The Morgan Library at 36th and Madison in NYC. Nearly my favorite place in the world.
Wednesday, June 7, 2023
Homestead by Melinda Moustakis. It has everything. I just finished it.
Marie and Lawrence are a young couple who try to make a life in the wiles of Alaska in the 50s. It’s brutal.
Animal attacks, freezing winters, potato blight, hunger, distrust, and danger.
In the end, this book is a careful examination of survival, skill, colonialism, corruption, graft, and the always-to-be-doomed interference with the rhythm of the earth and its indigenous populations.
Shem and Billy, Sheila and Sly, and other characters all trying to make it work.
It’s a novel, so it had to end with some sort of hope…even a little.
Till next time.
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Monday, June 5, 2023
Finally, today, the Apple WWDC 2023 arrived. In addition to various software updates for iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air, and the plain and great, good ol’ desktop Mac, the VisionPro goggles were announced, explained, dissected, reassembled, and placed in an ad.
Hmmm.
Fortunately, I have the prototype that was smuggled out of Apple, Inc by an enterprising pirate and sold to me for $79.95 tax-free.
After using the goggles and watching the whole two-hour event, I’m afraid there is too much hype.
Critical Apple Theory finds that:
1. While Apple strongly advocates good mental health and handy apps (which are inevitably destined to be hacked by a Columbian drug cartel), the VisionPro goggles were shown primarily used in isolation to view movies and photos. Good mental health needs other good people all around rather than a single guy on a single couch watching action movies and playing action-packed (AKA violent) video games.
2. The benefit of humongous virtual screens is neither a research-based fact nor a huge draw.
3. Sitting on one’s couch watching pirate movies and wild horses evidently appeals to a particular demographic and this demographic was featured in all action scenes. All.
4. Following a half-second lag when one guy handed another guy an orange credit card, an Apple VP mentioned there was no lag time when using the goggles.
5. Playing ball with your dad in the kitchen while he’s wearing his goggles and chopping carrots is creepy.
6. The actual number of people in hotel rooms having business meetings while wearing goggles and seeing other apparitions hanging about in the air or on the wall is fairly low.
7. The single best use of these goggles will be educational. The best clip was seeing a beating heart apparition in thin air and 3D. The. Best.
8. Bob Iger bravely got on the stage and explained all about the partnership between Apple and Disney+. He talked about everything except the price, which is inevitably going to be too high.
9. What I really need is a Mac that is a one-piece 32-inch monitor with built-in card reader and CD player. I also REALLY need a one-price Photoshop CD that works natively on Mac thereby leaving Rosetta in the virtual dust. Otherwise I’m all set.
10. If Apple could actually do something extremely extraordinary, I’d have them invent a time machine so that we could go back and get John Muir, Dian Fossey, E. O. Wilson, Stewart Udall, Theodore Roosevelt, Steve Jobs, Henry David Thoreau, Dwight & Mamie, and of course, Albert. Leading and chairing the whole group will be current-day superstars Jane Goodall, Greta Thunberg, and Carl Zimmer. Tim and Bob can arrange all the first-class accommodations…personally. I’d also bring back Tim Pigott-Smith simply because he’s so great.
11. I also noticed that Apple has lost all touch with their icons of Think Different although a Goldman Sachs savings account could certainly fall under the category of different.
12. These Apple people are SOOOOO very smart. Their unwavering commitment to and success with end-to-end encryption is why I pay extra for all their devices. I trust them, and yet…these goggles. Hmmm.
13. Finally, I’m wondering if Tim is interested in my Critical Apple Theory thoughts. I’ll give him a ring.
Footnote: For the record, I’m keeping my pirated goggles.
End Footnote.
Footnote 2: I've loved Apple ever since I bought my first IIe including and through today.
End Footnote 2.
Till next time.
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Think Different
Sunday, June 4, 2023
Peter Slen interviewed David Quammen about all the books he’s written about viruses, the pandemic, and the relationship between the microscopic world and the human world.
He explained that so far viruses move from their world to the human world via birds and mammals.
This process is called zoonotic.
Till next time.
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Saturday, June 3, 2023
Live from the Metropolitan Opera.
Right there. Live.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The Magic Flute
Die Zauberflöte
Including the glockenspiel.
In the 1700s, many operas were written in Italian. Mozart was from Austria and decided to write Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) in German rather than Italian for the benefit of everyone.
The Met staged this opera with an amazing group of singers, musicians, and stage crew who were responsible for the movable stage and all the props including a real-life glockenspiel played by Papageno under duress and under fire from the Three Little Boys.
The other amazing attribute of this Met presentation (basically about Beauty and Wisdom) was that online all the words were captioned in English.
Footnote: Galileo primarily wrote in Italian rather than Latin in order to honor common Italian citizens who rarely spoke and never understood Latin (according to Dava Sobel who wrote Galileo’s Daughter).
End Footnote.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, May 24, 2023
Half-way finished with Maria Tallchief’s biography. Her life was extraordinary. From Oklahoma to NY to LA to Paris and back again many times.
At one point she was married to George Balanchine. She wrote about how difficult some of his ballets were. Even though I tried not to, I couldn’t help but think of the concept of passive/aggressive behavior.
And then, I’d like to see men on pointe every now and then.
Great book for the details of how music, dance, talent, and perseverance can create long-lasting beauty and comfort. And then including Stravinsky, Toscanini, Marlene, Jerry Robbins, and dozens of other accomplished compatriotes is a perfect example of essential, informative, and entertaining details.
Footnote: She even explained how some of the stages had wooden floors with splinters and slopes. (Hard to pirouette on a stage with splinters and slopes...particularly on your toes.)
End Footnote.
Till next time.
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Saturday, May 13, 2023
Just finished The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.
Nearly my favorite place in the world is the Pierpont Morgan Library on 36th and Madison, NY, NY.
And now I know why. Belle was hired by John Pierpont Morgan to build his personal library of the best books and art of Europe and beyond around 1900.
Belle did all that and more. Her expertise knew no bounds. This kind of expertise requires decades to accrue, and even though the authors documented her college degree, it’s still unclear how she actually learned all the historical, artistic, and technical knowledge that was always at her fingertips.
I remember thinking the same thing when reading all six volumes of Karl Ove Knausguaard’s work. When did he have time to acquire all that knowledge at such a young age.
It happens.
The book is perfect. Belle rose to the highest levels as curator, business woman, art historian, and formidable negotiator. An essential book to understand the foibles and heart of humanity and also the arts.
Till next time.
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Friday, May 12, 2023
Finished The Wager by David Grann.
When will all the warring stop? That’s one take-away. There are dozens of others.
The book is well written and gripping. It seems impossible that a ship can withstand hundred foot waves and being stripped of its sails while still continuing to find land, but it’s all there in the captain’s logs and in the journals of the sailors and officers.
Sailing around the world in the 1700s with the intent of conquering lands that actually were already inhabited by indigenous people seems too preposterous, but there you have it.
Humans at their most preposterous.
The book could not have been better. There's an absolute clear sense of living for months and years lost at sea on a ship that is literally falling apart. The storage, the food, the hammocks, the sailors' sea chests with their belongings, the torturous, mutinous, murderous thoughts and feelings of sailors driven to starvation and sickness...it's all there. Two thousand men and boys leave for adventure. Two hundred or so return to Britain for court martials, medals, promotions, book publications, and at long last, a paycheck.
Till next time.
Saturday, May 6, 2023
Charles, at long last is finally king. Which brings me to the play and the movie:
King Charles III
Starring Tim Pigott-Smith (1946-2017).
Till next time.
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Wednesday, May 3, 2023
Today’s disparate thoughts…must be spring.
Six-word stories:
Marley was dead. To begin with. Charles Dickens
For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn. Ernest Hemmingway
Found true love. Married someone else. David Eggers
To be, or not to be? William Shakespeare
It was dark inside the wolf. Margaret Atwood
Also, I'm wanting to read Hermione Lee’s biography of Virginia Woolf.
And I’d really like to read SPQR about the Romans by Mary Beard.
Additionally, a little wisdom from George Orwell as Jay Powell and Jamie Dimon are this very day shaping the world's money supply:
“We could do with a little less talk of capitalist and proletarian and a little more about the robbers and robbed.”
So, Jamie and Jay, if we could start the planet’s money and money-laundering systems all over again, how could we build in and ensure equitable resources and wealth for all.
Finally, I’m halfway into The Wager by David Grann. Soooo great. I’m so happy not to be a shipwright, a British Navy sailor (then or now…but especially circa 1740), a pirate, or a robber baron. The world will never recover from colonization, and we without a restart button.
Footnote: SPQR Senatus Populus Que Romanu, Senate and People of Rome.
End Footnote.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, April 25, 2023
One of the best parts of the NYT Book Review are the letters to the editor:
Felicia of Providence, Rhode Island wrote in to remind people that Elmore Leonard had advised never to open a book with weather.
She went on to say, “George Orwell knew better when he opened “1984” with “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
Till next time.
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Sunday, April 23, 2023
Watched LIVE on BookTV the Los Angeles Festival of Books from USC.
To name a few, watched two panel discussions. Topics included censorship, intellecutal freedom, library funding, environmental issues, and narrataive journalism:
Angie Thomas
George Matthew Johnson
Erika Hayasaki
Kirk Wallace Johnson
Serious thinkers, writers, people.
The whole festival cost about a million+.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship is about three billion+.
Till next time.
Saturday, April 22, 2023
Less than a minute ago as measured by geological time:
Gloves. Hose. Pearls. Hats. Bridge. A new Lincoln. Shopping at the Plaza. Boredom. Malaise. How was Your Day, Dear? Cocktails.
And then along comes Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Marilyn French, Angela Davis, Bella Abzug, and Woody Guthrie.
Taylor. AOC. Greta. All saying thanks, thanks a lot.
Till next time.
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Saturday, April 15, 2023
Coming up might be Oprah’s recommendation…Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano although I was just thinking, I don’t think it can possibly be as good as:
Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus
Where’d You Go, Bernadette
by Maria Semple
The Goldfinch
by Donna Tartt
Where the Crawdads Sing
by Delia Owens
I’m hoping to be wrong.
Till next time.
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Friday, April 14, 2023
Every Man a King
by Walter Mosley
From Manhattan to Brooklyn to Queens to Long Island to Staten Island to Yale to Canada and back and then on to Kentucky and back again.
I estimated five thousand miles. Perhaps six.
I also estimated about five thousand characters to keep track of. It was a lot.
Plus, Rikers Island is so beyond the pale as to be inhumanely incomprehensible.
The book reminded me of C.B. Strike by Robert Galbraith as played by Tom Burke in the series. Also reminded me of The Blacklist with James Spader.
The take-away?
Big Oil, Big Money, Big Corruption equals Big Moral Deficits.
A bit of counter-balancing good news is that Silicon Valley is investing a billion or so in the removal of carbon from the atmosphere.
Till next time.
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Thursday, April 13, 2023
Watched The Circle with Tom Hanks and Emma Watson.
It’s based on the book by the wise and astute Dave Eggers.
Dave got it all just right. Google. Amazon. Apple. Chase. He-who-shall-not be named. And all the rest.
Dave’s book took their services and surveillance to the next level so that every person on the planet was under constant and voluntary surveillance (for the good of us all).
Jaron Lanier is the guy to watch for keeping us all warned about Big Tech.
Till next time.
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Sunday, April 9, 2023
Understanding America is an impossibly big job.
The book Travels with Charley In Search of America by John Steinbeck is a very good start. And it’s a good finish.
I took a lot of notes.
In this book, Steinbeck was critical of embezzlers, uncontrolled corporate wealth, the degradation of land for the purpose of strip malls, and the racist attitudes he met along the way (particularly in the south)…but his admiration and connection with ordinary working people are evident on every page.
“The great get-together symbol is the cup of coffee.”
“I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.”
“...for man has to have feelings and then words before he can come close to thought and, in the past at least, that has taken a long time.”
“I haven’t seen anything but cowardice and expediency. This used to be a nation of giants. Where have they gone? You can’t defend a nation with a board of directors. That takes men. Where are they?”
He traveled throughout America from NY to ME NH VT Chicago ND MT WA CA TX MS GA home and through all places in between. He spent several months in a truck fitted with a camper, kitchen, bedding, typewriter, books, and Charley…the French poodle from France who said, “Fttt” when he needed something special.
As I finished, I thought of two other books: 1) Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America with the best French to English version completed by Arthur Goldhammer and 2) the unique Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon who said he revised his writing 39 times…40 times was lapidary.
And closely aligned to understanding America is Mastering the Art of French Cooking by our Julia. Serious thinking about America and beyond requires a few bites of a nice profiterole aka cream puffs, pp. 177-180.
As an aside:
What if the Fed raising rates is not the cure for America's inflation?
What if the cure for inflation is for consumers to simply stop buying so much stuff (excluding food and gasoline, of course)?
Producers will then start lowering their prices and consumers will have more time to visit their local libraries.
I wonder if Jay Powell has thought of this.
Till next time.
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Sunday April 2, 2023
Book TV with Stacy Schiff. Live. Two hours.
It was an abundance of riches.
She talked about most of her books and took call-in questions from all kinds of folks.
Her books feature Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams, the Salem witch trials, Véra Nabokov, Cleopatra, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and all things in between.
Word for word…it was all perfect.
In her remarks about Cleopatra, Stacy explained that Cleopatra was Macedonian and Greek. Cleopatra ruled in Alexandria, Egypt as well as Rome. Alexandria ws famous for its international trade, its sophistication, and its library.
Leaders in Alexandria preferred to settle disputes through trade and discussion while Rome, famous for its military conquerors, preferred fighting and war.
Sunday with Stacy and Peter.
Till next time.
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Thursday, March 30, 2023
The past is not dead, it’s not even past.
The Magician: A Novel by Colm Tóibín is about Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955) and his family, his writing, and his life in and around two world wars.
Mann won the Nobel Prize for literature for his novel Buddenbrooks. Colm took the known facts about Mann and wove a probable story about the times and troubles through which Thomas and Katia (his very capable wife) lived. The book is a brilliant novel with all the truths and subtleties required. Colm never misses a beat.
Then it was The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland.
And then for the fourth time, it’s Allan Corduner reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
That’s three books in a row about war and the ways in which a few evil people can create an unlivable world for the masses.
So, it’s time for Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. I’ve finished chapter 1, and already my equilibrium is almost completely restored. That's Steinbeck.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, March 14, 2023
Finished…
The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World
by Jonathan Freedland
Walter Rosenberg (1924 – 2006) renamed for protection Rudolf Vrba.
Alfréd Israel Wetzler (1918 – 1988) Fred renamed for protection Jozef Lánik.
Walter and Fred were from Slovakia. As young Jewish people, they were captured and sent to Auschwitz. They watched thousands of Europe’s Jews murdered by the Nazis. They escaped from Auschwitz in 1944 after surviving two years in torturous conditions.
After their escape, they wrote down everything they knew about the camps and went to leaders to have it published.
Walter and Fred assumed:
1. that the world did not know what was happening in these camps.
2. that after the world found out what was happening in the camps, the world leaders would step up and end the German aggression.
3. that after world leaders (and especially Hungarian leadership) found out about the camps, world leaders would start warning people (Hungarian Jews in particular) about the German plans to send them to Auschwitz.
None of those three assumptions were accurate.
The book is a revelation in every way possible. It contains historical accuracy of names, dates, cities, people, villages, and the men responsible for the six million deaths.
It’s easy to see this level of aggression and murder as an historical anomaly until the headlines about Putin and Ukraine are printed.
The past is not dead, it’s not even past.
The book is straightforward, clear, and well documented.
The book also references, of course, Eli Wiesel (1928-2016) (winner of Nobel Peace Prize 1986) and Primo Levi (1919-1987).
The book also documents the life of Walter/Rudi after the war: Ph.D. in neurology/chemistry, publications in scholarly journals, conference keynotes, honorary doctorate, husband, father of two, university professor in Vancouver, advocate for truth.
Related to this book is another Holocaust survivor who is 100 and who made a recent presentation at Gonzaga University.
Carla Peperzak, said “The fact I’d like you to take away from my presentation is simply this: The Nazis didn’t need raving anti-semites to help them carry out their mission. All they needed was people who are willing to follow orders without asking questions.”
Till next time.
Rudolf Vrba
Carla Peperzak
Thursday, March 9, 2023
I’ve read it.
Digitally.
I needed the hard copy.
It arrived today.
And now it’s on the shelf.
Waiting for the inevitable reread…right after lunch.
Till next time.
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Sunday, March 5, 2023
Jeff Guinn was live on BookTV today for two hours with Peter Slen at the Tuscon Book Festival.
Jeff talked about his 25 books and answered loads of questions from viewers who called in with good questions and positive feedback.
Jeff’s answers were given with a friendly and professional response. He mentioned Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck. This book is now on my to-read list as it is one that inspired Jeff to be an historian.
