Books read recently by J. Zimmerman

Disclaimer. Links. Booker Prizes Chocolate. Books read Best books read in 2013. 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

"Cultivate necessary selfishness. The world — even the literary world — will ask you to do everything except write new poems. That, you must ask yourself." Jane Hirshfield quoted by Jeffrey Skinner on p.11 of his The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets: A Self-Help Memoir (2012).

{ March : san-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2013 }

(3.31.2013)

• Finished Creating Short Fiction: The Classic Guide to Writing Short Fiction (1981) by Damon Francis Knight (September 19, 1922 - April 15, 2002), the American science fiction author and master of the short story.

  A practical book on generating, structuring, and pacing one's prose fiction. Includes many effective exercises and examples. See especially his chapter on viewpoint.

• Finished skimming The Worst Hard Time (2006) by Timothy Egan

  The North American Dust Bowl of the 1930s was a man-made disaster when the topsoil blew away in five central states, due to their ; a lack of rain on ploughed-up perennial grassland.

  See also his The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America (2009), also written in the style of recent history with the lives of small individuals as the emotional heart of the book.

• Finished listening to Dear Life: Stories (2012) by Alice Munro, performed by Kimberly Farr and Arthur Morey.

  Often the stories have the volume of the material in a novel; insightful and often somber.

• Lakeland Walls (1969, 1972) by Willaim Rollinson.

  An informative illustrated summary of dry-stone walling in the English Lakelands.

• Unjunk Your Junk Food: Healthy Alternatives to Conventional Snacks (2011) by Andrea Donsky and Randy Boyer.

  Includes some startling data:

  • "junk food makes up almost one third of our daily diet"
  • Make at least 80% of your daily calories come from minimally processed food.
  • Carbs: "the fuel".
  • Protein: "the power source". "Having a protein-rich breakfast within 30 minutes of waking will help get your brain working. It will also stabilize your blood sugar."
  • Fats &mdash the good: Omega-3 and -6 fats are EFAs (essential fatty acids), found in nuts, salmon, sardines, hemp oil, and flax seeds. Mono-unsaturated fats lower LDL (low-density lipoprotein cholesterol — the bad one) while raising HDL (high-density lipoprotein cholesterol — the good one), and are in olive, peanut, and canola oil. Poly-unsaturated fats from raw whole-foods can be good; found in nuts, seeds, vegetables, and whole grain.
  • Fats &mdash the bad: Saturated fats should be consumed in great moderation; found in red meat, egg yolks, butter, coconut and palm oils.
  • Fats &mdash the ugly: hydrogenated fats (the artificial "trans fats" should be avoided completely; found in breaded foods, cereals, chocolate bars, corn chips, fish sticks, frozen pizza, granola bars, instant soup mixes, margarine, microwave popcorn, pancake mixes, peanut butter, pudding, and many more. "Americans ingest an average of 5.8 grams of trans fat daily. This translates into ... almost 5 pounds ... per year." Avoid foods with "partially hydrogenated" on the label: "foods that include less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving are allowed to state '0' trans fat on the Nutrition Facts panel".
  • "Reduced" fat: At least 25% less fat than the full-fat version.
  • Fiber: "the facilitator". Include both soluble fibers (found in oatmeal, beans, fruit, lentils, psyllium) and insoluble fibers (found in wheat bran, cereals, fruit skins, and vegetable skins. Eat at least 35 mg (women) or 38 mg (men). (3+ mg per serving is great.)
  • Sodium: Limit all daily sodium intake below 1500 mg (1.5 gm), i.e. less than FDA's 2.4 gm.
  • Sugar: minimize; combine it or any carbs with protein and/or lots of fiber.
  • Vitamins and minerals: "the essential elements".
  • GMOs (Genetically modified organisms) typically are "new organisms that would never occur in nature ... [and] are created by adding genes from bacteria, viruses, or animals to a plant's gene sequence". Commonly these are GMOs: canola oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, high-fructose corn syrup, soybean oil, and soy lecithin.
  • Lists of worst ingredients — see their web site for a printable copy:
    • p. 25: The worst includes artificial flavors, sweeteners, colors, and lakes, as well as MSG, types of trans fats, specific emulsifiers, and specific preservatives.
    • p. 26: Further ingredients to beware of, and avoid if possible include other specifics in the categories of the worst ingredients.
  • Individual chapters on:
    • Chips, dips, and party foods.
    • Ice cream and other frozen treats.
    • Cookies.
    • Chocolate.
    • Cakes and other deserts.
    • Granola bars and other on-the-go snacks.
    • Candy
    • Soda and other drinks.

