Books read recently by J. Zimmerman.

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{ September : septiembre (see also books on learning Spanish) 2010 }

(9.30.2010)

• Finished listening to Carol Shields' Unless (2002); her last published novel before her 2003 death; short-listed for the 2002 Booker Prize.

  The protagonist Reta (Summers) Winters, seems a little self-centered and hedonistic, now and then trying to understand why Norah, Reta's nineteen year-old daughter (one of her three daughters) has become a street person. But Reta likes to escape into her plans for her own fiction and into writing indignant letters (that she does not send) to male authors that neglect to acknowledge female authors.

  Reta's street-person daughter and her mentor, Danielle Westerman, are both more intesting characters in the limited amount that we see of them: they act on what they say they believe.

  The Stone Diaries (1995) had a stronger plot, more humor, and more poetry: I preferred it.

• Finished listening to: Say It loud! A Celebration of Black Music in America (compiled 2001).

  Six CDs of music, sequenced chronologically from Scott Joplin through Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Mahalia Jackson, Isaac Hayes, Queen Latifa, and a hundred other musicians. Interwoven with documentary clips relevant to the politics at the time of the music, including:

  • Booker T. Washington on the Negro Population of the South.
  • Frank Stanley on Negro Newspaper Week.
  • Civil Rights Bill narrowly defeated in the Senate.
  • W.E.B. Du Bois on the Place of the Black Man in Society.
  • Martin Luther King's 'Mountain Top' speech and the report on his assassination.
  • Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall on Segregation.
  • Jesse Jackson at the 1984 Democratic Convention.

• Manet: The Influence of the Modern by Fran&cced;oise Cachin

  Beautiful and richly illustrated book about the life, works, and influence of Impressionists painter Edouard Manet (1832-1883) with Cachin's informative commentary and an appendix of commentary by Manet's contemporary (many of whom failed to applaud the legacy that he was creating).

• A guide to the Impressionist landscape : day trips from Paris to sites of great nineteenth-century paintings by Patty Lurie.

  Fascinating to see paintings by Impressionists paired with photos of the modern location where each was painted.

• The Anthologist (2009) by Nicholson Baker.

  [One of the best book read in 2010: comments.]

  Other books by Baker:

  • A Box of Matches (2003)

• Finished dipping into: The Wisdom of Laotse (1948, 1975) notes and introduction by Lin Yutang.

  Possibly the clearest and deepest generally available introduction to the Tao.

• Finished dipping into: Existentialism: from Dostoevsky to Sartre (1975 revision of 1956 original) edited, with an introduction, prefaces, and new translations by Walter Kaufmann.

  Read in conjunction with a class on Existentialism.

• Finished listening to Doors Open (2010) by Ian Rankin.

  Well, this is NOT a REBUS book — Ian Rankin must have been serious about retiring Rebus in Exit Music.

  This is not a murder mystery but a book about thrills, greed, hubris, and theft. It's okay but none of the characters are as interesting or sympathetic as John Rebus and Siobhan Clarke.

  REBUS books read include:

  • The Black Book
  • Exit Music
  • The Falls
  • Fleshmarket Ally ['Fleshmarket Close' in UK]
  • Hide and Seek
  • Knots and Crosses
  • Let it Bleed
  • The Naming of the Dead
  • A Question of Blood
  • Resurrection Men
  • Strip Jack

• Tao Te Ching (1972) by Lao-tzu; 1972 translation by Gia-Fu Feng (who also wrote the Chinese calligraphy) and Jane English (who also took the photographs).

  Clear and excellently illustrated translation.

  Considerably better than the verging-on-the-twee Tao Te Ching of Lao-tzu: a Version (1997 version) 'translated' and read by Ursula K. Le Guin.

• Finished No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean Paul Sartre.

  The four plays in this collection are:

  • No Exit. (1944 as 'Huis Clos' originally.)
  • The Flies.
  • Dirty Hands. (1948. Overly talky.)
  • The Respectful Prostitute. (1946.)

  This text and other writings by Sartre were referenced in both recent classes: Existentialism. and Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Finished the brilliant Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within. by Kim Addonizio.

  Both inspiring and practical in the arts of writing and revising your poetry.

• Paul Strathern's Nietzsche in 90 Minutes in support of an Existentialism course.

  This book is funnier and more superficial than Ronald Hayman's Nietzsche. This makes it an easier introduction to Nietzsche's ideas.

