Books read recently by J. Zimmerman.
Inspired in part by Catarina.net's book blog.

Check disclaimer or links or archive of books read or best books read. Our current web log of Books. Mental Health of George W. Bush.

Reader's Bill of Rights - after Daniel Pennac in Better than Life as quoted in the November 2003 Utne Magazine - includes the rights to:

Skip pages Reread Not read Not finish Not defend your tastes

George Orwell (1938) in Homage to Catalonia (though, of course, one could say this about the Bush-Cheney regime in the 21st century):

"The workers could always be brought to heel by an argument that was almost too obvious to need stating: Unless you do this, that, and the other, we shall lose the war." "Every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency."

Real Chocolate : Sweet and Savory Recipes for Nature's Purest Form of Bliss by Chantal Coady. See also our chocolate page. Includes 50 delicious recipes from a leading campaigner for REAL chocolate. Try her Chocolate bombe, Chocolate nemesis revisited, Bad Girl's Trifle.

{ June (junio) 2004 }

(06.29.2004)

• I checked the current results at Ariadne Unst's poll on G. W. Bush's mental health. She had data from the first respondents, with these results (rounding by survey tool causes percentages to not always add up to 100 but numbers are accurate):

  What is the most obvious mental health problem of G. W. Bush? Number of votes: 40 Antisocial Personality Disorder (DSM 301.7). (1) 2% Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Predom. hyperactivity (3) 7% Delusional Disorder (297.1). (13) 32% Dry drunk (as Alcohol-Related Disorder NOS) (DSM 291.9). (11) 27% Narcissistic Personality Disorder (DSM 301.81). (6) 15% Politician Syndrome (proposed new DSM category 333.333). (2) 5% Some other mental health diagnosis. (2) 5% No problem: he is mentally healthy. (2) 5%

• Finished (and see our comments) Lapsing into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print -- and How to Avoid Them, Bill Walsh. An opinionated, humorous commentary and style guide.

• Finished Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center by Michael Downing (2002).

  A fascinating book about the people at the San Francisco Zen Center in the last third of the twentieth century. Problems at the S.F. Zen Center in the 1970's and 1980's led to the resignation of their Abbot, Richard Baker. What happened in 1983 among Richard Baker, Reb Anderson, and others has been a mystery (despite some newspaper articles that mostly focused on the more bizarre behaviors). This book, which aims for clarity rather than gossip, is the first book to unite published material with interviews by all of the key participants willing to communicate. Downing was an outsider to the Zen Center and to these events, and thus is probably a less biased recorder than most of those involved could be.

  Even Richard Baker communicates, such as by giving a statement of his sexual relationships from 1962 to 1983. Downing publishes this statement. Then he juxtaposes each sentence with quotations from women and men that were participants in the reported events, quotations that show not only different interpretations but also different facts from Baker's. There is a lot about the use of money and the use of sex, the abuse of power. In the end, the majority rejected:

  " Richard [who] was able to shrug off . . . even Zen Center itself. That is the fundamental story of Buddhism - almost. In the traditional telling of the tale, the Buddha shrugged off his own palace, not someone else's." (p.246)

  See also more books on Buddhism.

• Finished Quick Fit: The Complete 15-minute No-sweat Workout by Richard Bradley and made some notes. His basic program has a huge advantage over most exercise programs: Bradley's is for normal people. Start with 10 minutes of brisk aerobics (e.g. walk half a mile, or dance). Finish with half a dozen strengthening and stretching exercises for only 5 minutes more.

• Finished The Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action by Wendy Northcutt. I read much of this while dining alone in a restaurant: seven people asked me what was so funny. I gave each of them the gist of a story I'd just read. The men guffawed in great delight. So did most of the women, though one looked put off her food.

  The Darwin Awards go to someone who has died or someone who has destroyed their ability to breed. The are not people who die of natural causes, nor people who one die in an accident that is someone else's fault.

  The recipients of the Darwin Awards are men (and a very few women) who remove themselves from the gene pool in ways that show their failure to grasp cause and effect. Play roulette with a land mine in a bar, and the mine is going to explode. Treat a Bengal tiger or a burning stick of dynamite as "safe" and you will probably be astonished. While urban legends are reported, they are identified as being the embroideries that they are. Checkout reviews at Amazon for more examples.

