Reading Stack II

This entry follows up Reading Stack.

Today I have a fresh pile of books I’m about to dive into. I picked up the new issue of Shambhala Sun earlier this week and my friend Cerra sent me Black & White Nude Photography and Blankets. If my memory serves me well, Cerra was the first person I shared my excitement over Blankets with when I first read it, so it seems somehow special to receive a copy from her. It’s one of the books I treasure and love to share with others, so I imagine it will next be in circulation around this city. My last copy of the book went to Mexico.

Speaking of Blankets, its creator, Craig Thompson, has a blog at Doot Doot Garden. There you can find his brilliant artwork and learn more about his books. Be sure to look at the Blankets sketchbook to see the early glimmerings of the masterpiece that was to come.

I plan to free some books with Book Crossing soon, so if you’re in Halifax keep your eyes open for stray books.

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves; like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
Franz Kafka

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