• Finished listening to Her Fearful Symmetry (2009) by Audrey Niffenegger, in a brilliant reading by Bianca Amato, who captures accents and intonations of both the British and the Americans.

  The book is a romantic (and only slightly creepy) ghost story set around the famous Highgate Cemetery (in London).

  Also previously enjoyed her:

  • The Time Traveler's Wife (2005): An adventurous time-traveling librarian as a protagonist. It's a science fiction story, wrapped in layers and layers of a love story beyond time. Of course Claire is much too understanding as the wife. But otherwise there wouldn't have been this confection of a book.

• Finished listening to the BBC's Hercule Poirot plays adapted from The ABC Murders.

• Finished Nietzsche (1997) by Ronald Hayman.

  A concise and useful summary of the life, ideas, and writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings were referenced in both recent classes: Existentialism. and Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Finished listening to four BBC Maigret plays under the title Maigret's Little Joke all adapted from short stories by Georges Simenon:
  • The Yellow Dog
  • Inspector Cadaver
  • Maigret's Little Joke
  • Maigret and the Burglar's Wife

• Finished relistening to and taking notes on No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life, Part II lectures by Robert Solomon.

  Contains authors and writings referenced in both recent classes: Existentialism. and Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Finished relistening to and taking notes on No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life, Part I lectures by Robert Solomon.

  Contains authors and writings referenced in both recent classes: Existentialism. and Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Finished dipping into Parables of Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard being an author in both recent classes: Existentialism. and Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Finished Gary Carey's Notes on Camus' 'The Stranger', Camus being an author in both recent classes: Existentialism. and Agony, Despair, & Desire.

{ August : agosto (see also books on learning Spanish) 2010 }

(8.31.2010)

• Finished exploring The runner's yoga book : a balanced approach to fitness by Jean M. Couch.

  Excellent stretches including good ones for bicycling.

• Finished listening to The Story of Philosophy: Volume 1 from Plato to Voltaire and the French Enlightenment by Will Durant.
  Read by Grover Gardner.
  Includes: Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Voltaire, and Rousseau.
  A few insights but marred by the irritatingly prissy tone, due to Durant's too-frequent snide remarks and to Gardner's "educated" cadences.

  Previously listened to The Story of Philosophy: Volume 2 by Will Durant.
  Covers 18th to 20th century, focusing on Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Nietzsche, Bergson, Croce, Russell, Santayana, James, and Dewey.

• Finished reading The Flamenco Academy: a Novel another fascinating book by Sarah Bird.

  A tale of passion, obsession, rivalry, manipulation, and dedication to the practice of flameno. Sometimes a little contrived and possibly the weakest of the three books in terms of plot.

  As in other books of Bird's, this explore friendship and loyalty and revenge, primarily among women. All have strong women and some very funny dialog to counterbalance some dark material.

  [See also The Singer and Others: Flamenco Hay(na)ku by Eileen Tabios.]

  The variety of topic and tone in Bird's book is admirable:

  • How Perfect Is That (2008): a hilarious romp down the social ladder of Austin, Texas. [One of the best book read in 2010.]
  • The Yokota Officers Club (2001): a stunning exploration of the American Japanese-occupation military and their families from the end of World War II to 1968 together with the lives of women in occupied Japan.

(8.28.2010)

• Devoured The Chained Hay(na)ku Project (a collection of hay(na)ku sequences written by groups of three or more authors) curated by Ivy Alvarez, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Ernesto Priego, & Eileen Tabios.

  See also The Singer and Others: Flamenco Hay(na)ku [blogged in 2007] by Eileen Tabios.

  While reading The Chained Hay(na)ku Project sampled and then devoured my new favorite chocolate bar: Dolphin chocolate bar: Noir au Thé Earl Grey. Great!

• Class 15 of Existentialism.
• Class 15 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Abandoned listening to White Shadow by Ace Atkins, supposedly a newspaper reporter who worked on the Tampa-centered case that this book (a speculative novel) is based.

  Unsatisfying. Supposed to be Florida Noire; it seems crude. Gets a little more interesting when the Cuban connection appears.

• Class 14 of Existentialism.
• Class 14 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Read the script of The Lion In Winter: A Play by James Goldman, having seen a brilliant performance at the 2010 Shakespeare Santa Cruz (SSC) Festival.

• Class 13 of Existentialism.
• Class 13 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Finished skimming Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
  by George Orwell, author of Homage to Catalonia.
  A sad semi-comic novel: a would-be rebel against money lives a crimped and sorry life until he joins the middle class, getting an aspidistra, wife, child, and a job in advertising.