• Finished The Man that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester. As a canal digger and a surveyor in a coal mine, William Smith noticed what many before him had seen: changes in the rock as one descends into the earth. The unique thing about Smith was that he then traveled for two decades throughout Britain, collecting data that he integrated into his map (published in 1815), his 8-by-6-foot "A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales."

  Smith is called "the father of modern geology" and geologists have found this book "inspirational." For some of the rest of us, however, it can at times be a little like trying to walk through wet clay - a bit of a slog.

• The July/Aug Utne Magazine includes two interesting articles:

  (a) Lombardi's Web by Nick Stillman. Diagrams of power and money links, presented in arcs that display politics as art with titles like George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens circa 1979-90.

  (b) Blogging Off by Whitney Pastorek on the addictions of writing blogs:

  "These days, I don't hear about the stupid stuff that's going on -- 'I got a haircut' or 'My apartment burned down' -- because the bloggers assume that I have read about it on their blogs."

• I checked the current results at Ariadne Unst's poll on G. W. Bush's mental health. She had data from the first respondents, with these results:

  What is the most obvious mental health problem of G. W. Bush? Number of votes: 10 Antisocial Personality Disorder (DSM 301.7). (1) 10% Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Predom. hyperactivity (1) 10% Delusional Disorder (297.1). (5) 50% Dry drunk (as Alcohol-Related Disorder NOS) (DSM 291.9). (2) 20% Narcissistic Personality Disorder (DSM 301.81). (0) 0% Politician Syndrome (proposed new DSM category 333.333). (1) 10% Some other mental health diagnosis. (0) 0% No problem: he is mentally healthy. (0) 0%

• Finished The Warden by Anthony Trollope (1855). This gentle satire is the first of the "Barchester" novels and Trollope's fourth novel, conceived (according to Trollope) on a midsummer evening walking in the vacinity of Salisbury Cathedral.

  The goodness and niceness of its protagonist, Warden Septimus Harding, are at times a little boring. But the book deals with issues of concern through the ages: (1) financial impropriety in the church; (2) the power of manipulators of public opinion, here portrayed as the press; (3) the manipulation of public opinion by novelists (he meant Dickens rather than himself, though Trollope, like Dickens, is grinding an axe).

  Anthony Trollope wrote about 1,000 words per hour.

• Day 2 and page 2 of 1001 Most Useful Spanish Words by Seymour Resnick (1996). This $2 Dover book is a blessing: 55 pages, 20 words a page, roughly. If I study only one page/day, starting at midsummer, . . . See also other books on learning Spanish.

  One of today's words is:

  aguantar. To bear or stand. No puedo aguantar el ruido de la calle. I can't bear the noise from the street.

• Finished All Day Permanent Red: the first battle scenes of Homer's Iliad rewritten by Christopher Logue (2003). I appreciate the way that Logue introduces modern metaphors that bounce anachronistically across the battle field below the walls of Troy. Not yet sure what the movie will look like.

  This covers books 5-8 (I am told) of Homer's Iliad in a form that my high-school Latin teacher would be unlikely to recognize as the same story. See the helpful review by Stephen Burt. For Logue addicts, the current (June/July) issue of Poetry has Logue's more recent episode. He is slowly scything forward through the Iliad, a few years per chapter.

• Began 1001 Most Useful Spanish Words by Seymour Resnick (1996). This $2 Dover book is a blessing: 55 pages, 20 words a page, roughly. If I study only one page/day, starting at midsummer, . . .

  See other books on learning Spanish. One of today's words is:

  acordarse. To remember. ¿Se acuerdan Uds. de nosotros? Do you remember us.

• Finished The Power of Gold by Peter L. Bernstein (2000). Note that Peter L. Bernstein is writing books of the history finances and risk, as opposed to William J. Bernstein, who writes such books as The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio
  See also Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein (1998).

• Abandoned Islandia (1958) by Austin Tappan Wright. This was recommended (as a utopian novel) in the delightful And Tim O'Reilly ( Tim O'Reilly in a Nutshell) listed it as a book that has shaped his thinking. But it was too preachy and soap-opera-ish for me.

• Finished My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey (2003).
  Excellent book about deception, seduction, and obsession. See also his admirable Oscar and Lucinda (one of the best read in 2002).

