Kyle's bookshelf: read en-US Sat, 28 Sep 2024 17:26:55 -0700 60 Kyle's bookshelf: read 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Hot Milk 30649099 A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, Hot Milk moves "gracefully among pathos, danger, and humor” (The New York Times).

I have been sleuthing my mother's symptoms for as long as I can remember. If I see myself as an unwilling detective with a desire for justice, is her illness an unsolved crime? If so, who is the villain and who is the victim?

Sofia, a young anthropologist, has spent much of her life trying to solve the mystery of her mother's unexplainable illness. She is frustrated with Rose and her constant complaints, but utterly relieved to be called to abandon her own disappointing fledgling adult life. She and her mother travel to the searing, arid coast of southern Spain to see a famous consultant--their very last chance--in the hope that he might cure her unpredictable limb paralysis.

But Dr. Gomez has strange methods that seem to have little to do with physical medicine, and as the treatment progresses, Sofia's mother's illness becomes increasingly baffling. Sofia's role as detective--tracking her mother's symptoms in an attempt to find the secret motivation for her pain--deepens as she discovers her own desires in this transient desert community.

Hot Milk is a profound exploration of the sting of sexuality, of unspoken female rage, of myth and modernity, the lure of hypochondria and big pharma, and, above all, the value of experimenting with life; of being curious, bewildered, and vitally alive to the world.]]> 224 Deborah Levy 1620406713 Kyle 4 Hot Milk -- sort of like Toussaint's Camera, Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart, Sharpe's You Were Wrong, Geffen's "Jellyfish" to Keret's JELLYFISH, or many others -- is a coy experiment trapped in something most ordinary. Our heroine is Sofia, a Greek woman from England who's now in Spain caring for her mother, Rose, while they try a sort of New Age clinic.

There, Sofia meets Ingrid, a German; Ingrid's boyfriend Matthew; Juan, who works at the injury hut on the beach treating jellyfish stings (a jellyfish called in Spanish "medusa", like the figure from Greek myth); GĂłmez, her mom's doctor; Julieta (Nurse Sunshine), GĂłmez's daughter who works underneath him; and many other characters.

Small, plain cast, but they're sized just right to enact Sofia's nervous and pathetic 'case study' view of everything around her. Is this how anthropologists are? Haha. Otherwise, a very curious bunch of variables -- warm Europe, temporary beach time near a clinic, Greece, Germany, England, a very detached, weird, indie, quirky way of jumbling regular life and anthropological science -- can leave random, bizarre feelings after any of Levy's prose. Just my style! Lol (lots of love).

Dream-like. Each thing a metaphor for something else, so it can be renamed. Sofia becomes Zoffie when Ingrid calls her. Beheaded becomes Beloved. Sofia's love for her mother is repeatedly compared to an axe. And mysteriously enough (sort of a spoiler alert?), maybe she can walk.

Spain's where they are, England and Germany where they're from, Greece where Sofia goes reluctantly once, to meet her estranged dad who's remarried and had a new baby daughter (and an origin for a faux Ancient Greek vase that depicts some water-collecting female slaves), Italy where Ingrid's Roman-laced sandals originate. Like Godard's Film Socialisme, I suppose. Pre-Brexit, of course, sadly. But anyway, all of Europe! Rich!

Hot Milk has many uncomfortable touches with wilderness too. The medusas or jellyfish, of course, that haunt almost every page. The yelping dog that Sofia unties to get rid of, which she thinks unfortunately soon accidentally drowns itself but which actually just finds a new home. The snake that slithers inside but Ingrid beheads. Is nature just to be gotten rid of, just to deal with, somehow?

Like life, though. Almost. Not to be too enthusiastic (praising Gray's 2013 film Immigrant or Renner's 2012 film Ernest & Celestine come to mind, not necessarily about Levy's book, just about early/unproven hype), but Hot Milk's careful writing could be sort of the most authentic I've read in years. Experiences you experience fuzzily, vaguely; trying to define, explain them beforehand. Afterward. Never present.

At the beginning of each chapter is usually a cutting, off-key exclamation from Ingrid to Sofia, and at the close something sadder, more contemplative, but really equally cutting. It can be bossy and flat (even I guess kind of stilted and predictable, for brutal shouts like this to poetically open/close experimental prose), but in Hot Milk it nicely shortens and perks up what could become grueling. Almost to Wittgenstein's Mistress, one can think.]]> 3.46 2015 Hot Milk
author: Deborah Levy
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2021/04/01
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: animals, fiction, international, personal, women, writing
review:
Levy's Hot Milk -- sort of like Toussaint's Camera, Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart, Sharpe's You Were Wrong, Geffen's "Jellyfish" to Keret's JELLYFISH, or many others -- is a coy experiment trapped in something most ordinary. Our heroine is Sofia, a Greek woman from England who's now in Spain caring for her mother, Rose, while they try a sort of New Age clinic.

There, Sofia meets Ingrid, a German; Ingrid's boyfriend Matthew; Juan, who works at the injury hut on the beach treating jellyfish stings (a jellyfish called in Spanish "medusa", like the figure from Greek myth); GĂłmez, her mom's doctor; Julieta (Nurse Sunshine), GĂłmez's daughter who works underneath him; and many other characters.

Small, plain cast, but they're sized just right to enact Sofia's nervous and pathetic 'case study' view of everything around her. Is this how anthropologists are? Haha. Otherwise, a very curious bunch of variables -- warm Europe, temporary beach time near a clinic, Greece, Germany, England, a very detached, weird, indie, quirky way of jumbling regular life and anthropological science -- can leave random, bizarre feelings after any of Levy's prose. Just my style! Lol (lots of love).

Dream-like. Each thing a metaphor for something else, so it can be renamed. Sofia becomes Zoffie when Ingrid calls her. Beheaded becomes Beloved. Sofia's love for her mother is repeatedly compared to an axe. And mysteriously enough (sort of a spoiler alert?), maybe she can walk.

Spain's where they are, England and Germany where they're from, Greece where Sofia goes reluctantly once, to meet her estranged dad who's remarried and had a new baby daughter (and an origin for a faux Ancient Greek vase that depicts some water-collecting female slaves), Italy where Ingrid's Roman-laced sandals originate. Like Godard's Film Socialisme, I suppose. Pre-Brexit, of course, sadly. But anyway, all of Europe! Rich!

Hot Milk has many uncomfortable touches with wilderness too. The medusas or jellyfish, of course, that haunt almost every page. The yelping dog that Sofia unties to get rid of, which she thinks unfortunately soon accidentally drowns itself but which actually just finds a new home. The snake that slithers inside but Ingrid beheads. Is nature just to be gotten rid of, just to deal with, somehow?

Like life, though. Almost. Not to be too enthusiastic (praising Gray's 2013 film Immigrant or Renner's 2012 film Ernest & Celestine come to mind, not necessarily about Levy's book, just about early/unproven hype), but Hot Milk's careful writing could be sort of the most authentic I've read in years. Experiences you experience fuzzily, vaguely; trying to define, explain them beforehand. Afterward. Never present.

At the beginning of each chapter is usually a cutting, off-key exclamation from Ingrid to Sofia, and at the close something sadder, more contemplative, but really equally cutting. It can be bossy and flat (even I guess kind of stilted and predictable, for brutal shouts like this to poetically open/close experimental prose), but in Hot Milk it nicely shortens and perks up what could become grueling. Almost to Wittgenstein's Mistress, one can think.
]]> <![CDATA[Re: Colonized Planet 5, Shikasta]]> 10835306 Canopus in Argos: Archives. Presented as a compilation of documents, reports, letters, speeches and journal entries, this purports to be a general study of the planet Shikasta–clearly the planet Earth–to be used by history students of the higher planet Canopus and to be stored in the Canopian archives. For eons, galactic empires have struggled against one another, and Shikasta is one of the main battlegrounds.Johar, an emissary from Canopus and the primary contributor to the archives, visits Shikasta over the millennia from the time of the giants and the biblical great flood up to the present. With every visit he tries to distract Shikastans from the evil influences of the planet Shammat but notes with dismay the ever-growing chaos and destruction of Shikasta as its people hurl themselves towards World War III and annihilation.


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 386 Doris Lessing 0307777669 Kyle 0 to-read 3.38 1979 Re: Colonized Planet 5, Shikasta
author: Doris Lessing
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.38
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> What Are You Going Through 53812638
A woman describes a series of encounters she has with various people in the ordinary course of her an ex she runs into by chance at a public forum, an Airbnb owner unsure how to interact with her guests, a stranger who seeks help comforting his elderly mother, a friend of her youth now hospitalized with terminal cancer. In each of these people the woman finds a common the urge to talk about themselves and to have an audience to their experiences. The narrator orchestrates this chorus of voices for the most part as a passive listener, until one of them makes an extraordinary request, drawing her into an intense and transformative experience of her own.

In What Are You Going Through , Nunez brings wisdom, humor, and insight to a novel about human connection and the changing nature of relationships in our times. A surprising story about empathy and the unusual ways one person can help another through hardship, her book offers a moving and provocative portrait of the way we live now.]]> 221 Sigrid Nunez 0593191439 Kyle 2 nonfiction, personal, women
Soon to grow some vague soup of vague pronouns, drifting in and out a little, suggesting, pointing this way and that. Human experience is just like this, except it isn't anything like this, it seems to me. The book might suggest something but only rhetorically, deciding it's not. I'd like to feel like I have time for this sort of thing, you know, but I don't. "To any intelligent alien, he said, we would appear to be in the grip of a death wish" (16). "I didn’t know who to trust, I couldn’t tell what was sincere, what was flattery. I lost all confidence in my own judgment. I’m not trying to make excuses. If being an artist really had been my destiny, I know nothing should have stopped me" (68).

Too much of the book, too, considers petty opinions and mistakes that I don't think should be considered. What life should reduce until it's nothing. What death cuts off. "As there is no way to ignore the fact that a considerable amount of what we hear from them would have to be called whining. A defensive tone creeps in: each person seems to have felt a pressing need to explain his or her feelings, to present his or her situation as though laying out a case before a judge" (57). Later, even, to comically underline it, is some noxious political garbage: "That woman is as crooked as a barrel of fishhooks, she said. Worse even than the great Obamination" (114). Ok?

The bearable stuff is scant, when Nunez pauses the discomfort to pause and witness what's actually happening -- "Sunlight falling at an angle across the lawn so that it touched our elevated feet, then moved up our bodies like a long slow blessing, and I found myself a breath away from believing that everything was as it should be. See the moon. Count the stars" (198). And "Jesus, you know, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Even if it strikes me now as having been inevitable. But doesn’t love always feel just so: destined, no matter how unexpected, no matter how improbable" (226).

Nunez whips her crisp syntax back and forth until it's watery and doesn't mean much. By design? Sure. Exactly. From jagged fragments to try to make sense of the dialogue (like the tiny "Was our joint unspoken thought" (175)) to longer, more luxurious fragments, many paragraphs, many line breaks (like, later, "She had wanted to be strong. She had wanted control. She had wanted to die on her own terms and with as little trouble to the world as possible. She had wanted peace. She had wanted order. / Peace and order around her was all she had asked for. / A calm, clean, graceful, even—why not?—beautiful death. / Was what she’d had in mind. / A beautiful death in a nice house in a scenic town on a fine summer night. / Was the end my friend had written for herself" (202)).

And then again: "This is so like you. Everything that bothered him, everything that went wrong between us, was always so like me. / It was so like me not to have made him happy. So like me to have driven him away. To have forced him to seek comfort in somebody else’s arms—that was so fucking like me. / He actually said. / Yelled, in fact. / Imagine the young couple exchanging bewildered looks. Why is she telling us all this? / Or why not imagine them kind. Forgetting their fight, putting aside their own troubles to listen. Quel est ton tourment?" (237).

That's it then. What's your torment? It doesn't ever make a whole lot of sense. (Inside all of these are of course more meaningful things that might prove less abstract, but everything's dunked in something much worse, profoundly.) But hey! that's life! Returning to the beginning, you might find a tiny beat that's fun: "I might later complain. Depressing host talked too much about dead cat. The sort of comment you saw on the site all the time" (11). But too early, I'm afraid. Life and death then, ladies and their cats.]]> 3.90 2020 What Are You Going Through
author: Sigrid Nunez
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2021/05/01
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: nonfiction, personal, women
review:
Stories inside other stories, all shapeless vignettes recounted inside other shapeless vignettes. Shapeless like liquid, though, and by intricate design. "I understood. Or, at least, I tried to" (43). Yes? "You see, there I go again with the fucking words. But what I mean, she said, is that I’ve had it. I’ve done enough languaging. I’m sick of writing, sick of word searching" (86); ordinarily, I might find a sentiment like that totally annoying or totally interesting, but here it seems vague. Spoken by someone else. About to die, so we immortals just shrug. Who, though? It's not clear. Never clear.

Soon to grow some vague soup of vague pronouns, drifting in and out a little, suggesting, pointing this way and that. Human experience is just like this, except it isn't anything like this, it seems to me. The book might suggest something but only rhetorically, deciding it's not. I'd like to feel like I have time for this sort of thing, you know, but I don't. "To any intelligent alien, he said, we would appear to be in the grip of a death wish" (16). "I didn’t know who to trust, I couldn’t tell what was sincere, what was flattery. I lost all confidence in my own judgment. I’m not trying to make excuses. If being an artist really had been my destiny, I know nothing should have stopped me" (68).

Too much of the book, too, considers petty opinions and mistakes that I don't think should be considered. What life should reduce until it's nothing. What death cuts off. "As there is no way to ignore the fact that a considerable amount of what we hear from them would have to be called whining. A defensive tone creeps in: each person seems to have felt a pressing need to explain his or her feelings, to present his or her situation as though laying out a case before a judge" (57). Later, even, to comically underline it, is some noxious political garbage: "That woman is as crooked as a barrel of fishhooks, she said. Worse even than the great Obamination" (114). Ok?

The bearable stuff is scant, when Nunez pauses the discomfort to pause and witness what's actually happening -- "Sunlight falling at an angle across the lawn so that it touched our elevated feet, then moved up our bodies like a long slow blessing, and I found myself a breath away from believing that everything was as it should be. See the moon. Count the stars" (198). And "Jesus, you know, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Even if it strikes me now as having been inevitable. But doesn’t love always feel just so: destined, no matter how unexpected, no matter how improbable" (226).

Nunez whips her crisp syntax back and forth until it's watery and doesn't mean much. By design? Sure. Exactly. From jagged fragments to try to make sense of the dialogue (like the tiny "Was our joint unspoken thought" (175)) to longer, more luxurious fragments, many paragraphs, many line breaks (like, later, "She had wanted to be strong. She had wanted control. She had wanted to die on her own terms and with as little trouble to the world as possible. She had wanted peace. She had wanted order. / Peace and order around her was all she had asked for. / A calm, clean, graceful, even—why not?—beautiful death. / Was what she’d had in mind. / A beautiful death in a nice house in a scenic town on a fine summer night. / Was the end my friend had written for herself" (202)).

And then again: "This is so like you. Everything that bothered him, everything that went wrong between us, was always so like me. / It was so like me not to have made him happy. So like me to have driven him away. To have forced him to seek comfort in somebody else’s arms—that was so fucking like me. / He actually said. / Yelled, in fact. / Imagine the young couple exchanging bewildered looks. Why is she telling us all this? / Or why not imagine them kind. Forgetting their fight, putting aside their own troubles to listen. Quel est ton tourment?" (237).

That's it then. What's your torment? It doesn't ever make a whole lot of sense. (Inside all of these are of course more meaningful things that might prove less abstract, but everything's dunked in something much worse, profoundly.) But hey! that's life! Returning to the beginning, you might find a tiny beat that's fun: "I might later complain. Depressing host talked too much about dead cat. The sort of comment you saw on the site all the time" (11). But too early, I'm afraid. Life and death then, ladies and their cats.
]]> About Looking 19272768

From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 228 John Berger 0307794172 Kyle 3 art, nonfiction, shorts
Though Lowry gets a basic coverage with northern England, I like the more delicate, interesting shape Berger takes for Fasanella with New York. By-the-book art criticism comparing a British artist named Francis Bacon to Walt Disney, in an existentialist way concerned with alienation, I suppose. And a GrĂŒnewald altarpiece gets a spryer, more personal meditation.

The penultimate essay, about Romaine Lorquet (some French female sculptor I'd never heard of), is quite a bit more interesting than the ones about Turner or Rodin (artists familiar to me). Maybe introducing me to a whole new person through your thoughts, rather than more commentary on one that already "exists", works more kindly overall. Lorquet's sculptures look natural and not man-made because they "insist so little upon their own making"; backs blank not to be placed in front of a wall but so that their attachment to nature might be more obvious.

The closing essay, "Field", bookends the ponderous frustrations of the earlier, famous "Why Look at Animals?" Hollow prose of an academic, no?: "The first event leads you to notice further events which may be consequences of the first, or which may be entirely unconnected with it except that they take place in the same field" etc., etc. Gimme a break.]]> 3.94 1980 About Looking
author: John Berger
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at: 2016/08/01
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: art, nonfiction, shorts
review:
Aesthetic philosophy, sometimes obscure (frequently, surprisingly, in the shorter, airier essays) but often quite sharp (especially in the heavier "On Photography" in the middle, in which Sontag's whole book has a reading). The famous essay "Why Look at Animals?" is one that I think quite easily, flatly betrays itself, though: such a broad subject -- humans subjugating animals, to "see" them, to "say they've looked at" them, to witness something (even though nothing real might be witnessed but only the artificial 'sabotaged' by a passive object, etc.), to subconsciously effect some disingenuous surreality -- and so annoyingly, incoherently captured by the academic. Too often just a string of pointless paradoxes, rarely fruitful discussion.

Though Lowry gets a basic coverage with northern England, I like the more delicate, interesting shape Berger takes for Fasanella with New York. By-the-book art criticism comparing a British artist named Francis Bacon to Walt Disney, in an existentialist way concerned with alienation, I suppose. And a GrĂŒnewald altarpiece gets a spryer, more personal meditation.

The penultimate essay, about Romaine Lorquet (some French female sculptor I'd never heard of), is quite a bit more interesting than the ones about Turner or Rodin (artists familiar to me). Maybe introducing me to a whole new person through your thoughts, rather than more commentary on one that already "exists", works more kindly overall. Lorquet's sculptures look natural and not man-made because they "insist so little upon their own making"; backs blank not to be placed in front of a wall but so that their attachment to nature might be more obvious.

The closing essay, "Field", bookends the ponderous frustrations of the earlier, famous "Why Look at Animals?" Hollow prose of an academic, no?: "The first event leads you to notice further events which may be consequences of the first, or which may be entirely unconnected with it except that they take place in the same field" etc., etc. Gimme a break.
]]> <![CDATA[About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory]]> 19253461
With the publication of his best-selling Of Wolves and Men, and with the astonishing originality of Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez established himself as that rare writer whose every book is an event, for both critics and his devoted readership. Now, in About This Life, he takes us on a literal and figurative journey across the terrain of autobiography, assembling essays of great wisdom and insight. Here is far-flung travel (the beauty of remote Hokkaido Island, the over-explored GalĂĄpagos, enigmatic Bonaire); a naturalist's contention (Why does our society inevitably strip political power from people with intimate knowledge of the land small-scale farmers, Native Americans, Eskimos, cowboys?); and pure adventure (a dizzying series of around-the-world journeys with air freight everything from penguins to pianos). And here, too, are seven exquisite memory pieces hauntingly lyrical yet unsentimental recollections that represent Lopez's most personal work to date, and which will be read as classics of the personal essay for years to come.

In writing about nature and people from around the world, by exploring the questions of our age, and, above all, by sharing a new openness about himself, Barry Lopez gives us a book that is at once vastly erudite yet intimate: a magically written and provocative work by a major American writer at the top of his form.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 290 Barry Lopez 0307806502 Kyle 4 Fresh Air obit I heard, was a prolific travel writer. His About This Life (a semi-autobiographical collection of shorter pieces) is the kind of heady nonfiction that seems flat at best but is actually quite deep. Simplistic on the surface, but soon pretty marvelous. Not informational travel purely (though the Bonaire or Hokkaido essays or the ones about North American animals do have a lot of information in them), but it's experiential travel, like memories, like impressions
 "The odor and the flowers’ colors in the garden attracted me", so he'd want visits there, for instance to re-gather alphabet blocks he'd purposely pushed out his window the day before (21).

Lopez "understood that my Jesuit education, my social and economic class, my good grades, my trained and confident young man’s voice, my white skin, and the hegemony of my religion all pointed toward being well received in the world" (28). In a reading he skipped class sophomore year to attend, an Odyssey translation, he crystallized an attitude toward language and story: "galvanized in beauty by [the] presentation. History, quest, longing" (29).

"'Did you see the octopus!' someone shouted after a dive. Yes, I thought, but who among us knows what it was doing? What else was there, just then? Why?" (54). A part to roll your eyes at a little, but it soon develops into truer, more interesting expression. He would lie awake "trying to remember some moment of the day just past. The very process of calling upon the details of color and sound was a reminder of how provocative the landscape is, to both the senses and the intellect" (85).

In Hokkaido, "Nowhere here is 'scale-of-human-enterprise' large. It meshes easily with the land" (72); and in a Galápagos spot "You extend your fingers here to the damp, soft rims of orchids, blooming white on the flanks of dark volcanoes" (79). A few facts ensue, like "The cleft fore-edge of a lowland tortoise’s carapace resembles the sharply rising pommel of a sixteenth-century Spanish saddle, the old Spanish for which was galopego" (87); and a lot of opinions/reasoning ensue, like "Our knowledge of life is slim. The undisturbed landscapes are rapidly dwindling. And no plan has yet emerged for a kind of wealth that will satisfy all people" (91). I beg to differ, though, sort of -- a Green New Deal might redefine and re-orient us toward what's healthier.

With lush synonyms for days, Lopez can describe in precise detail things others might say were 'big', 'loud', 'good'. It rarely if ever seems needlessly verbose, or like he's putting ornaments on something hollow. It's all fascinating. Like in "Flight", when he contemplates time itself (142) or the goods we push hither and yon (146). There's a bit of shame later at the stereotypes we've all helped cultivate: "animals are all beautiful, diligent, one might even say well behaved" (176). But soon, "The shock to the senses comes from a different shape to the silence, a difference in the very quality of light, in the weight of the air" (177).

He mourns too: "An incipient industry, capitalizing on the nostalgia Americans feel for the imagined virgin landscapes of their ancestors, and on a desire for adventure, now offers people a convenient though sometimes incomplete or even spurious geography as an inducement to purchase a unique experience" (183). There can be manipulation of this nostalgia if there's political will and people are removed from where they could find firsthand disagreement, though (185).

A rare, tiny misstep might be when Lopez bumbles around a poetic look at an anagama kiln, where I thought he tried too hard. I appreciate the secular spirituality, I do, but here it's ladled on too quickly, and the essay has a bit of a gawky, unpolished veneer overall. But soon after he returns to better things, including a profound and many-faceted Moby-Dick metaphor. As well as the power of physical hands for instance: "not hard to believe they remember the heads patted, the hands shaken, the apples peeled, the hair braided, the wood split, the gears shifted, the flesh gripped and stroked" (288).

From the very practical he misinterpreted while young -- like, financial rules, check writing ("You write in whatever you want
 You can even, I said, write in a hundred dollars. More, a thousand, and go to the bank. They give it to you" (314)) -- to the very notional, the very abstract -- like, identifying with artifacts ("Just speculation [about] what they believe happened here [or similarly] about what we did" (343)), Lopez runs the gamut in some of the final essays in this book. Crisp vignettes usually enough.

Always a cute blend of astute memorization and fastidious note-taking, it must take, to jog through experiential nonfiction like this; as true, I imagine, for both a long-ago memory or an expedition hours ago! All to the reader's taste, it can seem mostly, how plain and utilitarian the prose is (all except little hints of poetry, of course), but far from just any old writer doing certain things it's unmistakably 'Barry Lopez doing certain things'. Even the boring, uniform 'doing' holds so much special.

There's a personal hope in photographs he says he has "perhaps because I presume we share certain principles related to the effort to imagine or explain" (310). Plus, earlier, he'd written that prose is far from just information conveyance, though: it's more to "help her discover what she means" (33).]]> 4.25 1998 About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory
author: Barry Lopez
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2021/03/15
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: animals, international, personal, nonfiction
review:
Barry Lopez, who died recently and had a Fresh Air obit I heard, was a prolific travel writer. His About This Life (a semi-autobiographical collection of shorter pieces) is the kind of heady nonfiction that seems flat at best but is actually quite deep. Simplistic on the surface, but soon pretty marvelous. Not informational travel purely (though the Bonaire or Hokkaido essays or the ones about North American animals do have a lot of information in them), but it's experiential travel, like memories, like impressions
 "The odor and the flowers’ colors in the garden attracted me", so he'd want visits there, for instance to re-gather alphabet blocks he'd purposely pushed out his window the day before (21).

Lopez "understood that my Jesuit education, my social and economic class, my good grades, my trained and confident young man’s voice, my white skin, and the hegemony of my religion all pointed toward being well received in the world" (28). In a reading he skipped class sophomore year to attend, an Odyssey translation, he crystallized an attitude toward language and story: "galvanized in beauty by [the] presentation. History, quest, longing" (29).

"'Did you see the octopus!' someone shouted after a dive. Yes, I thought, but who among us knows what it was doing? What else was there, just then? Why?" (54). A part to roll your eyes at a little, but it soon develops into truer, more interesting expression. He would lie awake "trying to remember some moment of the day just past. The very process of calling upon the details of color and sound was a reminder of how provocative the landscape is, to both the senses and the intellect" (85).

In Hokkaido, "Nowhere here is 'scale-of-human-enterprise' large. It meshes easily with the land" (72); and in a Galápagos spot "You extend your fingers here to the damp, soft rims of orchids, blooming white on the flanks of dark volcanoes" (79). A few facts ensue, like "The cleft fore-edge of a lowland tortoise’s carapace resembles the sharply rising pommel of a sixteenth-century Spanish saddle, the old Spanish for which was galopego" (87); and a lot of opinions/reasoning ensue, like "Our knowledge of life is slim. The undisturbed landscapes are rapidly dwindling. And no plan has yet emerged for a kind of wealth that will satisfy all people" (91). I beg to differ, though, sort of -- a Green New Deal might redefine and re-orient us toward what's healthier.

With lush synonyms for days, Lopez can describe in precise detail things others might say were 'big', 'loud', 'good'. It rarely if ever seems needlessly verbose, or like he's putting ornaments on something hollow. It's all fascinating. Like in "Flight", when he contemplates time itself (142) or the goods we push hither and yon (146). There's a bit of shame later at the stereotypes we've all helped cultivate: "animals are all beautiful, diligent, one might even say well behaved" (176). But soon, "The shock to the senses comes from a different shape to the silence, a difference in the very quality of light, in the weight of the air" (177).

He mourns too: "An incipient industry, capitalizing on the nostalgia Americans feel for the imagined virgin landscapes of their ancestors, and on a desire for adventure, now offers people a convenient though sometimes incomplete or even spurious geography as an inducement to purchase a unique experience" (183). There can be manipulation of this nostalgia if there's political will and people are removed from where they could find firsthand disagreement, though (185).

A rare, tiny misstep might be when Lopez bumbles around a poetic look at an anagama kiln, where I thought he tried too hard. I appreciate the secular spirituality, I do, but here it's ladled on too quickly, and the essay has a bit of a gawky, unpolished veneer overall. But soon after he returns to better things, including a profound and many-faceted Moby-Dick metaphor. As well as the power of physical hands for instance: "not hard to believe they remember the heads patted, the hands shaken, the apples peeled, the hair braided, the wood split, the gears shifted, the flesh gripped and stroked" (288).

From the very practical he misinterpreted while young -- like, financial rules, check writing ("You write in whatever you want
 You can even, I said, write in a hundred dollars. More, a thousand, and go to the bank. They give it to you" (314)) -- to the very notional, the very abstract -- like, identifying with artifacts ("Just speculation [about] what they believe happened here [or similarly] about what we did" (343)), Lopez runs the gamut in some of the final essays in this book. Crisp vignettes usually enough.

Always a cute blend of astute memorization and fastidious note-taking, it must take, to jog through experiential nonfiction like this; as true, I imagine, for both a long-ago memory or an expedition hours ago! All to the reader's taste, it can seem mostly, how plain and utilitarian the prose is (all except little hints of poetry, of course), but far from just any old writer doing certain things it's unmistakably 'Barry Lopez doing certain things'. Even the boring, uniform 'doing' holds so much special.

There's a personal hope in photographs he says he has "perhaps because I presume we share certain principles related to the effort to imagine or explain" (310). Plus, earlier, he'd written that prose is far from just information conveyance, though: it's more to "help her discover what she means" (33).
]]> Sharks in the Time of Saviors 48550623
Nainoa's family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods - a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart: Nainoa, working now as a paramedic on the streets of Portland, struggles to fathom the full measure of his expanding abilities; further north in Washington, his older brother Dean hurtles into the world of elite college athletics, obsessed with wealth and fame; while in California, risk-obsessed younger sister Kaui navigates an unforgiving academic workload in an attempt to forge her independence from the family's legacy.

When supernatural events revisit the Flores family in Hawaii - with tragic consequences - they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage, and the cost of survival.

One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020. Named one of the Best Books of 2020 by the New York Times (#30), the Guardian, the Boston Globe, Oprah Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, BBC Culture, Good Housekeeping, LitHub, Spectrum Culture, Third Place Books, and Powell's Books.]]> 386 Kawai Strong Washburn 0374720770 Kyle 4 Sing, Unburied, Sing: non-white minorities dealing with family, precocity, personal challenges. I'm also reminded a lot of Cloud Atlas's Hawai‘i bit -- whether Mitchell's book or Wachowskis/Tykwer's film -- especially when we're in the beloved nature of everyone's homeland. I mean everyone in the novel, not everyone in general.

As much as I like and respect the real Hawai‘i, I know, no matter what, I'd make wherever I was touristy and cheap. That's just who I am. I'm no Superman, and I know my limits. Everyone must know their limits. Everyone! No swaying palm trees or tropical drinks sipped here. Just kind of poor, uncertain, angsty about family, heritage, identity.

Washburn's dĂ©but novel Sharks in the Time of Saviors opens on Malia, at Noa our hero's conception (eww) in 1995. She witnesses something holy right when she and Augie, Noa's father, are making love. Nightmarchers, the ghosts of ancient Hawai‘ian warriors, pass by.

Malia and Augie marvel then, but it takes a while for the holiness to sink in (second-person voice is pretty much always pointed toward Noa): “Your father blew a long breath and said, ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ / It was the first time he’d talked about anything holy in a while. And there were no more torches; no more night marchers. We listened to our blood thump in our ears and it told us alive alive alive” (18).

We find out Noa's gifted with occasional miracle healing (Ă  la the HBO series °äČč°ùČÔŸ±±čĂ ±ô±đ): anyone he touches who's injured is instantly healed. At first it's plugged into a local curiosity (even some money-making schemes) but then later it's acknowledged with some awe and respect. The Nightmarchers story is only connected to Noa's life in retrospect; a little pat and perfect maybe (every connection, of any life, is made that way, no?), but scenes are blended together quite well into narrative.

Other memories at the end of Malia's short chapter (they're all parceled out to separate characters' first-person voices) are sublime and freaky (“nightmares vague with sugarcane and death” (20)), but she concludes with a spot of hope: "Oh my son. Now we know that none of it was. And this was when I started to believe"" (37). With belief we end that first episode, and belief runs profoundly through the whole novel that follows.

Malia's ecstasy we return to later on, but her three children supply most of the book's perspective: Noa, the core protagonist (touched by gods, gifted to the max); Dean, her other son (a sports star); and Kaui, her daughter (so ambitious, a science genius and wonderful hula dancer/climber, a good and smart blend of her two brothers). All the characters work their way out of, around, back to Hawai‘i. It's true true.

In daughter Kaui's chapter, skipping ahead a few years from her mom's opener, the plot's less supernatural and more societal. She's uncomfortable at a basketball game of her brother Dean. He's supposed to be an impressive new sports star. However, "All that heat from the lights and our butts on the sticky planks of seats, while down on the wood court sweaty boys panted around each other and watched a little ball fall into a little hoop. The horn going off for time-outs or whatever" (62) is about all she sees.

And then (once she excuses herself and goes outside) "Far on the other side of the parking lot, a cigarette tip danced orange. A little light laughter" (64). And a little later, her brother reflects back on his mom's spiritual experience in a similarly pathetic way: "yeah, I believe. I hate it—I hate it—but I believe" (76).

We return then to the mother. Everything Malia writes is phrased toward one of her sons: Noa, the spiritual one. She loves all her children, has no favorites, but her attention to him is definitely a source of doubt: "The thought that we’d be able to help you through this, to guide you to what you were supposed to become, was total stupidity; along with what we’d been asking you to perform for us" (109).

And then she even writes about Noa "If you were more of the gods than of us—if you were something new, if you were supposed to remake the islands, if you were all the old kings moving through the body of one small boy—then of course I could not be the one to guide you to your full potential. My time as a mother was the same as those last gasping breaths of the owl, and soon enough you’d have to gently set down my love" (112).

Dean the sports star, hoping to succeed on the mainland (specifically Spokane), has some fun, pretty authentic tries through a state school. Especially interesting are the small adventures he briefly alights on: "finding a tutor first week, sophomore girl if I can help it, big eyes toothpick jeans cross around her neck, like that. She’ll help out, they said" (118).

Forced phone discussions between Dean in Spokane and the rest of the family back home are always reflected back in Dean's own awkwardness, which I appreciate (and with a tiny bit of Hawai‘ian slang drizzled in): "And he would tell me small-kind something, and then Mom would get on and she’d do the same, but both of ’um pretty quick got to the point where they was all like, You gotta see what your brother is doing back here. Every time, every call, it always got there" (122).

Dean feels all his own pressure too, though: "Started for be like I fell asleep and woke up on the court, bleeding or sweating or spitting over equipment in the weight room, the cheep of shoes on the polished court floor, the flow and dip and rise, me and the ball. But nobody, the team, coach, nobody, still knew what I was" (128).

Kaui goes to school on the mainland too, but her experience in California is totally unlike Dean's in Washington. For instance, she "figured there would never be hula here, but there was. San Diego had hella Hawai‘i people, closest you could get to the islands without falling in the Pacific, I guess. I went to find them once, I did" (139).

Her mom's a source of Kaui's angst, mostly ("she" is Malia): “‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘We did a lot to get you there, you know.’ / She had to stick it in, right? She never said shit like this to the boys, only to me. Like I was supposed to be guilty of ambition while they were just living their full potential. ‘I know, Mom,’ I said” (149).

But back to our hero, after all? and jumping ahead a little in time, too?

Noa -- resettled on the mainland like his siblings, but to Portland -- is now a paramedic. He writes, about one of the patients he sees, that he “felt the weave of his skin and the buttery chunks of fat underneath, the hush and rush of what could only be his blood, so long and blowing, all of this just a feeling, it was nothing I saw. There were other muddled sensations deeper down, but strongest was an effervescent urge, his body eager to start repairing itself, but even that came and went so quick” (153). 'Urge to repair itself' harnessed toward goodness then, simply enough.

Noa "only knew that when I touched a broken body, I held an idea of what that body should be, and that idea became the muscle of a heartbeat, or the fusing of bones, or the electrochemical bolts storming through synapses. I’d felt the addict’s body wanting" (159).

Or later, reminiscing, his new girlfriend says Noa “‘just barely brushed the dog. It was going nuts, and when you arrived, it went so calm it might as well have been drugged. That was when I knew you’d be good with Rika.’ / ‘Because I petted a dog gently, I was going to be good with your daughter?’ I said. ‘That is negligent.’ / And she laughed. ‘Don’t tell Rika.’” (166). It's not always holy healing then; I appreciate. It can be modest too. Life.

Their relationship, Noa's and this new girl's, is revealed mostly in flashback after it's already happened. That technique, though, is sweet enough. It allows Washburn to avoid a lot of ho-hum rom-com stereotypes, and what's abruptly left is much stronger. Noa and the girl are trying “to build our bodies into a raft for each other— ‘That’s it,’ Khadeja said” (167).

His life as a paramedic isn't the sunshiney miracle you'd think, though. (Even suspending any kind of official or bureaucratic reaction, which you'd have to anyway.) A co-worker of his sighs after one of their shifts: “‘You shouldn’t be in this station,’ she said. ‘You should be in, I don’t know, a war hospital or a—a—Calcutta. Where there are thousands. Millions.’ / ‘I’m not Jesus,’ I said. I’d seen the strand of gold she wore around her neck, coming on shift or going off it, the delicate cross, the ash on her forehead in spring. / ‘I didn’t say that.’ / ‘I want to work here.’” (201).

And he feels the burnout all himself too: "that’s the problem with the present, it’s never the thing you’re holding, only the thing you’re watching, later, from a distance so great the memory might as well be a spill of stars outside a window at twilight" (213). Rush of poetry all at once is Washburn's, and he always blends it into the story quite well.

Meanwhile, Noa's sister Kaui, uncertain about her romantic feelings, tries to repress them: "That was the summer I learned: almost anything becomes tolerable if you get yourself a routine" (171). But in dreams she truly lives? Where nothing's optional. It's truly Hawai‘i? Curtly poetic too: "Women as large and distant as volcanoes, their skin dark like pregnant soil, dolphin-kind bodies thick and slick and full of joyful muscle
 all of it ceilinged by a thunder-brained sky" (220). But she awakens to discomfort when it's her family: "What sort of shitty sister does that make me?" (274).

In a way that links all three kids, though, Dean shares some ecstasy: "'Sometimes I get this feeling,' I say. 'Or I used to, anyway. Where it was like I was me and then I was something bigger than me, all at once.'" (380). And that sentiment moves through generations too, when Malia (needing to get her daughter Kaui back) says "Let’s not call it hope. It is a labor of sorts; that is all" (394).

Memories kind of fuse between Dean and Kaui, and it's a bit beautiful: "But there was no settling that way, not for Dean. For him it had to be his hand, taking as much as he thought we needed to wipe away everything that had happened to us before. To guarantee it was all over. But there wasn’t enough money in the world for that. / ‘There’s way more I can make, like coming out our ƍkoles,’ he said. ‘Whatchyou think about that?’” (503).

Augie's chapter, a concluding stream-of-consciousness akin to Joyce's Ulysses, then closes the whole novel: "Faster. Malia is gasping and we are running she is falling behind. I turn and grab her and we lift and move over the trail like the air does. I am the air. We are no longer on the ground we are moving above it" (508). In ecstasy it ends, with exactly the same characters in almost exactly the same situation but totally different: how good narratives often end.

And Malia briefly says too, in a way that almost might be trite if a lot of a good novel hadn't come before, "There’s aloha yet, to keep the rest of us alive" (347). Washburn's Sharks in the Time of Saviors, if you didn't remember, takes place in Hawai‘i, a place you may have heard of.]]> 3.98 2020 Sharks in the Time of Saviors
author: Kawai Strong Washburn
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2021/10/01
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: fiction, personal, science, women
review:
I'm haole; sorry. Washburn's novel seems to me a lot like Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing: non-white minorities dealing with family, precocity, personal challenges. I'm also reminded a lot of Cloud Atlas's Hawai‘i bit -- whether Mitchell's book or Wachowskis/Tykwer's film -- especially when we're in the beloved nature of everyone's homeland. I mean everyone in the novel, not everyone in general.

As much as I like and respect the real Hawai‘i, I know, no matter what, I'd make wherever I was touristy and cheap. That's just who I am. I'm no Superman, and I know my limits. Everyone must know their limits. Everyone! No swaying palm trees or tropical drinks sipped here. Just kind of poor, uncertain, angsty about family, heritage, identity.

Washburn's dĂ©but novel Sharks in the Time of Saviors opens on Malia, at Noa our hero's conception (eww) in 1995. She witnesses something holy right when she and Augie, Noa's father, are making love. Nightmarchers, the ghosts of ancient Hawai‘ian warriors, pass by.

Malia and Augie marvel then, but it takes a while for the holiness to sink in (second-person voice is pretty much always pointed toward Noa): “Your father blew a long breath and said, ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ / It was the first time he’d talked about anything holy in a while. And there were no more torches; no more night marchers. We listened to our blood thump in our ears and it told us alive alive alive” (18).

We find out Noa's gifted with occasional miracle healing (Ă  la the HBO series °äČč°ùČÔŸ±±čĂ ±ô±đ): anyone he touches who's injured is instantly healed. At first it's plugged into a local curiosity (even some money-making schemes) but then later it's acknowledged with some awe and respect. The Nightmarchers story is only connected to Noa's life in retrospect; a little pat and perfect maybe (every connection, of any life, is made that way, no?), but scenes are blended together quite well into narrative.

Other memories at the end of Malia's short chapter (they're all parceled out to separate characters' first-person voices) are sublime and freaky (“nightmares vague with sugarcane and death” (20)), but she concludes with a spot of hope: "Oh my son. Now we know that none of it was. And this was when I started to believe"" (37). With belief we end that first episode, and belief runs profoundly through the whole novel that follows.

Malia's ecstasy we return to later on, but her three children supply most of the book's perspective: Noa, the core protagonist (touched by gods, gifted to the max); Dean, her other son (a sports star); and Kaui, her daughter (so ambitious, a science genius and wonderful hula dancer/climber, a good and smart blend of her two brothers). All the characters work their way out of, around, back to Hawai‘i. It's true true.

In daughter Kaui's chapter, skipping ahead a few years from her mom's opener, the plot's less supernatural and more societal. She's uncomfortable at a basketball game of her brother Dean. He's supposed to be an impressive new sports star. However, "All that heat from the lights and our butts on the sticky planks of seats, while down on the wood court sweaty boys panted around each other and watched a little ball fall into a little hoop. The horn going off for time-outs or whatever" (62) is about all she sees.

And then (once she excuses herself and goes outside) "Far on the other side of the parking lot, a cigarette tip danced orange. A little light laughter" (64). And a little later, her brother reflects back on his mom's spiritual experience in a similarly pathetic way: "yeah, I believe. I hate it—I hate it—but I believe" (76).

We return then to the mother. Everything Malia writes is phrased toward one of her sons: Noa, the spiritual one. She loves all her children, has no favorites, but her attention to him is definitely a source of doubt: "The thought that we’d be able to help you through this, to guide you to what you were supposed to become, was total stupidity; along with what we’d been asking you to perform for us" (109).

And then she even writes about Noa "If you were more of the gods than of us—if you were something new, if you were supposed to remake the islands, if you were all the old kings moving through the body of one small boy—then of course I could not be the one to guide you to your full potential. My time as a mother was the same as those last gasping breaths of the owl, and soon enough you’d have to gently set down my love" (112).

Dean the sports star, hoping to succeed on the mainland (specifically Spokane), has some fun, pretty authentic tries through a state school. Especially interesting are the small adventures he briefly alights on: "finding a tutor first week, sophomore girl if I can help it, big eyes toothpick jeans cross around her neck, like that. She’ll help out, they said" (118).

Forced phone discussions between Dean in Spokane and the rest of the family back home are always reflected back in Dean's own awkwardness, which I appreciate (and with a tiny bit of Hawai‘ian slang drizzled in): "And he would tell me small-kind something, and then Mom would get on and she’d do the same, but both of ’um pretty quick got to the point where they was all like, You gotta see what your brother is doing back here. Every time, every call, it always got there" (122).

Dean feels all his own pressure too, though: "Started for be like I fell asleep and woke up on the court, bleeding or sweating or spitting over equipment in the weight room, the cheep of shoes on the polished court floor, the flow and dip and rise, me and the ball. But nobody, the team, coach, nobody, still knew what I was" (128).

Kaui goes to school on the mainland too, but her experience in California is totally unlike Dean's in Washington. For instance, she "figured there would never be hula here, but there was. San Diego had hella Hawai‘i people, closest you could get to the islands without falling in the Pacific, I guess. I went to find them once, I did" (139).

Her mom's a source of Kaui's angst, mostly ("she" is Malia): “‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘We did a lot to get you there, you know.’ / She had to stick it in, right? She never said shit like this to the boys, only to me. Like I was supposed to be guilty of ambition while they were just living their full potential. ‘I know, Mom,’ I said” (149).

But back to our hero, after all? and jumping ahead a little in time, too?

Noa -- resettled on the mainland like his siblings, but to Portland -- is now a paramedic. He writes, about one of the patients he sees, that he “felt the weave of his skin and the buttery chunks of fat underneath, the hush and rush of what could only be his blood, so long and blowing, all of this just a feeling, it was nothing I saw. There were other muddled sensations deeper down, but strongest was an effervescent urge, his body eager to start repairing itself, but even that came and went so quick” (153). 'Urge to repair itself' harnessed toward goodness then, simply enough.

Noa "only knew that when I touched a broken body, I held an idea of what that body should be, and that idea became the muscle of a heartbeat, or the fusing of bones, or the electrochemical bolts storming through synapses. I’d felt the addict’s body wanting" (159).

Or later, reminiscing, his new girlfriend says Noa “‘just barely brushed the dog. It was going nuts, and when you arrived, it went so calm it might as well have been drugged. That was when I knew you’d be good with Rika.’ / ‘Because I petted a dog gently, I was going to be good with your daughter?’ I said. ‘That is negligent.’ / And she laughed. ‘Don’t tell Rika.’” (166). It's not always holy healing then; I appreciate. It can be modest too. Life.

Their relationship, Noa's and this new girl's, is revealed mostly in flashback after it's already happened. That technique, though, is sweet enough. It allows Washburn to avoid a lot of ho-hum rom-com stereotypes, and what's abruptly left is much stronger. Noa and the girl are trying “to build our bodies into a raft for each other— ‘That’s it,’ Khadeja said” (167).

