I remember falling and trying to stop myself from hitting the road face first. I remember staying home almost two weeks, going from one doctor to another, and sitting in the sun in the late afternoons in September to try to dry out the open lesions n my forehead. Since my eye was swollen shut for days, I attributed that as the reason I stopped reading and blogging. Eventually, I researched concussions online to learn about becoming depressed. So there we go ... it still is difficult for me to resume reading and posting reviews. (Over $25 in library fines and missing books further evidences these doldrums.)
I'm not sure how in depth I can write about those books I managed to get through -- in random order:
Shrub by Molly Ivins; The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (actually on the 2012 list); The Disappearing Spoon by San Kean (the perfect book for the months that disappeared); The Fiction Class by Susan Breen; and Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell.
Let's do Shrub in short shrift. We have a book swap in the small galley kitchen at work and I traded Fiction Class for Shrub. I think Molly is witty and clever and can write extremely well and I figured that Shrub as an insider look at W as Texas governor would be tolerable. Marginally so. Only because I am a spy in the house of state politics and have had little regard for any of the governors who sat in the Capitol when I worked there, I am not disillusioned by the insider deals and self promotion of W. His addiction to his father's reputation and money aligns with his legacy years at Yale and Deke. I did not turn down a single dog-ear in the book and I will re-pot Shrub back on the kitchen shelf tomorrow, hoping to reclaim The Fiction Class to send to my daughter in law.
So on to The Fiction Class: this book came north with Hammagrael as she visited to rake pine needles early in the month. Ever so slightly reminiscent of We Have to Talk about Kevin, as the author is blunt about her contrary feelings towards her mother who is in a nursing home. Both H and I have dealt with this; I could never ask her if her Mom gave her as difficult a time as Nan did me ... but then, that was her modus operandi forever. The book was a page turner only to the extent that I kept reading Breen would be able to end the book spectacularly. She didn't ... it was mundane and anticlimactic.
I loved The Disappearing Spoon and decided it could be the inspiration of a new Boticelli like game. Make up names of make believe elements. Not happy that promethium has been taken, but how about some of these:
A new noble gas called Kingdum
A new heavy metal called Led Zeppelum
New inert gases called Tedium. Boredum
I had more written down but can't find my list. Like Kean's Violinist's Thumb and my desire to improve my understanding of biology since the 1970s, I hoped TDS would give me an aha moment for chemistry. I love books that are histories of topics, Salt, Cod, 1492, and a perspective of science from scientists is interesting but won't necessarily improve one's Regents score.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
It Sings: Corelli's Mandolin
I took Louis de Bernieres Correli's Mandolin out of the library last year. It was like having a box of macarons and not wanting to finish eating them because then they'd be all gone. I read short sections of it each night, hearing the story in my head, seeing the Greek island, long before Captain Correlli and his company occupy it. I decided it was a book to own and reread all that I read before and still moved through the book slowly, savoring it and underlining my own copy again and again.
It is so much better than the movie and I actually liked the movie, surprisingly only the second Nicholas Cage movie I can endorse, but that was early in his career, as was Moonstruck. I found it very difficult to isolate the factors that appeal to me and then I read about deBernieres on Wiki and discovered what an influence Garcia Marquez was in his writing. Duh, the story is loaded with South American style magical realism. He writes of a community over long periods of time, where history is myth and contemporary citizens larger than myth. He is a storyteller and the characters are unforgettable.
de Bernieres comes into his story most often through the voice of the doctor who is trying to write a history of Cephallonia, its centuries of occupiers and its links to Greco-Roman cultural heritage. The villagers are wonderful, if a bit stereotypical, at least/most human ... the drunken priest, the widowed mother of Pelagia's fiance Mandras, the gentle giant, the old men in the cafe. The reader loves them for their oddities, their humanity.
