Traveling Sprinkler

I listened to this book on Audible, read by the author. I actually listened to it twice! It was such a treat to go out for a walk and listen to Nicholson Baker (via Paul Chowder) talk about poetry. Paul Chowder is such a great character- observant, quirky, self effacing and very lovable. It seems li......more

Read the Anthologist, and have never read another book like it. I enjoyed his turn of phrase, his deep knowledge of poetry, and his gentle humor towards his main character. I couldn't take it in big chunks, but thoroughly enjoyed his exploration of the iambic rhyme versus the four-beat line. I was a......more

Making the routine beautiful. I like Baker's writing a lot.......more

The Anthologist There's something about the way Nicholson Baker puts a microscope to the English language that make this plotless poetry textbook masquerading as a novel engaging and necessary. I've always loved reading Baker. His prose is obsessive, his eye keen, and his focus laser-targeted and wild......more

If you were not already a Nicholson Baker fan, this would not make you one. But then again, that could probably be said of all his novels. I thought that he wrote The Everlasting Story of Nory as an apology for Vox; if that is the case, then the Paul Chowder "novels" could be seen as an apology for......more