His life as a paramedic isn't the sunshiney miracle you'd think, though. (Even suspending any kind of official or bureaucratic reaction, which you'd have to anyway.) A co-worker of his sighs after one of their shifts: “‘You shouldn’t be in this station,’ she said. ‘You should be in, I don’t know, a war hospital or a—a—Calcutta. Where there are thousands. Millions.’ / ‘I’m not Jesus,’ I said. I’d seen the strand of gold she wore around her neck, coming on shift or going off it, the delicate cross, the ash on her forehead in spring. / ‘I didn’t say that.’ / ‘I want to work here.’” (201).

And he feels the burnout all himself too: "that’s the problem with the present, it’s never the thing you’re holding, only the thing you’re watching, later, from a distance so great the memory might as well be a spill of stars outside a window at twilight" (213). Rush of poetry all at once is Washburn's, and he always blends it into the story quite well.

Meanwhile, Noa's sister Kaui, uncertain about her romantic feelings, tries to repress them: "That was the summer I learned: almost anything becomes tolerable if you get yourself a routine" (171). But in dreams she truly lives? Where nothing's optional. It's truly Hawai‘i? Curtly poetic too: "Women as large and distant as volcanoes, their skin dark like pregnant soil, dolphin-kind bodies thick and slick and full of joyful muscle
 all of it ceilinged by a thunder-brained sky" (220). But she awakens to discomfort when it's her family: "What sort of shitty sister does that make me?" (274).

In a way that links all three kids, though, Dean shares some ecstasy: "'Sometimes I get this feeling,' I say. 'Or I used to, anyway. Where it was like I was me and then I was something bigger than me, all at once.'" (380). And that sentiment moves through generations too, when Malia (needing to get her daughter Kaui back) says "Let’s not call it hope. It is a labor of sorts; that is all" (394).

Memories kind of fuse between Dean and Kaui, and it's a bit beautiful: "But there was no settling that way, not for Dean. For him it had to be his hand, taking as much as he thought we needed to wipe away everything that had happened to us before. To guarantee it was all over. But there wasn’t enough money in the world for that. / ‘There’s way more I can make, like coming out our ƍkoles,’ he said. ‘Whatchyou think about that?’” (503).

Augie's chapter, a concluding stream-of-consciousness akin to Joyce's Ulysses, then closes the whole novel: "Faster. Malia is gasping and we are running she is falling behind. I turn and grab her and we lift and move over the trail like the air does. I am the air. We are no longer on the ground we are moving above it" (508). In ecstasy it ends, with exactly the same characters in almost exactly the same situation but totally different: how good narratives often end.

And Malia briefly says too, in a way that almost might be trite if a lot of a good novel hadn't come before, "There’s aloha yet, to keep the rest of us alive" (347). Washburn's Sharks in the Time of Saviors, if you didn't remember, takes place in Hawai‘i, a place you may have heard of.
]]> We Run the Tides 55151457 An achingly beautiful and wickedly funny story of friendship, betrayal, and a mysterious disappearance, set in the changing landscape of San FranciscoÌę

Teenage Eulabee and her best friend, Maria Fabiola, own the streets of Sea Cliff, their foggy, oceanside San Francisco neighborhood. They know the ins and outs of the homes and beaches, Sea Cliff’s hidden corners and eccentric characters—as well as the swanky all-girls’ school they attend. Their lives move along uneventfully, with afternoon walks by the ocean and weekend sleepovers. Then everything changes. Eulabee and Maria Fabiola have a disagreement about what they did or didn’t witness on the way to school one morning, and this creates a schism in their friendship. The rupture is followed by Maria Fabiola’s sudden disappearance—a potential kidnapping that shakes the quiet community and threatens toÌęexpose unspoken truths.

Suspenseful and poignant,ÌęWe Run the TidesÌęis Vendela Vida’s masterpiece depiction ofÌęan inimitable place on the brink of radical transformation. Pre–tech boom San Francisco finds its mirror in the changing lives of the teenage girls at the center of this story of innocence lost, the pain of too much freedom, and the struggle to find one’s authentic self. Told with a gimlet eye and great warmth,ÌęWe Run the TidesÌęis both a gripping mystery and a tribute to the wonders of youth, in all its beauty and confusion.ÌęÌę]]> 272 Vendela Vida 0062936255 Kyle 2 We Run the Tides is like Wilsey's SF memoir Oh the Glory of It All, I guess, with a girl's twist. Just glimpses of darkness, malevolence inside too, like pedophilia sometimes (sad); and not even that, but pedophilia soon turned to young adults' paranoia, loyalty tests, etc. Boys don't get melancholy hair washes, for instance, nothing beautiful: just money, power, opportunities. You know. The girls know. To me, though, Vida's novel seems all too plain still. I don't know. Maybe that's just a me thing. "After an afternoon at the beach, the pads of our fingers are rough, and our palms smell of damp rock, and the boys are dazzled" is just a plain memory (23).

As is less plainly "Someone’s spray-painted 'ABC' on a large rock. That’s the tag of one of the local gangs of teenagers. 'ABC' stands for 'American Born Chinese.' The other tag you see around the neighborhood is 'CBS,' which stands for 'Can’t Be Stopped,' which is a group of skateboarders. To an outsider, it might seem that the news teams are competing" (67); but they aren't. Initially facile and dull image, but the complexity grows soon, as we "return to the towel where I was sleeping and see that someone’s written 'Slut' in the sand next to it. I look around to see who could have written it. I think about using my hand to erase it, but then don’t. Now I have a tag, too" (67). From simplicity of misapprehending ABC as its famous example, to sort of in parallel immediately seeing sexual darkness, aggressiveness. But in an innocent way that's still not naïve.

Our heroine's Eulabee, an upper-middle-class Swedish girl living in SF before the tech boom totally altered the city. One of her friends is Maria Fabiola, a rich heiress. A few brushes with differing stories, culminating in the fake kidnappings that get them expelled from Spragg (a lush private school) hit Eulabee and Maria Fabiola differently.

The first involves a man in a car, beckoning them over to ask the time, who may or may not have been pleasuring himself all the while. "'She said there was an incident on the way to school, and I maintained that the incident was a fabrication,' I say" recalls Eulabee to a cop, betraying her friend succinctly (92). But somehow -- and I don't always understand how, let alone why -- the betrayal goes further, through many layers. Skewed reactions to what the girls experience mount: "'Just pretend you don’t see him and keep your focus on me,' Ms. Livesey tells us whenever a flasher shows up. My father says I should point at the flashers and laugh. These are two very different approaches. Everything I'm told by one adult contradicts something I'm told by another" (74).

We always experience the diffidence of privileged teen girls (à la Sofia Coppola?): "and I am shallow, I think, to come to her wanting reinforcement" (81), "'Interesting,' she says, showing no interest" (90), "and then give them the phone number—666–7777—which in Swedish sounds like Sex! Sex! Sex! Who? Who? Who? Who?" (98)
 And after a kidnapping she suspects was faked, Eulabee decides to bike "to where I suspect Maria Fabiola is hiding" (99). Something else "provokes a cascade of questions: what else have I not seen? What else could I be missing?" (102). You see?

But even amidst all the frauds both serious and not, the girls' angst (mostly Eulabee's) shines through. "The sub’s eyes are still on Maria Fabiola, and she’s too distracted by the presence of fame to notice. / As for me, I am invisible" (128). "Even when people are talking about other things, they’re talking about her" (133). "I imagine I look like a better version of me. A future me" (146).

And later, some awkwardness more personal than public: "'I don’t know how you managed to make last night about you, but you did,' she says. / 'All I did was get my period.' / 'That’s disgusting.' / 'You know what’s disgusting?'" (180); and we wait, expectantly, and the awkwardness is palpable. But the perfect comeback doesn't come to Eulabee then, so she pretty much doesn't say anything. Later, she recalls "I place my hands on either side of my face, as though I can force my head to look in the direction of the future" (212).

Fame and exposure runs from Maria Fabiola to Eulabee as well. First, there's a dinky little TV spot that disappoints them. But later, once complex frauds are built around kidnapping, there's a lot more: "You’ll have to do B-roll, too, since I already did mine. B-roll is really fun. You walk up and down the sidewalk, open doors, pretend to do your homework. You can wear that pretty polka-dot dress" (227). Soon enough, wry little images start too flicker out as the darkness thickens: "I watch a tiny girl send the tetherball round and round until, high on the pole, it runs out of rope and stops" (247), "I run past palm trees and I run past gardeners with their trucks and loud leaf blowers and grating rakes" (251),

And all of a sudden, it's many years later, things have come and gone, and they bump into one another as adults: "She laughs her genuine cascading laugh. 'I’m so happy we ran into each other,' she says, and for a moment, she does seem very happy. And I feel as I did when I was thirteen—that her laughter is a reward, that her attention is a prize" (263). But eerie self-examination, not quite the recrimination you'd expect, surfaces: "I look at Maria Fabiola and see only my own reflection in her sunglasses" (264). Always, though, San Francisco (even if just in a tiny glimpse): "We spent much of our youth walking side by side, and here we are again, on another cliff, above another ocean" (269).

Vida, from the McSweeney's camp and from writing the 2009 film Away We Go, I thought would have much stronger prose. But it's plain, all complex ethics running behind dry incidents (invisible). I'm me, though, and you're you, and maybe I'm mis-reading.]]> 3.78 2021 We Run the Tides
author: Vendela Vida
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2021/08/26
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: fiction, women, personal, mcsweeneys, comedy
review:
We Run the Tides is like Wilsey's SF memoir Oh the Glory of It All, I guess, with a girl's twist. Just glimpses of darkness, malevolence inside too, like pedophilia sometimes (sad); and not even that, but pedophilia soon turned to young adults' paranoia, loyalty tests, etc. Boys don't get melancholy hair washes, for instance, nothing beautiful: just money, power, opportunities. You know. The girls know. To me, though, Vida's novel seems all too plain still. I don't know. Maybe that's just a me thing. "After an afternoon at the beach, the pads of our fingers are rough, and our palms smell of damp rock, and the boys are dazzled" is just a plain memory (23).

As is less plainly "Someone’s spray-painted 'ABC' on a large rock. That’s the tag of one of the local gangs of teenagers. 'ABC' stands for 'American Born Chinese.' The other tag you see around the neighborhood is 'CBS,' which stands for 'Can’t Be Stopped,' which is a group of skateboarders. To an outsider, it might seem that the news teams are competing" (67); but they aren't. Initially facile and dull image, but the complexity grows soon, as we "return to the towel where I was sleeping and see that someone’s written 'Slut' in the sand next to it. I look around to see who could have written it. I think about using my hand to erase it, but then don’t. Now I have a tag, too" (67). From simplicity of misapprehending ABC as its famous example, to sort of in parallel immediately seeing sexual darkness, aggressiveness. But in an innocent way that's still not naïve.

Our heroine's Eulabee, an upper-middle-class Swedish girl living in SF before the tech boom totally altered the city. One of her friends is Maria Fabiola, a rich heiress. A few brushes with differing stories, culminating in the fake kidnappings that get them expelled from Spragg (a lush private school) hit Eulabee and Maria Fabiola differently.

The first involves a man in a car, beckoning them over to ask the time, who may or may not have been pleasuring himself all the while. "'She said there was an incident on the way to school, and I maintained that the incident was a fabrication,' I say" recalls Eulabee to a cop, betraying her friend succinctly (92). But somehow -- and I don't always understand how, let alone why -- the betrayal goes further, through many layers. Skewed reactions to what the girls experience mount: "'Just pretend you don’t see him and keep your focus on me,' Ms. Livesey tells us whenever a flasher shows up. My father says I should point at the flashers and laugh. These are two very different approaches. Everything I'm told by one adult contradicts something I'm told by another" (74).

We always experience the diffidence of privileged teen girls (à la Sofia Coppola?): "and I am shallow, I think, to come to her wanting reinforcement" (81), "'Interesting,' she says, showing no interest" (90), "and then give them the phone number—666–7777—which in Swedish sounds like Sex! Sex! Sex! Who? Who? Who? Who?" (98)
 And after a kidnapping she suspects was faked, Eulabee decides to bike "to where I suspect Maria Fabiola is hiding" (99). Something else "provokes a cascade of questions: what else have I not seen? What else could I be missing?" (102). You see?

But even amidst all the frauds both serious and not, the girls' angst (mostly Eulabee's) shines through. "The sub’s eyes are still on Maria Fabiola, and she’s too distracted by the presence of fame to notice. / As for me, I am invisible" (128). "Even when people are talking about other things, they’re talking about her" (133). "I imagine I look like a better version of me. A future me" (146).

And later, some awkwardness more personal than public: "'I don’t know how you managed to make last night about you, but you did,' she says. / 'All I did was get my period.' / 'That’s disgusting.' / 'You know what’s disgusting?'" (180); and we wait, expectantly, and the awkwardness is palpable. But the perfect comeback doesn't come to Eulabee then, so she pretty much doesn't say anything. Later, she recalls "I place my hands on either side of my face, as though I can force my head to look in the direction of the future" (212).

Fame and exposure runs from Maria Fabiola to Eulabee as well. First, there's a dinky little TV spot that disappoints them. But later, once complex frauds are built around kidnapping, there's a lot more: "You’ll have to do B-roll, too, since I already did mine. B-roll is really fun. You walk up and down the sidewalk, open doors, pretend to do your homework. You can wear that pretty polka-dot dress" (227). Soon enough, wry little images start too flicker out as the darkness thickens: "I watch a tiny girl send the tetherball round and round until, high on the pole, it runs out of rope and stops" (247), "I run past palm trees and I run past gardeners with their trucks and loud leaf blowers and grating rakes" (251),

And all of a sudden, it's many years later, things have come and gone, and they bump into one another as adults: "She laughs her genuine cascading laugh. 'I’m so happy we ran into each other,' she says, and for a moment, she does seem very happy. And I feel as I did when I was thirteen—that her laughter is a reward, that her attention is a prize" (263). But eerie self-examination, not quite the recrimination you'd expect, surfaces: "I look at Maria Fabiola and see only my own reflection in her sunglasses" (264). Always, though, San Francisco (even if just in a tiny glimpse): "We spent much of our youth walking side by side, and here we are again, on another cliff, above another ocean" (269).

Vida, from the McSweeney's camp and from writing the 2009 film Away We Go, I thought would have much stronger prose. But it's plain, all complex ethics running behind dry incidents (invisible). I'm me, though, and you're you, and maybe I'm mis-reading.
]]> Sing, Unburied, Sing 34325038
In Jesmyn Ward’s first novel since her National Book Award–winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi’s past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers.

Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie’s children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.

Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power, and limitations, of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward’s distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature.]]> 304 Jesmyn Ward 1501126091 Kyle 4
Leonie's broken, clearly, but her story still holds so much beauty. She loves her children but proves again and again she's not a mother to them: "part of me wants to shake Jojo and Michaela awake, to lean down and yell so they startle and sit up so I don’t have to see the way they turn to each other like plants following the sun across the sky. They are each other’s light" (160).

The young ones also deal with their grandparents, their mom (mourning Given when she gets high on meth), dad Michael (white and just released from Parchman, where Leonie's dad had languished long ago and seen people die), occasionally Richie (one of these inmates Parchman killed, now incarnated as a wise ghost), and a bunch of beautiful and sad stuff in general.

Bummer, sounds like a bummer. I can't deny it or offer a whole lot of counter-points, but I do think it's pretty enough, lyrical enough, just in its own prose, to skate above that. Rarely if ever lowered to any base stereotypes! Our young hero Jojo -- in addition to mourning the real losses of his uncle (interestingly and sadly enough, shot by the cousin of his dad) and his grandfather's long-ago friend Richie -- also has to mourn his close-to-death grandmother and the relationship with his own mother that might never recover.

About his absent mom, he recalls "Back when I was younger, back when I still called Leonie Mama, she told me flies eat shit. That was when there was more good than bad, when she’d push me on the swing Pop hung from one of the pecan trees in the front yard, or when she’d sit next to me on the sofa and watch TV with me, rubbing my head. Before she was more gone than here. Before she started snorting crushed pills" (25). A heavy sigh, toward relatively dreary Southern Gothics? Sure. But it doesn't linger monotonously. There are spirits. There's freshness. It's hard to describe.

Jojo's special, though, obviously (grief'll do that): "I was ten then, and had already begun to see things that other kids didn't" (43); later on, when there's a drug deal in the next room and simultaneously some intricate, young drama right there underneath him, "I catch words: chair, TV, candy, all gone, move. I cup my hand around my ear, look at the women in the kitchen, watch the way their mouths move, and try to hear" (96), or just painful social truths like "He’s the whitest White man I’ve ever seen" (124).

A little like Arnold's film American Honey, no?

But still, "There’s so much Jojo doesn’t know. There are so many stories I could tell him" (147). He wants to learn about the world, clearly, but there are some roadblocks. You might know about these, vaguely. Systemic racism's one of many. But individual choices hold sway too. "The man is cooking, moves as easy and sure as a chef, but there is nothing to eat here" (102). That's sad. Basically.

A little funny, in a wry way, when he considers the name Parchman (where his grandfather spent some cruel years decades back): "Sometimes I wonder who that parched man was, that man dying for water, that they named the town and the jail after. Wonder if he looked like Pop, straight up and down, brown skin tinged with red, or me, an in-between color, or Michael, the color of milk. Wonder what that man said before he died of a cracked throat" (77).

The man, a pretend man, the namesake to a place, what race would he have? Would it kill him too? You might chuckle until you weep, sort of. Black like Jojo's grandfather, in between like Jojo himself, or white like Jojo's dad = fundamentally different ways of experiencing the same blistering, generally bitter events?

Like Jenkins's film Moonlight a bit now, no?

There are of course some wilderness metaphors all throughout too: "The mosquito that was in Mam’s room has followed us, and he’s buzzing around my head, talking about me like I’m a candle or a cake. So warm and delicious. I swat him away" (46), "cutting them down to protect their houses during storms or to pad their wallets. So much could be happening in those trees" (78), "parents wrapped up in their grief. Spider-bound: web-blind" (69). Most quite sad.

But saddest of all? One of the final images, gushing out pain in run-ons: "They perch like birds, but look as people. They speak with their eyes: He raped me and suffocated me until I died I put my hands up and he shot me eight times she locked me in the shed and starved me to death while I listened to my babies playing with her in the yard they came in my cell in the middle of the night and they hung me they found I could read and they dragged me out to the barn and gouged my eyes before they beat me still I was sick and he said I was an abomination and Jesus say suffer little children so let her go and he put me under the water and I couldn’t breathe. Eyes blink as the sun blazes and winks below the forest line so that the ghosts catch the color, reflect the red" (281).

But also -- not really a quotation, nor even a true paraphrase, just a few little things I picked up all throughout and smushed together -- Spanish moss, cypress, Tupelo, night bugs; pulsing, effervescent, yearning a little. Ward's Sing Unburied Sing is tough certainly, but I think it's written so tenderly and cleverly that it can float above.]]> 3.87 2017 Sing, Unburied, Sing
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2021/06/27
date added: 2023/09/24
shelves: fiction, race, women, personal
review:
In chapters that flip between many monologues, Ward's Sing Unburied Sing elegantly ties together many disparate ways of seeing 20th-century America. Jojo (a boy of 13), his toddler sister Kayla, their mom Leonie who's not functional and still grieving her brother Given, and Leonie's parents Pop and Mam all trace sadness of Black Southern experience. "'There's things you think you know that you don’t.' / 'Like what?' I spit it out fast" (190).

Leonie's broken, clearly, but her story still holds so much beauty. She loves her children but proves again and again she's not a mother to them: "part of me wants to shake Jojo and Michaela awake, to lean down and yell so they startle and sit up so I don’t have to see the way they turn to each other like plants following the sun across the sky. They are each other’s light" (160).

The young ones also deal with their grandparents, their mom (mourning Given when she gets high on meth), dad Michael (white and just released from Parchman, where Leonie's dad had languished long ago and seen people die), occasionally Richie (one of these inmates Parchman killed, now incarnated as a wise ghost), and a bunch of beautiful and sad stuff in general.

Bummer, sounds like a bummer. I can't deny it or offer a whole lot of counter-points, but I do think it's pretty enough, lyrical enough, just in its own prose, to skate above that. Rarely if ever lowered to any base stereotypes! Our young hero Jojo -- in addition to mourning the real losses of his uncle (interestingly and sadly enough, shot by the cousin of his dad) and his grandfather's long-ago friend Richie -- also has to mourn his close-to-death grandmother and the relationship with his own mother that might never recover.

About his absent mom, he recalls "Back when I was younger, back when I still called Leonie Mama, she told me flies eat shit. That was when there was more good than bad, when she’d push me on the swing Pop hung from one of the pecan trees in the front yard, or when she’d sit next to me on the sofa and watch TV with me, rubbing my head. Before she was more gone than here. Before she started snorting crushed pills" (25). A heavy sigh, toward relatively dreary Southern Gothics? Sure. But it doesn't linger monotonously. There are spirits. There's freshness. It's hard to describe.

Jojo's special, though, obviously (grief'll do that): "I was ten then, and had already begun to see things that other kids didn't" (43); later on, when there's a drug deal in the next room and simultaneously some intricate, young drama right there underneath him, "I catch words: chair, TV, candy, all gone, move. I cup my hand around my ear, look at the women in the kitchen, watch the way their mouths move, and try to hear" (96), or just painful social truths like "He’s the whitest White man I’ve ever seen" (124).

A little like Arnold's film American Honey, no?

But still, "There’s so much Jojo doesn’t know. There are so many stories I could tell him" (147). He wants to learn about the world, clearly, but there are some roadblocks. You might know about these, vaguely. Systemic racism's one of many. But individual choices hold sway too. "The man is cooking, moves as easy and sure as a chef, but there is nothing to eat here" (102). That's sad. Basically.

A little funny, in a wry way, when he considers the name Parchman (where his grandfather spent some cruel years decades back): "Sometimes I wonder who that parched man was, that man dying for water, that they named the town and the jail after. Wonder if he looked like Pop, straight up and down, brown skin tinged with red, or me, an in-between color, or Michael, the color of milk. Wonder what that man said before he died of a cracked throat" (77).

The man, a pretend man, the namesake to a place, what race would he have? Would it kill him too? You might chuckle until you weep, sort of. Black like Jojo's grandfather, in between like Jojo himself, or white like Jojo's dad = fundamentally different ways of experiencing the same blistering, generally bitter events?

Like Jenkins's film Moonlight a bit now, no?

There are of course some wilderness metaphors all throughout too: "The mosquito that was in Mam’s room has followed us, and he’s buzzing around my head, talking about me like I’m a candle or a cake. So warm and delicious. I swat him away" (46), "cutting them down to protect their houses during storms or to pad their wallets. So much could be happening in those trees" (78), "parents wrapped up in their grief. Spider-bound: web-blind" (69). Most quite sad.

But saddest of all? One of the final images, gushing out pain in run-ons: "They perch like birds, but look as people. They speak with their eyes: He raped me and suffocated me until I died I put my hands up and he shot me eight times she locked me in the shed and starved me to death while I listened to my babies playing with her in the yard they came in my cell in the middle of the night and they hung me they found I could read and they dragged me out to the barn and gouged my eyes before they beat me still I was sick and he said I was an abomination and Jesus say suffer little children so let her go and he put me under the water and I couldn’t breathe. Eyes blink as the sun blazes and winks below the forest line so that the ghosts catch the color, reflect the red" (281).

But also -- not really a quotation, nor even a true paraphrase, just a few little things I picked up all throughout and smushed together -- Spanish moss, cypress, Tupelo, night bugs; pulsing, effervescent, yearning a little. Ward's Sing Unburied Sing is tough certainly, but I think it's written so tenderly and cleverly that it can float above.
]]> <![CDATA[If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit]]> 248954 179 Brenda Ueland 1555972608 Kyle 0 to-read 4.13 2012 If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit
author: Brenda Ueland
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kindred 18889555 The visionary author’s masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.]]> 264 Octavia E. Butler 0807083704 Kyle 0 currently-reading 4.37 1979 Kindred
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/11/05
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Housekeeping 55071104 A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother.

The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere."

Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience.]]> 349 Marilynne Robinson Kyle 4
Ruthie, who narrates as a young girl, is effectively stranded with her sister Lucille by the suicide of their mother. They're taken care of by family, eventually Sylvie, but the book's essentially a monologue. "Whether the genius of this painting was ignorance or fancy I never could decide" Ruthie observes at first (8); and soon it's of course other people who command her attention: "The wanting never subsided until something—a quarrel, a visit—took her attention away" (21).

But realest of all, but ironically also the least real, ethics and morality and religion seem to take the most of Ruthie's mind. "If heaven was to be this world purged of disaster and nuisance, if immortality was to be this life held in poise and arrest, and if this world purged and this life unconsuming could be thought of as world and life" -- I frankly didn't note the dependent clause of this sentence, since it seemed so beside the point (21).

Of course, everything's temporary anyway! The caretakers of the two girls discuss getting rid of them
 benevolently, of course! "'That’s better for the children.' / 'In the short run.' / 'We think too much about the long run.' / 'And for all we know the house could fall tonight.' / They were silent" (55). Benevolence, benevolence.

Actually, tokens of late family invest the whole with softness, when tragic losses surface occasionally: "The dream and the obituary together created in my mind the conviction that my grandmother had entered into some other element upon which our lives floated as weightless, intangible, immiscible, and inseparable as reflections in water. So she was borne to the depths, my grandmother, into the undifferentiated past, and her comb had no more of the warmth of a hand about it than Helen of Troy’s would have" (59). Like Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress, this moment, at least in my view.

Forsyth's '87 film adaptation was an odd but very effective filter for the book, he Scottish, she Idaho-born, the story all melancholy American dysfunction about girls' growing up. An odd passion it was, squeezing sad wisdom out of a personal reminiscence. Incredible what's down-played in the book (men in general, schooling, the fact the whole lower floor of the house was temporarily flooded), to pretty much be totally ignored in the film by design. I mean, the flooding was there -- it'd have to be -- but other stuff wasn't.

Pretty much all that's mentioned of the flood = "that spring, water poured over the thresholds and covered the floor to the depth of four inches, obliging us to wear boots while we did the cooking and washing up" (87). But also of course, obviously somewhere else, "The water shone more brilliantly than the sky, and while we watched, a tall elm tree fell slowly across the road" (88).

"Ruth" done been the name of a Biblical figure (she got her own book!), and this Ruth is all the stoic, observant, waiting, noble person evinced there. Sometimes, the Bible's right sadly enough!! but almost always, it's the screechingly obnoxious, pathetic thing it shouldn't be, lol. Dang! Should have listened to the hoarse and misogynistic imbecile's rants or you wouldn't spend eternity swimming through agonizing hellfire, I guess. Stone 'em if you got 'em. I always say. Stone 'em if you got 'em.

Later, our hero finds herself growing closer to Sylvie, the caretaker she has, than Lucille, her own sister. Something about people tragically growing apart. "We can cook our own food and sleep in our own beds. What could be better?' She shuffled the cards and laid them out for solitaire. / 'I’m very tired of it,' Lucille said. / Sylvie picked up an ace and turned over the card beneath it. 'It’s the loneliness,' Sylvie said. 'Loneliness bothers lots of people" (93).

I think Ruthie knows, though. "Deprived of all perspective and horizon, I found myself reduced to an intuition, and my sister and my aunt to something less than that. I was afraid to put out my hand, for fear it would touch nothing, or to speak, for fear no one would answer. We all stood there silently for a long moment" (99). And then "If one should be shown odd fragments arranged on a silver tray and be told, 'That is a splinter from the True Cross, and that is a nail paring dropped by Barabbas, and that is a bit of lint from under the bed where Pilate’s wife dreamed her dream,' the very ordinariness of the things would recommend them" (103).

Hehe. I'm aware religion ain't all religiosity, though. "Who would think of dusting or sweeping the cobwebs down in a room used for the storage of cans and newspapers—things utterly without value? Sylvie only kept them, I think, because she considered accumulation to be the essence of housekeeping, and because she considered the hoarding of worthless things to be proof of a particularly scrupulous thrift" (249).

Ruthie persists in a higher way always. "Like a soul released, I would find here only the images and simulacra of the things needed to sustain me" (253). And she's Biblical again sometimes. "Imagine that Noah knocked his house apart and used the planks to build an ark, while his neighbors looked on, full of doubt" (254). And many wisdoms about family sometimes too. "You feel them the most when they’re gone (256). "Every sorrow suggests a thousand songs, and every song recalls a thousand sorrows, and so they are infinite in number, and all the same" (266).

In longer spots especially, big and social and individual vs. tiny and personal and family [contradictory, that, but I'd say it holds], are threaded the very meaningful spots of this story:

"We could watch the heat from the fire pull and tease the air out of shape, stretching the fabric of dimension and repose with its furious ascending. The magazine pages went black, and the print and the dark parts of pictures turned silvery black. Weightless and filigreed, they spiraled to a giddy height, till some current caught them in the upper air, some high wind we could not feel assumed them. Sylvie reached up and caught a flying page on the flat of her hand. She showed it to me—in dark silver, a woman’s face laughing, and below that in large letters, BETTER LATE THAN NEVER!" (274).

"For even things lost in a house abide, like forgotten sorrows and incipient dreams, and many household things are of purely sentimental value, like the dim coil of thick hair, saved from my grandmother’s girlhood, which was kept in a hatbox on top of the wardrobe, along with my mother’s gray purse. In the equal light of disinterested scrutiny such things are not themselves. They are transformed into pure object, and are horrible, and must be burned" (286).

Or in miniature could be both, who's to say: "It was so dark there might have been no Sylvie ahead of me, and the bridge might have created itself under my foot as I walked, and vanished again behind me" (290).

But it's the last few pages that finally sculpt it all: "No one watching this woman smear her initials in the steam on her water glass with her first finger, or slip cellophane packets of oyster crackers into her handbag for the sea gulls, could know how her thoughts are thronged by our absence, or know how she does not watch, does not listen, does not wait, does not hope, and always for me and Sylvie (300). I like how the ending really rushes at first through ✝ but finally arrives just at â˜Żïž ]]> 3.82 1980 Housekeeping
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at: 2021/08/01
date added: 2021/08/01
shelves: personal, women, religion, fiction, art
review:
Narrated quaintly and perfectly, like Ruthie is really Emerson's 'transparent eyeball' all the time. It feels nostalgic in the best way, like the house it's set in is every reader's own grandmother's he'd visit occasionally -- drafty, smelling different, homey, unquenchably homey, grandmatronly in a perfect way only his grandma's ever was, for some odd and delicious reason. Precious description elevated always to the universal. Robinson's powerful prose is much better to my mind than Iris Murdoch's, whose The Sea The Sea I tried and didn't jibe with much.

Ruthie, who narrates as a young girl, is effectively stranded with her sister Lucille by the suicide of their mother. They're taken care of by family, eventually Sylvie, but the book's essentially a monologue. "Whether the genius of this painting was ignorance or fancy I never could decide" Ruthie observes at first (8); and soon it's of course other people who command her attention: "The wanting never subsided until something—a quarrel, a visit—took her attention away" (21).

But realest of all, but ironically also the least real, ethics and morality and religion seem to take the most of Ruthie's mind. "If heaven was to be this world purged of disaster and nuisance, if immortality was to be this life held in poise and arrest, and if this world purged and this life unconsuming could be thought of as world and life" -- I frankly didn't note the dependent clause of this sentence, since it seemed so beside the point (21).

Of course, everything's temporary anyway! The caretakers of the two girls discuss getting rid of them
 benevolently, of course! "'That’s better for the children.' / 'In the short run.' / 'We think too much about the long run.' / 'And for all we know the house could fall tonight.' / They were silent" (55). Benevolence, benevolence.

Actually, tokens of late family invest the whole with softness, when tragic losses surface occasionally: "The dream and the obituary together created in my mind the conviction that my grandmother had entered into some other element upon which our lives floated as weightless, intangible, immiscible, and inseparable as reflections in water. So she was borne to the depths, my grandmother, into the undifferentiated past, and her comb had no more of the warmth of a hand about it than Helen of Troy’s would have" (59). Like Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress, this moment, at least in my view.

Forsyth's '87 film adaptation was an odd but very effective filter for the book, he Scottish, she Idaho-born, the story all melancholy American dysfunction about girls' growing up. An odd passion it was, squeezing sad wisdom out of a personal reminiscence. Incredible what's down-played in the book (men in general, schooling, the fact the whole lower floor of the house was temporarily flooded), to pretty much be totally ignored in the film by design. I mean, the flooding was there -- it'd have to be -- but other stuff wasn't.

Pretty much all that's mentioned of the flood = "that spring, water poured over the thresholds and covered the floor to the depth of four inches, obliging us to wear boots while we did the cooking and washing up" (87). But also of course, obviously somewhere else, "The water shone more brilliantly than the sky, and while we watched, a tall elm tree fell slowly across the road" (88).

"Ruth" done been the name of a Biblical figure (she got her own book!), and this Ruth is all the stoic, observant, waiting, noble person evinced there. Sometimes, the Bible's right sadly enough!! but almost always, it's the screechingly obnoxious, pathetic thing it shouldn't be, lol. Dang! Should have listened to the hoarse and misogynistic imbecile's rants or you wouldn't spend eternity swimming through agonizing hellfire, I guess. Stone 'em if you got 'em. I always say. Stone 'em if you got 'em.

Later, our hero finds herself growing closer to Sylvie, the caretaker she has, than Lucille, her own sister. Something about people tragically growing apart. "We can cook our own food and sleep in our own beds. What could be better?' She shuffled the cards and laid them out for solitaire. / 'I’m very tired of it,' Lucille said. / Sylvie picked up an ace and turned over the card beneath it. 'It’s the loneliness,' Sylvie said. 'Loneliness bothers lots of people" (93).

I think Ruthie knows, though. "Deprived of all perspective and horizon, I found myself reduced to an intuition, and my sister and my aunt to something less than that. I was afraid to put out my hand, for fear it would touch nothing, or to speak, for fear no one would answer. We all stood there silently for a long moment" (99). And then "If one should be shown odd fragments arranged on a silver tray and be told, 'That is a splinter from the True Cross, and that is a nail paring dropped by Barabbas, and that is a bit of lint from under the bed where Pilate’s wife dreamed her dream,' the very ordinariness of the things would recommend them" (103).

Hehe. I'm aware religion ain't all religiosity, though. "Who would think of dusting or sweeping the cobwebs down in a room used for the storage of cans and newspapers—things utterly without value? Sylvie only kept them, I think, because she considered accumulation to be the essence of housekeeping, and because she considered the hoarding of worthless things to be proof of a particularly scrupulous thrift" (249).

Ruthie persists in a higher way always. "Like a soul released, I would find here only the images and simulacra of the things needed to sustain me" (253). And she's Biblical again sometimes. "Imagine that Noah knocked his house apart and used the planks to build an ark, while his neighbors looked on, full of doubt" (254). And many wisdoms about family sometimes too. "You feel them the most when they’re gone (256). "Every sorrow suggests a thousand songs, and every song recalls a thousand sorrows, and so they are infinite in number, and all the same" (266).

In longer spots especially, big and social and individual vs. tiny and personal and family [contradictory, that, but I'd say it holds], are threaded the very meaningful spots of this story:

"We could watch the heat from the fire pull and tease the air out of shape, stretching the fabric of dimension and repose with its furious ascending. The magazine pages went black, and the print and the dark parts of pictures turned silvery black. Weightless and filigreed, they spiraled to a giddy height, till some current caught them in the upper air, some high wind we could not feel assumed them. Sylvie reached up and caught a flying page on the flat of her hand. She showed it to me—in dark silver, a woman’s face laughing, and below that in large letters, BETTER LATE THAN NEVER!" (274).

"For even things lost in a house abide, like forgotten sorrows and incipient dreams, and many household things are of purely sentimental value, like the dim coil of thick hair, saved from my grandmother’s girlhood, which was kept in a hatbox on top of the wardrobe, along with my mother’s gray purse. In the equal light of disinterested scrutiny such things are not themselves. They are transformed into pure object, and are horrible, and must be burned" (286).

Or in miniature could be both, who's to say: "It was so dark there might have been no Sylvie ahead of me, and the bridge might have created itself under my foot as I walked, and vanished again behind me" (290).

But it's the last few pages that finally sculpt it all: "No one watching this woman smear her initials in the steam on her water glass with her first finger, or slip cellophane packets of oyster crackers into her handbag for the sea gulls, could know how her thoughts are thronged by our absence, or know how she does not watch, does not listen, does not wait, does not hope, and always for me and Sylvie (300). I like how the ending really rushes at first through ✝ but finally arrives just at â˜Żïž
]]> The Master and Margarita 56969549
An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel’s vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author’s lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing to literally go to hell for him.

What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth, a work whose nuances splendidly emerge in Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor’s superb English translation, with an afterword and extensive commentary by Ellendea Proffer Teasley.]]> 432 Mikhail Bulgakov 1419756508 Kyle 0 to-read 4.20 1967 The Master and Margarita
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Seven Brief Lessons on Physics]]> 26844576 92 Carlo Rovelli 0399184430 Kyle 3 nonfiction, science, shorts
The 4th Lesson, Particles, is cooler: "Quantum mechanics and experiments with particles have taught us that the world is a continuous, restless swarming of things, a continuous coming to light and disappearance of ephemeral entities. A set of vibrations, as in the switched-on hippie world of the 1960s. A world of happenings, not of things." The 5th Lesson, Grains of Space, is less cool but it gets its business done soon, and for that you have to admire it. I think? "The multiplicity generates controversy, but the debate is healthy: until the fog has lifted completely, it’s good to have criticism and opposing views."

The 6th Lesson, Probability, has a very meaningful Einstein quote, after which Rovelli can sort of take the reins back himself and really go another place. He writes in quick summary at the start that "the whole universe is an illusion and that the universal 'flow' of time is a generalization that doesn’t work. When his great Italian friend Michele Besso died, Einstein wrote a moving letter to Michele’s sister: 'Michele has left this strange world a little before me. This means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction made between past, present and future is nothing more than a persistent, stubborn illusion.' Illusion or not, what explains the fact that for us time 'runs,' 'flows,' 'passes'?" and he goes on. Toward and then quickly away from German philosopher Heidegger, etc. Lol.

The final lesson, Ourselves, is a very simple one: "we are nature, in one of its innumerable and infinitely variable expressions. This is what we have learned from our ever-increasing knowledge of the things of this world." But it's not very optimistic, as humanity's apocalypse in general is pretty well assured. "I believe that our species will not last long," Rovelli writes, "It does not seem to be made of the stuff that has allowed the turtle, for example, to continue to exist more or less unchanged for hundreds of millions of years". So I guess humanity will kill itself and, besides the plastic left behind to annoy our fellows after we're gone, the turtles will remain? But who knows.]]> 4.15 2014 Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
author: Carlo Rovelli
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2021/07/12
date added: 2021/07/12
shelves: nonfiction, science, shorts
review:
In the 1st Lesson, the Most Beautiful of Theories, Einstein's General Relativity's explained. All of it, Rovelli writes, "describes a colorful and amazing world where universes explode, space collapses into bottomless holes, time sags and slows near a planet, and the unbounded extensions of interstellar space ripple and sway like the surface of the sea." In the 2nd Lesson, Quanta, it's more grounded: "If Planck is the father of the theory, Einstein is the parent who nurtured it." But, and I hate to quibble here of all places, can't fathers nurture? The 3rd Lesson's a rather plain one, The Architecture of the Cosmos, but it offers to tie together the first two. I don't know if it did, though: "first," "second," "next," here, there, everywhere, etc. I'm already lost? or am I just instantly found? Probably lost, huh?

The 4th Lesson, Particles, is cooler: "Quantum mechanics and experiments with particles have taught us that the world is a continuous, restless swarming of things, a continuous coming to light and disappearance of ephemeral entities. A set of vibrations, as in the switched-on hippie world of the 1960s. A world of happenings, not of things." The 5th Lesson, Grains of Space, is less cool but it gets its business done soon, and for that you have to admire it. I think? "The multiplicity generates controversy, but the debate is healthy: until the fog has lifted completely, it’s good to have criticism and opposing views."

The 6th Lesson, Probability, has a very meaningful Einstein quote, after which Rovelli can sort of take the reins back himself and really go another place. He writes in quick summary at the start that "the whole universe is an illusion and that the universal 'flow' of time is a generalization that doesn’t work. When his great Italian friend Michele Besso died, Einstein wrote a moving letter to Michele’s sister: 'Michele has left this strange world a little before me. This means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction made between past, present and future is nothing more than a persistent, stubborn illusion.' Illusion or not, what explains the fact that for us time 'runs,' 'flows,' 'passes'?" and he goes on. Toward and then quickly away from German philosopher Heidegger, etc. Lol.

The final lesson, Ourselves, is a very simple one: "we are nature, in one of its innumerable and infinitely variable expressions. This is what we have learned from our ever-increasing knowledge of the things of this world." But it's not very optimistic, as humanity's apocalypse in general is pretty well assured. "I believe that our species will not last long," Rovelli writes, "It does not seem to be made of the stuff that has allowed the turtle, for example, to continue to exist more or less unchanged for hundreds of millions of years". So I guess humanity will kill itself and, besides the plastic left behind to annoy our fellows after we're gone, the turtles will remain? But who knows.
]]> The Sympathizer 26893714 The Sympathizer is a Vietnam War novel unlike any other. The narrator, one of the most arresting of recent fiction, is a man of two minds and divided loyalties, a half-French half-Vietnamese communist sleeper agent living in America after the end of the war.

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. But, unbeknownst to the general, this captain is an undercover operative for the communists, who instruct him to add his own name to the list and accompany the general to America. As the general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, the captain continues to observe the group, sending coded letters to an old friend who is now a higher-up within the communist administration. Under suspicion, the captain is forced to contemplate terrible acts in order to remain undetected. And when he falls in love, he finds that his lofty ideals clash violently with his loyalties to the people close to him, a contradiction that may prove unresolvable.

A gripping spy novel, a moving story of love and friendship, and a layered portrayal of a young man drawn into extreme politics, The Sympathizer examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.]]> 403 Viet Thanh Nguyen 0802124941 Kyle 3
But Vietnam provides a rich, queer premise that I thought could be new enough to transform a plot like this. And the author talented enough to maneuver into the story in an unexpected way. And Pulitzer-backed. It could be a shoo-in. How unfortunate then that what I read feels so typical! "How good you are at what you do, even if the things I ask you to do may not be so good" (21). Oh.

And I have but a vague and simple grasp on the war itself politically, unfortunately, like all the grasps I have! Vague. Simple.

At first, there's a noir plot where we unroll our hero -- "mole, who burrows better alone" (37) -- that unfortunately I must say again is pretty typical. And it could be said of course 'Of course it seems that way! It is! As things often are!'; sure, sure, everything not what it is (politics (guerrilla, socialist vs. U.S.-backed, capitalist; sure), national identity (Vietnamese, American, Vietnamese-American), boy, man, man-boy, secret assassin, etc.

What I find a little tastier, to a medium extent I guess, is an escapade as a diversity consultant to some sort of Hollywood production about Vietnam. A Marx quote about people not being able to represent themselves, and therefore they must only be represented by others, holds a soft yet firm sway in this part of the novel. At the end, some torture, some rape, some climactic poetry, etc.: shocking, fine.

The whole thing a confession too of course. Meta-. Intriguing. But if I were a Pulitzer judge
 If I'd read many novels from the year
 (Both pretty huge 'If's that don't apply to me at all frankly! Lol) 
would I grace Nguyen's Sympathizer with the prize? I don't know, kind of doubt it. Even if that were as wonderfully progressive a move as it is for ethnicity exams. As pure literature, the novel doesn't seem the strongest.]]> 4.06 2015 The Sympathizer
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2021/06/05
date added: 2021/06/05
shelves: fiction, international, personal, politics, writing, comedy
review:
Is The Sympathizer all on its own, a unique thing I've never read before? I'm afraid not, as hero uncertain to his own identity, traitorous or something, with one foot in and one out, even as harsh as ethnicity, is a theme I've often seen before. A mole to be frank, double agent, undercover, finding American society (politics initially but life itself soon) at an odd-enough angle. Brand new, every word? Impossible, frankly. I'm well aware.

But Vietnam provides a rich, queer premise that I thought could be new enough to transform a plot like this. And the author talented enough to maneuver into the story in an unexpected way. And Pulitzer-backed. It could be a shoo-in. How unfortunate then that what I read feels so typical! "How good you are at what you do, even if the things I ask you to do may not be so good" (21). Oh.

And I have but a vague and simple grasp on the war itself politically, unfortunately, like all the grasps I have! Vague. Simple.

At first, there's a noir plot where we unroll our hero -- "mole, who burrows better alone" (37) -- that unfortunately I must say again is pretty typical. And it could be said of course 'Of course it seems that way! It is! As things often are!'; sure, sure, everything not what it is (politics (guerrilla, socialist vs. U.S.-backed, capitalist; sure), national identity (Vietnamese, American, Vietnamese-American), boy, man, man-boy, secret assassin, etc.

What I find a little tastier, to a medium extent I guess, is an escapade as a diversity consultant to some sort of Hollywood production about Vietnam. A Marx quote about people not being able to represent themselves, and therefore they must only be represented by others, holds a soft yet firm sway in this part of the novel. At the end, some torture, some rape, some climactic poetry, etc.: shocking, fine.

