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Best books read in 2013.
Best writers of poetry and prose
My chocolate of choice for a NaNoWriMo attempt:
Books read recently by J. Zimmerman
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Links.
Booker Prizes
Chocolate.
Books read
Best books read in 2013.
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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| "Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into a system. " Robert Musil |
{ June : roku-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2013 }
(6.29.2013)
A really good book about practical science, by a field biologist (specifically a herpetologist) who travels by solo to a remote part of the Congo in order to study snakes, venomous and not. Though despite being happy around snakes in the depths of tropical swamp forests, she seems to be ant-phobic (a nice humanizing touch). She is also helpful on the Byzantine politics of getting permits, on the foibles of the many people who help her (and the few who hinder her) and the scary (barf-provoking?) attributes of jungle foods.
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I have in front of me a 2-meter-long cobra, tangled in a bet with its head and neck
free. I somehow have to get the snake from here to a sealed container back at camp
[half an hour away though a flooded forest],
where I can lightly chloroform it before taking pictures.
... There are very few rules to the art of collecting venomous snakes.
Every situation is different.
[p. 143] |
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Everything suddenly falls into place and I recognize the snake in my hand
as a forest cobra ... In the sane instant that I shift my grip to get control of the head,
the snake turns to strike.
I see the mouth open.
I see the sharp tip of the left fang prick my right thumb.
... The neck is spread into a hood against my grip.
Viscous yellow venom is dribbling down my forearm and onto the cloth bag that Ange has given me.
...
"It's a forest cobra," I tell Ange.
"Oh. Did it bite you?" "I'm actually not quite sure ... We're finished here. Absolutely no fuss, okay? Probably nothing to worry about. But we're going back immediately." ... Very much in my thoughts is Joe Slowinski, a herpetologist killed a few years earlier by a misidentified juvenile krait, a snake so small that he couldn't tell if the fang had punctured the skin. [p. 295] |
Practical and succint directions, with half the book devoted to sample poems.
Read books by Mary Oliver (poetry unless specified otherwise):
Dream Work.
West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems.
Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse.
Winter hours: prose, prose poems, and poems.
The Leaf and the Cloud: A Poem.
Owls and Other Fantasies: poems and essays ().
Why I Wake Early.
Thirst.
Red Bird.
The classic adventure epic is modernized, especially in the conversation of Odysseus's companions, which makes the whole story more vibrant and adds to its impact.
The book won a 2011 Pulitzer Prize.
The book tells a history of cancer, which kills about seven million people worldwide each year, with 0.6 million of them in the USA.
Its last quarter is particularly interesting with the more recent research results, showing how accelerated cell division (cancer) results from the activation of oncogenes (such as RAS) combined with the deactivation of anti-oncogenes (such as RV). Some fascinating techniques include "humanizing an antibody".
A handy synopsis and light commentary.
Includes two haiku by moi.
Less enthusiastic about the essays and book reviews than in previous issues, although the original poems are widely ranging and all of interest.
See also comments on previous issues of: Modern Haiku:
Lectures:
Some terms and quotations:
Other Modern Scholar courses:
The recent DiCaprio The Great Gatsby movie was so much better than the wan version three decades ago that I finally read the book. It's very witty and compact.
Its jacket claims it gives "The theory and practice of scientology for beginners". Accompanying the three CDs, a booklet gives 20 pages of ads for other Scientology publications preceded by a 30-page glossary that intermingles created words (e.g. "preclear", "thinkingness", "randomity", "pan-determinism"), words defined with Scientology-specific meaning (e.g. "anchor point", "Tone scale", "problem"), and words that are now quaint or rarely used in general (e.g. "arrant", "disparagement"). And it begins with a series of exercises that novice would-be scientologists are put through. The booklet is interesting if sometimes seeming more like it's part of a science-fiction created world.
The CDs are painful to hear, however, because of their condescending tone about people that are not on the scientology path. It's one thing to be enthusiastic about scientology. But it's boring to hear the rest of the world dismissed so arrogantly
The book won a 1998 Pulitzer Prize as well as the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book.