BookTV.
Till next time.
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Friday, March 3, 2023
Nearly finished with The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland.
Two young boys/men escaped Auschwitz miraculously and lived as witness to the horrible truth of Nazi cruelty and war crimes. For Walter to live through this horror and compose this book is a feat that few could accomplish.
Determining truth versus lies and facts versus propaganda requires constant vigilance, brave writers, a free press, and trustworthy publishers.
Till next time.
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Monday, February 27, 2023
Finished Lois Lowry’s The Windeby Puzzle. It’s a bog-people story during the time of Druids, myths, warring, poverty, strife, death, power, machismo, and a young girl who fought against it all (around 41 BCE).
Lois takes the history and science of the bog and combines it with separate probable stories of a young teen girl and a young teen boy. The preserved bog body is on display at The Landesmuseum at the Schloß Gottorf in Schleswig, Germany
In the meantime, photo below.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, February 22, 2023
I’ve started these a couple of times. They are great. Something else always popped up. Now is the time. For sure.
Bill Bryson
Simon Winchester
Where would we be without BookTV.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, February 21, 2023
I had a baked potato for lunch and immediately thought of Frank McCourt’s story of when he was a kid and had snuck into the kitchen and ate the baked potato that his mother was saving for dinner for the whole family. She was livid; he was ashamed. After all that time, the event was still with him. Just like Proust knew it would be.
And then I finished Peter Sís’s The Wall.
If it weren’t for brave artists and truth tellers like him, we’d never know. The Iron Curtain (Winston Churchill) is The Wall.
Peter tells what it’s like to be a kid and live in a totalitarian state ruled by Russian terrorists in Czechoslovakia after WW II. When he got older, he defected and made his way in the world as a writer and artist.
At the end of The Wall, he lists the attributes of a democratic government versus a totalitarian government:
Democratic Government:
Hope Inspiration Joy Dreams Respect Love Benevolence Spirit Pride Art Justice Integrity Liberty Dignity Morality Virtue Honor Trust Truth Freedom Wisdom Happiness Equality Knowledge
Totalitarian Government:
Stupidity Suspicion Injustice Corruption Terror Fear Envy Lies
Till next time.
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Monday, February 20, 2023
I finished an autobiography of a famous writer who is also much revered by the book world. But soft-bragging about one’s Ivy League education, family wealth, and perfect life is the opposite of Benjamin Franklin’s never-tiresome autobiography, which documented frugality, industry, practicality, and independence. For whatever reason, silver-spoons and soft-bragging seem unseemly.
In the meantime I’m between books, AND I’m four weeks behind in the NYT Book Review, which is beginning to feel more like homework instead of joy.
Speaking of which…Be joyful though you know all the facts.
Finally, I was thinking about my top ten movies. And after last night, I’ve added Tár to the list as number one and two and three as well. Cate will never be able to make another movie that will surpass her brilliant performance as Lydia Tár. Adam Gopnik will agree, I’m sure.
Till next time.
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Monday, February 13, 2023
“Good books make good people.” Patrick Modiano
Till next time.
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Wednesday, February 1, 2023
I caught Simon Winchester on PBS talking about his new book, Land. This man has a clear picture of humanity and its relationship to the planet. He also has an incredible curiosity and writing talent. His talks and conversations are even better than his books, which can't possibly be true, but tis.
And then, on BookTV, there was Chris Hedges from 2022. His study of and books on humanity, religion, morality, decency, fairness, and peace are based on everything from first-hand experience to a study of ancient texts.
Plus, they both obviously love what they do.
Till next time.
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Sunday, January 29, 2023
Almost finished with my signed copy of Liberation Day by George Saunders.
His short stories to a page capture the many facets of the characteristics of what it means to be a human being.
Of all those lists of personality types, personality disorders, human strengths, human foibles, good intentions, bad results, or just plain quirky types, he’s managed to show them all including the petty, the destructive, and the great within each story.
How’d he do all that?
Too good to be true.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. A significant book.
Through fictionalized real-type characters, the book shows how the opioid and addiction problems of the Appalachia region have overwhelmed every health-care agency and every government agency assigned to help.
From the medical sales reps, to doctors, to hospitals, to isolation, to poverty, and to toxic masculinity, it all works together to create addiction, abandoned children, orphans, widows, pregnant teens, black-market medicine, generational unemployment…it’s all there.
Damon Fields aka as Demon Copperhead is the main character who needed parents, relatives, housing, education, food, clothing, money, and instead got none of what is considered average/normal/sustainable for a life.
Barbara didn’t miss a beat in describing all these families and the exact moments when their lives started a downhill trajectory with no way in sight to make their lives good again.
Barbara portrayed the teachers as competent and always going the extra mile to keep the kids moving forward academically. She was too hard on the social workers, however. She was critical of their ability to keep track of and help the hundreds of kids that each social worker has on her/his roster.
Barbara has written the modern-day Charles Dickens story of want, despair, injustice, struggle, and random acts of kindness (which never seem to be enough).
Till next time.
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Friday, January 20, 2023
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy. Long-listed for the Booker.
So, I finished but came away wondering why a man who was so quirky and many times inept, was so popular with so many different kinds of people.
Weepy, insecure, off-kilter, confused, and not very reliable are the characteristics that first come to mind. The place in time that caused all his problems is right before the Berlin Wall came down.
I was thinking during this reading, it’s time to rewatch Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleason in Alone in Berlin right before the wall went up. No one weeped or fell apart at least not in public. They simply went straight to work creating quiet resistance.
And also… It’s time to reread The Wall by Peter Sis. One of these days, maybe it will all actually be quiet on the Western Front.
Till next time.
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Friday, January 13, 2023
It’s extraordinary to write a novel as good great as Ian McEwan’s Lessons: A Novel.
Roland and Alissa…along with Jane and Stefanie (representing alpha and omega) as well as Daphne and Peter the bully. Where are they now?
To create characters that live, die, achieve, fail, falter, recover, transgress, assault, abuse, succeed, aspire, or just bumble around is a mirror of how most people on the planet live, die, achieve, fail, falter, recover, transgress, assault, abuse, succeed, aspire, or just bumble around.
And then to wrap it all up in piano lessons, the Nobel prize, child abandonment, books, music, poetry, power, and truth-seeking is extraordinary.
Thank you Sir Ian. To have this much talent, world knowledge, stamina, and work ethic is…I don’t really know what. But it’s nice to know that it’s out there.
Till next time.
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Friday, January 6, 2023
Still reading Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman. Almost finished, and I’m hoping for a hopeful ending. Will the author of a book featuring the Lumpsucker fish allow this very smart species to remain extant? Although the planet is nearing total degradation, Mark Halyard and Karin Resaint will surely prevail in their no-holds barred efforts to save one small fish and its habitat from the industrial-military complex known as winner-take-all capitalism.
Makes me want to immediately read My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George and then invite her and her two brothers to brunch at Sarabeth’s on 59th and 6th in NYC.
I remember my dad and I talking about this Mountain book as well as Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse. That may be the real reason to read books.
Till next time.
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Sunday, January 1, 2023
Live. BookTV. Today.
Chris Hedges did a wonderful job talking about his work as a journalist, professor, writer, scholar, minister, and humanitarian.
Peter Slen, as always, did an equally wonderful job of letting Chris answer complex questions in a timely and thorough manner.
I did text in a question that they didn’t get to: “If we as a nation want to keep capitalism as our monetary system, what needs to be done to clean it up and make it fair?”
Chris paid homage to Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, and Cornell West. He talked for two hours about ideas, data, writers, movements, history, governments, his family, and the books he has written. He did all this without notes, without missing a beat, and with a profound sense of purpose.
If we had a US Department of Culture, he’d be the one.
Till next time.
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Nothing like it.
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Clipping articles from the paper is a lost art. But my scissors are sharp and here’s the paper. So…
And then…
Chris Hedges is LIVE on BookTV on Sunday, January 1, 2023.
I can say without fear of successful contradiction that he has influenced my thinking more than any other writer, thinker, or activist other than, of course, my high school music teacher.
Till next time.
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Friday, December 23, 2022
In the first eleven pages, there are 17 characters…none of them main…all of them peripheral…or not.
I keep having the urge to create a spreadsheet/flowchart to keep track of everyone.
A Visit From the Goon Squad. Disappointing.
Proust…one main character. Just saying.
Plus, there’s a sequel. And it appears that everyone in the literature business loves both of these books. Something is askew. C'est probablement moi.
In the meantime, I’m moving on to Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead as soon as all the eggnog is gone.
Finally, Prue Leith in By the Book in response to the question, “What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?” answered “My first husband (he died 20 years ago) gave me a specially-bound-for-me little booklet of “Le Bateau Ivre,” a long poem by Arthur Rimbaud. I was studying Rimbaud and Baudelaire in Paris at the time, and I was 100 percent in love with Rimbaud. So, it was a good move. I still have it by my bedside.”
Moi again. I include this quote, because Arthur Rimbaud seems to be referenced in almost everything I read lately.
Coincidence?
Or nudge.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Finished reading Sugar Street by Jonathan Dee yesterday. I don’t remember how this book came across my desk. The Times Book Review? Probably. But then again. Maybe not. I’m not ready to read the reviews of this book before I actually decide what I think about it.
It wasn’t really clear until late in the game why the main character was on the run. And as it turns out he wasn’t a very competent criminal. Plus, who stole his money? That seems like a critical plot point that should have been made crystal clear. Autumn? Oscar? A neighborhood kid? Or did the guy just misplace it.
Also, at several points, it got a bit too Lolita, which made the guy VERY and SUDDENLY unlikeable. Up to that point, I was sort of rooting for him. Then again…a travel agent?
In the end, the book reminded me of the university administrator who abandoned his life by disappearing to Mexico from Wisconsin or Minnesota or someplace north as I recall. He took cash, stayed unknown, and tried to vanish. As I recall, this took place before internet, cell phones, tracking, surveillance, etc, and yet he still got caught. Hmm. Book’s name? Still looking.
In the meantime, something from long ago and probably very wholesome…The Hundred Dress by Eleanor Estes.
Till next time.
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Sunday, December 11, 2022
Instagram
TikTok
Youtube
Snapchat
Susan Linn published a new book, Who’s Raising the Kids? Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children.
Her thesis is that children are only ad revenue to the tech companies (the four listed above in particular) and that these four companies do not know anything about child development, brain development, or the social-emotional growth of young people in general. The tech companies (the four listed above in particular) care about children only to the extent that children relate to ad revenue. Seems like a shameful occupation. The term related to Linn’s book is ad-cultivated addiction.
Another book in the news is The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy. After reading the reviews, it seems obvious that I’m going to read The Passenger, but I’m almost scared to begin. Too dark? Possibly. But not as dark as ad-cultivated addiction.
Just finished Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel. Elizabeth, Mad, Harriet…all such interesting characters that the book was hard to put down. Supper at Six. “Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself.” I wish I hadn’t already read it, then I’d have the pleasure of reading it all over again.
Barbara Kingsolver’s new book Demon Copperhead is on the bedside table as is George Saunders’s Liberation Day, which I’ve started. But. The violence in the first story about Custer is really too much. I’m almost scared to finish it.
But then lined up are three back copies of The Book Review, which will undoubtedly point me in the direction of brand new must-reads.
And finally, I’m waiting for the Provensen Book of Fairy Tales by Alice and Martin Provensen. But. Wait. The release date is September 16, 2024. ?
In the meantime, the season is here with the 15th year-in-a-row of a Christmas card from Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.
Busy Times.
Till next time.
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Thursday, December 1, 2022
Lessons by Ian McEwan. What a triumph.
Combining a young boy’s piano lessons with life lessons from beginning to end is a lasting work of genius and scholarship. Lessons reminds me of Tom Stoppard’s work and also of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s as well as Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl in how they each have addressed world wars, totalitarianism, and government oppression and how those factors influenced people’s daily lives without people even understanding their personal dilemmas and missteps.
Within all these books there exists a place for rock music, which sought to upend all the brutality and violence of those decades. The music never really succeeded on a permanent basis because here we still are… And yet, the music tried.
The characters were perfect and perfectly flawed in this book.
Roland needed better parents.
Alissa needed more humanity.
Daphne needed less competence.
Peter needed more maturity.
And Lawrence needed more stability and more support for his genius in maths.
The book is a success in every way. The sociological statements, the stories of the characters’ lives, and the representation of the subtle and direct impact of the world on the small details of daily life are all included.
After letting all of this resonate for a bit, I will read Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel, whose cover is comfortingly reminiscent of Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. Lots of lessons to be learned.
Till next time.
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Monday, November 28, 2022
It’s been a minute. Then again, it’s flown by.
And it’s obvious, I need the book critics to give me the best insight into what makes a good book good. Almost finished with Lessons by Ian McEwan, and I’m not sure about it. Maybe too soon to tell.
I’ve seen enough interviews with Sir Ian to know that he is not Roland, but wow…poor Roland.
Till next time.
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Saturday, November 19, 2022
Elizabeth Strout writes serious books. Just finished her Lucy by the Sea. It’s all about the pandemic, marriage, the wealthy, NYC, and Maine. I suppose excessive wealth that allows ownership of multiple apartments in NYC and then a subsequent purchase of a new home in Maine is not something one should take for granted. And yet, Lucy and William never discuss this aspect of their lives. This wealth.
A major thing that didn’t ring true about Lucy as an accomplished and savvy New Yorker was when she left Maine to go back to NYC to visit and was SO surprised to see so many homeless people in Grand Central.
Living in a bubble (whether it be wealth, ideology, privilege, or choice) is always risky.
Morning walks by the sea. Breakfast on the porch. A wealth-enhanced Maine cottage. Travel. A generous publisher. Nice! (Though not really a B dot Franklin lifestyle of frugality and industry.)
It was nice to read that Olive was volunteering in a nursing home. (Yes, that Olive.)
Onward.
Till next time.
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Friday, November 11, 2022
After serious books, something less intense…Patti Lupone: A Memoir. I’ve read it before and am reading it again. Julliard. Italy. Broadway. Italian. Perfect.
Veni, vidi, vici.
Till next time.
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Thursday, November 10, 2022
Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2022.
So, I just finished her Shame. The ways in which she combines her own stories with the qualities of good literature are Nobel worthy…without a doubt.
I was skeptical at first on the first page at the first line, but in a bit I was there…in a great book.
Till next time.
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Sunday, November 6, 2022
Texas Book Festival. Live. Today. It’s humbling.
Mark Updegrove is the Director of the LBJ Foundation in Austin. He was the keynote speaker and talked extensively about LBJ’s leadership in Texas, Congress, and in the White House.
Also included in his talk were historical facts and stories of how presidents from the last 100 years handled civil rights, voting rights, democracy, and education. He explained about Eisenhower’s interstate road-building program and his devlopment of NASA, Nixon’s Environmental Protection Agency, Truman’s life after the White House, and Johnson’s establishment of ESEA as well as funding for higher education in 1986.
Then it was on to Douglas Brinkley who has never uttered a wrong word, and today was no exception. He discussed conservation, environmental issues, specific sites that require attention, and various Presidents who established protections for the planet throughout the last hundred years.
Also on this panel was Maya Van Rossum who is saving the Delaware River and all its tributaries. She also spearheaded the effort through the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court to shut down fracking in Pennsylvania. The state Supreme Court agreed that fracking violated people’s constitutional rights to have clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment.
The book festival was all live.
Another session was with Jeremy Suri and Nick Seabrook who identified the biggest current political problem: gerrymandering. Easy to see…hard to fix.
Finally, I was reminded of a glorious year of BookTV’s In-Depth interviews.
The Fiction Edition in 2018:
J David Ignatius
F Colson Whitehead
M Jeff Shaara
A Walter Mosley
M David Baldacci
J Gish Jen
J Brad Thor
A Cory Doctorow
S Jacqueline Woods
O Geraldine Brooks
N Jodi Picoult
D Brad Meltzer
All Live. All perfect. And, of course, Peter Slen orchestrated it and made it all possible.
Till next time.
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Saturday, November 5, 2022
Bookish People by Susan Coll…finished today, but I’m still wondering what happened to Clemi’s dad, why is Clemi’s voicemail always full, is a tortoise really a good pet, what was the smell in the store room, why buy such an unwieldy vacuum, what will happen with the secret nook, why did Florence set herself on fire, what happened to the guy who liked to drill holes, should one be so nonchalant concerning towed cars and missing vans, does Ann Patchett have this many simultaneous problems in her day-to-day Parnassus endeavors?
Next up? Still…Lessons by Ian McEwan.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, November 1, 2022
From time to time, I think about André De Shields who won a Tony in 2019 for Hadestown.
In his acceptance speech, he gave three pieces of advice for living a worthwhile life:
1) Surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you coming.
2) Slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be.
3) The top of one mountain is the bottom of the next, so keep climbing.