The whole thing a confession too of course. Meta-. Intriguing. But if I were a Pulitzer judge
 If I'd read many novels from the year
 (Both pretty huge 'If's that don't apply to me at all frankly! Lol) 
would I grace Nguyen's Sympathizer with the prize? I don't know, kind of doubt it. Even if that were as wonderfully progressive a move as it is for ethnicity exams. As pure literature, the novel doesn't seem the strongest.
]]> 11/22/63 10684280
Following his massively successful novel Under the Dome, King sweeps readers back in time to another moment a real life moment when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake's friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane and insanely possible mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake's new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

A tribute to a simpler era and a devastating exercise in escalating suspense, 11/22/63 is Stephen King at his epic best.]]> 864 Stephen King 1451627300 Kyle 3 Pleasantville at first than dark history of Dick's book Man in the High Castle. But certainly one-to-the-next crinkling, maturing. Certainly past the 2014 short film I'm You, Dickhead
 as amusing as that can be about time travel paradoxes that eventually stack up.

King's book is more toward out-there nice philosophy of Ramis's film Groundhog Day or a zillion other scrappy stories. Jake Epping, our hero, wearily says something's "dangerous as any other" (65); or, after a little joke (because in the rules of this particular time-travel scheme, when he went back it could all be erased, redone), "He'd never remember (75); we realize after all this, though, that time is "uniquely malleable" (112).

Today's pervasive, generalized mood of tasteless, hacky crap runs counter, then, to brighter nostalgia of '50s sweetness; but of course that'll end up untrue, by gum. Starry nostalgia, etc. "If I ever gave you the idea that 1958’s all Andy-n-Opie, remember the path, okay? The one lined with poison ivy. And the board over the stream", recalling an icky segregated bathroom (346). Later, he starts a statement "If you’ve ever been homesick, or felt exiled from all the things and people that once defined you" (446) -- lucky for him, I can relate to that! But relating (as petty as a sentiment like that can seem) is fortunately rare in the whole book.

Baby Hitler, though: would you kill him? Haha. Screechingly, whoopingly louder, earlier than King's 11/22/63 premise, but worth considering anyway. Personally, I'm way too feeble to kill anybody, even a baby; so I'm instantly off the hook, so to speak. But if I could? Probably, yes. I'd have more qualms than Epping, I reckon (little of the book's actually his feelings about homicide! A lot of the book that direction would for sure be a drag, but as it is I think we're off balance): I'd have to deliberate on many Holocaust torture/murder victims and his state's whole sponsorship, impunity, ugliness, yada yada. Boring!

Plus, would the baby for sure become the identical adult? Would stopping Hitler prevent the rise of the Third Reich (weren't other Teutonic obsessives, and maybe other failed painters, on track for hating Jews, building fascist empires?), the Holocaust (systematic persecution could be Japanese on Chinese?), or WWII (Mussolini might have ramped up Italian military, no?). Who knows? Well, historians have their educated guesses, but when all's said and done no one can know for sure. Until someone can (except in fiction, and for an event that'd be American in the early '60s): so here we are. Again.

Underneath all the time travel weirdness lies a regular mystery plot, with regular romance and events. King probably intended that mystery, a mystery of love, of romance, to be the core of his whole thing, and JFK time travel to be its dressing. But oh well! Epping, introduced to the phenomenon by Al Templeton, goes back as "George Amberson" to stop some killings (first civilians and then the 35th President himself!) but while there falls in love, lives life, the inevitable.

All with mostly peppy but sometimes grumbly, sometimes adorably rough asides, like "But blocked? Unable to feel my feelings? No, I have never been those things" (21) or when he uses "I'm flagellating myself" as an expression and somebody else takes it teasingly/flirtatiously as a sarcastic joke (32). Eventually, the average miracle (like Hallorann?) says weird stuff like "bastard-ball" (142) and "suck job" (143). Elsewhere, we find "a fug" (202). Frankly, I don't know these things. But it's all good: I'm satisfied. Enough. Again.

We know the alcohol angst, though, as a King trademark: "many already leaving Sobriety City on the Alcohol Express" (419) and "a hollow-eyed intensity that suggested hangover" (470). Better is the little joke about Lee Harvey Oswald having houseplants -- which Jake uses as an excuse for skulking about his place, but is repeatedly disbelieved, Ă  la an incredulous "He had plants?" exclamation -- for making readers chuckle.

Curt plot hints roll along, in a long way but certainly a quick way
 "it would have been simple" to look up a name before I went back (168). "Richie and Bev had been the right ones" to dance with (193). After all, "It didn't seem likely" (274). To a religious disbeliever, "If God had wanted you to know that part, He would have told you" (344).

There are good expressions like "Life turns on a dime. Sometimes toward us, but more often it spins away, flirting and flashing as it goes" (485). But also some cringey expressions like "And the crowd, as they say, goes wild" (513). But, shrug, what do we do?

In darker wrinkles is some ghastly misogyny and nihilism: "bring children into this filthy world? It's all going to blow up anyway, anyone who reads the paper can see that coming" (528). Except it didn't: duh! Earlier, of course, we'd heard "Life is too sweet to give up without a fight, don’t you think?" (409). Anti-life and pro-life yowls like those are few but pressing.

But in opposition, we find some simple teacher-happy stuff? Jake's an English teacher both in regular present life and artificial past life. "We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it’s too late. 'I don’t remember,' I said" (552). And simple political hops? "But did not Shakespeare say a man can smile, and smile, and be a villain? Do you know that Kennedy has okayed a CIA plan to assassinate Castro? Yes! They’ve already tried—and failed, thank God" (604).

In general of course, the squeaky-clean, King-managed trope of time travel is handled in an intricate but soft way all the time here. Shallow sometimes (whoa, 1958, nice), deep sometimes (what should each person do, when, why, a zillion times exponentially more complex), which can prompt a whole lot of ethical pondering somewhere else, in the reader, I guess. The book wisely sidesteps most of that on its surface text. Only in subtext does it really deal with it.

Peripheral to the twin pillars of 'Jake preventing JFK assassination' and 'Jake falling in love with Sadie, a girl of a whole different time and her own sordid dramas' is a smaller plot: going into the past just to win some bets, even if you're careful with them, can lead to some Mob nastiness. Tiny motifs (dance), tiny pop culture hints (music, TV) pervade the margins too. In I guess an overlong text where King builds somewhat a non-King plot, there's a lot of charm anyway, some excitement, even a little inspiration. The length doesn't hurt.]]> 4.22 2011 11/22/63
author: Stephen King
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2021/04/01
date added: 2021/04/06
shelves: fiction, history, politics, science
review:
Like almost all King's lucky, cute prose, it can seem effortless! The less effort it seems like it would have taken, though = the more it actually took. I know. Marvelously tidy too, seeming sort of like Harlan Ellison or Kurt Vonnegut in a little sense. We're deeper into bright pluckiness of Ross's film Pleasantville at first than dark history of Dick's book Man in the High Castle. But certainly one-to-the-next crinkling, maturing. Certainly past the 2014 short film I'm You, Dickhead
 as amusing as that can be about time travel paradoxes that eventually stack up.

King's book is more toward out-there nice philosophy of Ramis's film Groundhog Day or a zillion other scrappy stories. Jake Epping, our hero, wearily says something's "dangerous as any other" (65); or, after a little joke (because in the rules of this particular time-travel scheme, when he went back it could all be erased, redone), "He'd never remember (75); we realize after all this, though, that time is "uniquely malleable" (112).

Today's pervasive, generalized mood of tasteless, hacky crap runs counter, then, to brighter nostalgia of '50s sweetness; but of course that'll end up untrue, by gum. Starry nostalgia, etc. "If I ever gave you the idea that 1958’s all Andy-n-Opie, remember the path, okay? The one lined with poison ivy. And the board over the stream", recalling an icky segregated bathroom (346). Later, he starts a statement "If you’ve ever been homesick, or felt exiled from all the things and people that once defined you" (446) -- lucky for him, I can relate to that! But relating (as petty as a sentiment like that can seem) is fortunately rare in the whole book.

Baby Hitler, though: would you kill him? Haha. Screechingly, whoopingly louder, earlier than King's 11/22/63 premise, but worth considering anyway. Personally, I'm way too feeble to kill anybody, even a baby; so I'm instantly off the hook, so to speak. But if I could? Probably, yes. I'd have more qualms than Epping, I reckon (little of the book's actually his feelings about homicide! A lot of the book that direction would for sure be a drag, but as it is I think we're off balance): I'd have to deliberate on many Holocaust torture/murder victims and his state's whole sponsorship, impunity, ugliness, yada yada. Boring!

Plus, would the baby for sure become the identical adult? Would stopping Hitler prevent the rise of the Third Reich (weren't other Teutonic obsessives, and maybe other failed painters, on track for hating Jews, building fascist empires?), the Holocaust (systematic persecution could be Japanese on Chinese?), or WWII (Mussolini might have ramped up Italian military, no?). Who knows? Well, historians have their educated guesses, but when all's said and done no one can know for sure. Until someone can (except in fiction, and for an event that'd be American in the early '60s): so here we are. Again.

Underneath all the time travel weirdness lies a regular mystery plot, with regular romance and events. King probably intended that mystery, a mystery of love, of romance, to be the core of his whole thing, and JFK time travel to be its dressing. But oh well! Epping, introduced to the phenomenon by Al Templeton, goes back as "George Amberson" to stop some killings (first civilians and then the 35th President himself!) but while there falls in love, lives life, the inevitable.

All with mostly peppy but sometimes grumbly, sometimes adorably rough asides, like "But blocked? Unable to feel my feelings? No, I have never been those things" (21) or when he uses "I'm flagellating myself" as an expression and somebody else takes it teasingly/flirtatiously as a sarcastic joke (32). Eventually, the average miracle (like Hallorann?) says weird stuff like "bastard-ball" (142) and "suck job" (143). Elsewhere, we find "a fug" (202). Frankly, I don't know these things. But it's all good: I'm satisfied. Enough. Again.

We know the alcohol angst, though, as a King trademark: "many already leaving Sobriety City on the Alcohol Express" (419) and "a hollow-eyed intensity that suggested hangover" (470). Better is the little joke about Lee Harvey Oswald having houseplants -- which Jake uses as an excuse for skulking about his place, but is repeatedly disbelieved, Ă  la an incredulous "He had plants?" exclamation -- for making readers chuckle.

Curt plot hints roll along, in a long way but certainly a quick way
 "it would have been simple" to look up a name before I went back (168). "Richie and Bev had been the right ones" to dance with (193). After all, "It didn't seem likely" (274). To a religious disbeliever, "If God had wanted you to know that part, He would have told you" (344).

There are good expressions like "Life turns on a dime. Sometimes toward us, but more often it spins away, flirting and flashing as it goes" (485). But also some cringey expressions like "And the crowd, as they say, goes wild" (513). But, shrug, what do we do?

In darker wrinkles is some ghastly misogyny and nihilism: "bring children into this filthy world? It's all going to blow up anyway, anyone who reads the paper can see that coming" (528). Except it didn't: duh! Earlier, of course, we'd heard "Life is too sweet to give up without a fight, don’t you think?" (409). Anti-life and pro-life yowls like those are few but pressing.

But in opposition, we find some simple teacher-happy stuff? Jake's an English teacher both in regular present life and artificial past life. "We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it’s too late. 'I don’t remember,' I said" (552). And simple political hops? "But did not Shakespeare say a man can smile, and smile, and be a villain? Do you know that Kennedy has okayed a CIA plan to assassinate Castro? Yes! They’ve already tried—and failed, thank God" (604).

In general of course, the squeaky-clean, King-managed trope of time travel is handled in an intricate but soft way all the time here. Shallow sometimes (whoa, 1958, nice), deep sometimes (what should each person do, when, why, a zillion times exponentially more complex), which can prompt a whole lot of ethical pondering somewhere else, in the reader, I guess. The book wisely sidesteps most of that on its surface text. Only in subtext does it really deal with it.

Peripheral to the twin pillars of 'Jake preventing JFK assassination' and 'Jake falling in love with Sadie, a girl of a whole different time and her own sordid dramas' is a smaller plot: going into the past just to win some bets, even if you're careful with them, can lead to some Mob nastiness. Tiny motifs (dance), tiny pop culture hints (music, TV) pervade the margins too. In I guess an overlong text where King builds somewhat a non-King plot, there's a lot of charm anyway, some excitement, even a little inspiration. The length doesn't hurt.
]]> Minor Works 3232
II. Logical: "Categories"; "On Interpretation"; "Analytics" ("Prior" and "Posterior"); "On Sophistical Refutations"; "Topica."

III. Physical: Twenty-six works (some suspect) including astronomy, generation and destruction, the senses, memory, sleep, dreams, life, facts about animals, etc.

IV. "Metaphysics" on being as being.

V. On Art: "Art of Rhetoric" and "Poetics."

VI. Other works including the "Athenian Constitution"; more works also of doubtful authorship.

VII. Fragments of various works such as dialogues on philosophy and literature; and of treatises on rhetoric, politics and metaphysics. The Loeb Classical Library(r) edition of Aristotle is in twenty-three volumes.]]> 528 Aristotle 0674993381 Kyle 2 classics, nonfiction
But seriously, I learned from this book that "worms are bred in snow" and that threw me for a bit of a loop. They are?? Who says?

Also, setting aside language and time period, imagine if Aristotle wrote On Plants today, word-for-word, and it were wildly popular; but still somehow, a little scientifically dubious. He'd go on NPR to discuss his botanical theories and defend them against the opposing viewpoints that had thousands of years behind them. Who's to say who's right? It's interesting anyway. Damn.]]> 4.21 1963 Minor Works
author: Aristotle
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1963
rating: 2
read at: 2021/03/01
date added: 2021/03/21
shelves: classics, nonfiction
review:
You thought Jeff Feuerzeig's 2005 documentary The Devil & Daniel Johnston was the quote-unquote "longest, scariest commercial for Mountain Dew I've ever seen", but this Greek dude Aristotle's book On Plants is even longer and scarier than that. It doesn't explicitly name Mountain Dew but I understand the subtle machinations in its text. Just trust me.

But seriously, I learned from this book that "worms are bred in snow" and that threw me for a bit of a loop. They are?? Who says?

Also, setting aside language and time period, imagine if Aristotle wrote On Plants today, word-for-word, and it were wildly popular; but still somehow, a little scientifically dubious. He'd go on NPR to discuss his botanical theories and defend them against the opposing viewpoints that had thousands of years behind them. Who's to say who's right? It's interesting anyway. Damn.
]]> <![CDATA[Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can]]> 52759439 An urgent and definitive collection of essays from leaders and experts championing the Green New Deal—and a detailed playbook for how we can win it—including contributions by leading activists and progressive writers like Varshini Prakash, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Bill McKibben, Rev William Barber II, and more.

In October 2018, scientists warned that we have less than 12 years left to transform our economy away from fossil fuels, or face catastrophic climate change. At that moment, there was no plan in the US to decarbonize our economy that fast. Less than two years later, every major Democratic presidential candidate has embraced the vision of the Green New Deal—a rapid, vast transformation of our economy to avert climate catastrophe while securing economic and racial justice for all.

What happened? A new generation of leaders confronted the political establishment in Washington DC with a simple message: the climate crisis is here, and the Green New Deal is our last, best hope for a livable future. Now comes the hard part: turning that vision into the law of the land.

In Winning a Green New Deal, leading youth activists, journalists, and policymakers explain why we need a transformative agenda to avert climate catastrophe, and how our movement can organize to win. Featuring essays by Varshini Prakash, cofounder of Sunrise Movement; Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Green New Deal policy architect; Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist; Bill McKibben, internationally renowned environmentalist; Mary Kay Henry, the President of the Service Employees International Union, and others we’ll learn why the climate crisis cannot be solved unless we also confront inequality and racism, how movements can redefine what’s politically possible and overcome the opposition of fossil fuel billionaires, and how a Green New Deal will build a just and thriving economy for all of us.

For anyone looking to understand the movement for a Green New Deal, and join the fight for a livable future, there is no resource as clear and practical as Winning the Green New Deal.]]> 361 Guido Girgenti 198214243X Kyle 4
And you know sloganeering's not so daft: it's absolutely necessary. Always away from my favorite stereotype anyway of environmentalists 'shivering in the dark, eating beans', instead the GND's all about rebuilding everything in a more equitable, sustainable, healthy way: "The Green New Deal is good living" (xviii).

Essay 1, in Part 1 ("The Crisis They Won't Let Us Solve"), kind of headlines with the carbon percentage gloom that I know is real but is nevertheless a little weaker, whereas Essay 2 spins those truths into better and more effective turns of phrase: simple facts like just hiking taxes won't do it (France tried and a backlash there worsened the problem) or simple mordant dad humor like "this increasingly balmy rock we call home" (25).

Essay 3 is short but pretty provocative, all about how averting climate catastrophe is pretty much impossible under our current economic model. Unregulated capitalism, besides being cruel and short-sighted in general, birthed the current crisis, fosters it by protecting those who maintain it and punishing those who try to correct it, and is naturally committed to a destructive, awful future.

Part II: "Green New Deal Visions and Policies" gets concrete. McKibben, Gunn-Wright, and others offer crisp, bold backing to the proposals. I appreciate when economic truth is used; not 'costs now' whining but 'benefits later, and also reducing a later burden' reality; so much the fault of spoiled and short-sighted politicians, it's not even funny.

Some of the interior, meta stuff can be a little dry, if like me you're not planning on starting any protest movements soon. But it's all still interesting. "winning slowly is the same as losing" (140), and people power + political power = Sunrise's theory of change. Occupy Wall Street was a sobering recent lesson in how promising protest movements might crumble.

History, then, specifically white supremacy. America's third reconstruction (post-Civil War one was first, Civil Rights was second, Green New Deal has to be third), as we quickly go through race in America. "We cannot free ourselves from our dependence on oil without freeing ourselves from the lies that were used to justify our dependence on stolen land and stolen labor" (203). Then, the labor movement, and political nuances thereof, in our United States.

Then, quoting Mehdi Hasan briefly to say "Democrats bringing a knife to a gun fight while Republicans bring a rocket launcher (250) & the Democratic Party "isn't another team, it's the arena" (251). Shortly after, clinching pro-labor, Wagner act, joining all that good stuff to climate awareness (269). I'm not a political scientist, so I don't grok much. But it's all good, this volume. The Green New Deal surmounting climate change is the issue of my lifetime and probably yours, so I think I better be adequately well-read on it and I think you could be as well.]]> 4.26 2020 Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can
author: Guido Girgenti
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2021/02/23
date added: 2021/02/24
shelves: nonfiction, politics, science, epistolary
review:
Hollow inspiration is what it seems like all inspirations, especially the leftist kind I like, have to work against appearing as. Girgenti and Prakash offer with their book a lot of impressive substance to countervail it most profoundly. Neither squat idealism nor dreary paper-pushing can sink far enough in to weaken the basic, awesome core. Basically, environmental doom is real but can really be averted.

And you know sloganeering's not so daft: it's absolutely necessary. Always away from my favorite stereotype anyway of environmentalists 'shivering in the dark, eating beans', instead the GND's all about rebuilding everything in a more equitable, sustainable, healthy way: "The Green New Deal is good living" (xviii).

Essay 1, in Part 1 ("The Crisis They Won't Let Us Solve"), kind of headlines with the carbon percentage gloom that I know is real but is nevertheless a little weaker, whereas Essay 2 spins those truths into better and more effective turns of phrase: simple facts like just hiking taxes won't do it (France tried and a backlash there worsened the problem) or simple mordant dad humor like "this increasingly balmy rock we call home" (25).

Essay 3 is short but pretty provocative, all about how averting climate catastrophe is pretty much impossible under our current economic model. Unregulated capitalism, besides being cruel and short-sighted in general, birthed the current crisis, fosters it by protecting those who maintain it and punishing those who try to correct it, and is naturally committed to a destructive, awful future.

Part II: "Green New Deal Visions and Policies" gets concrete. McKibben, Gunn-Wright, and others offer crisp, bold backing to the proposals. I appreciate when economic truth is used; not 'costs now' whining but 'benefits later, and also reducing a later burden' reality; so much the fault of spoiled and short-sighted politicians, it's not even funny.

Some of the interior, meta stuff can be a little dry, if like me you're not planning on starting any protest movements soon. But it's all still interesting. "winning slowly is the same as losing" (140), and people power + political power = Sunrise's theory of change. Occupy Wall Street was a sobering recent lesson in how promising protest movements might crumble.

History, then, specifically white supremacy. America's third reconstruction (post-Civil War one was first, Civil Rights was second, Green New Deal has to be third), as we quickly go through race in America. "We cannot free ourselves from our dependence on oil without freeing ourselves from the lies that were used to justify our dependence on stolen land and stolen labor" (203). Then, the labor movement, and political nuances thereof, in our United States.

Then, quoting Mehdi Hasan briefly to say "Democrats bringing a knife to a gun fight while Republicans bring a rocket launcher (250) & the Democratic Party "isn't another team, it's the arena" (251). Shortly after, clinching pro-labor, Wagner act, joining all that good stuff to climate awareness (269). I'm not a political scientist, so I don't grok much. But it's all good, this volume. The Green New Deal surmounting climate change is the issue of my lifetime and probably yours, so I think I better be adequately well-read on it and I think you could be as well.
]]> <![CDATA[Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1)]]> 7677
Parque jurĂĄsico, la novela mĂĄs cĂ©lebre de Michael Crichton y una de las mĂĄs leĂ­das en los Ășltimos años, fue adaptada al cine por Steven Spielberg en una pelĂ­cula que se convirtiĂł en el gran acontecimiento cinematogrĂĄfico de 1993 y en el origen del fenĂłmeno de masas llamado «dinomanĂ­a».]]> 467 Michael Crichton 030734813X Kyle 3 animals, fiction, science 3.90 1990 Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1)
author: Michael Crichton
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1990
rating: 3
read at: 1999/06/01
date added: 2021/02/24
shelves: animals, fiction, science
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century]]> 33917107
On November 9th, millions of Americans woke up to the impossible: the election of Donald Trump as president. Against all predictions, one of the most-disliked presidential candidates in history had swept the electoral college, elevating a man with open contempt for democratic norms and institutions to the height of power.

Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, “Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”

Twenty Lessons is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.]]> 127 Timothy Snyder 0804190119 Kyle 4 nonfiction, politics, shorts
I like Snyder's writing sometimes. He has poetic departures, like when TV images can't convey urgency, when every story's 'breaking': viewers/voters are "hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean." Honestly, he can also strike me a bit shallow, though, like when ideologies (eg., Trump's 'post-truth' thing) are just skated over. Brief things aren't unimportant, I know, but sometimes I need some substance, some things fully handled. Ideologies, for instance, so often get short shrift generally, so seeing them get short shrift here again (even though everything else gets short shrift by design) is a bit of a let-down.

Useful phrases like 'Consider' [to begin a sentence illustrating the last point] and 'in other words' [to do much the same in the middle of a sentence] are sometimes over-used, but I guess that's common to history monographs or to short analyses like these. But depth like this (even toward some complications around Ukraine) is tremendously hard to come by in any writer's work.]]> 4.25 2017 On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
author: Timothy Snyder
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2020/09/01
date added: 2021/02/24
shelves: nonfiction, politics, shorts
review:
Accomplished Yale professor as he is, Snyder's doubtless written many books, but On Tyranny's a tiny one. Just the smallest and purest warnings against Trumpism. Smallness and purity can be very effective here, very bold, but sometimes also a little 'Wait, what?'. Academic work is usually decades out of date, so seeing "Trump" and "Putin" and "fake news" in an actual book is enough for my simple tastes, though. Politics nowadays indicate Germany of Hitler or USSR of Stalin in a very simple way.

I like Snyder's writing sometimes. He has poetic departures, like when TV images can't convey urgency, when every story's 'breaking': viewers/voters are "hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean." Honestly, he can also strike me a bit shallow, though, like when ideologies (eg., Trump's 'post-truth' thing) are just skated over. Brief things aren't unimportant, I know, but sometimes I need some substance, some things fully handled. Ideologies, for instance, so often get short shrift generally, so seeing them get short shrift here again (even though everything else gets short shrift by design) is a bit of a let-down.

Useful phrases like 'Consider' [to begin a sentence illustrating the last point] and 'in other words' [to do much the same in the middle of a sentence] are sometimes over-used, but I guess that's common to history monographs or to short analyses like these. But depth like this (even toward some complications around Ukraine) is tremendously hard to come by in any writer's work.
]]> The Moor's Account 21469607
But from the moment the NarvĂĄez expedition landed in Florida, it faced peril—navigational errors, disease, starvation, as well as resistance from indigenous tribes. Within a year there were only four survivors: the expedition’s treasurer, Álvar NĂșñez Cabeza de Vaca; a Spanish nobleman named Alonso del Castillo Maldonado; a young explorer named AndrĂ©s Dorantes de Carranza; and Dorantes’s Moroccan slave, Mustafa al-Zamori, whom the three Spaniards called Estebanico. These four survivors would go on to make a journey across America that would transform them from proud conquistadores to humble servants, from fearful outcasts to faith healers.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0307911675 Kyle 5 Moor's Account is a little like Nadifa Mohamed's Black Mamba Boy, which I also quite enjoyed. Not just for the simple reason both their authors are African women, though that doesn't hurt in neatly tying them together for me; but I think more because of the surprisingly rich masculine voices at their cores. Black Mamba Boy was set decades back, about a boy, while Moor's Account is set centuries back, about a man.

Both historical Africans, though. Both written by women. I'm a white guy reading them. But I think I can relate: "What each of us wants, in the end, whether he is black or white, master or slave, rich or poor, man or woman, is to be remembered after his death" (11). Twee, perfect line to quote there then? Maybe.

In the year [but you won't know the number anyway, since it's an Islamic count our hero uses here, by Hegira; but I guess from 622?]
 Never mind, though. 1527 NarvĂĄez expedition. Only four of the original party -- Álvar NĂșñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, AndrĂ©s Dorantes de Carranza, and Dorantes' enslaved Moor Estevanico -- survived the full thing. Explore Florida and the Gulf Coast, control it, colonize it, establish garrisons. Continually flashing back and forward, Moor's Account charts about a decade of momentous history.

Only a single line from Cabezo de Vaca's real report -- "el cuarto se llama Estevanico, es negro alĂĄrabe, natural de Azamor" ("The fourth is Estevanico, an Arab Negro from Azamor") -- attests fully to the historical truth. So this novel, though it's a novel, has some huge historical shoes to fill.

All along, the colonizers' arrogance, bluster, self-righteousness is naturally quite wrong and evil, but this African guy Estevanico (in their ranks but a slave) feels similar things as Indians I'm guessing: like them (colonizers) but like the Indians too (sensitive, the exploited, the downtrodden). More Ridley Scott's film 1492 than Malick's New World I suppose, but still intriguing. America, y'know! Jesus. We have to illegitimately 'discover' before we can illegitimately 'govern', right?

The hero's life, from angsty success in his own country toward becoming a slave (surprisingly and sadly enough, sort of by 'choice') to colonizers in the New World, is very nicely charted in Lalami's whole book. The devilments of both deep, deep history and deep, deep situation reversal (race, language, time) go hand in hand and make Moor's Account a must-read for this guy [here using thumbs to indicate self]. Realizing "his only means of salvation was to create a fiction" (521)? Hm.

The historical juice is for the most part stirred into the whole story quite wisely. Like McQueen's film 12 Years a Slave at times but also Peter Hunt's 1776. I like Lalami's prose a lot, either minor metaphor (so eager that he appeared to be "posing for an unseen sculptor" (14)) or major theme (I "felt ashamed, because I had been made a witness to these acts of theft and, unable to stop them, an accomplice to them as well" (15)).

Status quo awfulness, enslaving Africans and/or conquering New World natives, is usually shrugged off by some in the book quite heavily: either [so strange these Castilians were that] "just by saying that something was so, they believed that it was" (21). Or, later on, a friar's excuses for "an ordinary man caught in extraordinary circumstances" (124).

Sometimes, I guess, especially when we're dealing in minutiae, it can seem a little simple, everything served up in pat fashion. Curious relic! We condescend to it all, watch them fuss with olden things. Maybe in earlier drafts it was even higher drama, more arch, fussier -- I don't really know, I'm not the writer or a writer -- but there's still a small, marginal feeling of 'Oh boy, another foreign word, patly present this please'.

Kind of like a recent film to me: Twomey's Breadwinner, much different setting but similar historical preciousness, obviousness, tone I find a bit wrong. I'm not quite sure the particular vagaries of historical fiction there (I kind of grasp cinema's but haven't read deeply enough to know literature's), but it feels a little stereotypically low sometimes. Not sticking out exactly but not quite blended in enough.

However, "The women had made witnesses of us, even those of us who had chosen to close our eyes" (155).

Flashbacks to Azemmur in Morocco, where Estevanico came from, have more Arabic to them, while present happenings have more Spanish. There's an imbalance, though, in translating or explaining. I seem to have my hand held more in Morocco than in Florida, things pointed out, defined. All the hand-holding: it annoys me! I often need my hand held, that's not untrue, but it shouldn't be in so obvious a way. I think.

Maybe because Spanish is more a white Westerner's tongue than Arabic, though I personally don't speak either, I'm apter to forgive one than the other oddness in translation or non-translation, explanation or non-explanation, fit or unbelonging. Language I might see in a way that's a little racist, a little chauvinist, sorry. I do not fully grasp everything I do.

The syntax of the main text is pretty nice all things considered, though. Description nicely interwoven with feeling, time swaying present to past. And in smaller terms of dialogue, we feel what we don't feel: "Have you" instead of 'Do you have', no contractions, older and formal, the mood of Quixote often enough in stiff old Spanish or whatnot. By him as an African as well as by his Castilian fellow explorers. Lalami's whole text is like a grown-up and much better My Brother Sam Is Dead for hard historical fiction?

Some expressions repeat -- 'arquebus' a Spanish or Portuguese colonist's weapon; 'Land of the Indians' obvious but 'Land of Corn' a little less so; 'cacique' for Indian chief, pre-Columbian Spanish bleeding into that time decades ahead; 'this servant of God' like the deferential Muslim yours truly -- as obscure or typical little motifs variously enough. I like how little things like this bend time still further, in a woozy and psychedelic way, Africa-Europe-America, all together now; timeline, ethics, feeling.

Estevanico, born Mustafa ibn Muhammad, surrenders himself to survive/escape a drought while trying to support his family. He never sees them again. Slowly/sadly, he meets and befriends fellow slave Ramatullai, only to be yanked away again. Transatlantic then, surviving better than many of the better-fed, better-provisioned Europeans, he encounters hardship after hardship in a new America.

Slavery as an evil/dehumanizing institution, crazily awful to say the least, is seen not just in monochromatic villainy but in more interesting ways. Poverty, unpreparedness to defend against exploitation/colonization, easiest way to surrender against huge shame, etc. There's lots of discussion all the time, in Africa or in America or in some sad mix. I don't know. I'm no historian, and all we have here really is one individual's experience, but I think it proves pretty remarkable.

All the same, he persists sometimes in slavery acceptance, even when he's a slave himself: "I remembered all the times I had seen slaves in the marketplace of my hometown. I had never thought about these men and women, had never wondered how they had ended up in chains, had never worried about who they had left at home and who would miss them and pray for their return. I had passed them and gone about my business, delivering wax to a merchant or buying flour for the evening meal, without dwelling on the sight" (181). And after seeing a fellow slave, a girl, annoyed physically, he "gave many thanks to God that I was not born a woman and did not have to suffer her humiliation" (182).

Surviving? but in an easy, 100% good way or as a 'long-hauler' like today's Covid patients? (Too soon or too long/offensive of a connection to make?) A difficult mix. It depends. Along the way, our hero takes up some medicine (Ă  la Gordon's Physician) and, always, storytelling. (To me, more Levin's Instructions than McGraw's Golden Goblet, though? aside from the obvious difference in quality/aim) "I was alive. The warmth of the sun was on my face and hands" (315) and "The world was not what I wished it to be, but I was alive. I was alive" (347).

Then, Capoque a tribe they're with temporarily; then, Carancahua, a rougher tribe; then, Yguace simplistically better (Chaubekwan a two-spirit, gender-fluid acquaintance of theirs, like a proud second line dancer from New Orleans or something). It's always interesting too to see where religion, whether Muslim or Christian, is in a historical context like this: absent until it's convenient; then, very present. Ha. It's fun to see Jesus just as any old prophet, how a Muslim might, than as the Son of God.

Very appropriate anyway for any holy conquest! They "drifted from the matter of wealth to the matter of God -- few minds can entertain both subjects at once" (511).

Our hero still trusts whites sometimes, too often: "that had been our agreement: we would share all of our earnings" (389) or how some might pretend to be working "to establish imperial settlements through peaceful means" (435) or, even, sadly, realizing some whites could "never be moved by the power of words" (437), so what's he to do anyway? Try a fiction?

He "thought of the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, of all those who had built empires and left behind an imposing trace of their passage in the world. To be present in a place where one empire was ending and another was rising made of me a privileged witness. Yet I did not try to keep a record of the moment. All I wanted was to return to the city I called home" (450).

Sad a little, too, how they seem to have made some Indians "Amigos", Kapo-like betrayers of their own people, after little perks; and what a name they have in general: Amigos. Friends. [Insidious?] And in particular they're renamed too, but not with actual names, just innocuous Spanish nouns. That's one of the ways they work (fascists): conscripting a certain slice of their enemy to exclude themselves and work with them, to divide and conquer, to get the other side to willingly lower themselves and surrender something. Like a name. How does it work honestly, Estevanico fka Mustafa? I'm not blaming. Just curious.

In a petty way, Moor's Account might just leave the reader in shame and disappointment (what have we done? [enslaved, colonized, exploited] and what are we doing [well, New Zealand's celebrating Waitangi Day on Feb 6 still for one thing]), but I bet in a more mature way you could get a lot different out of it. Not really What have _I_ done? or What am _I_ doing now? [not much personally, I swear! Haha] but more What will we do now? Maybe we can foster the Green New Deal or Thrive Agenda and begin to roll back some damage to Indigenous communities.

I guess we're going through good fiction back into history, and we have the opportunity now, as always, to turn historical past to present/future and fiction to actuality.]]> 3.65 2014 The Moor's Account
author: Laila Lalami
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2021/02/10
date added: 2021/02/11
shelves: fiction, history, international, personal, race
review:
Laila Lalami's Moor's Account is a little like Nadifa Mohamed's Black Mamba Boy, which I also quite enjoyed. Not just for the simple reason both their authors are African women, though that doesn't hurt in neatly tying them together for me; but I think more because of the surprisingly rich masculine voices at their cores. Black Mamba Boy was set decades back, about a boy, while Moor's Account is set centuries back, about a man.

Both historical Africans, though. Both written by women. I'm a white guy reading them. But I think I can relate: "What each of us wants, in the end, whether he is black or white, master or slave, rich or poor, man or woman, is to be remembered after his death" (11). Twee, perfect line to quote there then? Maybe.

In the year [but you won't know the number anyway, since it's an Islamic count our hero uses here, by Hegira; but I guess from 622?]
 Never mind, though. 1527 NarvĂĄez expedition. Only four of the original party -- Álvar NĂșñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, AndrĂ©s Dorantes de Carranza, and Dorantes' enslaved Moor Estevanico -- survived the full thing. Explore Florida and the Gulf Coast, control it, colonize it, establish garrisons. Continually flashing back and forward, Moor's Account charts about a decade of momentous history.

Only a single line from Cabezo de Vaca's real report -- "el cuarto se llama Estevanico, es negro alĂĄrabe, natural de Azamor" ("The fourth is Estevanico, an Arab Negro from Azamor") -- attests fully to the historical truth. So this novel, though it's a novel, has some huge historical shoes to fill.

All along, the colonizers' arrogance, bluster, self-righteousness is naturally quite wrong and evil, but this African guy Estevanico (in their ranks but a slave) feels similar things as Indians I'm guessing: like them (colonizers) but like the Indians too (sensitive, the exploited, the downtrodden). More Ridley Scott's film 1492 than Malick's New World I suppose, but still intriguing. America, y'know! Jesus. We have to illegitimately 'discover' before we can illegitimately 'govern', right?

The hero's life, from angsty success in his own country toward becoming a slave (surprisingly and sadly enough, sort of by 'choice') to colonizers in the New World, is very nicely charted in Lalami's whole book. The devilments of both deep, deep history and deep, deep situation reversal (race, language, time) go hand in hand and make Moor's Account a must-read for this guy [here using thumbs to indicate self]. Realizing "his only means of salvation was to create a fiction" (521)? Hm.

The historical juice is for the most part stirred into the whole story quite wisely. Like McQueen's film 12 Years a Slave at times but also Peter Hunt's 1776. I like Lalami's prose a lot, either minor metaphor (so eager that he appeared to be "posing for an unseen sculptor" (14)) or major theme (I "felt ashamed, because I had been made a witness to these acts of theft and, unable to stop them, an accomplice to them as well" (15)).

Status quo awfulness, enslaving Africans and/or conquering New World natives, is usually shrugged off by some in the book quite heavily: either [so strange these Castilians were that] "just by saying that something was so, they believed that it was" (21). Or, later on, a friar's excuses for "an ordinary man caught in extraordinary circumstances" (124).

Sometimes, I guess, especially when we're dealing in minutiae, it can seem a little simple, everything served up in pat fashion. Curious relic! We condescend to it all, watch them fuss with olden things. Maybe in earlier drafts it was even higher drama, more arch, fussier -- I don't really know, I'm not the writer or a writer -- but there's still a small, marginal feeling of 'Oh boy, another foreign word, patly present this please'.

Kind of like a recent film to me: Twomey's Breadwinner, much different setting but similar historical preciousness, obviousness, tone I find a bit wrong. I'm not quite sure the particular vagaries of historical fiction there (I kind of grasp cinema's but haven't read deeply enough to know literature's), but it feels a little stereotypically low sometimes. Not sticking out exactly but not quite blended in enough.

However, "The women had made witnesses of us, even those of us who had chosen to close our eyes" (155).

Flashbacks to Azemmur in Morocco, where Estevanico came from, have more Arabic to them, while present happenings have more Spanish. There's an imbalance, though, in translating or explaining. I seem to have my hand held more in Morocco than in Florida, things pointed out, defined. All the hand-holding: it annoys me! I often need my hand held, that's not untrue, but it shouldn't be in so obvious a way. I think.

Maybe because Spanish is more a white Westerner's tongue than Arabic, though I personally don't speak either, I'm apter to forgive one than the other oddness in translation or non-translation, explanation or non-explanation, fit or unbelonging. Language I might see in a way that's a little racist, a little chauvinist, sorry. I do not fully grasp everything I do.

The syntax of the main text is pretty nice all things considered, though. Description nicely interwoven with feeling, time swaying present to past. And in smaller terms of dialogue, we feel what we don't feel: "Have you" instead of 'Do you have', no contractions, older and formal, the mood of Quixote often enough in stiff old Spanish or whatnot. By him as an African as well as by his Castilian fellow explorers. Lalami's whole text is like a grown-up and much better My Brother Sam Is Dead for hard historical fiction?

Some expressions repeat -- 'arquebus' a Spanish or Portuguese colonist's weapon; 'Land of the Indians' obvious but 'Land of Corn' a little less so; 'cacique' for Indian chief, pre-Columbian Spanish bleeding into that time decades ahead; 'this servant of God' like the deferential Muslim yours truly -- as obscure or typical little motifs variously enough. I like how little things like this bend time still further, in a woozy and psychedelic way, Africa-Europe-America, all together now; timeline, ethics, feeling.

Estevanico, born Mustafa ibn Muhammad, surrenders himself to survive/escape a drought while trying to support his family. He never sees them again. Slowly/sadly, he meets and befriends fellow slave Ramatullai, only to be yanked away again. Transatlantic then, surviving better than many of the better-fed, better-provisioned Europeans, he encounters hardship after hardship in a new America.

Slavery as an evil/dehumanizing institution, crazily awful to say the least, is seen not just in monochromatic villainy but in more interesting ways. Poverty, unpreparedness to defend against exploitation/colonization, easiest way to surrender against huge shame, etc. There's lots of discussion all the time, in Africa or in America or in some sad mix. I don't know. I'm no historian, and all we have here really is one individual's experience, but I think it proves pretty remarkable.

All the same, he persists sometimes in slavery acceptance, even when he's a slave himself: "I remembered all the times I had seen slaves in the marketplace of my hometown. I had never thought about these men and women, had never wondered how they had ended up in chains, had never worried about who they had left at home and who would miss them and pray for their return. I had passed them and gone about my business, delivering wax to a merchant or buying flour for the evening meal, without dwelling on the sight" (181). And after seeing a fellow slave, a girl, annoyed physically, he "gave many thanks to God that I was not born a woman and did not have to suffer her humiliation" (182).

Surviving? but in an easy, 100% good way or as a 'long-hauler' like today's Covid patients? (Too soon or too long/offensive of a connection to make?) A difficult mix. It depends. Along the way, our hero takes up some medicine (Ă  la Gordon's Physician) and, always, storytelling. (To me, more Levin's Instructions than McGraw's Golden Goblet, though? aside from the obvious difference in quality/aim) "I was alive. The warmth of the sun was on my face and hands" (315) and "The world was not what I wished it to be, but I was alive. I was alive" (347).

Then, Capoque a tribe they're with temporarily; then, Carancahua, a rougher tribe; then, Yguace simplistically better (Chaubekwan a two-spirit, gender-fluid acquaintance of theirs, like a proud second line dancer from New Orleans or something). It's always interesting too to see where religion, whether Muslim or Christian, is in a historical context like this: absent until it's convenient; then, very present. Ha. It's fun to see Jesus just as any old prophet, how a Muslim might, than as the Son of God.

Very appropriate anyway for any holy conquest! They "drifted from the matter of wealth to the matter of God -- few minds can entertain both subjects at once" (511).

Our hero still trusts whites sometimes, too often: "that had been our agreement: we would share all of our earnings" (389) or how some might pretend to be working "to establish imperial settlements through peaceful means" (435) or, even, sadly, realizing some whites could "never be moved by the power of words" (437), so what's he to do anyway? Try a fiction?

He "thought of the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, of all those who had built empires and left behind an imposing trace of their passage in the world. To be present in a place where one empire was ending and another was rising made of me a privileged witness. Yet I did not try to keep a record of the moment. All I wanted was to return to the city I called home" (450).

Sad a little, too, how they seem to have made some Indians "Amigos", Kapo-like betrayers of their own people, after little perks; and what a name they have in general: Amigos. Friends. [Insidious?] And in particular they're renamed too, but not with actual names, just innocuous Spanish nouns. That's one of the ways they work (fascists): conscripting a certain slice of their enemy to exclude themselves and work with them, to divide and conquer, to get the other side to willingly lower themselves and surrender something. Like a name. How does it work honestly, Estevanico fka Mustafa? I'm not blaming. Just curious.

In a petty way, Moor's Account might just leave the reader in shame and disappointment (what have we done? [enslaved, colonized, exploited] and what are we doing [well, New Zealand's celebrating Waitangi Day on Feb 6 still for one thing]), but I bet in a more mature way you could get a lot different out of it. Not really What have _I_ done? or What am _I_ doing now? [not much personally, I swear! Haha] but more What will we do now? Maybe we can foster the Green New Deal or Thrive Agenda and begin to roll back some damage to Indigenous communities.

I guess we're going through good fiction back into history, and we have the opportunity now, as always, to turn historical past to present/future and fiction to actuality.
]]> Normal People 45458902
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.
--penguinrandomhouse.com]]> 288 Sally Rooney 1984822195 Kyle 2
Such an on-the-nose thing anyway: strangeness, normalcy. So high school pathetic. You want to fit in, be invisible, like everybody else, but also totally unique, a star of every room you enter. Pathetic kid, selfish, small, typical. But relatable! I'm not Irish and I didn't take German or anything, but I relate! Rooney's book seems to run right through human experience -- first sociology (ethics around other people, big groups), then psychology (personal behavior), and then philosophy (existentialism deep inside) -- of Connell the guy and Marianne the girl. Both normal. Everything normal.

The later part, more philosophical for the both of them than just glumly reporting their relationship together, is a little richer for me. A little less wearying, I guess. All top-notch writing, a lot of swell metaphors, good rhythm to the prose; but, I don't know, just kind of down. I'm already alive; I don't need more life; do people assume that's what I need? I like when the later part reflects on the earlier part: "You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget", "All these years they've been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions", etc.]]> 3.49 2018 Normal People
author: Sally Rooney
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2021/01/24
date added: 2021/01/24
shelves: fiction, international, personal, romance, writing
review:
"such a strange person" is the kind of sentiment Rooney's Normal People might allow early on. Teen characters, veering between austerity of yore (Russian classics like Anna Karenina) and hip irony of novelty (surprising greatness of films like Brick or Afterschool), have awkward sexual feelings. It's very much like the insecure experiences we've all had, not that I've ever personally been anything but 100% secure, confident, dozens of close compatriots, years of firm experience. I have, personally. I'm not a strange person and have never been one. But maybe among my readers are some strange, unusual, abnormal.

Such an on-the-nose thing anyway: strangeness, normalcy. So high school pathetic. You want to fit in, be invisible, like everybody else, but also totally unique, a star of every room you enter. Pathetic kid, selfish, small, typical. But relatable! I'm not Irish and I didn't take German or anything, but I relate! Rooney's book seems to run right through human experience -- first sociology (ethics around other people, big groups), then psychology (personal behavior), and then philosophy (existentialism deep inside) -- of Connell the guy and Marianne the girl. Both normal. Everything normal.