• Netsuke (2011) by Rikki Ducornet.

  A peculiar little book on the eroticism of betrayal. Rather sad.

• Harvest (2013) by Jim Crace.

  Wonderful to have a new book by Crace, one of my favorite authors. Devoured it in the first two evenings I had it. Though it's not as strong as his 1997 Booker Prize listed Quarantine. or his The Pesthouse, with its North American population crash and nationwide organization collapse.

  Harvest appears (July 2013) on the 2013 Man Booker Prize long list.

• Listened to Kinsey and Me (2013) by Sue Grafton; read by Judy Kaye.

  A collection of short stories about her private-eye protagonist, Kinsey Millhone, together with stories about Kit Blue, letting the reader have a closer view of the author's difficult childhood and early relationships.

  Books read in Sue Grafton's series include:
  1982: A is for Alibi .
  1985: B is for Burglar.
  1987: D is for Deadbeat.
  1988: E is for Evidence.
  1989: F is for Fugitive: also a favorite.
  1992: I is for Innocent.
  1994: K is for Killer.
  1995: L is for Lawless.
  1996: M is for Malice.
  1998: N is for Noose.
  1999: O is for Outlaw.
  2001: P is for Peril.
  2003: Q is for Quarry.
  2004: R is for Ricochet.
  2005: S is for Silence, my favorite in the series so far, perhaps because of the liveliness of the characters.
  2007: T is for Trespass, one of her scariest books yet; becomes riveting.
  2009: U is for Undertow, a very satisfying book.
  2011: V is for Vengeance, very good.
  2013: Kinsey and Me.

• Dipped into The Mayo CLinic Diet (2010) a book that claims it's "designed to help you lose up to 6 to 10 lbs. in 2 weeks".

  All you have to do, they say, is

  • Add 5 habits:
    1. A healthy breakfast but not too much.
    2. 4+ daily servings of veg; 3+ of fruit.
    3. WHOLE grains.
    4. Healthy fats: olive oil, vegetable oil, nuts. Reduced-fat dairy. AVOID trans-fat (hydrogenated vegetable oil) as in stick margerine, baked goods, and snack foods. Minimize saturated fats as in meat, poultry, cheese, cream.
    5. Exercise for 30+ minutes daily. Weeding the garden or cleaning the house count ;) .
  • Break 5 habits:
    1. No TV while eating; only as much TV as time spent exercising.
    2. No sugar (except for what is naturally in fruit). Um, alcohol is counted as sugar!
    3. No snacks except vegetables and fruits.
    4. Moderate meat portions (size of a deck of cards) and low-fat dairy.
    5. No eating in restaurants (unless the meal fits the program).
  • Adopt 5 bonus habits, primarily related to logging that each of these 15 habits is accomplished each day.
    1. Keep food records: write down everything that you eat.
    2. Keep activity records.
    3. Increase your exercising to 60+ minutes every day.
    4. Eat 'real food' -- in its natural state or processed only lightly.
    5. Write your daily goals.

• Finished listening (and partly re-listening) to the lively The Reformed Vampire Support Group (2009) by Catherine Jinks; admirably performed by Caroline Lee.

  Another one of the best books read in 2013, and the best vampire novel of the year!

• Gave up on trying to read The Last of the Wine (1956) by Mary Renault. While well-recommended, it's a little too solemn and proud for me.

• Listened to D is for Deadbeat (1987) by Sue Grafton.
  Another satisfying book, well read as always by Judy Kaye.

