Books read recently by J. Zimmerman

Disclaimer. Links. Booker Prizes Chocolate. Books read Best books read in 2010. Best writers of poetry and prose Harry Potter; also Harry Potter en Español. Why read a book?. New books on Spirituality by Pagels, Ehrman, et al.

My chocolate of choice for a NaNoWriMo attempt:

Reader's Bill of Rights [after Daniel Pennac in Better than Life from November 2003 Utne Magazine] includes the rights to: Skip pages Not read Not finish Not defend your tastes

"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) 2012 }

(9.30.2012)

• Dipped into Celebrity Scarves by Alira Edelman now that knitting season has returned.

• Finished dipping into The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker (read by Authur Morey) as it's overdue at library — and just too long.

  The CD blurb summarizes: "Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. The murder rate in medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were unexceptional features of life for millennia, then were suddenly abolished." Perhaps, but the claim that " Wars between developed countries have vanished " is a statement made in a nervous lull: I doubt that it is permanent. And the book's "How could this have happened, if human nature has not changed?" proposes a less likely solution than simply people behave better when their government observes them and makes them accountable.

• Finished Christopher Moore's Fool (2009) in a 2009 recording narrated in suitably varied voicing by Euan Morton: Lear's faithful fool (wildly extrapolated from Shakespeare's King Lear) explains how he was really royal and came to marry Lear's daughter Cordelia, via a lot of plot that was sadly missing from Shakespeare's play.

  Books by Christopher Moore include:

  • (2011) Sacré Bleu: A Comedy D'Art (one of the best books read in 2012): the Muse runs through the Impressionist Painters
  • (2010) Bite Me: Abby Normal rocks Goth.
  • (2009) Fool: Lear's fool saves the kingdom from him and for his daughter.
  • (1995) Bloodsucking Fiends: Jody and Tommy.
  • (?) A Dirty Job (not recommended).

• Abandoned Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job . To the extent that I had patience for it, it lacked the humor and wit of his other books.

• Half the Moon Half of Me (2012), editor Susan Diridoni. This haiku chapbook from Haiku Poets of Northern California presents twelve poems by each of the four 2012 Two Autumns poets:
  • Bruce H. Feingold.
  • Michael McClintock.
  • Naia.
  • Renée Owen.

• Read A Glimpse of Red: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2000 (2001)
  edited by Jim Kacian and the Red Moon Editorial Staff.

  Terrific collection, the 5th in the Red Moon Anthology series. About 180 poems (English-language haiku and senryu) published around the world (but primarily the USA). Also a small section of haibun and of linked verse (which for this anthology are all rengay).

  The book concludes with essays reprinted from journals, these critical pieces on the study of haiku poems and sensibilities:

  • Dee Evetts' "The Conscious Eye: Homelessness".
  • Kai Falkman's "Construction & Distortion of the Image in Haiku" (importance of image sequence including in translation).
  • Richard Gilbert's "Universalism v. Particularism in International Haiku".
  • Jim Kacian's "Beyond Kigo: Haiku in the Next Millennium"
  • Ban'ya Natsuishi's "Common Ground: The Basis for World Haiku in the 21st century".
  • Haruno Shirane's "Beyond the Haiku Moment: Basho, Buson, and Modern Haiku Myths", in which he advocates for the fictional as well as the non-fictional, and for the use of metaphor and allusion. He discourages attempts of Western poets to echo the Japanese use of season words (p. 156):

    English-language haiku therefore has to depend on other dimensions of haiku [than season words] for its life. In short, while haiku in English is inspired by Japanese haiku, it can not and should not try to duplicate the rules of Japanese haiku because of significant differences in language, culture, and history. A definition of English-language haiku will thus, by nature, differ from that of Japanese haiku.

  Anthologies read in this series:

  • (2011) Carving Darkness: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2011
  • (2001) A Glimpse of Red: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2000

• The Space Between (2012) haiku by George Dorsty: to review for Frogpond.

• New Resonance 7: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (2011), edited by Jim Kacian and Dee Evetts: an excellent anthology of 18 poets' haiku, 15 per poet. I was especially interested to read work by:
  • Lorin Ford.
  • Duro Jaiye.
  • Chen-Ou Liu.

  as well as by Susan Antolin, Colin Stewart Jones, Renée Owen, and others.

• Finished Haiku: A Poet's Guide by Lee Gurga.

  This is the most interesting and helpful book about writing haiku that I have read todate. Full of the history of haiku in both Japanese and English-language cultures, Gurga's Haiku: A Poet's Guide shows the reader how to take inspiration and word-sketching, create and revise a haiku, to attain a poem's final version.

• burl (2012) a glorious collection of haiku by Mark Harris: to review for Frogpond.