  This fiction tells of an unreliable narrator (the snobbish poetry editor Lady Sarah Wode-Douglass) reporting a tale told to her by an unreliable hoaxster (the Australian Christopher Chubb), who "invented" the poems of a non-existent Bob McCorkle. The book shadows a "much less well-known episode in Australian history [the literary hoax in the 1940s with the invention of a certain Ern ('Norm' to his pals) Malley] as the basis for this hypnotic novel of personal and artistic obsession."

  The lack of quotation marks is confusing at first. Every chapter or two, I had to scan what I had just read in order to understand who was supposed to own the language. The point presumably being that these characters don't quite own the language. Nor do hoaxsters.

  Much of the sample poetry fragments of Bob McCorkle are the prose-like and derivative (like poor Pound), and are credited to the Max Harris estate (i.e. a co-creator of Ern Malley).

  The narrator, Sarah, is more clever, surprising, and amusing. For example, Sarah notes:

  [In her presentation of part of the tale by the delusioned Chubb, who claims he was in the compound of a mini raja whose warriors not only fight with but attempt to tax their neighbors:] "McCorkle himself strode into the compound trailed by a jostling mob of excited tax-collectors."

  and:

  "doubtless I looked as grotesque as a de Kooning."

  The obscenity trial in the book, when the hoaxed editor attempts a weak analysis of work by "McCorkle," is said to have become a performance piece for Australian poetry fans.

  One working theory is that the story is choreographed by the poet John Slater in revenge for the ongoing disdain of Sarah for his work (as a teenager she ripped pages from his book of poems, scribbled criticisms over them, and mailed them to Slater). In addition, one tends to discount Slater's self-serving, trust-winning explanation of his role in the death of Sarah's mother: not only does one lack confidence in Slater's veracity, but one thinks he could have announced his role more calmly in London rather than in Kuala Lumpur.

  John Slater (one's theory continues) has discovered the delusional Christopher Chubb living in Kuala Lumpur with fans of Bob McCorkle. And decides that the hoaxing of editors is too delightful of a game for him to avoid, especially when he has a certain amount of self-serving revenge in hand.

  But maybe this theory is just a hoax. Read the book, be dazzled, and invent your own.

• Finished Between Angels by Stephen Dunn (1989).
  His New and Selected Poems 1974-1994 contains 26 poems from Between Angels, although this collection is bleaker than his earlier book, Local Time (1986).

  My favorites include:

  • (p.23.) Men Talk, which contains:

    Friendship: someone leaning to your side of the truth.

  • (p.35.) On the Way To Work, which contains and ends thus:

    . . . How could we not have become friends or the kind of enemies who must talk into the night just one mistake away from love? . . . I had so much to tell her before we die about what I'd done all these years in between, under, and around truths like hers. Who knows where we would have stopped?

  • (p.54-85.) Hawk, which ends:

    and the unwritten caption that to be wild means nothing you do or have done needs to be explained.

  • (p.108-109.) The Retarded Angel, which ends:

    Whoever sent you must have been desperate and accidentally brilliant, you with whom we'd never argue, the damaged, unnerving, barely hopeful, last resort.

  The book's closing poem (p.110-111) is Walking the Marshlands, and it ends:

  But already we were near the end. Praise refuge, I thought. Praise whatever you can.

• Finished: Border Crossing by Pat Barker (2001).
  A book of about juvenile murderers and torturers, and the redemption of two of them. An exploration of those with anti-social personality disorder and their recovery.

• Abandoned Jigsaw (1989) by Sybille Bedford. Even though this was recommended in the delightful Lost Classics it was too self-absorbed to interest me.

• Finished:

  Nine Horses (2003), by Billy Collins.

  Delicious. His balance of lightness and depth pulls us into his poems which are not, despite their candy-like payoffs, superficial. There must be a recipe one could write of how to construct a Billy Collins poem.

• Listened to cassette of Susan Sontag reading portions of her book The Volcano Lover (1993). The tape is excerpts (and not an abridgment) of her book about Sir William Hamilton (who is the lover of a volcano), about his ex-courtesan 2nd wife Emma, and about Admiral Lord Nelson, Britain's Naval hero glorified in Trafalgar Square, London. Sontag avoids using the names of these characters, perhaps to minimize the baggage of preconceptions that we bring to her story, though it does make her tale seem needlessly obscure at times. Fortunately, I had read Saving Nelson previously, so I had some earlier ideas of what was going on amongst these three characters.