  Books read in Sue Grafton's series include:
  A is for Alibi .
  B is for Burglar.
  D is for Deadbeat.
  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.
  1999: O is for Outlaw.
  2001: P is for Peril.
  2003: Q is for Quarry.
  2004: R is for Ricochet.
  2005: S is for Silence, my favorite in the series so far, perhaps because of the liveliness of the characters.
  2007: T is for Trespass, one of her scariest books yet; becomes riveting.
  2009: U is for Undertow, a very satisfying book.
  2011: V is for Vengeance, very good.

• Began Kanji de Manga: the Comic Book that Teaches you how to Read and Write Japanese Volume 1 (2005) by Glenn Kardy and Chihiro Hattori.

  Gives 80 kanji that they say will be sufficient kanji for the lowest level JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test). However, a comment on the Amazon site for this book says that the full list of kanji you have to learn to pass "the first level exam (JLPT4) ... [is] 103 kanji ... as well as ... [about] 700 vocab words, and [of course] basic grammar and listening skills." Still, I am hoping that at one per day, in 3 months I might be able to recognize the JLPT4 kanji, by studying this book and adding in the other JLPT4!

• Frogpond (36:1, 2013), excellent haiku journal.

  Includes a haiku by J. Zimmerman and a tan-renga by her and Mimi Ahern!

• Finished listening to Deborah Tannen's Modern Scholar course Communication matters. Course two, "That's not what I meant!", sociolinguistics of everyday conversation (2004).

  Lectures:

  1. "Conversational style: the power of language in your life." Includes amplitude (loudness), pacing (speed) and pausing, turn-taking, intonation (pitch shifts), directness and indirectness, stories (topic and how you get to the point), joking, teasing, sarcasm, how you show you are listening, and kinesics (physical distance, touch, body orientation, eye gaze, and laughter). While style is "automatic and invisible", we base upon it conclusions (presumptions?) of "personality, intentions, abilities, or group stereotypes".
  2. "Linguistic signals, devices, and rituals." When conversational rituals are not shared, an utterance is interpreted literally. "Complementary schismogenesis" occurs in a conversation between people with opposite styles, with each escalating their style, as if that could alter the style of the other person toward theirs.
  3. "Framing and reframing: how meta-messages frame meaning." "Framing" tells us how to interpret the meaning of the words we hear. Jokes often depend on a shift of frame.
  4. "Power and solidarity: the interplay of hierarchy and connectedness." Includes choice of pronouns, use of first name versus title, etc. leads to:
     • Closeness plus hierarchy: e.g. Japanese amae; Javanese respect.
     • Distance plus hierarchy: e.g. American employer/employee.
     • Distance plus equality: e.g. Javanese formal/polite.
     • Closeness plus equality: e.g. American siblings.
  5. "Indirectness: the ways and whys we communicate meaning not in so many words." While indirectness can pay off by increasing self-defense or increasing rapport, those who tend to use a different style might genuinely miss the speaker's meaning, or understand it but resent the indirectness or the directness, or erroneously attributed negative personality, ability, or intention to the speaker.
  6. "The rhythms of talks: pacing, pausing, silence, and interruption." "Differences in the rhythms of talk can lead to negative impressions. When these patterns vary by culture and gender, they may result in speakers being unfairly stereotyped." Don't take differences in style personally. Consider adapting your style to that of someone you are talking with.
  7. "Listenership: conversation as a joint productions." To show you're listening: appropriate eye gaze (women gaze more than men), appropriate back-channel responses (sounds made to show you are listening, like "mhm, uhuh, yeah", need to be enough to show attentions but not too many to show impatience.
  8. "Agonism: programmed contentiousness, ritualized opposition." Significantly present in Western men's conversations; much less common in women's. Many Asian cultures, however, place "negative value ... on the open expression of opposition."
  9. "Gender: women and men talking." "Women's and men's [different] uses of language can be traced to the way boys and girls play. Boys (and men) focus on relative status; girls (and women) focus on relative connectedness." Women tend to make "rapport-talk" (including talking through problems) whereas men tend to make "report talk" (including quickly offering a solution).
  10. "Apologies in private and public contexts." Men tend to be reluctant to actually use the words "I apologize", to see apologizing as a degradation, and to make indirect apologies. But apologizing smoothes a world of troubles. So, try to accept indirect apologies (if you are the would-be recipient) or to actually say the words (if that is what is needed from you).
  11. "Talking at work: institutional and interactional power." "Knowing about conversational style gives you more flexibility to improve the situation if you feel you are not getting credit for your work or that your true abilities are not being recognized. It is also incumbent upon managers and others in high positions to become aware of conversational style differences in order to accurately judge the abilities of those who work under their supervision, to bring out the best work from those they supervise" while working with people with varying styles to serve customers who will also have varying styles.
  12. "The classroom: talking in school." Home style of conversation can lead to a need to educate a child about the different style of interaction needed in the classroom. Tendency for boys to take (and be given) power over girls in a mixed-gender situation.
  13. "Politics: talk in a public area." Particular tools are framing, agonism (ritualized opposition), and apologies (or lack thereof).
  14. "What to do with what you've learned." "An understanding of conversational style and an awareness of that style as employed by yourself and by those to whom you speak not only sheds light on human behavior but increases the likelihood of communicating successfully."

