2014 Jan-Mar zdino book log

Books read recently by J. Zimmerman

Disclaimer. Links. Booker Prizes. Chocolate.
Books read. Best books read in 2014.

Best book read in 2013:
Tan Twan Eng's The Garden of Evening Mists: a Novel (2012); short-listed for the 2012 Booker Prize.

Set in Malaya during and after WWII. Nakamura Aritomo is a Japanese master gardener adept at all aspects of Japanese gardening but especially the skills of shakkei ("borrowed scenery").
The narrator is Teoh Yun Ling, a Chinese-Malayan woman. With her sister, she was harshly imprisoned by the Japanese during WWII but survived the camp while everyone else there died.
Beautifully written.
Blog entry.

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:

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

No one can correct an error with better authority than the person who has been held responsible for it.
T.S. Eliot

{ March : san-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2014 }

(3.31.2014)

Ueda's Basho and his Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary; Compiled, Translated, and with an Introduction. Provides a chronology of Basho's life, and gives many of his poems with comments on them by the main Japanese commentators of Basho.

(3.30.2014)

2010: Heidi Cullen's The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and 0ther Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet.
See also: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (2008) by Mark Lynas.

(3.29.2014)

1987: Haruo Shirane's The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of The Tale of Genji.
In Japan in the early 11th century the poet Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji.
Shirane's book is especially helpful, even before you read a translated text. The best translation I have read is a 2001 translation by Royall Tyler: The Tale of Genji.

(3.28.2014)

1980: Mildred M. Tahara's annotated translations of Tales of the Yamato: A Tenth-Century Poem-Tale.

(3.27.2014)

Read issue 45.1 (Winter/Spring 2014) of Modern Haiku, the penultimate issue under Charles Trumbull's editorship.
Includes two haiku by moi.
See also comments on previous issues of: Modern Haiku:

(3.23.2014)

2013: this world, the annual HSA members' haiku anthology.
Includes a haiku by moi.

(3.22.2014)

2005: Peter Ackroyd's Shakespeare: the Biography.
It is brilliant: lots of historical data so that while there is some speculation, it is plausible. Very well written.
Books by Ackroyd:
- 2005: Shakespeare: the Biography.
- 1993: The Death of King Arthur.

(3.21.2014)

2012: The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012, editor Dan Ariely.

(3.19.2014)

Abandoned Dissident Gardens: a Novel, a self-amused but to me boring romp by Jonathan Lethem.
What a come-down from his Motherless Brooklyn (1999), one of the best book read in 2009.

(3.14.2014)

2012: Listened to Standing in Another Man's Grave by Ian Rankin.
Ian Rankin's return of Rebus, with a subtext of the other protagonist is Malcolm Fox. Great to have Rebus back, even more of his own man than ever.
FOX books read include:
- 2011: The Impossible Dead
- 2009: The Complaints
REBUS books read include:

(3.4.2014)

2007/2010: Karin Fossum's The Water's Edge (trans. Charlotte Barslund, 2010).
Karin Fossum is a Norwegian detective novelist with psychological insights. Her topic in this book is child murder, with the additional trails of child pornography, physical violence to children, child-child bullying, and male manipulation of women. Not an easy read. And a little too much of a tutorial.
Also see Karin Fossum's:
- 2002/2007: Black Seconds (poor).
- ?/2002: Don't Look Back.
- ?/2003: He Who Fears the Wolf. One of her best.

{ February : ni-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2014 }

(2.28.2014)

100 tanka by 100 poets of Australia and New Zealand (2013), a tanka anthology edited by Amelia Fielden, Beverley George, and Patricia Prime.

Because it's impossible to pick my favorite tanka from this fine collection, I'll simply give you three excellent tanka — one from the start of the book, one from near the middle, and one from near the end.

rain overnight the shadowed morning in patterns of blue your shoes at the door hold the shape of you Yvonne Adami
[My favorite lines are the 2nd and the 5th. And I am quite happy to see rhyme used in this tanka.]
every night I raise to my mouth your tea bowl whose ideas was it to glaze it with the moon Kathy Kituai
[My favorite lines are the 3rd and the marvelous 5th. And the mouth-moon connection (both sound and shape) is delightful.]
the oyster catchers take flight in a swirl of wings ... did I frighten them? their leaving, like yours so abrupt Barbara Strang
[I like the juxtaposition of images, and I like the breaking of the form (especially the over-long 1st line and the over-short 5th line) to match the disruption of the relationship. Line 3 has an intriguing resonance with what follows.]

