Books read recently by J. Zimmerman.
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Books read Best books read in 2007. Best writers of poetry and prose Harry Potter; also Harry Potter en Español. New books on Christianity and Spirituality by Pagels, Ehrman, et al. | ||
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The Mental Health of George W. Bush
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{ December : diciembre (see also books on learning Spanish)) 2007 }
Well, now that I have a slippery grip on the alphabet and the accents, and some of the femine NOUNS and some of present and future tense of simple verbs ... Only 23 more units, 10 appendixes, and a miscellany of other material to go ...
Began Chapter 1.
Well, now that I have a slippery grip on the alphabet and the accents, the next stop is the NOUNS. Only 24 more units, 10 appendixes, and a miscellany of other material to go ...
A collection of odd short stories, some of which display a suspicious interest of a man in a very young girl. Picked this up because his The Brief History of the Dead, one of the best books read in 2007. But this is a collection to avoid.
As good as The Best American Poetry: 2006, Guest Editor Billy Collins.
Listened to a multi-accented reading (by British actor Nigel Planer) of Hogfather (1999) by Terry Pratchett. |
As it was so great to hear this book a couple of year ago and the year before that, I listened to it all over again. It continues to hold up as the funniest and most creative of the many books by Terry Pratchett.
On Hogwatch Night, the plump Hogfather in his red suit and white beard climbs into his sleigh pulled by four pigs (Gouger, Tusker, Rooter, and Snouter), and delivers gifts to the cargo-cult worshipping (i.e., Capitalist consumer) boys and girls.
This year the Hogfather is missing, and his stand-in is everybody's straight man, DEATH.
The Assassin's Guild is responsible for the disappearance of the Hogfather, and they have been hired by the humorless Auditors of the Universe. The Auditors, being literal-minded accountants, want people to stop believing in things that aren't real and thus causing cosmic disorder.
It's up to Death's adopted granddaughter Susan (the 'gothic governess') to save chaos, and she is aided by a raven (addicted to eating eyeballs), the small-scythe carrying Death of Rats ('the Grim Squeaker'), and Bilious, the God (actually the Oh-God) of Hangovers.
The textbook sociopath in Hogfather is Teatime:
Teatime put a comforting arm around his shoulders. "Don't worry," he said. "I'm on your side. A violent death is the last thing that'll happen to you." |
Various help and hindrance is unleashed by Archchancellor Ridcully and fellow wizards at UU (Unseen University) of not only a practical but also a philosophical nature like:
The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics. But this was only a formal statement of the theory which absolutely everyone, with only some minor details of a 'Fill in name here' nature, secretly believes to be true. |
and Ridcully's:
"That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?" |
Ridcully: "I'm just saying man is naturally a mythopoeic creature."
Senior Wrangler: "What's that mean?" Dean: "Means we make things up as we go along." |
Also recommended: Jingo and Thief of Time.
See also his The Foundations of Western Civilization: Part II and Blog of Part II
He applies his seven habits:
This book is about misdiagnosis.
As opposed to "The Checklist" by Atual Gawande in The New Yorker of 10 December 2007:
"If a new drug were as effective at saving lives
as Peter Pronovost's checklist,
there would be a nationwide marketing campaign urging doctors to use it."
His list to avoid infections when inserting a "line" require that the doctor should:
By doing this at Johns Hopkins Hospital (Gawande reports) "the ten-day line-infection rate went from eleven percent to zero. ...for fifteen months ... in this one hospital, the checklist had prevented forty-three infections and eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs." |
Meanwhile, back at Groopman's book:
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
Attributed to Dr. Terry Light. [p. 173 of hardback first edition.] |
Groopman differentiates it from 'medical mistakes' such as 'prescribing the wrong dose of a drug or looking at the x-ray of a patient backward'. As he says, misdiagnosis is not that straight forward. Rather:
It is a window into the medical mind.
It reveals why doctors fail to question their assumptions, why their thinking is sometimes closed or skewed,
why they have gaps in their knowledge.
