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My chocolate of choice for a NaNoWriMo attempt:
Books read recently by J. Zimmerman
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Booker Prizes
Chocolate.
Books read
Best books read in 2011.
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My chocolate of choice for a NaNoWriMo attempt:
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Reader's Bill of Rights [after Daniel Pennac in Better than Life
from November 2003 Utne Magazine] includes the rights to:
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"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry."
[Jefferson's 1785 statute] |
{ September : ku-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2011 }
Stoppard's read (or seen) include:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: the Film (1991)
Stoppard: The Plays for Radio 1964-1983 (1990)
containing:
Remarkable pean to anarchism in Britain.
Astonishing to come immediately upon another of the best books read in 2011.
Brilliantly lively. One of the best books read in 2011.
Chödrön suggests that we might respond differently and constructively to the shocks and losses of life, and perhaps find "true happiness", if we stop biting the "hook" of our habitual responses. Using Buddhist teachings from The Way of the Bodhisattva she explores how to: stay centered while faced with difficulty; reduce stress in relationships; avoid the downward spiral of self-hatred; and awaken our compassion for ourselves as well as others.
Books read by Pema Chödrön include:
A solid country-house (or in this case a small, private museum ("dedicated to the inter-war years, 1919 through 1938" that seems like such a house) ) style murder mystery. Red herrings are strewn and Commander Adam Dalgliesh walks on the water they swim in. A particular pleasure to read a detective novel nowadays where the protagonist is not a psychological wreck. And where the effects of motherhood and fatherhood are even more important than usual. Valuable profiles of the major characters appear before we begin to solving the mysteries. And very nice that this particular private museum has chosen to provide a benefit free entry to people on Job Seeker's Allowance even if they chose not to include people on Income Support.
Opening the book at random, words like "evil" or "pain" or "torture" or "crazy" appear. Even though it includes some poets whose work I like, this collection has relatively unattractive work. So this has become another book for the release pile.
Stoppard's read (or seen) include:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: the Film (1991)
{ August : hachi-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2011 }
(8.30.2011)
| The clans began to bombard the outer force field with rockets, missiles, nukes, and harsh language. |
As in the book, the last 20% is the most powerful, with the deprivations upon the Russians and the French of the Napoleon's over-extended invasion of Russia and his long retreat from Moscow. Natasha and family are still a little too live-in-the-moment but the two main young men become dramatically more wise and capable.
The Lamont Poetry selection (for an American poet's second book) for 1983.
However, apart from some poems about her children, most poems seem overly harsh and sometimes melodramatic. "Rite of Passage" is the best one.
Finished seeing and reading plays of the 2011 season (the 30th) SSC season: all very well received:
Finished dipping into and further book release of:
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The Hitchhiker series was wittier. But it includes a valuable walk-on part played by the poet S.T. Coleridge and insight into the Person from Porlock.
Reported books by Mary Oliver:
Notice that the Player in his first appearance tells you the idea of the play as what happens offstage.
Especially when watching the film or reading the script, notice the inattention of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern to just about everything except what they are doing this moment. And how Shakespeare's Hamlet is performed in background (2-for-1) with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern occasionally participating politely in it.
Slightly better read (with various attempts at accents) than written (rather repetitive and predictable at times but full of useful background on Orwell's life and behavior).
Book by Orwell include:
Book-release day!
| Let me tell you why I hate critics. Not for the normal reason that they're failed creators (they usually aren't; they may be failed critics, but that's another matter); or that they're by nature carping, jealous, and vain. (they usually aren't; if anything, they might be accused of upgrading the second-rate so that their own fine discriminations thereby appear the rarer). No, the reason I hate critics — well, some of the time — is that they write sentences like this ... |
Sutherland continues: " there follow some prime examples of ... several pages of blistering sarcasm and personal invective[.] Barnes concludes, 'now you know why I hate critics'."
| This book's principal conclusion is that humanity will not achieve sustainability, equity, harmony, or happiness while the pursuit of industrial growth, measured by GNP, remains its main economic objective. ... the progressive bounding of economic activity by tight sustainability constraints, and the explicit direction of that activity by and toward positive human values: personal development and the quality of life ...; and the monitoring of progress toward these goals. |
Orphaned at 10, Hadrian was emperor of Rome 117-138 C.E., following Trajan (emperor 53-117 C.E.); Hadrian was one of the 'good' emperors in Roman history. Except for Judea, "Hadrian's strength-based diplomacy brought a century of warfare to a peaceful conclusion."
