2024-04-18 23:22
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride“Chona had never been one to play by the rules of American society. She did not experience the world as most people did. To… Read More
Blog Directory > Books & Literature Blogs > The Frugal Chariot books-and-literature Blog >
2024-04-10 20:02
Tartuffe by Molière“Beauty without intelligence is like a hook without bait.” ― Molière, Tartuffe
One of the most divisive comedi… Read More
2024-04-09 14:38
The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy by James Purdy“Just like children, he and the greatwoman Grainger longed, and especially demanded even, that something should happen, or… Read More
2024-04-01 22:22
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett“I look at my girls, my brilliant young women. I want them to think I was better than I was, and I want to tell them the truth in case the truth will be us… Read More
2024-03-05 16:44
Peacock & Vine: On William Morris and Mariano Fortuny by A.S. Byatt“If Morris and his contemporaries were possessed by the medieval Christian imagination and the anc… Read More
2024-03-01 10:15
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh“News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read.” ― Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
Scoop (London, 1938) by Evelyn Waugh i… Read More
2024-02-28 16:31
Tropic Moon by Georges Simenon“My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven’t read man… Read More
2024-02-08 15:42
The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner by Friedrich Nietzsche“Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompa… Read More
2024-02-07 19:24
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
“it was easier to believe she was lying than that lightning loves a scarred tree.” ― Rebecca Makkai, I Have… Read More
2024-02-05 15:39
The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague by Timothy Garton Ash“In this crowded world, we mu… Read More
2024-01-25 16:07
All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays by George Orwell“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.” ― Ge… Read More
2024-01-17 11:21
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus“Whenever you start doubting yourself, whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change and change is what we're chemica… Read More
2024-01-09 19:06
The Heart in Exile by Rodney Garland"It was all clear now, or at least as clear as it could be. I had discovered and could explain many things, but there was so much, of course, that I… Read More
2024-01-05 02:54
Trust by Hernan Diaz“they all believed, without any sort of doubt, that they deserved to be heard, that their words ought to be heard, that the narratives of their faultless lives… Read More
2023-12-17 13:15
Paul CelanPaul Celan was not an easy man—why would he be?—and his poetry, as his translator Michael Hamburger writes, is not easy either. Celan, Hamburger says, “calls for… Read More
2023-12-14 16:08
Annual Top Ten Favorites Top Ten Favorite Books of 2023Since January 1, 2023, these books have been my favorites. They span a wide range of reading genres, from non-fiction… Read More
2023-12-10 17:50
Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett“In other words, or perhaps another thing, whatever I said it was never enough and always too much.” ―……Read More
2023-11-30 15:55
This Other Eden: a Novel by Paul Harding“Other ideas still, though, were darker, underwater, or he underwater and they above the surface, clear and sharp and focused. He coul… Read More
2023-11-20 21:32
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren"People are like plants: they grow toward the light. I chose science because science gave me what I needed---a home as defined in the most literal sense: a safe p… Read More
2023-11-07 20:35
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells“By this time I was no longer very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were, passed the limit of terror and despair. I felt now th… Read More
2023-11-02 14:45
All Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt“There was desperation in his eyes. As he looked at me, it was as though he were looking into me from another world, trying to reach ac… Read More
2023-10-29 13:36
The Temptation to Exist by Emil M. Cioran“For all sensation is a bond, pleasure as much as pain, joy as much as misery. The only free mind is the one that, pure of all intimacy wi… Read More
2023-10-26 14:24
Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar“She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people… Read More
2023-10-25 15:58
The Death Ship by B. Traven
The death ship it is I am in,All I have lost, nothing to winSo far off sunny New OrleansSo far off lovely Louisiana. (from "Song of An American Sailor")This… Read More
2023-10-15 15:12
The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine“Memory is a wound, you said. And some things are released only by the act of writing. Unless I go in with my scalpel and suction… Read More
2023-10-08 16:19
The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature by Bill Goldstein"In 1922, Eliot, Forster, Lawre… Read More
2023-10-04 16:11
Leadership : Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger“A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.” ―… Read More
2023-09-20 16:15
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano“We’re part of the sky, and the rocks in your mother’s garden, and that old man who sleeps by the train station. We’re all inter… Read More
2023-09-10 14:53
Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling"Over and above the darkness and the mystery of the procession, Harvey could feel the land close around him once more, with all its thousands of pe… Read More
2023-09-08 15:29
The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason“As their song crescendoed I had the sudden conviction that the world, which I had considered the province of meaningless chances, a… Read More
2023-08-31 15:18
Uprooted by Naomi Novik“truth didn’t mean anything without someone to share it with; you could shout truth into the air forever, and spend your life doing it, if someone did… Read More
2023-08-28 15:56
The Magician by Colm Tóibín
“He wanted that which had been so fleeting to become solid. The only way he knew to make this happen was to write it down. Should he have… Read More
2023-08-27 16:29
Literature and the Gods by Roberto Calasso“Whatever else it might be, the divine is certainly the thing that imposes with maximum intensity the sensation of being alive.”&nb&hell…Read More
2023-08-21 17:06