His message was a gracious and picture-perfect performance. Brought to us by pure talent, unflagging perseverance, and a heart-healthy dose of…The Arts.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Today, I’m trying to finish The It Girl by Ruth Ware, but it so closely resembles that Italian story of the murder of a college girl that it’s hard to keep the two events separate.
Also, I keep comparing the It book to Cynthia Ozick’s book Heir to the Glimmering World in terms of depth, complexity, social commentary, history, imagination, and perfect word after perfect word.
A whodunnit versus a book to reread.
4-stars @13,242 versus 3.5-stars @221
And then finally, I think I'll just scoot on over to the next book queued up and waiting impatiently...Lessons by Ian McEwan.
Till next time.
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Friday, October 21, 2022
I was thinking about movies today and remembered these three actors:
Colleen Dewhurst 1924-1991 age 67
Geraldine Page 1924-1987 age 62
Maureen O’Hara 1920-2015 age 95
Till next time.
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Sunday, October 16, 2022
In 20+ years of watching BOOKTV (since it’s inception in 1998), I have never been disappointed in listening to the ideas and reviews of the thousands of people who have written books and been interviewed…both live and taped.
Today, four big thinkers talked about their books and did a flawless job, AND it was live:
1. Ben Raines
The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning (about Thomas Meaher’s human trafficking in 1860 and its ongoing trauma and damage to the people of Africatown, Alabama then and now).
2. Kristen Green
The Devil’s Half Acre: The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated the South’s Most Notorious Slave Jail (about Mary Lumpkin’s [1832-1905] life and extraordinary fortitude).
3. David Randall
The Monster’s Bones: The Discovery of T-Rex and How It Shook Our World (about the discovery of the first T-Rex which is now in the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh while pieces of the second and third T-Rex are at the AMNH. Barnum Brown (1873-1963) was the paleontologist extraordinaire who orchestrated all the digging in 1902).
4. Ernie Suggs
The Many Lives of Andrew Young (about his accomplishments, work ethic, and leadership for civil rights and beyond…Andrew Young [1932- ]).
Till next time.
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Friday, October 14, 2022
Finished Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer. Had my doubts that I’d finish, but once Arthur set out on his across-America adventure as a Minor American Novelist, the book couldn't be stopped.
The phrase to remember, in addition to Minor American Novelist, is:
Know no no.
But will I remember what it means? Time will tell.
And now it’s on to a rereading of Mantel Pieces by Hilary Mantel (1952-2022). This book of essays is SOOOOO good because Hilary dissected and critiqued books for the LRB in a fearless and forthright manner.
Words, phrases, and perspective…all perfect.
Till next time.
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Sunday, October 9, 2022
Finished The Winners by Fredrik Backman.
There were a lot of characters to keep track of, and this meant remembering if the characters were from Beartown, Hed, or both (meaning some worked in one town and lived in another).
All the characters sort of looked alike in my head, which was okay because the book was about power, money, and violence via the stories of boys and men in sports (as well as the tangentially placed girls and women who were also part of it all).
As I finished the book, I was thinking about the education these young ice-hockey players had received. It appeared…not much.
And this led me to think about the autobiography of Louis L’Amour (1908-1988) who wrote about his own education. Power, money, and violence on one end of the spectrum versus education on the other.
L’Amour’s quote?
“If I were asked what education should give, I would say it should offer breadth of view, ease of understanding, tolerance for others, and a background from which the mind can explore in any direction.”
Sounded good when I read it 30 years ago and sounded good when I read it again yesterday.
The letters to the editor of the NYTBR are one of the very best parts of the Sunday NYT.
And on Sunday, September 18, 2022, page 6, there was a letter from Dorchen A. Leidholdt. Dorchen wrote in reference to a NYT photo of a group of women who were fighting for women’s rights in 1979.
She explained that the photo had been used in a book review without acknowledging the women by name. And then, guess what? Dorchen provided the names.
The women’s names are:
Dorchen herself on the far left and then moving from the left:
Barbara Mehrhof
Susan Brownmiller
Frances Goldin
Dolores Alexander
Is there anything better than these letters in the Book Review? Maybe (just maybe) the book reviews themselves.
Till next time.
Snapped about a minute ago.
Friday, September 30, 2022
The Winners by Fredrik Backman is almost too much (even at the 40% mark). It’s very dark and tells the stories of what happens in communities where violent sports are tolerated and applauded (ice hockey).
Strength, leadership, winners, manliness. Those are the only things that matter.
The book is about these human attributes and the damage they cause. But in the end, it’s mostly about money (at least in this book it's mostly about money, which so far reads pretty true).
Dissonance versus harmony. Which sells more tickets?
Till next time.
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Friday, September 23, 2022
Hilary Mantel
July 6, 1952 – September 22, 2022
A loss. And she without a coin.
Till next time.
Photo by Els Zweerink in the NYT.
Thursday, September 22, 2022
At first I was somewhat disheartened to read a book that was immediately confusing and jumped back and forth in time several decades for the first story/essay.
It was also somewhat disappointing that I didn’t realize that this was a book of essays rather than a novel. But because the book got such glowing reviews, I thought I’d continue.
And I’m glad I did even though I’m cautious about a person’s personal journey when it gets too personal.
But well done.
So, The Crane Wife by C. J. Hauser and two others are on my mind.
A Woman of No Importance: the Untold Story of the Woman Who Helped Win WWII by Sonia Purnell.
And
Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler by Lynne Olson
Next up: Andrew Sean Greer’s Less is Lost.
And
Ian McEwan’s Lessons
And probably
Ruth Ware’s The Lying Game
Footnote: I wish I had my books organized by Dewey decimal instead of by a timeline of when I read them. At least they’re not organized by color or size and are findable…eventually.
End Footnote.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, September 14, 2022
On this bright, sunny day with rain nowhere in sight, I have three thoughts.
1. The It Girl by Ruth Ware. I am person number 165 on 45 copies of this ebook at the library.
2. I had a friend once who said that pizza was nothing more than a mound of grease and salt. Still. And. Never. The. Less. I’d like a slice.
3. Even though I’m in the middle of reading several different books, my mind still returns to specific books for their sheer impact:
Building Stories by Chris Ware,
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders,
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles,
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe,
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy,
The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq,
Mirrors by Eduardo Galeano,
all six volumes of My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard,
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman,
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt,
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and read flawlessly by Allan Corduner,
Dear Genius The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom by Leonard S. Marcus,
Avid Reader by Robert Gottlieb (on which I have just now checked and found two copies of this exact same book on my shelves…why does this keep happening?),
and finally Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing.
Johannes Gutenberg in 1439 had no idea what his printing press was destined for.
Till next time.
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Friday, September 9, 2022
Jill Lepore has written an extraordinary book about Jane Franklin. Jill researched boxes of letters, documents, pamphlets, papers, flyers, newspapers, books, notes, paintings, and monuments in order to understand Jane’s life.
The takeaways?
Jane was as smart as Benjamin.
She did not receive formal education.
She used invented spelling and wrote a lot of letters (most now missing).
She had twelve children with one surviving.
She made soap and sold it.
She made embroidery and bonnets and sold them.
She understood industry and frugality as a goal of life.
She was a believer in providence.
She knew about the almshouse and mental illness.
She was there when tea went into the Boston harbor.
She loved books and was self-taught.
She was obscure in the eyes of history.
She should be on the back of the hundred-dollar bill.
She endured.
She endures.
March 27, 1712 – May 7, 1794 (aged 82).
Jill Lepore was on C-SPAN live for 2 hours with Peter Slen on October 4, 2020. The effort to write this book was significant. And yet it’s just one of many books that Jill has given the world of academe and history.
Book of Ages.
How does the world produce a Jane, a Jill, a Virginia, a Greta?
Till next time.
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Saturday, September 3, 2022
Two wonderful sessions among many wonderful sessions stood out at the LOC National Book Festival today (live on BookTV and thrilling).
Elizabeth Williamson
Her book explains the Sandy Hook tragedy and highlights the difference between truth and conspiracies.
In 2007, there were five million tweets per day.
In 2012, there were five million tweets per second.
That’s how fast lies can travel and change reality.
Edith Widder
She gave a brilliant talk about deep-sea life. She recommends spending ninety billion dollars exploring the ocean before Artemis is again scheduled to explore the moon. Hard to argue with that.
Juli Berwald
She researched coral reefs and explained that the coral is a little animal that produces an external skeleton, and in that external skeleton grow algae which are green. Coral must live near the top of the ocean in order for the algae plants to stay alive via sunshine. Millions of small fish live in these coral skeletons and provide the start of the ocean’s and life's food chain.
It was all hopeful.
Till next time.
Thursday, September 1, 2022
Barbara Ehrenreich
August 26, 1941 - September 1, 2022
I met her at a book signing. It was a wonderful conversation. She was very interested in and knowledgeable about everything. Ben Cheever and Michael Moore were there, too. Ages ago. But it was unforgettable.
Nickeled and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America.
An instant classic.
Till next time.
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Saturday, August 27, 2022
The NYTBR is getting the better of me. I’ll have to focus more deliberately if I’m to catch up on all the reviews of all the great books.
Making a start includes C. J. Hauser’s The Crane Wife.
Then, it’s Fredrik Backman’s The Deal of a Lifetime.
Also, it’s Path Lit by Lightning by David Maraniss.
Currently, finishing The Book of Ages by Jill Lepore and A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell.
I was reading Excellent Women by Barbary Pym, but then I discovered I had already read it in 2017.
Cued up on the ipod for an evening walk (yes, I know it’s been pronounced obsolete, but there you have it…the ipod not the walk) is A Little Night Music with Hermione Gingold and Glynis Johns.
Busy.
Till next time.
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Sunday, August 21, 2022
Finished The Maid by Nita Prose.
A brilliant book encompassing invisible worker bees, below-sustainable wages, autisim, drug cartels, cleanliness, betrayal, loneliness, companionship, and the exact right ending.
The autistic aspect of The Maid(although the word autistic was never used in The Maid) reminded me of the book/Broadway play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time starring Alex Sharp. It was the most extraordinary performance I’ve ever seen.
The other connection to this book is an interview on an NPR type show that featured an autistic man who had received medical treatment to lessen his symptoms. When his symptoms lessened, he was able to remember and understand all those people who had made fun of him, tricked him, laughed at him, and played jokes on him. Remembering those people and times was overwhelming for him.
The Maid Molly never received medial treatment but did get better at reading expressions, knowing whom to trust, and finding the right people, just by luck, who stood in her corner.
One of the best scenes in the book was when she and a dubious and supposed boyfriend took her to Olive Garden where she wanted to order the Tour of Italy dinner. That order never materialized, but she did plan right then that someday she would take this supposed boyfriend to Italy where they would go eat at Olive Garden.
The drugs, the police, the judge, the jail, the detective, the hotel manager, the immigrant, the drug lord, the hotel laundry in the steamy basement, the lawyer, the doorman, the gun, the wives, Molly, and finally, Gran.
It all works together for a perfect story.
Till next time.
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Saturday, August 20, 2022
Michael Pawlyn was on Jon Richardson and the Futurenauts podcast recently.
Michael is a systems analyst.
His life’s work revolves around planetary conservation.
He used words like:
marginal incrementalism
the pain of the possible
regenerative vs sustainable
carbon oxygen nitrogen hydrogen
One of the most interesting aspects of his talk was the notion that sustainable projects are inadequate (he cited the Bloomberg HQ in London).
The only action that will sustain and repair damage to the earth wind water and sky will be regenerative housing, farming, traveling, schooling, and everyday living. That is…putting more in than is taken away.
Carbon footprint? Not near enough positive results from this marketing ploy and is actually the wrong phrase.
Regenerative actions…the right way to go.
Michael Pawlyn.
Till next time.
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
True or False? True.
More than one million earths would fit into the sun.
Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life by Wendy Mass.
Jeremy
His mom
Lizzy
Her dad
NYC
James the driver
Mr. Oswald the antiques dealer
Reminiscent of Quantum Leap wherein wrongs are made right and also Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close wherein a boy won’t use the subway. Also, a little bit The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.
Jeremy only eats peanut butter sandwiches. Nice touch.
And now?
One by One written by Ruth Ware. Suspense. Crime. Resolution.
Erin
Liz
Topher
Eva
Elliott
Finished this book today and found it engaging and suspenseful. Young, semi-educated people make a lot of money in the dot-com era, puff up, and then quickly lose it all. In the end, lots of damage.
FOOTNOTE: In this book, there was a lot of technical info about skiing in the mountains, which makes me think I will never be a skier, but a nice cup of milky coffee will always be welcome.
END FOOTNOTE.
Till next time.
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Monday, August 8, 2022
David McCullough (1933-2022)
He changed everything.
His books and his BookTV lectures are a testament to the pursuit of happiness.
His obituary written by Daniel Lewis in the Times:
“McCullough spoke of the founders’ notion of the pursuit of happiness — which, he said, did not mean “long vacations or material possessions or ease.” Rather, he said, ‘as much as anything it meant the life of the mind and spirit.’”
.˙. Happiness = the life of the mind and spirit
McCullough’s research was in depth and relied on libraries and librarians for Adams, Truman, The Johnstown Flood, The Great Bridge, and all the rest.
He regularly paid tribute to the nation's five best research libraries and their librarians:
Harvard,
Boston Public,
Yale,
Library of Congress,
NYC Public Library.
Till next time.
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Sunday, August 7, 2022
Ruth Ware writes suspenseful crime novels. In a recent By the Book interview, she was asked which three writers she would invite to a dinner party.
If she wanted to impress people, she said, she’d invite Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Emily Brontë.
However, if she were being truthful, she said, she’d invite those who write crime novels.
If By the Book were to ask me who I'd invite, I’d invite Fiona Shaw, RBG (I know), Kate DiCamillo, Susan Orlean, Alan Bennett, and Robert Gottlieb.
Every Thursday.
Plus for the big picture issues, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Peter Higgs, and obviously, Jamie Dimon…to pick up the tab.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, August 3, 2022
Finished The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott.
This book clearly captures the pain and suffering that women have endured since the beginning of time. The book doesn’t invite sympathy but rather it paints a picture of generational poverty that just won’t go away.
Statistically, most people live lives of noodle salad and warm slippers by the fire. The question is why can’t everyone?
This is a very brave book. I don’t recall how it came my way, but there you go. Worthwhile things abound.
Jim
Annie
Sally
Sister Illuminita
Sister St. Saviour
Sister Lucy
Sister Jeanne
Patrick
Till next time.
Alice and her book.
Saturday, July 30, 2022
It’s the oddest sensation.
You start the book and feel like you’ve seen the movie. But you can’t recall.
So, you think for a minute more, and voila. There it is. You’ve read this book before. Twasn’t a movie after all, but the book’s scenes were so well written that it imprinted as though they were movie images.
Totally.
Neat.
The book?
The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott.
The brain is so handy.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, July 27, 2022
So…James Patterson in his autobiography mentioned Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge, which are two novels by Evan S. Connell.
James said both of these books written in 1959 and 1969, respectively, were instrumental in James’s telling of his own stories. Short chapters, short sentences, fast action.
I’ve just finished reading them both. He’s quite right.
Evan established the short chapter, short sentences, fast action genre, and did it exceptionally well.
Published in the mid-century before civil rights and women’s rights were unquestionably the law of the land, these novels make the picture clear.
There was a lot to rebel against unless you were part of the country-club set.
Things are, of course, better now unless you read Banksy. The newest Banksy book is by by Stefano Antonelli and Gianluca Marziani, and I want it even though it's $40.
Throughout his works, Banksy illustrates with gorilla strength that the 50s simply are not that long ago. The past isn't over...it's not even past (Faulkner).
The Bridge family:
Walter-the long-suffering father…given the power to always know best
India-the perfect mother who had no life except to raise perfect children
Ruth-the eldest rebellious daughter
Carolyn-the middle daughter who married poorly
Douglas-the son who was privileged, argumentative, and lazy
Harriett-the hired help who ran the house
Julia-the hopefully sad office secretary
The book matches Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in terms of enough is enough.
These two novels by Evan Connell are works of sociological research presented as a story of quiet desperation. And even though Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward starred in the movie, the better movie about this era stars Julia Roberts in Mona Lisa Smile, which made Jackson Pollack’s painting necessary.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Finished the Patterson book. The best parts were the beginning to the middle when he described his years growing up and getting started as an ad man, a writer, and finally an entrepreneur. He really hustled all through his life and is still hustling to support books and readers.
Nice.
The final best part was a list of meaningful books he’s read throughout his life.
Short chapters. Concise sentences. Lots of action. That’s his stated routine for writing his books. Also. He listed all of his cowriters who are each his favorite.
Sadly.
He endorsed a university reading program for kids without having even one ounce of knowledge about the literacy research of the past 70 years. And that research totally debunks the specific university and its research he embraced and endorsed. I wonder if he also has steadfast opinions about how surgeons should perform appendectomies.