This book of archeo-anthropology presents convincing data (from archaeology, ethno-linguistics, ethno-biology, etc,) showing that geography determines history. In particular, the Eurasian (including North Africa) civilizations spread out and conquered not because of racial superiority but because they started in an environment rich in domesticable plants and animals, supporting their move from hunter-gatherer food acquisition to farming. As a result of farming animals, Eurasians contacted and developed resistance to many diseases that reached them by transfer from their proximate animals: hunter-gatherers did not experience those diseases until exposed to them by invading Eurasians, and through which they tended to be either killed outright or else so weakened that the invaders conquered them easily.
Useful if you already know a few hundred Japanese words and how to write them in kata
{ May : go-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2013 }
(5.31.2013)
A novel of speculative fiction about the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, the apparent assassin of President John F. Kennedy. The book describes a conspiracy among disgruntled CIA operatives who plan the assassination. DeLillo's author's note says he has "made no attempt to furnish factual answers to any questions raised by the assassination." That is probably why the book is not particularly interesting.
Dedication: "For Joanne, our mother, and my brother Steve", the latter being the Apple cofounder, Steve Jobs. Life on the road of a girl-child and her flamboyant, manipulative, and somewhat delusional mother.
The book is ok, attempting to tell the story from the view points of the different characters. But I never became invested enough in any of the characters to give this more than a cursory reading.
In his late teens, as if the angels had deserted him, the poet Arthur Rimbaud ceased to write poetry. Then (perhaps in contest with his mother?) he set about making his fortune out of her reach, in Africa, especially Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). He seems to be an arrogant, gun-running colonial, pretending he has no responsibility for the slave trade that is empowered by the types of weapon he sells. In his mid-teens, Rimbaud had played the system of French connections, received an enthusiastic invitation from Verlaine, and become "monsters together" with Verlaine abetted by the green fairy, absinthe.
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He [Rimbaud] was still sixteen, after all. He was not methodical, nor could he be
at that age, and in Charleville, certainly, there was no one to advise him;
there was no known path and, in a way, almost no point.
At the same time, however, the kid was cagey
— anything but unmindful of how to get his, get yours, and get on his way.
[p. 166] |
In A Season in Hell (1873, when Rimbaud is 18) he anticipates his hope for maternal care when he returns with a swollen infected leg (to be amputated) and with a year left to live:
I will come home with limbs of iron and dark skin and a furious look ... women take care of these ferocious invalids, back from the torrid countries. [p. 259] |
Why did Rimbaud stop writing? Duffy imagines a conversation with Verlaine:
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Rimbaud stared clear through him. "Because ... I no longer need
to write. What I need, Verlaine, is to not write"
[p. 289] |
Did Verlaine's work benefit from Rimbaud? Duffy imagines Verlaine telling an interviewer:
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"with my Brussels poems, in their landscapes — thanks to Rimbaud —
I came to that place where the artist vanishes. As he himself vanishes in his
prose pieces, his Illuminations."
[p. 324] |
Why did Rimbaud ceased writing his poetry? It's to Verlaine's trollop Eugénie that Duffy attributes this insight:
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"Admit it. At twenty, great genius that he was, Rimbaud
was simply burned out. A dead volcano. Shot his wad."
[p. 324] |
And shortly thereafter Duffy gives Verlaine this last word:
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"Rimbaud was a man crushed. Abandoned by God. Killed
storming the heavenly citadel."
[p. 327] |
Duffy's conversational style make this an easy read, though the sections on some of Rimbaud's more unpleasant excesses were ones that I tended to skim rather than read.
A well-performed BBC audio book.
Christie's enjoyed:
A cheerful book about small towns of eccentric people, as you might need to be for a life in a town with the name of Boogertown (North Carolina), Gas (Kansas), Goofy Ridge (Illinois), Hell (Michigan), Nothing (Arizona), or Purgatory (Maine).
Other Modern Scholar courses:
Beautifully read, this book balances an imaginative narrative and characters that enlist our interest while in parallel giving us a story of the unexpected wintering of monarch butterflies in Appalachia, as an apparent result of climate change.