The later part, more philosophical for the both of them than just glumly reporting their relationship together, is a little richer for me. A little less wearying, I guess. All top-notch writing, a lot of swell metaphors, good rhythm to the prose; but, I don't know, just kind of down. I'm already alive; I don't need more life; do people assume that's what I need? I like when the later part reflects on the earlier part: "You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget", "All these years they've been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions", etc.
]]> Agent Running in the Field 44033409 A new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author John le Carré

Set in London in 2018, Agent Running in the Field follows a twenty-six year old solitary figure who, in a desperate attempt to resist the political turbulence swirling around him, makes connections that will take him down a dangerous path. In his plot and characterization le Carré is as thrilling as ever and in the way he writes about our times he proves himself, once again, to be the greatest chronicler of our age.]]> 288 John Le Carré 1984878883 Kyle 3 Fresh Air re-aired some interviews with him and so I thought I'd give him a read. My experience has been mostly cinematic: Constant Gardener (with thanks to Rachel Weisz) and Most Wanted Man (with some reluctant thanks to the late, usually great Philip Seymour Hoffman). The reputation is kind of impressive still. Shallow spy formula, I suppose, but built in a more thoughtful, less gung-ho way.

The careerist stuff is kind of interesting, I'll say. Certainly not plain in the way of Fleming's James Bond. "The natural-born agent-runner is his own man" versus "sheer bloody lunacy" we find we're pulled between; "I am not afraid of heights but dislike depths" our hero Nat says about himself later. Especially when he needs to confess to his own daughter Steff 'I'm a spy, honey' the whole landscape starts to clarify: "We welfare them. If it's money they're after, we give them a pot of it. If they're into God, we do God with them. It's whatever works, Steff. We're their friends. They trust us. We provide for their needs. They provide for ours. It's the way of the world."

I think there are three levels to Nat's life: extracurricular (which we open on, as he plays badminton at a neighborhood athletic club); occupational (the meat of the book, all the action, the spy stuff, mostly against pro-Putin Ukraine); relational (family/romance, core to him but maybe marginal to us). Quite a lot of British stuff, not just expressions of course but manner, tone, feeling. Nat's wife is Prue and their daughter's the aforementioned Steff, and it's a bit predictable soap opera but a bit fresh. Nat has to lead this office called the Haven, while simultaneously dealing with mysterious Ed -- extracurricular, since he plays badminton, but also occupational, since he's spoken of like a spy asset, persists in Brexit- and Trump-centric political discussions, eerie reminders Nat had to filter everything back to handler types -- as well as lurching shudders, in general, of unhealthy world affairs.

For as encouraging as it is to see not just contemporary names dropped in as treats but full discussions had, still the anti-Trump, anti-Brexit material seems woefully simple to me. I don't know. We're not just opposed to a football team, tsk-tsking a few isolated little political choices, seeing a storm on the horizon and yelling out at it "This sucks! I hate storms!" (I don't think Le Carré's ever as dismissive as that, as the worst of that simplicity, but I don't think his writing's A1.) It's a bad situation in general, so general, so wide. Gross.

For instance -- and I'm sorry to be too American, but it's all I know -- a Trump cult. It's not just one guy I'm against, but millions and millions of scummy Nazis who said 'Sure' to him, out of ignorance or malice or whatnot, underneath him. What will we do with them? The same may be true of Brexit, no? There's a cult? Ed, Nat's badminton acquaintance cum spy target, accepts some political damage: "'Yeah, well,' he agreed in the faraway voice of a man coming round from an anaesthetic. 'There were plenty of good Germans too'."

Nat soon has to deal with a colleague of his, Florence, resigning (can a spy just do that?) as well as with an old case, Pitchfork aka Sergei, activating again. It was assumed Sergei was just a low-intensity sleeper agent, but like the interesting Woodpecker aka Arkady he might be 'waking up' as it were. Soon, some trouble. Some little ethical chats then with Bryn (a supervisor) and others. Ending a little hurried and flat, but some endings just are.]]> 4.10 2019 Agent Running in the Field
author: John Le Carré
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2020/12/28
date added: 2020/12/28
shelves: fiction, politics, personal, international
review:
Le Carré's Agent Running in the Field is the late spy novelist's last book. It's a standalone thing, supposedly the guy's "Brexit novel", well apart from his famous character Smiley (which I'm loath to jump anywhere toward; sorry). Le Carré's usually seemed kind of fluffy to me in reputation, too genre (though his literary star isn't as low as Ludlum's), but I did enjoy when NPR's Fresh Air re-aired some interviews with him and so I thought I'd give him a read. My experience has been mostly cinematic: Constant Gardener (with thanks to Rachel Weisz) and Most Wanted Man (with some reluctant thanks to the late, usually great Philip Seymour Hoffman). The reputation is kind of impressive still. Shallow spy formula, I suppose, but built in a more thoughtful, less gung-ho way.

The careerist stuff is kind of interesting, I'll say. Certainly not plain in the way of Fleming's James Bond. "The natural-born agent-runner is his own man" versus "sheer bloody lunacy" we find we're pulled between; "I am not afraid of heights but dislike depths" our hero Nat says about himself later. Especially when he needs to confess to his own daughter Steff 'I'm a spy, honey' the whole landscape starts to clarify: "We welfare them. If it's money they're after, we give them a pot of it. If they're into God, we do God with them. It's whatever works, Steff. We're their friends. They trust us. We provide for their needs. They provide for ours. It's the way of the world."

I think there are three levels to Nat's life: extracurricular (which we open on, as he plays badminton at a neighborhood athletic club); occupational (the meat of the book, all the action, the spy stuff, mostly against pro-Putin Ukraine); relational (family/romance, core to him but maybe marginal to us). Quite a lot of British stuff, not just expressions of course but manner, tone, feeling. Nat's wife is Prue and their daughter's the aforementioned Steff, and it's a bit predictable soap opera but a bit fresh. Nat has to lead this office called the Haven, while simultaneously dealing with mysterious Ed -- extracurricular, since he plays badminton, but also occupational, since he's spoken of like a spy asset, persists in Brexit- and Trump-centric political discussions, eerie reminders Nat had to filter everything back to handler types -- as well as lurching shudders, in general, of unhealthy world affairs.

For as encouraging as it is to see not just contemporary names dropped in as treats but full discussions had, still the anti-Trump, anti-Brexit material seems woefully simple to me. I don't know. We're not just opposed to a football team, tsk-tsking a few isolated little political choices, seeing a storm on the horizon and yelling out at it "This sucks! I hate storms!" (I don't think Le Carré's ever as dismissive as that, as the worst of that simplicity, but I don't think his writing's A1.) It's a bad situation in general, so general, so wide. Gross.

For instance -- and I'm sorry to be too American, but it's all I know -- a Trump cult. It's not just one guy I'm against, but millions and millions of scummy Nazis who said 'Sure' to him, out of ignorance or malice or whatnot, underneath him. What will we do with them? The same may be true of Brexit, no? There's a cult? Ed, Nat's badminton acquaintance cum spy target, accepts some political damage: "'Yeah, well,' he agreed in the faraway voice of a man coming round from an anaesthetic. 'There were plenty of good Germans too'."

Nat soon has to deal with a colleague of his, Florence, resigning (can a spy just do that?) as well as with an old case, Pitchfork aka Sergei, activating again. It was assumed Sergei was just a low-intensity sleeper agent, but like the interesting Woodpecker aka Arkady he might be 'waking up' as it were. Soon, some trouble. Some little ethical chats then with Bryn (a supervisor) and others. Ending a little hurried and flat, but some endings just are.
]]> Heavy 41160902 Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. Heavy is a “gorgeous, gutting
generous” (The New York Times) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon’s experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

Defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family through years of haunting implosions and long reverberations.]]> 241 Kiese Laymon 1501125664 Kyle 3
It can be its own country, can't it? Mississippi. As well as the whole Dixie. We tried, had some success for a while, but it was ultimately so bad we had to cut our losses. Evacuate out all your reasonable liberals, evacuate in all our Southern-sympathizing dummies, wipe our hands of all that Civil War gunk, etc. Watch them destroy themselves. Sorry. A modest proposal.

Also, the domestic abuse, corporal punishment from mother to son, is a major concern to me. I'm not willing to dismiss it as 'racial thing I wouldn't understand' or what have you, akin to female genital mutilation. Stop it? Stop glorifying it? Stop allowing it as part of 'trials and tribulations of growing up sometimes, all normal' or whatever? Just tsk-tsk-aww-jeez? perennially? every decade different and yet totally the same? Stop putting it in your book(s) like it's a trial to go through instead of a freakish absurdity that should not happen? Is that a lot to ask?

The occasional hand raised in anger is sorry enough on its own, but repeated rituals are much, much lower. Why is this woman, a mother, 'has her faults but that's just my mom, taught me a lot' instead of 'monster who absolutely, fundamentally does not understand parent-child care, discipline, life'? Maybe because she's also a respected scholar who introduced so much Black pride? There's a louder inconsistency than not, though. It doesn't seem like 'Black bodies such complex things' can have that much complexity around it. I'm familiar with bodies generally.

But those political problems aside, Heavy is a pretty worthwhile experience to me. (_Do_ dignify my rants, please, by calling them 'political'! Thanks.) That worth's both because of the intellectual weight of the book itself (lol, all Heavy reviews need puns inside them) and self-exam at its core. The constant second-person-POV experimentalism can sometimes verge on dim or glib, but the brilliant catharsis it must have all been writing-wise sort of counter-balances the difficulties reading-wise. It's very urgent at all times and lived-in authentic to the weirdness of '80s and '90s America, though I of course know only whiteness. Like an actual conversational monologue, it's sometimes awkward, incoherent, wandering; but like an actual conversational monologue, what we get sometimes is really good, really beautiful, and reflects some awesome understanding of life lived.

But it's a memoir! One individual's life! And as finely wrought as it sometimes is, you can either ask, or have someone next to you ask rhetorically but it's something you'd also been maybe sort of meaning to ask, 'Hmm, ok, so?' Laymon says on page 1 he originally wanted to write a lie: "I wanted to do that old black work of pandering and lying to folk who pay us to pander and lie to them every day" and repeats it. Stingingly. He wanted to write a lie. And in the final pages he outlines an idealistic future for Black America but then offers 'or not' as a depressing alternative. Sometimes there's a tiny salve -- "I think it's possible to be broken and ask for help without breaking other people" (228) -- but enough of one to counteract all the painful fat in the middle? I don't know. It remains to be seen.]]> 4.53 2018 Heavy
author: Kiese Laymon
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2020/11/12
date added: 2020/11/14
shelves: bio, personal, nonfiction, race, philosophy, writing
review:
I'm not in Heavy's world, much at all, obviously. You can probably tell I'm white without the photographic proof; sorry about that. (But I assume I can still review the book? There ought to be affirmative action for us whites, a reason to give a white man *any* rental or employment or entitlement or respect let alone *99% or whatever the current amount*: c'mon, I'm begging here) Nevertheless, there's more than simply race that divides us. For instance, why is Mississippi still a state in the U.S. at all? Seriously. Are we that shy about angering a bunch of sick, braindead, treasonous yokels yawping about 'fancy-pants Yankees' or whatever? I'm not really anymore; I've had enough of their political garbage, mostly via the Electoral College, and I'm in a slightly-northern red state still, so I'm I guess slightly more trustworthy about this than not.

It can be its own country, can't it? Mississippi. As well as the whole Dixie. We tried, had some success for a while, but it was ultimately so bad we had to cut our losses. Evacuate out all your reasonable liberals, evacuate in all our Southern-sympathizing dummies, wipe our hands of all that Civil War gunk, etc. Watch them destroy themselves. Sorry. A modest proposal.

Also, the domestic abuse, corporal punishment from mother to son, is a major concern to me. I'm not willing to dismiss it as 'racial thing I wouldn't understand' or what have you, akin to female genital mutilation. Stop it? Stop glorifying it? Stop allowing it as part of 'trials and tribulations of growing up sometimes, all normal' or whatever? Just tsk-tsk-aww-jeez? perennially? every decade different and yet totally the same? Stop putting it in your book(s) like it's a trial to go through instead of a freakish absurdity that should not happen? Is that a lot to ask?

The occasional hand raised in anger is sorry enough on its own, but repeated rituals are much, much lower. Why is this woman, a mother, 'has her faults but that's just my mom, taught me a lot' instead of 'monster who absolutely, fundamentally does not understand parent-child care, discipline, life'? Maybe because she's also a respected scholar who introduced so much Black pride? There's a louder inconsistency than not, though. It doesn't seem like 'Black bodies such complex things' can have that much complexity around it. I'm familiar with bodies generally.

But those political problems aside, Heavy is a pretty worthwhile experience to me. (_Do_ dignify my rants, please, by calling them 'political'! Thanks.) That worth's both because of the intellectual weight of the book itself (lol, all Heavy reviews need puns inside them) and self-exam at its core. The constant second-person-POV experimentalism can sometimes verge on dim or glib, but the brilliant catharsis it must have all been writing-wise sort of counter-balances the difficulties reading-wise. It's very urgent at all times and lived-in authentic to the weirdness of '80s and '90s America, though I of course know only whiteness. Like an actual conversational monologue, it's sometimes awkward, incoherent, wandering; but like an actual conversational monologue, what we get sometimes is really good, really beautiful, and reflects some awesome understanding of life lived.

But it's a memoir! One individual's life! And as finely wrought as it sometimes is, you can either ask, or have someone next to you ask rhetorically but it's something you'd also been maybe sort of meaning to ask, 'Hmm, ok, so?' Laymon says on page 1 he originally wanted to write a lie: "I wanted to do that old black work of pandering and lying to folk who pay us to pander and lie to them every day" and repeats it. Stingingly. He wanted to write a lie. And in the final pages he outlines an idealistic future for Black America but then offers 'or not' as a depressing alternative. Sometimes there's a tiny salve -- "I think it's possible to be broken and ask for help without breaking other people" (228) -- but enough of one to counteract all the painful fat in the middle? I don't know. It remains to be seen.
]]> <![CDATA[How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen: A Survival Guide to Life with Children Ages 2-7]]> 29430728
A must-have resource for anyone who lives or works with young kids, with an introduction by Adele Faber, coauthor of How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk , the international mega-bestseller The Boston Globe dubbed “The Parenting Bible.”

For nearly forty years, parents have turned to How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk for its respectful and effective solutions to the unending challenges of raising children. Now, in response to growing demand, Adele’s daughter, Joanna Faber, along with Julie King, tailor How to Talk ’s powerful communication skills to parents of children ages two to seven.

Faber and King, each a parenting expert in her own right, share their wisdom accumulated over years of conducting How To Talk workshops with parents, teachers, and pediatricians. With a lively combination of storytelling, cartoons, and observations from their workshops, they provide concrete tools and tips that will transform your relationship with the children in your life.

What do you do with a little kid who
won’t brush her teeth
screams in his car seat
pinches the baby...refuses to eat vegetables
throws books in the library...runs rampant in the supermarket? Organized by common challenges and conflicts, this book is an essential manual of communication strategies, including a chapter that addresses the special needs of children with sensory processing and autism spectrum disorders.

This user-friendly guide will empower parents and caregivers of young children to forge rewarding, joyful relationships with terrible two-year-olds, truculent three-year-olds, ferocious four-year-olds, foolhardy five-year-olds, self-centered six-year-olds, and the occasional semi-civilized seven-year-old. And, it will help little kids grow into self-reliant big kids who are cooperative and connected to their parents, teachers, siblings, and peers.]]> 409 Joanna Faber 150113163X Kyle 2 kids, nonfiction, personal
It's not a whole meltdown or a whole elaborate parenting routine I'm interested in, personally: it's just 'To Talk' like the title says. How do you do it? Main takeaways (not to break or cheapen the book)? *Acknowledge feelings. *Sit on 'but's: use "Problem is" or "Even though you know" instead. *Sometimes, don't say anything; just a well-timed Mmm or Ugh.

*Give kids a choice, but make both options positive. *If you have to express a negative emotion, use 'I' and not 'you'. *Instead of complimenting kids (unfairly judging their character), describe the effect on others or their effort (Labeling kids 'gifted' might backfire: if I'm gifted now why risk un-gifting myself?) Describe, don't evaluate!

*When special needs kids or kids on the spectrum can't handle things normally, it can help to approach from their perspective: "When we demonstrate generosity of spirit by accepting feelings, we help our children become more resilient" *Translating into words what kids want, even partially, even without fulfilling it, can help: "when kids feel understood they also feel more calm, connected, and able to tolerate frustration" *Help shy kids by saying 'when he's ready'

Basically, you can acknowledge feelings and then constructively problem-solve, while keeping expectations level with a kid's age, and remaining willing to be playful (silly voices, etc.). I like how the advice always wraps around, boils down to 'Acknowledge feelings'. Like I said, I wish it were more honest to its title (I still don't know how to talk, frankly!) but it's not too bad. What are you gonna do.

Kind of weak overall, I guess, how it's anecdotal and scattershot -- I think I'd be interested in slightly deeper psychology, instead of another story illustrating it (let alone a tiny little snippet, plainly/anecdotally reproduced via hearsay and such) -- but I'm sure that kind of thing might have been trimmed from earlier drafts. Some readers want different books from some writers! They don't have to coöperate.

However off-base advice like this can sometimes appear initially, I know it was won through a lot of painstaking trial-and-error applications (as well as many considerations for and against). Child development isn't like your run-of-the-mill science
 blow one experiment and the ammonia or whatever will be 100% 'up' for the next as a matter of fact, but blow one experiment with a child and you can consider the next few blown as well at least. At least! However far until lost memory and/or forgiveness might take over. ]]> 4.47 2017 How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen: A Survival Guide to Life with Children Ages 2-7
author: Joanna Faber
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2020/09/12
date added: 2020/09/12
shelves: kids, nonfiction, personal
review:
This book's forebear, How To Talk So Kids Will Listen, stuck a 'Little' into its title and transformed into a new advice collection about dealing with young ones. But I like how the subtitle wraps around again, "and How to Listen So Kids Will Talk" (which this Little one doesn't do: it's hard enough to put one "little" in, let alone two "little"s! Lol) and, instead, explains the age range a bit. 2-7!

It's not a whole meltdown or a whole elaborate parenting routine I'm interested in, personally: it's just 'To Talk' like the title says. How do you do it? Main takeaways (not to break or cheapen the book)? *Acknowledge feelings. *Sit on 'but's: use "Problem is" or "Even though you know" instead. *Sometimes, don't say anything; just a well-timed Mmm or Ugh.

*Give kids a choice, but make both options positive. *If you have to express a negative emotion, use 'I' and not 'you'. *Instead of complimenting kids (unfairly judging their character), describe the effect on others or their effort (Labeling kids 'gifted' might backfire: if I'm gifted now why risk un-gifting myself?) Describe, don't evaluate!

*When special needs kids or kids on the spectrum can't handle things normally, it can help to approach from their perspective: "When we demonstrate generosity of spirit by accepting feelings, we help our children become more resilient" *Translating into words what kids want, even partially, even without fulfilling it, can help: "when kids feel understood they also feel more calm, connected, and able to tolerate frustration" *Help shy kids by saying 'when he's ready'

Basically, you can acknowledge feelings and then constructively problem-solve, while keeping expectations level with a kid's age, and remaining willing to be playful (silly voices, etc.). I like how the advice always wraps around, boils down to 'Acknowledge feelings'. Like I said, I wish it were more honest to its title (I still don't know how to talk, frankly!) but it's not too bad. What are you gonna do.

Kind of weak overall, I guess, how it's anecdotal and scattershot -- I think I'd be interested in slightly deeper psychology, instead of another story illustrating it (let alone a tiny little snippet, plainly/anecdotally reproduced via hearsay and such) -- but I'm sure that kind of thing might have been trimmed from earlier drafts. Some readers want different books from some writers! They don't have to coöperate.

However off-base advice like this can sometimes appear initially, I know it was won through a lot of painstaking trial-and-error applications (as well as many considerations for and against). Child development isn't like your run-of-the-mill science
 blow one experiment and the ammonia or whatever will be 100% 'up' for the next as a matter of fact, but blow one experiment with a child and you can consider the next few blown as well at least. At least! However far until lost memory and/or forgiveness might take over.
]]> <![CDATA[The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (ANIMA: Critical Race Studies Otherwise)]]> 33572961 The Right to Maim Jasbir K. Puar brings her pathbreaking work on the liberal state, sexuality, and biopolitics to bear on our understanding of disability. Drawing on a stunning array of theoretical and methodological frameworks, Puar uses the concept of “debility”—bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors—to disrupt the category of disability. She shows how debility, disability, and capacity together constitute an assemblage that states use to control populations. Puar's analysis culminates in an interrogation of Israel's policies toward Palestine, in which she outlines how Israel brings Palestinians into biopolitical being by designating them available for injury. Supplementing its right to kill with what Puar calls the right to maim, the Israeli state relies on liberal frameworks of disability to obscure and enable the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies. Tracing disability's interaction with debility and capacity, Puar offers a brilliant rethinking of Foucauldian biopolitics while showing how disability functions at the intersection of imperialism and racialized capital.]]> 296 Jasbir K. Puar 0822369184 Kyle 2
Expression is bogged down in words I'd say are hifalutin non-words. But I would say something like that, wouldn't I? not having studied evidently what I should have studied before embarking here. I could point out and make fun of tons of these words -- from the common but still mystifying ('engender', 'assemblages', 'normative', 'cohere', 'neoliberal', 'amalgamates', 'instrumentalize') to the downright bizarre ('securitization', 'conceptualization', 'precaritization', 'capacitization') -- but I'd say it's probably just that I'm just not an academic, don't speak 'academic-ese' (and kind of don't even think there should be a separate, high, ivory-tower 'academic-ese' argot). Why say "intensification" when you could say "intensity and how it was built up"?

And phrases too -- like, 'Spacialize the relationality of absence', 'through the epistemic projects that have functionalized their coherence', or 'Binarization of an interdependent relationship', etc. Are these actual phrases that actually convey actual information or just coded things traded by academics? If it's the latter that's fine with me, but why publish them in a book? Sigh. I don't know. It's challenging, unfun to single these out, I guess, and it often seems a little disingenuous anyway, but I'll do what I do. Is it just me, or is "through reifying intersectional identity frames -- these are frames that still hinge on discrete notions of inclusion and exclusion -- as the most pernicious ones for political intervention, thus obfuscating forms of control that insidiously include in order to exclude, and exclude in order to include" (23) a lucid and coherent thing actually? Anyone??

I think the final lines of the preface synthesize the main argument pretty well nevertheless, though: "At our current political conjuncture, Black Lives Matter, the Palestinian solidarity movement, the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline to protect sacred grounds and access to water: these are some of the movements that are leading the way to demand livable lives for all. These movements may not represent the most appealing or desired versions of disability pride. But they are movements anchored, in fact, in the lived experiences of debilitation, implicitly contesting the right to maim, and imagining multiple futures where bodily capacities and debilities are embraced rather than weaponized" (xxiv). It takes more words in fact, and more jargon-stuffed prose than I might have used for an expression I think would be very basically the exact same, but it's a very solid and worthwhile argument: linking protest movements together as social manifestations against people who aren't able-bodied.

Whether those people are victims of "disability" (individualist) or "debility" (similar, overlapping, usually collective and state-sponsored or -used, not visible or trackable in quite the same way) is another of Puar's fixations. I won't wrongly try to summarize it, but basically the distinction might be somewhat due to abuse, impunity, legitimacy, etc. It's very scary to touch anything inside of this, but not strictly because of harsh/tender disability or social-rights PC subject matter, but because of syntactical oddness and density. I don't like it. It doesn't look good. But that's what's there. And the subject matter's too important not to try a tiny bit.]]> 4.49 The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (ANIMA: Critical Race Studies Otherwise)
author: Jasbir K. Puar
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.49
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2020/08/14
date added: 2020/08/14
shelves: nonfiction, philosophy, race, science, women
review:
Far more academic than I was hoping, dense, barely readable (but by whom? Me? Well, personally, I'm not academic, qualified, so there's that), just a thick syntactical gum you might learn how to chew. Eventually. Sometimes. But do you want to? Well, it's 'style' [shrug] -- but it's also access, welcome, trans-disciplinary movement, so there might not be a shrug there at all. Shrug. I can bear it ok, but I feel like I could skip an entire line of text and get basically the same tiny amount of information as if I'd read the line as Puar wrote it. Is all of this 100% lucid and meaningful? Honestly.

Expression is bogged down in words I'd say are hifalutin non-words. But I would say something like that, wouldn't I? not having studied evidently what I should have studied before embarking here. I could point out and make fun of tons of these words -- from the common but still mystifying ('engender', 'assemblages', 'normative', 'cohere', 'neoliberal', 'amalgamates', 'instrumentalize') to the downright bizarre ('securitization', 'conceptualization', 'precaritization', 'capacitization') -- but I'd say it's probably just that I'm just not an academic, don't speak 'academic-ese' (and kind of don't even think there should be a separate, high, ivory-tower 'academic-ese' argot). Why say "intensification" when you could say "intensity and how it was built up"?

And phrases too -- like, 'Spacialize the relationality of absence', 'through the epistemic projects that have functionalized their coherence', or 'Binarization of an interdependent relationship', etc. Are these actual phrases that actually convey actual information or just coded things traded by academics? If it's the latter that's fine with me, but why publish them in a book? Sigh. I don't know. It's challenging, unfun to single these out, I guess, and it often seems a little disingenuous anyway, but I'll do what I do. Is it just me, or is "through reifying intersectional identity frames -- these are frames that still hinge on discrete notions of inclusion and exclusion -- as the most pernicious ones for political intervention, thus obfuscating forms of control that insidiously include in order to exclude, and exclude in order to include" (23) a lucid and coherent thing actually? Anyone??

I think the final lines of the preface synthesize the main argument pretty well nevertheless, though: "At our current political conjuncture, Black Lives Matter, the Palestinian solidarity movement, the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline to protect sacred grounds and access to water: these are some of the movements that are leading the way to demand livable lives for all. These movements may not represent the most appealing or desired versions of disability pride. But they are movements anchored, in fact, in the lived experiences of debilitation, implicitly contesting the right to maim, and imagining multiple futures where bodily capacities and debilities are embraced rather than weaponized" (xxiv). It takes more words in fact, and more jargon-stuffed prose than I might have used for an expression I think would be very basically the exact same, but it's a very solid and worthwhile argument: linking protest movements together as social manifestations against people who aren't able-bodied.

Whether those people are victims of "disability" (individualist) or "debility" (similar, overlapping, usually collective and state-sponsored or -used, not visible or trackable in quite the same way) is another of Puar's fixations. I won't wrongly try to summarize it, but basically the distinction might be somewhat due to abuse, impunity, legitimacy, etc. It's very scary to touch anything inside of this, but not strictly because of harsh/tender disability or social-rights PC subject matter, but because of syntactical oddness and density. I don't like it. It doesn't look good. But that's what's there. And the subject matter's too important not to try a tiny bit.
]]> Quichotte 44599127 A dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age--an epic tour de force that is as much an homage to an immortal work of literature as it is to the quest for love and family, by Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE

Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where "Anything-Can-Happen." Meanwhile, his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.

Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirize the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse. And with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of Rushdie's work, the fully realized lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction.]]> 396 Salman Rushdie 059313298X Kyle 4 Quichotte's initially-vague "Interior Event" maybe, hehe, as well as all the surface reminders. But it's also always seemed a little too soft and easy, just boomer novelists grumbling about 'kids and their easy boob tubes', a few decades out of date (Harlan Ellison complaining in Glass Teat, maybe also Woody Allen, Updike, Mailer, Roth, etc., all the way to DFW's Infinite Jest and Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and "Water" sad warnings). Here, though, Rushdie folds that ease into the rest of Don Quixote's goofy simplicity rather nicely.

It's overall a long Confederacy of Dunces squirt, besides the shorter riffs on Odyssey and Moby Dick (packed into bizarre, stream-of-consciousness gunk coming from other famous stuff, drive-by referenced), plus some red-state-blue-state, ripped-from-the-headlines politics, xenophobia and racism and awkward evil, all plugged into TV itch and opioid-epidemic anxiety and Trump blahs and drizzled through modernized Don Quixote. How could a bored guy in a hotel, with his imaginary friend (or not?), crushing on a TV star (or not?), do all this (or not?)?

Rushdie's 14th novel, fyi, is a nice comment on both semi-tired gender/alienation tropes as well as newer Trump, opioid, culture tropes that I find much more interesting. Smart sadsack, Indian-born but America-living, crushing on woman celeb (a former Bollywood icon who now hosts a daytime talk show): it's a charming-enough slip. Sort of the fictional cousin of Joseph Anton: A Memoir maybe, in Rushdie's post-fatwa odd but funny discomfort. Also like DFW's Broom of the System, an early-in-his-career, tight-but-very-episodic, wonky venture; or Pynchon's Vineland, charmingly shambolic, good, reliable, dizzy.

Our hero, Sam DuChamp, creates the character of Ismail Smile / Quichotte, a down-on-his-luck, Indian-American salesman sort of like himself. After sending some creepy but interesting fan letters to Salma R, he commits to meet her and begins a car trip with his imaginary son Sancho. They bond, have some tĂȘte-Ă -tĂȘtes, Quichotte and Sancho: "You are right," Quichotte admitted, stopping. "We are in the third valley, in which all knowledge has become useless. My useless knowledge, this rough magic, I here abjure" (153) [and then soon after] "When you talk that way," Sancho said, "it makes me sorry I asked" (155).

Soon after that, we get a short but scary sexual assault Salma remembers. Inside the sad but successful, kind of tragic story all her own. Flipping back and forth from the uneasy, opioid-influenced alienation she's experiencing as a privileged person just then. It saves Rushdie's Quichotte overall, I think, from the all-around masculine same-olds we've seen a lot of before. Aside from an amusing dash through Vonnegut-like surreality (involving mastodons, in kind of the awkward pro- or anti- camp that might implicate Trump if his cult weren't sewn so tight to begin with), Rushdie trawls us through present escapades rather nicely.

We then connect fiction (like Ismail Smile / Quichotte and Salma) to sort of nonfiction (like Brother and Trampoline and Sister), in a discomfiting way that's poignant. Evel Cent's a Musk-like tech billionaire predicting apocalypse. I guess Awwal Sant's like Evel Cent, and Evel Cent's Knievel-like stunting or sinister-like evil, we don't know; but that thread's, I guess, better than Eggers's Circle but not as good as Shteyngart's SSTLS, but who am I am to say (this side of NEXT that I'm on (bad side), instead of good side). Uh. Kunkel's Indecision and Phillips's Tragedy of Arthur, too, feel somewhat apropos.

Then, apocalypse. Salma almost ODs on her Smile-delivered drug but then begins a mea culpa in public. Anti-climactic certainly but more genuine. With even some metafictional touches, considered by Quichotte and other characters: "as if he were being written and the author could not turn the page" (334) and "See, if I'm bad -- to quote the great Jessica Rabbit -- it's because I'm drawn that way" (338) and an almost-conclusive puncture "We are scary as shit" (344).

And more surrealistic touches, as Sancho rides a bus to his own beloved. There's an Italian-speaking cricket, and then the Blue Angel (who recommends to him an unhelpful 'everything'): "'Everything sounds like a lot,' Sancho said" (351). Later, Quichotte is called back to his beloved Salma on a sort of drug run, but the Manhattan he has to walk through isn't so romantic: "Nobody looked at anyone, everyone was shouting, but these were soliloquies. A city of Hamlets howling their anguish at the traitorous skies" (373).

Cross-country trip, then, pretty much in the blink of an eye (as you're wont to do when there's apocalypse afoot). "I was out of my mind, looking for this year's birds in last year's nests. And all around me America -- and not only America, the whole human race! -- yes, even our India! -- was also losing its reason, its capacity for ethics, its goodness, its soul (381). And then [spoiler alert of all spoiler alerts; but, still, it's something you could have guessed, no?] there's a portal: "brilliantly done the impossible and joined the two worlds, and crossed over from the world of Fancy into the Author's real world" (390). Televisual almost, like Lodge 49 or like Man in the High Castle or something. Pretty good.]]> 3.88 2019 Quichotte
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/07/15
date added: 2020/07/15
shelves: comedy, fiction, future, personal, pop-culture, race, writing
review:
The obsession with TV's harm has always seemed, at least in my opinion, a vapid and shallow problem of vapidity and shallowness. It's exemplified here in Quichotte's initially-vague "Interior Event" maybe, hehe, as well as all the surface reminders. But it's also always seemed a little too soft and easy, just boomer novelists grumbling about 'kids and their easy boob tubes', a few decades out of date (Harlan Ellison complaining in Glass Teat, maybe also Woody Allen, Updike, Mailer, Roth, etc., all the way to DFW's Infinite Jest and Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and "Water" sad warnings). Here, though, Rushdie folds that ease into the rest of Don Quixote's goofy simplicity rather nicely.

It's overall a long Confederacy of Dunces squirt, besides the shorter riffs on Odyssey and Moby Dick (packed into bizarre, stream-of-consciousness gunk coming from other famous stuff, drive-by referenced), plus some red-state-blue-state, ripped-from-the-headlines politics, xenophobia and racism and awkward evil, all plugged into TV itch and opioid-epidemic anxiety and Trump blahs and drizzled through modernized Don Quixote. How could a bored guy in a hotel, with his imaginary friend (or not?), crushing on a TV star (or not?), do all this (or not?)?

Rushdie's 14th novel, fyi, is a nice comment on both semi-tired gender/alienation tropes as well as newer Trump, opioid, culture tropes that I find much more interesting. Smart sadsack, Indian-born but America-living, crushing on woman celeb (a former Bollywood icon who now hosts a daytime talk show): it's a charming-enough slip. Sort of the fictional cousin of Joseph Anton: A Memoir maybe, in Rushdie's post-fatwa odd but funny discomfort. Also like DFW's Broom of the System, an early-in-his-career, tight-but-very-episodic, wonky venture; or Pynchon's Vineland, charmingly shambolic, good, reliable, dizzy.

Our hero, Sam DuChamp, creates the character of Ismail Smile / Quichotte, a down-on-his-luck, Indian-American salesman sort of like himself. After sending some creepy but interesting fan letters to Salma R, he commits to meet her and begins a car trip with his imaginary son Sancho. They bond, have some tĂȘte-Ă -tĂȘtes, Quichotte and Sancho: "You are right," Quichotte admitted, stopping. "We are in the third valley, in which all knowledge has become useless. My useless knowledge, this rough magic, I here abjure" (153) [and then soon after] "When you talk that way," Sancho said, "it makes me sorry I asked" (155).

Soon after that, we get a short but scary sexual assault Salma remembers. Inside the sad but successful, kind of tragic story all her own. Flipping back and forth from the uneasy, opioid-influenced alienation she's experiencing as a privileged person just then. It saves Rushdie's Quichotte overall, I think, from the all-around masculine same-olds we've seen a lot of before. Aside from an amusing dash through Vonnegut-like surreality (involving mastodons, in kind of the awkward pro- or anti- camp that might implicate Trump if his cult weren't sewn so tight to begin with), Rushdie trawls us through present escapades rather nicely.

We then connect fiction (like Ismail Smile / Quichotte and Salma) to sort of nonfiction (like Brother and Trampoline and Sister), in a discomfiting way that's poignant. Evel Cent's a Musk-like tech billionaire predicting apocalypse. I guess Awwal Sant's like Evel Cent, and Evel Cent's Knievel-like stunting or sinister-like evil, we don't know; but that thread's, I guess, better than Eggers's Circle but not as good as Shteyngart's SSTLS, but who am I am to say (this side of NEXT that I'm on (bad side), instead of good side). Uh. Kunkel's Indecision and Phillips's Tragedy of Arthur, too, feel somewhat apropos.

Then, apocalypse. Salma almost ODs on her Smile-delivered drug but then begins a mea culpa in public. Anti-climactic certainly but more genuine. With even some metafictional touches, considered by Quichotte and other characters: "as if he were being written and the author could not turn the page" (334) and "See, if I'm bad -- to quote the great Jessica Rabbit -- it's because I'm drawn that way" (338) and an almost-conclusive puncture "We are scary as shit" (344).

And more surrealistic touches, as Sancho rides a bus to his own beloved. There's an Italian-speaking cricket, and then the Blue Angel (who recommends to him an unhelpful 'everything'): "'Everything sounds like a lot,' Sancho said" (351). Later, Quichotte is called back to his beloved Salma on a sort of drug run, but the Manhattan he has to walk through isn't so romantic: "Nobody looked at anyone, everyone was shouting, but these were soliloquies. A city of Hamlets howling their anguish at the traitorous skies" (373).

Cross-country trip, then, pretty much in the blink of an eye (as you're wont to do when there's apocalypse afoot). "I was out of my mind, looking for this year's birds in last year's nests. And all around me America -- and not only America, the whole human race! -- yes, even our India! -- was also losing its reason, its capacity for ethics, its goodness, its soul (381). And then [spoiler alert of all spoiler alerts; but, still, it's something you could have guessed, no?] there's a portal: "brilliantly done the impossible and joined the two worlds, and crossed over from the world of Fancy into the Author's real world" (390). Televisual almost, like Lodge 49 or like Man in the High Castle or something. Pretty good.
]]> Anarchism and Other Essays 551926 Emma Goldman is often depicted in current academic discourse, and the “Left” in particular, as a role model for feminists and a champion of the proletariat. Keith Preston however in reviewing each chapter of Goldman’s most famous work “Anarchism and Other Essays” reveals that Emma Goldman often expressed ideas which many of her present day admirers will find surprising and unsettling. He highlights the fact that Emma Goldman distrusted the proletariat, wrote disdainfully of the early feminists who were her contemporaries, and expressed scepticism of women’s suffrage.
Keith Preston maintains that Emma Goldman can only be really understood by recognising her admiration for the ideas of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (an admiration that she shared with Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists). He argues that Emma Goldman (as with Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra”) represents a model of a “superior individual” who is capable of rising above the herd instincts of the masses - one who never hesitated to countenance both the ire of public authorities and the scorn of public opinion. Politically correct she was not.]]> 271 Emma Goldman 0486224848 Kyle 0 to-read 4.06 1910 Anarchism and Other Essays
author: Emma Goldman
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1910
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[No One Belongs Here More Than You]]> 6592893 225 Miranda July 1416539670 Kyle 0 to-read 3.71 2007 No One Belongs Here More Than You
author: Miranda July
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The First Bad Man 22125168 No One Belongs Here More Than You, a spectacular debut novel that is so heartbreaking, so dirty, so tender, so funny—so Miranda July—that readers will be blown away.

Here is Cheryl, a tightly-wound, vulnerable woman who lives alone, with a perpetual lump in her throat. She is haunted by a baby boy she met when she was six, who sometimes recurs as other people’s babies. Cheryl is also obsessed with Phillip, a philandering board member at the women’s self-defense nonprofit where she works. She believes they’ve been making love for many lifetimes, though they have yet to consummate in this one.

When Cheryl’s bosses ask if their twenty-one-year-old daughter, Clee, can move into her house for a little while, Cheryl’s eccentrically ordered world explodes. And yet it is Clee—the selfish, cruel blond bombshell—who bullies Cheryl into reality and, unexpectedly, provides her the love of a lifetime.

Tender, gripping, slyly hilarious, infused with raging sexual obsession and fierce maternal love, Miranda July’s first novel confirms her as a spectacularly original, iconic, and important voice today, and a writer for all time. The First Bad Man is dazzling, disorienting, and unforgettable.]]> 288 Miranda July Kyle 0 to-read 3.59 2015 The First Bad Man
author: Miranda July
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The New York Times Book of Movies: The Essential 1,000 Films to See]]> 44526455
While critiques of beloved Hollywood milestones from Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, and Orson Welles are all included, this book is notably a resource for the modern cinema buff and student. Nowhere else can one find this curated collection of reviews with such special features as lists of best films by category and year, as well as unique recommendations and sidebars for the modern viewer--including what to watch and from DVD and Blu-Ray to streaming platforms.

In an era when most students and fans of film simply rely on the Internet for information, this category killer will prove its worth as a relevant and indispensable gift and reference.]]> 1296 Wallace Schroeder 078933657X Kyle 4
(By the way, according to the list at , I've seen 463 of these 1,000! On one hand disappointing (when 90% of a basically-no-work decade has this for output, and in 2016 or something (when basically everything's supposed to be available) vs. 1965 or something) but on the other hand kind of impressive I guess (compared to one-per-weekend perusers, amateurs, or something; and next to 30 critics or so a single individual) etc.! But let's not compare. No. No comparison at all here. Comparison's so gauche in general)

First of all, the explanatory preface, written by Dargis and Scott, is a nice overview of the whole collection. "Even the most casual movie fan will quickly notice missing favorites and puzzling inclusions"
 Not a canon, just a starting point, not necessarily even 'best', yada yada, the usual business; but it's good, a nice and modest introduction to a hefty volume.

Puzzling inclusions, though? Haha. Some are just curiosities, obscurities, maybe like Major Barbara (or, hehe, like Le Boucher, The Bride Wore Black, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Guelwaar, The Ipcress File, Lacombe Lucien, like Mayerling, One Hour With You, The Rose Tattoo, or Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here: dreadful titles, maybe unwatchable, like they shouldn't be listed let alone examined much further, not that there's anything wrong with any of them necessarily!). Is there time enough for these?

I know there's time enough for ones spanning time itself, haha! From silent film to hot-off-the-presses movies of today. Pollyanna from 1920 to Lady Bird from 2017. Yada yada.

And there are of course many New York Times distinctions in this book, besides loyalty to Woody Allen that might look a little out of step eventually. Carefully noting which NYC theater(s) is/was (are/were) engaging the film in question, in nearly every review. Sometimes-slightly-incongruous Mr. Lastname, instead of just Lastname. Covering every element like it's an obligation (since often it probably was): auteur and lead at the opening, screenwriter and story in the middle, support and music and other elements at the close. It's almost like there's sometimes kind of a rough formula, at least sometimes.

The critics themselves -- V.C. is Canby, B.C. is Crowther, M.D. is Dargis, S.H. is Holden, S.K. is Kauffman, D.K. is Kehr, J.M. is Maslin, E.M. is Mitchell, A.O.S. is Scott, etc., totaling 34 -- are recognizable and memorable just in glimpses. I appreciate that theoretical anonymity. It's all in effect under the New York Times, where individual voices get kind of a shrug. Kind of comforting in a strange sense.

Sometimes, there's praise I agree with (Casablanca) or praise I don't (Blazing Saddles), or praise for ones I haven't seen yet but I'm intrigued by (Black Girl); sometimes, there's lukewarm reaction I agree with (Chinatown) or lukewarm reaction I don't (Days of Heaven) or lukewarm reaction I'm still kind of intrigued by (Diva).

I dislike a lot of what I read by Crowther (especially when he's slamming the good Cléo from 5 to 7 or celebrating the bad Dumbo), and Canby, whose reviews are usually dry and workmanlike. But I know it's all just part of the game. And Canby correctly hates The Exorcist. And Scott btw was correctly amused by Faces Places, but I might have been a little more effusive.

However, Crowther to my appreciative surprise correctly appreciates Man Hunt, and Canby correctly appreciates Fanny and Alexander. Surprisingly and dismayingly, Roger Greenspun didn't like Five Easy Pieces, though. Wattup with that?

Contemporary critics' reviews here (especially Dargis's review of Monika or Scott's of Moonlight) definitely seem longer, more elegant appreciations, compared to shorter, more clipped, probably more rushed dispatches from decades in the past. That's true. But to me still, there's rarely the perfect balance I need: thoughtful and relaxed (but not as long) yet short and well aimed (but not as dashed off). Perhaps if the New York Times hired me, an unproven, unprofessional, non-journalistic writer (who btw does not live in New York or see many films or even like cinema that much), I could supply the style of prose I mean.

Honestly, I hardly need reviews at all: just the list of movies is interesting enough. And by that same token but opposite, a lot of the reviews are good in and of themselves. As just reads, without the films behind them (if that were ever even possible). In this listing, when they're arranged alphabetically; or by chronological time; or by distinct critic; or however. I don't know. No one's paying me enough to know; or do they ever pay anyone enough to know, or do they do it for other reasons, and if so why and who; etc., etc.]]> 3.95 The New York Times Book of Movies: The Essential 1,000 Films to See
author: Wallace Schroeder
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/01
date added: 2020/04/01
shelves: epistolary, art, gargantuan, nonfiction, pop-culture, shorts
review:
As I read the NYT Book of Movies ('read' it, as if reading most of a reference book is something I'd do and an insane person would never do, since I'm obviously not insane; so let's just say 'looked at some of'), I kept thinking about the big multi-part Google Doc I have of all my film reviews (mostly via but some before; , , , , & ). Unpublished scraps of stream-of-consciousness from one amateur voice is obviously much different (and some, like me, might even stress that it's quote-unquote 'a whole lot better') than decades of various, professional, newspaper-article-length reviews from a whole bunch of respected critics. And inside a book, whatever that is. But the similarities are still pretty remarkable, ha. Alphabetical list of films, sure, kind of long, kind of unreadable all at once, sure.

(By the way, according to the list at , I've seen 463 of these 1,000! On one hand disappointing (when 90% of a basically-no-work decade has this for output, and in 2016 or something (when basically everything's supposed to be available) vs. 1965 or something) but on the other hand kind of impressive I guess (compared to one-per-weekend perusers, amateurs, or something; and next to 30 critics or so a single individual) etc.! But let's not compare. No. No comparison at all here. Comparison's so gauche in general)

First of all, the explanatory preface, written by Dargis and Scott, is a nice overview of the whole collection. "Even the most casual movie fan will quickly notice missing favorites and puzzling inclusions"
 Not a canon, just a starting point, not necessarily even 'best', yada yada, the usual business; but it's good, a nice and modest introduction to a hefty volume.

Puzzling inclusions, though? Haha. Some are just curiosities, obscurities, maybe like Major Barbara (or, hehe, like Le Boucher, The Bride Wore Black, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Guelwaar, The Ipcress File, Lacombe Lucien, like Mayerling, One Hour With You, The Rose Tattoo, or Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here: dreadful titles, maybe unwatchable, like they shouldn't be listed let alone examined much further, not that there's anything wrong with any of them necessarily!). Is there time enough for these?