• Concluded the 586-page On China (2011) by Henry Kissinger.

  One of the most grievous omissions is some kind of timeline, but perhaps Kissinger is more the anecdotal than the scientific analyst.

  Accordingly here is a timeline of recent presidents of the United States of America along with number of pages indexed to them or their administrations in On China:On China

  POTUS No.	POTUS (president of the USA)	years served	pages referring
  32	Franklin D. Roosevelt (served 1933 - 1945 Democratic)	8	1
  33	Harry S. Truman (served 1945 - 1953 Democratic)	8	12
  34	Dwight D. Eisenhower (served 1953 - 1961 Republican)	8	15
  35	John F. Kennedy (served 1961 - 1963 Democratic)	2	2
  36	Lyndon B. Johnson (served 1963 - 1969 Democratic)	6	3
  37	Richard Nixon (served 1969 - 1974 Republican)	5	97
  38	Gerald Ford (served 1974 - 1977 Republican)	3	26
  39	Jimmy Carter (served 1977 - 1981 Democratic)	4	26
  40	Ronald Reagan (served 1981 - 1989 Republican)	8	26
  41	George H. W. Bush (served 1989 - 1993 Republican)	4	31
  42	Bill Clinton (served 1993 - 2001 Democratic)	8	6
  43	George W. Bush (served 2001 - 2009 Republican)	8	12
  44	Barack Obama (serving 2009-2017 Democratic)	active	3

  Read the first quarter last year.

{ February : ni-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2013 }

(2.26.2013)

• Ribbons (8, 3) Winter 2012 issue. Includes a couple of Tanka by J. Zimmerman, part 1 of her essay on her Tanka Revision Workshop, and a responsive tanka by her and Beverly Acuff Momoi.

• Abandoned Paolo Giordano's The Solitude of Prime Numbers (2009), partly because of the stilted writing (or perhaps Shaun Whiteside's translation from the Italian?), partly because I felt unsympathetic to the portrayed characters, and partly because there was so much pain in the book that to continue would for me have been masochistic.

• C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle (1956) performed by Michael York.

  The 7th book written in the Narnia seven-book series, and the 7th in the Narnian Chronology: a fairly strong Christian analogy, which takes up time that could have been spent on story. Basically, everyone but Susan goes to heaven.

  C.S. Lewis' books read (in the sequence of the Narnian Chronology, as advised by Douglas Gresham, stepson of C.S. Lewis):

  • (1955) The Magician's Nephew
  • (1950) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  • (1954) The Horse and His Boy
  • (1951) Prince Caspian
  • (1952) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
  • (1953) The Silver Chair
  • (1956) The Last Battle

• C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair (1952) performed by Ian Richardson.