Sadly.
And finally for the day and after catching up on the NYTBR, I’ve decided to study more about Barbara Pym and her work. I’m also interested in the philosophical writings of Iris Murdoch although I’m sure they’re way over my head.
I’m also interested in the new book by Thomas Piketty. He has the whole capitalism, inequality, participatory socialism, communism thing all figured out. It’s his mission as a thinker. How the world produces people like him is a miracle. And a good one.
It would be interesting for Lena Waithe (The Chi [shy]) to sit down wtih Piketty and share her insight into the economics of life as she sees it.
Then.
There are two new books on the nightstand:
Jill Lepore’s Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (Ben's sister)
And
Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour: A Novel
Also… At some point in the near future, it’ll be Susan Orlean’s On Animals.
Till next time.
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Monday, July 11, 2022
Starting James Patterson by James Patterson. The blurb in the NYTBR was hilarious, and who doesn’t need a bit of hilarity to start the week.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, July 5, 2022
Elif Batuman recommended a couple of books from her interview in the NYTBR: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami is one I’ve just started. Hmm. I’m actually looking for books with less metaphor, fewer descriptions, and characters who are able to verbally communicate with each other without becoming smaller.
Amor Towles, Fredrick Bachman, and Iris Murdoch come immediately to mind…not to mention Christopher Paul Curtis and Wallace Stegner.
The other books in my cue are The Idiot: A Novel and Either/Or both by Elif Batuman, both of which may be beyond my grasp.
Plus, I’m getting back into Sonia Purnell’s A Woman of No Importance, which is a book close to another great book, Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler by Lynne Olson.
And finally, James Patterson by James Patterson is obviously a book by James Patterson…can’t wait on this one. It’ll probably jump the cue. Most likely.
A busy month.
Till next time.
July is always busy.
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
The NYT had an extended interview with John Grisham recently. The piece wasn’t all that flattering I fear. He started out his professional life as an underpaid lawyer. He wanted more money so he tried writing novels and has 30 years later been wildly successful.
This seemed like a good time to read a couple of his books. They aren’t quite as compelling as I’d hoped. Lots of characters…sometimes identified by their first names, sometimes by their last names. Maybe my attention is elsewhere.
The book is about corruption, casinos, judges, hit men, too much money, too few investigators, and ultimately, excessive greed. Next up? Still deciding.
Till next time.
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Monday, June 20, 2022
Between books today.
And. Per usual, behind in the NYTBR where I will undoubtedly find the next big book.
I’ve got The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson as well as A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell both partially read.
I’ve sort of set aside WWII books for the moment while I catch my breath.
Bill drew cartoons about Willie and Joe as they lived in mud-filled trenches in Italy and France in the 40s. Bill was anti-war, anti-slacker, anti-lazy officer, anti-graft, anti-corruption, anti-the rear echelon, and pro-medics, pro-front line COs, and very much pro-the enlisted man on the front lines.
The cartoons were published in the Stars and Stripes and other newspapers and helped keep morale and truth up front.
In this 1945 book, Bill adds the text that shows what war is actually like for the front lines. It’s never good. But he documented the camaraderie that made staying alive possible.
In Sebastian Junger’s book, Tribe, there is evidence of the same kind of comradeship that allows "sojers" to keep on.
I learned that trench foot is actually a disease of the foot from being in watery, icy, muddy trenches where the feet swell, skin cells die, and then the feet require either advanced treatment or amputation once the boots are removed.
It was a difficult book to write and difficult to read but necessary to understand the savagery and waste of war.
Professors at West Point teach all this and more. And yet...
Till next time.
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Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Karl Ove Knausgaard called it a masterful novel. So, it must be me. But, I didn't quite get it. The most interesting character was the minor character played by the Russian grocery-store shopper. I did finish the book and found it interesting in technique. It flowed back and forth over a twenty year period and didn’t miss a beat. Checkout 19.
And then In Defense of Witches was a treatise on the misused roles of women in history. I could have used more headings, shorter chapters, and less repetition. It did effectively compare the work of Betty Friedan with the work of Gloria Steinem. I’m not looking for a beach read, but I am looking for a book with characters who stick…always looking.
Next up on the kindle is A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell. Seems like quite a story. It’s a WWII resistance story, and who doesn’t need more resistance.
And finally
At last
Debunked
Lean In
and
Grit
Till next time.
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Sunday, June 5, 2022
Sam Quinones was live on BookTV today for two hours. His areas of expertise include immigration, drugs, communities, and people’s needs.
He’s an independent journalist and writer. He did a splendid job.
He understands the drug trade from Mexico to the US and stated that Fentanyl is the biggest problem currently. The production of this drug is easier than other plant-based drugs because it requires no land, no farming, no sun, and no tilling.
It’s a chemically made drug and so flies below the physical surveillance radar. It enters the US through various sea ports along the coast. He’s studied the drug problem and relates it to guns, shoplifting, sea ports, addiction, the economy, and lives controlled and lost.
Bleak.
But his commitment to documenting the problem is significant. When he was asked how closely the TV show Ozark is to reality, he indicated not much. Still, Laura Linney and Jason Bateman portray the money and illegality of it all to a high degree.
BookTV. Peter Slen. Always leading.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, June 1, 2022
It doesn’t seem quite right. Booker Nobel On and On.
John Banville’s The Sea is a blend of Proust, The Graduate, Humbert Humbert, Arrested Development, and the OED.
John Updike advised to critique a book on the basis of what the author intended to write rather than what the author wrote. I’m not sure. The sea plays a part…maybe that’s it. The ebb and flow of life.
Max, Anna, Claire, Chloe, Myles, Connie, Carlo, and finally Rose.
The book was not as compelling (although it does capture the grandly darker side of life) as The Map and the Territory or My Struggle, and the darkness of it did leave me wondering about the potential of humanity to rise.
There was quite a bit of press about Banville’s concern with prizes and money, which was all a bit untoward, but the press probably got it all wrong although writers must eat.
Reminds me of:
Sea Fever
By John Masefield
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
I bet Sea Fever reminds Banville of his book, too. All in all, a very fine read. One that will linger.
Till next time.
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Thursday, May 19, 2022
Could have been titled Where’s Ben?
Instead, it’s The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley.
Each chapter is a couple minutes long and revolves around only a few characters who each speak in first person in their own chapters.
Ben, Nick, Jess, the Concierge, Mimi, Antoine, Jacques, Sophie.
Poor Sophie can’t eat.
Poor Mimi can’t find a boyfriend.
Poor Antoine can’t be nice.
Poor Jacques can’t count all his money.
Poor Nick can’t tell the truth.
Poor Concierge can’t be treated right.
Poor Jess can’t find Ben.
Poor Ben can't be found.
Alas, there is no character named Beauregard, which sounds so very French.
Also, the City of Lights doesn’t seem so splendid anymore.
Half finished.
Footnote: TBA
For the record, best book ambassadors ever:
Mitchell Kaplan,
Ann Patchett,
James Patterson,
David Rubenstein,
Michael Silverblatt,
Brian Lamb,
Peter Slen,
Barbara Flanigan.
Till next time.
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Saturday, May 14, 2022
A day in traffic, five items out of stock, patron number 251 on a waiting list of 40 copies of The Paris Apartment, and I’m all set for the doldrumy hmphhhs. So.
Now’s the time to reread a vintage book by Jean Craighead George titled, My Side of the Mountain, which is just about my favorite book of all time besides:
The Lincoln Highway
Lincoln in the Bardo
The Book Thief
The Goldfinch
A Man Called Ove
My Struggle
The God of Small Things
The Map and the Territory
Max Perkins
Mirrors
Things Fall Apart
Avid Reader: A Life
Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom
And a few hundred others.
Till next time.
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Friday, May 6, 2022
The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont
Finished this. Took awhile. Can’t say why. It’s a mystery.
What could have happened if Agatha Christie’s husband, Archie, had purchased their baby from a Catholic orphanage in Ireland in 1919?
This book convincingly portrays that event via all the usual suspects…intrigue, mystery, cruelty, justice, and the ravages of war.
Agatha, Archie, Nan, Chilton, Finbarr, Teddy, and the nanny Honoria.
Catholicism, WWI and then WWII, abandoned houses, tins of tongue, bottles of wine, various breads, cyanide, strychnine, and life goes on for better or worse.
Two small quotes:
“It was Hamlet, wasn’t it, who said, ‘One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.’”
“The world had offered no justice, so we made our own.“
Till next time.
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Monday, April 25, 2022
I don’t know much about Jennifer Haigh, but I finished her book Mercy Street: A Novel.
It’s dark. But it exactly captures current and past deliberations on the status of women in society.
Claudia, Tim, Anthony, Victor, Deb, Nicolette…
All trying to make it in Boston.
The book is centered around a women’s health clinic serving women who have been left to hold up their half of the sky pretty much on their own.
The characters’ situations are all pretty bleak and seemingly without end made worse by talk radio, dark websites, too many boyfriends, alcohol, drugs, poverty, limited educational opportunities (BU, Harvard…where art thou?), and general societal malaise.
I was reminded of the Social Readjustment Rating Scale which compares 43 stresses of life to the health of individuals.
The characters in this book experienced nearly all of these stresses and had little support except for themselves.
Support as defined by happiness research includes: family, friends, worthwhile work, health, and financial stability.
It all sounds pretty simple to live a stable life, and yet Claudia, Tim, Anthony, Victor, Deb, and Nicolette had little access to happiness.
It was a lot for one book. But. Glad it came my way.
And finally, I had a technical observation about writing as I made my way through the book’s many characters. It was somewhat difficult to keep track of the characters when they didn’t have stated physical attributes. The one person who did have a stated physical attribute was easy to visualize since she was described as having dark, angry eyebrows.
Till next time.
Monday, April 18, 2022
A quote from The Hidden Brain podcast:
Hunt the good stuff.
And now for some books:
Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh
The Shadow in the Garden by James Atlas
I is Another by Jon Fosse
The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont
Till next time.
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Julia. HBO.
Sarah Lancashire
David Hyde Pierce
Bebe Neuwirth
James Cameron
Jefferson Mays
Judith Light
Isabella Rossellini
A cast of thousands.
The show’s a winner. And then both books. In my hands.
Julia’s Boeuf Bourguignon…page 315
Judith’s Blueberry Soup…page 96
Delightful. Thursdays.
Till next time.
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Sunday, April 3, 2022
There couldn’t be any better live interview on BookTV than the one with Peter Slen and Noam Chomsky today for two hours.
He spoke at length about Ukraine, sanctions (legal ones and illegal ones), the role of the UN in legal sanctions, climate change effects, unions, civil rights, and the world’s immigrants. He also said that President Eisenhower was the last great conservative president in the original definition of conservative.
Noam’s memory about documents, leaders, governments, books, economics, the Great Depression, and totalitarian governments was flawless. He answered a dozen questions from viewers and gave concise and historically contextualized answers. It was really something to watch.
I located my copy. It is dense with theory, examples, explanations, and answers as to how language works.
Noam is a world treasure. He gave us his all. AND. He has two new books coming out this year.
Grateful.
Till next time.
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Friday, April 1, 2022
Bits and Bobs of This and That: Women’s Work
The real reason to watch Killing Eve is to see Fiona Shaw deliver flawless performances as a clever agent and savvy observer of human nature. Plus, she gets to deliver all the best lines.
And of course since "April is the cruelest month," Fiona and Alec Guinness in various online clips share T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.”
Also, Fiona was interviewed by Al Senter for the National Theatre. It’s now a podcast but used to be a video, with said video seeming to have been scrubbed from the www. Hmmm.
And then there’s also another extraordinary talent who is everywhere…Sally Wainwright of BBC fame. Sally is a writer with out-of-this-world talent. She filmed a carriage scene in Gentleman Jack starring award-winning Suranne Jones (who resembles award-winning Phoebe Waller-Bridge IMHO, also Fiona is Phoebe’s character’s counselor in Fleabag…small world). In the carriage scene, the carriage supposedly and wildly driven by Suranne accidentally ran over a curb and nearly tipped. Sally used that exact scene in the episode and gave credit to the actual horse-carriage driver…Karen Bassett.
Karen has a horse carriage business in the UK where she is an International expert on all things carriage. She was singularly selected to transport the found skeletal remains of King Richard III to Leicester, England in 2012.
Fiona, Sally, Suranne, Phoebe, Karen
All in a day’s work.
Footnote: Al Senter’s interview with Derek Jacobi (similar to his missing interview with Fiona) is still available as a video and is totally splendid. Luck wins the day (according to Sir Derek).
End Footnote.
Till next time.
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Monday, March 28, 2022
When Penelope Lively recommends a book, it’s a must.
Capital: A Novel by John Lanchester
It was all there…capital and the lack thereof running lives and ruining the world.
Petunia, Shahid, Roger, Quentina, Zbigniew/Bogdan…all on Pepys Road
London, Pakistan, London, Zimbabwe, Poland
“We Want What You Have”
And finally, someone dug out Linda Ronstadt singing Different Drum written by the late Michael Nesmith (1942-2021) of The Monkees and included it at the end of the episode (Mrs. Maisel Maybe?).
Apple, Click, Buy, Play
A good week. Fore and aft.
Till next time.
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Sunday, March 27, 2022
I’ve tried. Just can’t do it. I need the paper copy in my hands rather than online, and even so, I always seem to be weeks and weeks and weeks behind.
However.
I did find a chuckling anecdote online in By the Book…
Jeremy Denk, Concert Pianist, was asked:
How do you organize your books?
“I asked Alex and he suggested ‘towers of random and dangerous heights, reaching dustily toward the heavens, placed for maximum inconvenience and with no regard for rodent infestation.’ ”
One last thing. I know I should read more Alice Munro. And yet…
Till next time.
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Wednesday, March 23, 2022
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright died today.
Born May 13, 1937 in Prague, The Czech Republic.
Till next time.
Photo by Ruth Fremson for NYT.
Sunday, March 13, 2022
BookTV was live at the Tuscon Book Festival today. It was really something to watch as people with expertise came together on panels to discuss various topics. By far, the best was Alexander Vindman who is originally from Ukraine and who has been a US citizen for decades. His analysis was direct, insightful, accurate, and hopeful.
His book is Here, Right Matters: An American Story
UPDATE: Finished Persepolis…an extraordinary book. When power, oil, and religion mix, it never ends well. The book documents the life of Marjane Satrapi as she grew up in Iran and Vienna in the 70s and 80s. I don’t think I would have survived. Clearly, her parents were the glue that kept her safe and provided for her education throughout all the terrors of oppression and war of that era.
Till next time.
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Thursday, March 10, 2022
Between books, finished How It All Began, which ended too abruptly, perhaps.
Waiting for spring, and in the meantime, starting Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. I’ve read it in the past, but it’s time for a reread.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, March 1, 2022
I’m well into Penelope Lively’s How It All Began. I’ve read it before, but luckily for me, it once again floated to the top of my desk, and I’m so glad it did.
Two noteworthy quotes from the book:
“she is like millions of others built by books,”
and
"you worry about the state of the nation, about sixteen-year-olds sticking knives into one another, about twenty-year-olds who can’t find a job, you worry about the absence of sparrows and the paucity of butterflies, about destruction of habitats, you worry about the decline of the language, about the books that are no longer read, about the people who don’t read. All of which is entirely unproductive—self-indulgent, maybe. Leave the knives to the police, the habitats to the environmentalists. If people don’t read, that’s their choice; a lifelong book habit may itself be some sort of affliction.”
These ideas are from Charlotte, a somewhat older and wiser character who has just been mugged and has had her purse stolen. She seems more or less to be the star of the show...or at least she's where it all began.
The book's other characters are normal people who are very busy with jobs, breakfast, shopping, work, rushing around, and staying busy. Love it.
Till next time.
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Sunday, February 27, 2022
I watched a splendid interview on BookTV today. It was one of the first to be recorded back in the C-SPAN studio rather than on zoom, and the difference in the quality of discussion was extraordinary. The difference between talking to someone face to face rather than on zoom is the difference between Tres Leches Cake and a Hostess Twinkie.
Laura Coates talked about her new book on justice in the legal system with Georgetown Law professor Kristin Henning.
In discussing the work of civil rights activism in the 60s and 70s, Laura mentioned a quote by Arthur Ashe,
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
Laura is optimistic that full civil rights can be achieved soon even though there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. She stated that there are times in history when things can and do change quickly.
Words du jour: Informed optimism.
Till next time.
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Saturday, February 26, 2022
Olga Tokarczuk wrote Flights. She won the Nobel, the Booker, and others.
I did finish it out of respect. However, the book was and is too complicated for me to understand.
I've always understood the standard wisdom of novel writing to be:
characters = plot.
A character who eats porridge or grows beanstalks or milks a cow behaves and acts in certain ways. Therefore, the plot, like the porridge, will thicken as the characters heat up.