I know there's time enough for ones spanning time itself, haha! From silent film to hot-off-the-presses movies of today. Pollyanna from 1920 to Lady Bird from 2017. Yada yada.

And there are of course many New York Times distinctions in this book, besides loyalty to Woody Allen that might look a little out of step eventually. Carefully noting which NYC theater(s) is/was (are/were) engaging the film in question, in nearly every review. Sometimes-slightly-incongruous Mr. Lastname, instead of just Lastname. Covering every element like it's an obligation (since often it probably was): auteur and lead at the opening, screenwriter and story in the middle, support and music and other elements at the close. It's almost like there's sometimes kind of a rough formula, at least sometimes.

The critics themselves -- V.C. is Canby, B.C. is Crowther, M.D. is Dargis, S.H. is Holden, S.K. is Kauffman, D.K. is Kehr, J.M. is Maslin, E.M. is Mitchell, A.O.S. is Scott, etc., totaling 34 -- are recognizable and memorable just in glimpses. I appreciate that theoretical anonymity. It's all in effect under the New York Times, where individual voices get kind of a shrug. Kind of comforting in a strange sense.

Sometimes, there's praise I agree with (Casablanca) or praise I don't (Blazing Saddles), or praise for ones I haven't seen yet but I'm intrigued by (Black Girl); sometimes, there's lukewarm reaction I agree with (Chinatown) or lukewarm reaction I don't (Days of Heaven) or lukewarm reaction I'm still kind of intrigued by (Diva).

I dislike a lot of what I read by Crowther (especially when he's slamming the good Cléo from 5 to 7 or celebrating the bad Dumbo), and Canby, whose reviews are usually dry and workmanlike. But I know it's all just part of the game. And Canby correctly hates The Exorcist. And Scott btw was correctly amused by Faces Places, but I might have been a little more effusive.

However, Crowther to my appreciative surprise correctly appreciates Man Hunt, and Canby correctly appreciates Fanny and Alexander. Surprisingly and dismayingly, Roger Greenspun didn't like Five Easy Pieces, though. Wattup with that?

Contemporary critics' reviews here (especially Dargis's review of Monika or Scott's of Moonlight) definitely seem longer, more elegant appreciations, compared to shorter, more clipped, probably more rushed dispatches from decades in the past. That's true. But to me still, there's rarely the perfect balance I need: thoughtful and relaxed (but not as long) yet short and well aimed (but not as dashed off). Perhaps if the New York Times hired me, an unproven, unprofessional, non-journalistic writer (who btw does not live in New York or see many films or even like cinema that much), I could supply the style of prose I mean.

Honestly, I hardly need reviews at all: just the list of movies is interesting enough. And by that same token but opposite, a lot of the reviews are good in and of themselves. As just reads, without the films behind them (if that were ever even possible). In this listing, when they're arranged alphabetically; or by chronological time; or by distinct critic; or however. I don't know. No one's paying me enough to know; or do they ever pay anyone enough to know, or do they do it for other reasons, and if so why and who; etc., etc.
]]> Emma 38719694 'I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.'

Beautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen's most flawless work.

This edition includes a new chronology and additional suggestions for further reading.]]> Jane Austen Kyle 3 3.79 1815 Emma
author: Jane Austen
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1815
rating: 3
read at: 2020/03/03
date added: 2020/03/03
shelves: classics, comedy, fiction, personal, women
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Where English Came From: What Every American English Speaker Should Know]]> 23965450 12 Kathy Cohen Kyle 1 3.29 2014 Where English Came From: What Every American English Speaker Should Know
author: Kathy Cohen
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2014
rating: 1
read at: 2020/02/07
date added: 2020/02/14
shelves:
review:

]]> The Iliad 34470777 Homer Kyle 3 3.00 -800 The Iliad
author: Homer
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.00
book published: -800
rating: 3
read at: 2020/02/14
date added: 2020/02/14
shelves: classics, fantasy, fiction, international, politics
review:

]]> Meditations 18621317 307 Marcus Aurelius Kyle 2 4.06 180 Meditations
author: Marcus Aurelius
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.06
book published: 180
rating: 2
read at: 2020/01/18
date added: 2020/01/18
shelves: classics, history, international, nonfiction, personal, philosophy, politics, shorts
review:
I'm afraid it was a little disappointing. Just a limp Art of War thing. I thought we could be funnier, more comical, lighter. C'mon.
]]> <![CDATA[The Anarchist Banker (8) (GWE Literature in Translation)]]> 40587140 The Anarchist Banker takes place in a Lisbon café where the narrator meets an old friend, now a wealthy banker. He questions his friend about his anarchist origins and discovers to his amazement that the banker still considers himself to be an anarchist. The story revolves around the banker's vigorous defense of his position and his assertion that he is the only genuine anarchist among the banker's so-called anarchist friends.

This is a bilingual English/Portuguese edition.]]> 100 Fernando Pessoa 1771833327 Kyle 0 to-read 3.72 1922 The Anarchist Banker (8) (GWE Literature in Translation)
author: Fernando Pessoa
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1922
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World]]> 43706466 An intensely powerful new novel from the best-selling author of The Bastard of Istanbul and Honour

'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away...'

For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which the women use to wax their legs while the men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that Leila shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends she made at each key moment in her life - friends who are now desperately trying to find her. . .]]> 312 Elif Shafak 0241293863 Kyle 0 to-read 4.09 2019 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
author: Elif Shafak
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump]]> 43822314
Shortly after Trump’s election, two outraged former congressional staffers wrote and posted a tactical guide to resisting the Trump agenda. This Google Doc entitled “Indivisible” was meant to be read by friends and family. No one could have predicted what happened next. It went viral, sparking the creation of thousands of local Indivisible groups in red, blue, and purple states, mobilizing millions of people and evolving into a defining movement of the Trump Era. From crowding town halls to killing TrumpCare to rallying around candidates to build the Blue Wave, Indivisibles powered the fight against Trump—and pushed the limits of what was politically possible.

In We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump, the (still-married!) co-executive directors of Indivisible tell the story of the movement. They offer a behind-the-scenes look at how change comes to Washington, whether Washington wants it or not. And they explain how we’ll win the coming fight for the future of American democracy. We Are Indivisible isn’t a book of platitudes about hope; it’s a steely-eyed guide to people power—how to find it, how to build it, and how to use it to usher in the post-Trump era.]]> 347 Leah Greenberg 1982129972 Kyle 5 politics, nonfiction
On that particular page is a quick, mega-bite-size, but wholly good history lesson and political primer and urge forward, in quite a concrete way overall. Founding Fathers gave us a wonderful system of democracy, but it's not fit for the chaos of today. We have ideologically polarized parties screaming at each other and playing constitutional hardball. Republicans dove deep into insane white nationalism, Christian fundamentalism, and corporatism, with democracy now gerrymandered, sabotaged, and rigged in their favor. To fix American democracy requires of course _more_ democracy; and that's all. Easy, right? Totally.

Also, in general, of course
 $? Racism? Stupidity helped by religion? Stubbornness built off independent thickness? It's the unanswerable chaos of activist politics (and we even contend with what's hollowly trendy, vacantly chiming somewhere, just the sort of obnoxious and fluffy content I'll sometimes post on Facebook if you're friends with me on Facebook and you see my content sometimes), but from what I'm seeing here it's pretty surprisingly adroit and clever and muscular. I think We Are Indivisible almost always kills the bad and re-inforces the good.

If you have a politically progressive mind (and decent minds almost always are politically progressive, imho, almost all, like 100% of people I know but I don't know everyone so I reduce it to 99% just theoretically), you can of course just slump with a shrug into 'Democracy. It's broken in America, huh? Look at this mess' and begin to go deeper and deeper into a hollow list of grievances without solutions. Hey, I've done it too. It's sometimes easy. Sometimes even good, maybe? Satire of ResistanceHole, political pokes of Daily Show in its Jon Stewart years, etc., etc., I don't know


But I don't think Levin or Greenberg ever really approach that careless, relatively empty posture, though it'd be so, so easy, I think, for them to fall that direction. They stay standing often enough, keeping their dukes up, skillfully, firmly, powerfully. Words carefully chosen and madly fussed over: I know nothing of those, but it's fun to admire some sometimes anyway.

Obviously, I cannot personally relate to much! I guess I've pledged more than the next guy to Indivisible-adjacent causes, but it's a few dollars, a few social media posts, a few scant appearances at events, etc. Ha! Politics. It is not much, never much. Of course! (Said with modesty but a secret hope that this'll all be world-changing, influential, whatnot. Of course) But I know a thing or two, I think, about trying to write influential nonfiction to skeptics within a near-dead industry (about which you're often skeptical in general), how-to of course but also tending to try to sort of subtly nudge them in a certain direction, etc. How's that? Well, I don't know. It's all mysterious and unknowable and none of it matters anyway.

Sure, problems with tone sometimes. Any stretch of text of any importance, especially nonfiction, will have those if it's worth its salt. I like some of the historical catch-ups (especially theorizing about American political dysfunction via Linz's ideas) and dislike some of them (especially accidentally finding out grassroots political organizing has somewhat a checkered history), but it mainly seems par for the course. I kind of wish kneejerk stuff like "Dumbledore's Army" were dismissed sooner (I think it severely weakens liberal ideas by making them weak, fun, a cheeky game, often enough), but at least it occurs at all.

Laugh all you want (it's healthy); we're never vain here! This thing's timely (how to situate ourselves against "Trump"? dead-on, by saying his name? Then, when he's out of office in prison or, in some sort of American FĂŒhrerbunker, very extremely sadly passed away tragically, how will the book look? But it's never all about him, for sure) but timeless in general, like all the best political writing needs to be.

By carefully balancing ideals and praxis, Levin and Greenberg can pull together something cogent and vibrant and urgent. I don't know how they did it, to be quite frank. I would have just begun to rant again about a desperately unqualified racist idiot corrupt reality TV host, deep in some sleazy and evil mess, gold-lacquered sludge of treason and paper-pushing ditziness, bolstered by stupid South Park-adjacent curt and itchy meme humor and neo-Nazi cultist dummies, in the shallow Russia-backed KKK swamp of modern America; but luckily it isn't my book to write!

I also see Man in the High Castle whenever I'm alarmed, saddened, frustrated by another swing into fascism (or anything about fascism, really)
 and I'll probably only descend into reviewing it inside reviews of other things. You know. Until there's a film of it. Or I read the original book, which I haven't because I don't really "read" a whole lot of texts. How America becomes Nazi, but there's a tiny resistance that can't ever be extinguished. Yeah, yeah, I know the premise, and its connection here is probably typical. It probably won't be the Reich or the Empire marching in but instead just some water wars sparked (unless we get some Green New Deal policies started very soon) or some eugenics inspired by Aktion T4 or something (I didn't think it'd get so personal so soon either, haha)


Needless to say, we're lucky we still have some champions of democracy pushing back solidly against malevolent threats of stinginess, corruption, anti-life lying and evil and crispness. You don't owe Levin's and Greenberg's We Are Indivisible much, but you owe it a lot, you know.]]> 4.05 2019 We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump
author: Leah Greenberg
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2019/11/23
date added: 2019/11/23
shelves: politics, nonfiction
review:
Why. Quite inspirational by gum but also clear, coherent, bold. In just a few paragraphs of lucid prose, we can dismiss Trump as just a symbol of dysfunction and anti-democratic madness and get on to building what he and his ilk have broken, are breaking, and are trying to keep broken. And how! For anyone asking 'Ok, sure, but how??' you can probably lead them to any, any section of text here -- it's all quite masterfully built and effective and just-so perfectly appropriate (honestly!) and often, in the best way, inspirational -- but I'd especially point out page 16.

On that particular page is a quick, mega-bite-size, but wholly good history lesson and political primer and urge forward, in quite a concrete way overall. Founding Fathers gave us a wonderful system of democracy, but it's not fit for the chaos of today. We have ideologically polarized parties screaming at each other and playing constitutional hardball. Republicans dove deep into insane white nationalism, Christian fundamentalism, and corporatism, with democracy now gerrymandered, sabotaged, and rigged in their favor. To fix American democracy requires of course _more_ democracy; and that's all. Easy, right? Totally.

Also, in general, of course
 $? Racism? Stupidity helped by religion? Stubbornness built off independent thickness? It's the unanswerable chaos of activist politics (and we even contend with what's hollowly trendy, vacantly chiming somewhere, just the sort of obnoxious and fluffy content I'll sometimes post on Facebook if you're friends with me on Facebook and you see my content sometimes), but from what I'm seeing here it's pretty surprisingly adroit and clever and muscular. I think We Are Indivisible almost always kills the bad and re-inforces the good.

If you have a politically progressive mind (and decent minds almost always are politically progressive, imho, almost all, like 100% of people I know but I don't know everyone so I reduce it to 99% just theoretically), you can of course just slump with a shrug into 'Democracy. It's broken in America, huh? Look at this mess' and begin to go deeper and deeper into a hollow list of grievances without solutions. Hey, I've done it too. It's sometimes easy. Sometimes even good, maybe? Satire of ResistanceHole, political pokes of Daily Show in its Jon Stewart years, etc., etc., I don't know


But I don't think Levin or Greenberg ever really approach that careless, relatively empty posture, though it'd be so, so easy, I think, for them to fall that direction. They stay standing often enough, keeping their dukes up, skillfully, firmly, powerfully. Words carefully chosen and madly fussed over: I know nothing of those, but it's fun to admire some sometimes anyway.

Obviously, I cannot personally relate to much! I guess I've pledged more than the next guy to Indivisible-adjacent causes, but it's a few dollars, a few social media posts, a few scant appearances at events, etc. Ha! Politics. It is not much, never much. Of course! (Said with modesty but a secret hope that this'll all be world-changing, influential, whatnot. Of course) But I know a thing or two, I think, about trying to write influential nonfiction to skeptics within a near-dead industry (about which you're often skeptical in general), how-to of course but also tending to try to sort of subtly nudge them in a certain direction, etc. How's that? Well, I don't know. It's all mysterious and unknowable and none of it matters anyway.

Sure, problems with tone sometimes. Any stretch of text of any importance, especially nonfiction, will have those if it's worth its salt. I like some of the historical catch-ups (especially theorizing about American political dysfunction via Linz's ideas) and dislike some of them (especially accidentally finding out grassroots political organizing has somewhat a checkered history), but it mainly seems par for the course. I kind of wish kneejerk stuff like "Dumbledore's Army" were dismissed sooner (I think it severely weakens liberal ideas by making them weak, fun, a cheeky game, often enough), but at least it occurs at all.

Laugh all you want (it's healthy); we're never vain here! This thing's timely (how to situate ourselves against "Trump"? dead-on, by saying his name? Then, when he's out of office in prison or, in some sort of American FĂŒhrerbunker, very extremely sadly passed away tragically, how will the book look? But it's never all about him, for sure) but timeless in general, like all the best political writing needs to be.

By carefully balancing ideals and praxis, Levin and Greenberg can pull together something cogent and vibrant and urgent. I don't know how they did it, to be quite frank. I would have just begun to rant again about a desperately unqualified racist idiot corrupt reality TV host, deep in some sleazy and evil mess, gold-lacquered sludge of treason and paper-pushing ditziness, bolstered by stupid South Park-adjacent curt and itchy meme humor and neo-Nazi cultist dummies, in the shallow Russia-backed KKK swamp of modern America; but luckily it isn't my book to write!

I also see Man in the High Castle whenever I'm alarmed, saddened, frustrated by another swing into fascism (or anything about fascism, really)
 and I'll probably only descend into reviewing it inside reviews of other things. You know. Until there's a film of it. Or I read the original book, which I haven't because I don't really "read" a whole lot of texts. How America becomes Nazi, but there's a tiny resistance that can't ever be extinguished. Yeah, yeah, I know the premise, and its connection here is probably typical. It probably won't be the Reich or the Empire marching in but instead just some water wars sparked (unless we get some Green New Deal policies started very soon) or some eugenics inspired by Aktion T4 or something (I didn't think it'd get so personal so soon either, haha)


Needless to say, we're lucky we still have some champions of democracy pushing back solidly against malevolent threats of stinginess, corruption, anti-life lying and evil and crispness. You don't owe Levin's and Greenberg's We Are Indivisible much, but you owe it a lot, you know.
]]> <![CDATA[Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea]]> 40604846 Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life.

Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects—average North Korean citizens—fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them.

Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.]]> 338 Barbara Demick Kyle 2 4.47 2009 Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
author: Barbara Demick
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2019/10/01
date added: 2019/10/07
shelves: nonfiction, politics, international
review:

]]> Crime and Punishment 37649233 Crime and Punishment is a psychological thriller that deals with issues of morality, conscience, and redemption. Widely considered to be one of the greatest novels written in any language, this novel explores the life of Rodin Raskolnikov, a young Russian man who robs and murders a pawnbroker to save himself from a life of poverty. As a consequence, he must deal with the oppressive mental anguish of being a criminal while attempting to maintain relationships with his friends and family.]]> 517 Fyodor Dostoevsky 1684122902 Kyle 2 4.33 1866 Crime and Punishment
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1866
rating: 2
read at: 2019/09/17
date added: 2019/09/17
shelves: classics, fiction, international, gargantuan
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained]]> 13411854 974 John Milton Kyle 4
Jesus. It's a joke.

No, but more seriously, as regards cinema, it's not really Schrader's First Reformed or DeMille's Ten Commandments or really any of the usual suspects that I think holds a key to Milton's early masterpiece: it's Thanos from the Marvel movies, duh. Haha. No, really, God isn't godly here: he's just a regular supervillain whose powers, y'know, include casually obliterating the universe or whatever. So what's the point of anything really? Haha. I don't know.

Lost is an epic in blank verse, telling that Old Testament again or something like it, to sexily "justify the ways of God to men". Sexy. Regained is the plainer, shorter 'brief epic' that continued the story; this dude Jesus is born, preaches, finds out he's God's son somehow, etc. Everything be kind of Biblical, yo!

Zeffirelli's 1977 film about Jesus () or this random 2009 documentary about Jerusalem I saw () might be important previous stops, and an audiobook reading of Milton's Paradise Lost/Regained might be just another present stop. You know? We all must contemplate this lewd impropriety that's doinking all our moralities, right? I guess so. I'm doing my best (or actually, wait sorry, I thought you'd requested my 'worst', so I offered that by mistake; sorry, "best", "worst", I may have mixed them up; my bad).

During Regained, when Satan says things are "fallacious" I was hearing the audiobook and not the actual text, so of course I misheard it as "fellatious". That's a word, right? Well, I consider it one, and that's of course all words need. To be considered. It's diction! Diction. Emphasis on the "dick" part of "diction", to go with the topic at hand. Literally, at hand (on the back of a head, guiding the mouth nearer and farther). Is my soul cursed to Hell yet, or is yours since you've read this sentiment? I don't quite understand it: they give you breaks, right?

Needless to say, when Satan says something might be a fallacy I'm like "Yeah, that's a fallacy, indeed" even if I don't fully understand.

I've read Milton before (I can say Great Books of the Western World, #32), but haven't we all? He seems like one of these good poet guys, talented at the poetry thing.]]> 3.79 1667 Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained
author: John Milton
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1667
rating: 4
read at: 2019/06/11
date added: 2019/06/13
shelves: classics, fiction, religion, fantasy
review:
They wrote a novelization of Aronofsky's mother! [exclamation point most definitely intended]??

Jesus. It's a joke.

No, but more seriously, as regards cinema, it's not really Schrader's First Reformed or DeMille's Ten Commandments or really any of the usual suspects that I think holds a key to Milton's early masterpiece: it's Thanos from the Marvel movies, duh. Haha. No, really, God isn't godly here: he's just a regular supervillain whose powers, y'know, include casually obliterating the universe or whatever. So what's the point of anything really? Haha. I don't know.

Lost is an epic in blank verse, telling that Old Testament again or something like it, to sexily "justify the ways of God to men". Sexy. Regained is the plainer, shorter 'brief epic' that continued the story; this dude Jesus is born, preaches, finds out he's God's son somehow, etc. Everything be kind of Biblical, yo!

Zeffirelli's 1977 film about Jesus () or this random 2009 documentary about Jerusalem I saw () might be important previous stops, and an audiobook reading of Milton's Paradise Lost/Regained might be just another present stop. You know? We all must contemplate this lewd impropriety that's doinking all our moralities, right? I guess so. I'm doing my best (or actually, wait sorry, I thought you'd requested my 'worst', so I offered that by mistake; sorry, "best", "worst", I may have mixed them up; my bad).

During Regained, when Satan says things are "fallacious" I was hearing the audiobook and not the actual text, so of course I misheard it as "fellatious". That's a word, right? Well, I consider it one, and that's of course all words need. To be considered. It's diction! Diction. Emphasis on the "dick" part of "diction", to go with the topic at hand. Literally, at hand (on the back of a head, guiding the mouth nearer and farther). Is my soul cursed to Hell yet, or is yours since you've read this sentiment? I don't quite understand it: they give you breaks, right?

Needless to say, when Satan says something might be a fallacy I'm like "Yeah, that's a fallacy, indeed" even if I don't fully understand.

I've read Milton before (I can say Great Books of the Western World, #32), but haven't we all? He seems like one of these good poet guys, talented at the poetry thing.
]]> <![CDATA[The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea]]> 30371004 The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea tells the tale of a band of savage thirteen-year-old boys who reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call "objectivity." When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealize the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard their disappointment in him as an act of betrayal on his part, and react violently.]]> 5 Yukio Mishima Kyle 4 3.45 1963 The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1963
rating: 4
read at: 2019/05/30
date added: 2019/05/30
shelves: fiction, japan, personal, piracy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Mamba Boy: Library Edition]]> 9223054 0 Nadifa Mohamed 1441754946 Kyle 4
In an account I guess half fictional and half true (but what is fiction if not fully true?), young boy Jama -- after dealing with his mother (Mira Nair's film Queen of Katwe is about the only non-Western maternal I've seen), his friend Abdi, and others in the city of Aden in Yemen -- decides to set out in search of Guure, his own long-missing father. Surprisingly lush masculine identity we stay with for a while then.

But everything's crisp, really lived-in, really quick and smart. I like how racial pressure is nicely unrolled into smaller (I guess) questions of colonial politics, but it's also in language of course (Somali, Arabic, English, Italian, whatnot), and then in education ("On hard benches the children were taught everything French and nothing about themselves; they were only dark slates to be written over with white chalk"). "Ferengi" are the whites in Africa and "Yahudi", I guess, is a slur for non-Somali Africans.

Jama meets various people of course, soaks up the positive and repels the negative mostly, thinks about it all subtly. A man named Idea he meets in Djibouti, a former teacher and now intellectual; then, an Italian soldier named Leon he meets in Ethiopia. The one-after-the-next, down-the-line, benevolent-and-then-cruel new center for each place, each chapter, it can seem a little wearying. But I don't know, maybe that's how you have to construct it, especially historical fiction about a boy's journey, I suppose.

The whole premise seems plenty to keep Black Mamba Boy afloat. From a woman looking at a father/son relationship, from a place of privilege looking at the roughness of decades past, the West can keep a fascist hold on East Africa. Jama's life darkens considerably along with all the other elements.

It's always bound to the ground, though, and that's what's true and fine about it. The Hajj, Mecca, Allah among the few references to Islam, and Louis Armstrong's "Go Down Moses" ("Pharaoh, let my people go") a tiny one to Christianity. It's mostly not devout at all: just a boy's life quotidian, terrestrial, real.]]> 4.33 2010 Black Mamba Boy: Library Edition
author: Nadifa Mohamed
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2019/05/27
date added: 2019/05/27
shelves: fiction, international, personal, politics, race
review:
To dissect misogyny confronting Black Mamba Boy isn't even to dissect racism/xenophobia, and that's not even to dissect the scary/thrilling family evisceration we see. Mohamed tells the painful but good and deep story of her father's life in Yemen in the 1930s and 40s, when it was still under colonial rule by the British, and then his trek through Sudan, Egypt, Palestine, the Mediterranean, and then Britain.

In an account I guess half fictional and half true (but what is fiction if not fully true?), young boy Jama -- after dealing with his mother (Mira Nair's film Queen of Katwe is about the only non-Western maternal I've seen), his friend Abdi, and others in the city of Aden in Yemen -- decides to set out in search of Guure, his own long-missing father. Surprisingly lush masculine identity we stay with for a while then.

But everything's crisp, really lived-in, really quick and smart. I like how racial pressure is nicely unrolled into smaller (I guess) questions of colonial politics, but it's also in language of course (Somali, Arabic, English, Italian, whatnot), and then in education ("On hard benches the children were taught everything French and nothing about themselves; they were only dark slates to be written over with white chalk"). "Ferengi" are the whites in Africa and "Yahudi", I guess, is a slur for non-Somali Africans.

Jama meets various people of course, soaks up the positive and repels the negative mostly, thinks about it all subtly. A man named Idea he meets in Djibouti, a former teacher and now intellectual; then, an Italian soldier named Leon he meets in Ethiopia. The one-after-the-next, down-the-line, benevolent-and-then-cruel new center for each place, each chapter, it can seem a little wearying. But I don't know, maybe that's how you have to construct it, especially historical fiction about a boy's journey, I suppose.

The whole premise seems plenty to keep Black Mamba Boy afloat. From a woman looking at a father/son relationship, from a place of privilege looking at the roughness of decades past, the West can keep a fascist hold on East Africa. Jama's life darkens considerably along with all the other elements.

It's always bound to the ground, though, and that's what's true and fine about it. The Hajj, Mecca, Allah among the few references to Islam, and Louis Armstrong's "Go Down Moses" ("Pharaoh, let my people go") a tiny one to Christianity. It's mostly not devout at all: just a boy's life quotidian, terrestrial, real.
]]> <![CDATA[The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.]]> 10770576
A constellation of previously published pieces and new essays as provocative and idiosyncratic as any he’s written, this volume sheds light on an array of topics from sex in cinema to drugs, graffiti, Bob Dylan, cyberculture, 9/11, book touring, and Marlon Brando, as well as on a shelf’s worth of his literary models and Norman Mailer, Paula Fox, Bret Easton Ellis, James Wood, and oth­ers. And, writing about Brooklyn, his father, and his sojourn through two decades of writing, Lethem sheds an equally strong light on himself.]]> 464 Jonathan Lethem 0385534957 Kyle 3
The style can get pretty blurry, maybe, and I should probably try length before giving up on him. Full books. Full books with all their own things. I don't know. Maybe _I'm_ the problem and _he's_ the good one, and _you_ can be a problem too if you want (and who does not want to be a problem, _the_ problem, y'know) and what's readable anyway, for reading, each prose style toward each pair of eyes, mind, reading it. Do we have to be on the exact same level? Do you mind? Yes, I mind. He knows things -- this writer -- and will share them with you, maybe, some things, if you want. As was the style in those days.

But it's the current year, all right, and this was past year and no sense now in fiddling with it. Some's novel (like, new, and soon-to-expire young expense, I mean) but some's timeless, I guess, depending how you or an ideal reader would feel reading it. Timeless may include the titular piece, "The Ecstasy of Influence" from Harper's in '07, I guess. Go ahead, plagiarize, gift economy, it's all good? Oh?

Like, this guy knows a whole bunch of authors and stuff, in various critical considerations, and I think, self-reflexively, like, I don't know 'very many' or 'as many as that' or 'exactly those' or 'those in as deep or as careful a way as this guy must', and I don't know what I'm supposed to do, 'read more of those or something if you want and change how you consider them if you want'? Whoa, sounds like a lot of work. I was told I was doing ok right now (perfect, always; or, oh crap oh crap, never perfect, ever; or something comfortably in between those but with room for improvement) and ok is ok for me! Ok? It's not ecstatic. It's just ok.

All Philip K. Dick books, ever, have you considered them? Or trendiness, literary celebrity, collecting culture, have you considered them? I think I have, and I think I don't speak enough of this language yet to read/understand the verdict that's been handed down, but by the time I do it'll be old news anyway, and there'll have stacked up dozens of other ones around me probably, to blow in this wind if this wind ever picks back up, but I think that's the way of all news, so if I slowly learn this language anyway in order to get the verdict then I'll have the verdict, maybe, and we might be able to do with that what we will. Or not. It'll probably change by that time.

Or I don't know, James Brown in his final years or '06-era Dylan, Lethem gets these real musical masters in sort of their twilight years, for some critical pieces in Rolling Stone or something. Some of the material here is pretty promising and thoughtfully done in my estimation. It opens up some questions, like 'New York post-9/11. Whoa. It's a whoa' or 'Music. How you do it. Why' or a lot of things otherwise.

More interesting to me, I don't know quite why, are a lot of the book reviews Ecstasy of Influence seems to conclude with. Jackson, Bolaño, Agee, etc.; the encyclopedia comes out again, but I'm more accustomed to the flood this time, I guess, and ready to float on top than flounder and struggle. I wish a particular book were dealt with (Toole's Confederacy of Dunces? which I personally didn't like, found a bit overrated, but I wonder what a fellow like Lethem thinks of it) and maybe even a particular film (Kazan's Arrangement?), but, I don't know, perhaps the Toole was a jotted-off allusion and I just forgot about it or perhaps the Kazan would open up a cinematic can of worms in what was supposed to be mostly literary, just a little musical, just a little cultural.

In this section, besides a modest end I found quite wise, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot autobiographical; but that's when the autobiography's probably cooking most intensely, huh? when you can hardly tell it's there at all.]]> 3.63 2011 The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.
author: Jonathan Lethem
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2019/05/11
date added: 2019/05/11
shelves: art, nonfiction, personal, pop-culture, writing
review:
Lethem's Ecstasy of Influence, collecting essays and stories and occasional pieces, was published in 2011, but, besides Men and Cartoons that collected stories in 2004, it's the only Lethem I've ever read and maybe ever will. He's an encyclopedic guy, this guy, and it can be pretty interesting but also pretty tiring. Is there such a thing as ideal reader. Ideal digestion. Good to scan some certain book or books, or stack them in an interesting way on a shelf. But how, why, what is what, in your opinion, why.

The style can get pretty blurry, maybe, and I should probably try length before giving up on him. Full books. Full books with all their own things. I don't know. Maybe _I'm_ the problem and _he's_ the good one, and _you_ can be a problem too if you want (and who does not want to be a problem, _the_ problem, y'know) and what's readable anyway, for reading, each prose style toward each pair of eyes, mind, reading it. Do we have to be on the exact same level? Do you mind? Yes, I mind. He knows things -- this writer -- and will share them with you, maybe, some things, if you want. As was the style in those days.

But it's the current year, all right, and this was past year and no sense now in fiddling with it. Some's novel (like, new, and soon-to-expire young expense, I mean) but some's timeless, I guess, depending how you or an ideal reader would feel reading it. Timeless may include the titular piece, "The Ecstasy of Influence" from Harper's in '07, I guess. Go ahead, plagiarize, gift economy, it's all good? Oh?

Like, this guy knows a whole bunch of authors and stuff, in various critical considerations, and I think, self-reflexively, like, I don't know 'very many' or 'as many as that' or 'exactly those' or 'those in as deep or as careful a way as this guy must', and I don't know what I'm supposed to do, 'read more of those or something if you want and change how you consider them if you want'? Whoa, sounds like a lot of work. I was told I was doing ok right now (perfect, always; or, oh crap oh crap, never perfect, ever; or something comfortably in between those but with room for improvement) and ok is ok for me! Ok? It's not ecstatic. It's just ok.

All Philip K. Dick books, ever, have you considered them? Or trendiness, literary celebrity, collecting culture, have you considered them? I think I have, and I think I don't speak enough of this language yet to read/understand the verdict that's been handed down, but by the time I do it'll be old news anyway, and there'll have stacked up dozens of other ones around me probably, to blow in this wind if this wind ever picks back up, but I think that's the way of all news, so if I slowly learn this language anyway in order to get the verdict then I'll have the verdict, maybe, and we might be able to do with that what we will. Or not. It'll probably change by that time.

Or I don't know, James Brown in his final years or '06-era Dylan, Lethem gets these real musical masters in sort of their twilight years, for some critical pieces in Rolling Stone or something. Some of the material here is pretty promising and thoughtfully done in my estimation. It opens up some questions, like 'New York post-9/11. Whoa. It's a whoa' or 'Music. How you do it. Why' or a lot of things otherwise.

More interesting to me, I don't know quite why, are a lot of the book reviews Ecstasy of Influence seems to conclude with. Jackson, Bolaño, Agee, etc.; the encyclopedia comes out again, but I'm more accustomed to the flood this time, I guess, and ready to float on top than flounder and struggle. I wish a particular book were dealt with (Toole's Confederacy of Dunces? which I personally didn't like, found a bit overrated, but I wonder what a fellow like Lethem thinks of it) and maybe even a particular film (Kazan's Arrangement?), but, I don't know, perhaps the Toole was a jotted-off allusion and I just forgot about it or perhaps the Kazan would open up a cinematic can of worms in what was supposed to be mostly literary, just a little musical, just a little cultural.

In this section, besides a modest end I found quite wise, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot autobiographical; but that's when the autobiography's probably cooking most intensely, huh? when you can hardly tell it's there at all.
]]> Hamlet 1432 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN13:9780743477123, Hamlet.

Hamlet is the story of the Prince of Denmark who learns of the death of his father at the hands of his uncle, Claudius. Claudius murders Hamlet's father, his own brother, to take the throne of Denmark and to marry Hamlet's widowed mother. Hamlet is sunk into a state of great despair as a result of discovering the murder of his father and the infidelity of his mother. Hamlet is torn between his great sadness and his desire for the revenge of his father's murder.

Each Folger edition includes:

- Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
- Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
- Scene-by-scene plot summaries
- A key to famous lines and phrases
- An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language
- An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
- Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books]]> 342 William Shakespeare Kyle 5 4.05 1601 Hamlet
author: William Shakespeare
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1601
rating: 5
read at: 2005/10/01
date added: 2019/04/14
shelves: classics, personal, fiction, plays
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All Quiet on the Western Front]]> 355697
In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious war’. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.]]> 296 Erich Maria Remarque 0449213943 Kyle 2 4.04 1928 All Quiet on the Western Front
author: Erich Maria Remarque
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1928
rating: 2
read at: 2003/01/01
date added: 2019/04/06
shelves:
review:

]]> Anna Karenina 15995953
«Nos capĂ­tulos iniciais de Anna KarĂ©nina, somos conduzidos, uma e outra vez, a um sentido de analogia musical. HĂĄ efeitos de contraponto e harmonia no desenvolvimento das principais tramas do “prelĂșdio Oblonski” (o acidente na estação ferroviĂĄria, a zombadora discussĂŁo sobre o divĂłrcio entre Vronski e a baronesa Chilton, o deslumbramento do fogo vermelho diante dos olhos de Anna). O mĂ©todo de Tolstoi Ă© polifĂłnico; mas as harmonias principais desen- volvem-se com uma tremenda força e amplitude. As tĂ©cnicas musicais e linguĂ­sticas nĂŁo podem comparar-se de um modo exato. Mas como poderĂ­amos elucidar de outro modo o sentimento de que as novelas de Tolstoi surgem de um princĂ­pio interior de ordem e vitalidade, enquanto as dos escritores menos importantes parecem alinhavadas?»

«Anna KarĂ©nina morre no mundo do romance; mas cada vez que lemos o livro ela ressuscita, e mesmo depois de o termos acabado adquire outra vida na nossa recordação. Em cada personagem literĂĄria existe algo da FĂ©nix imortal. AtravĂ©s das vidas perdurĂĄveis das suas personagens, a prĂłpria existĂȘncia de Tolstoi teve a sua eternidade.» [George Steiner, Tolstoi ou Dostoievski]]]> 1152 Leo Tolstoy Kyle 4
Also, Wright's 2012 adaptation of this was a limp picture I kind of dislike when I remember it at all, so Tolstoy's original novel has some huge shoes to fill!!!!

A throwaway line early on had me chortling at some of the old-fashioned language, in this popular Garnett translation at least: one of our guys Stepan says to a butler Matvi, giving him some money, "Enough or not, we must make it do": 'Make it do'? Oh boy, I like that expression a lot, forgive me.

And then later on, in Part 5, Nikolai Lyovin is dying of consumption, so his younger brother Kostya goes to visit him and "felt utterly cold, and was not conscious of sorrow nor of loss, less still of pity for his brother"
 And then even later, in Part 7, Kostya Lyovin is looking at his newborn son by Dolly and "felt nothing towards it but disgust"
 Jeez, this guy: give me a break, right?

The whole Anna Karenina novel's sort of like Welles's film MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS to me: a melancholy panorama of an upper-middle-class family on the down-stroke. This soap opera so soapy of an opera, and Russian too by golly.

I'd like to see a portrait of modern Russian society like Anna Karenina 2019, where it centers on disrupting liberal democracy in the West by gaming elections and sowing fascism, but I don't think they write novels anymore: it's all just memes, I guess.]]> 4.05 1878 Anna Karenina
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1878
rating: 4
read at: 2019/04/01
date added: 2019/04/06
shelves: classics, international, fiction, politics, religion, writing
review:
Historical context seems paramount to Tolstoy's book, a great one I guess, but you don't need my reportage on that, do you? Well, first of all, there's this big country, Russia. Ah! Russia. Emperor Alexander II was leading it for a while, and he introduced this Emancipation reform of 1861. Railroad, banks, industries, all that hot stuff: getting hotter every day!

Also, Wright's 2012 adaptation of this was a limp picture I kind of dislike when I remember it at all, so Tolstoy's original novel has some huge shoes to fill!!!!

A throwaway line early on had me chortling at some of the old-fashioned language, in this popular Garnett translation at least: one of our guys Stepan says to a butler Matvi, giving him some money, "Enough or not, we must make it do": 'Make it do'? Oh boy, I like that expression a lot, forgive me.

And then later on, in Part 5, Nikolai Lyovin is dying of consumption, so his younger brother Kostya goes to visit him and "felt utterly cold, and was not conscious of sorrow nor of loss, less still of pity for his brother"
 And then even later, in Part 7, Kostya Lyovin is looking at his newborn son by Dolly and "felt nothing towards it but disgust"
 Jeez, this guy: give me a break, right?

The whole Anna Karenina novel's sort of like Welles's film MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS to me: a melancholy panorama of an upper-middle-class family on the down-stroke. This soap opera so soapy of an opera, and Russian too by golly.

I'd like to see a portrait of modern Russian society like Anna Karenina 2019, where it centers on disrupting liberal democracy in the West by gaming elections and sowing fascism, but I don't think they write novels anymore: it's all just memes, I guess.
]]> Event Factory (Ravicka, #1) 9257320
Event Factory is the first in a series of novels (also available are the second, The Ravickians; the third, Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge; and the fourth, Houses of Ravicka) that Renee Gladman is writing about the invented city-state of Ravicka, a foreign “other” place fraught with the crises of American urban experience, not least the fundamental problem of how to move through the world at all.]]> 126 Renee Gladman 0984469303 Kyle 0 to-read 3.77 2010 Event Factory (Ravicka, #1)
author: Renee Gladman
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Don Quixote 40522165
Contains Active Table of Contents (HTML)Ìęand ​in the end of book include a bonus link to the free audiobook.

Don Quixote, errant knight and sane madman, with the company of his faithful squire and wise fool, Sancho Panza, together roam the world and haunt readers' imaginations as they have for nearly four hundred years.]]> 109 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 2378073003 Kyle 2
In general, and especially later on, the prose is usually hard to take too: I can of course handle the "thee"s and "thou"s from rich old Spanish and knightly pomposity, but I think translation should stretch or compact rather than just faithfully reproduce. It's not just Spanish to English but also 'old, old Spanish, with goofy/tight-lipped "hero" who's become a cliché, etc.' to 'this English we speak now in America in the 21st century', no? Is that asking too much or asking it of slightly the wrong thing/person or both? So many commas and looped clauses, for instance. Jeez.

Seems often very stupid? Surprise surprise -- well, not always. From literary 'what's all this then', going far behind the joke, it then squats in front and expects to move us in the same way. Not everything needs to be bookish/smartass of course, or even can be, but the same kind of clever philosophy could puff nearer to the whole story. Smarter these days than medieval dunces are we? Mostly. In both intelligence and cleverness/quickness? Probably. Maybe too much.

Gilliam's art is close of course, in at least a modern sense. (Not just for the adaptation of Quixote that seemed a vain, heart-on-its-sleeve passion until it actually happened, but for all the other projects that take their cues from the doomed yet funny quester, 'tilting at windmills' and whatnot: BARON VON MUNCHAUSEN most of all, I guess.) For older things we have Chaucer working, Sterne working, Swift working, I don't know. Before that, Homer's Odyssey, the Bible from Moses and Jesus and God or whatever, Beowulf, etc.

I tend to enjoy the stories within the stories more than the story itself. Whether it's a shepherd who went a little nuts, or a Christian captured by Moors who fell in love with a Moorish woman secretly a Christian too (they took their religion pretty seriously in old Europe, I guess!), each little romance can charm me more than continual goofiness from a 'knight errant' buffoon and his ass-riding disciple.

"Madness" is a mad thing? The density of old epic is all part and parcel (so pull it apart and find some juicy jokes)? I do not always know; I'm not always amused! (This Cervantes guy might not be too happy with this review, but tough titties) The hero might have a "rueful countenance", but I think the reader would eventually have one too! You can understand the depth of Don Quixote's imprint on our culture -- tragedy to slapstick, psychology and philosophy, beauty and ugliness -- and still not really dig the text much itself. Right?]]> 2.75 1615 Don Quixote
author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
name: Kyle
average rating: 2.75
book published: 1615
rating: 2
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2019/01/26
shelves: classics, fiction, international, comedy
review:
Cervantes's Don Quixote isn't quite the brilliant head smack I thought it'd be. Early on, in the first few chapters especially, it has flashes of balanced wisdom to mix in with its punch; but eventually, the stark divide between high and low brows pulls too much for me. For one extreme, it tips into leaden raunch and jokiness and whatnot. Sancho literally poos too near Quixote, and we're to Haha at this, perhaps also groan at its pretension; but also of course we've gotten some blizzards of Spanish names and titles, little itches toward epic. The mix of these was at first an intriguing wonder but then too much a meaningless goo.

In general, and especially later on, the prose is usually hard to take too: I can of course handle the "thee"s and "thou"s from rich old Spanish and knightly pomposity, but I think translation should stretch or compact rather than just faithfully reproduce. It's not just Spanish to English but also 'old, old Spanish, with goofy/tight-lipped "hero" who's become a cliché, etc.' to 'this English we speak now in America in the 21st century', no? Is that asking too much or asking it of slightly the wrong thing/person or both? So many commas and looped clauses, for instance. Jeez.

Seems often very stupid? Surprise surprise -- well, not always. From literary 'what's all this then', going far behind the joke, it then squats in front and expects to move us in the same way. Not everything needs to be bookish/smartass of course, or even can be, but the same kind of clever philosophy could puff nearer to the whole story. Smarter these days than medieval dunces are we? Mostly. In both intelligence and cleverness/quickness? Probably. Maybe too much.

Gilliam's art is close of course, in at least a modern sense. (Not just for the adaptation of Quixote that seemed a vain, heart-on-its-sleeve passion until it actually happened, but for all the other projects that take their cues from the doomed yet funny quester, 'tilting at windmills' and whatnot: BARON VON MUNCHAUSEN most of all, I guess.) For older things we have Chaucer working, Sterne working, Swift working, I don't know. Before that, Homer's Odyssey, the Bible from Moses and Jesus and God or whatever, Beowulf, etc.

I tend to enjoy the stories within the stories more than the story itself. Whether it's a shepherd who went a little nuts, or a Christian captured by Moors who fell in love with a Moorish woman secretly a Christian too (they took their religion pretty seriously in old Europe, I guess!), each little romance can charm me more than continual goofiness from a 'knight errant' buffoon and his ass-riding disciple.

"Madness" is a mad thing? The density of old epic is all part and parcel (so pull it apart and find some juicy jokes)? I do not always know; I'm not always amused! (This Cervantes guy might not be too happy with this review, but tough titties) The hero might have a "rueful countenance", but I think the reader would eventually have one too! You can understand the depth of Don Quixote's imprint on our culture -- tragedy to slapstick, psychology and philosophy, beauty and ugliness -- and still not really dig the text much itself. Right?
]]> Mythologies 51715 Mythologies. There is no more proper instrument of analysis of our contemporary myths than this book—one of the most significant works in French theory, and one that has transformed the way readers and philosophers view the world around them.

Our age is a triumph of codification. We own devices that bring the world to the command of our fingertips. We have access to boundless information and prodigious quantities of stuff. We decide to like or not, to believe or not, to buy or not. We pick and choose. We think we are free. Yet all around us, in pop culture, politics, mainstream media, and advertising, there are codes and symbols that govern our choices. They are the fabrications of consumer society. They express myths of success, well-being, and happiness. As Barthes sees it, these myths must be carefully deciphered, and debunked.

What Barthes discerned in mass media, the fashion of plastic, and the politics of postcolonial France applies with equal force to today's social networks, the iPhone, and the images of 9/11. This new edition of Mythologies, complete and beautifully rendered by the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, critic, and translator Richard Howard, is a consecration of Barthes's classic—a lesson in clairvoyance that is more relevant now than ever.]]> 160 Roland Barthes 0374521506 Kyle 0 to-read 4.12 1957 Mythologies
author: Roland Barthes
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/09/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Overcoat and Other Short Stories]]> 12095452 147 Prosper Mérimée Kyle 2
We start out promising. "The Mantle", the title story, follows a hopeless, beige fellow working as a clerk (like Melville's Bartleby?) named Akaki Akakievitch. And "since it is the custom to portray the physiognomy of every separate personage in a tale" Gogol also introduces for our benefit Petrovitch the tailor. We get some expressions that seem antique and unfashionable though nevertheless very readable, in the way of Russian translation I guess: "vexatious", "'Petrovitch, I adjure you!' said Akaki Akakievitch in an imploring tone", and maybe a lot showing the difficulty of translating skaz Russian to formal English, I don't know.