  See also Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others.

• Skimmed The nature of music : beauty, sound, and healing by Maureen Draper (2001).

• Read The gas we pass by Shinta Cho (Translator Amanda Mayer Stinchecum) (1994).
  Another gem from the author of Everyone Poops. We read it out loud to each other in the delightful digestive pause between fresh grilled salmon (did you know that fish is a prolific generator of gas?) and organic cherries with our basic food group - chocolate (whose gas-generative power is not known at this time).
  Bolder than Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School, funnier than The elegant universe, more luridly illustrated than The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, this book gets 7 on the Laugh-out-loud-ometer.

• Skimmed The elegant universe: superstrings, hidden dimensions, and the quest for the ultimate theory by Brian Greene (1999).
  Greene's book (less funny and sociopathic and with more illustrations than Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) tells you about Everything.

  Despite his good looks and plethora of gushing adjectives, Mr. Greene cannot remove the concerns of many empirical physicists (as I once was) that: "superstring theory is in a crucial way incomplete. And, above all, it has fundamental problems with empirical testability problems that make questionable its status as a physical theory at all." [from 2002 presentation at University of Pittsburgh by Dr. Reiner Hedrich, Zentrum fuer Philosophie und Grundlagen der Wissenschaft, Justus Liebig University, Giessen].

  To decide if it's worth reading the whole book, start with the last chapter, Prospects, where Green describes "five central questions string theorists will face as they continue the pursuit of the ultimate theory":

  1. What is the fundamental principle underlying string theory?
  2. What are space and time? We presuppose the existence of space and time in which we place strings. Is there a zero-brane (or no-brainer)?
  3. Will string theory lead to a reformulation of quantum mechanics?
  4. Can string theory be experimentally tested? Can 'superpartner' particles be discovered, for example.
  5. Are there limits to scientific explanations? Or is that idea just a cop-out of an erroneous theory? Maybe string theory is merely "contributing our rung on the human ladder reaching for the stars."

  Or read Chapter 12, Beyond Strings.

  To touch the pulse of what may ultimately be the Late Great String Theory, here are a few definitions from the book:

  brane: "Any of the extended objects that arise in string theory. A one-brane is a 'string', a two-brane is a membrane, a three-brane has three extended dimensions, etc. More generally, a p-brane has p spatial dimensions. " [It would be a cheap shot to call string theory pea-brained.] closed string: "A type of string that is in the shape of a loop." curled-up dimension: "a spatial dimension that does not have an observably large spatial extent; a spatial dimension that is crumpled, wrapped, or curled up into a tiny size, thereby evading direct detection." dual, duality, duality symmetries: "Situation in which two or more theories appear to be completely different, yet actually give rise to identical physical consequences." eleven-dimensional supergravity: "Higher-dimensional supergravity theory developed in the 1970s, subsequently ignored, and more recently shown to be an important part of string theory." entropy: "A measure of the disorder of a physical system; the number of rearrangements of the ingredients of a system that leave its overall appearance intact." gauge symmetry: "Symmetry principle underlying the quantum-mechanical description of the three nongravitational forces; the symmetry involves the invariance of a physical system under various shifts in the values of force changes, shifts that can change from place to place and from moment to moment." M-theory: "Theory emerging from the second superstring revolution that unites the previous five superstring theories within a single over-arching framework. M-theory appears to be a theory involving eleven spacetime dimensions." In 1995, Edward Witten that the five string theories were different ways of describing the same underlying physics. This lead to M-theory, which includes not only vibrating strings but also vibrating 2-dimensional membranes (2-branes), undulating 3-dimensional blobs (3-branes), and so on. open string: "A type of string with two free ends." perturbation theory: "Framework for simplifying a difficult problem by finding an approximate solution that is subsequently refined as more details, initially ignored, are systematically included." Planck energy: "About 1 megawatt hour. The energy necessary to probe the distances as small as the Planck length. The typical energy of a vibrating string in string theory." Planck length: "About 10-33 centimeters. The scale below which quantum fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime would become enormous. The size of a typical string in string theory." Planck mass: "About 10 billion billion times the mass of a proton, about one hundred thousandth of a gram; about the mass of a small grain of dust. The typical mass equivalent of a vibrating string in string theory." Planck's constant: "About 10 billion billion times the mass of a proton, about one hundred thousandth of a gram; about the mass of a small grain of dust. The typical mass equivalent of a vibrating string in string theory." Planck tension: "About 10 39 tons. The tension on a typical string in string theory." Planck time: "About 10 -43 seconds. The time that it takes light to travel the Planck length." string: "Fundamental one-dimensional object that is the essential ingredient in string theory." string theory: "Unified theory of the universe postulating that fundamental ingredients of nature are not zero-dimensional point particles but tiny one-dimensional filaments called 'strings'. String theory harmoniously unites quantum mechanics and general relativity, the previously known laws of the small and the large, that are otherwise incompatible. Often short for superstring theory." [p.284] "Having five proposals takes significant wind from the sails of each." The first self-consistent theories were these 5: (1). Type I SO(32). Involves both open and closed strings. (2). Type IIA. Involves closed strings with left-right symmetric vibrational patterns. (3). Type IIB. As Type IIA, but with asymmetric vibrational patterns. (4). Heterotic-E (hererotic E8 x E8 or E8 x E8 Heterotic) (5). Heterotic-O (hererotic O(32) or SO(32) Heterotic ) wave-particle duality: "Basic feature of quantum mechanics that objects manifest both wavelike and particle-like properties." winding energy: "The energy embodied by a string wound around a circular dimension of space." winding number: "The number of times a string is wound around a circular spatial dimension."