An enthusiastic if a-grammatical (confusing the superlative and the comparative, for example) tale of Princess Yolande (1381-1442) of Aragon, who married Louis II of France, becoming Yolande Queen of Sicily, Duchess of Anjou, and Countess of Provence. Eventually her daughter Marie (1404-1468) married Charles VII (1403-1461), King of France. The book claims that Yolande was the recognizer of Joan of Arc (1412-1431), thereby saving France from their naughty English cousins, and raising the wimpy Charles to his coronation as King of France.
A passionate collection about the surprise-to-her breakdown of her marriage. The consistency of topic and tone, as well as the multi-faceted look at this all-too-common problem, make this a book of our times.
An excellent choice as the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
One of his best &mdash a complete hoot.
Touch & Go: a novel (2013)
by Lisa Gardner.
A quick read (especially as the writing is sloppy):
e.g. p.4 has "not to mention" clauses in two adjacent sentences.
Similar repetitive mannerisms abound.
But the plot is interesting.
Even if sometimes the characters seem too out-of-character
(on the positive side) than required by the plot.
{ April : shi-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2013 }
(4.30.2013)
Instead see Difficult Mothers: Understanding and Overcoming Their Power, which deals with a major root cause (a parent) for difficulties in decoding one's feeling, and which is so much more specific, understandable, and useful.
Chapters:
Apter notes (p. xv) that about 20% of 176 men and women she studied "gave accounts that clearly depict a difficult relational environment generated and maintained by a mother's behavior".
It includes my haibun "Birthstone".
Nine stories, written between 1979 and 2011; printed chronologically:
Alienation and isolation in urban environments or deep space. The earlier stories seem more supple and imaginative: I especially admire "Human Moments in World War III" set in space; and "The Ivory Acrobat" set in Greece after a 6.6 earthquake.
Books by DeLillo read include:
A bit too erudite and mind-gamey for me. Its chapters (with up to 3 levels of subsections) are:
e.g. 3.3.1.2. The CT and the black box
Eco's heart-topic of semiotics (from the Greek sema meaning mark) seems to be egg-head-speak for (primarily) semantics, in its sense of the relationship between signs and symbols and what they express (signify, denote). The book likes to introduce terms unfamiliar to the reader and to give unfamiliar meanings to old terms.
Semiotics is sometimes seen as larger, reaching into linguistics, and being a triumvirate of:
It also includes signs in any medium or experienced by any kind of sense.
K. Doyle's February 10, 2011, review titled "Gestaltic inelegance on parade" on Amazon.com, comments on Eco's earlier (1986) book Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (Advances in Semiotics) that:
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It seems to me, that you can divide the world's linguists into two
categories. There are those who can use their linguistic insights to
present their ideas clearly, simply and concisely, and there are those
who instead use their linguistic insights to exhibit their vast
knowledge of the subject via the liberal use of complexity, clever
metaphor, and insider or otherwise obscure references and terminology.
Eco is undeniably the consummate grandiloquent semiologue. As Edmund
Kean remarked, "Complexity is easy, simplicity is hard." Methinks the
truly brilliant linguist, would be one of few words. While reading this
book, I just couldn't help thinking, what's wrong with this picture? Is
this rocket science? No, I found here a pretentious alchemy, attempting
to fashion lead into gold at the end of a semiotic rainbow.
... A more down to earth book on "Semiotics"is Daniel Chandler's Semiotics: The Basics. It's far more practical, and there's far less pretension. Still, it would appear that semioticians are yet struggling with basic definitions and lack coherent methodologies. You'd think by now they'd have figured out enough to get better at communicating with each other, at least. What good is analysis if it doesn't net some understanding, other than to buffalo the deans of universities into paying your bills? At this rate, significant semiotic insights are still a long ways off. What should we expect to come out of it? An awareness of cultural relationships and connections that will produce startling insights? A new language that is more concise, or suggested refinements of existing languages? The ability to communicate unique concepts that have been heretofore ineffable? Or perhaps, something much more modest — the ability to identify and eliminate needless complexities and redundancies? |
I find this is also apt for Kant and the Platypus.
See also the Red Moon anthologies:
| I made the enthusiast's mistake of assuming that everyone shared my previous ignorance. ... I was also the first person in the world to understand Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. |
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.
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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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