So the mantle's stolen, Akaki embarks on a labyrinthine, Kafkaesque way of reporting the theft, and an official yells at him quite severely when he does it wrong. He gets sick, very sick (lol). Spoiler alert, hehe: Akaki dies! And then comes back as a ghost? Whoa. Black humor out the wazoo: "The police adopted all possible measures in order to get this ghost dead or alive"

And then "The Nose" is quite all right too. Ivan Jakovlevitch is a barber. We stay with him just a bit -- "Like every honest Russian tradesman, Ivan Jakovlevitch was a terrible drunkard" -- and then move away. Major Kovaloff, one of Ivan's customers, wakes one morning to find something gone (like Kafka's Metamorphosis but much less intense?), his schnoz. It's a little slapstick, a little surreal, a good mix. His predicament's described to him as 'Nonsense' and he strikes back nonsensically "But this is not nonsense!": fun.

But then we get to "Memoirs of a Madman". The story starts out nice, a little unnerving and a little ominous ("For some little time past I hear and see things which no other man has heard and seen"), even departing for some amusing little flourishes that might have tickled Gogol as he wrote them ("The critics also are criticised; they are said only to be able to find fault, so that authors have to beg the public for protection"). But then we go completely off the rails into the deranged monologue of a crazy guy. It's just not meaningful; and unlike the title story or even "The Nose" there's nothing subtle underneath getting twisted. We have a few possibilities -- eg., "how all the scent-bottles and boxes are arranged in her boudoir" could speak to the material? eventually? -- but nothing substantial. I’m afraid we're just eventually treated to more of what's annoying and charmless as we go on.

And the stories following those, "A May Night" and "The Viy," have nothing good in them at all, I'm afraid. It's just not promising, and this Gogol kid, wherever he is today, out there in Russia or whatever, in my opinion doesn't have a fine literary career ahead of him. Maybe when he dies his ghost will come back seeking vengeance. I wouldn't know, since I myself have no plans at all to die and so never will. Can ghosts interact at all with the mortal world? I do not know. It can seem a little fantastical, fictional, maybe.]]> 3.91 1836 The Overcoat and Other Short Stories
author: Prosper Mérimée
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1836
rating: 2
read at: 2018/08/05
date added: 2018/08/05
shelves: classics, comedy, fiction, shorts
review:
I expected Gogol's prose to be like the mildly funny dusty stuff of a Brit like Swift or an Italian like Leopardi or a German like Grimm, but it's really not. Maybe it's the mood of Russia/Ukraine that I'm so not used to yet, or something else, but I just didn't feel a spark. Such an 'Eh' introduction to the book, by Frenchman Prosper Mérimée, surprised me first of all -- not exactly critiquing Gogol's misapplied ironies, like in a constructive way, but instead just dumping on the guy; hehe, so why'd you accept the introduction-writing gig, Prosper my dude, if for instance you "do not know the dates of Gogol's different works"? -- but by the end, I don't know, maybe he knows more than I do.

We start out promising. "The Mantle", the title story, follows a hopeless, beige fellow working as a clerk (like Melville's Bartleby?) named Akaki Akakievitch. And "since it is the custom to portray the physiognomy of every separate personage in a tale" Gogol also introduces for our benefit Petrovitch the tailor. We get some expressions that seem antique and unfashionable though nevertheless very readable, in the way of Russian translation I guess: "vexatious", "'Petrovitch, I adjure you!' said Akaki Akakievitch in an imploring tone", and maybe a lot showing the difficulty of translating skaz Russian to formal English, I don't know.

So the mantle's stolen, Akaki embarks on a labyrinthine, Kafkaesque way of reporting the theft, and an official yells at him quite severely when he does it wrong. He gets sick, very sick (lol). Spoiler alert, hehe: Akaki dies! And then comes back as a ghost? Whoa. Black humor out the wazoo: "The police adopted all possible measures in order to get this ghost dead or alive"

And then "The Nose" is quite all right too. Ivan Jakovlevitch is a barber. We stay with him just a bit -- "Like every honest Russian tradesman, Ivan Jakovlevitch was a terrible drunkard" -- and then move away. Major Kovaloff, one of Ivan's customers, wakes one morning to find something gone (like Kafka's Metamorphosis but much less intense?), his schnoz. It's a little slapstick, a little surreal, a good mix. His predicament's described to him as 'Nonsense' and he strikes back nonsensically "But this is not nonsense!": fun.

But then we get to "Memoirs of a Madman". The story starts out nice, a little unnerving and a little ominous ("For some little time past I hear and see things which no other man has heard and seen"), even departing for some amusing little flourishes that might have tickled Gogol as he wrote them ("The critics also are criticised; they are said only to be able to find fault, so that authors have to beg the public for protection"). But then we go completely off the rails into the deranged monologue of a crazy guy. It's just not meaningful; and unlike the title story or even "The Nose" there's nothing subtle underneath getting twisted. We have a few possibilities -- eg., "how all the scent-bottles and boxes are arranged in her boudoir" could speak to the material? eventually? -- but nothing substantial. I’m afraid we're just eventually treated to more of what's annoying and charmless as we go on.

And the stories following those, "A May Night" and "The Viy," have nothing good in them at all, I'm afraid. It's just not promising, and this Gogol kid, wherever he is today, out there in Russia or whatever, in my opinion doesn't have a fine literary career ahead of him. Maybe when he dies his ghost will come back seeking vengeance. I wouldn't know, since I myself have no plans at all to die and so never will. Can ghosts interact at all with the mortal world? I do not know. It can seem a little fantastical, fictional, maybe.
]]> Sputnik Sweetheart 28259262 reprint cover for ISBN 9780375726057

Haruki Murakami, the internationally bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, plunges us into an urbane Japan of jazz bars, coffee shops, Jack Kerouac, and the Beatles to tell this story of a tangled triangle of uniquely unrequited loves.

A college student, identified only as “K,” falls in love with his classmate, Sumire. But devotion to an untidy writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments-until she meets Miu, an older and much more sophisticated businesswoman. When Sumire disappears from an island off the coast of Greece, “K” is solicited to join the search party and finds himself drawn back into her world and beset by ominous, haunting visions. A love story combined with a detective story, Sputnik Sweetheart ultimately lingers in the mind as a profound meditation on human longing.]]> 210 Haruki Murakami Kyle 4 3.81 1999 Sputnik Sweetheart
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2018/06/01
date added: 2018/06/23
shelves: fiction, japan, international, women, pop-culture, personal
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hercule Poirot's Casebook (Hercule Poirot, #42)]]> 16428
The shrewd little detective with the egg-shaped head and the enormous black mustaches was created by one of the great storytellers of the world. Only she could have devised the cases worthy of his skill, the ingenious mysteries that challenge the reader as well as the detective.

Poirot had a passion for order, for rational thought, and he had a justified confidence in his deductive genius. No matter what the provocation, he remained calm. Although his character does not change, there is a spectacular diversity in the plots and themes of the cases. But whether murders are committed by violence, by poison, or by more subtle means, Poirot finds the solution. Thefts of money or jewels are uncovered or thwarted. Here, too, are Poirot's famous adventures against modern monsters of evil from The Labors of Hercules. There is variety in the length of the cases, which range from "The Wasp's Nest," a very brief tale of a crime prevented, to "The Under Dog," a story of almost novella length about the trapping of a killer. These and all the other brilliant stories make Poirot's Casebook solid, satisfying entertainment.]]> 861 Agatha Christie 0399150218 Kyle 2
Poirot's cases are reliable, well-turned, but usually pretty bland at the end (though not as bland as you might fear). I expected and sometimes received some hot-to-trot anti-rationality, even despite the 'little grey cell' and 'order and method' choruses; "We moderns with all our boasted science" (65) is a typical one. But it's usually a not-too-terrible thinking man's rebuff to superstition, rarely shallow, rarely easy; to the idea that "Perhaps it is haunted, as Mrs. Robinson suggested", Poirot only "shook his head in a dissatisfied manner" and moved on (35).

Surprising, though, when some of the loud weaknesses really turn up. The tone can be curt, as when our hero sends a quick telegram expressing the case solved: "advise Japp arrest housekeeper before it is too late" (51). Or it can be sadistic, as when a story ends with the wry note, supplied by a narrator who thankfully isn't Poirot, "Mr. Pace's huge fortune passed into the hands of his murderers. Nevertheless, Nemesis did overtake them, and when I read in the paper that the Hon. Roger and Mrs. Havering were among those killed in the crashing of the Air Mail to Paris I knew that justice was satisfied" (54); or, likewise in dialogue, "I'm sunk . . . / Hercule Poirot rubbed his hands together and smiled cheerfully" (308).

And interesting/irritating too that all the female characters seem cute, small, Audrey Hepburn types, rather vapid and interchangeable when you come right down to it. The only ones with any personality are seen as hideous: "Her general effect was that of a lot of bones flung together at random " (357). Harsh!]]> 4.24 1999 Hercule Poirot's Casebook (Hercule Poirot, #42)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1999
rating: 2
read at: 2013/12/01
date added: 2018/06/04
shelves: fiction, french, international, shorts
review:
The detective stories depicting Agatha Christie's famed detective Poirot -- deifying "the little grey cells" and "order and method," even as he's a peculiar little guy spouting off a random selection of French asides -- show a strange British Francophilia. At the time Christie was creating Poirot, it was fashionable in England to sympathize with Belgium, as Germany's WWI invasion and occupation (Rape of Belgium, you know) was their casus belli. But that's far in the background; so aside from an occasional wrinkle of "bloody foreigner," no one seems to pay it much mind at all.

Poirot's cases are reliable, well-turned, but usually pretty bland at the end (though not as bland as you might fear). I expected and sometimes received some hot-to-trot anti-rationality, even despite the 'little grey cell' and 'order and method' choruses; "We moderns with all our boasted science" (65) is a typical one. But it's usually a not-too-terrible thinking man's rebuff to superstition, rarely shallow, rarely easy; to the idea that "Perhaps it is haunted, as Mrs. Robinson suggested", Poirot only "shook his head in a dissatisfied manner" and moved on (35).

Surprising, though, when some of the loud weaknesses really turn up. The tone can be curt, as when our hero sends a quick telegram expressing the case solved: "advise Japp arrest housekeeper before it is too late" (51). Or it can be sadistic, as when a story ends with the wry note, supplied by a narrator who thankfully isn't Poirot, "Mr. Pace's huge fortune passed into the hands of his murderers. Nevertheless, Nemesis did overtake them, and when I read in the paper that the Hon. Roger and Mrs. Havering were among those killed in the crashing of the Air Mail to Paris I knew that justice was satisfied" (54); or, likewise in dialogue, "I'm sunk . . . / Hercule Poirot rubbed his hands together and smiled cheerfully" (308).

And interesting/irritating too that all the female characters seem cute, small, Audrey Hepburn types, rather vapid and interchangeable when you come right down to it. The only ones with any personality are seen as hideous: "Her general effect was that of a lot of bones flung together at random " (357). Harsh!
]]> The Turn of the Screw 12954 386 Henry James 0312406916 Kyle 3 3.39 1898 The Turn of the Screw
author: Henry James
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1898
rating: 3
read at: 2008/08/01
date added: 2018/05/27
shelves: classics, fantasy, women, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Disowning Knowledge: In Seven Plays of Shakespeare]]> 946418 272 Stanley Cavell 0521529204 Kyle 0 to-read 4.22 1987 Disowning Knowledge: In Seven Plays of Shakespeare
author: Stanley Cavell
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Both Flesh and Not 17333245
Never has Wallace's seemingly endless curiosity been more evident than in this compilation of work spanning nearly 20 years of writing. Here, Wallace turns his critical eye with equal enthusiasm toward Roger Federer and Jorge Luis Borges; Terminator 2 and The Best of the Prose Poem ; the nature of being a fiction writer and the quandary of defining the essay; the best underappreciated novels and the English language's most irksome misused words; and much more.

Both Flesh and Not restores Wallace's essays as originally written, and it includes a selection from his personal vocabulary list, an assembly of unusual words and definitions.]]> 336 David Foster Wallace 0316182389 Kyle 3 3.90 2012 Both Flesh and Not
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2018/04/19
date added: 2018/04/19
shelves: nonfiction, personal, philosophy, writing, shorts, pop-culture, science, politics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3)]]> 11298 353 Haruki Murakami 037571894X Kyle 4 3.96 1982 A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3)
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2018/03/01
date added: 2018/04/01
shelves: animals, comedy, fiction, japan
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University]]> 252426 Inspiring stories and practical advice from America’s most respected journalists The country’s most prominent journalists and nonfiction authors gather each year at Harvard’s Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. Telling True Stories presents their best advice—covering everything from finding a good topic, to structuring narrative stories, to writing and selling your first book. More than fifty well-known writers offer their most powerful tips, including:
‱ Tom Wolfe on the emotional core of the story
‱ Gay Talese on writing about private lives
‱ Malcolm Gladwell on the limits of profiles
‱ Nora Ephron on narrative writing and screenwriters
‱ Alma Guillermoprieto on telling the story and telling the truth
‱ Dozens of Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists from the Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and more . . .

The essays contain important counsel for new and career journalists, as well as for freelance writers, radio producers, and memoirists. Packed with refreshingly candid and insightful recommendations, Telling True Stories will show anyone fascinated by the art of writing nonfiction how to bring people, scenes, and ideas to life on the page.

]]> 317 Mark Kramer 0452287553 Kyle 0 to-read 4.07 2007 Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University
author: Mark Kramer
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character]]> 17366
In this phenomenal national bestseller, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist recounts in his inimitable voice his experiences trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums, and much else of an eyebrow-raising and hilarious nature. Woven together with his views on science, Feynman's life story is a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, eternal skepticism, and raging chutzpah.]]> 356 Richard P. Feynman 0786177284 Kyle 1 4.09 1985 Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
author: Richard P. Feynman
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1985
rating: 1
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2018/03/02
shelves: nonfiction, personal, science, classics
review:
Hokey, bland, old-fashioned, dreary, amateurish.
]]> Jane Eyre 16154687
Unabashedly romantic and utterly enthralling, Jane Eyre endures as one of the greatest love stories of all time]]> 296 Charlotte Brontë Kyle 3 4.38 1847 Jane Eyre
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1847
rating: 3
read at: 2018/01/31
date added: 2018/01/31
shelves: classics, fiction, personal, women
review:

]]> The Lover's Dictionary 11748555
Taking a unique approach to this age-old problem, the nameless narrator of David Levithan's The Lover's Dictionary constructs the story of a relationship as a dictionary. Through these sharp entries, he provides an intimate window into the great events and quotidian trifles of coupledom, giving us an indelible and deeply moving portrait of love in our time.]]> 211 David Levithan 1250002354 Kyle 3 3.98 2011 The Lover's Dictionary
author: David Levithan
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2018/01/31
date added: 2018/01/31
shelves: comedy, epistolary, fiction, personal, shorts, writing
review:
Like Greenman's Circle Is or Wilsey's Oh the Glory, a little between them, yet slimmer. The author of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist tried a more experimental note, eh? "ineffable" is meta. I like. The gender ambiguity's very cute too: "kerfuffle" sealed it with alcohol. "posterity" is physical as well, but alcohol touches gender in a way aging doesn't. Shortness of each of these -- as a part of our tweet-sized culture, I really enjoy what seems more a reprieve -- should be a liability but rarely is.
]]> Can You Tolerate This? 36911543 A dazzling—and already prizewinning—collection of essays on youth and aging, ambition and disappointment, Katherine Mansfield tourism and New Zealand punk rock, and the limitations of the body.

Youth and frailty, ambition and anxiety, the limitations of the body and the challenges of personal transformation: these are the undercurrents that animate acclaimed poet Ashleigh Young's first collection of essays. In Can You Tolerate This?—the title comes from the question chiropractors ask to test a patient's pain threshold—Young ushers us into her early years in the faraway yet familiar landscape of New Zealand: fantasizing about Paul McCartney, cheering on her older brother's fledging music career, and yearning for a larger and more creative life. As Young's perspective expands, a series of historical portraits—a boy who grew new bone wherever he was injured, an early French postman who built a stone fortress by hand, a generation of Japanese shut-ins—strike unexpected personal harmonies, as an unselfconscious childhood gives way to painful shyness in adolescence. As we watch Young fall in and out of love, undertake an intense yoga practice that masks an eating disorder, and gradually find herself through her writing, a highly particular psyche comes into view: curious, tender, and exacting in her observations of herself and the world around her.

Can You Tolerate This? presents a vivid self-portrait of an introspective yet widely curious young woman, the colorful, isolated community in which she comes of age, and the uneasy tensions—between safety and risk, love and solitude, the catharsis of grief and the ecstasy of creation—that define our lives.]]> 256 Ashleigh Young 0525534032 Kyle 0 to-read 3.82 2016 Can You Tolerate This?
author: Ashleigh Young
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Socialism: Utopian and Scientific]]> 18866145 69 Friedrich Engels Kyle 3 4.17 1880 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
author: Friedrich Engels
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1880
rating: 3
read at: 2018/01/21
date added: 2018/01/21
shelves: nonfiction, politics, classics
review:

]]> Bartleby the Scrivener 114230 Moby-Dick—Bartleby the Scrivener is simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, it was also, perhaps, Herman Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce finally just said, "I would prefer not to"?

The tale is one of the final works of fiction published by Melville before, slipping into despair over the continuing critical dismissal of his work after Moby-Dick, he abandoned publishing fiction. The work is presented here exactly as it was originally published in Putnam's magazine—to, sadly, critical disdain.]]> 64 Herman Melville 0974607800 Kyle 4 writing, fiction, classics 3.91 1853 Bartleby the Scrivener
author: Herman Melville
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1853
rating: 4
read at: 2009/07/01
date added: 2018/01/05
shelves: writing, fiction, classics
review:

]]> The Yiddish Policemen's Union 16703
But homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. He and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any of their outstanding cases. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his life—and also his worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under Landsman's nose. Out of habit, obligation, and a mysterious sense that it somehow offers him a shot at redeeming himself, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. But when word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, Landsman soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation that are his heritage—and with the unfinished business of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who understands his darkest fears.

At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.
(front flap)]]> 414 Michael Chabon 0007149824 Kyle 3 fiction, jewish, religion
Some of the monologuing is surprising and good ("letting this pigeon shit on their fedoras"), while some is less so (playing klezmer "like there was a dybbuk inside him"). I guess that could be the Jewish/secular divide straight down, especially when they're talking Yiddish or when they're talking American (that's how English is called). I don't always know about the alt history that's supremely Jewish: it's not exactly an Israel exactly relocated, but it's close. Kind of one-note? Not A+? I'm no Jew, but I laugh a little sometimes. I don't know.]]> 3.72 2007 The Yiddish Policemen's Union
author: Michael Chabon
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2018/01/05
date added: 2018/01/05
shelves: fiction, jewish, religion
review:
Usually pretty chucklingly funny, in an alt-noir way sort of like Johnson's film Brick or Godard's film Alphaville (the former a masterpiece and the latter a misstep, fitting the book pretty well). "'These are strange times to be a Jew,' Tenenboym agrees. 'No doubt about it.'"
 "Jews want livable space"
 Like many of Pynchon's novels, Vineland or Inherent Vice or what have you. But altogether, I don't know.

Some of the monologuing is surprising and good ("letting this pigeon shit on their fedoras"), while some is less so (playing klezmer "like there was a dybbuk inside him"). I guess that could be the Jewish/secular divide straight down, especially when they're talking Yiddish or when they're talking American (that's how English is called). I don't always know about the alt history that's supremely Jewish: it's not exactly an Israel exactly relocated, but it's close. Kind of one-note? Not A+? I'm no Jew, but I laugh a little sometimes. I don't know.
]]> Lord Jim 18891029 256 Joseph Conrad Kyle 1 classics, fiction
Always with menace -- the deck of a ship metaphorically "a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife" -- but never to anything coherent or solid. Interesting how one of its quirks is German -- "From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air"; then, soon after is Ewigkeit; and then, and then, and then -- but never interesting enough. And "this has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of intelligence and the perversions of -- of nerves, let us say"]]> 3.74 1900 Lord Jim
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1900
rating: 1
read at: 2017/12/09
date added: 2017/12/09
shelves: classics, fiction
review:
Sorry, it's not so good. Next to Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim's just lower. Marvelous that Conrad was a Pole and wrote in a language that wasn't native; but, um, we can tell, can't we? I mean, ten-cent words out the wazoo, pile-up after pile-up of a similar sort of quirky description. I can barely write a sentence in a non-English language, let alone a book, but I know how nowadays, don't I? And this isn't how. Heart of Darkness had strange excitement enough to counter-balance the stodgy, misfit, delicately nested syntax, but this one doesn't. The author's note says "If I hadn't believed that it was interesting I never could have begun to write it" -- and I'm like, Whoa, really?

Always with menace -- the deck of a ship metaphorically "a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to the knife" -- but never to anything coherent or solid. Interesting how one of its quirks is German -- "From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air"; then, soon after is Ewigkeit; and then, and then, and then -- but never interesting enough. And "this has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life, of the kind that is not disturbed by the vagaries of intelligence and the perversions of -- of nerves, let us say"
]]> <![CDATA[The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race]]> 28505023 , The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.

In light of recent tragedies and widespread protests across the nation, The Progressive magazine republished one of its most famous pieces: James Baldwin’s 1962 “Letter to My Nephew,” which was later published in his landmark book, The Fire Next Time. Addressing his fifteen-year-old namesake on the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Baldwin wrote: “You know and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon.”

Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward knows that Baldwin’s words ring as true as ever today. In response, she has gathered short essays, memoir, and a few essential poems to engage the question of race in the United States. And she has turned to some of her generation’s most original thinkers and writers to give voice to their concerns.

The Fire This Time is divided into three parts that shine a light on the darkest corners of our history, wrestle with our current predicament, and envision a better future. Of the eighteen pieces, ten were written specifically for this volume.

In the fifty-odd years since Baldwin’s essay was published, entire generations have dared everything and made significant progress. But the idea that we are living in the post-Civil Rights era, that we are a “postracial” society, is an inaccurate and harmful reflection of a truth the country must confront. Baldwin’s “fire next time” is now upon us, and it needs to be talked about.]]> 226 Jesmyn Ward 1501126342 Kyle 0 to-read 4.35 2016 The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Beowulf 52357 259 Unknown 0393320979 Kyle 2 3.46 1000 Beowulf
author: Unknown
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1000
rating: 2
read at: 2017/11/14
date added: 2017/11/14
shelves: classics, fiction, fantasy, international
review:

]]> Strumpet City 17061953 Strumpet City marks the centenary of the 1913 Lockout. It has been chosen as Dublin City Libraries' One City, One Book for 2013. First published in 1969, it has repeatedly been described as one of the greatest Irish novels of all time.

Centring on the seminal lockout of 20,000 workers in Dublin in 1913, Strumpet City encompasses a wide sweep of city life. From the destitution of Rashers Tierney to the solid, aspirant respectability of Fitz and Mary, the priestly life of Father O'Connor, and the upper-class world of Yearling and the Bradshaws, it paints a portrait of a city of stark contrasts, with an urban working class mired in vicious poverty.

Strumpet City is much more than a book about the Lockout. Through the power of vivid fiction we encounter all the complexities of humanity.

The brilliant and much-loved TV series, originally screened by RTE in 1980, is fondly remembered by many but to read the book is to immerse yourself in social and historical writing akin to Chekhov and Tolstoy.

Strumpet City is the great, sweeping Irish historical novel of the 20th century.]]> 560 James Plunkett 0717156109 Kyle 3
Plunkett's novel, as it is the sort of centennial epic that captures a zeitgeist, is meant as an Irish equivalent to the 'Great American novel'. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, as the novelistic pieces are often cut-out predictable (thwarts, melancholies, drifting moods, joys, etc.). And, you know, books in English that aren't American aren't so common, I humbly reckon, at least in the canon I know; so it has that rarity thing going for it. It's also often compared to another Irish great, Joyce's Ulysses, which proves it sweeping through decades (maximalist) where Joyce zeroes in one day in 1904 (minimalist). Which is a better experience of Dublin? I do not know, frankly.

The 1913 lock-out -- one side cheering for Larkin, Connolly, revolution, and the other for status quo, wealth inequality, the same old landlord/tenant grumbling -- makes a fine premise at times. The socialist debates this setting summons are eternally conveyed in quaint yet precise words and eternally proven in itchy moods, vignettes, piquant life corners. It can be a little tiresome at times (haven’t you yet decided? realized?), but life in general can be that way just as often as literature, no? We aren’t ready for a nature like that, I suppose, human civilization and all; still stuck we are to miserable capitalism and pained "justice" and 'the way it’s been and will continue to be' and stuff. So depressing in that sense. But not a bad book in general. I don’t know.

Maybe when Dublin itself is glimpsed, less when the human characters inside it get long gazes and are followed? All on page 494, near the book's end, the city's characterized in a sad yet funny way again: Rashers Tierney describes Dublin as "the most misbegotten kip of a city in the whole wide world" ['kip' defined soon after as "a resort of ill fame, a whorehouse"; for Father Griffley "it was a fitting word. It pleased him."] Just as Rashers as a character can remind us of Bubbles, so can Strumpet City's Dublin echo The Wire's Baltimore: a hard-luck, blue-collar place, of a lot of highs and lows both, in a particular and remarkable turn of history. We need not so much the inhabitants' complicated, confusing ins and outs, in my opinion: let's bask more in reality (smaller nature), no?]]> 4.26 1969 Strumpet City
author: James Plunkett
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1969
rating: 3
read at: 2017/11/05
date added: 2017/11/05
shelves: fiction, international, politics
review:
Dublin was "a comfortless city" (71). "There were particular deaths no longer, only Death in general" (96). "These bricks were returning once more to dust, one by one these walls would bulge outwards, crack, collapse into rubble. They were despised and uncared for, like the tenants they sheltered, who lived for the most part on bread and tea and bore children on rickety beds to grow up in the same hardship and hunger. Larkin was thundering his message of revolution, organising strikes, leading assaults on a shocked society, but the immediate gains, where they came at all, made little difference" (296). "But that was the Will of God" (390). Oh! Not quite Angela's Ashes monotonous Irish misery but close, no?

Plunkett's novel, as it is the sort of centennial epic that captures a zeitgeist, is meant as an Irish equivalent to the 'Great American novel'. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, as the novelistic pieces are often cut-out predictable (thwarts, melancholies, drifting moods, joys, etc.). And, you know, books in English that aren't American aren't so common, I humbly reckon, at least in the canon I know; so it has that rarity thing going for it. It's also often compared to another Irish great, Joyce's Ulysses, which proves it sweeping through decades (maximalist) where Joyce zeroes in one day in 1904 (minimalist). Which is a better experience of Dublin? I do not know, frankly.

The 1913 lock-out -- one side cheering for Larkin, Connolly, revolution, and the other for status quo, wealth inequality, the same old landlord/tenant grumbling -- makes a fine premise at times. The socialist debates this setting summons are eternally conveyed in quaint yet precise words and eternally proven in itchy moods, vignettes, piquant life corners. It can be a little tiresome at times (haven’t you yet decided? realized?), but life in general can be that way just as often as literature, no? We aren’t ready for a nature like that, I suppose, human civilization and all; still stuck we are to miserable capitalism and pained "justice" and 'the way it’s been and will continue to be' and stuff. So depressing in that sense. But not a bad book in general. I don’t know.

Maybe when Dublin itself is glimpsed, less when the human characters inside it get long gazes and are followed? All on page 494, near the book's end, the city's characterized in a sad yet funny way again: Rashers Tierney describes Dublin as "the most misbegotten kip of a city in the whole wide world" ['kip' defined soon after as "a resort of ill fame, a whorehouse"; for Father Griffley "it was a fitting word. It pleased him."] Just as Rashers as a character can remind us of Bubbles, so can Strumpet City's Dublin echo The Wire's Baltimore: a hard-luck, blue-collar place, of a lot of highs and lows both, in a particular and remarkable turn of history. We need not so much the inhabitants' complicated, confusing ins and outs, in my opinion: let's bask more in reality (smaller nature), no?
]]> <![CDATA[Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon 1965-72]]> 8123122 Between 1965 and 1972, America experienced a second civil war. From its ashes, today's political world was born. It was the era not only of Nixon, Johnson, Agnew, Humphrey, McGovern, Daley and Wallace; but Abbie Hoffman, Ronald Reagan, Angela Davis, Ted Kennedy, Charles Manson, John Lindsay and Jane Fonda. There are glimpses of Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Jesse Jackson, John Kerry and even of two ambitious young men named Karl Rove and Bill Clinton--and an unambitious young man named George W. Bush.
Filled with prodigious research, driven by a powerful narrative, Perlstein's account of how America divided confirms his place as one of our country's most celebrated historians.]]> 896 Rick Perlstein Kyle 0 to-read 4.36 2008 Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon 1965-72
author: Rick Perlstein
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Red-Haired Woman 36101978 From the Nobel Prize winner and bestselling author ofÌęSnow,ÌęMuseum of InnocenceÌęČčČÔ»ćÌęMy Name Is Red, a timeless and absorbing fable of fathers and sons.

On the outskirts of a town thirty miles from Istanbul, a master well-digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck metre by metre, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before--not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other, and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world. But in the nearby town, where they buy provisions and take their evening break, the boy will find an irresistible diversion. The Red-Haired Woman, an alluring member of a travelling theatre company, catches his eye and seems as fascinated by him as he is by her. The young man's wildest dream will be realized, but, when in his distraction a horrible accident befalls the well-digger, the boy will flee, returning to Istanbul. Only years later will he discover whether he was in fact responsible for his master's death and who the red-headed enchantress was.
ÌęÌęÌęÌę A beguiling mystery tale of family and romance, of east and west, tradition and modernity, by one of the great storytellers of our time.]]> 274 Orhan Pamuk 0735272727 Kyle 0 to-read 3.72 2016 The Red-Haired Woman
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Moonglow 26795307 The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon traveled to his mother’s home in Oakland, California, to visit his terminally ill grandfather. Tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, memory stirred by the imminence of death, Chabon’s grandfather shared recollections and told stories the younger man had never heard before, uncovering bits and pieces of a history long buried and forgotten. That dreamlike week of revelations forms the basis for the novel Moonglow, the latest feat of legerdemain from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon.

ÌęMoonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession of a man the narrator refers to only as “my grandfather.” It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and marriage and desire, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of keeping secrets and telling lies. It is a portrait of the difficult but passionate love between the narrator’s grandfather and his grandmother, an enigmatic woman broken by her experience growing up in war-torn France. It is also a tour de force of speculative autobiography in which Chabon devises and reveals a secret history of his own imagination.

ÌęFrom the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York’s Wallkill prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of the “American Century,” the novel revisits an entire era through a single life and collapses a lifetime into a single week. A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional nonfiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most moving and inventive.]]> 430 Michael Chabon 0062225553 Kyle 3 3.77 2016 Moonglow
author: Michael Chabon
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2017/06/14
date added: 2017/06/14
shelves: fiction, jewish, personal, romance, writing
review:
I admire how Moonglow refuses to classify itself as novel and memoir, and comes through with nostalgia and weirdness all its own, every word pumped with love; but as a book all by itself, I think coherence is sadly missing. It's just one glowing and wonderfully constructed metaphor after another, but most crumble very soon after takeoff. (Mixed metaphor of sugar cube or space shuttle? Chabon would choose a different path and probably make it some quaint Jewish thing, the description of which might take pages of languorous work, but for which I myself would have little entry at all.) It's all too cute and too writerly to me in general, from WWII Europe and postwar Baltimore to the retirement Florida in decades following. There's some ok stuff but way too much ok stuff and some ok stuff that's mixed up in an odd way.
]]> Romanian Notebook 29939122
The day before Cyrus Console and his pregnant wife leave for a monthlong visit to Romania, they receive troubling news―the fetus she’s carrying is at elevated risk for Down syndrome. As the trip unfolds, his worry spirals into broader meditations on parenthood, language, addiction, love, marriage, and the passage and management of time. In and among the cities of Roman, Iasi, and Bucharest, Console chronicles his loving but comically awkward interactions with friends and family, taking place as they do in a language and culture unfamiliar to him.

The resulting travel diary moves beyond daily life to delve into the enigmas of art, suffering, creativity, and family. Mixing memory with acute observations on everything from chess and stray dogs to heartbreak and dreamscape, Romanian Notebook turns the anxiety and rumination of the expectant parent into a deeper way of thinking about the human condition.]]> 176 Cyrus Console 0865478309 Kyle 0 to-read 4.05 Romanian Notebook
author: Cyrus Console
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/05/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Movies Are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings]]> 32284329 208 Josh Larsen 0830844783 Kyle 2
I suppose a lot of reviews of the book will start with either 'As a strong fellow believer' or 'As a non-believer who's curiously enough reading a Christian book', either positively toward faith or negatively away, and I won't start mine any differently. It's the "atheist" one for me! I'm not a special person; I don't do different things. That may be the scariest and least Christian confession to make, mightn't it? that one isn't a special person? that selfishness and know-better 'I'm a sinner too' arrogance and condescension won't work this time?

And I suppose furthermore everything will be a cushy 'expressly for you and you alone' thing, in the way of movies, prayers, and Movies Are Prayers, right? Give it a break, though! Solid prose, not 100% perfect but solid enough, off a premise so tricky. You have to give Larsen some credit too: secular place like Filmspotting, daring to bring just the tiniest bit of faith into the darkness. It's one of the more heroically unnecessary tasks I can imagine. Not as bad as the NY Times bringing aboard a climate change skeptic -- but awfully similar.

Oh, I'm just full of resentment? I like free copies of exclusive new media so much that I'll sign up for anything. I expected the Filmspotting-approved titles, but I was pulling for more from the prose than just a watery super-Biblical and then super-multiplex juxtaposition, again and again. I've related more to Larsen's film opinions than his co-host Kempanar's honestly. Still too much to ask, though, especially from a struggling scrivener? Maybe, but I'm just not happy with my purchase (a purchase of 0 so far!); so you can probably just say something about Mammon and let me go.

Shouldn't an atheist say "Hmm, Christian book? Surprisingly good" and the Christian say "Hmm, Christian book? Good and I knew it'd be good"? 'Bad' ruins the whole thing for atheists and Christians alike. Carefully balancing good and bad is the religion's whole modus operandi, right? so an imbalance is outright hellish! Well, to nitpick, I just don't like all the endnotes in a slim thing like this; I'm glad they're not densely parenthetical, but do we need every example numbered? I don't like semantically confusing Oz for its wizard, like on page 39. I don't like all the pull quotes in television sets throughout the text. I don't like when "wasn't" succeeds an "'if" (when I reckon it should be the properly subjunctive "'weren't"), like on page 162.

Plus, I'm afraid I detect that the book might be intellectually smug, slowed, or self-paralyzing. I'm afraid it sees the world as utterly broken and in need of severe correction, as all Christianity sees it (even the self-professed hopeful or progressive recent spins), instead of the inherently good and natural I try to see. Larsen sees some perversions of religion as like "a story that repeatedly raps its characters on the knuckles" and I like that he isn't afraid to reflect 'bad religion' back onto 'bad movies'. But what if all religion were bad religion inherently and the perversions were just various examples? I wish faith wouldn't always skew itself into reaction, into 'But' after 'But', never finishing anything it says.

I do unload a lot of epic religious problems onto the one slim book, and for that I apologize. Again, it's not bad at all. A little treacly deep in the writing; and the movie criticism is sandwiched with the religious criticism in a way that can be a little dull or samey (for instance, I'd prefer the ecstasy around Rushmore applied to more movies overall; instead of a main movie's larger crisis enveloped around a few smaller ones in each chapter). My tone's probably not as kind or encouraging as it could be, but I was disappointed by Movies Are Prayers overall.

More than a mere run-through of Christ-like figures and the feeble analysis that'd take, Larsen blows some interesting and surprisingly-secular titles into his whole cinematic take. But other than titles, we probably don't have a great book yet. It's not there. Maybe the library in Hell will have a copy or two of Movies Are Prayers: I can re-read it once or twice, as just a slight departure from my endless agony. If Satan'll allow that, but I doubt he will, oh fiddlesticks.]]> 3.85 Movies Are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings
author: Josh Larsen
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2017/05/21
date added: 2017/05/21
shelves: art, nonfiction, religion, pop-culture
review:
As a heathen, I can assure you that Larsen's book is for Christians and non-Christians alike! And after about 3000 ratings and about 1900 reviews on I can assure you that movies are something. Maybe not prayers per se, and maybe I'd put "Films" in the main title instead of "Movies" and change the subtitle entirely (I'm a stickler for semantics and lately resent "movies" cheapening the form and whatnot), but they're something. The book troubled me a little, but you can just use the hashtag #heathentroubles and shrug.

I suppose a lot of reviews of the book will start with either 'As a strong fellow believer' or 'As a non-believer who's curiously enough reading a Christian book', either positively toward faith or negatively away, and I won't start mine any differently. It's the "atheist" one for me! I'm not a special person; I don't do different things. That may be the scariest and least Christian confession to make, mightn't it? that one isn't a special person? that selfishness and know-better 'I'm a sinner too' arrogance and condescension won't work this time?

And I suppose furthermore everything will be a cushy 'expressly for you and you alone' thing, in the way of movies, prayers, and Movies Are Prayers, right? Give it a break, though! Solid prose, not 100% perfect but solid enough, off a premise so tricky. You have to give Larsen some credit too: secular place like Filmspotting, daring to bring just the tiniest bit of faith into the darkness. It's one of the more heroically unnecessary tasks I can imagine. Not as bad as the NY Times bringing aboard a climate change skeptic -- but awfully similar.

Oh, I'm just full of resentment? I like free copies of exclusive new media so much that I'll sign up for anything. I expected the Filmspotting-approved titles, but I was pulling for more from the prose than just a watery super-Biblical and then super-multiplex juxtaposition, again and again. I've related more to Larsen's film opinions than his co-host Kempanar's honestly. Still too much to ask, though, especially from a struggling scrivener? Maybe, but I'm just not happy with my purchase (a purchase of 0 so far!); so you can probably just say something about Mammon and let me go.

Shouldn't an atheist say "Hmm, Christian book? Surprisingly good" and the Christian say "Hmm, Christian book? Good and I knew it'd be good"? 'Bad' ruins the whole thing for atheists and Christians alike. Carefully balancing good and bad is the religion's whole modus operandi, right? so an imbalance is outright hellish! Well, to nitpick, I just don't like all the endnotes in a slim thing like this; I'm glad they're not densely parenthetical, but do we need every example numbered? I don't like semantically confusing Oz for its wizard, like on page 39. I don't like all the pull quotes in television sets throughout the text. I don't like when "wasn't" succeeds an "'if" (when I reckon it should be the properly subjunctive "'weren't"), like on page 162.

Plus, I'm afraid I detect that the book might be intellectually smug, slowed, or self-paralyzing. I'm afraid it sees the world as utterly broken and in need of severe correction, as all Christianity sees it (even the self-professed hopeful or progressive recent spins), instead of the inherently good and natural I try to see. Larsen sees some perversions of religion as like "a story that repeatedly raps its characters on the knuckles" and I like that he isn't afraid to reflect 'bad religion' back onto 'bad movies'. But what if all religion were bad religion inherently and the perversions were just various examples? I wish faith wouldn't always skew itself into reaction, into 'But' after 'But', never finishing anything it says.

I do unload a lot of epic religious problems onto the one slim book, and for that I apologize. Again, it's not bad at all. A little treacly deep in the writing; and the movie criticism is sandwiched with the religious criticism in a way that can be a little dull or samey (for instance, I'd prefer the ecstasy around Rushmore applied to more movies overall; instead of a main movie's larger crisis enveloped around a few smaller ones in each chapter). My tone's probably not as kind or encouraging as it could be, but I was disappointed by Movies Are Prayers overall.

More than a mere run-through of Christ-like figures and the feeble analysis that'd take, Larsen blows some interesting and surprisingly-secular titles into his whole cinematic take. But other than titles, we probably don't have a great book yet. It's not there. Maybe the library in Hell will have a copy or two of Movies Are Prayers: I can re-read it once or twice, as just a slight departure from my endless agony. If Satan'll allow that, but I doubt he will, oh fiddlesticks.
]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Peanuts, 1950-1952 (The Complete Peanuts, #1)]]> 27426444
This first volume, covering the first two and a quarter years of the strip, will be of particular fascination to Peanuts aficionados worldwide: Although there have been literally hundreds of Peanuts books published, many of the strips from the series' first two or three years have never been collected before―in large part because they showed a young Schulz working out the kinks in his new strip and include some characterizations and designs that are quite different from the cast we're all familiar with. (Among other things, three major cast members―Schroeder, Lucy, and Linus―initially show up as infants and only "grow" into their final "mature" selves as the months go by. Even Snoopy debuts as a puppy!) Thus The Complete Peanuts offers a unique chance to see a master of the art form refine his skills and solidify his universe, day by day, week by week, month by month.

This volume is rounded out with Garrison Keillor's introduction, a biographical essay by David Michaelis (Schulz and Peanuts) and an in-depth interview with Schulz conducted in 1987 by Gary Groth and Rick Marschall, all wrapped in a gorgeous design by award-winning cartoonist Seth. Black-and-white comic strips throughout]]> 356 Charles M. Schulz Kyle 2 4.55 2004 The Complete Peanuts, 1950-1952 (The Complete Peanuts, #1)
author: Charles M. Schulz
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at: 2017/04/01
date added: 2017/04/15
shelves: art, comedy, fiction, graphic-novel, kids, shorts, pop-culture
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain]]> 18718907 After his family adopted Callie, a shy, skinny terrier mix, Berns decided that there was only one way to answer that question—use an MRI machine to scan the dog’s brain. His colleagues dismissed the idea. Everyone knew that dogs needed to be restrained or sedated for MRI scans. But if the military could train dogs to operate calmly in some of the most challenging environments, surely there must be a way to train dogs to sit in an MRI scanner.

With this radical conviction, Berns and his dog would embark on a remarkable journey and be the first to glimpse the inner workings of the canine brain. Painstakingly, the two worked together to overcome the many technical, legal, and behavioral hurdles. Berns’s research offers surprising results on how dogs empathize with human emotions, how they love us, and why dogs and humans share one of the most remarkable friendships in the animal kingdom.

How Dogs Love Us answers the age-old question of dog lovers everywhere and offers profound new evidence that dogs should be treated as we would treat our best human friends: with love, respect, and appreciation for their social and emotional intelligence.

]]> 272 Gregory Berns Kyle 3 animals, nonfiction, science 4.04 2013 How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain
author: Gregory Berns
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2017/03/27
date added: 2017/03/27
shelves: animals, nonfiction, science
review:
Light but not shallow. We get a skim of animal science (Berridge, Panksepp, MacLean) and, although with many easily twizzled cliffhangers, we see some of the long road of "the Dog Project". Faceless/'passive' to an extent (as that's the way scientists need to write) but very wholesome toward its canine subject (natural of course, as how you gonna read about dogs and not say every once in a while AWW, WHAT A BIG STUPID, ADORABLE LUNKHEAD?). The big takeaways are that dogs are or could be "resonant", or fully in sync with their owners' natures, and that they might have been conditioned anthropologically to be empathetic, mentally "there". It's just that humans might be noisy in a sense, barking lots of ambiguous gibberish, gesturing inscrutably, being inconsistent, etc.
]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Everything: A Visual Guide to Travel and the World (Lonely Planet)]]> 23396471 Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher*

Want to know how to wear a kilt, kiss a stranger, prevent a hangover, get out of a sinking car, eat a lobster, greet an alien, predict the weather, play croquet and much, much more? The Book of Everthing has it all. Open the book! Dive in! We guarantee you'll learn something new. And, equipped for a world of smart, safe and exciting travel, you can use your witty know-how to make friends wherever you go.

Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet, Nigel Holmes.

About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel.

TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category

'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times

'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)

*#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013

]]> 204 Nigel Holmes 1743605927 Kyle 3 nonfiction, comedy 3.70 2012 The Book of Everything: A Visual Guide to Travel and the World (Lonely Planet)
author: Nigel Holmes
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2017/02/15
date added: 2017/02/15
shelves: nonfiction, comedy
review:

]]> CivilWarLand in Bad Decline 28747 179 George Saunders 0099595818 Kyle 0 to-read 4.25 1996 CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
author: George Saunders
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Not So Happily Ever After: The Tale of King Ludwig II]]> 18900402
Who was Mad King fairy tale king? Insane eccentric? His life path followed many twists and turns on its way to Not So Happily Ever After.]]> 135 Susan Barnett Braun Kyle 2 3.90 2012 Not So Happily Ever After: The Tale of King Ludwig II
author: Susan Barnett Braun
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2017/02/01
date added: 2017/02/06
shelves: german, nonfiction, history, bio
review:
Curious enough that he's supposed "eccentric" or "insane" -- and indeed Braun's YA mini-bio belabors these a bit. But he seems to me neither of those but instead clearly just a tragic case of failed expectations. "If I were a poet," the King wrote in 1886, oddly self-aware all at once, "I might be able to reap praise by putting these things to verse. But the talent of expression was not given to me, and so I must bear being laughed at, scorned and slandered." Relatable to some quirky indie millennials, but zoomingly how else? A few missed opportunities (like, the coup attempt right before a mysterious and Anastasia-like death? Thicken and weird-up and lengthen that shit, c'mon) but overall a solid little jaunt.
]]> <![CDATA[How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, and Beyond: Art, Technology, Language, History, Theory]]> 1883319
Now, James Monaco offers a special anniversary edition of his classic work, featuring a new preface and several new sections, including an "Essential One Hundred Books About Film and Media You Should Read" and "One Hundred Films You Should See." As in previous editions, Monaco once again looks at film from many vantage points, as both art and craft, sensibility and science, tradition and technology. After examining film's close relation to other narrative media such as the novel, painting, photography, television, and even music, the book discusses the elements necessary to understand how films convey meaning, and, more importantly, how we can best discern all that a film is attempting to communicate. In addition, Monaco stresses the still-evolving digital context of film throughout--one of the new sections looks at the untrustworthy nature of digital images and sound--and his chapter on multimedia brings media criticism into the twenty-first century with a thorough
discussion of topics like virtual reality, cyberspace, and the proximity of both to film.

