Books read recently by J. Zimmerman.
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New books on Christianity and Spirituality by Pagels, Ehrman, et al.
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Harry Potter;
also
Harry Potter en Español.
The Mental Health of George W. Bush
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{ March (marzo (see also books on Spanish)) 2007 }
While the novel explores loss, pain approach and avoidance, communication, protection, and reunion, it is predominantly about searching, mainly for various beloveds, either physically or in the heart. The majority of searches are for fathers, including:
The book is told by three different voices, that of Oscar and that of each of his father's parents. In the recording the three voices (though a little too similar in pitch and cadence) tease out the braided stories.
Kaplan teaches courses in political theory and American politics at Notre Dame. He reads the text in the record-book version, with syllabus:
Much interesting work.
I notice that Lee Gurga (past editor of Modern Haiku) and a half dozen other poets present each of their haiku on a single line, instead of on three lines. Gurga's haiku tend to reflect the three-phrase groupings. The one-line poems by some of the other poets lack such groupings, and as a result they fall flat, read like prose, or give this reader the "what the heck does that mean?" heebie-jeebies.
Of the several book reviews, read Joseph Kirshner (pp. 87-89) on Abigail Friedman's "The Haiku Apprentice: Memoirs of Writing Poetry in Japan". Note his remarks on capturing the mood of the experience and how he feels the book offers:
| What is it that makes haiku haiku and not just an exotic form of short-verse poetry. |
See also our comments on issue 36.2 of Modern Haiku.
Quite depressing. Everyone trying to feel good and climb on the back of the other lemmings in the 1980s real-estate boom.
A little unnerving to have it read by the phenomenally brilliant Richard Poe, whom I've heard read Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby, John Steinbeck's East of Eden and several books by DeLillo.
Speaking of DeLillo reminds me of his Cosmopolis. Whereas DeLillo was funny in his irony, Smiley is more subtle, and for me too earnest.
Quite funny.
Three witches show why three is better than one or two for fighting a Midsummer's Nightmare.
More favorites from the many
reviewed books by Terry Pratchett:
Ok; an important political statement; very long; a bit slow and repetitive.
{ February (febrero (see also books on Spanish)) 2007 }
How the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato have spread their existence, their varieties, and their genes by the seduction of humans through the human desires for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control.
The chapter on the apple is eye-opening on the truth-behind-the-legend of Johnny Appleseed.
The chapter on marijuana gives insight on toxic and intoxicant plants, including entheogens ("the god within") worshipped "as a path to divine knowledge. ... What a natural history of the divine would show is that the human experience of the divine has deep roots in psychoactive plants and fungi." An interesting note [p. 147] on the platonic ideal:
| "Under the spell of cannabis 'every object stands more clearly for all of its class,' as David Lenson writes in On Drugs. 'A cup looks like the Platonic Idea of a cup, a landscape looks like a landscape painting, a hamburger stands for all the trillions of hamburgers served,' ... A psychoactive plant can open a door onto a world of archetypal forms, or so they can appear. Whether or not such a plant or fungus did this for Plato himself is of course impossible to ascertain ... But one could do worse, surely, searching for the spring of a metaphysics as visionary and strange as Plato's." |
Summarizing some of the brain research of Allyn Howlett, Lenson reports [p. 153-154]:
| "The cannabinoid receptors Howlett found showed up in vast numbers all over the brain
(as well as in the immune and reproductive systems), though they were clustered in regions
responsible for the mental processes than marijuana is known to alter:
the cerebral cortex (the locus of higher-order thought),
the hippocampus (memory),
the basal ganglia (movement), and
the amygdala (emotions).
... cannabinoid receptors didn't show up in the brain stem,
which regulates involuntary functions such as circulation and respiration.
This might explain the remarkably low toxicity of cannabis and the fact that no one is know
to have ever died from an overdose.
...
