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My chocolate of choice for a NaNoWriMo attempt:
Books read recently by J. Zimmerman
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Chocolate.
Books read
Best books read in 2010.
Best writers of poetry and prose
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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] |
{ June : roku-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2012 }
Wonderful book, one of the best books read in 2012.
Very interesting musings on what we remember and how our emotions color not only our interpretation of what we remember, but even what we remember. Barnes won the 2011 Booker Prize for it — and it is indeed really good — and quite short for a novel — just in case you are looking for a "good read" sometime. And it's not overly highbrow (which Barnes sometimes is). Calibration advisory: I'm enthusiastically in the low-brow-Stella-Rimington-side of the Booker readability debate.
As it's about an unreliable [aren't we all?] narrator trying to revisit his memories and adjust them, perhaps to become more reliable, some quotations:
| Isn't the whole business of ascribing [historical] responsibility a kind of cop-out? We want to blame an individual so that everyone else is exculpated. Or we blame a historical process as a way of exonerating individuals. [p. 12] |
| 'History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.' [p. 18] |
| '... historians need to treat a participant's own explanation of events with a certain scepticism. It is often the statement made with the eye to the future that is the most suspect. ... And mental states may often be inferred from actions.' [p. 20.] |
| ... later [in life] there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. [p. 114] |
Julian Barnes' books "read" include:
On putting together a new book (pp. 16-17):
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I sometimes take a spread of a hundred or so poems that have been in magazines
and put them in groups around on the living room rug, so that I can begin to understand any relations they may have.
Maybe some could be beginning poems; I let them get together.
Some might be later; they go over there.
A few begin to seem like stunts of some kind. This stack usually gets higher and higher.
Some might be sad, some happy. I try to keep them from being unhelpful to each other,
and usually they get into sections so as to make it easy to think about sequences.
Finally there is an order, and the publisher gets a manuscript with a tentative table of contents
plus some extra poems, and my word that I am ready to add, delete, or whatever.
Almost always a publisher has a few ideas, and I have always acceded;
for once a reader has a preference I find myself understanding that preference.
...
People have told me that my way is spineless and slovenly. And I understand that point of view, but there are considerations derived from my way of writing. Each piece comes to me as a crystallization of its own, and preferably without my thinking of its effect on others. It is true, though, that once a piece is done I have ideas about whether it might get a friendly reception reception from an editor or reader. ... a poem must have early rewards. It must be eventful in language; there must be early and frequent verbal events. Content, or topic, is not nearly enough, of course. A poem is an experience in the reading or hearing; the eventfulness of a poem comes in the experience of the reader. And in those events for the reader there must be a coherence ... Readers should not be loaded with more information and guidance than a lively mind needs — puzzlement can be accepted, but insulting clarity is fatal to a poem. |
On teaching students (p. 18):
| What did a piece of writing mean? — not what did it say, but what did it portend, or hint, or reveal, about that surely valid response that brought it about? My job was not to correct but to understand and participate. A student's paper was a test for me, and I began not to put any evaluation remarks at all on a paper. My remarks were meant to show my accompaniment, sometimes my readiness to learn more. |
On poems (p. 58) — some remarks that support one's perception of Stafford's poetry as being somewhat simple and plain, somewhat prosy (despite his work being often selected for the annual The Best American Poetry, David Lehman, Series Editor):
| Ideally for me, poems are nothing special. They are just the language without any mistakes. ... Ideally, every letter should have the same trancelike, forward unfolding into the subject matter that a poem should have. I think poems are pieces of talk, savored and sustained. I would call them "lucky talk." A poem is a lucky piece of talk. Letters are usually addressed to someone we are sympathetic with. It can be direct. It appeals to many common experiences, usually. I think a poem is like that. |
Includes in-depth guide to how you could paint like Sargent, Turner, Cézanne, and others. My favorite new-to-me artist in this book is Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828), whose paintings include Cliffs Near Branscombe, and whose techniques include paint-smearing with the palm to achieve subtle and organic effects, as well as the use of a small knife pulled through almost-dry paint to achieve texture.
