Kundera, Woolf, Nietzsche, Plato, Solzhenitsyn, Nick Hornby”

This reminds me those scenes in “Star Trek” episodes where a character rattles off a list of geniuses, topped off by a made-up guy. (”Beethoven! Mozart! Brumblemeyer!” “Shakespeare! Faulkner! Spaetzlehoeuwer!”) Hornby isn’t made up, but he’s not exactly in the same league as those others.