David Hare of Page Eight and Beat the Devil would agree, I feel.
In Flights, there were several plots and characters. And they were mixed in with monologues, soliloquy, partial monographs, train tickets, and bodies of water.
Also, to become invested in a book, readers have to care about the characters whether they be Ishmael, Jean Valjean, Huck, Hester, Dorothy, or even Jack and Jill.
In Flights, I had difficulty staying focused on the characters and their attributes as they were woven in and out of time and space. I would, for sure, benefit from rereading this at some point in the future.
Footnote: Next up?
Maybe just resting with Mrs. Maisel for awhile and rewatching the scene where Susie (Alex Borstein) gives the single best eulogy ever written for mature audiences on or off TV for her co-worker Jacopo “Jackie” Dellapietra (in real life Brian Tarantina [1959-2019]). Season 4, episode 3, minutes 37:05-41:26.
End Footnote.
Till next time.
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Thursday, February 24, 2022
After reading 3 books by revolutionaries:
The Happy Prince
The Little Prince
Persepolis
I suddenly began thinking about woodcut books and one in particular. It took digging, looking, searching, reviewing, giving up, and then at the last minute stumbling upon…exactly what I was looking for.
And then, of course, regarding Olga and Flights…Olga, I tried. But wow. Lectures in the midst of stories in the midst of time travel in the midst of characters that lack appeal, and I’m lost.
Sad. Sadder. Saddest. Sadly.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, February 23, 2022
Flights is proving a challenge.
So, as a break, for some reason, I’ve dug out my copy of The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde, which led me to The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, which led me to Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi who has written the perfect book of revolution.
The Little Prince was published in the USA in 1943 by Reynal and Hitchcock. This 1943 version was translated from the French by Katherine Woods. Reynal and Hitchcock was purchased by Harcourt in 1948. The book was then republished in 2000 after havig been re-translated from the French by Richard Howard. Howard's is considered to be the most accurate. Or perhaps it's the Woods translation. Hmmmm.
There is also an online rendering of the book read aloud by Kenneth Branagh whose interpretation is perfect.
Saint-Exupery’s life story is one of the best around. Bigger than life and sadly lost.
Back to Flights. I wonder if the people of Nobel and Booker find it necessary to select books that are difficult.
Till next time.
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Sunday, February 20, 2022
You know, it’s like anything else…
Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel and the Booker for Flights.
It’s philosophy. It’s existentialism. It’s a novel. It’s introspective. It’s extrospective. It’s difficult. It’s easy. It’s a miracle. It's too soon to tell.
Never.The.Less.
It’s in my hands, and it's a busy week ahead.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Since it’s been twenty years since I’ve read it and since it’s been under scrutiny by politicians and the media as of late, I felt it was time to reread Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech.
Update: Wednesday, February 9, 2022
All is well. Nothing to fear in this award-winning book. I do think that Gram and Gramps were a little too folksy and not all that reliable as grandparents and that Sal and Phoebe were too imaginatively independent compared to other young girls around their age, but the book was engaging and worthwhile.
Footnote: Not as good as Creech’s Love that Dog, of course. But there you go. Done and dusted.
End Footnote.
Till next time.
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Sunday, February 6, 2022
A delightful Sunday morning watching a live two-hour interview on BookTV with Georgetown law professor Sheryll Cashin and the incomparable Peter Slen.
Alabama
Vanderbilt
Harvard
Georgetown
And all places in between
Well done.
Till next time.
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Saturday, February 5, 2022
I wish I could remember when I first realized that writers were the best people on earth.
I finished the essay that Robert Gottlieb wrote about Sinclair Lewis when suddenly I realized I was reading.
The writing was so good, the explanation of Sinclair’s life was so clear, and the authority of the author was so evident that I didn’t even realize I was reading.
So, now I’m starting Main Street and Babbitt by Sinclair, rereading Stephen King's On Writing, and I’m also reading Persepolis, which was referenced in the Book Review. I read it some time ago, but it’s time for a refresh. For sure.
Till next time.
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Monday, January 31, 2022
Regarding Lisey’s Story by Stephen King. Whoa. The reviews rave about the book’s portrayal of the loveliness of marriage and the importance of the wife in the success of the husband’s writing career. This has been thoroughly documented in all kinds of sociological research.
The HBO movie seems to be more about mental illness rather than marriage.
Hmm. HBO missed an opportunity. Why, I wonder.
Stephen is undoubtedly indebted to Tabby to whom he dedicated the book. The whole family seems decent, stable, talented, creative, and hard-working.
But Stephen. Wow. He’s unstoppable.
And then Mare Winningham reading Lisey’s Story. Who could want for more? Mare’s voice is remarkable. I wish she’d read aloud everything.
And then there’s also that lovely poster in the old folks’ home in The Stand where Stephen is included in the poster’s ad. VERY sneaky.
And then there’s his book On Writing, which is the one to read and reread, which I’ve done.
And then Stephen won the Audie 2020 lifetime achievement award and was introduced to the podium by his son.
And then I was going to write him a fan letter, but his website basically said, “No.” So, I've written these few thoughts instead.
And then
That’s enough And thens…
How can you not be happy for his talent and success! Well done, Stephen.
Next up? Billy Summers.
Till next time.
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Sunday, January 30, 2022
Perfect timing.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, January 26, 2022
I just finished Silverview, the late John le Carré ’s final book. In fact, his son had to complete it because it was still on John’s desk.
It had a nice ending that mirrored both real life and book life.
Edward, Deborah, Salma, Proctor, Ellen, Lily, and Julian.
In the end, it was the mailman who made the final delivery.
As realistic and legitimate as all these cold-war spy novels are, they don’t compare to the current troubles in Ukraine, where undoubtedly, a lot of people are working above and below to keep the natural gas lines open and flowing.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, January 18, 2022
Today, I’m feeling like a brown bear searching for salmon in a river.
Why is that?
Well.
For the past couple of hours, I’ve been reading The Book Review’s 125 years of reviews.
So. Here I am, the bear, wading around in the water without direction or agenda just meandering here and there waiting for something to come my way.
And they did.
Flannery, Eudora, Edith, Nora, Zadie, William F., Ralph, and The Babe.
And invariably, thoughts like these always seem to lead somehow to semiotics and intertextuality as written about by Julia Kristeva whose work I consistently set aside unlike the bear with his salmon.
Just another typical Tuesday meandering through The Times.
Till next time.
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Saturday, January 15, 2022
The problem with The Tragedy of Macbeth is that Joel Cohen assumed most of us could keep up. But alas, as Shakespeare might have said, “Oh my, it is a never-fixed mark.”
The tall cement-like building that houses the film’s action was a key character in this update and certainly added to the feelings of deception and deceit that led to all the mayhem, meanness, and madness.
But for the non-Macbeth scholar (me), it was difficult to know who was who and who was after whom.
Conversely, the 2015 Macbeth film with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard and the incomparable Paddy Considine made it much more clear as to who was climbing for the twin peaks of power and glory.
So. It seems that. Power and glory without service to the greater good will invariably and always end badly…eventually. Hopefully.
Never. The. Less. Denzel…Frances…and the fabulous Brendan Gleeson…perchance quite a treat.
In 2016, to mark the 400th year of Shakepeare’s death, BookTV interviewed the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in DC, Michael Witmore. Michael did a wonderful, wonderful job explaining this institution and the man. It was hard to stop watching. But that’s what happens when you hire a Berkeley grad.
Two books that have stayed with me all these years are Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. WWII, fascism, the working class, book burning, prejudice, shock, horror, complicity, unforgivable acts. Both books explain all this through characters that are victims of the arrogance and banality of evil.
Colm Toibin’s The Magician: A Novel looks at all those factors through the life of Thomas Mann and even though The Magician gets positive critical reviews from those in the know, I found it to be less compelling than Stones from the River or The Book Thief (especially when Thief is read aloud by the incomparable Allan Corduner).
Maybe this is all because when disaster strikes the lives of ordinary folks, the mind embraces them more profoundly than when disaster strikes those who have options, connections, money, status, and resources even when they are forced into disruption. Seems wrong, but there you have it.
ON the other hand (and there’s always an other hand), there are indeed those who have the big picture capacity and the intellectual capacity to process huge amounts of information and who can therefore offer insights, perspectives, and solutions that most others can’t. In the end, Mann did not shirk his duties as a public scholar, and that is why there are so many books about him.
Also, I’ve come to realize, I like books with short sentences.
Speaking of movies related to WWII…
A recent movie starring Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson does an excellent job of showing what ordinary people must do to endure and fight oppression. Alone in Berlin. A German working class couple lost their son in the war and gradually and secretly fought back against the oppressive regime of their government.
A lot to end 2021 with, but then again, 2021 provided a lot to ponder.
And finally, I think I’d make a terrible spy but a pretty good subversive.
Till 2022.
Monday, December 27, 2021
FedEx, UPS, USPS.
Come and gone.
Back to the books.
28% into The Magician: A Novel by Colm Tóibín.
Thomas Mann ?
It took me several, many, a lot of pages before I realized this novel was based on the life of Thomas Mann.
However, I won’t check out the wiki page till I decide if it’s all plausible or not. But really…anything Colm writes is gonna be great.
Till next time.
Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Received my yearly Christmas card for 15 Christmases in a row from the President making the season officially hopeful.
Framed and admired on a daily basis.
Merry Christmas, President and Mrs. Carter.
...
Friday, December 17, 2021
Christmas Cheer.
Cindy Sherman
Alice Neel
Vivian Maier
And that's not even counting Twyla Tharp's interview on Fresh Air as well as Anna Baryshnikov on Dickinson.
Till next time.
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Sunday, December 12, 2021
It’s maniacally sad to be this delinquent in reading The Book Reviews.
How did this happen?
Too many catalogues?
Too many cupcakes?
Too many miles?
Too many emails?
Too many videos?
Too much Vivian, Alice, and Cindy?
Maybe. Probably. Perhaps. Then, again.
PLUS…I MUST get back to Bill Bryson. I’ve been on page 168 since 2003. Sorry, Bill. Today’s the day.
Till next time.
...
Friday, December 10, 2021
Being between books, I’m rewatching all three seasons of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel waiting for season four to begin some time in 2022.
Twenty-twenty-two. I wonder if that’s how you write that.
There’s a scene in season two of the series that I particularly liked. Miriam’s mom, Rose Weissman, goes to Paris for some fresh air, French toast, and independence (or as the French say liberté, égalité, fraternité). While there, she visits the Rodin Museum where she sees the Burghers of Calais and then returns to her apartment to tell her husband, Abe, all about the museum and the sculpture.
I thought, “Hmmmm. That sculpture looks familiar.” So, I flipped through the 13,412 photos on my mac, and voila. There it was.
The Burghers of Calais being studied by students and their teacher at the Met via my iPhone in 2014.
It’s a spectacular sculpture in the series, on the screen, and in person. Full of skilled craftsmanship, historical significance, and lessons to be learned.
Till next time.
The Burghers at the Rodin.
Burghers and students at the Met.
Thursday, December 2, 2021
Bucket List
Spend the day with Fiona Shaw.
I stumbled onto a podcast from the National Theatre from 2011 and listened to Fiona’s interview…three times. On the second and third time, I took notes:
Alan Rickman, Fiona Shaw, Lindsay Duncan in John Gabriel Borkman (2011) by Henrik Ibsen (1896).
Originally with Glenda Jackson in 1984 and then with Fiona Shaw and Tim McInnery in Scenes From an Execution (2012) by Howard Barker.
Alec Guiness and Fiona Shaw (1995 and again 2010) The Wasteland by T.S. Eilot. “April is the cruelest month.”
Fiona Shaw with director Phyllida Lloyd in Brooklyn in 2013 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge written in 1797.
Fiona Shaw in Fleabag, Killing Eve, Harry Potter.
Fiona Shaw in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1998) by Muriel Spark (92nd Street Y interview) written in 1961.
Fiona Shaw, Maggie Smith, Keeley Hawes, Michael Gambon, David Tennant in The Last September (Book by Elizabeth Bowen in 1929, movie by John Banville in 1999).
Fiona Shaw in Hedda Gabler (1992) by Henrik Ibsen (1891).
Fiona Shaw as Winnie in Happy Days (2008) by Samuel Beckett (1960).
Fiona Shaw as Mary in The Testament of Mary (2013) by Colm Toibin.
Fiona Shaw as King Richard in Richard II (1997) directed by Deborah Warner. [Glenda Jackson (2019) as Lear in King Lear].
Fiona Shaw in Shakespeare’s Viola in Twelfth Night (not Rosalind in As You Like It).
In the future maybe, Fiona Shaw as Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and Fiona Shaw in Major Barbara (1905) by George Bernard Shaw.
Fiona’s mom said, “In the midst of life, we are in death. Pass the marmalade.”
Till next time.
...
Friday, November 26, 2021
There is hardly a single thought in my head that hasn’t been influenced by Stephen Sondheim’s music, plays, and life.
March 22, 1930 - November 26, 2021
Till next time.
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Tuesday, November 23, 2021
There are some books (many, actually) that even though you’ve read it from the library, you just gotta have it on your shelf. And Avid Reader by Robert Gottlieb is one of those books.
Just arrived…today.
Photographed, documented, and on the shelf. For posterity and beyond.
Till next time.
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Sunday, November 21, 2021
Today, BookTV shared a live broadcast from the Miami Book Fair.
I watched H.W. Brands talk about his new book Our First Civil War. Totally great. I just checked it out from the library.
And then…
The pièce de résistance was Chris Hedges who has been a heroic writer for decades. His new book is Our Class, and I just queued up for it at the library. His presentation was brilliant.
A day of thinking well spent.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Ann Patchett of Parnassus Books said she told Kate DiCamillo that readers would remember her book, The Beatryce Prophecy 100 years from now. Seemed like I should read it. I did. Quite good.
My favorite, though, of Kate’s is The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane AND The Tale of Despereaux. Love them both. AND, I'd have to add her Flora and Ulysses as another favorite; and then wow, the Raymie Nightengale series…all wonderful!!!!!!!!!! Kate shouldn’t worry about the longevity of her books. They’re here to stay.
The Beatryce book leaves one wondering whether those who lie, cheat, and steal will always ultimately fail in their efforts to be villainous, or will those who lie, cheat, and steal mostly wind up as winners.
Sure wish real life mirrored those books wherein the virtuous always win and the villains always lose.
Also, from a feminist perspective, Beatryce’s mother was beautiful and smart, the mermaid was beautiful with a jeweled tail, the boy was brave and tenacious, and Beatryce was an egalitarian who could read and write. Quite a collection of folks.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, November 10, 2021
It’s difficult to begin another book while still thinking about Emmett and Billy (from The Lincoln Highway) as FINALLY they start out from Times Square to San Francisco for their next big adventure. It seems like the book almost leaves room for a sequel. But I can’t think what could possibly be better than what’s already happened to them:
Landing in jail,
Losing the farm,
Riding the rails,
Meeting Ulysses,
Having the Studebaker stolen,
Camping at the high line before it was the High Line,
Escaping the loathsome Pastor John,
Meeting Professor Abernathe on the 55th floor of the Empire State Building,
Finding $150,000 in a safe,
Leaving town with silver dollars and two brothers all in tact.
And not to forget the book that started it all: Professor Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers which included all manner of Greek and Roman references and, of course, Joseph Campbell.
The biggest sad part of the novel was Woolly. He never got to see the Statue of Liberty. And I wish the scene of $50,000 floating around in a lake with a boy who couldn’t swim had been different. But it happens.
Also. Related.
Mary Beard, the classicist, according to By the Book is fond of Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy. Sadly, it’s difficult to find info on the sequence of each separate book. Cicero’s secretary, Tiro, provided the info on Cicero’s life (106-43 BCE).
This appears to be the order of the published books:
Imperium
Conspirata/Lustrum
Dictator
Mary also recommends learning Latin to enjoy Tacitus’ Annals (a history of the Roman Empire). (I’m pretty sure that won’t happen.)
To begin a study of the classics, she also recommends starting with Greece and Homer (800 BCE-701 BCE) and his Odyssey. Mary recommends the writer Derek Walcott in this regard.
[Iliad by Homer chronicles Trojan War including King Agamemnon and warrior Achilles]
[Odysseus and Odyssey occurred after events of Iliad.]
Summary
Trojan War with Agamemnon and Achilles and then Odysseus.
Is any of this even remotely accurate? And will I remember it?
Till next time.
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Sunday, November 7, 2021
In olden days, the most trusted people in America were Walter Cronkite and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Today, it’s Tom.
Just watched Finch.
And then there’s not to forget Jeff and Goodyear or the indomitable Mr Wilson.
Well done.
Till next time.
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Saturday, November 6, 2021
You’re five pages in, and you know. You just know. You absolutely know.
Emmett
Billy
Sally
Duchess
Woolly
The librarian
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles is compelling and propelling.