Arnold Schoenberg "I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I don't know whether this is the cause why I did it in music and also why I did it in paintin… Read More
2023-08-20 16:58
Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913-1926 by Walter Benjamin“Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed;… Read More
2023-08-16 19:20
King Lear by William Shakespeare“This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.” ― William Shakespeare, King Lear
The division of the… Read More
2023-07-31 16:12
Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster"Miss Abbott, don’t worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I’m one of them … I never expect anything to happe… Read More
2023-07-28 10:03
At the Court of the Borgia by Johann BurchardOn Christmas Day the pope came in procession to the Basilica where he celebrated High Mass with all traditional ceremony and splendour. &hell…Read More
2023-07-27 20:14
The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett“That must be something to discover a book that nobody's ever heard of or everybody thought was lost.""It's every bibliophile's dream," said Fr… Read More
2023-07-19 14:46
The Defense by Vladimir Nabokov“The recollection also came back empty, and for the first time in all his life, perhaps, Luzhin asked himself the question – where exactly had… Read More
2023-07-15 23:55
Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy“If you had to say something definitive about the world in a single sentence what would that sentence be?It would be this: the world has created no… Read More
2023-07-14 20:48
The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy“Mercy is in the province of the person alone. There is mass hatred and mass grief. Mass vengeance and even mass suicide. But there is no mass forg… Read More
2023-06-30 17:56
Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion“In many ways, writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your… Read More
2023-06-19 15:50
Matrix by Lauren Groff
“Nothing is all stark and clear any longer, nothing stands in opposition. Good and evil live together; dark and light. Contradictions can be true at once. T… Read More
2023-06-17 20:01
When the cheering stopped: The last years of Woodrow Wilson by Gene Smith"We are troubled on every side, yet not destressed,; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, bu… Read More
2023-06-15 15:25
The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy“They are gone now. Fled, banished in death or exile, lost, undone. Over the land sun and wind still move to burn and sway the trees, the gras… Read More
2023-06-13 16:18
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius“Indeed, the condition of human nature is just this; man towers above the rest of creation so long as he realizes his own nature, and when… Read More
2023-06-12 19:33
The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain by Darío Fernández-Morera“The oft-repeated assertio… Read More
2023-05-30 20:11
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka“{We] glide serenely through the water, safe in our knowledge that we are nothing more than a blurry peripheral shape glimpsed in passing through the f… Read More
2023-05-18 13:50
A River Runs through It by Norman Maclean"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful… Read More
2023-05-17 15:56
Illusions of Camelot: A Memoir by Peter BoalDance is like life. It exists as you are flitting through it, and when it's over, it's done. -- Jerome Robbins
I enjo… Read More
2023-05-08 20:24
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers“The Heart is a lonely hunter with only one desire! To find some lasting comfort in the arms of anothers fire...driven by a despera… Read More
2023-05-07 14:38
Find Me by André Aciman“Everything in my life was merely prologue until now, merely delay, merely pastime, merely waste of time until I came to know you.”  &hell…Read More
2023-04-26 20:43
The Complete Poems by Thomas HardyThe last thirty years of Thomas Hardy's life was devoted to poetry. During this time after he had eschewed novel-writing he wrote hundreds of poems. Th… Read More
2023-04-23 12:57
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy“Her library would have been valuable to a bibliophile except she treated her books execrably. I would rarely open a volume that she had not desec… Read More
2023-04-17 15:26
Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andreï Makine“The unsayable! It was mysteriously linked, I now understood, to the essential. The essential was unsayable. Incommunicable. And… Read More
2023-04-11 20:29
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger“The dead are never far from us. They’re in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single brea… Read More
2023-04-10 19:55
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson“I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that c… Read More
2023-03-30 11:13
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison“I remember that I'm invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in th… Read More
2023-03-22 01:31
Serious Things by Gregory Norminton"Though he did not consent to friendship, the tall and beautiful English boy had acknowledged my existence." - Gregory Norminton, Serious… Read More
2023-03-12 19:18
Landscape: Memory by Matthew Stadler“If all memories decay, what of them will really ever be left? What is it that's growing from out of the rotting material of old memories? Is e… Read More
2023-03-09 20:04
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez“Consider rereading, how risky it is, especially when the book is one that you loved. Always the chance that it won't hold up, that you might, for whatev… Read More
2023-03-08 17:34
Cicero by D.R. Shackleton Bailey“Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the ed… Read More
2023-03-07 15:16
War and Peace by Leo TolstoyThe Death of Prince Andrew BolkonskiOn the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in his hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkonski bleeding profusel… Read More
2023-03-05 21:20
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell“I'll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another d… Read More
2023-02-17 02:28
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz“There are people one knows and people one doesn't. One shouldn't cheapen the former by fei… Read More
2023-02-15 00:46
Independent People by Halldór Laxness
“This was the first time that he has ever looked into the labyrinth of the human soul. He was very far from understanding what he saw… Read More
2023-02-10 17:35
