Issue 2 | March 2008
This month features Spanish author Javier Marías, whose novel Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me was translated into English in 2001. I had never read Marías before, so the book is brand new to me. I’m going out to the bookshop this week to buy all his other works that have been translated. I only wish I could read Spanish, I think the beauty of his sentences would be that much more powerful.
The second feature is a long-forgotten collection of some great conversations. This 1948 gem is the product of deep research by a real bibliophile, though editor Louis Biancolli was a music critic by profession. In The Book of Great Conversations, you’ll read Goethe being questioned about love, Napoleon wondering aloud how he can escape recapture after Waterloo, Stalin debating communism with H.G. Wells, and Socrates berating his friends and students for crying after he drinks from a cup of hemlock. Not to worry: many copies of this book are available through the internet’s wonderfully long arms at nationwide used book stores.