  The 3rd book written in the Narnia seven-book series, but the 5th one in the Narnian Chronology: the two of the children (Edmund and Lucy) return with their feeble cousin Eustace to re-meet Prince Caspian. Eustace sees a dragon die, steals some of its treasure, ... and while he sleeps he is turned into a dragon.

  C.S. Lewis' books read (in the sequence of the Narnian Chronology, as advised by Douglas Gresham, stepson of C.S. Lewis):

  • (1955) The Magician's Nephew
  • (1950) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  • (1954) The Horse and His Boy
  • (1951) Prince Caspian
  • (1952) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
  • (1953) The Silver Chair

• Reread Ernest Fenollosa's The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry in its 1936 version edited by Ezra Pound. Written by Fenollosa before his death in 1908, the essay is an enthusiastic ramble. On p. 5. he states:

  Now my own impression has been so radically and diametrically opposed to such a conclusion [that Chinese and Japanese "branches of poetry are fields too barren to repay the toil necessary for their cultivation"], that a sheer enthusiasm of generosity has driven me to wish to share with other Occidentals my newly discovered joy.

  His rather rambling gist is that the visual information in Chinese characters (and by extension, Japanese kanji) adds an invaluable visual aspect to augment the meaning of the poetry. To demonstrate he includes four lines of Chinese poetry and a handful of additional character.

• Reread A Poetry Handbook (1994) by Mary Oliver.

  A concise and deft introduction to the craft and spirit of writing poetry.

  Read books by Mary Oliver (poetry unless specified otherwise):

  • 1963, first edition; 1965, expanded edition: No Voyage and Other Poems.
  • 1972: The River Styx, Ohio, and Other Poems.
  • 1978: The Night Traveler.
  • 1978: Twelve Moons.
  • 1983: American Primitive.
  • 1986: Dream Work.
  • 1990: House of Light.
  • 1992: New and Selected Poems Volume One.
  • 1994: White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems.
  • 1994 (prose): A Poetry Handbook.
  • 1995 (prose): Blue Pastures.
  • 1997: West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems.
  • 1999 (prose): Winter hours: prose, prose poems, and poems.
  • 2000, prose poem: The Leaf and the Cloud: A Poem.
  • 2002: What Do We Know.
  • 2003: Owls and Other Fantasies: poems and essays ().
  • 2004: Why I Wake Early.
  • 2004: Blue Iris: Poems and Essays.
  • 2005: New and Selected Poems Volume Two.
  • 2006: Thirst.
  • 2008: Red Bird.
  • 2012: A Thousand Mornings.

• Listened to V is for Vengeance (2011) by Sue Grafton.
  Another satisfying book, well read as always by Judy Kaye.

  The heroine Kinsey Millhone notices and reports a shop-lifting heist. Then this multiple-viewpoint book is on a roll, with lots of interesting Goodies and Baddies dealing with huge amounts of cash and of passions. The intertwined love plot is a little too sweet but out gal Kinsey certainly takes the bitter — strangulated almost to unconsciousness by a bad cop and punched out by the 'good' Mob guy, for example. And almost forgetting her May 5th birthday.

  Other books read in Sue Grafton's series include:
  1982: A is for Alibi .
  1985: B is for Burglar.
  1988: E is for Evidence.
  1989: F is for Fugitive: also a favorite.
  1992: I is for Innocent.
  1994: K is for Killer.
  1995: L is for Lawless.
  1996: M is for Malice.
  1998: N is for Noose.
  1999: O is for Outlaw.
  2001: P is for Peril.
  2003: Q is for Quarry.
  2004: R is for Ricochet.
  2005: S is for Silence, my favorite in the series so far, perhaps because of the liveliness of the characters.
  2007: T is for Trespass, one of her scariest books yet; becomes riveting.
  2009: U is for Undertow, a very satisfying book.
  2011: V is for Vengeance, very good.

• C.S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952) performed by Sir Anthony Quayle.