The characters are trying to make their lives work in spite of no money, no house, a questionable past, no support system, no parents of note, and little experience with how to get by. And so it goes with an old Studebaker, the unlikely promise of money, and a long stretch of highway from Times Square to the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco's Lincoln Park as their only hope.
And in spite of John Banville’s admittance that he doesn’t read much fiction anymore because it’s mere prattle, I do. I do, I absolutely do, because it’s not prattle a’tall.
Fingers crossed that it all works out. It did for A Gentleman in Moscow. So, hopes are high.
Till next time.
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Thursday, November 4, 2021.
John Banville was interviewed today for By the Book.
He says, “I’m rereading the Everyman’s Library edition of Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain” in the magnificent translation by John E. Woods. Also “The Empress of Ireland,” an inexplicably neglected memoir by Christopher Robbins of the inexplicably forgotten Irish film director Brian Desmond Hurst, first published in 2004. The book is extremely engaging, sad and funny, and a sort of masterpiece in its way. Get it in the wonderful and wonderfully named Slightly Foxed Editions edition, if you can.”
What better advice I do not know.
Till next time.
Illustration by Rebecca Clarke.
Sunday, October 31, 2021
Little Debbie and I have just finished The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard. A serious book.
He explores philosophy, life and death, and truth through the eyes and lives of many characters. These characters don’t necessarily know each other although they seem to cross paths in quite surprising ways. A priest performs a funeral for an unknown man whom she met on the train the day before. He’d said, “I am the Lord.” The man had died a week earlier.
So, Karl Ove is wrestling with big issues and relying on Aristotle, Greek gods, Roman myths, Norse mythology, religion, and the trials and trepidations of modernity, which as it turns out, is not all that rewarding.
He’s wrestling with issues that he wrote about throughout his six volumes of My Struggle. At some point, ya just gotta admit that it’s okay and/or desirable to say, “We just don’t know.”
However and further, there is no fault, none, ever, in forever asking the big questions.
Till next time.
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Friday, October 29, 2021
Books up next. A lot of reading to be accomplished.
Plus, I was reading that sesame seeds have a lot of Tyrosine which can enhance memory.
1 gram per day. I have no idea how much that is. I need a triple beam balance scale and a lot of other metric stuff as well. Clearly.
And with a respectful nod to Malcolm G., not even my 10,000 hours over the years of photoshop usage seem to be enough. Still.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Sadly, not even Giovanni Ribisi can save Julie Delpy's On the Verge. Setting women back 70 years is hard to do with a great cast, but whoa, there you are. The perfect 1950s show.
I wonder if Julie is familiar with Wally Funk of the Mercury 13 crew. Wally’s interview on C-SPAN was fabulous.
The space race began in the 1960s:
Out of 159 men pilots, there were seven (4.4%) who were able to make the cut for the first earth-orbital program. Hence: Mercury Seven.
Out of 25 women pilots, there were thirteen (52%) who were able to make the cut for the first earth-orbital program. Hence: Mercury 13.
And this month?
Wally, at an ageless 82, just returned from outer space. She was thrilled.
Anyhoo…And...
Yesterday, out of the blue, I was thinking of Sara Nelson. MANY years ago, she did an outstanding interview on BookTV about her role as editor in chief of Publishers Weekly. Then surprisingly, she went to Amazon as director for books and Kindle. And now? A quick search finds her, thankfully, back in the thick of it at HarpersCollins since July 18, 2016.
I wonder if they'd like to have lunch? My treat.
Till next time.
Sara and Wally.
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
Matters of immense consequence.
That’s what it was…the National Book Festival sponsored by The Library of Congress. Live. There's something about live book discussions that enable matters of immense consequence to come to light.
The first session I watched included David Rubenstein and Joseph Ellis with a robust discussion of the revolutionary war.
I learned a lot. An eight-year war that was all about power…not taxation necessarily, but power.
If the British had won, Canada, North America, and the Caribbean would have become colonies of Great Britain.
Who’s to say. Think of it.
Boris.
And also.
Next up is Silverview by John le Carré. The book was his last and contains matters of immense consequence, which is a lovely phrase that I absolutely lifted from the NYT review of this book.
Also up next are:
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard
The Magician by Colm Tóibín
The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
A lot of immensity.
Till next time.
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Friday, October 8, 2021
Seems like lately, everywhere I look, there’s William and his work.
William Keepers Maxwell was the fiction editor for The New Yorker for forty years.
Forty years.
He wrote Nearing 90 for the NYT Magazine published on March 9, 1997.
He died July 31, 2000 at age 91.
Modern-day American literature begins with him. His editorial and writing accomplishments are like no other. And in the end, he always liked writing sentences and perhaps still does.
Jill Krementz photographed him for her book, which is by far one of the best things I own: The Writer’s Desk.
William is on page sixty-four
right after Joan Didion and right before Robert Coles.
Till next time.
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Sunday, October 3, 2021
Peter Slen and History Professor Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
Today. Live. BookTV. Two Hours.
A perfect sunny Sunday.
Her scholarship coincides with the work of Howard Zinn and his A People’s History of the United States. Her research focuses on indigenous people, colonialism, historical events, and the global connections of those concepts and events.
The callers were informed and appreciative. And her explanations, references, and remarks were all illuminating.
Couldn’t have been better.
Till next time.
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Friday, October 1, 2021
Finished Mrs. March. I’m not sure why publishers are interested in books about women who proceed to fall apart over a period of time. I don’t think this particular book was enlightening or entertaining whereas Where’d You Go, Bernadette was both. In fact, I think I’ll reread Bernadette. SO much better than the movie, although Hollywood gave it a good shot.
Also, Amor Towles has a new book out as does Karl Ove Knausgaard. And it’s very possible that I’ll read them both.
Possibly.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, September 29, 2021
I bought the hardcover catalog for Alice Neel’s recent showing at the Met. It arrived today. There was a TV documentary about her quite some time ago. It was compelling, and that’s when I became a fan. And then the NYT did a couple of recent pieces. So getting the book was essential.
And happily, I’ve got it. However, seeing paintings in real life and not in a book is far more impactful. Her Andy Warhol at the Whitney has staying power.
Never.The.Less.
I’ve got the book and couldn’t be happier. Well…ya’ know. Relativity and all that.
Till next time.
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Friday, September 24, 2021
Some day, I’ll be sophisticated enough to appreciate barefoot musicians in gray suits who are self-mesmerized and telling the world:
Don’t you worry ‘bout me, everybody’s coming to my house.
In the meantime, I’ve reread Jon Klassen’s The Rock from the Sky online from the library. Too, too good. Reminds me of Wayward Pines, season one.
What else are we not aware of.
Till next time.
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Sunday, September 19, 2021
Caught the season two opener of The Morning Show on Apple TV. While the leading lead finishes typing up her memoir about how tough it is to be a mega star on TV and to have your life totally controlled by a media corporation, I’m betting there will be little sympathy for her character in the real real world. I stopped watching when she started reflectively gazing out the window of her winter chalet while sporting a cozy, sky blue cable-knit sweater and sipping contentedly from an over-sized mug of coffee.
Meanwhile Billy Crudup steals every scene. As does Holland Taylor.
I wonder what the writers were thinking.
ALSO…wow. Elizabeth Moss is unstoppable. Handmaid’s Tale? The Square? Mad Men? Shirley? And all the others. She’s as good as Meryl…maybe better. Is that allowed to be said.
Meanwhile, I’m finishing Hamnet today, and I can’t stop thinking about this wonderful book which is due back at the library, and as Jessica Tandy and Dan Aykroyd discussed in Driving Miss Daisy…
...
Friday, September 10, 2021
For writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Tom Stoppard, László Krasznahorkai, and Uwe Johnson (there are others…but these are the ones I’ve read) who lived under the control of totalitarianistic and corrupt governments and then wrote about that kind of life, it’s nearly too much, it’s dark, it’s essential, it’s honorable, it’s unbearable, it’s bearable, it’s illuminating, it’s instructive, it’s guidance, it’s the study of oppression 101. All that.
And it’s totally different than the message of oppression represented in the film Nomadland. Frances McDormand played Fern who had skidded into hard times and then had been drawn to a group who blamed the tyranny of capitalism for their woes and downfalls.
The tyranny of government storming your home, stealing everything, and leaving you for dead is a different kind of tyranny than Wall Street in the dead of night manipulating your bank account, your job, your livelihood, your mortgage, your pension, your life.
The first requires physical resistance that nearly always fails while the other requires education, financial awareness, voting rights, plenty of library books, solidarity, and reliance on Naomi Klein, Thomas Pikkety, Dolores Huerta, Jill Lepore, Jared Diamond, Robert Woodson, Michael Lewis, Lawrence Wright, Arundhati Roy, Jane Mayer, Thomas Dyja, and Greta Thunberg.
However, and even after due diligence of study and thought, in the end, the Delta variant needs neither government nor Wall Street to control the world. It is satisfied with its one and only brainless, self-centered, ego-driven talent…to duplicate.
Life. Blessings and curses and all things in between. That’s life.
Till next time.
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Monday, September 6, 2021
Francine Prose wrote The Vixen. It’s about Ethel and Julius Rosenberg who were convicted of treason in 1953. Judi Dench was in Red Joan and played a British college student who was also involved in treason. But the best related movie was Angels in America when Meryl Streep portrayed Ethel's ghost and visited the hospital bedside of the dying Roy Cohn. It was unforgettable.
The Vixen’s main character is Simon who is trying to rise in the ranks of editorship in the New York publishing industry in 1953.
Simon trembles, steps unsuredly, loses the ability to speak, loses the ability to think, and lives across the street from Bellevue Hospital. He’s no Max Perkins and is tedious.
Labor Day.
80% of Americans belonged to unions in the 50s.
12% belong today.
How many Americans wear an Apple Watch?
Maybe about 15%.
On a real upbeat note, Audra McDonald was interviewed on Sirius yesterday. Lots of talent and major generosity.
Till next time.
Saturday, August 28, 2021
László Krasznahorkai is an Hungarian writer who has won the Booker and the National Book Award and a PEN honor.
I’m reading his The Melancholy of Resistance…it’s dystopian, disturbing, scary, and compelling in that I can’t stop reading it.
But it’s now less scary that I’ve heard him interviewed at the 92nd Street Y with Salman Rushdie and then by Colm Tóibín via PEN America not to mention Michael Silverblatt of Bookworm.
He seems pretty normal, which makes the dystopia easier and less scary to read.
The whale is coming to town.
Till next time.
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Friday, August 27, 2021
Just finished reading Rita Dove’s By the Book interview.
August 8, 2021 NYT
And then remembered:
A BookTV episode from way back.
Rita Dove (former laureate)
Robert Haas (former laureate)
Robert Pinsky (former laureate)
1998. At the White House. Giving readings. Sharing poems. All on the same stage. Making poetry look completely normal.
The thing about it is that Tom Stoppard is a public intellectual who is peerless. On every page of his biography are insights and facts that are the result of his pain-staking research into the governments, peoples, and power in Germany, Russia, the Czech Republic, and London during the last century and beyond.
He said that he spends a lot of time on the research for each detail that he includes in his plays. I’m almost finished with Hermione Lee’s biography of him and have just checked out from the library, Travesties.
His newest and perhaps final play, Leopoldstadt, opened in London in March 2020 and was closed by COVID. It’s supposed to reopen in October. But realistically, it probably won’t.
One of these days, the new normal will actually be normal.
Also, watched Annette (neither Funicello nor Bening).
Nine-minute standing ovation at Cannes.
I get it.
Do I?
Till next time.
Tom, Hermione, Annette...a busy week.
Monday August 16, 2021
With overwhelming respect for Judi, Ian, and Idris, Cats with Elaine Paige and Ken Page will last forever.
I’d forgotten how good the original actually is even though I’ve watched it five or six times in the last ten years. It gets me every time. The same spots...most notably when Old Deuteronomy raises his paws at the very end for a well-deserved and final stretch of victory.
Plus, I learned how to blur the background on my new M1 Mac. Still, a 24” screen is claustrophobic.
32" seems way excessive. 30" would be great. Apple? You there?
Till next time.
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Monday, August 9, 2021
I heard a good phrase the other day…one that I’ll try to keep track of.
“Uncomplicated integrity”
And.
I’ve been reading so much nonfiction lately that I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to be reading and then to all of a sudden forget that you’re reading.
But with The President’s Daughter: A Thriller by Bill Clinton and James Patterson, that invisibility of the book returned.
With nonfiction, I read slower and have to look stuff up as I go.
With well-written fiction, it’s easy just to fall into the story and forget about the print on the page. Funny how that happens. Paper, print, the brain, a good story. That’s all that’s required.
With the Clinton/Patterson book, the nation’s security forces and their talents were accurately portrayed as were the many frailties of our species. But what really started the book’s whole mess was the folly of youth, teenage short-sightedness, and the self-promotion of too many in power in and out of every single day. It really was a page turner. Hard to believe. But t’was.
The bigger theme of the book was who gets to decide which culture and whose values will be respected. And that theme remains unresolved.
Till next time.
BookTV.
Thursday, July 29, 2021
The book, the movie…all very grand. Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (KOL-əm toh-BEEN).
Colm. Reading his books and listening to his interviews are steadying. His interviews with Michael Silverblatt are always the best. But Brooklyn. Wow. What a story. How could he write anything better.
Around the same time as loving Brooklyn for the umpteenth time, reading The Woman Who Stole Vermeer by Anthony Amore while remembering Nory Ryan’s Song by Patricia Reilly Giff provide both a fictional and nonfictional feel for Irish life and the relationships between Ireland and England.
And of course, all this doesn’t begin to explain Northern Ireland, which is a whole different level of understandings.
Finally, adding Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes to the work of Colm, Anthony, and Patricia makes it all very melancholic but also and oddly very satisfying.
Ireland.
Till next time.
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Saturday, July 24, 2021
You gotta love a couple of tv shows where the writers manage to work in a little science and a bit of linguistics:
Orphan Black
F=ma
(force = mass x acceleration)
Ted Lasso
Semantic Satiation
(You use a word so much that its meaning devolves into just a bunch of sounds.)
Till next time.
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Friday, July 23, 2021
It’s magic. Obviously. Reading Robert Gottlieb’s July 4, 2021 review of John Gunther’s Inside America copyright 1946 is nothing short of magic.
And then many clicks later through ILL (interlibrary loan), the book is in my hands.
So, from one avid reader to another, many thanks.
Till next time.
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Sunday, July 18, 2021
Tom Stoppard by Hermione Lee is terrific. Seeing the historical view of Tom’s life from the Czech Republic to Singapore to India to London to NYC shines light not just on Tom’s life but on historical events as well. The other book that stays with me and comes to mind on a regular basis particularly as I’m reading Tom is by the late Uwe Johnson and is titled, Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl. What a wonderful novel. Published by the New York Review of Books.
The history of twentieth century conflicts, revolutions, winners, losers, survivors, and innocents is best understood in these kinds of stories.
Plus, today I was watching on BookTV a University of Chicago historian talk about his new book. He referenced Keynes’s mumbo jumbo. Red flag alert...particularly considering that FDR with advice from John Maynard Keynes saved America after the Great Depression. And at the same time, Emma Rothschild of Harvard was his host and represented the best of what an intellectual community should be. Her stance, like all seasoned scholars, was one of always asking the right questions as opposed to believing something strongly and then seeking out facts to support one’s beliefs.
After all that, it’s nice to look at Monet’s water lilies.
Till next time.
Monet at MOMA, March, 2015.
Saturday, July 10, 2021
I know that William Gaddis created a book form that involves writing dialogue with no quotation marks. The writing and action were so well written that you knew exactly who was speaking even without quotation marks. Zero. None. Nada.
Relatedly, I’m s l o w l y getting through The Friend by Sigrid Nunez. It's slow because I’m having to reread almost every paragraph to figure out who is speaking to whom. And that’s in spite of the book’s use of quotation marks. Sometimes it’s apparent who’s speaking but mostly not. Somewhat irritating.
I’m sure it’s my lack of sophistication as a reader that I’m having trouble.
Maybe.
Also, I just watched James Patterson and Bill Clinton talk on BookTV about their new mystery book, The President’s Daughter. It’s up next on my nightstand. And I’m betting I’ll have no trouble following what’s going on. Their interview was splendid, June 8, 2021, and you can quote me.
Till next time.
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Sunday, July 4, 2021
It was a perfect interview.
Annette Gordon-Reed
AND…it was live.
BookTV.
Peter Slen.
Two hours.
Flawless.
Only in America.
And probably France.
Till next time.
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Saturday, July 3, 2021
A totally busy day.
The History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live
Danielle Dreilinger
Independent Journalist published by W.W. Norton
After the Fall: Being American in the World We Made
Ben Rhodes
Former deputy national security adviser for the Obama administration, 2009-2017.
Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White
Patricia Sullivan
University of South Carolina
Interviewed by Kenneth Mack who appeared to be under-prepared although he did indicate that he had read the book under discussion.
And then of course, it’s a live two-hour BookTV interview tomorrow with Annette Gordon-Reed. It will be great. Totally.
Plus, there’s the fireworks.
Till next time.
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Monday, June 28, 2021
So.
Next up:
The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
The Art of Eating by M. F. K. Fisher
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
Oliver Wendell Holmes by Stephen Budiansky
The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore
Tom Stoppard by Hermione Lee
The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson
Inside U.S.A. by John Gunther (recommended by the incomparable Robert Gottlieb)
Till next time.
...
Thursday, June 24, 2021
An excess of book reviews means an excess of books that are waiting to be read.
Currently, in the middle of Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri and can’t seem to put it down. The chapters are tiny and short, which gives you the chance to reread these short little morsels of angst and ennui…and enjoy them all over again...perfect for a hot summer day.
Till next time.
...
Sunday, June 13, 2021
Finally finished New York, New York, New York by Thomas Dyja. At the same time, on my mind are Vera by Carol Edgarian (about the SF earthquake) and an interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti (about poetry and his SF bookstore).
Also related to SF were a couple of movie/TV references. That’s a lot of SF in a short period of time.
The New York book made me rethink and possibly downgrade from A+ to A my love for the theater, museums, and street life of NYC. The New York book also made me think maybe I’ve been hoodwinked by flashy advertising, brilliant marketing, and non-stop promotion of this whole I Love New York thing.
Never. The. Less.
September 14
Broadway re-opens.
Phantom
Lion King
Hamilton
Wicked
Plus, of course, with 41 theaters, and a budget of 1.8 billion dollars spent by 14.6 million people in 2019, there’s no shortage of love.
And that's not counting:
The Met
MOMA
The Whitney
The High Line
The Burger Joint at the Parker
Bemelman's at The Carlyle
The Strand
Museum of the City of New York
Studio Museum of Harlem
Schomburg Center
Sarabeth's
Fairway
A Starbucks on every second corner
And Lin on the A train at 181st In the Heights
Still…there’s this bookstore in SF. Beckoning.
Till next time.
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Saturday, June 12, 2021
It’s really something to listen to Michael Silverblatt discuss poetry and life with Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021).
Listening to them via Bookworm on KCRW, it’s easy to envision a bit of eavesdropping on them at a café in SF, LA, or even Brooklyn as they discuss Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, Walt Whitman, and Ezra Pound while also acknowledging that Ezra wrote global poetry while the rest wrote American. It’s easy to envision eavesdropping on this conversation but not as easy to envision eavesdropping on two people in the same cafe discussing fishing, knitting, bowling, biking, big salads, or even the habitation of Mars. Poetry just feels different somehow.
In conclusion:
To understand America through poetry remains a utopian dream. And yet a poem about spring by ee cummings recited in the moment by Lawrence makes it seem doable.
In the end, it’s probably Mark Twain or Susan Sontag who can best tell America about itself or perhaps Alexis de Tocqueville (or actually and most probably Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie (as in Stamberg, Wertheimer, Totenberg, and Roberts, respectively).
In the meantime, Amanda Gorman found us...just in time.
Finally, an aeronautical term that means the time between being functional and being unconscious due to lack of oxygen is called “the time of useful consciousness.” And that is the name of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s book, The Time of Useful Consciousness.
City Lights Booksellers and Publishers
Bohemians and Beats, Bonsoir.
Till next time.
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Sunday, June 6, 2021
Seventy-seven years ago.
D-Day
June 6, 1944
Sir Max Hastings, a British historian, was live on BookTV today discussing his many books about wars and WWII specifically. He was interviewed by Peter Slen who did a splendid job.
Sir Max discussed Churchill, Roosevelt, Japan, Germans, Russians, WWI, WWII, the Vietnam War, and all related considerations.
His knowledge about the geopolitical conflicts was extraordinary. He explained that the Austrian Hungarian Empire of WWI used the assassination of Franz Ferdinand by a Seriban as an excuse to expand their empire.
And from that goal to amass wide swaths of land, modern war came to be.
One caller wanted to know if Germany, France, and Japan also had scholarly writers who wrote about these wars. Sir Max referenced the Potsdam Report from Germany as being accurate. The French have no official history of WWI and WWII because no one in France can agree on the complexities of their occupation and collaboration problems. Japanese historians distort the war and their part in it.
Two hours of an in-depth look at history and war with an emphasis on how easily people and governments can be both manipulated and heroic.
Sir Max also mentioned that JFK had read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, and that book played a part in the decisions he made with regard to the Cuban missile crisis with Russia.
And as Harm de Blij said, “We are all geography.”
Till next time.
European alliances in 1914.
Sunday, May 30, 2021
It’s just not Sunday without the Times, a milky coffee, and a poem by Cynthia Ozick refuting the review of her new book Antiquities, which I read and liked very much. And the editors of the NYT Book Review had the decency/graciousness to print her lettered poem. All is right with the world (for a brief bit in the world of bookishness).
Also, I’ve been listening to Martin Amis talk with Michael Silverblatt on Bookworm. Totally worthwhile. To listen to good conversation about books, life, and ideas in a measured and pleasant atmosphere is steadying. Always.
Finally, I read a really good interview with Bill Nighy in The Guardian. He and the reporter were in a café in Piccadilly. He likes cafes. America doesn’t have them. Bars and diners. Yes. Cafes with outdoor seating? No. I met him once for a nano-second outside a theater in NYC. He was going to speak. I froze. He continued on. As did I. Eventually.
The famous question of who you’d invite to a dinner party if you could invite any threefive people made me think I’d invite:
Cynthia
Martin
Michael
Bill
Beatrix
And I’d maneuver them all so that Beatrix could talk about Peter Rabbit, of course, but mostly about shearing sheep and living her life as Mrs. William Heelis. Quite a story. I wish I could hear her voice. I have an idea she sounds a bit like Eleanor Roosevelt but with a countrywoman’s British accent. Surely, she’s on tape someplace. I’ll keep looking.
Till next time.
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Friday, May 28, 2021
NYC…my favorite place in the world. But is it?
New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation by Thomas Dyja is my kind of book. It tells me the truth. It tells me the behind the scenes story of a city I love, but it also informs me that I’ve been duped? Misled? Protected from reality?
NYC is a place that roiled with money problems from the beginning, and with money problems come vice and all manner of shenanigans.
Still. It’s for me.
The book. The city. The history. The future.
Plus, you gotta love a book where the author uses the Oxford comma
in. the. title.
Twice.
ACTUALLY, this book is an in-depth historically accurate presentation of how culture, finance, power, talent, greed, aspirations, and naiveté come together to make a city that by all measures is the cultural and financial capital of the world.
Great book. Every page.
Till next time.
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Sunday, May 23, 2021
Eric Carle 1929-2021
WWII survivor
Korean War veteran
Family man
Serious artist
National treasure
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Saturday, May 22, 2021
As Stephen Sondheim wondered, “Does anyone still wear a hat?”
I wonder, “Do people still clip newspaper articles anymore?”
I do. A bit in excess. In fact.
But then…how many clippings are there of Stacey Abrams.
Actually, quite a few. Millions.
Plus, she’s a reader, a writer, and all around leader.
For the ages and beyond.
Finally, I made this Please Stand By sign.
Don’t know why really.
But it works.
Till next time.
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Sunday, May 16, 2021
A quiet Sunday with coffee, the NYT, a slight storm in the air, and maybe a cold supper like in all the old movies.
But.
Before I forget what’s up and to be read:
The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Tom Stoppard by Hermione Lee
The Awkward Black Man by Walter Mosley
The Woman Who Stole Vermeer by Anthony Amore
And currently reading:
New York, New York, New York by Thomas Dyja
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
...
Finally, there are these bison to consider.
Till next time.
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Saturday, May 15, 2021
Via two scholars, the arguments for and against capitalism are explained in just under 90 minutes.
At last.
BookTV.
Danilo Petranovich, Moderator
Richard Wolff, Socialist
Arthur C. Brooks, Capitalist
Etta James, Singer
Till next time.
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Saturday, May 8, 2021
After reading the NYT's review, I bought Jon Klassen’s new book: The Rock from the Sky, and it was just as good as I knew it would be. He also wrote the engaging and inventive…I Want My Hat Back and the accompanying This is Not My Hat.
All three are brilliant and substantial.
The art, the text, the multi-layeredness, and the fun of the books are rare, unique, and long-lasting.
Go, Jon, Go.
And unrelatedly and sadly, I accidentally deleted in the trash on my mac my entire folder of recent correspondence.
Word to the wise…don’t do that.
Till next time.
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Saturday, May 1, 2021
Finished reading two books this week:
1. Vera: A Novel by Carol Edgarian
Vera is a semi-orphan in San Francisco about the time that Enrico Caruso (yes, that Enrico) sang and exactly at the time when the 1906 earthquake struck and brought SF to its knees.
The story isn’t just about the quake, it’s about parentage, vice, prejudice, hypocrisy, money, graft, grandeur, women, men, and money, money, money.
I wish the book hadn’t ended the way it did.
2. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
I’m reminded of:
Patricia Reilly Giff’s Nory Ryan’s Song from 2001
John Ogbu and Patrick Finn’s research from the 1980s
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart from 1958
Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn: A Novel from 2015
All of these books address the assimilation of groups into a different culture. These books also address voluntary versus involuntary assimilation, enslavement, indentured servitude, colonialism, and as one Brexit supporter put it, “our country, our culture, our community.”
Also related to how people and beliefs develop are the books by Karen Armstrong who presents historical perspectives on the world’s primary religious systems and how those systems came to be.
Religion, inclusion, exclusion, decency, protectionism, fear, fate, generosity, graft, giving…and even on a good day, Plato’s Cave still remains front and center.
And of course, Michael Silverblatt set me on the right course to read both of these books. Bookworm…as far from Plato’s Cave as one can get.
Till next time.
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Saturday, April 24, 2021
You start the day thinking you know enough, and then there’s BookTV and C-SPAN-3…
I.
BookTV
COVID-19
San Antonio Book Festival April 9, 2021
Nicholas Christakis, MD
Yale
Apollo’s Arrow
Albert Camus
The Plague
Homer’s
Iliad
Apollo, Agamemnon
1890…Russian flu, probably coronavirus, 70 days, spread through bats to cattle to people from Moscow to NYC
2024…pretty much back to normal until the next plague arrives.
AND
II.
C-SPAN-3
Susan Eisenhower
How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower’s Biggest Decisions
Edna Friedberg
Historian US Holocaust Memorial Museum
SUCH a totally splendid day of learning, and it’s only mid-afternoon.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, April 20, 2021
I never get tired of marveling at or reading Cynthia Ozick.
Antiquities is a brief book full of history, boys, old men, scholars, and fools.
And she always gets it all just exactly right.
After all the searching and Egyptology and boys to men, she writes, “I learned that though stories can never generate pots, pots will always tell stories. —C.O.”
Till next time.
From NYT.
Monday, April 19, 2021
It was quite something. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V. E. Schwab.
It’s one thing to know about Faust, it’s quite another to bring it up to date well into the twenty-first century.
Adeline…doesn’t want to marry Roger in Villon-sur-Sarthe, France on July 29, 1714.
Henry…is a bookseller in New York City on March 12, 2014.
Luc…Lucian…Lucifer…flits here there and yon for millennia.
London, England…February 3, 2016…Addie remembers Henry but will be with Luc not forever but “as long as you want me by your side.”
A deal’s a deal.
Overall, an intricately woven and splendidly crafted novel with the overarching message, “Be careful what you wish for.”
Till next time.
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Saturday, April 17, 2021
There was a splendid documentary on pocket watches.
I watched it.
George Daniels (1926-2011) was a master craftsman. His apprentice was Roger William Smith (1970-).
Dr. Daniels explained that his pocket watches were:
Historic
Intellectual
Technical
Aesthetic
Amusing
Useful
Elegant
And they were…are…all those things and more.
Fifteen hours a day working at his jeweler’s bench for 60 years…his life.
After watching it, I thought, “Hmm. Wouldn’t it be rather nice to own either a GW Daniels watch or an RW Smith watch.”
A few clicks and there they were…starting at around a million and a half.
As compensation for a lack of a million and a half, I’m up next to check out from the library, Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick. Can’t wait. AND it’s free (not counting the computer, the kindle, the iPad, the Wi-Fi, the electricity to power the battery, and the state taxes that are allocated to fund public libraries). Still it’s much less than a million and a half.
Just to know about these historic, intellectual, technical, aesthetic, amusing, useful, and elegant watches is and will have to be…enough.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, April 14, 2021
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Finished last night.
Nora, the main character (by way of the local librarian, Mrs. Elm,) visits and lives through hundreds of lives. As Nora stumbles through time and space being rich, poor, loved, used, successful, unsuccessful and otherwise, she gets to choose a life that best suits her…IF she wants a life.
Swimmer, rock star, bar owner, wife, mother, scholar, or glacier scientist…what to do, what to do.
And toward the end, just when you think, oh no, not a cliché, thankfully, the author sets the whole journey right. A great ending.
Also along for the heroine’s journey are Voltaire, Thoreau, Schopenhauer, and Emerson (among others) each playing their philosophical parts.
A thoughtful (as in thought-provoking) book wherein you're always rooting for Nora.
Nora Seed...rather than Colm Tóibín's Nora in Nora or Henrik Ibsen's Nora in The Doll's House or even the incomparable Nora Ehphron.
Till next time.
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Saturday, April 10, 2021
Golly.
How does this happen.
Four weeks behind in the NYTBR. Concurrently, a review of the new movie with Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer called the movie lazy.
Hmmm. Interesting.
Never. The. Less.
The weekend is here…time to catch up with the good, the bad, the lazy and plenty of espresso.
Finally: carpe diem etc. etc. etc.
(with nods to Odes written by the Roman poet Horace circa 23 BCE and The King and I starring Yul Brynner 1951 CE).
Till next time.
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Friday, April 9, 2021
Jun 10, 1921 – April 9, 2021
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
Today’s NYT had a piece featuring John Cullum who is 91 and is preparing for a streaming broadcast of his musical repertoire.
Starts tomorrow. April 8, 2021.
Where? 132 W 22nd, NYC, Irish Repertory Theatre.
AND
The article had a reference to John’s appearance on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Tituss Burgess and Jane Krakowski and Carol Kane are great and written of course by Tina Fey).
A few clicks (actually many), and here ‘tis:
Season 1, Episode 10, 25 minutes, 10 seconds.
And it wasn’t just John in the episode. It was also Jefferson Mays and Robert Osborne. Totally great.
And for whatever reason, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell popped into my head.
Fabulous British series from 2015.
Johnathan Strange played by Bertie Carvel
and
Mr. Norrell played by Eddie Marsan who stole the show…as he always does.
Memory lane? Done. For today.
Except to mention Bodyguard with Keeley Hawes (The Durrells in Corfu) and Richard Madden (Films of Scotland). Scary series but great acting.
And FINALLY speaking of The Durrells…
Josh O’Connor (Hope Gap, The Crown)
Callum Woodhouse (All Creatures Great and Small)
Milo Parker (Mr. Holmes WITH Sir Ian McKellen and Laura Linney no less)
Again, done, after moving through time and space from John to Milo.
Till next time.
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Sunday, April 4, 2021
How normal is it to be so happy about books?
Completely, I hope.
And today, it’s a day for women in medicine.
It was a live, two-hour interview with a medical ethicist and researcher, Harriet Washington on Book TV. Her six books are respected best sellers and are all about medicine.
I learned a lot. She was so clear and focused in her presentation that in addition to learning content, it was easy to also learn the art of answering questions and honoring callers.
As an additional bonus, BookTV listed the books she values and is currently reading.
Also, this morning’s interview comes on the heels of chapter six of The Doctors Blackwell, which is a book about Elizabeth Blackwell who was the first woman MD in America. It’s fabulous. And next is chapter seven.
Medicine. Then. Today. Tomorrow.
Till next time.
Peter Slen and Harriet Washington.
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Up next...chapter 7.
Friday, April 2, 2021
Seriously.
Watched Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7.
Very hard to watch. But very necessary. AND, the incomparable Aaron Sorkin got it all exactly right.
I had in my “Keepers” file the People magazine from May 1, 1989 featuring the life of Abbie Hoffman (November 30, 1936-April 12, 1989).
Political discourse, idealism, equity, justice, voting rights, and the absolute commitment to nonviolence…they’re all still in play.
Still, 2021.
Time to reread Thomas Paine, Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, Naomi Klein, and Jane Mayer.
Also, there exists an exhaustive and handy list of economists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economists
Finally to the art of the film, seriously, hats off:
Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Rylance, Frank Langella, and Walter Cronkite.
And as everyone knows/hopes,
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968).
Till next time.
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Monday, March 29, 2021
I hate to be so Pollyanna about it all, but wow.
