Underneath My Christmas Tree

My sister gave me a wonderful Christmas present: William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books. (Look at it at the publisher's web site here.)
William Blake was an illustrator as well as a poet. Much of his poetry (perhaps all of it) was published in the form of drawings that Blake created himself. Click this link, for instance, to see the plate of my favorite Blake poem, The Sick Rose.
The reproduction in my new book is much crisper and more clear than the Internet link above. My book also includes all of Blake's work its original size, except for one image, the poem "Laocoon", that had to be reduced by about 30 percent.
I'm looking forward to reading the introduction by David Bindman.
Another thing that fascinates me about this paperback book is how relatively inexpensive it is. Amazon lists it at $25.17. I say this not to diminish my sister's wonderful gift, but to appreciate the fact that this kind of high-brow art is accessible at a reasonable price.
In other holiday books news, J.K. Rowling announced a few days before Christmas that the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, will be released on July 16. Hooray, hooray! I will be writing more about my appreciation for the Harry Potter books as this date approaches. I encourage anyone who loves books to at least try reading the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Reading for a Merry Christmas

If you can make the time this week for some great reading, I urge you to turn to that old classic, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. (Click the link to read it in its entirety.)

Because Tiny Tim looms so large in the popular consciousness, people mistakenly recall Dickens as being maudlin or sentimental. Actually, he has a biting, sarcastic sense of humor, especially when it comes to the rapacious excesses of industrial capitalism.

I particularly love the opening of A Christmas Carol. Here it is:

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

Teaching journalistic writing

William Zinsser is the author of On Writing Well, one of my favorite books about nonfiction writing. He's a new teacher at my alma mater, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. What I wanna know is, how come he didn't teach when I was there? Not fair!

Read the alumni newsletter here announcing it. Warning, it's a pdf document.

Another tidbit I gleaned from the newsletter is that James B. Stewart is still working on Disneywar. (I've written about this book previously here.) Stewart teaches at Columbia, too, and in fairness I will add that he did teach then when I was a student, lo these many moons ago (1999, anyway).

Is anyone waiting for this book with more bated breath than me?

Hot 100 X 2

The New York Times and The Washington Post have both published their lists of best books for 2004. Check them out here and here while they're still freely available.
I adore year-in-review lists. (And not just for books, I also like music and movies.) It's fun too see how many of the books I've read, and I get lots of ideas for what I want to read next.
On the other hand, the lists do give me that queasy feeling of being chronically underread. I think to myself, I'll never catch up! I try to accept this feeling and then move beyond it, because there are just too many books out there. No one, and I mean no one, will ever catch up. Get used to it!
For all you foodies out there, the NYT has also posted a section on the year's notable cookbooks. Check it out here for the time being.