May 2010
3 tags
“The difference essentially between a book and a friend lies not in their greater...”
– Marcel Proust, Days of Reading (via daysofreading)
May 31st
21 notes
3 tags
Book Review: One Day
Book #37 “You’re gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of you life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle,” David Nicholls, One Day I didn’t want to put this down. I’m at a loss for words, because all that’s coming to me are cliches. “Incredibly...
May 31st
21 notes
3 tags
May 30th
33 notes
4 tags
Meeting David Mitchell.
I walked into Hatchard’s a couple of days ago to look around (if you don’t know what Hatchard’s is, it’s an absolutely gorgeous bookstore that’s been in business since 1797. I love it) and when I got to the back, I was pleasantly surprised to find David Mitchell signing some books. I lingered for a second, listening to the conversation. A couple of the storekeepers, a...
May 30th
2 tags
“Who cannot recall, as I can, the reading they did in the holidays, which one...”
– Marcel Proust, Days of Reading (via daysofreading)
May 30th
27 notes
9 tags
May 30th
29 notes
2 tags
“There are no days of my childhood which I lived so fully perhaps as those I...”
– Marcel Proust, Days of Reading (via daysofreading)
May 29th
65 notes
4 tags
“You can’t throw years of your life away because it makes a funny anecdote.”
– David Nicholls, One Day
May 29th
2 tags
May 28th
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May 27th
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May 27th
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Anonymous asked: Why do you buy so many books if you read so few of them? It makes me sad to see that in today's world the desire to own art is much stronger than the desire to engage in art.
May 26th
6 tags
Removing credit and links.
I never wanted to have to make this post but when people are rude and insulting I have to. I now have enough people following me that it’s become a problem, and thus I have to address it. I will say this very clearly: Do NOT remove the “via distantheartbeats” link when you reblog. Removing it means removing my credit, and since *I* have taken the photograph, most of the time of...
May 26th
5 tags
May 26th
27 notes
4 tags
May 26th
18 notes
4 tags
May 26th
2 tags
Anonymous asked: I'm curious, have you read all of them yet?
May 25th
2 tags
Anonymous asked: How do you afford buying so many books? Do you go for all bargains?
May 25th
6 tags
Books Bought This Year
I counted. What you see before you is 244 books. I also shipped some off home a couple of days ago (around 30 books) that are not in this photograph. But in this photograph are approximately 30 books I bought last year, and not this year, so the number would be around the same. I keep getting asked how many books I buy. Well, folks, here you go. This is my year’s haul from September 2009...
May 25th
34 notes
4 tags
“To be ourselves we must have ourselves — possess, if need be re-possess,...”
– Oliver Sacks
May 25th
3 tags
May 25th
79 notes
3 tags
May 25th
34 notes
6 tags
May 25th
424 notes
2 tags
Nick Hornby returns to The Believer!
and I am tickled pink. I loved his column and am very much looking forward to reading it again. *hugs Hornby* “It’s never easy, returning home after failing to make one’s way out in the world. When I left these pages in 2008, it was very much in the spirit of “Good-bye, nerdy losers! I’m not wasting any more time ploughing through books on your behalf! I have things to do, places to go,...
May 23rd
4 tags
May 23rd
3 tags
“…she was still idealistic enough to think that a book could change a life.”
– R. J. Ellory in Ghostheart (via plumfield)
May 23rd
17 notes
2 tags
May 23rd
340 notes
4 tags
May 23rd
85 notes
5 tags
Oh, those hazy, lazy, crazy days of summer
After my abysmal exam yesterday, my friends insisted I go to the picnic we’d planned and I am so glad they did. We were in the sun for about five hours and we had a great time. We were seated under that beautiful tree, and when you lay down it was like a kaleidoscope. Five hours of talk, food, dozing off in the sun, and laughter is five hours well spent.
May 23rd
8 notes
3 tags
May 23rd
4 tags
May 22nd
58 notes
2 tags
May 22nd
48 notes
2 tags
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
– Cicero (via bookshelves) In fact, after spending a significant portion of my afternoon outside with a large group of friends just sitting and laying down in the sun, talking and debating, laughing and eating, with a book within arm’s reach, I would say I’ve never believed this so...
May 22nd
627 notes
3 tags
Ways to know I'm too exhausted from studying:
Little things annoy me much more than a piano falling on my head would. For instance, the fact that I can see the tips of my eyelashes because they’re long makes me want to pull my eyelashes out. You stop thinking. This is definitely a bad thing, as studying is supposed to happen. But you start working on autopilot until two hours later you realise you have absolutely no fucking clue what...
May 21st
26 notes
3 tags
“Infinity, numbers, annihilation weigh us down, but it is not that they are so...”
– Marcel Proust in Days of Reading (via daysofreading)
May 21st
4 tags
May 21st
13 notes
3 tags
May 21st
39 notes
2 tags
May 21st
51 notes
2 tags
cynthiaohmy asked: I got your postcard! It's beautiful and is my new bookmark :) Thanks again!!

PS. Your handwriting is gorgeous, though you must hear that all the time too ;)
May 21st
1 note
3 tags
thepapercompendium-deactivated2 asked: Are you from London? I was reading one of your latest posts and I've been wanting to plan a trip for awhile. What are some of the best places either around London, or in the U.K. in general?
May 21st
2 tags
Can I just say
I know people are still answering what we’re currently reading (if you haven’t, do!) but can just had to say, pretty much all my followers have great taste in books. There was only one book on the list I would want to throw out a window and I won’t name it.  Seriously though, pat yourselves on the back. You’re all fabulous. Edit: I should’ve known that this would...
May 21st
2 tags
Time for another edition of what's everyone...
I’m reading: Days of Reading by Marcel Proust for my book club with Manuel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks The Future Dictionary of America in bits and pieces, because even a dictionary with entries by Jeffery Eugenides and Dave Eggers is still a dictionary. You know, because I’m not also in the middle of any university reading...
May 21st
3 tags
May 20th
25 notes
3 tags
Discourse on Life: On flirting. →
I’m a bit of a flirt. I don’t mean to be, it’s just how I am. It’s not gender-specific, either. I just tend to be overly friendly and chatty and people occasionally misconstrue this as me hitting on them. I’ve had many, many conversations with people about it and back when I had a regular “gang” of friends, they were tasked with pinching me or pulling me aside if I was doing anything that to...
May 20th
21 notes
3 tags
Just for shit and giggles.
I spent pretty much all of today studying with a friend of mine for my last final on Saturday. We started out in a cafe, then in my dorm’s lounge area, then we came up to my flat to cook dinner. He hasn’t been in my room before and did a double-take when he saw all my books. This happens all the time, so I just smiled and ignored it. Then he goes: Him: “You’re a big...
May 20th
3 tags
May 20th
21 notes
1 tag
May 19th
2 tags
May 19th
6 notes
3 tags
May 19th
20 notes
2 tags
May 18th
16 notes