A very interesting fantasy story with real challenges faced by a 13-year-old girl translated back a century to a slave plantation run by her ancestors.
The characters are well drawn and memorable. The plot, while clever and intricate, is supported by the life of the times and the characters that are presented. And the heroine's (Sophie's) responses to some of the harder aspects of life back then (including dealing with excrement and menstruation as well as the sexual predation of some of the (white) males) anticipated or echoed my own responses.
Delia has made a significant contribution to the possible perceptions by today's youth of ante-bellum times. It's one of those books that would make a good gift to a young person, especially a young woman.
Very very long story about a love affair between two amateur-intellectual and opinionated translators, but I kept dozing off.
It's a mostly prosy collection, often over-long, often with jarring line-breaks. As for her other books, I am not impressed. But this one does include her stunning (and brief) "Choices":
I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and a clear view to snow
on the mountain
...
Suddenly, in every tree,
an unseen nest
where a mountain
would be.
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Other books by Gallagher read:
Boring. [Puzzling that the end-paper shows Freeling apparently pleased that he was once jailed for three weeks for theft.]
Includes:
An astute and enthralling evolutionary-biology science fantasy novel. It runs an experiment in natural selection for a million years. Funny and only slightly appalling. A kinder and gentler Carl Hiassen.
Vonnegut's read:
Concise and practical introduction to Japanese social mores, appropriate pronunciation of a dozen phrases relevant to each, and their katakana representation.
{ May : go-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2012 }
A lively and cheery book full of ideas to get you writing. Where Writing Down the Bones was good for timed writings on given topics, Couturier's book is more varied and creative.
A relatively uninteresting novel of clichés mishmashing (pseudo post-modernistically) disparate legends and historical figures without a shred of post-juvenile humor.
Soccer, assassins, pies, necromancy, micromail (or micromale?) ... and an ORC! One of Pratchett's best.
Wonderful book, one of the best books read in 2012).
A delightful book on modern yacht racing, yachting terminology (yes, a sloop is a "sailboat with one mast, setting only one sail forward of the mast), and preprinted paper with fold lines and instructions for making you own sailable model yachts.
A vindictive little play, imagining a drunk and suicidal Nixon talking to the pictures on his walls.
Essentially it's the Persephone story, where the daughter descends into "hell" (in the form of late 1950s Communist China and the start of their Difficult Years of famine) and the mother searches for her, finds her, loses her, and ultimately rescues her. Some of the most intense descriptions of what it's like to starve to death. Fortunately, love conquers a great deal (though not all).
It's a sequel to (and more powerful than) Shanghai Girls (2009), including many of same characters and introducing new ones.
Also enthralling is Snow Flower and the Secret Fan : a novel (2009) also by Lisa See (and one of the best books read in 2012).
All these books by See are interesting addenda to my current study of History of China.
The end of the world rides again ... on motor bikes ... with a posse ...
A good mid-level book in the Pratchett realm of ingenuity.
Perhaps more importantly, spent an hour watching Sir Terry's u-tube video about his investigation (given his encroaching dementia) of death when you choose, such as with the aid of the Swiss Dignitas.
Favorites from the many Terry Pratchett books reviewed:
{ April : shi-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2012 }
(4.29.2012)
Includes:
Volumes:
Also enjoyed:
A brilliant collection.
One of the best books read in 2012.
Even richer in terms of the surrounding culture than See's Shanghai Girls (2009).
Both of these books by See are interesting addenda to my current study of History of China.
Volumes:
Warning: typos in text and diagrams. Also, you often have to fold more than ten times, so one might find the title deceptive: several of the "steps" contain multiple sub-steps!
This is a more traditional (lots of names and dates; no soft stuff like Ebrey's color illustrations of art) history in which the factions and causes and consequences are relatively clear; hence it is a useful complement to Ebrey, where such data are often unclear.
An interesting (though occasionally seems muddled) history of China; the illustrations are lavish; the reader does get a sense of an impressive and millenia-long culture.
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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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