With hundreds of illustrative black-and-white film stills and diagrams, How to Read a Film is an indispensable addition to the library of everyone who loves the cinema and wants to understand it better.]]> 736 James Monaco 0195321057 Kyle 3
Sure, groan at how "Rap or Hip Hop" is unwisely capitalized even as it's dismissed, oughts is misspelled with an O rather than A, YouTube is desperately over-elevated, or other awkward mistakes of future-looking instructional text; but still, so much of it is on point. I giggled a little when I read on page 247 Ingmar Bergman's name misspelled Bargeman -- he was a Swede who worked on a barge? and not a cinema master? -- but the very tiny, sometimes-painlessly-excruciating minutia of different elements doesn't offer many giggles.

You already are a master, you declare, as everyone is a master (familiar with not the specifics of each and every 'thing' but with the grand shape!), so saddling yourself with a specific review is very unnecessary and might be suspicious? Well, thank "you": "I" appreciate "you" calling "me" a master, as you just did, but I must say I disagree: being a master already may be fine enough, but it definitely requires some renewal sometimes.

The whole century of cinema condensed to just a long prose list = ok, for the most part, and I'd agree a huge challenge to organize; but I'd take issue with many pieces, including a focus on box office gross that can be a little pathetic/wrong sometimes. And condensing Africa to just a single name, or examining South America with just a few titles I haven't heard before, seems a bit problematic and maybe insensitive. I don't know! To say before everything you say "Ok, this might seem a little controversial, but I assure you it's very hard and we're ok and you can go elsewhere if you need, so I'm just gonna say" might not always be the greatest way to say what you say. Mentioning Marvel's rise this early might be more common than I realize, but it's still a little impressive, to me at least.

And theory! Though we enjoy reviewing the strains of prescriptive vs. descriptive, MĂŒnsterberg vs. Lindsay, Eisenstein, Euro vs. American, Expressionist vs. Realist, and all, it often seems to tend toward a "reader-response" time waste. Definitely the more abstruse elements solidified in '40s and '50 France -- Cahiers du cinĂ©ma, montage vs. mise-en-scĂšne, the filmmakers Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer and theorists Bazin and Astruc -- sink even further. We all delight that authorship soon found its place, but the historicity could be a bit sharper.

After that, we move into other media. I appreciate at the outset that "audience engagement" is dialed back, and we get a far more inquisitive picture of whole trends. Radio and television are spent as most of Monaco's analysis, in shade after well-drawn shade. But then we move into the "multimedia" that might cripple and confuse the analysis too much. It's a very confusing system of confusion itself, but there might be less tired ways to draw us through! "Do we dare leave all the editing to Google?" it asks at the almost-end, and you can answer 'SEO?' which can begin a new screamingly-insane adventure.]]> 3.54 1977 How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, and Beyond: Art, Technology, Language, History, Theory
author: James Monaco
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1977
rating: 3
read at: 2017/01/01
date added: 2017/01/29
shelves: art, gargantuan, nonfiction, pop-culture
review:
You know what you getting? You getting a textbook. But dang, a pretty sweet textbook, a pretty wise exam of some theoretical subject, or I should say theory for simplicity's sake, but "theory" will lock us in to some aesthetic, semiotic, semantic beeswax, so I'll leave it at subject. There's some charmless drudgery at the outset, clarifying some devices for understanding the power of whatnot (and charmless, I say, despite warnings that the drudgery is just various methodologies, opinions, skippable, but I chose not to skip and still insist on 'drudgery'), though we move very soon into more fertile questions. Semiotics into other things!

Sure, groan at how "Rap or Hip Hop" is unwisely capitalized even as it's dismissed, oughts is misspelled with an O rather than A, YouTube is desperately over-elevated, or other awkward mistakes of future-looking instructional text; but still, so much of it is on point. I giggled a little when I read on page 247 Ingmar Bergman's name misspelled Bargeman -- he was a Swede who worked on a barge? and not a cinema master? -- but the very tiny, sometimes-painlessly-excruciating minutia of different elements doesn't offer many giggles.

You already are a master, you declare, as everyone is a master (familiar with not the specifics of each and every 'thing' but with the grand shape!), so saddling yourself with a specific review is very unnecessary and might be suspicious? Well, thank "you": "I" appreciate "you" calling "me" a master, as you just did, but I must say I disagree: being a master already may be fine enough, but it definitely requires some renewal sometimes.

The whole century of cinema condensed to just a long prose list = ok, for the most part, and I'd agree a huge challenge to organize; but I'd take issue with many pieces, including a focus on box office gross that can be a little pathetic/wrong sometimes. And condensing Africa to just a single name, or examining South America with just a few titles I haven't heard before, seems a bit problematic and maybe insensitive. I don't know! To say before everything you say "Ok, this might seem a little controversial, but I assure you it's very hard and we're ok and you can go elsewhere if you need, so I'm just gonna say" might not always be the greatest way to say what you say. Mentioning Marvel's rise this early might be more common than I realize, but it's still a little impressive, to me at least.

And theory! Though we enjoy reviewing the strains of prescriptive vs. descriptive, MĂŒnsterberg vs. Lindsay, Eisenstein, Euro vs. American, Expressionist vs. Realist, and all, it often seems to tend toward a "reader-response" time waste. Definitely the more abstruse elements solidified in '40s and '50 France -- Cahiers du cinĂ©ma, montage vs. mise-en-scĂšne, the filmmakers Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer and theorists Bazin and Astruc -- sink even further. We all delight that authorship soon found its place, but the historicity could be a bit sharper.

After that, we move into other media. I appreciate at the outset that "audience engagement" is dialed back, and we get a far more inquisitive picture of whole trends. Radio and television are spent as most of Monaco's analysis, in shade after well-drawn shade. But then we move into the "multimedia" that might cripple and confuse the analysis too much. It's a very confusing system of confusion itself, but there might be less tired ways to draw us through! "Do we dare leave all the editing to Google?" it asks at the almost-end, and you can answer 'SEO?' which can begin a new screamingly-insane adventure.
]]> Single Version 30280918 CURE, a massive private paramilitary organization, has replaced the police force in all major cities. The general public is fully armed. The population of cockroaches has exploded.


In this world lives Palazzo, an entomophobic pacifist (and his cat, Larry). His goal is simple and yet impossible: maintain a shred of sanity as society erodes around him. Human empathy is on the decline. CURE s influence expands rapidly into all aspects of daily life. If he listens closely enough, it seems as though the sky is screaming.


Palazzo learns that his neighbor is a member of a clandestine group that call themselves Unarmed Citizens. He attends a meeting, setting into motion a series of events that will put him in the incredible position to change CURE and therefore society from the inside out.]]> 300 Scott Barsotti 1942645139 Kyle 3
I appreciate that the government, or at least some swooping external force, doesn't seem the source of the dystopia: it's just the plain rashness and thickness and ugliness of each individual. Not just deep down in subtext, but right there on the surface. There are some itchy stream-of-consciousness run-on scripts to show us what the internets became -- weak comment, disagreement, shrill and off-base comment, accusation of weakness, threat of murder, etc. -- that would probably instantly fall unsuccessful, unconvincing. But that's what internets is, boom. Every discussion ends in a flat "I'm gonna kill you [period]" and everything is spelled absurdly wrong because no one cares about their spelling not seeming absurd. Right? I wouldn't know at all, but I guess it's fine to guess.

Similarly, our central character seems not inauthentic, apart from a few plot-happy moves (like staying loyal to a Long Goodbye-esque cat, or finding romance with some tough girls, etc.). He doesn't charge in with the perfect thing or hang back with the meaningfully imperfect thing, but stays mostly in the middle. Pacifism and indecision as good things, on the hero's end? Cagey. Ok. *100 emoji in red and underlined twice* Barsotti plays his end pretty loud, and its softness is surprising given how abrasive most of the book is that came before.]]> 4.50 Single Version
author: Scott Barsotti
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2016/12/01
date added: 2016/12/14
shelves: animals, fiction, future, politics
review:
Very astute dystopia about the zeitgeist, even as it forcefully jabs thick 'cockroach' and 'unarmed/paramilitary' points. Barsotti's prose seems pretty workmanlike and MFA-glitzed usually, with some ratatat tricks over an already-clearly-decided mood, but I guess that's supposed to be part of the charm. Our hero is of course a pacifist in a violence-choked hell, surreal moments interspersing the general grayness, and of course he's let into a conspiracy: Unarmed Citizens. In our age of politically-accepted alt-right shadow jackasses screaming lies, the dread that America is actually becoming exactly like this booked-about dystopia (spazzy paramilitary gun nuts, a loud and sick post-truth always-on internets, etc.) is juxtaposed with quainter Blade Runner, Robocop, Idiocracy, Videodrome queer angst. Angst isn't generally 'quaint', though? I guess it depends what the angst's about!

I appreciate that the government, or at least some swooping external force, doesn't seem the source of the dystopia: it's just the plain rashness and thickness and ugliness of each individual. Not just deep down in subtext, but right there on the surface. There are some itchy stream-of-consciousness run-on scripts to show us what the internets became -- weak comment, disagreement, shrill and off-base comment, accusation of weakness, threat of murder, etc. -- that would probably instantly fall unsuccessful, unconvincing. But that's what internets is, boom. Every discussion ends in a flat "I'm gonna kill you [period]" and everything is spelled absurdly wrong because no one cares about their spelling not seeming absurd. Right? I wouldn't know at all, but I guess it's fine to guess.

Similarly, our central character seems not inauthentic, apart from a few plot-happy moves (like staying loyal to a Long Goodbye-esque cat, or finding romance with some tough girls, etc.). He doesn't charge in with the perfect thing or hang back with the meaningfully imperfect thing, but stays mostly in the middle. Pacifism and indecision as good things, on the hero's end? Cagey. Ok. *100 emoji in red and underlined twice* Barsotti plays his end pretty loud, and its softness is surprising given how abrasive most of the book is that came before.
]]> The Circle (The Circle, #1) 18302455 alternate cover for ISBN 9780385351393

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.

As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO.

Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.

What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.]]> 493 Dave Eggers Kyle 3
Handmaid's Tale dystopia, back and forth with regular old trend-piece-hopping twentysomething angst, complete with wise-yet-smartaleck buddy who's into it more as well as usual romance. I can see an irritating groan (used this already, in début Heartbreaking Work, sophomore You Shall Know, and echoes in arguably everything else) after that old trope of parent being ill, stranding a young adult setting out by themselves; but I like in The Circle the solidity of insurance paperwork being the most profound pain of it, lending us some weird/new foothold. Leading us briskly through a deep drama of several hundred pages is never the easiest. And, I mean, as long as California's what you know, then I suppose a lot should be set there.

However (and this is when I, a denizen of these important internets, say 'However' as the first word of a new paragraph, and markedly adjust the argument advanced so far (You can wait till later to give this a 'smile' or 'frown'; just be honest! But no seriously, give me a smile, give me a smile or I'll reach through this screen and gouge out your eyes), the whole work can strike one as just dashed-off, to catch the zeitgeist and ride it wherever. I'm just gonna be brutally honest, as I know Mr. Eggers hangs on every word posted about his books to goodreads-dot-com, and just declare straight up that I have a lot of reservations about The Circle. Sorry. It's very easy, kind of too flat, kind of too long. Good premise but not great substance! He should try again and ask me if I'll make my review sunnier, warmer.

Boy am I glad, however, that there is an Incognito option in many internets browsers. That way, I can freely and without embarrassment investigate child porn, trafficking in meth, the best and hugest assassination strategies for reprehensible political candidates, how to buy blackmail plane tickets to Aruba, etc. Until hackers get the gall/wherewithal to hack the unhackable, I will be totally fine. Pretend that there is a cult, see? and it surveils everything, tracks everything, infinite memory, sees all, horrifying. But is there a key? Maybe there is a key! Take that key and hold it up high (although I hope to God no raptor birds swoop down with a caw and steal it) because that's all you need.

I like all the challenges of making the content, though. I mean, a reader is supposed to eternally sympathize with such an awkward thing, blinkered and soliloquizing antiheroine swallowed by delusion. And then symbols emerge -- some very, very flat and obvious but some less so -- playing tenderly with creativity. So selfish ultimately, no? and in many ways self-defeating, a behind-the-times, anti-tech, closed-minded philosophy in general. Plus, a precursor to all the transcendently political corporate/environmental, Snowden/WikiLeaks, Black Lives Matter, Trump razzmatazz, right? I know you have strong views.

Furthermore, I'd be tempted to just slather a story like this in trendy acronyms or snide in-jokes, but not much like that happens. It's dialed back, just waiting. I don't know, self-righteousness or anonymous pain, it's hard to touch.

When I reviewed Bigelow's film K-19 () (what?? You didn't see that or aren't following my film reviews? Well, wow, why?? I'm a little hurt), I found a pretty interesting connection between it and McTiernan's Hunt for Red October. You ready for this? Basically, in comparing two very similar films about Soviet subs, Bigelow's an '00s one about '60s events and McTiernan's a '90s one about '80s events, the gap between subject and release could connect directly to the overall quality. Something similar could be said for books, Eggers' a 2013 one about up-to-the-second events in comparison to Pynchon's 2013 about events of a dozen years prior; and a TV series also about computer tech, AMC's Halt and Catch Fire, a 2013 one about events of about 25 years prior. I'm seeing quality expanding with time gaps when it comes to this very subject. Curious, no?

Or Badham's 1983 film about a precocious hacker, WarGames, or Robinson's 1992 Sneakers. Both written by the same team, examining similar quirky early PC culture. You see? You don't see? Like, computers are weird, so when you 'plug' fiction into it the fiction also becomes weird. Or something.

But soon we'll sweep it all away suddenly, with Ex Machina blood or something? Yes? To soothe (and, in so doing, solve!) each and every problem encountered thus far. I still can't believe, though, how you're zinging me about my use of the word "cult" and almost nobody sent me smiles for my K-19 review. Are these just meaningless tools to distract me, just pollution, or what? That makes pretty much no sense. "obfuscate," "Suffering is only suffering if it's done in silence," etc., etc.]]> 3.41 2013 The Circle (The Circle, #1)
author: Dave Eggers
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2016/10/01
date added: 2016/10/22
shelves: fiction, future, history, mcsweeneys, personal, politics
review:
You know this is the perfect utopia, the perfect riches to rags, wise snapshot of 2013-era Facebook, Google, Apple tech boom. We're gonna show a 21st-century millennial environment, deep in the lucky day after day, darkening pleasantries of cult. At first the la-la waltz, crash into paranoia and gossip, all the way into how everything's a torturous jungle of empty back-biting, miscommunication, impure bullshit. The cult steps -- more and more 'Participation, participation, participation', emptier and more sickening all the time (the way you feel, stomach drop, the way you'll feel) -- are sometimes annoyingly neat and paper-thin, but it's decent.

Handmaid's Tale dystopia, back and forth with regular old trend-piece-hopping twentysomething angst, complete with wise-yet-smartaleck buddy who's into it more as well as usual romance. I can see an irritating groan (used this already, in début Heartbreaking Work, sophomore You Shall Know, and echoes in arguably everything else) after that old trope of parent being ill, stranding a young adult setting out by themselves; but I like in The Circle the solidity of insurance paperwork being the most profound pain of it, lending us some weird/new foothold. Leading us briskly through a deep drama of several hundred pages is never the easiest. And, I mean, as long as California's what you know, then I suppose a lot should be set there.

However (and this is when I, a denizen of these important internets, say 'However' as the first word of a new paragraph, and markedly adjust the argument advanced so far (You can wait till later to give this a 'smile' or 'frown'; just be honest! But no seriously, give me a smile, give me a smile or I'll reach through this screen and gouge out your eyes), the whole work can strike one as just dashed-off, to catch the zeitgeist and ride it wherever. I'm just gonna be brutally honest, as I know Mr. Eggers hangs on every word posted about his books to goodreads-dot-com, and just declare straight up that I have a lot of reservations about The Circle. Sorry. It's very easy, kind of too flat, kind of too long. Good premise but not great substance! He should try again and ask me if I'll make my review sunnier, warmer.

Boy am I glad, however, that there is an Incognito option in many internets browsers. That way, I can freely and without embarrassment investigate child porn, trafficking in meth, the best and hugest assassination strategies for reprehensible political candidates, how to buy blackmail plane tickets to Aruba, etc. Until hackers get the gall/wherewithal to hack the unhackable, I will be totally fine. Pretend that there is a cult, see? and it surveils everything, tracks everything, infinite memory, sees all, horrifying. But is there a key? Maybe there is a key! Take that key and hold it up high (although I hope to God no raptor birds swoop down with a caw and steal it) because that's all you need.

I like all the challenges of making the content, though. I mean, a reader is supposed to eternally sympathize with such an awkward thing, blinkered and soliloquizing antiheroine swallowed by delusion. And then symbols emerge -- some very, very flat and obvious but some less so -- playing tenderly with creativity. So selfish ultimately, no? and in many ways self-defeating, a behind-the-times, anti-tech, closed-minded philosophy in general. Plus, a precursor to all the transcendently political corporate/environmental, Snowden/WikiLeaks, Black Lives Matter, Trump razzmatazz, right? I know you have strong views.

Furthermore, I'd be tempted to just slather a story like this in trendy acronyms or snide in-jokes, but not much like that happens. It's dialed back, just waiting. I don't know, self-righteousness or anonymous pain, it's hard to touch.

When I reviewed Bigelow's film K-19 () (what?? You didn't see that or aren't following my film reviews? Well, wow, why?? I'm a little hurt), I found a pretty interesting connection between it and McTiernan's Hunt for Red October. You ready for this? Basically, in comparing two very similar films about Soviet subs, Bigelow's an '00s one about '60s events and McTiernan's a '90s one about '80s events, the gap between subject and release could connect directly to the overall quality. Something similar could be said for books, Eggers' a 2013 one about up-to-the-second events in comparison to Pynchon's 2013 about events of a dozen years prior; and a TV series also about computer tech, AMC's Halt and Catch Fire, a 2013 one about events of about 25 years prior. I'm seeing quality expanding with time gaps when it comes to this very subject. Curious, no?

Or Badham's 1983 film about a precocious hacker, WarGames, or Robinson's 1992 Sneakers. Both written by the same team, examining similar quirky early PC culture. You see? You don't see? Like, computers are weird, so when you 'plug' fiction into it the fiction also becomes weird. Or something.

But soon we'll sweep it all away suddenly, with Ex Machina blood or something? Yes? To soothe (and, in so doing, solve!) each and every problem encountered thus far. I still can't believe, though, how you're zinging me about my use of the word "cult" and almost nobody sent me smiles for my K-19 review. Are these just meaningless tools to distract me, just pollution, or what? That makes pretty much no sense. "obfuscate," "Suffering is only suffering if it's done in silence," etc., etc.
]]> <![CDATA[Voices of Ireland - Irland Lesebuch]]> 2894608 184 Harald Raykowski 3423094168 Kyle 4
O'Faolain's "The Kitchen" is a sweet memory of his mom. "grumbling and growling" (24) is "murrend und knurrend" (25), "like a moustache" (30) is "wie ein Schnurrbart" (31), and "foxy eyes" (32) is "fuchsigen Augen" (33). Soon after, his "A Lovely Creation" is a nice snapshot of Dublin. "a lovely artificial, sophisticated, deliberate creation" (42) is "eine wunderbar kunstvolle, durchdachte, planvolle Schöpfung" (43). Various subjects clip by nicely, Gaelic language to Dublin as a city, all about the cultural import of Ireland.

Ethel Mannin's "Galway" (did you know Chekhov is spelled Tschechow? "darlin'" is translated "reizende"?) and Edna O'Brien's "Tough Men" ("Being home on holidays, Ryan did nothing but hatch in houses, drink tea, and click girls in the evening" (70) is "Da er Ferien hatte, tat Ryan sowieso kaum etwas anderes als bei den Leuten zu hocken, Tee zu trinken und abends mit MĂ€dchen zu schĂ€kern" (71) both show some feminist grit. I'll admit I still don't know what a "mountainy man" is, even though it's translated "Bergbauer" [mountain farmer?]. Shearman's "Ulster" introduces Troubles in a sense, and O'Beirne clarifies it to religion ("Kick the Pope" is a song title translated as "Ein Fußtritt fĂŒr den Papst").

Did you know "famine" was "Hungersnot"? Nothing much to the rest, but I guess having that last piece -- Lord Dunsany's "The Widow Flynn's Apple Tree", court transcript of a guy who claims he was transformed to a goose by Celtic witchcraft -- maintains some charm from all of them. Long quirky conclusion but apt as always?]]> 3.50 2002 Voices of Ireland - Irland Lesebuch
author: Harald Raykowski
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2016/10/01
date added: 2016/10/18
shelves: epistolary, german, international, nonfiction, shorts, fiction
review:
Thackeray's snippet is first. Suitably tiny and weirdly entertaining: "Every now and then, at a trip of the horse, a disguised lady's maid, with a canary bird in her lap, and a vast anxiety about her best bonnet in the bandbox, begins to scream; at which the car-boy grins, and rattles down the hill only the quicker" (10) is translated "Ab und zu stolpert das Pferd, und dann stĂ¶ĂŸt die inkognito reisende Kammerzofe, die einen Kanarienvogel auf dem Schoß hĂ€lt und sich wegen ihrer guten Haube in der Hutschachtel große Sorgen macht , spitze Schreie aus ; worauf der Kutscher grinst und den Berg nur um so schneller hinunterrattert" (11). Hardcore.

O'Faolain's "The Kitchen" is a sweet memory of his mom. "grumbling and growling" (24) is "murrend und knurrend" (25), "like a moustache" (30) is "wie ein Schnurrbart" (31), and "foxy eyes" (32) is "fuchsigen Augen" (33). Soon after, his "A Lovely Creation" is a nice snapshot of Dublin. "a lovely artificial, sophisticated, deliberate creation" (42) is "eine wunderbar kunstvolle, durchdachte, planvolle Schöpfung" (43). Various subjects clip by nicely, Gaelic language to Dublin as a city, all about the cultural import of Ireland.

Ethel Mannin's "Galway" (did you know Chekhov is spelled Tschechow? "darlin'" is translated "reizende"?) and Edna O'Brien's "Tough Men" ("Being home on holidays, Ryan did nothing but hatch in houses, drink tea, and click girls in the evening" (70) is "Da er Ferien hatte, tat Ryan sowieso kaum etwas anderes als bei den Leuten zu hocken, Tee zu trinken und abends mit MĂ€dchen zu schĂ€kern" (71) both show some feminist grit. I'll admit I still don't know what a "mountainy man" is, even though it's translated "Bergbauer" [mountain farmer?]. Shearman's "Ulster" introduces Troubles in a sense, and O'Beirne clarifies it to religion ("Kick the Pope" is a song title translated as "Ein Fußtritt fĂŒr den Papst").

Did you know "famine" was "Hungersnot"? Nothing much to the rest, but I guess having that last piece -- Lord Dunsany's "The Widow Flynn's Apple Tree", court transcript of a guy who claims he was transformed to a goose by Celtic witchcraft -- maintains some charm from all of them. Long quirky conclusion but apt as always?
]]> <![CDATA[Five Great German Short Stories: A Dual-Language Book]]> 94635 267 Stanley Appelbaum 0486276198 Kyle 3 fiction, german, shorts
1. "Das Erdbeben in Chili" ("The Earthquake in Chile") von Heinrich von Kleist is 32 pages.

I don't like it. Too outdoorsy and eh overall.

2. "Der Sandman" ("The Sandman") von E. T. A. Hoffman is 70 pages.

"schnell" is translated "in a trice" -- why not "quickly", I have no idea, but believe me, I dig the word "trice"! It's cool. More elaborate and multifaceted than the single word "quickly," and much sexier too. "frostig" is translated "glacial" -- why not "frosty", I have no idea, but believe me, I dig the word "glacial"! etc. etc.

A sentence concluded "aber daß er Kinder haßte, das brachte in Euch Kindern wahren Abscheu gegen ihn hervor" (52) becomes "but it was his hatred of children that caused you children to have such a real aversion to him" (53). I would say that "children" awkwardly repeated so close renders the English a bad translation, but that might mislead one into assuming I have any notion of the finer points of German at all, let alone the mastery to break a tricky idea like "hatred" causing "aversion," or whatever the heck. It's completely beyond me. I have no business inside a paragraph like this. Let me out of here. I'm so sorry.

"wie das kindische Kind ĂŒber die goldgleißende Frucht, in deren Innern tödliches Gift verborgen" (54) is "like the innocent child who rejoices over the glittering golden fruit inside of which deadly poison is concealed" (55). Ok, groovy. You know, the drama is basically like a darker genre thing colliding with family discomfort. Cinematically, I guess it's Lubitsch's Doll meeting Hitchcock's Vertigo.

3. "Leutnant Gustl" ("Lieutenant Gustl") von Arthur Schnitzler is 60 pages.

More my speed, definitely. Well before modernism, well before Joyce or Woolf, Schnitzler paints a funny little picture of one guy's interior monologue. "Gustl" is Austrian and very rich with peculiar little place names and details.

4. "Tristan" von Thomas Mann is 80 pages.

If you'll excuse me, dividing language into syntax and diction just as easily/flatly as between German and English, what's up with all the endless sentences, fussy and intricate even as it's just piling up descriptive clauses? You know. I'm down with the diction that's silly and close-to-home, guesting and medical and whatnot, but I don't care for syntax like this. Radically different between Schnitzler and Mann for sure.

"als seien seine ZĂ€hne der Zunge im Wege" (182) is "as if his teeth were in the way of his tongue" (183). Curious expression, even aside from the pile of Ss and Zs.

"kleine niggersongs" -- I won't even ask about the lower-case noun -- is "little minstrel songs"? Cool. Fine enough.

5. "Das Urteil" ("The Judgment") von Franz Kafka is 23 pages.

It's Kafka, man.

Even in only titles, I'm entertained by some of the translated words: the country is spelled Chili here like the food, "lieutenant" gets a sweet shortening. I don't even know. Are you serious about this? I'm no polyglot maven or anything.]]> 3.60 1993 Five Great German Short Stories: A Dual-Language Book
author: Stanley Appelbaum
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2016/07/01
date added: 2016/07/26
shelves: fiction, german, shorts
review:
Five Great German Short Stories is edited and translated by Stanley Appelbaum, who also worked on AusgewÀhlte MÀrchen. Unbeknownst to me for a while -- but it feels right. I don't know. Denser, more "normal" prose seems much harder for me to track bilingually, even just in flighty and occasionally dipped attempts; but I can tell for the most part it's solid and careful. That's what I say every time. I guess I'll just stick to verse or fancy little folk tales or airy monuments to philosophy. Y'know?

1. "Das Erdbeben in Chili" ("The Earthquake in Chile") von Heinrich von Kleist is 32 pages.

I don't like it. Too outdoorsy and eh overall.

2. "Der Sandman" ("The Sandman") von E. T. A. Hoffman is 70 pages.

"schnell" is translated "in a trice" -- why not "quickly", I have no idea, but believe me, I dig the word "trice"! It's cool. More elaborate and multifaceted than the single word "quickly," and much sexier too. "frostig" is translated "glacial" -- why not "frosty", I have no idea, but believe me, I dig the word "glacial"! etc. etc.

A sentence concluded "aber daß er Kinder haßte, das brachte in Euch Kindern wahren Abscheu gegen ihn hervor" (52) becomes "but it was his hatred of children that caused you children to have such a real aversion to him" (53). I would say that "children" awkwardly repeated so close renders the English a bad translation, but that might mislead one into assuming I have any notion of the finer points of German at all, let alone the mastery to break a tricky idea like "hatred" causing "aversion," or whatever the heck. It's completely beyond me. I have no business inside a paragraph like this. Let me out of here. I'm so sorry.

"wie das kindische Kind ĂŒber die goldgleißende Frucht, in deren Innern tödliches Gift verborgen" (54) is "like the innocent child who rejoices over the glittering golden fruit inside of which deadly poison is concealed" (55). Ok, groovy. You know, the drama is basically like a darker genre thing colliding with family discomfort. Cinematically, I guess it's Lubitsch's Doll meeting Hitchcock's Vertigo.

3. "Leutnant Gustl" ("Lieutenant Gustl") von Arthur Schnitzler is 60 pages.

More my speed, definitely. Well before modernism, well before Joyce or Woolf, Schnitzler paints a funny little picture of one guy's interior monologue. "Gustl" is Austrian and very rich with peculiar little place names and details.

4. "Tristan" von Thomas Mann is 80 pages.

If you'll excuse me, dividing language into syntax and diction just as easily/flatly as between German and English, what's up with all the endless sentences, fussy and intricate even as it's just piling up descriptive clauses? You know. I'm down with the diction that's silly and close-to-home, guesting and medical and whatnot, but I don't care for syntax like this. Radically different between Schnitzler and Mann for sure.

"als seien seine ZĂ€hne der Zunge im Wege" (182) is "as if his teeth were in the way of his tongue" (183). Curious expression, even aside from the pile of Ss and Zs.

"kleine niggersongs" -- I won't even ask about the lower-case noun -- is "little minstrel songs"? Cool. Fine enough.

5. "Das Urteil" ("The Judgment") von Franz Kafka is 23 pages.

It's Kafka, man.

Even in only titles, I'm entertained by some of the translated words: the country is spelled Chili here like the food, "lieutenant" gets a sweet shortening. I don't even know. Are you serious about this? I'm no polyglot maven or anything.
]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh]]> 858534 344 A.A. Milne Kyle 5 kids, animals, fiction 4.53 1926 The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh
author: A.A. Milne
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.53
book published: 1926
rating: 5
read at: 2011/01/01
date added: 2016/06/20
shelves: kids, animals, fiction
review:
Viciously philosophical on the one hand -- not in some easy, allegorical way; but as a crazy, fully-loaded assault on every strain of ethics in the world. Yet on the other hand it's kind, tender, irrepressible, exactly the thing to narrate quietly in someone's ear as they fall asleep. That split is amazing, and it's matched by all the gusto, charm, and oddity of a great, classical-seeming British children's book. Each chapter is wondrously self-contained yet at the same time wholly indebted to the whims and peculiarities of A.A. Milne's real-life son/the peculiarities of each stuffed animal
 It's a hilarious and magical ambiguity.
]]> The Handmaid's Tale 12379917
Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now... everything has changed.]]> 395 Margaret Atwood Kyle 3 4.29 1985 The Handmaid's Tale
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2016/04/01
date added: 2016/04/26
shelves: fiction, future, women, religion, politics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Can You Feel the Silence?: Van Morrison]]> 49104 576 Clinton Heylin 1556525427 Kyle 4 nonfiction, pop-culture, bio
The beginning's quite interesting, zig-zagging all over his career; always quite quaint, from the early outside "And It Stoned Me" to the late inside "On Hyndford Street"! It'd be maddening if it weren't so carefully documented and shaped into good little pieces. Then of course is the dull grind of the early '60s, amateur musicianship to showband circuit to Them coherence, all the while finding a voice. Not song lyrics now, as digressions to color the research, but little slices quoting the people themselves (colleagues, etc.) or Morrison himself (during an interview, or in the between-song patter of some obscure-but-recorded concert, might pass a slight reminiscence). The shift between keeping mostly lyrics or mostly quotes from real people isn't as smooth as I might hope, but it ends up servicing the prose quite nicely for the most part.

I don't dig all of Heylin's music criticism, especially overblowing some Them stuff I could take or leave as well as giving short shrift to The Bang Masters (I think "Chick-A Boom", "It's All Right", and "Send Your Mind" are all A+ songs myself). He's appropriately reverent about Astral Weeks, though, and gives the songs a lot of critical high marks while chasing down all sorts of production trivia. It's an odd balance the music biographer sets for himself in general -- sorting through mundanities in quest of the sublime, so should these 'mundanities' who've done all the work have the spotlight they deserve or the rougher 'sublime' itself? -- but usually a worthwhile one anyway.

There are some very strange and welcome Morrison quotes too, which Heylin has compiled for us. After Blowin' Your Mind!'s disgraces, Van the Man said an album was "roughly forty minutes of music, that's all" (158). What a curious way to neutralize a problem, by making even-more-problematic just about every other thing you've done in your life. And later, no longer musical but personal, he mentions during a break from performing "It's All In The Game" (imprecisely fixed by Heylin to "a quarter of a century later" than all the acrimony surrounding suit, counter-suit, split with Janet, etc. in the early '70s): "By the time solicitors get involved, it doesn't matter whose fault it is" (268). 'Doesn't matter' in that way, though, sounds as if it had used to matter or would matter if there were some other condition met: unconvincing.

Or as Van the Man reflected in 1985 about the events of more than a decade earlier, when Saint Dominic's Preview had come out, in a certainly longwinded but always rather intriguing way, "Then you have a couple of albums out and you get these reviews, and these people are saying, 'Well, this means this about that, and he was going through that when he wrote this.' You read these things and you go, 'Who are they talking about?'... So you get to the point where you're afraid to write anything, because you know somebody's gonna make something of it" (259). Well, ouch, I must say. But if you can't take the criticism (when someone 'makes something of' something else), then don't originally make anything, especially if it's inside a la-la, critic-happy world where everyone's apparently a critic.

Or as a similar reflection follows (quoted in 1987, about the events of 1973 or so): "...So you have to pretend that there is something you are searching for [even if not], or... an idea that you take somewhere. So it seems like you're searching, but in fact you're just telling little stories" (279). Pretending you are yourself searching equals not searching. Well, the most I've read about 73's Hard Nose the Highway in quite a while, as well as the sabbatical to Ireland, Veedon Fleece, and plenty of others; but the attention to this or that manager or promoter or publicist, and the falling out that usually results from testing Morrison's surliness, starts to feel unnecessary. Sure, you're allowed, but is it one-sided gossip or watery and many-sided Rashomon-like wastes? Humongous collection, fact-checked and pruned all day, but to what end?

Christianity investigation, in the years starting around '79 and in the pages starting around 350, is in my opinion a much better outlet for Heylin's investigation. Into the Music may have hinted at a beginning, and the next few albums developed it, but it wasn't until Inarticulate Speech of the Heart name-checked L. Ron Hubbard that he really seemed lost. But maybe he wasn't lost (as much as Dylan in those same years) but just searching in a New Age way? And when there's disposable income and few ties, Scientology might not be the worst?

Very disillusioned he became, though: "Van said to them, 'Tell me what the secrets are and I'll tell you whether it's worth a few million. Give me a clue. I don't know what I'm getting.' The guy said, 'Look, it's either done it for you up to this degree or it hasn't. If it's done it, you're in and you'll want it. If it hasn't done it, it's time for you to move on.' And Van goes, "Ok, time to move on'" (375). Sounds pretty healthy actually. Throw a few thousand down the drain of a money-sucking cult started on a dare by a hack, and when it doesn't work walk away and don't throw any more down. Ok.

Or the same about an actual Christianity: as friend Clive Culbertson recalls, "Paul [Jones with whom he'd been discussing religion] said, 'Van, here's the deal. God sent a son, he died for you, you can be saved, you can go to heaven, I will not discuss it further.' And Van said, 'But I want to discuss...' 'But Van, either he died for you or he didn't. If he didn't, we've nothing to talk about. If he did, then you're already free.' That's the Christian shape. And that drove him mad... [In the end] he still walked away as [unhealed] as when he came in" (426). I sometimes wonder what Heylin's brackets and ellipses are changing/excluding -- for instance, was something said after 'mad' that would amuse me, like 'absolutely frickin balls-out mad'? Or was there are a word or a phrase synonymous with 'unhealed' said that I could know about? 'decent' maybe or 'thoughtfully conscientious'? I suppose such mysteries will rage still.

I agree that the album Enlightenment doesn't have much, but "Real Real Gone" is pretty fun. I certainly don't expect the author to always exactly mirror how I've taken the music, but his hottest takedowns seem to touch the songs I think least deserve heat. Or maybe that's how I'd see it, you know, in the weak and sappy 'would'-heavy tendency of a Christian beat. "like a series of shopping lists from the id" is I suppose a serviceable enough critique of Hymns to the Silence, I won't say it isn't, but finding a better target isn't the hardest.

Rogan in a sense declared Morrison 'no poet' (just a working musician, petty, no mystery) and Hinton in a sense declared him 'poet' (not just a working musician, somebody great, with troubling ideas, a misfit), so wouldn't it be just perfect if Heylin declared him 'kinda poet'? That would be very great, but I don't think it works quite like that. Heylin leans a bit too hard for my taste into Rogan's 'no poet' conclusion for instance, and a 100% middle-of-the-road balance between all three doesn't seem sustainable at all, so maybe 'not really a poet' would better fit than 'kinda'. Disappointing in a sense that the conclusion is the drab, cynical one; but I won't complain much.

No one's clarified yet, though, how a person can work for years and years -- getting more and more watery, objectively (some like water, but I think almost everyone would agree it's watery), with each new output -- and still be pretty rich and well-supported. It doesn't make sense. Sure, not every record will be Moondance, but how many Beautiful Visions will be tolerated before at least a Veedon Fleece? There might be some absurd Faustian bargain deep down there somewhere. I don't know.]]> 3.51 2002 Can You Feel the Silence?: Van Morrison
author: Clinton Heylin
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2016/04/01
date added: 2016/04/24
shelves: nonfiction, pop-culture, bio
review:
Unlike Rogan's 2/5 and Hinton's 3/5, Heylin's is a very promising and critically perceptive biography of Van Morrison. I could tell right away. Maybe too early: maybe I just grabbed it as soon as I could, before becoming maturely wise all around. Or maybe exactly at the right time: while it's all still fresh, before all unnecessary piles of preparation can make you stale and removed. Is that it? Is that how it should be grabbed, or if it's grabbed like that maybe that's in the end just 'grasping for straws'? Grabbing, grasping, all belabored. Irish rock or stone, passingly interesting, hounded yet further. It's all right.

The beginning's quite interesting, zig-zagging all over his career; always quite quaint, from the early outside "And It Stoned Me" to the late inside "On Hyndford Street"! It'd be maddening if it weren't so carefully documented and shaped into good little pieces. Then of course is the dull grind of the early '60s, amateur musicianship to showband circuit to Them coherence, all the while finding a voice. Not song lyrics now, as digressions to color the research, but little slices quoting the people themselves (colleagues, etc.) or Morrison himself (during an interview, or in the between-song patter of some obscure-but-recorded concert, might pass a slight reminiscence). The shift between keeping mostly lyrics or mostly quotes from real people isn't as smooth as I might hope, but it ends up servicing the prose quite nicely for the most part.

I don't dig all of Heylin's music criticism, especially overblowing some Them stuff I could take or leave as well as giving short shrift to The Bang Masters (I think "Chick-A Boom", "It's All Right", and "Send Your Mind" are all A+ songs myself). He's appropriately reverent about Astral Weeks, though, and gives the songs a lot of critical high marks while chasing down all sorts of production trivia. It's an odd balance the music biographer sets for himself in general -- sorting through mundanities in quest of the sublime, so should these 'mundanities' who've done all the work have the spotlight they deserve or the rougher 'sublime' itself? -- but usually a worthwhile one anyway.

There are some very strange and welcome Morrison quotes too, which Heylin has compiled for us. After Blowin' Your Mind!'s disgraces, Van the Man said an album was "roughly forty minutes of music, that's all" (158). What a curious way to neutralize a problem, by making even-more-problematic just about every other thing you've done in your life. And later, no longer musical but personal, he mentions during a break from performing "It's All In The Game" (imprecisely fixed by Heylin to "a quarter of a century later" than all the acrimony surrounding suit, counter-suit, split with Janet, etc. in the early '70s): "By the time solicitors get involved, it doesn't matter whose fault it is" (268). 'Doesn't matter' in that way, though, sounds as if it had used to matter or would matter if there were some other condition met: unconvincing.

Or as Van the Man reflected in 1985 about the events of more than a decade earlier, when Saint Dominic's Preview had come out, in a certainly longwinded but always rather intriguing way, "Then you have a couple of albums out and you get these reviews, and these people are saying, 'Well, this means this about that, and he was going through that when he wrote this.' You read these things and you go, 'Who are they talking about?'... So you get to the point where you're afraid to write anything, because you know somebody's gonna make something of it" (259). Well, ouch, I must say. But if you can't take the criticism (when someone 'makes something of' something else), then don't originally make anything, especially if it's inside a la-la, critic-happy world where everyone's apparently a critic.

Or as a similar reflection follows (quoted in 1987, about the events of 1973 or so): "...So you have to pretend that there is something you are searching for [even if not], or... an idea that you take somewhere. So it seems like you're searching, but in fact you're just telling little stories" (279). Pretending you are yourself searching equals not searching. Well, the most I've read about 73's Hard Nose the Highway in quite a while, as well as the sabbatical to Ireland, Veedon Fleece, and plenty of others; but the attention to this or that manager or promoter or publicist, and the falling out that usually results from testing Morrison's surliness, starts to feel unnecessary. Sure, you're allowed, but is it one-sided gossip or watery and many-sided Rashomon-like wastes? Humongous collection, fact-checked and pruned all day, but to what end?

Christianity investigation, in the years starting around '79 and in the pages starting around 350, is in my opinion a much better outlet for Heylin's investigation. Into the Music may have hinted at a beginning, and the next few albums developed it, but it wasn't until Inarticulate Speech of the Heart name-checked L. Ron Hubbard that he really seemed lost. But maybe he wasn't lost (as much as Dylan in those same years) but just searching in a New Age way? And when there's disposable income and few ties, Scientology might not be the worst?

Very disillusioned he became, though: "Van said to them, 'Tell me what the secrets are and I'll tell you whether it's worth a few million. Give me a clue. I don't know what I'm getting.' The guy said, 'Look, it's either done it for you up to this degree or it hasn't. If it's done it, you're in and you'll want it. If it hasn't done it, it's time for you to move on.' And Van goes, "Ok, time to move on'" (375). Sounds pretty healthy actually. Throw a few thousand down the drain of a money-sucking cult started on a dare by a hack, and when it doesn't work walk away and don't throw any more down. Ok.

Or the same about an actual Christianity: as friend Clive Culbertson recalls, "Paul [Jones with whom he'd been discussing religion] said, 'Van, here's the deal. God sent a son, he died for you, you can be saved, you can go to heaven, I will not discuss it further.' And Van said, 'But I want to discuss...' 'But Van, either he died for you or he didn't. If he didn't, we've nothing to talk about. If he did, then you're already free.' That's the Christian shape. And that drove him mad... [In the end] he still walked away as [unhealed] as when he came in" (426). I sometimes wonder what Heylin's brackets and ellipses are changing/excluding -- for instance, was something said after 'mad' that would amuse me, like 'absolutely frickin balls-out mad'? Or was there are a word or a phrase synonymous with 'unhealed' said that I could know about? 'decent' maybe or 'thoughtfully conscientious'? I suppose such mysteries will rage still.

I agree that the album Enlightenment doesn't have much, but "Real Real Gone" is pretty fun. I certainly don't expect the author to always exactly mirror how I've taken the music, but his hottest takedowns seem to touch the songs I think least deserve heat. Or maybe that's how I'd see it, you know, in the weak and sappy 'would'-heavy tendency of a Christian beat. "like a series of shopping lists from the id" is I suppose a serviceable enough critique of Hymns to the Silence, I won't say it isn't, but finding a better target isn't the hardest.

Rogan in a sense declared Morrison 'no poet' (just a working musician, petty, no mystery) and Hinton in a sense declared him 'poet' (not just a working musician, somebody great, with troubling ideas, a misfit), so wouldn't it be just perfect if Heylin declared him 'kinda poet'? That would be very great, but I don't think it works quite like that. Heylin leans a bit too hard for my taste into Rogan's 'no poet' conclusion for instance, and a 100% middle-of-the-road balance between all three doesn't seem sustainable at all, so maybe 'not really a poet' would better fit than 'kinda'. Disappointing in a sense that the conclusion is the drab, cynical one; but I won't complain much.

No one's clarified yet, though, how a person can work for years and years -- getting more and more watery, objectively (some like water, but I think almost everyone would agree it's watery), with each new output -- and still be pretty rich and well-supported. It doesn't make sense. Sure, not every record will be Moondance, but how many Beautiful Visions will be tolerated before at least a Veedon Fleece? There might be some absurd Faustian bargain deep down there somewhere. I don't know.
]]> <![CDATA[Milton (Great Books of the Western World, #32)]]> 11960780
English Minor Poems
Paradise Lost
Samson Agonistes
Areopagitica
]]> 412 John Milton Kyle 4 classics, fiction, religion 4.36 Milton (Great Books of the Western World, #32)
author: John Milton
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.36
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2015/09/01
date added: 2016/03/28
shelves: classics, fiction, religion
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson]]> 112204 THE ONLY ONE-VOLUME EDITION CONTAINING ALL 1,775 OF EMILY DICKINSON’S POEMS

Only eleven of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published prior to her death in 1886; the startling originality of her work doomed it to obscurity in her lifetime. Early posthumously published collections-some of them featuring liberally “edited” versions of the poems-did not fully and accurately represent Dickinson’s bold experiments in prosody, her tragic vision, and the range of her intellectual and emotional explorations. Not until the 1955 publication of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, a three-volume critical edition compiled by Thomas H. Johnson, were readers able for the first time to assess, understand, and appreciate the whole of Dickinson’s extraordinary poetic genius.