  The 5th book written in the Narnia seven-book series, but the 3rd one in the Narnian Chronology: the two of the children (Edmund and Lucy) return with their feeble cousin Eustace to re-meet Prince Caspian. Eustace sees a dragon die, steals some of its treasure, ... and while he sleeps he is turned into a dragon.

  C.S. Lewis' books read:

  • (1950) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  • (1951) Prince Caspian
  • (1952) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
  • (1954) The Horse and His Boy
  • (1955) The Magician's Nephew

• John Pollack's The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay more than Some Antics [semantics, geddit?] (2011), in a reading by Pete Larkin. Despite the wincibility of the author's title and subtitle, almost 5% of his examples were funny.

• paul m.'s Called Home (2006), a collection of haiku.

  The first half has poems of California and is particularly good — strong and fresh juxtapositions — and I'm always a sucker for haiku set in the Sierra!

  The second half, set in New England, was good but seemed less strong. Perhaps the poet had a smaller repertoire to select from, as he'd been in California for several decades before moving back to New England.

  This collection seems quite traditional. And very few senryu.

  Some are brilliant, such as:

   
  no one to tell
  the alpine sky heavy 
  with thunderclouds
   
  and
   
  schoolyard snow
  all the bullies
  I have known
  

  I was puzzled by one:

   
  tug of her hand
  a spring so small
  you could miss it
  

  After about 7 re-readings I am thinking they are walking together and she sees a little mountain spring — as opposed to the tug being "springy" or some emblem of the spring (or capital-S Spring) season (an early flower perhaps) being seen.

• Dipped into and abandoned the annoying Will Self's Umbrella (2012), unaccountably short-listed for the 2012 Booker Prize. Umbrella. The worst Booker nominee I've ever attempted to read: 0/10 on the Blog-ometer.

  I've heard that it tells the story of a mentally challenged woman diagnosed with encephalitis lethargica. But the clever stream-of-consciousness style (apparently learned from Woolf, Joyce, et al.) was hard to get in to. As for the book's title, the book opens with a quotation by James Joyce:

  A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.

  Then on pp. 374-5 (in Self's style of interleaved italics and non-italics):

  They would titrate the dose differently ... put up the umbrella as much as the nurses required, but at all costs keep on with the trial that's nothing of the sort.

  And elsewhere:

  night [is] an umbrella with starry holes torn in its cover.

• C.S. Lewis' The Horse and his Boy (1954) read by Sir Anthony Quayle.

  The 3rd book written in the Narnia seven-book series, and also the 4th one in the Narnian Chronology.

  C.S. Lewis' books read:

  • (1950) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  • (1951) Prince Caspian
  • (1954) The Horse and His Boy
  • (1955) The Magician's Nephew

• Helen Simpson's fourth collection of short stories Driver's Seat (published as The Constitutional (2005) originally in the UK.

  Simpson is recommended by Jonathan Franzen in his Farther Away: Essays.

  Insightful and hilarious and poignant about the human condition, particularly of those whom we want to (but in real life never do) shake and shout at to wake up!

  Her "If I'm Spared" is particularly incisive about one's response to hearing one (or one's sweetie) has a life-threatening illness.

• The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry (1987), edited by Leon Stokesbury. Poets from Ralph Adamo to Charles Wright (whose "Clear Night" is one of my all-time favorite free-verse poems).

• Imbibed in one lovely afternoon Alison Moore's The Lighthouse (2012), another one of the best books read in 2013, and short-listed for the 2012 Booker Prize.

• Finished dipping into Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (2010).
  
  He defines his term "the bloodlands as territories subject to both German and Soviet police power and associated mass killing policies at some point between 1933 and 1945" (p. 409). As of 2010, these lands had become the center and east of Poland, the western band of the Russian Federation (St. Petersburg to the Sea of Azov), all but the two small western patches of Ukraine, and the entirety of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus (as on map on p. 385).
  
  A terrifying story of mass killings under the leadership of Hitler and of Stalin.
  