... In one study [no citation] of misdiagnoses that account for serious harm to patients, some 80 percent could be accounted for by a cascade of cognitive errors, like ... putting [a patient] into a narrow frame and ignoring information that contradicts a fixed notion. Another study [no citation; may refer to a 2005 article by Mark Graber] of one hundred incorrect diagnoses found that inadequate medical knowledge was the reason for error in only four instances. ... As many as 15 percent of all diagnoses are inaccurate, according to a 1995 report [no citation] in which doctors assessed written descriptions of patients' symptoms and examined actors simulating patients with various diseases. These findings match classical research [no citation], based on autopsies, which shows that 10 percent to 15 percent of all diagnoses are wrong. [p. 24 of hardback first edition.] |
Groopman's book essentially says that in order to perform, doctors employ pattern matching and heuristics (shortcuts), which help them function particularly when under time and emotional pressure. However, the snap into one of those patterns has often prevented a doctor from (a) listening to the patient, (b) understanding what the patient experiences, and (c) making the correct diagnosis.
For that reason, specialists and second opinions are often valuable. Likewise, a patient is wise to recognition of when a doctor fails to listen and to change that doctor.
On Friday, April 13, 2007, Groopman blooged: "I am in favor of improving the system primarily by honing the individual doctor's skills and my peer argues standardization of the medical process."
While Groopman is What I have not seen in Groopman is numbers: how many diagnoses are made correctly by a standardized medical process? And how many iatrogenic illnesses are caused by failure to follow the directions, such as for correctly inserting an I.V?
It would be an error to proclaim that such patterns should not be developed and used, however.
As Groopman writes:
In most cases, a physician arrives at the correct diagnosis and offers
appropriate treatments.
[p. 260 of hardback first edition.] |
Groopman encourages patients to look for doctors that:
Among the questions that Groopman encourages us to ask as patients to help our doctors reach the correct diagnosis (especially as in his "Epilogue: A Patient's Questions"):
Telling the story afresh can help you recall a vital bit of information that you forgot.
Telling the story again may help the physician register some clue that was, in fact,
said the first time but was overlooked or thought unimportant.
This will [?might?] prompt him to look in new directions for answers.
[p. 261 of hardback first edition.] |
Picked this up because his The Brief History of the Dead was so great. Grooves: a Kind of Mystery has some good puns ("The Happy Golden Days of Yor" being one of the best) and ideas, but it's a bit sweet ("twee?").
Nothing close to as good as Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead, one of the best books read in 2007.
It's a COMPLETELY sidetracking killer book on Ancient Greek "spells" -- sort of Harry Potter in Attica. I began with the "binding" spells, which were like preemptive full-body-binds against athlete competitors, legal competitors, love competitors, etc. Then there were curses from the dead. There are herbs, potions, and more!
The Almost Moon is demented and mysteriously consoling. The story concerns how and why the protagonist (as opposed to the author) murdered her aged mother. Sebold walks a delicate tightrope between the dreadfulness of some actions by the protagonist and the immense service that she has made of her life to mordantly help her mother/captor.
One of the best books read in 2007, not least because of the liveliness of Sebold's writing. A few samples:
'Mother,' I said, calling her the name only I,
as her sole child, had the right to call her.
She looked up at me and smiled.
'Bitch,' she said. The thing about dementia is that sometimes your feel like the afflicted person has a trip wire to the truth, as if they can see beneath the skin you hide in. 'Mother, it's Helen,' I said. 'I know who you are!' she barked at me. ... I stood there for a moment longer, until it felt like an established fact. She was my mother and I was her daughter. I thought we could go forward from this into our usual unpleasant encounter. [p. 5 of hardback first edition.] |
Sarah would have been visiting for the weekend,
and she would have helped me carry my mother up the stairs to the bath.
But, more likely, Sarah would have made phone calls.
The simple phone calls that any sane person would have made.
I could not imagine my youngest standing above her soiled grandmother in the
wing chair and saying, 'Mother, let's kill her. That's the only choice.'
|
I had never been able to do Jake's meditation exercises.
I'd sit on the little round black pillow and try to om-out while my feet and hands
went into prickly pins and needles.
Inside my head, strange figures walked in and out as if my brain were a heavily frequented coffee shop.
|
'I think your mother is almost whole,' he said.
|
I wanted to tell her [the mother] that in terms of mystique, she'd
won the lottery ... her mystique was bulletproof,
even if it was more about being creepy and strange than unattainable.
|
My mother was scheduled for an MRI and was deathly afraid.
For weeks beforehand, I had arrived to find her lying on the floor of the living room
with a ticking alarm clock by her head.
'What are you doing?' I'd ask her.
'Practicing,' she'd say.
|
See also The Lovely Bones, Sebold's amazing first novel (one of the best books read in 2006).
