MemberPaulDalton

Real Name

Paul Dalton

About My Library

I've enjoyed reading books, for work and for pleasure, as long as I can remember. Its something my parents instilled in me and which I would like to pass on to my own two children.

My library is a conglomeration of influences from places I have lived, countries visited, friends old and new, and, not least, my own imaginings of other lives that might be lived, places not yet explored. My parents gave me English classics to read. I read a lot more English literature at university, and in my spare time some Russian and French classics. Only later did I start exploring Ozlit, and even later again, the literatures of Southern, Eastern, and, most important of all, Central Europe.

'There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.'
Brian Moore

'I suppose it was then that I became acquainted with the process of reading, reading for nothing in particular, an experience in no way compatible with the experience of reading as it is generally understood and designated, the sort of reading bouts, or mania for reading, which might overcome a person at best just once or twice in a lifetime.'
Imre Kertesz, The Union Jack

'Our "One Hundred Best Books" need not be yours, nor yours ours; the essential thing is that in this brief interval between darkness and darkness, which we call our life, we should be thrillingly and passionately amused ... for the only unpardonable sin is the sin of taking this passing world too gravely.'
John Cowper Powys, One Hundred Best Books

About Me

Location

Copenhagen

Also On

Goodreads, Tumblr, Twitter

Currently Reading

The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf

Never Any End to Paris by Enrique Vila-Matas

Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl (New York Review Books Classics) by Damion Searls

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut

Favorite Authors

Thea Astley, John Banville, Anton Chekhov, Tove Ditlevsen, Sergei Dovlatov, George Eliot, Mathias Énard, Richard Ford, Jon Fosse, Vasily Grossman, Thomas Hardy, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Bohumil Hrabal, Imre Kertész, Mario Vargas Llosa, Andreï Makine, David Malouf, Javier Marías, Gerald Murnane, Orhan Pamuk, Per Petterson, Raymond Queneau, Joseph Roth, Leonardo Sciascia, W. G. Sebald, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Dag Solstad, Tarjei Vesaas, Émile Zola

Member Connections

Friends

50Watts, cerievans1, Emrayfo, Girkner, johnbakeronline, nasredinhoja

Interesting Library

aileverte, akfarrar, aquaticus, arubabookwoman, baswood, bodachliath, byebyelibrary, Caroline_McElwee, cerievans1, ChocolateMuse, deb80, ELiz_M, Emrayfo, eudaemonist, GoodKnight, Isgodchekhov, John, kidzdoc, kitzyl, Krishna-1, lewiscrofts, lriley, Macumbeira, MSarki, P_S_Patrick, Skinnersrow, Stbalbach, thewordygecko, tomcatMurr, Waldstein