Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Books
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Reading Dostoyevsky's Notes From the Underground, which has so many quotable lines. The fragment that really affected me when I read the first few pages, years ago: "...in that fever of oscillations, of resolutions determined for ever and repented of again a minute later..." Now, I'm fond of this one: "My jests, gentlemen, are of course in bad taste, jerky, involved, lacking self-confidence. But of course that is because I do not respect myself. Can a man of perception respect himself at all?"
I'm considering his discussion of action and justice, which reminds me of the Bhagavad-Gita.
Just read The Eyre Affair by Fforde (a gift from Nathaniel and Shweta), which I enjoyed, and Changing Lanes by Le Guin (a gift from Zack), which I really liked, and Making Book by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, which I liked most when she talked about copyediting.