  Of the 14 million people that Snyder reports as having being deliberately killed in the bloodlands, he makes a summary (p. 411) that includes:
  • 1932-33: "3.3 million Soviet citizens (mostly Ukrainians) deliberately starved by their own government in Soviet Ukraine".
  • 1937-38: 0.3 million "Soviet citizens (mostly Poles and Ukrainians) shot by their own government in the western USSR among the roughly seven hundred thousand victims of the Great Terror of 1937-1938".
  • 1939-41: 0.2 million "Polish citizens (mostly Poles) shot by German and Soviet forces in occupied Poland".
  • 1941-44: "4.2 million Soviet citizens (largely Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians) starved by the German occupiers".
  • 1941-44: "5.4 million Jews (most of them Polish or Soviet citizens) gassed or shot by the Germans".
  • 1941-44: "several hundred thousand civilians (mostly Belarusians, and Poles) shot by the Germans in 'reprisals' chiefly in Belarus and Warsaw".
  
  He compares his total (using "sums of counts made by the Germans or the Soviets themselves, complemented by other sources, rather than statistical estimates of losses bases upon censuses. Accordingly, my counts are often lower (even if stupifyingly high) than others in the literature") with:
  • 4 million "people who died in all of the Soviet and German concentration camps (as opposed to the death facilities) taken together over the entire history of both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany".
  • 12 million "German and Soviet soldiers, taken together, killed on the battlefields in the Second World War (counting starved and executed prisoners of was as victims of a policy of mass murder rather than as military casualties)".
  • 1 million "American and British casualties, taken together, of the Second World War".
  • 1 million "American battlefield losses in all of the foreign wars that the United States has ever fought".

• Finished Tan Twan Eng's The Gift of Rain (2007), long-listed for the 2007 Booker Prize.
  
  Like Eng's subsequent The Garden of Evening Mists: a Novel, this book also explores the boundaries of loyalty and deceit before, during, and in the aftermath of a time of war. Both books are set in the context of the World War II invasion of Malaya by Japan. And both are told from the point of view of someone who is aging, with aging memories.
  
  This book presents (a little more explicitly than the subsequent The Garden of Evening Mists: a Novel) how a spy can seduce someone into giving them information and how a collaborator can walk a jagged path between helping the enemy, protecting his family and others he cares for, and supporting in-country resistance fighters. The respect for a Japanese skill (in this book, akido; in The Garden of Evening Mists: a Novel, Japanese gardening and archery) allow us to admire something beautiful in the culture of the invading race.
  
  Books by Eng:
  • 2012: The Garden of Evening Mists: a Novel: one of the best books read in 2013.
  • 2007: The Gift of Rain.

Nothing in the Window: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2012 (2013) edited by Jim Kacian and the Red Moon Editorial Staff. Terrific collection, the 17th in the Red Moon Anthology series. 142 poems (English-language haiku, and senryu) published around the world in calendar year 2012. Also 30 poems in linked forms: haibun, renku, and rengay, and sequences. And 3 critical pieces on the study of haiku poems and sensibilities. Gratifyingly, includes a haiku by me!

Anthologies read in this series:

• Nothing in the Window: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2012 (2013).
• Carving Darkness: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2011 (2012).
• A Glimpse of Red: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2000 (2001).

• Arthur Sze's The Redshifting Web: poems 1970-1998.

• Read issue 44.1 (Winter/Spring 2013) of Modern Haiku, the penultimate issue under Charles Trumbull's editorship.

  Includes three haiku by moi.

  Also a positive review of the Yuki Teikei 2012 haiku anthology, Bending Reeds .

  It was great to see David Lanoue's enthusiastic review of Stephen Addiss' Art of Haiku: It's History Through Poems and Paintings by Japanese Masters. I bought a copy of this superb book at a local book store last year and am perusing it at an enthralled yet leisurely pace.

  Gratifying to see Paul Miller's review of three books by Robert Epstein, including his The Temple Bell Stops: Contemporary Poems of Grief, Loss and Change (2012), in which I have haiku. and tanka.