Fascinating story of "how it all ends". Concerns the limbo where the dead live as long as someone is alive that remembers them ... and what happens when only three then two people then one person remains alive. It is one of the best books read in 2007.
Wonderfully read by the phenomenally brilliant Richard Poe, whom I've heard read Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby, John Steinbeck's East of Eden, Jane Smiley's Good Faith, and several books by DeLillo.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
Finished dipping in to, so could return:
Initially, in addition to being excessively disgusting in that quintessential Palahniuk mode, it commits a worse sin: it is slow. I began this in October, and felt no loss in setting it aside for November. Today, as I start to dig out from NaNoWriMo 2007 project, I decided to finish it, even if I could only handle it at speed-reading pace.
But it improves midway through, as the grossness decreases (or saturates?) and the concepts hove up through the miasma, so the threads becomes as "clear" as they ever do in a Palahniuk novel, including:
"Picture time less like a river than a book ... already done and complete."
[p. 305 of hardback first edition.] |
"Picture time travel as nothing more than knocking your half-read book to
the floor and losing your place.
You pick up the book and open the pages to a scene too early or too later,
but never exactly where you've been reading."
[p. 305 of hardback first edition.] |
"suspended outside the linear movement of time which human beings experience. ... has no beginning and no end. Nothing is subject to the natural processes of decay and replacement. In Liminal Time, nothing is born and nothing dies." [p. 265 of hardback first edition.] |
"means you flashback to breed a better you."
[p. 267 of hardback first edition.] |
"means you slaughter some ancestor to make sure you'll never be born."
[p. 267 of hardback first edition.] |
For anything approaching explanations of other things, like Boosting, Reverse Pioneering, the Historians, and Party Crashing, you just have to read the whole book.
The multiple (50 or so) narrators with their different perceptions of truth, and still greater differences in their perceptions of the truths they want to communicate, turn out to be fairly interesting. Initially it gives the book a Russian novel aura of "who are all these people?" Part of the reason for that confusion is that the voices are not on the whole distinguishable: I had to checking who was speaking.
This book is relevant to my NaNoWriMo 2007 project, which also uses multiple (though not as many) voices ... and tries to separate them.
Even so, it won't approach the splendor of Lullaby.
Other Palahniuk books read:
{ November : noviembre (see also books on learning Spanish)) 2007 }
(11.30.2007)
DONE with NanoWriMo 2007:
Other books read in Sue Grafton's series include:
A is for Alibi .
B is for Burglar.
E is for Evidence.
F is for Fugitive:
also a favorite.
I is for Innocent.
K is for Killer.
L is for Lawless.
M is for Malice.
N is for Noose.
O is for Outlaw (1999).
Q is for Quarry (2003).
R is for Ricochet (2004).
S is for Silence (2005).
my favorite in the series so far, perhaps because of the liveliness of the characters.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
A relatively sedate and hype-free essay by Rem Koolhaus was the reason for borrowing the book. He discusses the Pearl River Delta (PRD) project and the lack of Chinese architects, including:
[In China]
Financial aspects determine the height of the building or the change in program.
Changes are sometimes radical:
an office becomes a hospital half-way through construction.
... The beauty of the system is that Chinese architecture is never final, but in permanent conversion. There is no ultimate condition, only mutation from one condition to the other. I would like to suggest to my European colleagues that this is also going to happen here very soon, and our illusion that architecture will ever reach finality will probably evaporate in the next 20 years. In that sense, there is a mysterious, almost sinister quality of premonition and prognosis going on here. [ Sounds just like the anarchy of software development. JZ ] ... In Shenzen there are rice fields and then, without any intermediate condition, the metropolis. The juxtaposition could be described as horrifying but it is also extremely luxurious in the sense that two habitually autonomous situations can coexist in a single system. |
See also: The Story of Philosophy: Volume 1.
(11.12.2007)
It takes apart the FBI categorization of serial killers as being strongly divided into 'organized' and 'disorganized' and it shows the extremely small percentage of cases for which the FBI profilers came close to predicting the attributes of the killer that was finally apprehended. Sample quote:
"The FBI's approach to criminal profiling ... was so full of unverifiable and contradictory and ambiguous language that it could support virtually any interpretation." |
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
Completed dipping into
Whales, Dolphins, and Other Marine Mammals of the World
by Hadoram Shirihai and Brett Jarrett. |
Poems by 11 poets. Favorites:
Prose by 8, plus letters by many. Favorites:
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
I am
an official winner of the 2005 NaNoWriMo -- write a novel in the month of November:
an actual text-only one. | |
an official winner of the 2006 NaNoWriMo -- write a novel in the month of November:
the haiku option. |
So I return for 2007 NaNoWriMo, using the form of the haibun: prose interleaved with haiku, each of which is like a picture and gets a word bonus because a picture is worth a thousand words...