{ May (mayo) 2004 }

(05.31.2004)

• Finished An Equal Music by Vikram Seth (1999).
  A book about love for music and between people.

(05.30.2004)

• Skimmed The constants of nature : from Alpha to Omega -- the numbers that encode the deepest secrets of the universe by John D Barrow (2002).
  "The constants of nature are the numbers that define the universe. They tell us how strong its forces are and what its fundamental laws can do." From skimming this book, one might be hard-pressed to be sure one had a grasp on all "the numbers that define the universe", though.

  Some good epigraphs, such as:

  "What happens first is not necessarily the beginning." Henning Mankell. "I am a mathematician to this extent: I can follow triple integrals if they are done slowly on a large blackboard by a personal friend." J.W. McReynolds.

  The specifics of the constants are swamped by the trivial pursuit of entertaining in-text numbers like:

  "in the seventeenth century the English physicist, Robert Hooke made a calculation 'of the number of separate ideas the mind is capable of entertaining'. The answer he got was 3,155,760,000. . . . {However] 10-to-the-70,000,000,000,000 . . . is the modern estimate of the number of different electrical patterns that the brain could hold. This number is so vast that it dwarfs the number of atoms in the observable Universe - a mere 10-to-the-80.

  With diligence, one finds the "dimensionless" constants. Note that alpha appears in his index, but omega does not:

  α, the fine structure constant, is a combination of the electronic charge, e, the speed of light, c: and Planck's constant, h. α = 2 π e2 ~ 1/137 Also: αG = G . m pr2 / hc ~ 10 -38

  Barrow recommends "use the 'natural' units of mass, length and time that Stoney and Planck introduced to help us escape from the strait-jacket of a human-centered perspective":

  Planck's units [p26] (for what they are worth, NPI) are:

  m pl = (h . c / G ) 1/2 = 5.56 * 10 -5 grams l pl = (G . h / (c 3 ) ) 1/2 = 4.13 * 10 -33 centimeters t pl = (G . h / (c 5 ) ) 1/2 = 1.38 * 10 -43 seconds T pl = k -1 . (h . (c 5 ) / G ) 1/2 = 3.5 * 10 32 Kelvin

  While the 'naturalness' of these numbers is in the beholder's endorphines, here is how Barrow claims that the universe measures up:

  "... present age of visible universe ~ 1060 Planck-times ... present size of visible universe ~ 1060 Planck-lengths ... present mass of visible universe ~ 1060 Planck-masses ... present density of visible universe ~ 10-120 of the Planck density ... present temperature (at three degrees above absolute zero) of visible universe ~ 10-30 of the Planck temperature

  Be warned, as other reviewers have observed, that there is " a certain amount of carelessness" in this book that makes one less than keen to read it in full detail - despite some of its above attractions.

