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The Big LitWit Fit: the winners

March 26, 2012 By: jessicazafra Category: Books, Contest

Thank you for telling us what you’ve been reading. We went through the lists and tried to match readers with books they might enjoy.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday (now a film starring Ewan MacGregor) – lestat

I Never Liked You, a comic book by Chester Brown – Taribong

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides – bottlerocket, because you’re reading David Foster Wallace and one of the protagonists is supposedly based on him.

Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak in the new translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky – mcmorco

The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith (creator of Ripley; lots of anomie, sociopaths, people getting away with bloody murder) – Momelia

The Life of an Unknown Man by Andrei Makine – maelynda

When the Nines Roll Over by David Benioff – tfkjw (It’s an old copy so we threw in some review copies.)

Monstress, a short story collection by Lysley Tenorio (Fil-American) – johnbristol6

Till I End My Song, last poems by famous poets, selected by Harold Bloom – Jen

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton (slightly read) – lionheart147

Camus, A Romance by Elizabeth Hawes – ruthd

Spymistress, a biography of WWII spy Vera Atkins – jepotskie

The Millennium Trilogy – Ellizoid

The Accident by Ismail Kadare – go_light

The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips – hastydevil

The Last Station by Jay Parini – siege16

The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht (Cat not included) – eraser

Fantastic Women, an anthology of fantastic tales – Paul Bryan

Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah the bestselling superhero komiks by Carlo Vergara and Si Crispin, a spinoff from Rizal’s Noli me tangere by Tony Perez – gigics

Everything You Know by Zoe Heller (Author of Notes on a Scandal; you mentioned Dame Judi Dench) – ruth

If you’ve already read the book, give it away.

Claim your prizes at the Customer Service Counter of National Bookstore in Power Plant Mall, Rockwell, Makati, starting on Wednesday, 28 March 2012. They will be filed under your username. The books will be there for 3 months. You don’t have to claim the book personally, you can send someone.

And if you don’t like the book, give it away.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

Comments (19)

Don’t stand, don’t stand so, don’t stand so close to me

August 17, 2010 By: jessicazafra Category: Books

Halfway through The Rehearsal I abandoned the book. I wanted to keep going but it had begun to feel like homework. It’s very impressive, stylish, worthy of the accolades, but I was looking for human beings to feel for. The novel is about a high school sex scandal—a music teacher is discovered to be having an affair with a student—but you don’t actually meet the protagonists. Instead the author presents us with fictional characters who imagine themselves as protagonists in the ongoing drama as if they were actors auditioning for roles in a play. There’s also an acting school in which the students are trying to get into character. The result is to distance the reader from the story so it feels like you’re watching ants in an aquarium. Clever as hell, but cold. I read novels because I want to feel, not think about feeling. I already do too much of that in real life.

Read an excerpt from The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton.

Comment (1)

The Backlog Report

July 07, 2010 By: jessicazafra Category: Books

Very pleased at my self-control (due in large part to fear of overweight baggage): bought only four books in London. The Penguin Decades reissue of Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd with the cover by John Squire of The Stone Roses,

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton, Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd, and The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, bought in a 3-for-2 promo at Waterstone’s.

I am still reading David Mitchell’s wonderful new book Jacob de Zoet, which I lugged everywhere but somehow never managed to read. It was supposed to be my airplane book but I slept through most of the 12-hour flight and when I was half-conscious I watched The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski, slick, slumming), A Single Man (directed by Tom Ford as a series of Gucci ads), The Last Station (basically waiting for Leo Tolstoy to croak), and best of all, episodes of Family Guy and American Dad (I’d already seen their 30 Rocks).

This is what my reading backlog looks like at the moment. I thought it would be much worse. The Russian novels:

That project is not zipping along. I blame life for getting in the way of my reading.

The contemporary novels and recent biographies:

That’s not so bad. Manageable. As long as I don’t buy any books for the next two months.

Comments (10)