About

Thanks for stopping by my brand new book blog! When I ran out of financial aid and postponed the completion of my masters degree not too long ago, I found that one of the things I missed most about academia (besides the keg parties) was the frequent and wonderful literary conversation I had always found at school. Now I find my favorite literary discourse is often that which transpires between people at local, possibly-crappy bars on a weeknight, after you've had your "I just really needed a beer" beer, when you're prone to being passionate.

 

Strange Bookfellows is my attempt at keeping the conversation alive, even when everyday life doesn't necessarily call for literary discourse or bookish ramblings or sudden exclamations of but you just HAVE to read this! (though we've all been known to do that, usually at the most inappropriate times). I'm not a critic or even much of a reviewer; I'm just a reader who likes to share. 

my 5-month-old rescue mutt Finn

  Hey, I'm Marly.

I'm Marly, a 25-year-(feelingvery)old living in the swamps of North Jersey, where all my oldest friends are right down the street and my college degree sits, unused, in the basement next to my adolescent dance recital costumes and childhood finger-paintings. I love no human as much as I love my dog, which is fine, because humans are difficult to understand and my dog just wants to eat shoes and lick your face.

 

I spend a lot of time watching old British television shows, listening to excessively loud music, and reading totally fantastic books that make me sigh and scream and run around the room flailing my arms until someone tells me to stop. Sometimes, I stop. I say "yous" too much, even though I know that you know that I know it's not a word. I also like coffee, Medieval poetry, bar beer specials, and Election Day. Yous should come over and we'll hang out.

My Standing Favorites

Posts specific to works I call "favorites" can be found here.

Novels: Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville; Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce; The American, by Henry James; To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf; Lord of the Rings, et al, by JRR Tolkien. 

Authors: James Joyce, Toni Morrison, Jonathan Swift, Raymond Chandler, Chuck Palahniuk, Amanda Quick, Tolkien, Tennessee Williams, Brandon Sanderson.  

Plays: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams; Glengarry Glen Ross, by David Mamet; Streamers, by David Rabe.

Poets: TS Eliot, William Blake, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, John Donne, Gwendolyn Brooks.