I was intrigued by some of the Amazon review including: "a gaggle of oddballs ... follow, or more precisely obsessively stalk, the novel's enigmatic central character, Wesley. The architect of a chocolate company-funded treasure hunt, author of a pseudo-Nietzschean walking guide and the man behind the daring theft of an antique pond, he is a rather malevolent Pied Piper."
But after reading the first few and the last few chapters, I was bored and abandoned it. Another Amazon reviewer wrote: "I found both the beginning and end to be unsatisfying (albeit for rather different reasons). At the same time, the meat of the text is incredibly entertaining and engaging." So maybe I missed a gem — if so, how quaint of the author to be as difficult as Wesley.
Other of her books:
Still to read: her 2004 Long List Booker Nominee Clear: A Transparent Nove. It was that year's best title though the contents sounds more like journalism: "about David Blaine's feat of endurance in his glass box over the Thames"]
Read monotonously by Jenny Sterlin. The problem is primarily the material, as Sterlin made a terrific reading of:
The book on which the film Blade Runner was based starts off creatively and richly in the first half but loses traction and credibility, becoming lame in the last half: the movie is better.
See also Environmental Ethics Course (summer intensive).
Deep ecology claims that all forms of life and nature have an intrinsic value. Contrast with utilitarianism, which denies moral status to most forms of life; utilitarianism places no intrinsic value on biodiversity; the 'moral value' of most life forms is assumed to be only the benefit provided to sentient beings.
Includes poems by Galway Kinnell: "Ruins Under the Stars" and "There Are Things I Tell to No One".
A novel told from the viewpoint of Death, primarily about a fostered, pugnacious girl, Liesel, during World War II, in a German family that hides a Jewish man for much of the War.
Adventures in guilt, loyalty, cruelty, kindness, and the value of words.
{ July : shichi-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2011 }
Books by Collins read:
Book 3 in this marvelous parallel-universe story, one of the best books read in 2011; probably the most powerful of this three-book series:
The Amber Spyglass not only won a Whitbread (now Costa) Prize for best children's book of the year but was the first children's book to be named the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year.
The core character is a child called Lyra and the core tool is a cryptic truth-telling tool called an alethiometer; at the end of her childhood she loses her ability to read or decode its truth:
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"why can't I read the alethiometer anymore?
Why can't I even do that?
That was the one thing I could do really well, and it's just not there anymore —
it just vanished as if it had never come ..."
"You read it by grace," said Xaphania, looking at her, "and you can regain it by work." "How long will that take?" "A lifetime." "That long ..." "But your reading will be even better then, after a lifetime of thought and effort, because it will come from conscious understanding. Grace attained like that is deeper and fuller than grace that comes freely, and furthermore, once you've gained it, it will never leave you." |
The big theme of the book is the mysterious entity, Dust, and about who is the fascist-like authority of heaven and earth:
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"Tell me, then," said Will.
"Tell me about Metatron, and what this secret is.
Why did that angel call him Regent?
And what is the Authority? Is he God."
"He sat down, and the two angels, their forms clearer in the moonlight than he had ever seen them before, sat with him" Balthamos said quietly, "The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty — those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves — the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself. Matter loves matter. It seeks to know more about itself, and Dust is formed. The first angels condensed out of Dust, and the Authority was the first of all. He told those who after him that he had created them, but it was a lie. One of those who came later was wiser than he was, and she found out the truth so he banished her. We serve her still. And the Authority still reigns in the Kingdom, and Metratron is his Regent." |
Marvelous parallel-universe story. Although not quite as fascinating as the first book in the series:
The Golden Compass.
Looking forward to the third and closing book of the series:
The Amber Spyglass,
which not only won a Whitbread (now Costa) Prize for best children's book of the year but
was the first children's book to be named the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year.
A little heavy handed on the moral philosophy.
Senior Detective Mma Precious Ramotswe and
Assistant Detective Mma Makutsi books read:
The Kalahari typing school for men. My favorite so far.
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies.
Morality for Beautiful Girls.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Tears of the Giraffe.
Other books by this author are relatively boring, particularly: At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances. The Unbearable Lightness of Scones.
Marvelous parallel-universe story.
Like Stafford, Bly, Dickinson, and others, Lehman developed a practice of writing a poem a day for several years. This book selects poems for about half the days of the year. Very daily, often prose chopped into lines, a few good poems but mainly the book is of interest for inspiring others to do something similar: "the more you do it, the easier it gets and the more enjoyable".
Books by Collins read:
Initial Response: An A-Z of Haiku Moments (2011),
haiku and senryu poetry
by Maeve O'Sullivan.
Capering Moons (2011),
haiku and senryu poetry
by Anatoly Kudryavitsky.
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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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