Random books from mambo_taxi's library
The House of Mirth (Dover Thrift Editions) by Edith Wharton
Gemini/The Marriage by Theodora Keogh
Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
Paul Delvaux: Surrealizing the Nude (Reaktion Books - Essays in Art and Culture) by David Scott
The Driver's Seat: (Reprint) (The New Directions Bibelots) by Muriel Spark
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Members with mambo_taxi's books
Member connections
Friends: StellaSandberg, tbaltazar
Interesting libraries: dottiehinkle, Lenazuckerwise, ortsorfragments
Member: mambo_taxi
CollectionsYour library (354), Currently reading (1), Favorites (19), All collections (354)
Reviews45 reviews
Tagsfiction (209), non-fiction (114), women (101), lesbianism (92), British literature (83), American literature (54), essay (51), biography (33), feminism (33), philosophy (24) — see all tags
Cloudstag cloud, author cloud
GroupsNone
Favorite authorsHannah Arendt, Ann Bannon, Juana Ines de la Cruz, Marilyn Frye, Patricia Highsmith, Daphne Du Maurier, Sarah Schulman, Muriel Spark, Virginia Woolf (Shared favorites)
About meSingle white female seeks hardcover or non-trade paperback book for hours of physically passive entertainment. Would prefer this to be your first relationship, though if you've been pawed by a few other owners this may be acceptable providing previous owners were non-smokers with clean hands. Pages with folded corners are a deal breaker.
Underlining passages means I love you.
About my libraryMy tags speak as to the kind of books with which I fill my library. If you were to combine all of my books into one, you'd have an existentialist pulp masterpiece involving upper class imperialists during WWII in which all of the principle characters savor their food whilst on the run from lesbian vampire first wave feminists. All of the women in the story are beautiful and emotionally complex, and most of the men are homosexual. There would be a happy ending to the story if it weren't for the fact that everyone's marriage has ended disastrously due to the prevalence of Kafkaesque incest and erotic encounters between linguistics instructors and their expatriate drifter students.
Homepagehttp://garbohateshermeneutics.blogspot.com
Real nameHaywain McTarry
Account typepublic, lifetime
Connection NewsConnection News
URLs
http://www.librarything.com/profile/mambo_taxi (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/mambo_taxi (library)
Common KnowledgeSeries (49), Awards (129), Characters (942), Places (201)
Member sinceMar 30, 2008
Currently readingA History of Western Philosophy: The Classical Mind, Volume I by W. T. Jones














Leave a comment
Sign up or sign in to leave a comment.
posted by StellaSandberg at 3:07 am (EST) on Jan 26, 2009
posted by StellaSandberg at 3:31 am (EST) on Dec 4, 2008
Hehe I thought of that too... I also suffered from the misconception that there would be some reference to a sexual relation between Euthanasia and Agnes, which I waited for in vain throughout the entire novel! I don't know where I got it from. Someone told me Burman's books were "queer" but I don't quite think that a gay detective and a molly house suffice to make them so if the protagonist is 100% straight.
posted by StellaSandberg at 5:36 am (EST) on Oct 2, 2008
posted by chloelikedolivia at 12:17 pm (EST) on Sep 22, 2008
posted by StellaSandberg at 7:46 am (EST) on Sep 22, 2008
posted by StellaSandberg at 6:54 am (EST) on Sep 21, 2008
Thank you for the pulp recommendations! I've read "The Price of Salt" under the title "Carol" and I like it a lot. For a while I was afraid it would degenerate into a detective novel with perhaps a desperate murder and some chasing thrown in, a little like the sudden change of genre in "Sabine", but luckily it didn't. I was so relieved when I read the ending!
Oh I'm sure Sweden can be as exotic as any other place, depending on how different the place you're from is... I've seen English people struck by the fact that most of the country is actually covered with trees. I think nothing of it as most of it is anything but untouched wilderness - more like industrial planted forest mixed with fields and houses and roads - but I guess it seems exotic if you come from a very open and very densely populated farming landscape... And of course historical Sweden can seem exotic to me too, like any historical setting. Come to think of it, none of Burman's historical mystery novels are actually set in Sweden - they're set in London, Rome and I think Istanbul, though the protagonist is a Swedish authoress.
No, I haven't written anything about Queen Christina, for two reasons - I mostly keep to the 19th and 20th centuries and I never use existing historical persons as characters. A lot of people writing historical novels do that, they do a lot of research and write these semi-biographical, semi-fictional accounts of someone's life. I'm not sure what I think about that, ethically. Personally I prefer to have a little more artistic freedom and invent my own characters, that's half the fun!
posted by StellaSandberg at 5:27 am (EST) on Sep 16, 2008
Re "Streets of Babylon" I hesitated between 3 stars and 4. The Swedish original is out of print so I read it in English too and I suspect I might have given it one more star if I'd read it in the original language with Burman's witty style intact... I'm not saying the translation is bad by any means, but it's a funny feeling reading something written from such a Swedish viewpoint in a foreign language and with little explanations such as "the small Swedish town of..." added. So exotic all of a sudden! Anyway, Burman writes mystery novels with very thin and predictable plots, while the real point of her books are the historical settings, the gossip about real and invented celebrities of the day and the funny, self-confident heroine.
I too love everything Garbo but especially Queen Christina...
posted by StellaSandberg at 2:58 am (EST) on Sep 15, 2008
posted by StellaSandberg at 11:36 am (EST) on Sep 14, 2008
posted by daykeeper at 8:52 pm (EST) on May 31, 2008