Unlike Play It As It Lays and Things Fall Apart, this is a story of triumph. Where the plot weakens is towards the end where the author depicts a more contemporary Greece where the population is skewed towards the vulgarity of ignorant but rich tourists. The ending in the movie is a bit more believable than Corelli returning to Pelagia when they are in their late 60s or early 70s, not that the reader does not believe their love can quickly rekindle, but that he was able to return to the island often not noticed by the villagers or that she could not figure out it was him sending her unsigned postcards from around the world for decades. It is not likely that these two could still hop on a motor scooter and find the old shepherd's abandoned hut where they trysted in their youth, especially since everything else on the island was pretty much destroyed in the earthquake of 1953.
It is so much better than the movie and I actually liked the movie, surprisingly only the second Nicholas Cage movie I can endorse, but that was early in his career, as was Moonstruck. I found it very difficult to isolate the factors that appeal to me and then I read about deBernieres on Wiki and discovered what an influence Garcia Marquez was in his writing. Duh, the story is loaded with South American style magical realism. He writes of a community over long periods of time, where history is myth and contemporary citizens larger than myth. He is a storyteller and the characters are unforgettable.
de Bernieres comes into his story most often through the voice of the doctor who is trying to write a history of Cephallonia, its centuries of occupiers and its links to Greco-Roman cultural heritage. The villagers are wonderful, if a bit stereotypical, at least/most human ... the drunken priest, the widowed mother of Pelagia's fiance Mandras, the gentle giant, the old men in the cafe. The reader loves them for their oddities, their humanity.
Unlike Play It As It Lays and Things Fall Apart, this is a story of triumph. Where the plot weakens is towards the end where the author depicts a more contemporary Greece where the population is skewed towards the vulgarity of ignorant but rich tourists. The ending in the movie is a bit more believable than Corelli returning to Pelagia when they are in their late 60s or early 70s, not that the reader does not believe their love can quickly rekindle, but that he was able to return to the island often not noticed by the villagers or that she could not figure out it was him sending her unsigned postcards from around the world for decades. It is not likely that these two could still hop on a motor scooter and find the old shepherd's abandoned hut where they trysted in their youth, especially since everything else on the island was pretty much destroyed in the earthquake of 1953.
Catching Up: Four Books Behind
If my brain is in as bad shape as my sinuses, these reviews will make absolutely no sense and the linkages in themes I see between them will be just as hallucinatory as the smoke I "saw" waking up with a jolt after taking two too many Contacs.
The first two books are associated with the book club. One of the founding members suggested the latest Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, for April. In our five year history, I think we have read exactly one other nonfiction, and 700 pages seemed way beyond the group's attention span. Nonetheless, I took the book out of the library and carted it all the way to Texas and back ans still only finished it this morning, a month after the wedding. I am a Pinker fan: I loved The Blank Slate and How the Mind Works. His training and career is primarily about how the brain works and how thoughts evolve into language. The is a too-great stretch for him to venture into a "scientific" analysis of why violence has declined.
Perhaps it came too close on the heels of reading The Phantom Tollbooth, but methinks, Pinker is using numbers, graphs and charts to prove his agenda, couple with his linguistic prowess, he merges the worst of Digitopolis and Dictionopolis and makes everything seem logical and backed up with data. Feeling as blah as I do today, and not anxious to incur additional library fines, I can't even bring myself to go back through the text to remove all the post-it notes I scattered throughout. I do agree that we are much "safer" in today's world than under arbitrary rules that punished, tortured and killed innocents for the sake of the communities' biases. But I am left thinking that while Old Testament and Middle Ages' violence was widespread and pervasive, with enormous aggregated totals, the underlying clan and religious fervor continues, with an order of magnitude improvement in the methods of terror. Pinker argues against 9/11 and bombings in Jerusalem on the basis on a score pad tally. He attributes the underlying motivation of Islamic terrorism as being fear and the disruption of daily live. I have not been argued out of my perspective that it is a jihad of conquer. It seems to me like he is covering his ass-umptions when thirty pages before neatly wrapping his theorems with a tidy bow, he reprises:
"Religion: Speaking of ideologies, we have seen that little good has come from ancient tribal dogmas. All over the world, belief in the supernatural has authorized the sacrifice of people to propitiate bloodthirsty gods ... " He goes on to reiterate the diminution of this compulsion.
