About Me

This blog’s name is inspired by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas on flow. Anyone fortunate enough to experience those moments when time’s flow is stemmed knows the profound enjoyment it provides and the equal degree of concentration required.

With the demise of what was once called the blogosphere, this blog now serves primarily as a reading journal and commonplace book. Blogging changed the way I read, mostly for the better. I am ever grateful that during my years of blogging I made many literary-minded friends that continue outside of an online world that is now entirely subsumed into a corporate marketing machine.

Reading is for me a social activity. If you have a yearning for conversation about literature and what makes a human, please feel free to send me an email. I’m ambivalent about social media, but do have a presence on Twitter and use LibraryThing to keep track of my reading.

As is possibly evident, I have no scholarly background in literature. There is no explicit information about the writer of this blog except the great deal implied by what I read and write. No mystery intended, but I am far, far less interesting than the books I read. This blog was once named in The Guardian and also won the 3:AM Blog of the Year 2011.

Anthony

58 thoughts on “About Me”

    • Thank you. I added your blog’s feed to my watch list today. It appears we have uncannily similar film tastes, judging by your recent post. Yes, that is my library.

      Like

      Reply ↓

  4. I am not a blogger so far; yet I love your ideas and let us hopefully communicate more on what we read. Not just naming books and authors
    Krishnan Unni.P

    Like

    Reply ↓

  5. Thanks. Love the amateur ethic and the list of favourite writers … Big Beckett fan myself. Lots of reading for me here! Regards from Thom at the immortal jukebox.

    Like

    Reply ↓

  6. Szymborska’s quoted manifesto is exactly right—there’s something deadening about reviewing. For me, at least, the felt need to review takes over and inhibits actually lingering with the work (whatever the medium). It seems like you’re the same. Much better to follow out the thoughts brought to the surface by reading than to try to find the exact balance of praise and blame to dole. (And I find that reading such responses is much better advertisement, anyway—I’d rather find the stimulus of new thoughts than the stimulus of praise.)

    I’ve written one review proper on my blog. It’s a failure. I wrote it only because I had come up with what I thought (and think) is a pretty clever bit of wordplay—the only redeeming quality it has.

    I’ve read some of your posts, and enjoyed them. I’ll be stopping by more often.

    Like

    Reply ↓

    • Thank you, pleased that you enjoyed some posts here.

      Aside from a few of the bloggers I include in my blog roll. I don’t read reviews much either. Reading is so subjective, so personal, that straight book reviews are dead as soon as the words hit the page. I’ve come to trust some readers as having a taste broadly similar to my own, but sufficiently different to introduce me to new writers frequently.

      Like

      Reply ↓

  8. What a delightful library! I myself aspire to have something remotely close to this some day. But for the time being it seems rather improbable.
    By the by, this blog is a constant source of learning for me, Anthony.
    Also, it inspires me to read more!

    Like

    Reply ↓

  9. Dear Anthony, I note – with a touch of sadness – your recent absence from the howling desert of Twitter, but would like to wish you a very happy New Year in any case. I have had email issues of late, so may have missed a few updates to your blog, but continue to visit and enjoy same… Anastasia

    Like

    Reply ↓

  11. Hi,
    I’m a german blogger and discovered your fantastic and visionary blog while taking a walk through english literature blogs.
    I’ll visit you once more and learn much !
    Regards from Herbert Steib

    Like

    Reply ↓

    • Yes, very rare, the 5% I think. I once signed up to an email discussion list at intp.org but it soon drove me a bit nuts, reading messages with all that intensity!

      Modernism is a house with many rooms and I think literary postmodernism falls into Bradbury’s category of those second generation modernists who were optimistic about its freedoms.

      Like

      Reply ↓

      • LOL I think INTPs by definition are resistant to joining such groups!
        A broad church, yes. I have just finished reading Kenzaburo Oe’s Death by Water, a book which resists labels of all kinds, I think….

        Like

        Reply ↓

  14. I found your blog earlier this month. It is a exhilarating blog, and excellently written. I was struggling to find inspiration in regards to what to read next, but reading your blog has given me much to think upon, for which I am very glad.

    Like

    Reply ↓

  15. 100% agree that if a book doesn’t move you, stop reading it! Of course some do take some time to get into, but I have wasted too many hours on stories that have never gone anywhere!

    Your blog is inspiring. Thanks for keeping at it!

    Like

    Reply ↓

  17. Hi Anthony, you are invited to participate in my Bookish Time Travel Tag, if you so choose. Check my blog post for more details. Thanks, EnglishLitGeek

    Like

    Reply ↓

  18. Anthony, I just discovered your site and I am so glad to have found it. It is wonderful. Thank you so much. As it happens, I have recently been thinking that I must somehow find a way to make peace with the passage of time. I will be 73 next month – “Time’s winged chariot,” etc. Your site has already helped me in this quest.

    Like

    Reply ↓

  19. Regarding your list of the Bowes & Bowes series ‘Studies in Modern European Literature and Thought’. I’ve been collecting them for about 10 years. I have 25, with the latest found yesterday (Malraux). You may have already seen my covers on Flickr.

    A couple of things:

    ‘Romanov’ should be ‘Rozanov’ (no doubt a pesky auto-spell-corrector).
    Charles Peguy and 49. Samuel Beckett should be 1965 not 1956 (numbers transposed).

    In addition to the Fernando Pessoa, Nietzsche, Robert Musil, and Leopardi which you reference, there are 4 other titles listed as in preparation on the back flap of various titles in my collection, all of which then disappear in later back flap lists, presumably abandoned:

    Karl Barth by D. M. McKinnon
    Berdyaev by Morris Philipson
    Karl Jaspers by Werner Brock
    Remy de Gourmont by Garnet Rees

    Cheers,
    Ben

    Like

    Reply ↓

  25. Anthony, I have a random question. I’m torn between purchasing Quignard’s Abysses and Villa Amalia. I know one’s a novel and one isn’t. Which one would you suggest?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

Leave a Reply to Anthony Cancel reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s