The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon by Richard Zimler“God comes to each of us in the form we can best perceive Him. To you, just now, He was a heron. To someone else, He might come as a… Read More
2023-02-08 17:45
Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard
Here’s a couple waving goodbye from the train, but who are they? No idea! That’s why they’re waving goodbye. It’s like a second dea… Read More
2023-01-26 17:03
Rats, Lice and History by Hans ZinsserBut however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, and bedbugs… Read More
2023-01-22 19:57
Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen“In America, Ben felt like a foreigner, too, but in a different way, He couldn't have explained it. In New Orleans, he couldn't have… Read More
2023-01-12 22:42
Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw"The most inevitable dramatic conception, then, of the nineteenth century is that of a perfectly naive hero upsetting religion, law and order in all dir… Read More
2023-01-07 22:58
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles“Wouldn’t it have been wonderful, thought Woolly, if everybody’s life was like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Then no one person’s… Read More
2023-01-06 21:33
The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut“The funny thing is, I don't care too much. You think you love something so badly, but when it's gone you find out you don't care so much.”&nb&hell…Read More
2022-12-29 17:29
Young Man From The Provinces: A Gay Life Before Stonewall by Alan Helms"I studied my face in the mirror. I was good-looking, yes, but there were guys at Columbia better looking tha… Read More
2022-12-22 22:17
Annual Top Ten Favorites Top Ten Favorite Books of 2022These are my favorite reads since January 1, 2022. They include an extensive variety of reading: from the Classics to… Read More
2022-12-22 19:40
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles“He had said that our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain ge… Read More
2022-12-20 19:29
How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue“But my father used to say we can’t do only what we’re at ease with, we must do what we ought to do.” ― Imb… Read More
2022-12-16 20:23
Casals and the Art of Interpretation by David Blum“I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.” ― Pablo Casals… Read More
2022-12-15 16:54
The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading by Edmund White“Many people like books because they’re suspenseful or scary or touching or inspirational or because one admires t… Read More
2022-12-15 16:32
Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson“There was an odd bending around in back at the extreme limits of culture and politics where back-to-the-land hippies and radical survivalists… Read More
2022-12-10 01:26
Enchantment"'There's some
extraordinary things in books,' said the mariner." - H. G.
Wells (1)
I
have found in my current rereading of Don
Quixote
that an extraordinary challenge wa… Read More
2022-11-27 14:28
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Sappho"Eros, that slackener of limbs, twirls me again---bittersweet, untamable, crawling thing.but you, Atthis, hate the thought of me,and go… Read More
2022-11-27 14:13
Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer
“There is no indisputable proof for the big bang," said Hollus. "And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the questi… Read More
2022-11-14 13:57
Our Fathers by Andrew O'Hagan“We couldn’t complete the world or ourselves. We could only live, and look for small graces, and learn to accept the munificence of change.&rdqu&hell…Read More
2022-11-13 23:58
The Chosen by Chaim Potok"'Reuven, listen to me. The Talmud says that a person should do two things for himself. One is to acquire a teacher. Do you remember the other?" Choose a friend… Read More
2022-11-06 14:28
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks“Sometimes the thoughts and feelings I had didn't really agree with each other, so I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain.&rdqu&hell…Read More
2022-10-28 08:12
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
The epic voyage of the spacecraft Leonora Christine will take her and her fifty-strong crew to a planet some thirty light-years distant. But, because the ship… Read More
2022-10-27 14:38
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe“I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.&r&hell…Read More
2022-09-27 19:03
The Essential Plotinus by Plotinus“We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing, a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all, though few put it to use.” … Read More
2022-09-26 13:52
ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound“Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. It doesn't matter whether the good writer wan… Read More
2022-09-05 15:19
Confessions by Augustine of Hippo“And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the c… Read More
2022-09-04 12:15
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale“All at once I felt myself haunted by a terrible vision, of a world without guidance: a land of emptiness, where all was ruled by the madness o… Read More
2022-09-02 21:24
The Dog in the Chapel by Anthony McDonald“Tom & Christopher and Their Kind.”― Anthony McDonald, The Dog in the Chapel
A story of two young men, 21 and 18, who fell… Read More
2022-09-02 21:09
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert“Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it… Read More
2022-08-11 22:06
Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954 by Hannah Arendt“Words used for the purpose of fighting lose their quality of speech; they become clichés. The extent to which clich… Read More
2022-08-11 14:26
Lenin in Zurichby Alexander Solzhenitsyn Alexander Solzhenitsyn introduces Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the key character of his planned multi-volume chronicle of Russian revolutionary histor… Read More
2022-08-02 17:04
I and Thou by Martin Buber
“This
is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that
wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but
something… Read More
2022-07-31 15:18
An Insubstantial PageantThe smell of burning books permeates the air.It hovers about those engaged in daily activity,Yielding a strange sense of bittersweet victory.Forcing our selves… Read More
2022-07-30 16:08
Jobby Joseph Roth"One must write, even when one realises that the printed word can no longer improve anything. To the optimists, it might seem an easy thing to write. To the sceptics - not t… Read More
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