  Possibly a version of the story that Orwell will later tell in 1984.

• Finished listening to Tao Te Ching of Lao-tzu: a Version (1997 version) 'translated' and read by Ursula K. Le Guin.

  Unsatisfying. Le Guin particularizes or otherwise alters the text. Her cautious subtitle 'A Version' flags this. But this version is unsatisfying. For the real thing, see Stephen Mitchell's version.

  Le Guin's reading had a preachy quality (as if Le Guin wants to sound like a priestess?), which unfortunately called my attention away from the text.

  Also adding to this listener's dissatisfaction was the often-jarring-and-unsupportive accompaniment by Todd Barton on gongs, drums, bells, flutes, etc. The Tao deserves to be heard, not interfered with.

• Class 12 of Existentialism.
• Class 12 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Class 11 of Existentialism.
• Class 11 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Class 10 of Existentialism.
• Class 10 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Finished listening to Uncommon Carriers (2006) by John McPhee (read by the author).

  McPhee's enthuses about rides and drivers on 18-wheelers hauling toxic chemicals, towboats pushing 1000 feet of barge up Illinois River narrows, and long long coal trains. Among other experiences he gets lost in the vast automated 40 m.p.h. (his estimate) parcel-sorting mazy acres at UPS-central.

  Also by McPhee, told with his same skill of taking a topic that fascinates him and plunging into details of anecdote and technique:

  • The Founding Fish: skills, challenges, history of shad fishing.

• Attended the 2010 Shakespeare Santa Cruz (SSC) Festival's Love's Labour's Lost -- brilliant — the first production that I've ever seen that shows this play to be witty and wise and engaging and clear.

• Class 9 of Existentialism.
• Class 9 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Class 8 of Existentialism.
• Class 8 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Paul Strathern's Kierkegaard in 90 Minutes, in support of the course of Existentialism.

• Class 7 of Existentialism.
• Class 7 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Attended the 2010 Shakespeare Santa Cruz (SSC) Festival's Othello -- passionate, though I wish the relative youthfulness of Iago (28 years in Shakespeare's script) had been leveraged.

• Adam Foulds' The Quickening Maze (2009), short-listed for the 2009 Booker Prize.

  Good.

• Class 6 of Existentialism.
• Class 6 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Finished Padgett Powell's Typical (1991), an early and not too interesting collection of short stories.

  The most successful stories are the 1-to-2 page mini-fiction tales in the third section; they are focused and maintain energy.

  PP books read include:

  • Edisto Revisited (1996).
  • The Interrogative Mood: A Novel? (2009).
  • Typical (1991).

• Class 5 of Existentialism.
• Class 5 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• V. S. Naipaul's A house for Mr. Biswas (1961).

  See also his A Bend in the River (1979), short-listed for the 1979 Booker Prize.

• Class 4 of Existentialism.
• Class 4 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Attended the 2010 Shakespeare Santa Cruz (SSC) Festival's The Lion In Winter: A Play by James Goldman -- a brilliant performance by Marco Barricelli (SSC Artistic Director) as Henry II.

{ July : julio (see also books on learning Spanish) 2010 }

(7.30.2010)

• Class 3 of Existentialism.
• Class 3 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Class 2 of Existentialism.
• Class 2 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Skimmed start, middle, and end of Susan Hasler's Intelligence (2010).

  A lightweight CIA-terrorism novel, every character a personality/caricature.

• Class 1 of Existentialism.
• Class 1 of Agony, Despair, & Desire.

• Various Bicycle magazines. Informative not just about bikes and their equipment but also about health and safety of the biker. And some articles are simply LOL hilarious.

• Listened again to Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, in an L.A. Theatre Works production (2009) of what is Stoppard's most brilliant of plays, moving seamlessly between the people of 1809 and the people of the present day that are competing to understand both their present world and the people presented in the other part of the play. Very witty dialog that is a delight even on multiple re-hearings.

• Magnapoets: Issue 6 July 2010. Includes a tanka by JZ. and a haiku by JZ.

  See especially Glenn Waters' gorgeous cover photo of a thousand daisies. And the interview with Charles Simic. Editor-in-Chief Aurora Antonovic

• Finished The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff.
  Good on quoting Winnie the Pooh books and giving a gentle introduction to the Tao Te Ching. But too heavily politically insistent.

