Junction Bookstore

Photo

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 09:49:03 -0400

October 2011

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 04:15:14 -0400

October 2011

The First Annual Scavenger Hunt in Thimphu was about to begin...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 06:23:00 -0400

The First Annual Scavenger Hunt in Thimphu was about to begin which is why the shop looks unusually crowded in this picture.

Photography credit: Upasana Dahal

April 2011

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 03:38:29 -0400

April 2011

August 2010

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 03:26:28 -0400

August 2010

Hyacinths at the store… Photo credit: Rajesh Gurung

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 02:16:11 -0400

Hyacinths at the store…

Photo credit: Rajesh Gurung

Photo

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 02:08:48 -0400

At night

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 01:49:49 -0500

At night

cruello: The Paris Library floods, 1910 1910 Great Flood of...

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 01:05:04 -0400

cruello:

The Paris Library floods, 1910

1910 Great Flood of Paris:

The 1910 Great Flood of Paris was a catastrophe in which the Seine River, carrying winter rains from its tributaries, flooded Paris, France, and several nearby communities. [read more]

Photo: Historical Library of Paris

odditiesoflife: Curious History: The Book Reader of the...

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 04:19:29 -0400

odditiesoflife:

Curious History: The Book Reader of the Future

This appeared in the April 1935 issue of “Everyday Science and Mechanics.” The strange thing about this past prediction of future technology is how similar the shape of the object is to that of original desk top computer. A square box that allows the reader to see enlarged text. Science fiction is frequently a precursor to the future. Although a writer in the 1930’s could not have imagined that the process would be done with a microchip instead of film, the similarities are still quite profound.

Gilbert Garcin, The Collector, 2004 A Waking I was walled inside a dream.Its walls had no...

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:22:49 -0400

Gilbert Garcin, The Collector, 2004

A Waking

I was walled inside a dream.
Its walls had no consistency,
no weight: its emptiness was its weight.
The walls were hours and the hours
sorrow, hoarded forever.
The time of those hours was not time.

I leapt through a breach: in this world
it was four o’clock. The room was my room
and my ghost was in each thing.
I wasn’t there. I looked out the window:
not a soul under the electric light.
Vigilant streetlamps, dirty snow,
houses and cars asleep, the insomnia
of a lamp, the oak that talks to itself,
the wind and its knives, the illegible
writing of the constellations.

The things were buried deep in themselves
and my eyes of flesh saw them
weary of being, realities
stripped of their names. My two eyes
were souls grieving for the world.
On the empty street the presence
passed without passing, vanishing
into its forms, fixed in its changes,
and turned now into houses, oaks, snow, time.
Life and death flowed on, blurred together.

Uninhabited sight, the presence
looked at me with nobody’s eyes:
a bundle of reflections over the cliffs.
I looked inside: the room was my room
and I wasn’t there. Being lacks nothing
—always full of itself, always the same—
even though we are not there … Outside,
the clarities, still uncertain:
dawn in the jumble of the rooftops.
The constellations were being erased.

— Octavio Paz, translated by Eliot Weinberger, in A Tree Within

vintageanchor: Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams at Cafe...

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 05:06:29 -0400

vintageanchor:

Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams at Cafe Nicholson in New York City (1949).

The Invisible Library: books that only exist in other books

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 00:34:07 -0400

The Invisible Library: books that only exist in other books

Reading Group: George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty Four

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 05:49:00 -0400

Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell’s nightmare vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff’s attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell’s prescience of modern life—the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language—and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written. (amazon.com)

Reading Group on Thursday

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 02:31:00 -0400

We are back to reading and discussing short-stories for a while.

We will be discussing the quintessential Uncanny text according to Freud, ETA Hoffmann’s ‘The Sandman’ (1816).

We’ll also be discussing Raymond Carver’s ‘Why Don’t You Dance’. You can read it online HERE.

In ”Why Don’t You Dance?” a man whose marriage has collapsed puts his furniture up for sale in the front yard, where he has arranged it as it was inside his house, running out an extension cord so that the television and the record player work. A young couple come along and try out the furniture, stay for drinks and then, at the man’s suggestion, dance together in the driveway. The intimacy of marriage is voided, exposed, re-enacted and distanced, all at once. The moment may be said to suggest memory, art, the astonishing bond of intimacy among a world of strangers, the ghostliness of one’s attachment to any place or relationship. (Marriage and Other Astonishing Bonds)

Reading Group on Thursday: Conversation with Linda Leaming, author of Married to Bhutan.

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:14:22 -0400

If interested, please drop by for an informal session where we will be talking publishing, writing, and a lot more. Timing - 6.00p this Thursday (12/07/2012).

Linda Leaming is a writer whose work has appeared in Ladies’ Home Journal, Mandala, Guardian UK, A Woman’s Asia (Travelers’ Tales), and many other publications. Eric Weiner included her in his bestseller, The Geography of Bliss. Originally from Nashville, she has an M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Arizona; and she regularly speaks about Bhutan at colleges, churches, seminars, and book groups. She is married to the renowned Bhutanese thanka painter, Phurba Namgay. (via Hay House)

Reading Group: Waiting for Godot

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:12:27 -0400

What the book is about: The plot of Samuel Beckett’s play is simple. Two tramps are waiting by a sickly looking tree for the arrival of M. Godot. They quarrel, make up, try to sleep, eat a carrot and gnaw on some chicken bones. Two other characters appear, a master and a slave, who perform a grotesque scene in the middle of the play. A young boy arrives to say that M. Godot will not come today, but that he will come tomorrow.

You can find a copy of the book which can be downloaded at: http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/WorldeBookLibrary.com/godot.htm

10% Storewide Sale Tomorrow, Our 2nd Birthday

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:23:13 -0400

There are days we feels like the shop is less than a year old but most days we feel like the shop’s been here forever.

Tomorrow we’ll be celebrating our 2nd Birthday with a 10% Storewide Sale.

Vladimir Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ in Words and Pictures

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 00:23:14 -0400

teachingliteracy:

cinderellainrubbershoes:

Project by by Sanja Planinic.

Reader's Share: Ariel Lebowitz

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 06:18:00 -0400

After being in the country for less than a year, Ariel has already become an indispensable member of our Reading Group. There are very few people I’ve met who willingly take up the challenge to read a diverse range of genres, books and authors – Ariel is one of them. Here, she welcomes us to take a peek into her bookshelf.

On your nightstand now

The Immortals of Meluha by Amish

Favorite book when you were a child

Too many to list but - In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, the Mog Series, My Father’s Dragon series by Ruth Stiles Gannett, When we were very young by A.A. Milne, Paddington Bear Series by Michael Bond.

Your top 5 authors

Michael Ondaatje, Sue Grafton, Barbara Kingsolver, Thomas King, Nick Hornby

Book you’ve faked reading

100 years of solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez - picked it up many times but never made it through

Book you’re an evangelist for

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson, it’s so good (brilliantly written and heartbreaking) - You should read it!

Book you’ve bought for the cover

I don’t remember the name and I never read it - but it had a peach on the cover.

Book that changed your life

The Covenant by James Michener - historical fiction about South Africa. I think it was the first time I read a book that made me really want to visit a country. I have not yet made it South Africa - but it sparked my wanderlust and I will get there some day.

Favorite line from a book

“There are no truths, Coyote,” I says. “Only stories” Page 326, Green Grass Running Water

Book you most want to read again for the first time

None of them, I love reading things over and over again. I find I only get more out of it each time.

Book you are most looking forward to reading

Whatever I pick up next….