Kiyoko Ogawa (co-editor of Poetry Nippon) writes:

Circa 1235, Fujiwara no Teika edited the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (100 Poems by 100 Poets) at his villa in Kyoto near Mt Ogura. Teika would surely have been both astonished and delighted were he to have been told that the Hyakunin Isshu has set out for the southern hemisphere, where one hundred talented poets have composed tanka in English for another such anthology.

To see the full 100 tanka, including excellent poems by each of the three editors, copies of this 68-page soft-cover book may be purchased on-line at: http://www.ginninderrapress.com.au/poetry.html

Additional fine features of this anthology are the gorgeous art by Ron C. Moss and the very well-organized and clear 4-pages of acknowledgements (for which Beverley George deserves the organizational credit).

(2.22.2014)

2006: Dipped into Peter Douglas Ward's Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth's Ancient Atmosphere.

A well-written science book, with lots of detail and fine illustrations.

Its thesis is "deceptively simple":

The history of atmospheric (and hence oceanic) oxygen levels through time has been the most important factor in determining the nature of animal life on Earth — its morphology and basic body plans, physiology, evolutionary history, and diversity. This hypothesis means that the level of oxygen influenced every large-scale evolutionary adaptation or innovation that is the history of animal life on Earth, that oxygen levels dictated evolutionary originations, extinctions, and the architecture of animal body plans. Support for this hypothesis will make up the chapters that follow [p.2].

Also:

The book is a reinterpretation of selected and important events and evolutionary breakthroughs during the past 550 million years, the time of animals, showing in chronological fashion why this author believes that it was the varied kinds of adaptation to varying oxygen levels that was [s.b. 'were' JZ] the major stimulus to evolutionary change among the animal phyla. The evidence comes from both the history we have observed and what we know of animals living today. Following two introductory chapters, one discussing why animals need oxygen and the other recounting how various researchers have deduced the history of oxygen levels through time, the focus is on the new appearances and disappearances of various taxa and illustrating how specific adaptations among the various animal groups support the larger thesis of the importance of oxygen in forging new evolutionary changes and results. Many of the evolutionary results are themselves newly hypothesized. By the end of this book, readers will come to appreciate the critical role of changes in atmospheric oxygen levels on the history of animal life on Earth and why there were dinosaurs and why there are birds [p.6-7].

Sub-hypotheses include:

2.1 [p.47] Reduced levels of oxygen stimulate higher rates of disparity (the diversity of body plans) than do high levels of oxygen.

2.2 [p.47] The diversity of animals is correlated with oxygen levels. The highest diversities are present during times of relatively high-oxygen content.

8.1 [p.168] The initial dinosaur body plan of bipedalism evolved as a response to low oxygen in the middle Triassic.

8.2 [p.189] In times of higher global temperature but lower atmospheric oxygen, and increasing proportion of tetrapod diversity is composed of animals that re-evolved a marine life style.

8.3 [p.192] Dinosaur diversity was strongly dependent on atmospheric oxygen levels, and the long period of low dinosaur diversity after their first appearance in the Triassic was due to the extremely low atmospheric oxygen content of the late Triassic.

8.4 [p.197] Saurischian dinosaurs had a lower extinction rate than any other terrestrial vertebrate group because of a competitively superior respiration system — the first air sac system

(2.21.2014)

2007: Dipped into Rosemarie Tichler and Barry Jay Kaplan's collection of interviews: Actors at Work.
The most interesting and impressive was Meryl Streep, with her ability to express thoughts fluently, memorize lines, and learn foreign languages as easily as breathing. Kevin Kline was one of the most delightful — very informative on process. Patti LuPone is particularly energetic. Having heard Philip Seymour Hoffman on Fresh Air recently, I had high expectations, but he seemed somewhat muddled.
The Foreword by Mike Nichols. The actors interviewed are: Marian Seldes; Billy Crudup; Estelle Parsons; Kevin Kline; Mandy Patinkin; Frances Conroy; Patti Lupone; John Lithgow; S. Epatha Merkerson; Dianne Wiest; Ruben Santiago-Hudson; Meryl Streep; Kevin Spacey; Philip Seymour Hoffman.

(2.17.2014)

Presence #49, the haiku journal.
Includes a tanka by moi.

(2.14.2014)

Finished listening to The Complaints (2009) by Ian Rankin.
Ian Rankin's next protagonist is Malcolm Fox, in this first book where he carries the detective story with a lively independence and suspicions and loyalties. He's a good candidate as a replacement for Rebus, even if the reader does figure out a lot of the plot before we get there.
FOX books read include:
- 2011: The Impossible Dead
- 2009: The Complaints
REBUS books read include:

(2.10.2014)

2012: Dipped in to the 2013 winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction (known as the Orange Prize for Fiction between 1996 and 2012; from 2014 the prize will be called the 'Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction' ...), May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes, her sixth novel.
It's a black comedy and one gets the idea of its tone and tempo and self-enjoyment quickly. After reading the first quarter, I leapt to the last 20 pages to see how it all turned out.