[Howlett listed] various direct and indirect effects of cannabinoids: pain relief, loss of short-term memory, sedation, and mild cognitive impairment. 'All of which is exactly what Adam and Eve would want after being thrown out of Eden. You couldn't design a more perfect drug for getting Eve through the pain of childbirth or helping Adam endure a life of physical toil.' " |
Then there is the effect of chocolate on the THC in marijuana and on anandamide, the brain's natural bliss chemical:
| "THC is far stronger and more persistent than anandamide, which, like most neurotransmitters, is designed to break down very slowly soon after its release. (Chocolate, of all things, seems to slow this process, which might account for its own subtle mood-altering properties.)" |
He [p.168] discusses how "memory is the enemy of wonder" and that cannabis's memory-inhibition property may well be the cause of much of the pleasure of its company.
The chapter on the potato comments [p.204] that in 1794-England the introduction of the potato as an alternative staple on the failure of the wheat harvest:
| "In the same way that the potato exempts the potato eater from the civilizing process of bread making, it also exempts him from the discipline of the economy." |
The analogy depends, however, on the potato (rather than the wheat) appearing second.
The buried lead [p. 236] is that the FDA does not consider the 'Bt'-containing (genetically modified) NewLeaf potato a food. In fact,
| "in the eyes of the the federal government, not a food at all but a pesticide, putting it in the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency." |
Also includes:
Very helpful to see the original French (written in variations of the Ballade form) in parallel with the translation.
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Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels (2006)
by Scott McCloud. Terrific book. A great introduction (with lots of exercises and notes) to creating the images and words of comics. Includes many frames drawn by (and credited to) other comics authors. See also:
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The book's inside cover says: "Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, ... it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places." [A decade ahead of its time?]
Read its start, its close, and some of its places in between: none of it held my interest, despite my appreciation of his second novel, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), which is more concise and less rambling. It's enormous (1085-pages, over 100 characters) so there is probably something good in there that I missed. But life is short.
Dean uses the concept of the "authoritarian personality" (and the research) of Robert Altemeyer in this analysis of conservative behavior, the George W. Bush administration, and "neoconservatism". He reviews for a general reader the data in psychology (references include Robert Altemeyer's Enemies of Freedom), sociology, and politics, centered on applying what is known about the authoritarian personality's methods, tricks, and defenses.
Altemeyer identified three particularly important aspects of the authoritarian personality:
Dean presents two types of authoritarians:
Noir, expediency, and authoritarianism of full and strict government control of the radical conservatives of the radically shifted Republican party including the George W. Bush administration.
Fascinating commentary on the power of the authoritarian approach of the early-21st-century administration of V.P. Richard Cheney ("an authoritarian dominator") and President George W. Bush.
[From Disc 1]. "Authoritarian thinking was the principal force behind everything that went wrong with the Nixon White House."
[From Disc 7]. "Bad judgment is Dick Cheney's trademark." Examples given. Presents "Cheney as the mind of this presidency, with Bush its salesman." Carl Rove as a promoter of winning elections by making the voters fearful.
See also USA Modern History Glossary.
Began reading texts for class on modern USA history:
See also
"Webb was able to speak bluntly ('The President took us into this war recklessly')
not only because he writes that way but also on account of a Kevlar resumé.
... Webb noted that he and his kin, like many other soldiers,
None of that, he made plain, has been forthcoming from the present Administration. As for Bush's speech, its principal merit was that it provided a pretext for Webb's." |
This first book in Sandford's series on Lucas Davenport and serial killers has a killer whose criminal mind is intelligent and organized, a match for the intelligence and game-playing of Lucas. Seems to be more explicit nastiness than in some of Sandford's later books, although Sandford often uses implication of nastiness rather than making you endure it explicitly.
Tense scenes are admirably extended by a Hitchcock-like technique of showing the same scene overlapping in time from more than one point of view.
A parallel plot shows Davenport entanglements with women.