• Forward Moving Shadows: A Tanka Memoir (2012), tanka by Peggy Heinrich. Black and white photographs by John Bolivar are interleaved with the poems.

  The poems are gorgeous -- very strong. And the photos are so artistic -- I really like the way the poet has chosen to juxtapose poems and images. I particularly liked turning p. 17 (with "tonight/a full moon ...") to the photo of mist in the trees on p.18. And the image of the pregnant woman's belly is stunning.

• Finished listening to Emily Gray's reading of Jasper Fforde's One of Our Thursdays is Missing.

  Thursday Next books: (2001) The Eyre Affair. (2002) Lost in a Good Book: a Thursday Next novel. (2003) The Well of Lost Plots: a Thursday Next novel. (2004) Something Rotten. (2007) Thursday Next in First Among Sequels. (2011) One of Our Thursdays is Missing. Nursery Crime books: (2005) The Big Over Easy. (2006) The Fourth Bear: a Nursery Crime.

{ August : hachi-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2012 }

(8.28.2012)

• C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) in a recording narrated by Michael York.

  The 1st book written in the Narnia seven-book series, but the 2nd one in the Narnian Chronology: the four children return to join Aslan in battling the witch introduced in The Magician's Nephew.

  The first book written in the Narnia seven-book series, introducing the country, its inhabitants, and the child-adventurers.

  Also read his:

  • (1955) The Magician's Nephew

• Finished Christopher Moore's Bite Me (2010) in a 2010 recording narrated by Susan Benett with pitch-perfect voicing of Goth girl and Nosferatu-wanna-be Abby Normal, along with people.

  Compassionate vampires — trust Christopher Moore!

  Also read Christopher Moore's

  • (1995) Bloodsucking Fiends: Jody and Tommy
  • (2011) Sacré Bleu: A Comedy D'Art (one of the best books read in 2012): the Muse runs through the Impressionist Painters

• Abandoned Margaret Atwood's depressing Life Before Man (1979) in a whiny-voiced narration (2003) by Lorelei King.

• Finished dipping into Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost by Stanley Eugene Fish, as supplementary reading to Milton's Paradise Lost itself.

• Lewis Carol's Through the Looking Glass in a recording narrated (2002) by Alan Bennett. Lovely accents (especially working-class Northern and bogus upper-class).

• Finished Christopher Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends (1995) in a 2008 recording narrated by Susan Benett with a wicked since of voicing San Francisco types, from the naive-writer-from-the-midwest to the grocery-store nightworkers to the vampire-wanna-be's to the cops to the street people.

  Compassionate vampires — trust Christopher Moore!

  Charmed by Christopher Moore's Sacré Bleu: A Comedy D'Art (one of the best books read in 2012) I tried his vampire book. Interesting that his main characters are the same in both books:

  • A young vibrantly attractive woman who may or may not be evil.
  • A young naive man with artistic (in this case writing) ambitions.
  • An older supernatural man who may be a threat or a savior.
  • Various other characters with the STD of their age.

• Saw David Mamet's American Buffalo (1975 play; 1996 movie). Trust, mistrust, and paranoia: what a depressing play.

• Milton's Paradise Lost Books 9-12. Eve emerges as the most interesting character.

Saw the third play in the 2012 SSC (Shakespeare Santa Cruz) season:

• Man in the Iron Mask (by Scott Wentworth) — the most delightfully presented and enthusiastically received in this year's season. Charles Pasternak (the gorgeous Romeo in the 2008 SSC (Shakespeare Santa Cruz) Romeo and Juliet) terrific as both King Louis and his twin brother.

Saw plays in the 2012 SSC (Shakespeare Santa Cruz) season:

• Henry IV, Part Two — excellent Falstaff (Richard Ziman); a good Prince Hal (Charles Pasternak again) showing the transformation from wastrel to a prince worthy of his father and the crown.
• Twelfth Night — a relatively weak production of this interesting though cruel play; mistakes by some of the principles in the meaning of what they said.

• Milton's Paradise Lost Books 7-8.

• C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew (1955) in a recording narrated (2001) by Kenneth Branaugh.

  A parallel-worlds story of the creation.

• Milton's Paradise Lost Books 3-6.

• Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland in a recording narrated (2002) by Alan Bennett. Lovely accents (especially working-class Northern and bogus upper-class).

• Abandoned The Silmarillion (a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's "mythopoeic works"). Extremely boring fictitious social anthropology, centered upon "a series of interconnected tales set in the First Age that make up the tragic saga of the three jewels, the Silmarils" (wikipedia).

• Finished Christopher Moore's Sacré Bleu: A Comedy D'Art (2012), a fabulous first edition with COLOR images of the reference paintings.

  One of the best books read in 2012.