• Skimmed In Search of the Ultimate Building Blocks by Gerard 't Hooft (1997).
  A personal account of developments in particle physics from the 1960's to 1990's.
  He describes size, atoms, molecules, quanta, dot-dot-dot. Check out some of these terms to toss about in conversation and your poems:

  baryon: Particle sensitive to the strong force. Has a spin of 1.5 and consists of 3 quarks. boson: [As opposed to Bozo - see George W. Bush] Particle with integer spin [as opposed to political spin - again, see George W. Bush]. color force: "force by which quarks are attracted to one another." Copenhagen interpretation: "the view that quantum mechanics yields all possible information concerning probability distribution. Descriptions in terms of particles and waves are 'complementary'." Dirac sea: According to Dirac's original theory, this is "infinite reservoir of negative energy particles populating empty space. . . . These particles are themselves invisible, but if one of them is absent this is observed as an antiparticle." fermion: A particle whose spin is half-integer (.5, 1.5, 2.5, etc.). field: "quantity depending on where in time and space it is measured, such as air pressure, temperature distributions, etc. Also the height of water can be regarded as a field. Oscillations in a field are called 'waves'." field equations: "laws determining the time dependence of a field." gauge field: "field of a 'guage boson', a spin 1 particle transmitting a force comparable with the electromagnetic force, in which gauge invariance plays an important role." gauge invariance: "absence of any change when a gauge transformation . . . is performed." gauge transformation: "change in our description of some situation that does not affect the physically observed phenomena that we are describing." gluon: "energy quantum of the strong force; a particle of spin 1 that transmits the strong force between quarks." hadron: "a particle sensitive to the strong force. Includes the baryons and mesons." Higgs particle: "Boson with spin 0, not easily detectable yet populating empty space in huge quantities." Kaluza-Klein theory: "theory describing new dimensions of space and time that are tightly curled up." knot theory: "mathematical theory of knots and links. A closed piece of string can carry knots of different sorts; several closed strings can be tied together in links. A knot or link is said to be different from another knot or link if one cannot be deformed into the other by moving the strings around or stretching them." lepton: Particle insensitive to the strong force and with spin of 0.5. mass: "extent to which a particle persists in its motion (inertia)." mirror symmetry; also called Parity (P): "extent to which a physical phenomenon or a particle resembles its mirror image." Pauli's exclusion principle: "no two fermions can exist at the same point, or more generally occupy the same quantum state, unless they are in some other sense different from each other (different spin direction or different color, for instance). Fermions have to stay away from each other." quantum chromodynamics: "theory describing the strong 'color' forces between quarks in a hadron, based on the mathematical 'group' called SU(3)." quantum electrodynamics: "theory describing the electromagnetic interactions between electrons and photons." quantum mechanics: "theory describing the way small and light particles move, in which probabilities play an essential role. Electron, spin and several other properties of the particle are 'quantized'." quark (the definition you have been looking for!): "building block of the hadrons. A fermion with spin 0.5. Occurs only in multiples of three or is bound to an antiquark. Six species are know"0: bottom (or beauty), charm, down, strange, top (or truth, the 6th heaviest quark), and up. relativity, general: "detailed geometric treatment of curved space and time, enabling one to understand the gravitational force, as discovered by Einstein in 1915." relativity, special: "geometric theory of space and time set up in such a way that the velocity of light appears to be the same for all observers, as discovered by Einstein in 1905." string theory: "depicts particles as little pieces of string - either open-ended or in closed loops. Different particle types correspond to the different modes of vibration and rotation of a string." strong force: "force acting between the hadrons, which gives them their shape." supergravity: "mathematical construction that manages to combine supersymmetry with the gravitational force." TOE: "'Theory of Everything' Set of equations . . . that describes space-time, matter and forces controlling all motion with, in principle, infinite accuracy." weak force: "force acting between all known particles. Very weak and with a very small range." WIMPs: "weakly interacting massive particles, an as yet unknown species of particles that may be present in huge quantities between the galaxies, producing gravitational fields there."

• Finished The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin (2002).
  More puns than Nostradamus Ate My Hamster and an even better plot than my previous favorite, The Fandom of the Operator. A serial killer is mowing down the famous elite of Toy Town (now grown into a Toy City) but thanks to a crack[ed] detective team of a 13-year-old boy and Ed, the teddy bear, ...
  As I laud elsewhere, Rankin's work is the love-child of Douglas Adams and Monty Python on a date with Kafka. A lot of fun and drama, thanks especially to Rankin's excellent CD reading.

