Book

More and more oftenly I hear parents complaining that they can't get their children into reading. They'd give anything for it, but kids don't find it interesting and over. Other temptations are more and more luring and unfortunately there isn't time for everything.

Do you remember the three “devils” in Bulgakov's novel? I had met them a long time ago and remembered them when a friend went to Moscow and told me that he sat on a bench in the very Patriarshiye Prudy. I suddenly missed that gang of rascals turning the city upside down driving its citizens crazy. I promised myself to read the book again with the first chance and so I did.

I must admit that, however enthusiastically I might have been told about The Corrections, (the book signed by Jonathan Franzen and translated by Polirom Publishing in 2004), I never got into it. I gave it up after about 150 pages.

25 to 29 May 2011: 6th Edition of the Bookfest, the beginning of the summer Fair of Bucharest, a counterpart of the end of autumn one, Gaudeamus (or the other way round: the latter - counterpart of the first!);

The destiny of this unusual writing was not lucky from the beginning. The first form, published in late 1988 (Dacia Publishing, Cluj), came when the period of launching the "new wave" of postmodern fiction of the "desant group" [landing troups] was rather over, for which reason the attention of the reception criticism was dimming.

Collection “Poets Awarded the 'Mihai Eminescu' National Poetry Prize”, coordinator Gellu Dorian, Paralela 45 Publishing, 2010 (editions 1-16 and 18-20):

There were seven years on 8 March 2011 since I've been presenting books for television, on the TVR Cultural. Three stages and three different formulas: first as daily tablet, Monday to Friday, for 3-4 broadcasts a day, under the generic title Cartea [The Book]....

About a year ago or so, I read like everyone did that writer J. D. Salinger died at the age of 91. After 1965, he retired to a village in New Hampshire and refused any contacts with literary or editorial world. For nearly 50 years he didn't give any interviews, published any book or let any intruder trouble his peace in any way. He defended his privacy in court when he needed to.

My childhood memory of Ștefan Mihăilescu-Brăila is that of an artist with a big nose – a natural one, it goes without saying -, who had neither a tragic aura, nor a Hamletian charisma, nor... nothing of what could have given the thrills and dependency to a kid infatuated with theatre. As I often saw him in TV sketches, I often catalogued him as a comical actor with mimics.

Sorin Gherguț's volume, Anything (Overtures & Residues), recently published by the Pandora M Publishing House, opens the collection of poetry coordinated by Svetlana Cârstean, “Live Poets Society”. This series aims to tame poetry readers. Cure them of classical prejudices: that verses are heavy to take in, elitist and for an expert audience.