• Finished listening to the excellent Teaching Company Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, Part I by David Zarefsky.

• Finished listening to Inventing Japan, 1853-1964 (2003) by Ian Buruma (read by Nelson Runger).

  The story of Japan from its 'soft invasion' by USA traders (led by Matthew Perry in 1853) through the years of a military-directed country, subjugating Korea and invading Manchuria and other areas of China, culminating in Japan's alliance with the Nazi Axis, its pre-emptive attack on USA forces in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor (which was and still is seen by some Japanese opinion leaders as simply a continuation of the war begun by 1853 soft invasion). The historic figurehead nature of the Emperor of Japan is illustrated, as is the Emperor's protection from accusation at the Japan War Trials and the subsequent politics in Japan up till the 1964 Olympic Games that it hosted.

• V. S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River (1979), short-listed for the 1979 Booker Prize.

  A somber tale of post-colonial central Africa, where a new African nation attempts to begin, and ordinary people are barely saved by loyalties or are slaughtered during times of political upheaval. It sounds similar to some of the troubles in the 1970s when the Belgian Congo transformed into Zaire. Relentless. Hints of Graham Green without the humor.

• Ribbons: Summer 2010 issue. Includes a couple of Tanka of J. Zimmerman.

• Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America (2010).

  A two-'author' historical fiction of early United States. A bit of a slog, though lively in parts.

  Long-listed (but hopefully not much more) for the 2010 Booker Prize.

• Caroline Alexander's The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War (2009).

  A fascinating reading of the Iliad, which:

  • Relates the events in that book to events in the world today.
  • Helps the reader understand more of the context in which people would hear the Iliad recited or sung at its composition (around 750 to 700 BCE) and the poems that preceded it in a Greek Bronze Age aural tradition.

• Finished listening to Dark of the Moon (2007) by John Sandford (read by Eric Conger).

  Virgil Flowers (protégé of Lucas Davenport) tracks down an organized small-town serial killer. A good summer read, though Virgil is rather sombre compared with Lucas, hero of many of Sandford's other books:

  Title (alphabetic)	Series ordinal	Year
  Broken Prey	16th	2005
  Eyes of Prey	3rd	1991
  Invisible Prey	17th	2007
  Mind Prey	7th	1995
  Mortal Prey	13th	2002
  Naked Prey	14th	2003
  Night Prey	6th	1994
  Phantom Prey	18th	2008
  Rules of Prey	1st	1989
  Secret Prey	9th	1997
  Shadow Prey	2nd	1990
  Sudden Prey	8th	1996
  Winter Prey	8th	1996

  Flowers books:

  • Dark of the Moon (2007)

• Finished listening to Emma, by Jane Austen (read rather drearily by Victoria Morgan).

  Maybe Austen's weakest book.

  Austen books read:

  • Emma (1815). High ratio of self-meditation to action or even conversation. So the book seems to dawdle and be relatively passive. Relatively weak.
  • Northanger Abbey (1817 — posthumous) (read in a pretty good narration by Flo Gibson). What a HOOT! I last read it when I was about 12 and had Completely Forgotten that Ms. Austen was SOOOOOOOOO sarcastic!
  • Also Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies (2009) (Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith).

• Finished browsing The Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, history by Thucydides, edited by Robert B. Strassler.

• Gave up on After One (1983) by Tom Sleigh: this poet declined to give his age in The Best American Poetry 2009 but this debut book makes me suppose he was born in early 1960s or in the 1950s.

  Not a fan of this early book, whose poems don't connect me and which sometimes seem a little self-consciously poetic. As he asks on p.39 in "Land's End Dialectic":

  Will we ever be free of these foaming sallies on the mutability of sand?

• Finished And Another Thing —: Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Part Six by Eoin Colfer.

  A slow start and everyone seems a little more sane than in the original Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy books. Nonetheless, the book picks up part-way though and is a fun read. With judicious cutting, would be a lot more fun.

• Listened to T is for Trespass (2007) by Sue Grafton.
  A very satisfying book, well read as always by Judy Kaye.

  Its themes are elder abuse, child molestation, and castration. One of the scariest of her books, perhaps because of the apparent helplessness of some of the victims, particularly a cantankerous and isolated elderly neighbor. But, with a little help from one's friends and the judicial system, the Good Gals and Guys win.

  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).
  P is for Peril (2001).
  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.
  T is for Trespass (2007): one of her scariest books yet; becomes riveting.
  U is for Undertow (2009): a very satisfying book.

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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