(2.8.2014)

1974: The Haiku Form by Joan Giroux, a text on haiku.

(2.6.2014)

The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane.
Poetic prose: excellent books about landscape and walking. His books include:
- 2012: The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
- The Wild Places

(2.5.2014)

(2013) World News, Local Weather by Charles Atkinson, author of Fossil Honey.

(2.3.2014)

(2014) Read Stanford Forrester (editor)'s bottle rockets 15:2 (aka number 30).
Its 100 pages of short verse contain a haiku and a tanka by moi.
Michael Fessler's "Types of Haiku Now Trending ..." is a total hoot.
And I specially loved David Budbill's "More and more now".

{ January : ichi-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2014 }

(1.30.2014)

2013: MaddAddam: a novel by Margaret Atwood, the third novel in her dystopian bio-engineering trilogy that started with Oryx and Crake (2003) and The Flood (2009).
An apt conclusion to the trilogy, aided by its use of three narrators. Gripping, though I preferred both of the two other books in this series.

(1.27.2014)

2013: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, her first novel, a historical fiction set in Iceland.

It's gripping and brilliant though I'm glad I don't live in that time or community! I hope it is in the next Booker Prize nominations.

It works so well in the four biggest dimensions of a novel:

plot,
character,
structure,
writing.

Her structure is especially excellent through its interleaving of what is historical (documents and documented events) with her invented scenes and actions and conversations. I like her fluidity in using changing of points of view, and through her juxtaposing the inner thoughts (especially of Agnes) with her outer expression in conversation and silences with Toti, Margret. I loved the use of Nordic words I knew but had not heard since childhood - "Flitting Days", etc.

But the icing on the cake for me was the visceral experience of weather and the dwellings and the CONSTANT labors.

Memories shift like loose snow in a wind, or are a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. There is only ever a sense that what is real to me is not real to others, and to share a memory with someone is to risk sullying my belief in what has truly happened.

One of the best books read in 2014.

(1.26.2014)

1993: Right Under the Big Sky, I Don't Wear a Hat by Hosai Ozaki.

(1.25.2014)

2002: Haiku: the Poetry of Nature edited by David Cobb.
Haiku by the great Japanese poets translated by Cobb, R.H. Blythe, Shirane, Ueda, and others.
From p. 1 of Cobb's introduction: "In Japanese literature we recognise certain poems as haiku as far back as the 12th century, but it was not until the end of the 19th century that the term 'haiku' was actually applied to any of these poems from the seven hundred intervening years."
He points out some of the forbears: and three key attributes of haiku: (1) brevity; (2) seasonal word (kigo); (3) cutting word (kireji).
Full color gorgeous illustrations from the collection of Japanese art in the British Museum
Organized in to 4 seasonal sections (New Year poems at placed at the end of winter).
Some favorites:
```
Autumn

p. 63  Buson (autumn)

the beginning of autumn:
what is the fortune-teller
looking so surprised at

p.67  Suzuki Masajo (winter)

no escaping it -
I must step on fallen leaves
to take this path
```

(1.19.2014)

1993: The Death of King Arthur: Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, a retelling by Peter Ackroyd.
It was a good version, though Mallory is a bit repetitive, and as what are being repeated are mostly sociopathic acts, I was glad to finish it. Interesting to see the summary bio of Malory that this book may be in the "prison literature" club — and how Mallory seems to have embodied some of the "might is right" philosophy ... and been jailed for it more than once.
I have started Ackroyd's Shakespeare: the Biography and it is brilliant.

(1.6.2014)

2010: Finished listening to Allen MacNeill's Modern Scholar course Evolutionary Psychology I: The Science of Human Nature.
Very informative on how we have become who we are, especially in the fields of survival, courtship, and gender.
Modern Scholar courses taken:
- (2011) Evolutionary Psychology II: The Science of Human Nature.
- (2010) Evolutionary Psychology I: The Science of Human Nature.
- (2009) Shakespeare: Ten Great Comedies course guide by the informative and insightful Raphael Shargel.
- (2008) Understanding the Movies: The Art and History of Film course guide by the informative and insightful Raphael Shargel.
- (2005) Basics of Genetics
- (2005) Greek Drama: Tragedy and Comedy
- (2005) How to Listen to and Appreciate Jazz
- (2004) Communication matters. Course two, "That's not what I meant!", sociolinguistics of everyday conversation

(1.3.2014)

(2013): Dane Cervine's How Therapists Dance, a collection of essays and poems, the best of which are "Elightenment is a Bitch" and "The Art of Therapy".

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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