Self-referential

Rapid Reading: This course will increase reading speed a little each day until the end of the term, by which time the student will be required to read The Brothers Karamazov in fifteen minutes. The method is isolating pronouns from one’s field of vision. Soon the pronouns are eliminated. Gradually the student is encouraged to nap. A frog is dissected. Spring comes. People marry and die. Pinkerton does not return.
–Woody Allen, Getting Even

So I haven't been holding up my end of the soliloquy here.

Just between us, the royal we is rather singular in the pronoun's referent being the subject, thereby irreverently undermining the conceit. And there's a question of exclusivity; we wonder whether the authorial we becomes the editorial we under revision. And then they complain they can't be him or her.

Now, where were we? Well, since last checking in, at the Best Translated Book Awards (where our favorite won) and a couple of translated booklaunch readings (but with the author reading in the original language), Elias Khoury's As Though She Were Sleeping and Laszlo Krasznahorkai's Satantango, both likely contenders for next year's award. Not to mention many bookstore prowls ...

But the blog long ago ceased to be a conversation betwixt me, my shelf, and I; writing about everything read became more obligation and impediment than self-service, and the lit-chatboard The Fictional Woods took up the slack whilst providing external feedback (and has on occasion fed back here).

So in the collective spirit of the prior post, we've assembled a dozen other past postings that, just among ourselves, seemed worthwhile revisiting, even if nowadays "Advertisements for Myself" depend more upon browsing history and social network mappings. Apologies in advance for linkrot, but that's the diff between reminiscence and living in the past.

Reviews'n'such
John Williams' Stoner in a self-addressed stamped envelope (salutation shamelessly stolen from Tony Miles)
B.S. Johnson's The Unfortunates
Louis Aragon's Paris Peasant (pendant to a nod to Walter Benjamin)
E.A. Poe's "The Purloined Letter" wherein nothing is left unsaid

Riffs
Keats and Chapman with apologies to Flann O'Brien
Shouts and Murmurs (also xposted)
Lies and Damned Lies
Archy and Mehanagement
Wittgenstein and Financial Markets
Poe (or Roussel) and Shaksper
(off cite)
Birnbaum and not Lethem
Bim and Bom