Dame Hermione Lee digs deep into her biographies. I just finished her in depth book on Edith Wharton. It’s exhaustive of course, and a bit exhausting to read as well.
From her childhood to her marriage to her war efforts in France to her writings. She was extraordinary. Edith was.
But so is Hermione. Whoa. She’s unstoppable.
And waiting in the wings on the proverbial bedside table are Hermione’s Virginia Woolf and Penelope Fitzgerald (to get to eventually).
Also, I made the mistake of starting Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. Heaveey. Now what? Persevere? For a bit.
In the meantime, I have John Barrowman singing Cole Porter’s I Happen to Like New York on repeat, repeat, and repeat. It’s too perfect and the perfect reprieve from too much academic-type thinking.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, March 24, 2021
I just finished Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2017.
Klara is an AF (artificial friend) who was purchased in a shop for a sickly human girl named Josie. Several years pass and by the end, humanity seems to have learned very little about how to live.
Kazuo’s book The Remains of the Day from 1989 is his most well-known book. It’s a compelling look at memory, choices, power, and control during the WWII era.
Note to self: After watching his Nobel lecture and several other interviews where he talks about books vs. books on film, reading the book is probably essential over just watching the movie.
His Nobel lecture was perfect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW_5Y6ekUEw
Also, I just discovered Sara Nelson who was editor in chief of Publishers Weekly for several years was let go. She is now head of Amazon’s book review department, which is where I hope she continues her outstanding book review work for decades to come.
Till next time.
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Sunday, March 21, 2021
Welp, it’s Sunday, and all thoughts turn to the NYT and a double espresso as well as Elena Ferrante, Uwe Johnson, and Umberto Eco.
Elena’s Neapolitan Novels and in particular that scene in the square where two young Italian girls are reading aloud to each other from Little Women.
Uwe’s Anniversaries: A Year in the Life of Gessine Cresspahl and a scene where Gessine’s daughter is in the elevator in her UWS apartment vs. a scene where Gessine is with her father in their house in the Eastern bloc while war, as always, wages on.
Umberto’s lecture at BookExpo in the Jacob Javits Center in 2005 alongside Barbara Ehrenreich, John Irving, and Bob Herbert where Umberto talks about three kinds of memory:
automatic memory (to hold a pencil, drive a car), semantic memory (knowing things in the common world of knowledge [Paris is in France]), and autobiographical memory (who am I).
This is one of my all-time favorite BookTV broadcasts.
AND just starting a new book by Hermione Lee titled, Edith Wharton.
Till next time.
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Thursday, March 18, 2021
I was listening to Michael Silverblatt talking about a new novel, and in this conversation he bemoaned the ignorance of the American public on the topics of semiotics and phenomenology as written about by such folks as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Julia Kristeva.
I was disappointed to hear this.
These are difficult topics and difficult writers, and one should not feel bad about not understanding their works. PLUS, the best writers are not those who purposefully or smugly or inconsiderately write difficult books so that readers feel stupid/inadequate or feel that they must reread them several times in order to understand them.
The best writers are those who obviously know Foucault, Derrida, and Kristeva and weave those folks’ ideas into their plots without the reader even knowing they’re there.
“One can’t possibly know everything, now can One,” thought the Queen.*
*(Possibly what the Queen might have thought about the topics of semiotics and phenomenology from Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader [if she had ever had occasion to think about such things].)
Till next time.
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Sunday, March 14, 2021
Where are wisdom and genius found?
From elders, within the structure of a grain of sand, or from listening to a TED talk?
Perhaps.
But mostly from books.
I just listened to Michael Silverblatt interview Tobias Wolff on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Tobias’s book, This Boy’s Life.
Thirty years have passed and here is Tobias, still writing, just retired from teaching, and now talking to Michael.
Where is that book? Oh yes, found it. On the shelf where it's always been.
I also listened to Michael’s live on-stage (last year before the, you know, virus, shut us all down) interview with Charles Yu whose new book is Interior Chinatown: A Novel.
And I’m well into Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. It’s all about AFs who can be bought in shops and who then become our very own AFs (Artifical Friends). Neat.
Greatness abounds!
And yet, Broadway won’t reopen till around Labor Day. According to today’s NYT.
At first, that seemed great.
Labor Day.
Around May sometime.
Yes?
Checked the calendar.
Evidently.
Not.
Till next time.
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Sunday, March 7, 2021
Elizabeth Kolbert, a science writer, was live on BookTV today for two hours.
She solemnly explained the current climate-change crisis facing earth. It goes beyond mere global warming.
The earth is getting warmer and can also get colder. For example (and the best example she gave in her two hour talk), involves the Greenland ice sheet and the warm Gulf jet stream that travels from the Gulf of Mexico to the UK and northern Europe. As the Greenland ice sheet melts, it releases fresh cold water into the ocean right about where the ocean delivers the warm Gulf jet stream to the UK and northern Europe. This cold melted water alters the buoyancy and temperature of the ocean’s jet stream. And since the jet stream is like a conveyer belt, the warm air of the jet stream becomes cold, which means that the UK and northern Europe will start experiencing ice and snow rather than their usual warm temperate rain.
In short, global warming melts Greenland which in turn alters the warm Gulf Stream. This alteration allows the UK and northern Europe to see snow and ice instead of the warmth of the Gulf.
Also, she explained that warm water expands and is therefore responsible for the loss of land mass around all coasts.
Her latest book is The Sixth Extinction.
She explained that the best solution to repairing global warming and climate change is a carbon tax on CO2 producers rather than more federal regulatory actions.
And as always Peter Slen did an excellent job.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, March 2, 2021
My Zabar’s catalog came today, and I’m nearly finished with The Cold Millions by Jess Walter.
The book is an historical novel that takes a look at the robber barons of timber, land, railroads, power, money, banks, rivers, and all natural resources.
Gig and Rye and Queenie and the hero Elizabeth Gurley Flynn take on the power structure and face courts, punishments, prisons, and torture in the early 1900s as they fought for what was fair and right.
They used unions and the Industrial Workers of the World in their efforts to have meetings, print newspapers, and stand on soap boxes to raise money for the cause of workers’ rights.
The book is so engaging that you feel as if you're in prison or on a cot or trying on gloves or sitting on a train right along with the characters.
Today in real life, workers' rights remain part of the battle for equity. The rights of workers to have a say in their working conditions is a central tenet of modern economies. Conversely, companies also have a right to expect workers to be able, stable, and compatible. The balance between owners and workers is a tenuous one at best and at worst an easily corruptible one.
My kindle says I’ve got 20% left to go in the book. I don’t know how it will end. And that’s a good thing for a novel.
One of the characters says, “I just don’t see how you fight a class war without the war.”
What if Jess had never researched and written this book? But he did. For the cold millions and the cold billions yet to come.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, February 24, 2021
It’s such a great book. Photos of libraries from all over the world. And the title?
Libraries. It was a gift.
The perfect gift.
I was watching something on TV, and the scene was in a library. I said to myself, “Wait. I know that library.”
And there it was in my Libraries book. Pages 160-163.
The Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Centre of Humboldt University in Berlin.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, February 17, 2021
It started with A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders.
Saunders chose four Russian writers and their short stories to showcase and explain. In addition to short stories, the four writers left us with novels, plays, poetry, insight, and material for a lifetime.
Ivan Turgenev 1818-1883 (aged 64) A Sportsman’s Sketches; Fathers and Sons
Anton Chekhov 1860-1904 (aged 44) Three Sisters; The Cherry Orchard
Leo Tolstoy 1828-1910 (aged 82) War and Peace; Anna Karenina
Nikolai Gogol 1809-1852 (aged 42) The Overcoat
It seems to me you can’t really understand humanity unless you understand Russia and the sources of all its brilliance, sadness, complexity, strength, and disparities.
And from there, my brain went to two other physican/writers (in addition to Chekhov) William Carlos Williams and Robert Coles.
It appears that writers/physicians are a natural combination of art, science, and verisimilitude.
I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole adult life for this book. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders. And Michael Silverblatt’s interview with George was over the moon. I’m so happy to have this book.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, February 9, 2021
Edward (1990) and Cheyenne (2011) share the same hairstyle.
I bet I’m the first one to notice this coincidence. Loved both movies. Diane Wiest and Frances McDormand are world-class thinkers and actors as is Johnny Depp who is also very brave.
Till next time.
Edward Scissorhands....................This Must Be the Place
Monday, February 8, 2021
On a chilly Monday morning, two more thoughts from the NYT Book Review.
The book reviewer of James Comey’s new book stated that we need to determine the standards to be used for deciding what is true (as opposed to merely saying what is true). A few standards for determining what is true include vetted and reliable sources, multiple perspectives, corroborative views, tangible sources, and then consensus for those decided-upon standards.
I rather like this process.
Truth. Chasing it is always a noble endeavor.
Till next time.
Sunday, February 7, 2021
Even when I’m behind (shamefully/pre-pandemic or forgivably/during-pandemic) with the NYT Book Review, it’s still always wonderful to read through and pick out the best parts. I always start with Letters to the Editor.
To read these earnest and serious letters of angst, ennui, correction, accolade, concern, outrage, and gratitude is like being at dinner with friends who bring up little bits of this and that about books and book reviews while thoroughly enjoying their soup, grilled asparagus, filet mignon, and crème brûlée at Ruth’s Chris (although now that I think about it, I’m not sure Ruth’s Chris serves the brûlée).
Even without the meal, the letters and the reviews are delicious. For example: Andrew Sullivan took quite a thrashing with his mis-definition of liberal democracy, and thanks to three astute letter writers, he stands corrected (and hopefully humbled and appreciative).
And then there was Rupert Grint in the A&L section who paid tribute to Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast Revisionist History. Rupert also does a wonderful job in Servant produced by M. Night Shyamalan. Season 2 can’t come soon enough. Oops. I just checked. It’s here. I’m behind. Nothing new.
The book review about John Thompson, basketball coach at Georgetown in D.C., was riveting. We need his caliber of leadership at the CEO, presidential, ambassador, and/or king level. The review was great and so is the book.
A good way to decide on a next book is the By the Book section. And an even better way is to check the Best Sellers list so that if the book is on the list for 17 or 110 weeks, whoa, it’s a go.
Next, is the Editors’ Choice. There’s rarely a misstep there.
Finally in movie news, there was a full-page ad of Mank, which I thought was a misprint of Mark but which of course, it wasn’t. Gary Oldman was fabulous as Mank just as he was fabulous in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy; Darkest Hour; The Laundromat; and everything else (including and surprisingly as Sirius Black).
And finally, Bill Nye, the Science Guy, in Bliss with Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek. In fact, he stole every scene. Both of them.
One more thing…in the letters section, there was a vigorous discussion of punctuation in poetry. It’s all still up in the air.
A good Sunday read.
Till next time.
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Thursday, February 4, 2021
A milky coffee with lots of sugar surely spells death.
And yet, here I am reading The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson in the morning and 197,196 Words: Essays by Emmanuel Carrère in the evening while waiting for season 2 of Lupin…all powered by a milky coffee with lots of sugar and just the right amount of caffeine.
Footnote: Hats off to Eddie Izzard for giving voice and accolades to the brilliance of a "milky coffee."
End Footnote.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Mrs. Hall in the kitchen at Darrowby-2297.
Mason Cash bowls…they’re everywhere.
And now for something completely different.
First of all, it’s Clementeen. Four kids. The youngest a boy...a gambler, a drinker, and a bit of a puzzle.
The Splendid and the Vile…an extraordinary book.
And delightedly, just getting started.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Finished Mantel Pieces by Hilary Mantel. From Marie Antoinette to Robespierre to her stepfather, it was a roller coaster of a brilliant read. But the best parts were the little phrases she used to describe people, places, and events. And, of course, I didn’t keep track of even one of them, which means I’ll have to reread it at some point. And will do better.
Next up is Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile, which has been on the up-next list for a year. Will do better. And this book is gonna be great from start to finish. AND it’s signed by the author.
Neat.
Till next time.
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Saturday, January 23, 2021
Rockin’ the Bob.
Dessa and Yellen! Here to save the day.
I'm not sure why this is so thrilling, but 'tis.
The rap was released on January 21, 2021, and Kai Ryssdal featured it.
Rap, research, economics, politics, perseverance, style, suavity, sophistication, and finally...a big plan. It's all there.
Thrilling.
Till next time.
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Saturday, January 16, 2021
Watching BookTV is not what it used to be. I depended on these bookish types to speak to other bookish types about their…books.
But now, it’s zoom, zoom, zoom, and it’s harder to stay focused as the audio, the video, the lighting, the odd configurations, the barking dogs in the background all appear, disappear, and reappear at random. ALTHOUGH, it may just me being persnickety.
How. Ev. Er. Today, I watched the former German ambassador to the US, Wolfgang Ischinger talk about the role of diplomacy worldwide. He was exactly what an ambassador should be. It was a wonderful conversation.
I can’t believe I lucked out and clicked on just the right stuff to inaugurate the start of a very pleasant day.
Wolfgang has been in public service all his life. He supports the Paris Climate Agreement, NATO, diplomacy efforts with Russia and China, and stable leadership from the US with regard to world peace, economics, stability, and technology advances.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” Edmond Burke.
Wolfgang is certainly doing his share of goodness. And more.
Till next time.
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Friday, January 15, 2021
I never tire of Alan Bennett’s observations.
And lately I’ve been rewatching his movie series packaged as 4 DVDs in a collection titled The Alan Bennett Collection featuring An Englishman Abroad and including my all time favorite, A Question of Attribution starring Prunella Scales.
And.
One of those movies is about Marcel Proust.
Alan says that Marcel says that a novel takes you inside yourself rather than outside yourself. I’m not sure Marcel was right about that. I immediately thought of four twelve novels in no particular order that took me all over the world:
The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl by Uwe Johnson
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Why I Live at the P.O. by Eudora Welty
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick
Also, I never get tired of listening to Alan Bennett read his work especially The Uncommon Reader.
And finally, for the weekend (even if the Dowager Countess of Grantham doesn't know what a weekend is), I’m well into Hilary Mantel’s Mantel Pieces and loving it.
Till next time.
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Tuesday, January 12, 2021
There are nearly too many books queued up at the ready. Jay Parini’s book on Borges and Me turned out to be too full of cognitive dissonance for me. The book was mostly a coming of age book from 50 years ago rather than about the poet Jorge Luis Borges. Also, Parini, in the 1960s, was in Scotland studying for his thesis and at the same time avoiding the draft for the Vietnam War. He mentions this draft avoidance many times in the book, and I kept expecting him to say in the end, he became a conscientious objector and served somehow, somewhere. But no…He also mentioned the horrible death of his friend in the war. So…
Martin Amis’s book Inside Story was supposed to be a novel, but really it was an historical anecdote about his relationships with Kingsley (his dad), Saul Bellow, and Christopher Hitchens as well as girlfriends and family. To be a writer for Amis seems to be all that he is when actually we know there are other fascinating rhythms of life:
Groucho Marx
Willie Mays
The Second Movement of the Jupiter Symphony
Louie Armstrong’s recording of Potato Head Blues
Swedish movies
Sentimental Education by Flaubert
Marlon Brando
Frank Sinatra
Apples and Pears by Cezanne
The crabs at Sam Wo’s
George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue
Or so says Woody Allen in Manhattan
Also, in today’s Times was a piece about the new Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station and VP Kamala Harris’s photo on the cover of Vogue. Such a variety.
I’m moving on to Hilary Mantel’s Mantel Pieces and possibly a piece of German Chocolate Cake.
Till next time.
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Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Finally. Today.
Something to consider:
Clarity isn’t everything.
It’s the only thing.
Also, a new book is queued up. Life isn’t Everything: Mike Nichols, as Remembered by 150 of His Closest Friends.
And then there are three books to reread and to re-enjoy as winter settles in:
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Mirrors by Eduardo Galeano
I WAS thinking about collecting all the book reviews written by Michiko Kakutani, who wrote literary criticism for the NYT for 38 years. HOWEVER, after reading about how she was fearless, disinterested, and sometimes mean as well as way too powerful, I’m thinking no.
For me, John Updike’s advice on how to review a book remains the gold standard for reviewers. This advice is from his book Picked-Up Pieces from 1977.
1. Try to understand what the authors wished to do, and do not blame them for not achieving what they did not attempt.
2. Provide enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book's prose so the review's readers can form their own impressions.
3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book.
4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.
5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's ouevre or elsewhere.
6. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like.
Till next time.
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Friday, January 1, 2021
Speaking of new year’s resolutions…
Oh. My. Goodness.
Yesterday, I bought carrots and low-fat dip.
Today, I had two cookies and a bag of chips for lunch.
ARGH.
On a MUCH brighter note, I got a lovely new fountain pen for Christmas.
Virginia Woolf wrote with a fountain pen. She also recommended George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which I have just started reading.