Others are:
{ January (enero (see also books on Spanish)) 2007 }
Cites evidence that anti-Semitism is not native to Islam, but is an import to Islam from Christianity,
Comments upon the peacefulness of the Islamic scriptures, which do not condone terrorism. Apologia for the bloodshed-to-bring-peace approach at the start of Islam.
Also see the Time Chart for Iran and Iraq.
What a disappointment. Sound like a collection of revenge poems. Other writers have compared Anne Carson favorably to Louise Glück. This book shows them as rather similar.
Don't bother to read this. Read Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red: a Novel in Verse.
Includes the spectacular ghazals of Shail D. Patel, with their five short-line stanzas and smart slant rhymes (like will-freewheel-will-well-evil-Shail-wills) in "The Rule":
Discipline. Free will
Doesn't mean freewheel.
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His algorithm for solving all problems (including problems of the heart, one wonders) is:
Three parts:
The former spent its opening chapter on VERY heavy-handed "the story so far" exposition. Science fiction surely does not have to be like this. The latter opened boringly (Why to Stop Reading a Book) also, with an avoided confrontation. Both dragged. Jumping to the final chapter did not make me want to read what went between.
Why waste time on such when one can read the brilliant Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red: a Novel in Verse? Or one any number of best books.
I borrowed this because I heard a reading of Neil Gaiman's brilliant short story "Chivalry", from his Angels and Visitations (1993), a collection of his short fiction and nonfiction. by Neil Gaiman. "Chivalry" is one of the cleverest and most delightful stories I have heard.
Also Gaiman created the book and the film script for the delightful Stardust.
Sadly Anansi boys sounds like a poor version of a book by Robert Rankin, such as Rankin's delicious: The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, Nostradamus Ate My Hamster, and The Fandom of the Operator.
And is way, way, way weaker than anything by Terry Pratchett.
Each of their 12 collections includes work by a guest poet, in this case Fay Aoyagi, who is one of the few poets today that is successful in both Japanese-language and English-language haiku journals: "often it is the subtle interplay of emotions from her Japanese roots and her American life of choice that carries the deepest meaning".
Noir and racism at the golf courses of LA from the mid-1950s. Violence and psychotics are so overt and in-your-face compared with how John Sandford veils (and only hints at) the most cruel actions in his series on Davenport's serial killers (e.g. Broken Prey). Dexter won the 1988 National Book Award for his novel Paris Trout.
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Autobiography of Red: a Novel in Verse (1998)
by Anne Carson.
Brilliant. Striking movement of a legend into the modern world. Other writers have compared Anne Carson favorably to Louise Glück. Carson has a more interesting voice, in this book, compared with anything of Gluck's. One of the best books read in 2007. |
Essays critical of Eliot, Pound, Yeats, and Auden, and enthusiastic of William Carlos Williams, Dylan Thomas, and Henry Miller.
7th in his series of Davenport's serial killers, another scary exploration of the nastiness of the criminal mind. A psychotherapist and her daughters are captured by one of her ex-patients. A lot of nastiness, although Sandford often uses implication of nastiness rather than making you endure it explicitly. A parallel plot shows Davenport trying to decide to ask his sweetie to marry him.
Others are:
Striking and sometimes startling fifth book of poems. Won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Boston Globe Literary Press Award, and the Poetry Society of America's Melville Kane Award.
Essays critical of Eliot, Pound, Yeats, and Auden, and enthusiastic of William Carlos Williams, Dylan Thomas, and Henry Miller.
[This is much better than the 2007 rambling Against the day.]
Tone is very similar to that of the more recent Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk, whom Pynchon has apparently influenced.
Palahniuk read so far are:
A vigorous if occasionally inaccurate version.
Dutch poet born in Dutch Guiana (now Surinam) in 1933; died 1990. Published 8 books (1968-1990); about one every 4 years.
Themes include:
Style include:
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Books on Buddhism.
Books on Learning Spanish.
Poetry - Learn How to Write Your Own.
Forests of California and Trees of the World.
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