Which brings me to the book that eventually surfaced as the more "readable" entrant for April: Daniel Silva's Portrait of a Spy, a novel set in the today present, of a cash poor Dubai, a Pygmalion Saudi Arabia, an ill-advised US President, a demoralized CIA and a group of world saving Israelis. Let me put my lot with the latter. (In fact, I couldn't help but compare Silva's special assistant to the President for homeland security, James McKenna, to Steven Pinker.)
There are some tenets for Pinker's that I hold; the first, that trading with someone diminishes the chance of wanting to harm them, profit trumps violence. And secondly, although it might take a bit longer for me to admit to it, if you can envision yourself as someone else, you are more accommodating to them. That one does not hold in Silva's world of spies, terror and torture. The best spy completely understands the point of view of the other, but that other remains a threatening adversary, and the scales of justice must be balanced by any means.
The first two books are associated with the book club. One of the founding members suggested the latest Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, for April. In our five year history, I think we have read exactly one other nonfiction, and 700 pages seemed way beyond the group's attention span. Nonetheless, I took the book out of the library and carted it all the way to Texas and back ans still only finished it this morning, a month after the wedding. I am a Pinker fan: I loved The Blank Slate and How the Mind Works. His training and career is primarily about how the brain works and how thoughts evolve into language. The is a too-great stretch for him to venture into a "scientific" analysis of why violence has declined.
Perhaps it came too close on the heels of reading The Phantom Tollbooth, but methinks, Pinker is using numbers, graphs and charts to prove his agenda, couple with his linguistic prowess, he merges the worst of Digitopolis and Dictionopolis and makes everything seem logical and backed up with data. Feeling as blah as I do today, and not anxious to incur additional library fines, I can't even bring myself to go back through the text to remove all the post-it notes I scattered throughout. I do agree that we are much "safer" in today's world than under arbitrary rules that punished, tortured and killed innocents for the sake of the communities' biases. But I am left thinking that while Old Testament and Middle Ages' violence was widespread and pervasive, with enormous aggregated totals, the underlying clan and religious fervor continues, with an order of magnitude improvement in the methods of terror. Pinker argues against 9/11 and bombings in Jerusalem on the basis on a score pad tally. He attributes the underlying motivation of Islamic terrorism as being fear and the disruption of daily live. I have not been argued out of my perspective that it is a jihad of conquer. It seems to me like he is covering his ass-umptions when thirty pages before neatly wrapping his theorems with a tidy bow, he reprises:
"Religion: Speaking of ideologies, we have seen that little good has come from ancient tribal dogmas. All over the world, belief in the supernatural has authorized the sacrifice of people to propitiate bloodthirsty gods ... " He goes on to reiterate the diminution of this compulsion.
Which brings me to the book that eventually surfaced as the more "readable" entrant for April: Daniel Silva's Portrait of a Spy, a novel set in the today present, of a cash poor Dubai, a Pygmalion Saudi Arabia, an ill-advised US President, a demoralized CIA and a group of world saving Israelis. Let me put my lot with the latter. (In fact, I couldn't help but compare Silva's special assistant to the President for homeland security, James McKenna, to Steven Pinker.)
There are some tenets for Pinker's that I hold; the first, that trading with someone diminishes the chance of wanting to harm them, profit trumps violence. And secondly, although it might take a bit longer for me to admit to it, if you can envision yourself as someone else, you are more accommodating to them. That one does not hold in Silva's world of spies, terror and torture. The best spy completely understands the point of view of the other, but that other remains a threatening adversary, and the scales of justice must be balanced by any means.
Industrial Strength Writers' Block
It is difficult, even tonight, to write. It is only the pressure of having to return weeks-long over due books to the library that compels me to write. That and reading a book about Catholic guilt, The Name of the Rose. Yes, I still believe everything is connected. So, Eco's book both reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 for the flaming destruction of the abbey's library and for what I am enduring at work: namely, wearing "ears" to drown out the sound of yet another secretary who is addicted to the phone and would talk to a busy signal. I have been listening to Gregorian chants and Latin Masses, fearing that I would be too apparently enjoying more contemporary music. In fact, the Masses are therapeutic and have underlined Eco's book.