There may be NaNoWriMo 2007 status.
Book Blog will be quiet in November.
{ October : octubre (see also books on learning Spanish)) 2007 }
As part of warm-up for
2007 NaNoWriMo,
finished the The William Blake Tarot by Ed Buryn, based on the work of William Blake. |
Murakami is better (imho) at short stories, particularly After the Quake: Stories.
Finished the
Thursday Next in First Among Sequels
by
Jasper Fforde.
This one almost reaches the brilliance of (2003) The Well of Lost Plots.
Comments on Thursday Next in First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde. |
Favorites include "Enlightened" [p. 5] and "Kafka Cooks Dinner" [pp. 9-18] and especially "Tropical Storm" [p. 19], with its poetic line break:
Like a tropical storm
I, too, may one day become "better organized." |
A superb reference. See especially the discussion about bird Classification Schemes and DNA-DNA hybridization.
Completed Orca: Visions of the Killer Whale (1996) by Peter Knudsen. |
How nostalgic! A peaceful few hours curled on the couch with a sweet old spy novel. While the twists and turns of the plot are sometimes unconvincing, it's a good change to read a page-turner like this, especially after yesterday's struggle.
One of the delights is the way that Deighton's hero responds with jokes and sarcasm to startling accusations or information, e.g.:
"You sit in here and get broody," he accused me.
... "You think I take your money and then don't give a damn."
"Is that your legal training that makes you so perceptive?" I said. "Or have you got second sight?" |
A collection of short and short-short stories. The shorter, the better. In autumn of 2003 she was 1 of 25 to get a MacArthur Foundation ("Genius") award, which indicates that her highly praised work might be a little, um, odd. The voice of the work is a little depressed and obsessively ruminative: like a somber Bridget Jones on downers. Or R.D. Laing. Favorites include "A Natural Disaster" [pp. 43-44] and "Trying to Learn" [p.82] and "How He is Often Right" [p. 147].
More professional and powerful than the also-interesting Sounds from the Unknown (a collection of tanka by Japanese-Americans); translated and edited Lucille M. Nixon and Tomoe Tana.
See also her other side river (1995), volume two in contemporary japanese women's poetry, containing free 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. |
Excellent background on Glass's musical education, on-the-job training with Ravi Shankar, and operas collaborations.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
See also
Tintin: The Complete Companion
for Hergé (author and illustrator)
written by Michael Farr.
Very weird.
Really good, especially for those of us that have run out of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. A fantasy plot that writhes and ripples and reinvents itself in each chapter.
Punch and Judy (of the Show) as marriage counselors are particularly effective.
Many jokes on most pages. One laugh-out-loud joke occurs when, trying to determine some background on the large unexplained explosion in the Berkshire village of Obscurity, Detective Chief Inspector Jack Spratt, quizzing the local vicar, comments on the large size of the church graveyard. The vicar responds, naturally:
You'd be surprised by the number of people who die in Obscurity. |
Another, with an insight almost as verbal as that of George W. Bush, is Jack's realization that a 50-kilogram cucumber is a critical-mass ultimate weapon:
"McGuffin, flitting around with his Men in Green,
in the background, was changing, crossbreeding, bioengineering
and reseeding until he had created a devastatingly destructive power that could be
created in a grow bag with nothing more complex than a dibbler
and a watering can."
"You mean . . . ?" "Right," growled Jack. "Cuclear energy." |
And then there is the admission that the Gingerbreadman:
is the prototype of Project Ginja Assassin, a bioculinary weapons technology ... impervious to pity, guilt or scruples, as the advance guard of an army on the move ... agile, adaptable, tireless and highly motivated -- the perfect Ginja. |
This one almost reaches the brilliance of his Thursday Next books:
Nursery Crime books:
This book compares especially unfavorably with those of Jim Crace, a brilliant maker of both modern and ancient myths. See for example, The Gift of Stones.
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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