• Scientific American Mind (March 2010): especially interesting are the articles:
  • "The Power to Persuade" (p.24+) that says "Humor is the key, especially if it catches your listeners off-guard, leaving them laughing and open to suggestion" and "Make people believe you have their best interests at heart, and you can persuade them to do almost anything". Cites Robert Cialdini's identification of "six core principles of social influence":
    • Reciprocity (return favors).
    • Liking (of the influencer).
    • Scarcity (we overvalue things in short supply).
    • Social proof (we take guidance from others when we are less sure).
    • Authority (we listen to experts and those in power).
    • Commitment (to our word) and consistency (in finishing what we start).
  • "The Pluses of Getting It Wrong" (p.39+):
    • "Students who take tests on material before studying it remember the information better and longer than those who study without pre-testing".
    • "Anyone can use this [pre-testing] technique to enhance recall of new information" if one asks oneself questions about the information not yet learned.
  • "Busting Big Myths In Popular Psychology" (p.42+) with selected items from Scott O. Lillienfeld et al's 50 Great Myths in Popular Psychology, with 50 big myths and 250 "mini-myths". Major myths discussed include:
    • "Blowing our tops defuses our anger" — "Yet more than 40 years of research reveals that expressing anger actually amplifies aggression".
    • "Different strokes for different pupils" — "most investigations have failed to show that matching teaching styles to learning styles works: for example it does not improve students' grades in most cases. Instead ... setting high expectations for students and providing them with the motivation and skills to attain them ... usually yield better results than other strategies, regardless of students' learning styles".
    • "Positive thinking cures cancer" — "The weight of the evidence, however, fails to support the notion that optimism is a salve for cancer".

• Scientific American Mind (January 2012): especially interesting are the articles:
  • "A feeling for the past" (p.24+) — "Emotion engraves the brain with vivid recollections but cleverly distorts our brain's record of what really took place":
    • "So-called flashbulb memories actually fade considerably even though, paradoxically, they seem so vivid that we hold a misguided confidence in their fidelity".
    • "Emotion produces a kind of tunnel memory, boosting recall of central objects but allowing people to forget surrounding detail".
    • "Putting a positive spin on a bad situation [(cognitive reappraisal)] can both enhance accuracy in emotional memories and diminish their negative overtones". Also "We tend to recall fewer perceptual details of pleasant events, however, than of troublesome ones".
  • "Trying to forget" (p.32+):
    • "We can will ourselves to forget; a neural circuit like the one that inhibits actions governs the ability to reject memories we neither want nor need".
    • "The inability to forget can impede emotional recovery in trauma victims".
    • "If you practice rebuffing recollections, you are likely to get better at it".
    • The methods seem to have varying results; they often involve use of interfering actions or memories.
  • "Totaling Recall" (p.40+) — "Scientists can put memories in a precarious state — and manipulate, or even erase, them":
    • "Research now suggests that reminding a person of something makes that recollection temporarily revert to an insecure state, in which it can be modified or even erased".
    • "Deleting, or at least muting, parts of human memory with drugs or targeted therapies might help people recover from trauma or anxiety".
  • "Mind-warping visions: 10 brain twisters compete to be the best illusion of 2011" (p.46+).

• Milton's Paradise Lost Books 1-2.

• Finished listening to the first and last portions of The Book of Spies (2010) by Gayle Lynds (reading by Kate Reading).

  Abandoned this somewhat implausible story of a rare-book expert turned-murderer-turned-CIA-agent. Some awkward writing and too many cliff hangers.

{ July : shichi-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2012 }

(7.31.2012)

• At p. 164 of On China (2011) by Henry Kissinger.

  Only pausing in the reading because it's overdue at the library and I can't read its 586 pages in a marathon session. After one gets past some jingoist seeming statements initially, it's an insightful (though sometime colloquial) summary of Chinese politics.

• Finished dipping into Taking it all in (1984) a collection of movie reviews by Pauline Kael.

• Listened to The Sinister Pig (2003) by Tony Hillerman.

  "There is a sinister pig in control of the pipelines of drug smuggling between the U.S. and Mexico. But in this business, one can only stay on top for so long. ... Now the sinister pig must either fight — or run.

  His best mystery novel to date. Sergeant Jim Chee is now his own man, working more as an equal with the "legendary" (and retired, though only officially) Joe Leaphorn.

• Movie Thieves Like Us (1974) directed by Robert Altman. His bank-robber movie: his robbers like to listen to the radio and fall in love; a more rambling and less interesting film than most of his others I've seen.

• Finished dipping into A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) by Jennifer Egan.

  Too hip for me, I found myself impatient with and skimming the book. Nonetheless, this book won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

  My favorite chapter was a PowerPoint presentation(!) written as the PowerPoint slide diary of the 12-year-old daughter (Alison), whose autistic (?) brother is obsessed with the pauses in recordings of rock songs. The spaces within and between the PowerPoint slides, as well as the pauses in the recordings, become a metaphor for the gaps between all members of Alison's family members.