• Finished The Art of War by Sun Tzu (before 400 B.C.) translated by Ralph D. Sawyer. A solid but dry version of this classic. I much prefer the Asiapac Comic version of The Art of War translated by Leong Weng Kam edited and illustrated by Tsai Chih Chung.

  None the less, here are some handy quotes from the Sawyer version, which a Commander-in-Chief (if one happens to read this Blog) would do well to use:

  "Warfare should not be undertaken unless the state is threatened." "If it is not advantageous, do not move." "The ruler cannot mobilize the army out of personal anger." "A vanquished state cannot be revived."

  More cynically such a C-in-C does appear to follow some of the advice, including:

  "Attack what they love first." "Compel them [those whose support you desire] with prospects for profit, but do not inform them about potential harm."

• Walked with thousands through the magnificent opened-today Koolhaas-designed Seattle Public Library. Oh my.
  The best is possibly the book spiral, where you glide over the rubber mats in the floor that show you the Dewey Decimal Codes of the books in the shelves you are passing. Or the ugly and interesting neurotic talking heads. Or the 10th-floor reading-room with its slanted glass walls and glorious views of the city skyline and the ocean.
  Probably, though, the best was the way each staff member, volunteer, and visitor grinned or smiled demurely at the prospect of years of exploration of one of our favorite passions and joys - books, wonderful books.

Finished:

The Mouse and his Child by Russell Hoban.

Long ago, the teacher and creator JoAnn King recommended this book as one of her favorites. Spurred by Lost Classics finally I read it, and find that it teaches about nature - of both the tooth-and-claw variety and the milk-of-human variety. Also, lots of lovely puns including:
"'The elephant of surprise. Element,' he corrected himself." (05.16.2004)

• Skimmed Algorithms In Java: Parts 1-4 by Robert Sedgewick.

  This is a superb book for anyone learning to use Java effectively and to acquire "as broad a range of fundamental algorithms as possible." Lots of walked-through examples and lots of exercises for the reader. I admire the images that illustrate how algorithms work, especially the tilted-line diagrams on p.291 that compare "the ways that insertion sort, selection sort, and bubble sort bring a file to order." The standard complaint applies: no answers are provided.

• Finished Lost Classics: Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct, or Otherwise Out of Commission edited by Michael Redhill, Michael Ondaatje et al.

  A precious book of small essays (1 to 5 pages) by scores of authors, who each name one of the books that influenced them most when young. From its possible books, I now want to read at least:

  1. Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets by Alun Lewis (recommended by poet Philip Levine).
  2. Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright.
  3. Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford
  4. Lependu (The Hanged) by Donald McKay.
  5. The Gates of Horn by G.R. Levy (recommended by poet W.S. Merwin).
  6. The Mouse and his Child by Russell Hoban. DONE
  7. The Name and Nature of Poetry by A.E.Housman.
  8. Old Wives Tales by Arnold Bennett.
  9. Treatise on Style by Louis Aragon.
  10. The Twilight of Briareus (science fiction) by Richard Cowper (recommended by writer Eden Robinson).

• Delighted to hear today's Weekend Edition radio interview with Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. and Tears of the Giraffe.

Finished:

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein (1998). See our review.

(05.10.2004)

• Finished Nostradamus Ate my Hamster by Robert Rankin (1996).
  Almost as wonderfully weird as The Fandom of the Operator. The multi-time defeat of A. Hitler, narrated by the tongue-in-cheek author.

  "All the Hollywood greats are there -- all the dead ones anyway. Thanks to a neat bit of software, they can produce life-sized moving holograms of famous film stars. But the big question is, 'Where did they get the software?' Or should the question be 'when?'"

• Finished skimming Abnormal Psychology by David Rosenhan and Martin Seligman.
  A decent text.

• Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. A delight.