  Also intriguing is Eve Luckring's review of Lakes & Now Wolves (2012) Scott Metz' first collection.

  I admired the idea of a set of essays on senryu (if not all of the essays themselves). Jane Reichhold's bold piece was particularly amusing if forceful to the point of rant in places.

  See also comments on previous issues of: Modern Haiku:

  • 43.3 of Modern Haiku.
  • 43.2 of Modern Haiku.
  • 43.1 of Modern Haiku.
  • 41.2 of Modern Haiku.
  • 41.1 of Modern Haiku.
  • 40.2 of Modern Haiku.
  • 39.3 of Modern Haiku.
  • 39.1 of Modern Haiku.
  • 38.2 of Modern Haiku.
  • 38.1 of Modern Haiku.
  • 36.2 of Modern Haiku.

• Finished dipping into Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: a Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective (2008), a recreation of the events surrounding an 1860 murder of a child (Francis Saville Kent). The Moonstone (1868) was likely influenced by the news and speculation at the time concerning the Kent murder.

{ January : ichi-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2013 }

(1.29.2013)

• Listened to Jonathan Franzen's Farther Away: Essays (2012), narrated by Jonathan Franzen and Scott Shepherd (2012).

  A collection of insightful essays and speeches, particularly about his deceased friend and comrade David Foster Wallace and about the destruction of wild birds.

• Abandoned Umberto Eco's The Prague cemetery (2011), also highly recommended but not for me.

• Finished dipping into William Gass' On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry (1976), highly recommended but not for me, even though blue is my favorite color. Ok for people that are more interested in language than topic, but the free-association is too loose for me.

• Finished dipping into Karen Elsa Sandness' Japanese the Easy Way (1997), a set of 18 practical chapters on learning Japanese).

• Abandoned trying to listen to George R.R. Martin's A Clash of Kings (1999) in a 2004 narration by Roy Dotrice.

  Psychopathic royalty on the loose in a mediaeval/fantasy view of tribal culture; borrows on North-versus-South England versus Scotland versus Wales, etc. But the writing is uninspiring.

• Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test: a Journey Through the Madness Industry.

  A chatty pop-psychology book, written like a collection of short stories, each chapter concerning a possible-psychopath in different circumstances (prison, business, etc). The consensus reported by Ronson is that about 1% of the non-prison population, about 4% of CEOs, and about a third of the prison population are psychopathic. Includes (pp. 97-98) the "famous twenty-point Hare PLC-R Checklist" for identifying psychopaths.

• Finished listening to Henning Mankell's final book in the Kurt Wallender series The Troubled Man (2009) in a 2011 narration by Robin Sachs.

  A poignant end-of-career story as dementia sets in. A couple of coincidences too many, but otherwise a worthwhile read.

• red lights: January 2013 issue. Includes another five-section tanka series by J. Zimmerman.

• Mary Oliver's A Thousand Mornings (2012).

• Finished Tan Twan Eng's The Garden of Evening Mists: a Novel.

  One of the best books read in 2013.

• Cultural Anthropology 13, 3 (August, 1998). Includes Peter Metcalf's "The Book in the Coffin: On the Ambivalence of 'Informants'".

• Finished Maria Tatar's The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales.

  One of the best books read in 2013.

  See also her The Annotated Brothers Grimm.

• Frogpond (35:3, 2012), excellent haiku journal.

  Includes a haiku, a collaborative tan-renga (with Alison Woolpert), and a book review of Mark Harris' burl (2012) and George Dorsty's The Space Between (2012) by J. Zimmerman.

  Also includes Michelle Root-Bernstein's "Dog Star: An Interview with Akito Arima" and Charles Trumbull's essay "Meaning in Haiku".

• Jeffrey Skinner's The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets: A Self-Help Memoir (2012).

  A little heavier on the memoir, but his main points are good:

  1. Protect talent.
  2. Find the liminal ("in-between") places.
  3. Make use.
  4. Self-discipline
  5. Find poetry companions
  6. Be ambitious for the work.
  7. [The cutely numbered '6.5'] Take the long view.

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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