I am hard-pressed to find the ur-theme of this endeavor. I know it has won international accolades but I cannot decide what it is about. It is hardly a murder mystery. It is a difficult national or religious history book. I guess it is a personal apologia: What does it mean to be a contemporary author who acknowledges the classical and religious foundations of his education and culture. How does one shift through the banality of religious factionalism and propaganda, How does one reconcile a classical foundation versus one that is based in Catholicism.
I have been reading, a lot, despite my neglect of my blog. Two other books impinge and intermingle with The Rose: The Closing of the American Mind and Intellectuals and Society. I will attempt to get caught up and blog about both of them. But, today as I was trying to finish Closing as well as The Rose, I was struck by the emphasis on Socrates. How incendiary he is to both Eco and Bloom. How important both authors maintain it is to think independently about human defining thought. What I find cheapening about Eco is dear old William of Baskerville. Maybe if I watched the movie and linked with Sean Connery as William I'd be more sympathetic, but in the novel he seems unfocused, smart by serendipity, aloof from catecatical controversy, lucky in his mystery-solving.
I dog-eared many pages, but tonight as I ignore the network propaganda about election results, I am left with my residual impressions about the book. First, let me be perfectly clear that without my scholarly son, I found all the paragraphs of Latin tedious. Even if I attempted to translate all the sections, I hardly believe it would have clarified or advanced the plot. Toward the end, I felt Eco was more self-disclosive about why he wrote the book. The discussion of the need for humor in literature and human perception of dogma is introduced late in the story but stressed at the end. The absurdity of religious factions stands allegorically for politics as well as Catholic schisms ... in fact who outside Vatican historians care anymore.
So why is this book so well regarded? It is a struggle. I probably spent more time reading it than I will reading Gone with the Wind, once I gird my loins and do it. And with probably much less satisfaction.
I am left with thoughts about censorship (back to Fahrenheit) and admiration for champions of foundations in classics of philosophy and the humanities. I hope my brain can do justice to Bloom and Sowell .. I resolve to get them blogged by the weekend, as well as The Disappearing Spoon, aka the disappearing book.
I am hard-pressed to find the ur-theme of this endeavor. I know it has won international accolades but I cannot decide what it is about. It is hardly a murder mystery. It is a difficult national or religious history book. I guess it is a personal apologia: What does it mean to be a contemporary author who acknowledges the classical and religious foundations of his education and culture. How does one shift through the banality of religious factionalism and propaganda, How does one reconcile a classical foundation versus one that is based in Catholicism.
I have been reading, a lot, despite my neglect of my blog. Two other books impinge and intermingle with The Rose: The Closing of the American Mind and Intellectuals and Society. I will attempt to get caught up and blog about both of them. But, today as I was trying to finish Closing as well as The Rose, I was struck by the emphasis on Socrates. How incendiary he is to both Eco and Bloom. How important both authors maintain it is to think independently about human defining thought. What I find cheapening about Eco is dear old William of Baskerville. Maybe if I watched the movie and linked with Sean Connery as William I'd be more sympathetic, but in the novel he seems unfocused, smart by serendipity, aloof from catecatical controversy, lucky in his mystery-solving.
I dog-eared many pages, but tonight as I ignore the network propaganda about election results, I am left with my residual impressions about the book. First, let me be perfectly clear that without my scholarly son, I found all the paragraphs of Latin tedious. Even if I attempted to translate all the sections, I hardly believe it would have clarified or advanced the plot. Toward the end, I felt Eco was more self-disclosive about why he wrote the book. The discussion of the need for humor in literature and human perception of dogma is introduced late in the story but stressed at the end. The absurdity of religious factions stands allegorically for politics as well as Catholic schisms ... in fact who outside Vatican historians care anymore.
So why is this book so well regarded? It is a struggle. I probably spent more time reading it than I will reading Gone with the Wind, once I gird my loins and do it. And with probably much less satisfaction.
I am left with thoughts about censorship (back to Fahrenheit) and admiration for champions of foundations in classics of philosophy and the humanities. I hope my brain can do justice to Bloom and Sowell .. I resolve to get them blogged by the weekend, as well as The Disappearing Spoon, aka the disappearing book.
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