• Finished the helpful Japan: Its History and Culture (2005) by William Scott Morton and J. Kennith Olenik, an introduction to Japanese culture.
• Abandoned dipping into the rather elderly The Japanese (1977) by Edwin Oldfather Reischauer.

• Frogpond (35:2, 2012), excellent haiku journal.

  Includes a haiku by J. Zimmerman.

• Three Poets of Modern Korea: Yi Sang, Hahm Dong-Seon, and Choi Young-Mi (2002), poetry translated and with an introduction and notes by Yu Jung-yul and James Kimbrell.

• The Cat's Table (2011) by Michael Ondaatje, Winner of the 1992 Booker Prizes with The English Patient.

  A memorable book about a rambunctious boy child on a three-week boat trip from Ceylon to England, on the many characters and adventures on the ship, and of the boy's adulthood, with his re-connection and reevaluation of what he experienced and saw.

• Finished dipping in to The Cartoon Guide to Statistics (1993) by Larry Gonick and Woollcott Smith. Includes:

  Volumes:

  1. What is Statistics?
  2. Data Description
  3. Probability
  4. Random Variables
  5. A Tale of Two Distributions
  6. Sampling
  7. Confidence Intervals
  8. Hypothesis Testing
  9. Comparing Two Populations
  10. Experimental Design
  11. Regression
  12. Conclusion

  Also enjoyed his:

  • The Cartoon History of the Modern World I: Volumes 1-5 From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution (2007)
  • The Cartoon History of the Universe II: Volumes 8-13 From the Springtime of China to the Fall of Rome (1994)

• On first public day of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art showing of the Cindy Sherman photography exhibit (exhibition organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York) spent hours walking through ten glorious rooms of her photos. Brilliant.

• Listened to Bossypants (2011) by Tina Fey, read by Tina Fey.

  A light read: starts out feisty but ends up relatively demure.

• Finished dipping in to Mammal Tracks & Sign: A Guide to North American Species by Mark Elbroch.

  A rich and informative book.

• Ribbons (8, 1) Spring/Summer 2012 issue. Includes a couple of Tanka by J. Zimmerman. Also a helpful Editor's Message from the new Ribbons editor, David Rice, and a "Poet and Tanka" essay by Kozue Uzawa.

• Night Fading to Pale Rose, tanka by the Japanese poet Yosano Akiko (1878-1942), translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro.

  "She [Yosano] infused erotic and imaginative passion into the traditional tanka form at a time when it had grown lifeless and conventional" according to the booklet's blurb.

• "Questions" section of Essential Japanese Grammar: A Comprehensive Guide to Contemporary Usage (2012).

• Too Much Happiness: stories by Alice Munro, winner of the 2009 International Booker Prize.

  Each short story has the depth and breadth of characters usually found in a novel — or (in the case of her title story) a Russian novel.

  Brilliant when read singly. But a whole book of them becomes a little "too much happiness", like the second layer of a box of chocolates that I should have left alone. However it is still possible (as on the book's blurb, quoting from The New York Times Book Review) that:

  "Alice Munro has a strong claim to being the best fiction writer now working in North America" — Jonathan Franzen

• "Interrogatives" section of Essential Japanese Grammar: A Comprehensive Guide to Contemporary Usage (2012).

• "Comparisons" section of Essential Japanese Grammar: A Comprehensive Guide to Contemporary Usage (2012).

• "Auxiliary Verbs and Adjectives" section of Essential Japanese Grammar: A Comprehensive Guide to Contemporary Usage (2012).

• Finished dipping into Writing Open the Mind: Tapping the Subconscious to Free the Writing and the Writer by Andy Couturier. Dozens of writing strategies.

• "Linking verb (da/desu)" section of Essential Japanese Grammar: A Comprehensive Guide to Contemporary Usage (2012). Aha! The first time I've had some insight into this changeling and fundamental verb!

• "Adverbs" section of Essential Japanese Grammar: A Comprehensive Guide to Contemporary Usage (2012).

• "Accents" section of Essential Japanese Grammar: A Comprehensive Guide to Contemporary Usage (2012).

• Read issue 43.2 (Summer 2012) of Modern Haiku.

  Includes three haiku by moi:

  last day of the year recycled paper jams my printer reflected in a dew drop New Year's dawn not the answer I was expecting heat haze

  Includes a spotlight feature on Nagase Togo's haiku from Fukushima, a collection of 50 haiku and winner of the 2011 Kadokawa Haiku Award; 25 are translated by Emiko Miyashita and Michael Dylan Welch.

• "Introduction" (word order, verb morphology, counters, honorifics) section of Essential Japanese Grammar: A Comprehensive Guide to Contemporary Usage (2012).

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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