• Found some good handmade cards - look for them in your local independent book story. They combine brush art with favorite quotes like:

  There is no way to Happiness. Happiness is the way. (Buddhist)

  and:

  He who hesitates before each step spends his life on one leg. (Ancient Chinese proverb)

{ April (abril) 2004 }

• In progress: Poems for the Millennium: Vol 2; From Postwar to Millennium Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris.
  A huge book (almost 900 pages) - and this is only one of two volumes.
  This global anthology of twentieth century poets begins with Charles Olson and Paul Celan, Anna Akhmatova and John Cage. Then it ranges wider, including:
  • the Vienna Group,
  • the Tammuzi Poets,
  • Concrete Poetry
  • Beat Poetry,
  • the Art of the Manifesto
  • Postwar Japanese Poetry,
  • Language Poetry,
  • The Misty Poets,
  • Cyberpoetics Poetics.

(04.27.2004)

• Abandoned Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes.
  Boring. Pretentious.

(04.25.2004)

• Finished The Fandom of the Operator by Robert Rankin (2001).
  Wonderfully weird, on the rise of the neo-British Empire. The love-child of Douglas Adams and Monty Python on a date with Kafka.

  "Gary Cheese is twenty-two. His hobbies include music, girls, TC, and the novels of the legendary P.P. Penrose. And of course, attempting to reanimate the dead. ..."

  
  
  Wicked puns and other jokes. An evil story. Great entertainment.

Lent is over, so I sipped a Gewurtztraminer, nibbled dark chocolate, and read the delicious:

Real Chocolate : Sweet and Savory Recipes for Nature's Purest Form of Bliss by Chantal Coady. Improve your Defense of Dark Chocolate Arts

See her book for fifty delicious recipes from a leading campaigner for REAL chocolate.
Try her Chocolate bombe, Chocolate nemesis revisited, and Bad Girl's Trifle.

See also our chocolate page for how:

1. chocolate is one of the most nutritious and easily digested foods known.
2. chocolate contains many of vitamins, minerals, and complex alkaloids;
3. chocolate is an instant anti-depressant;
4. chocolate provides antibacterial protection.

• Finished (good one for income tax day!) Learned Optimism by Martin E. P. Seligman (1991).
  See our comments on 'Learned Optimism'.

• Finished How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen (2002).
  14 personal essays and opinions on the U.S.A., the value of reading, his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease, the horrors of the Chicago Postal Service, the super-max prisions, the difficulties of having The Corrections selected by the Oprah book club, etc. Franzen's skilled command of English creates throught-stimulating essays, despite his part-anxious, part-depressed, and part-querulous tone.

One of the best books read in 2004. Finished Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell (1938). See our review of 'Homage to Catalonia'.

A riveting book, and one of the few to clarify the mysterious Spanish Civil War. While it is not a comedy, it is often funny because Orwell and his companions were able to see some of the humor in their dire circumstances.

In 1936, Eric Blair (the novelist, critic, and political satirist who used the pseudonym George Orwell) went to Spain to write about the Spanish Civil War, and to enlist in a Socialist Republican militia. He said he went to Spain "to fight Fascism" and that he was fighting for "common decency". Throughout Homage to Catalonia, one gets a sense of Orwell's commitment to honesty.

During 1936 and 1937, he fought with the "Trotskyist" P.O.U.M. in support of the Republican government. In the trenches in the Catalan section of Spain, he battled against the attempted take-over by Franco's Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Despite the sacrifices by the Spanish and volunteers from Britain and the United States, Franco and his fellow-Fascists defeated the legally elected socialist Republican government of Spain.

Orwell has said: "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it."

See especially Chapter Five. Some quotes:

"His [Franco's] rising was a military mutiny backed up by the aristocracy and the Church, and in the main, especially at the beginning, it was an attempt not so much to impose Fascism as to restore feudalism." "One of the most horrible feature of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting." "It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours." "Every move [by the Communists in Spain] was made in the name of military necessity, ... but the effect was to drive the workers back from an advantageous position and into a position in which, when the war was over, they would find it impossible to resist the reintroduction of capitalism."

(04.07.2004)

• Finished Local Visitations by Stephen Dunn (2003), winner of Pulitzer Prize.
  Contains some wonderful poems.

• Abandoned Cuba Libre (1998) by Elmore Leonard.
  It's 1898 in Cuba, the battleship Maine lies on the bed of Havana harbor, and a USA gun runner arives in Cuba... I could have used more history and less shoot-em-up.

• Finished Death and Restoration by Iain Pears (1996).
  Another good-natured (if one can say that about murder) Jonathan Argyll murder mystery, set in Rome.

Related pages: 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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