Daedalus Children's Books

Daedalus Children's Books has an online sale site. Check it out if you're interested in amazingly low prices on new children's books. Sale ends 12/31/03.

Jim Crace Interview

From Bookslut, we hear about an interview with Jim Crace in the Independent(UK). He's got a new book out called Genesis.

On Confessions of Zeno, from Marlo

I didn't find much on the WWW in the way of reader's guides or discussion questions for Svevo's book. However, for those who have time, I found an interesting, although insidious, article at
http://www.vladivostok.com/Speaking_In_Tongues/glazova34eng.htm

Speaking In Tongues: Guided by Voices -- Joyce, Svevo and Weininger

by Anna Glazova.

She discusses two themes in Svevo's work: anti-Semitism and misogyny

From Marlo

Thinking of Mars recently having been so close to Earth, our rector included this poem in his weekly church letter. Love, M

"As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse" by Billy Collins

I pick an orange from a wicker basket
and place it on the table
to represent the sun.
Then down at the other end
a blue and white marble
becomes the earth
and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.
I get a glass from a cabinet,
open a bottle of wine,
then I sit in a ladder-back chair,
a benevolent god presiding
over a miniature creation myth,
and I begin to sing
a homemade canticle of thanks
for this perfect little arrangement,
for not making the earth too hot or cold
not making it spin too fast or slow
so that the grove of orange trees
and the owl become possible,
not to mention the rolling wave,
the play of clouds, geese in flight,
and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.
Then I fill my glass again
and give thanks for the trout,
the oak, and the yellow feather,
singing the room full of shadows,
as sun and earth and moon
circle one another in their impeccable orbit
and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.

Update: Billy Collins is the US Poet Laureate. This poem can be found in his book called Nine Horses. Here is a review.