This book, a distillation of the three-volume Complete Poems, brings together the original texts of all 1,775 poems that Emily Dickinson wrote.]]> 716 Emily Dickinson Kyle 0 to-read 4.28 1890 The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
author: Emily Dickinson
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1890
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kurt Vonnegut: Letters 17857645 "Newsweek"/The Daily Beast The Huffington Post" Kansas City Star Time Out New York"
This extraordinary collection of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Kurt Vonnegut's fiction. Written over a sixty-year period, these letters, the vast majority of them never before published, are funny, moving, and full of the same uncanny wisdom that has endeared his work to readers worldwide.
Included in this comprehensive volume: the letter a twenty-two-year-old Vonnegut wrote home immediately upon being freed from a German POW camp, recounting the ghastly firebombing of Dresden that would be the subject of his masterpiece "Slaughterhouse-Five;" wry dispatches from Vonnegut's years as a struggling writer slowly finding an audience and then dealing with sudden international fame in middle age; righteously angry letters of protest to local school boards that tried to ban his work; intimate remembrances penned to high school classmates, fellow veterans, friends, and family; and letters of commiseration and encouragement to such contemporaries as Gail Godwin, Gunter Grass, and Bernard Malamud.
Vonnegut's unmediated observations on science, art, and commerce prove to be just as inventive as any found in his novels-from a crackpot scheme for manufacturing "atomic" bow ties to a tongue-in-cheek proposal that publishers be allowed to trade authors like baseball players. ("Knopf, for example, might give John Updike's contract to Simon and Schuster, and receive Joan Didion's contract in return.") Taken together, these letters add considerable depth to our understanding of this one-of-a-kind literary icon, in both his public and private lives. Each letter brims with the mordant humor and openhearted humanism upon which he built his legend. And virtually every page contains a quotable nugget that will make its way into the permanent Vonnegut lexicon.
On a job he had as a young man: "Hell is running an elevator throughout eternity in a building with only six floors."
To a relative who calls him a "great literary figure": "I am an American fad-of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop."
To his daughter Nanny: "Most letters from a parent contain a parent's own lost dreams disguised as good advice."
To Norman Mailer: "I am cuter than you are."
Sometimes biting and ironical, sometimes achingly sweet, and always alive with the unique point of view that made him the true cultural heir to Mark Twain, these letters comprise the autobiography Kurt Vonnegut never wrote. "From the Hardcover edition."]]> 480 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385343760 Kyle 2 4.04 2012 Kurt Vonnegut: Letters
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2016/03/01
date added: 2016/03/21
shelves: nonfiction, epistolary, comedy, bio, writing, shorts
review:

]]> The Ministry of Special Cases 29791
The long-awaited novel from Nathan Englander, author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. Englander’s wondrous and much-heralded collection of stories won the 2000 Pen/Malamud Award and was translated into more than a dozen languages.

From its unforgettable opening scene in the darkness of a forgotten cemetery in Buenos Aires, The Ministry of Special Cases casts a powerful spell. In the heart of Argentina’s Dirty War, Kaddish Poznan struggles with a son who won’t accept him; strives for a wife who forever saves him; and spends his nights protecting the good name of a community that denies his existence--and denies a checkered history that only Kaddish holds dear. When the nightmare of the disappeared children brings the Poznan family to its knees, they are thrust into the unyielding corridors of the Ministry of Special Cases, the refuge of last resort.

Nathan Englander’s first novel is a timeless story of fathers and sons. In a world turned upside down, where the past and the future, the nature of truth itself, all take shape according to a corrupt government’s whims, one man--one spectacularly hopeless man--fights to overcome his history and his name, and, if for only once in his life, to put things right. Here again are all the marvelous qualities for which Englander’s first book was immediately beloved: his exuberant wit and invention, his cosmic sense of the absurd, his genius for balancing joyfulness and despair. Through the devastation of a single family, Englander captures, indelibly, the grief of a nation. The Ministry of Special Cases, like Englander’s stories before it, is a celebration of our humanity, in all its weakness, and--despite that--hope.]]> 339 Nathan Englander 0375404937 Kyle 2 3.66 2005 The Ministry of Special Cases
author: Nathan Englander
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2016/03/01
date added: 2016/03/15
shelves: fiction, jewish, international
review:

]]> The Wolf of Wall Street 20579566
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notorious investment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamous names in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper who led his merry mob on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Street and into a massive office on Long Island. In this astounding and hilarious tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story of greed, power, and excess no one could invent - the story of an ordinary guy who went from hustling Italian ices at sixteen to making hundreds of millions. Until it all came crashing down.

'What separates Jordan's story from others like it, is the brutal honesty.' - Leonardo DiCaprio]]> 518 Jordan Belfort 1444778129 Kyle 4 personal, nonfiction, comedy
A clippy journal of various falls or badnesses or hypocrisies, or a fully new example of an additional one? The vanity of improvement or redemption, even when it moves from vanity itself? The absurdity of wealth, in that when you're wealthy you're wealthy and when you become not wealthy (by pissing it all away on frivolous wastes, like drugs or luxury or any modern tabloid stunts) you can still be wealthy unless you chose to piss all your wealth away instead of saving it for when you'd become not wealthy? It's a difficult question. "It was like being in the Marines. In fact, I was getting the distinct impression that this bastard's favorite movie was An Officer and a Gentleman" (4). I relate! Oh wait: no, I don't at all, sorry, never mind.

In between flips of Wall Street Journals and reports on Microsoft, something new happens? "What I offer you now is a reconstruction of that insanity -- a satirical reconstruction -- of what would turn out to be one of the wildest rides in Wall Street history" (10). 'Satirical' is what he helpfully offers as a summation of his confessional memoir, a summation not many confessional memoirs would be anywhere close to approaching. But is it a satire exactly, or just a cathartic question before a humongous belly flop? Who knows. Hypothetically of course, "The name of my show was Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional" (15). His wife Nadine was the star of a Miller Lite beer commercial during Monday Night Football (16). Fiction can easily be satire, but nonfiction rarely is if I recall correctly.

However, do not attempt what you are about to see, with a wink but then a smirk but then another wink. It could be dangerous, but what's life without a little danger. There might be plenty of naysayers -- no, that is bad; it is very, very bad; it's pretty much the worst thing ever, and the fact that you don't see any problems might be a problem itself, or you yourself are the problem and that's why you don't see any; etc.

Dosed up with an enormous amount of drugs, and then you smirk? But no, no, it's crazy how plain but brisk. And knowing how clueless and daft you might seem, while still clever and economical? Just go for it anyway: "amazing how everything always seemed to work out. When I fell down, there was always someone to pick me up
 as if I was bulletproof or something" (20). SpongeBob SquarePants. "Gordon Gekko, Don Corleone, Kaiser Soze" (21). Martha Stewart. Knowing how ridiculous the word 'loamy' is? Just use it anyway: "loamy loins, glistening with greed and desire" (22). Knowing how vindictive you might seem sometimes? Just go for it: "Wolf to bear his fangs" (26). With the word 'wolf' capitalized of course.

And sometimes just petty, of course. He describes, while having water thrown on him by his wife because he's cheating on her, talking her down: "In a tone of voice normally reserved for someone who's standing on the edge of a cliff and threatening to jump, I said, 'Put down the glass of water, sweetie, and stop crying'." (26). Playing not only with the outside but with the inside too, in a similar way. "After all, guilt and remorse were worthless emotions, weren't they? Well, I knew they weren't, but I had no time for them" (26). Time is of course money, and nothing is of such necessity to human pursuits as money. But I for one disagree with 'Time is money' but agree with 'I need money', so where to stand? Here? "The greasy chicken in Rocky II before his rematch with Apollo Creed" (31). "I felt like Moses in cowboy boots" (51). Real World!

No time for messy emotions but plenty for "Mutual back-scratching and phony palm-pressing" (57), huh? You haven't even read yet gleefully misinterpreting a comparison to Robin Hood and then defining 'omerta' to painful awkwardness (68). I know, I know. It's difficult to stomach some of the dull horseshit Belfort traffics in soon after -- little black box like an M16 that needs you to fire it (telephone) or "money is the single greatest problem solver known to man" (96) or "ridiculous line of bullshit about how money is the root of all evil" or "There's no nobility in poverty" (97) or etc. etc. etc. -- but there's always "bleeding cash like a hemophiliac in a rose bush" (110) and a question about whether good times would still roll or if he'd become a simple hypocrite if one of his business partners "ever stopped laying golden eggs" (133). Simple badness is always right around the corner. It always 'gets better'! -- or worse, far worse, depending how you look at it.

We keep following Belfort when he decides to meet with Saurel, a French guy in Switzerland, to discuss bank fraud. Musing about the mischievous partner Danny he'd left in their hotel room! Yes indeed. Belfort guesses "there wasn't much Danny could do, short of rape or murder, that the man sitting across from me couldn't fix with one phone call to the proper authority." Also, women are inferior to men, the guy muses? "Jesus! That sounded horrific! Yet I had said those same words to myself many times -- trying to rationalize my own behavior. But to be on the receiving end of it made me realize how truly ridiculous it was" (150). He seems to use the concept of rationalizing so much as just the easiest explanation for all his wrongs, no? Childish 'I was so naughty' conclusion to make. Romantically corrupt, excessive, unusual. Fitting, no? Yeah.

Leisurely they go on, and soon Belfort admires smoking differences between Swiss and Americans. "It was as if in Switzerland it was all about being entitled to partake in a simple manly pleasure, while in the United States it had more to do with having the right to kill yourself with a terrible vice, in spite of all the warnings" (151). Yes, to simplify it this way is good, noble, pure, good, pure? Heck yes.

Oh, so it's an internal monologue you have then, with all those 'Perhaps's and 'Although's? "I'm an adolescent inside a man's body" (171). Yes? He finds "some things are just inherently wrong, and you can look at them from a thousand different angles but, at the end of the day, you always come to the same conclusion, which -- in my case -- is that I'm a dirty rotten scoundrel" (172). Right. Leg pain "was coming from nowhere, and everywhere. And it seemed to be moving" (159). Good motif? I like the way he builds it: like the entire world: seems solid enough but if you breathe too heavily it'll all blow away.

He goes to his beloved Aunt Patricia then, to finalize the fraud. She seems solid enough, especially looking at the issue from a distance: "One thing you'll find as you grow older is that, sometimes, money can be more trouble than it's worth.' She shrugged. 'Don't get me wrong, love, I'm not some silly old fool who's lost her marbles and lives in a dream world where money doesn't matter. I'm well aware" (164). Aware then, and furthermore she suggests "Money is the tool, my child, not the mason" (165). Tool? Mason? What is this, a metaphor?

But getting down to brass tacks seems like a breeze, as she clarifies: "I want you to know that I am all for it!
 when you get to my age, a little bit of raciness is what keeps you young, isn't it?" (165). Sure! He even adds soon after, during a different caper back home, "-- despite the voice inside my head that screamed, 'You're in the midst of making one of the gravest errors of your young life!' But I ignored the voice and instead focused on the warmth of the sun" (204). Sun won't be warm forever. Soon, it'll swallow the whole planet up.

Financial regulations all sound like gibberish, especially when you try to patiently triplicate an explanation for them (Rule 144, Regulation S, 2-year loophole for foreigners investing in the United States!). But just remember: repeat something louder if your language isn't understood. It's not that the language isn't intrinsically best or worthwhile or something. Belfort finishes a chapter with a heavy-hearted noir hook, "I won't forget, Todd. I promise," complete with a cut at the end "And just like that I forgot." So naked. Then, trouble with the wife again? "In spite of everything she'd said, it was the word little that wounded me most" (213). The word 'little', huh? Little things can become big problems. It "reminded me of the Pigeon Sisters from the movie The Odd Couple" (213).

Something like the film Ed Wood it could be, I guess, in that little details (eating goldfish, tossing midget, wild sex and drugs and language and smuggling and fraud, etc.) can temporarily distract from the general horror, sadness, bone-chilling angst of the whole thing. Investment is one of the dullest and most colorless pursuits, right up there with making ridiculously bad motion pictures, so won't some very excessive, bombastic flourishes make it palatable? Even the smallest could. Belfort need not worry about being a total hypocrite or boring waste, and Scorsese of course need not worry about any motion picture he makes being bad; but it's just human nature to worry, no?

Considering a fascist or at least conservative trend at the ritzy restaurant where he meets with the FBI, "Back in the good-old days, whenever those were" (256). And then, back at his own office, a speech in progress insulting homosexuals -- outrageous! so un-PC! wouldn't fly anywhere today! -- rumbles together a bit of a no-burn, pass-agg witch hunt but earns only a sigh. "Money makes people do strange things, Danny. Just have patience; you'll find out soon enough" (274). Then, Gilligan's Island (281). A huge Quaalude bender, after which he resolves to quit, "and this time I'm dead serious about it" (299). Saving a friend from drowning, but it's a bit craven too? "Un-fucking-believable! She didn't call me a hero!" (315).

Doing Steve Madden Shoes a favor then. Some business tendency (while some kind of debate rages between steadiness and risk), "in truth, was both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness" (323). Neat divisions are easy. "'Don't take what I said the wrong way' -- Oh, really? How else am I supposed to take it, you fucking backstabber!" (331). Some new business associate was "a spitting image of a rodent. In fact, he could have been a Hollywood stunt double for the comic book character BB Eyes from Dick Tracy" (363).

All of the horseplay minimized or just totally flipped? Monster doses of Quaaludes and coke becoming just a slight whiff of marijuana, or nothing at all, including even the occasional aspirin or gulp of coffee. Marathons with any available prostitute or position or situation becoming just a lingering glance and unspoken squirt later on, or nothing at all, including even the occasional ribald thought. Heaps of money and Long Island luxury becoming just the modest amount to live on, or nothing at all, including even a bed that night in any case. How exactly Belfort wants you to use the examples from his life certainly isn't clear, but he's smart enough to at least leave them alone long enough that their inflation is still silly enough.

Just a shallow, monster hot take on life, of which is then taken a much shallower, even more monster hot take itself? We belong to each other then, just as everything belongs to everything else, when you really think about. 'I' belong to 'you' and 'you' belong to 'me' and 'a fireman' belongs to 'a fire' and 'viewership' belongs to 'the horse' and 'bowling games all over the place' belong to 'liberty', etc. Belfort "rented the mansion of Peter Morton, of Hard Rock Café fame" (388). A near-death yachting accident threatens him, but shortly after "a six-foot-tall Ethiopian masseuse jerked me off... Yet, was there really any difference between getting a hand job and jerking myself off with my own hand?" (412). Philosophy only the occasional thinky ornament gracing normal life, like so?

Then, nearly along to a rock-bottom dive, pills and coke shooting off occasionally, with only capitalism-run-amok craziness as a vague memory. Could it be that this was it? all the ballooning drugs, language, riches garbage disappearing behind pleasantly? The downfall you fear, for sure -- him the paranoid, addict, mental case, and his wife Nadine the martyr, enabler, codependent/angel -- but such a deep and bonkers delivery that you probably wouldn't even believe it if you read about it in a review such as this one. Culminating in less than a year of prison and a resolution I think is best described as 'soft'. Ultimate example: of things ending, and sometimes it's just a comfortable plop and not the total, dramatic summation you'd think it would make. Also ridiculous?

Or I'm sure other films are spoken to, stylistically, as much as books, in a general sense. Don Jon is a very thick confession along these lines. Fast Food Nation is a very searing nonfiction work disguised with fictions. Religulous pretends to strident sociology but can deliver only a lukewarm meditation. If all Belfort's words can do is to lead me again to Scorsese's film, then the book's probably paid for itself. But then again, it was given as a gift, a literal gift, that I'm currently pissing away (albeit in ways almost imperceptible), so maybe that speaks on its own behalf to the concept of "paying" overall. Who knows.]]> 3.65 2007 The Wolf of Wall Street
author: Jordan Belfort
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2016/02/01
date added: 2016/02/29
shelves: personal, nonfiction, comedy
review:
Filthy mouth with baby face only begins to exemplify all the silly contradictions Jordan Belfort has. Dumbass but millionaire? Drug-insane but handsome, healthy, comfortable? Up on that Scarface shit but then going all Confessions of a Dangerous Mind but then going, uh, Rocky and Bullwinkle or something? Ugh. I've heard all this before. He's aware of a lot of these contradictions but not all, crucially, so any hunt for a complete list (does the daft guy know how daft he is?) becomes all the more amusing. Scorsese's film was a good one, but Belfort's memoir does things it couldn't. Not a charmless opportunity, of course, to be the anal digester of fat and merry shallowness.

A clippy journal of various falls or badnesses or hypocrisies, or a fully new example of an additional one? The vanity of improvement or redemption, even when it moves from vanity itself? The absurdity of wealth, in that when you're wealthy you're wealthy and when you become not wealthy (by pissing it all away on frivolous wastes, like drugs or luxury or any modern tabloid stunts) you can still be wealthy unless you chose to piss all your wealth away instead of saving it for when you'd become not wealthy? It's a difficult question. "It was like being in the Marines. In fact, I was getting the distinct impression that this bastard's favorite movie was An Officer and a Gentleman" (4). I relate! Oh wait: no, I don't at all, sorry, never mind.

In between flips of Wall Street Journals and reports on Microsoft, something new happens? "What I offer you now is a reconstruction of that insanity -- a satirical reconstruction -- of what would turn out to be one of the wildest rides in Wall Street history" (10). 'Satirical' is what he helpfully offers as a summation of his confessional memoir, a summation not many confessional memoirs would be anywhere close to approaching. But is it a satire exactly, or just a cathartic question before a humongous belly flop? Who knows. Hypothetically of course, "The name of my show was Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional" (15). His wife Nadine was the star of a Miller Lite beer commercial during Monday Night Football (16). Fiction can easily be satire, but nonfiction rarely is if I recall correctly.

However, do not attempt what you are about to see, with a wink but then a smirk but then another wink. It could be dangerous, but what's life without a little danger. There might be plenty of naysayers -- no, that is bad; it is very, very bad; it's pretty much the worst thing ever, and the fact that you don't see any problems might be a problem itself, or you yourself are the problem and that's why you don't see any; etc.

Dosed up with an enormous amount of drugs, and then you smirk? But no, no, it's crazy how plain but brisk. And knowing how clueless and daft you might seem, while still clever and economical? Just go for it anyway: "amazing how everything always seemed to work out. When I fell down, there was always someone to pick me up
 as if I was bulletproof or something" (20). SpongeBob SquarePants. "Gordon Gekko, Don Corleone, Kaiser Soze" (21). Martha Stewart. Knowing how ridiculous the word 'loamy' is? Just use it anyway: "loamy loins, glistening with greed and desire" (22). Knowing how vindictive you might seem sometimes? Just go for it: "Wolf to bear his fangs" (26). With the word 'wolf' capitalized of course.

And sometimes just petty, of course. He describes, while having water thrown on him by his wife because he's cheating on her, talking her down: "In a tone of voice normally reserved for someone who's standing on the edge of a cliff and threatening to jump, I said, 'Put down the glass of water, sweetie, and stop crying'." (26). Playing not only with the outside but with the inside too, in a similar way. "After all, guilt and remorse were worthless emotions, weren't they? Well, I knew they weren't, but I had no time for them" (26). Time is of course money, and nothing is of such necessity to human pursuits as money. But I for one disagree with 'Time is money' but agree with 'I need money', so where to stand? Here? "The greasy chicken in Rocky II before his rematch with Apollo Creed" (31). "I felt like Moses in cowboy boots" (51). Real World!

No time for messy emotions but plenty for "Mutual back-scratching and phony palm-pressing" (57), huh? You haven't even read yet gleefully misinterpreting a comparison to Robin Hood and then defining 'omerta' to painful awkwardness (68). I know, I know. It's difficult to stomach some of the dull horseshit Belfort traffics in soon after -- little black box like an M16 that needs you to fire it (telephone) or "money is the single greatest problem solver known to man" (96) or "ridiculous line of bullshit about how money is the root of all evil" or "There's no nobility in poverty" (97) or etc. etc. etc. -- but there's always "bleeding cash like a hemophiliac in a rose bush" (110) and a question about whether good times would still roll or if he'd become a simple hypocrite if one of his business partners "ever stopped laying golden eggs" (133). Simple badness is always right around the corner. It always 'gets better'! -- or worse, far worse, depending how you look at it.

We keep following Belfort when he decides to meet with Saurel, a French guy in Switzerland, to discuss bank fraud. Musing about the mischievous partner Danny he'd left in their hotel room! Yes indeed. Belfort guesses "there wasn't much Danny could do, short of rape or murder, that the man sitting across from me couldn't fix with one phone call to the proper authority." Also, women are inferior to men, the guy muses? "Jesus! That sounded horrific! Yet I had said those same words to myself many times -- trying to rationalize my own behavior. But to be on the receiving end of it made me realize how truly ridiculous it was" (150). He seems to use the concept of rationalizing so much as just the easiest explanation for all his wrongs, no? Childish 'I was so naughty' conclusion to make. Romantically corrupt, excessive, unusual. Fitting, no? Yeah.

Leisurely they go on, and soon Belfort admires smoking differences between Swiss and Americans. "It was as if in Switzerland it was all about being entitled to partake in a simple manly pleasure, while in the United States it had more to do with having the right to kill yourself with a terrible vice, in spite of all the warnings" (151). Yes, to simplify it this way is good, noble, pure, good, pure? Heck yes.

Oh, so it's an internal monologue you have then, with all those 'Perhaps's and 'Although's? "I'm an adolescent inside a man's body" (171). Yes? He finds "some things are just inherently wrong, and you can look at them from a thousand different angles but, at the end of the day, you always come to the same conclusion, which -- in my case -- is that I'm a dirty rotten scoundrel" (172). Right. Leg pain "was coming from nowhere, and everywhere. And it seemed to be moving" (159). Good motif? I like the way he builds it: like the entire world: seems solid enough but if you breathe too heavily it'll all blow away.

He goes to his beloved Aunt Patricia then, to finalize the fraud. She seems solid enough, especially looking at the issue from a distance: "One thing you'll find as you grow older is that, sometimes, money can be more trouble than it's worth.' She shrugged. 'Don't get me wrong, love, I'm not some silly old fool who's lost her marbles and lives in a dream world where money doesn't matter. I'm well aware" (164). Aware then, and furthermore she suggests "Money is the tool, my child, not the mason" (165). Tool? Mason? What is this, a metaphor?

But getting down to brass tacks seems like a breeze, as she clarifies: "I want you to know that I am all for it!
 when you get to my age, a little bit of raciness is what keeps you young, isn't it?" (165). Sure! He even adds soon after, during a different caper back home, "-- despite the voice inside my head that screamed, 'You're in the midst of making one of the gravest errors of your young life!' But I ignored the voice and instead focused on the warmth of the sun" (204). Sun won't be warm forever. Soon, it'll swallow the whole planet up.

Financial regulations all sound like gibberish, especially when you try to patiently triplicate an explanation for them (Rule 144, Regulation S, 2-year loophole for foreigners investing in the United States!). But just remember: repeat something louder if your language isn't understood. It's not that the language isn't intrinsically best or worthwhile or something. Belfort finishes a chapter with a heavy-hearted noir hook, "I won't forget, Todd. I promise," complete with a cut at the end "And just like that I forgot." So naked. Then, trouble with the wife again? "In spite of everything she'd said, it was the word little that wounded me most" (213). The word 'little', huh? Little things can become big problems. It "reminded me of the Pigeon Sisters from the movie The Odd Couple" (213).

Something like the film Ed Wood it could be, I guess, in that little details (eating goldfish, tossing midget, wild sex and drugs and language and smuggling and fraud, etc.) can temporarily distract from the general horror, sadness, bone-chilling angst of the whole thing. Investment is one of the dullest and most colorless pursuits, right up there with making ridiculously bad motion pictures, so won't some very excessive, bombastic flourishes make it palatable? Even the smallest could. Belfort need not worry about being a total hypocrite or boring waste, and Scorsese of course need not worry about any motion picture he makes being bad; but it's just human nature to worry, no?

Considering a fascist or at least conservative trend at the ritzy restaurant where he meets with the FBI, "Back in the good-old days, whenever those were" (256). And then, back at his own office, a speech in progress insulting homosexuals -- outrageous! so un-PC! wouldn't fly anywhere today! -- rumbles together a bit of a no-burn, pass-agg witch hunt but earns only a sigh. "Money makes people do strange things, Danny. Just have patience; you'll find out soon enough" (274). Then, Gilligan's Island (281). A huge Quaalude bender, after which he resolves to quit, "and this time I'm dead serious about it" (299). Saving a friend from drowning, but it's a bit craven too? "Un-fucking-believable! She didn't call me a hero!" (315).

Doing Steve Madden Shoes a favor then. Some business tendency (while some kind of debate rages between steadiness and risk), "in truth, was both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness" (323). Neat divisions are easy. "'Don't take what I said the wrong way' -- Oh, really? How else am I supposed to take it, you fucking backstabber!" (331). Some new business associate was "a spitting image of a rodent. In fact, he could have been a Hollywood stunt double for the comic book character BB Eyes from Dick Tracy" (363).

All of the horseplay minimized or just totally flipped? Monster doses of Quaaludes and coke becoming just a slight whiff of marijuana, or nothing at all, including even the occasional aspirin or gulp of coffee. Marathons with any available prostitute or position or situation becoming just a lingering glance and unspoken squirt later on, or nothing at all, including even the occasional ribald thought. Heaps of money and Long Island luxury becoming just the modest amount to live on, or nothing at all, including even a bed that night in any case. How exactly Belfort wants you to use the examples from his life certainly isn't clear, but he's smart enough to at least leave them alone long enough that their inflation is still silly enough.

Just a shallow, monster hot take on life, of which is then taken a much shallower, even more monster hot take itself? We belong to each other then, just as everything belongs to everything else, when you really think about. 'I' belong to 'you' and 'you' belong to 'me' and 'a fireman' belongs to 'a fire' and 'viewership' belongs to 'the horse' and 'bowling games all over the place' belong to 'liberty', etc. Belfort "rented the mansion of Peter Morton, of Hard Rock Café fame" (388). A near-death yachting accident threatens him, but shortly after "a six-foot-tall Ethiopian masseuse jerked me off... Yet, was there really any difference between getting a hand job and jerking myself off with my own hand?" (412). Philosophy only the occasional thinky ornament gracing normal life, like so?

Then, nearly along to a rock-bottom dive, pills and coke shooting off occasionally, with only capitalism-run-amok craziness as a vague memory. Could it be that this was it? all the ballooning drugs, language, riches garbage disappearing behind pleasantly? The downfall you fear, for sure -- him the paranoid, addict, mental case, and his wife Nadine the martyr, enabler, codependent/angel -- but such a deep and bonkers delivery that you probably wouldn't even believe it if you read about it in a review such as this one. Culminating in less than a year of prison and a resolution I think is best described as 'soft'. Ultimate example: of things ending, and sometimes it's just a comfortable plop and not the total, dramatic summation you'd think it would make. Also ridiculous?

Or I'm sure other films are spoken to, stylistically, as much as books, in a general sense. Don Jon is a very thick confession along these lines. Fast Food Nation is a very searing nonfiction work disguised with fictions. Religulous pretends to strident sociology but can deliver only a lukewarm meditation. If all Belfort's words can do is to lead me again to Scorsese's film, then the book's probably paid for itself. But then again, it was given as a gift, a literal gift, that I'm currently pissing away (albeit in ways almost imperceptible), so maybe that speaks on its own behalf to the concept of "paying" overall. Who knows.
]]> <![CDATA[This Is Not a Novel and Other Novels]]> 25786901
Now for the first time, three of Markson's masterpieces are compiled into one page-turning volume: This Is Not a Novel, Vanishing Point, and The Last Novel. In This Is Not a Novel, readers meet an author, called only "Writer," who is weary unto death of making up stories, and yet is determined to seduce the reader into turning pages and getting somewhere. Vanishing Point introduces us to "Author," who sets out to transform shoeboxes crammed with note cards into a novel. In The Last Novel, we find an elderly author (referred to only as "Novelist") who announces that, since this will be his final effort, he possesses "carte blanche to do anything he damn well pleases."

United by their focus on the trials, calamities, absurdities and even tragedies of the creative life, these novels demonstrate David Markson's extraordinary intellectual richness--leaving readers, time after time, with the most indisputably original of reading experiences.
]]> 441 David Markson 1619027143 Kyle 0 to-read 4.20 2016 This Is Not a Novel and Other Novels
author: David Markson
name: Kyle
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society]]> 50759
EXCERPT
'Big Sky' contains some of the most beautiful, thunderous music The Kinks ever recorded, aligned to a vulnerability and warmth no other group - and I mean no other group - could ever hope to equal. It is a perfectly balanced production. On the one hand, the mesh of clattering drums and electric guitar never threatens to overwhelm the melody; on the other, the gossamer-light harmonies, Ray and Dave's vocal line traced by Rasa Davies' wordless falsetto, are bursting with emotion. When most of the instruments drop away at 1.20, the effect is effortlessly vivid - two lines where Davies' performance is both nonchalant and impassioned. The result is wonderfully, enchantingly sad, made more so perhaps by the knowledge that The Kinks will never again sound so refined or so right.]]> 160 Andy Miller 0826414982 Kyle 3 nonfiction, pop-culture 3.76 2003 The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society
author: Andy Miller
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2016/01/01
date added: 2016/01/17
shelves: nonfiction, pop-culture
review:
I kind of thought "Fu Manchu, Moriarty and Dracula" were interesting things to preserve, but apparently Andy Miller doesn't agree as much because he hardly mentions them at all.
]]> Stories: All-New Tales 9824692 448 Neil Gaiman 0061230936 Kyle 2
If you're bored by A, which is all-encompassing and epic, then you'll probably be interested in B -- oh yeah, I guess A's technically not all-encompassing, since there's B, but it's like a coin: all of one side isn't all of the coin, since there's a flip side, but each time you flip it the flip side changes, and are you a coin master or something? You could probably manage a little story about such a mysterious coin, though it might require a sprinkle of je-ne-sais-quoi too. But B is even "worse" than A, so buckle in for some interesting new avenues through the swing of any dark new popular arch art-aware un-popularity in any case. Most of them are mindless wastes, sorry to say, though a mindful waste would be equally as wasteful, no? "Being lost was not romantic at all": tell me about it, sister! In your best, most meta-, most tiresome, drabbest but also most gotcha, hip reader-response way! Because I know you're puzzling over all this, the genre/catharsis pleasure chasm.

There's even a story called "Stories", which is about things very similar to most other things. But I certainly wouldn't say that's even a compliment, necessarily, since all the rigmarole is shrill and obnoxious absolutely, even more so when the dang thing's so obvious with itself. Um. "People join revolutions until they get what they want as individuals, then start quarrelling over the spoils, however imaginary." Um, ok, yeah? Promising enough itself, yes, but immediately followed by all the unnecessary blather with which it's immediately and cynically knotted. Hello! Are you listening to yourself? I wouldn't necessarily want to spend my time with something like that, so you don't have to deeply recount it for me.

Meaning what? Meaning
 everything. Trying to dazzle away, but eventually not being able to. I know the very high-minded yet efficiency-minded economical attempt that's all the rage, or at less I think I do (hmm!), but this style -- if it even _is_ the style that it appears to be, rather than a brilliant and noble novel technique -- seems like just a weakness in fiction in general these days. Bad, woozy stuff that's actually hollow and less smart than it constantly shouts that it is? I'd hate to go that far, but if that's how far you need to go this one time then sure ok yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, shouldn't the accused have the right to rise on their own from the defendants table and speak freely in their defense whenever the need arises, to whomever, skipping past all convoluted legal malarkey and paperwork and permissions? Imaginative/exceptional fiction? Ok, except I expected something different. Smarter, wiser, more thoughtful, lower, longer maybe?]]> 3.78 2010 Stories: All-New Tales
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2016/01/01
date added: 2016/01/17
shelves: fiction, shorts, writing, fantasy
review:
In the terse and quirky but ultimately pretty empty lexicon of modern American genre fiction master wizard geniuses are many scratches both exceptionally scratched and exceptionally un-scratched. These stories don't have quite the hollow screech of all the artificial and carefully-crafted importance of a sword-clashing dragon adventure or sail-rippling yarn of olde, but they do make a single small screech, or at least the plucky beginnings of a small screech, or at least the same lowly subtext that they're more meaningful themselves than any other thing itself, so why don't you just sit back and be entertained finally by something that's entertaining and has decided for itself what it's going to say rather than something that's less dashing or sure of itself, plus smart surprise. By the light of most of them having a similar self-involved and mentally-handicapped bad tone, they instruct by carefully not instructing and just being their own gee-whiz special sauce, prattling on and on yet about terse mysteries, mists which may have import, jerkins and dirks and city/wilderness oaths. Or literature itself, which is given the overwrought and defensive whine that we all love in neat and well-built little jots such as these.

If you're bored by A, which is all-encompassing and epic, then you'll probably be interested in B -- oh yeah, I guess A's technically not all-encompassing, since there's B, but it's like a coin: all of one side isn't all of the coin, since there's a flip side, but each time you flip it the flip side changes, and are you a coin master or something? You could probably manage a little story about such a mysterious coin, though it might require a sprinkle of je-ne-sais-quoi too. But B is even "worse" than A, so buckle in for some interesting new avenues through the swing of any dark new popular arch art-aware un-popularity in any case. Most of them are mindless wastes, sorry to say, though a mindful waste would be equally as wasteful, no? "Being lost was not romantic at all": tell me about it, sister! In your best, most meta-, most tiresome, drabbest but also most gotcha, hip reader-response way! Because I know you're puzzling over all this, the genre/catharsis pleasure chasm.

There's even a story called "Stories", which is about things very similar to most other things. But I certainly wouldn't say that's even a compliment, necessarily, since all the rigmarole is shrill and obnoxious absolutely, even more so when the dang thing's so obvious with itself. Um. "People join revolutions until they get what they want as individuals, then start quarrelling over the spoils, however imaginary." Um, ok, yeah? Promising enough itself, yes, but immediately followed by all the unnecessary blather with which it's immediately and cynically knotted. Hello! Are you listening to yourself? I wouldn't necessarily want to spend my time with something like that, so you don't have to deeply recount it for me.

Meaning what? Meaning
 everything. Trying to dazzle away, but eventually not being able to. I know the very high-minded yet efficiency-minded economical attempt that's all the rage, or at less I think I do (hmm!), but this style -- if it even _is_ the style that it appears to be, rather than a brilliant and noble novel technique -- seems like just a weakness in fiction in general these days. Bad, woozy stuff that's actually hollow and less smart than it constantly shouts that it is? I'd hate to go that far, but if that's how far you need to go this one time then sure ok yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, shouldn't the accused have the right to rise on their own from the defendants table and speak freely in their defense whenever the need arises, to whomever, skipping past all convoluted legal malarkey and paperwork and permissions? Imaginative/exceptional fiction? Ok, except I expected something different. Smarter, wiser, more thoughtful, lower, longer maybe?
]]> My Name is Red 7964402
With the Sultan demanding an answer within three days, perhaps the clue lies somewhere in the half-finished pictures . . .

From Turkey's winner of the Nobel Prize and author of Istanbul and The Museum of Innocence, this novel is a thrilling murder mystery set amid the splendour of Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire. Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name is Red is also a stunning meditation on love, artistic devotion and the tensions between East and West.]]> 671 Orhan Pamuk Kyle 3
What in the who still unknown, pines for marriage to whom, decides to visit elsewhere, comes across a new fact, etc. Eh. I do not understand and cannot recount or condense! But quite hypnotic and good and heart-clenching even so, all the prose really working in the best way. So different it feels than other attempts might. Singular! O! Not exactly like a soap opera but a plot that's complicated and involving like that. Sentimental but clever. Hundreds and hundreds of pages, yes, but when the most human and impressive material is within the last 50 or so you just have to buckle in. Very sad and then kind of happy and then woozily pretty sad: oops, might have sort of spoiled maybe, sorry.]]> 3.71 1998 My Name is Red
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2015/12/01
date added: 2015/12/21
shelves: art, fiction, history, international
review:
Not just a regular historical novel. Rough detective story crossed with deeply smooth art critique, between Ottoman and Venetian techniques, the customs of old Muslims or new infidels. There's a time for "shit" or "fucking" to pop out in sudden, funny way in ancient, classically-tinged dryness. Maybe that's part of it? Or Turkey as a whole -- already pinned between Europe and the Middle East or between antiquity or modernity in whatever way is best for fresh trumpeting of globe understanding! -- can be put into a certain queer time back then? Enlightenment dawning; New World populating and strengthening; the Earth managing to finally be completely known!

What in the who still unknown, pines for marriage to whom, decides to visit elsewhere, comes across a new fact, etc. Eh. I do not understand and cannot recount or condense! But quite hypnotic and good and heart-clenching even so, all the prose really working in the best way. So different it feels than other attempts might. Singular! O! Not exactly like a soap opera but a plot that's complicated and involving like that. Sentimental but clever. Hundreds and hundreds of pages, yes, but when the most human and impressive material is within the last 50 or so you just have to buckle in. Very sad and then kind of happy and then woozily pretty sad: oops, might have sort of spoiled maybe, sorry.
]]> <![CDATA[German Demystified: A Self Teaching Guide]]> 2977030 479 Ed Swick 0071475613 Kyle 4 3.94 2007 German Demystified: A Self Teaching Guide
author: Ed Swick
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2015/11/01
date added: 2015/12/06
shelves: german, nonfiction, international
review:
On page 298, the word "idiotic" appears to have been thrown in by mistake. Classic! I love when stuff like this happens.
]]> <![CDATA[Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"]]> 20588698 Not That Kind of Girl. These are stories about getting your butt touched by your boss, about friendship and dieting (kind of) and having two existential crises before the age of 20. Stories about travel, both successful and less so, and about having the kind of sex where you feel like keeping your sneakers on in case you have to run away during the act. Stories about proving yourself to a room of 50-year-old men in Hollywood and showing up to "an outlandishly high-fashion event with the crustiest red nose you ever saw." Fearless, smart, and as heartbreakingly honest as ever, Not That Kind of Girl establishes Lena Dunham as more than a hugely talented director, actress and producer-it announces her as a fresh and vibrant new literary voice.]]> 265 Lena Dunham 081299499X Kyle 3 3.28 2014 Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
author: Lena Dunham
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2015/10/01
date added: 2015/10/11
shelves: comedy, nonfiction, personal, pop-culture, women
review:

]]> Bleeding Edge 17208457
It is 2001 in New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11th. Silicon Alley is a ghost town, Web 1.0 is having adolescent angst, Google has yet to IPO, Microsoft is still considered the Evil Empire. There may not be quite as much money around as there was at the height of the tech bubble, but there’s no shortage of swindlers looking to grab a piece of what’s left.

Maxine Tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her license got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own code of ethics—carry a Beretta, do business with sleazebags, hack into people’s bank accounts—without having too much guilt about any of it. Otherwise, just your average working mom—two boys in elementary school, an off-and-on situation with her sort of semi-ex-husband Horst, life as normal as it ever gets in the neighborhood—till Maxine starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO, whereupon things begin rapidly to jam onto the subway and head downtown. She soon finds herself mixed up with a drug runner in an art deco motorboat, a professional nose obsessed with Hitler’s aftershave, a neoliberal enforcer with footwear issues, plus elements of the Russian mob and various bloggers, hackers, code monkeys, and entrepreneurs, some of whom begin to show up mysteriously dead. Foul play, of course.

With occasional excursions into the DeepWeb and out to Long Island, Thomas Pynchon, channeling his inner Jewish mother, brings us a historical romance of New York in the early days of the internet, not that distant in calendar time but galactically remote from where we’ve journeyed to since.

Will perpetrators be revealed, forget about brought to justice? Will Maxine have to take the handgun out of her purse? Will she and Horst get back together? Will Jerry Seinfeld make an unscheduled guest appearance? Will accounts secular and karmic be brought into balance?

Hey. Who wants to know?]]> 477 Thomas Pynchon 1594204233 Kyle 4 comedy, fiction 3.61 2013 Bleeding Edge
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2015/08/01
date added: 2015/08/27
shelves: comedy, fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Selected Folktales/Ausgewahlte Marchen: A Dual-Language Book]]> 22478199 ]]> 468 Jacob Grimm 0486119548 Kyle 4
And the translations always seem really, really excellent. Some rhyming songs stretched a bit far to fit back into English, but the bulk of it is line-for-line impressive and well done. Dual-language seems to me quite rewarding and awesome, for big details (whether it feels better to say this or that, etc.) or small details (cross back line-by-line or sentence-by-sentence or graf-by-graf, etc.), or how you read at all.

Also, I guess folk tales can seem, when they're just bare English, off-point and bad; so when there's macabre or gruesome bits, those can be ironically twisted up in a way to mock what seems crazy and archaic. But they don't seem like that much in German. Everything has the same rich, aged, funny, kind of smelly character, where everything's as old as everything else, so you can be macabre a little bit anytime you want to. It's not just little tales that can do that, sure, but crazy-big monuments and movements and songs. And don't get me started on the grand dangers of blood and alcohol. Hitler didn't drink, fyi.

"Der Froschkönig" is the first, "MĂ€rchen von einem, der auszog, das FĂŒrchten zu lernen" (they be dead on them gallows, y'idiot) the second, "Der Wolf und die 7 jungen Geißlein" (Big Swallow motif, yo; cut out of belly and replace with stones), the third, and "BrĂŒderchen und Schwesterchen", "Rapunzel", "Die 3 Spinnerinnen" next.

"HÀnsel und Gretel" (hot-as-hell oven) is the seventh, "Strohhalm, Kohle und Bohne" the eighth, "Das tapfere Schneiderlein" the ninth, "Aschenputtel" (dance with prince and then a super-quick wardrobe change) the tenth, "Frau Holle" and "RotkÀppchen" next, and "Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten" (talking animals whose dreams of rock musician stardom won't be cut short by any meddling humans) the thirteenth.

"Tischendeckdich" (Table-Set-Yourself, and don't forget the donkey who poops gold) is the fourteenth, "Daumesdick" the fifteenth, "Die 6 SchwÀne" and "Dornröschen" and "Sneewittchen" the next, and "Rumpelstilzchen" (angry little person, who boasts too loud about his own cool name) the nineteenth, and "Der goldene Vogel", "Allerleirauh", "6 kommen durch die ganze Welt" next.

But I really like "Hans im GlĂŒck" most of all. It's so simple, just a guy going home after service, and powerful all the same. A careful series of exchanges
 Seven years to gold. Gold to horse. Horse to cow. Cow to pig. Pig to goose. Goose to grindstone. And then that falls down a well, so he's "frei von aller Last" and happy still. Who would have thought?

"Die GĂ€usemagd" the twenty-fourth, "Die zertanzten Schuhe" (take better care of your sweet kicks, so no one realizes you sneak off to dance) the twenty-fifth, and "Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot" and "Die Meisterdieb" the last. These Germans and their silly folk tales. They can spin one pretty well when they feel like it, it seems like, for eventual translation alongside they original words, to which you just gotta word up. Word.]]> 3.50 Selected Folktales/Ausgewahlte Marchen: A Dual-Language Book
author: Jacob Grimm
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2015/05/01
date added: 2015/08/11
shelves: fiction, german, shorts, classics
review:
The introduction provides some excellent Grimm trivia, if naught else
 Wilhelm concentrated on literature, while Jacob was more wide-ranging; and there are no fairies (I repeat, no fairies, so get out of here with those fairies) as fairies were French. It does a pretty nice job of introducing everything. Presentation of business at hand -- each tale's years, sources, provenance, whatnot -- isn't as dry as it could be thanks to the fun and light cross-referencing and compact digressions by Applebaum.

And the translations always seem really, really excellent. Some rhyming songs stretched a bit far to fit back into English, but the bulk of it is line-for-line impressive and well done. Dual-language seems to me quite rewarding and awesome, for big details (whether it feels better to say this or that, etc.) or small details (cross back line-by-line or sentence-by-sentence or graf-by-graf, etc.), or how you read at all.

Also, I guess folk tales can seem, when they're just bare English, off-point and bad; so when there's macabre or gruesome bits, those can be ironically twisted up in a way to mock what seems crazy and archaic. But they don't seem like that much in German. Everything has the same rich, aged, funny, kind of smelly character, where everything's as old as everything else, so you can be macabre a little bit anytime you want to. It's not just little tales that can do that, sure, but crazy-big monuments and movements and songs. And don't get me started on the grand dangers of blood and alcohol. Hitler didn't drink, fyi.

"Der Froschkönig" is the first, "MĂ€rchen von einem, der auszog, das FĂŒrchten zu lernen" (they be dead on them gallows, y'idiot) the second, "Der Wolf und die 7 jungen Geißlein" (Big Swallow motif, yo; cut out of belly and replace with stones), the third, and "BrĂŒderchen und Schwesterchen", "Rapunzel", "Die 3 Spinnerinnen" next.

"HÀnsel und Gretel" (hot-as-hell oven) is the seventh, "Strohhalm, Kohle und Bohne" the eighth, "Das tapfere Schneiderlein" the ninth, "Aschenputtel" (dance with prince and then a super-quick wardrobe change) the tenth, "Frau Holle" and "RotkÀppchen" next, and "Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten" (talking animals whose dreams of rock musician stardom won't be cut short by any meddling humans) the thirteenth.

"Tischendeckdich" (Table-Set-Yourself, and don't forget the donkey who poops gold) is the fourteenth, "Daumesdick" the fifteenth, "Die 6 SchwÀne" and "Dornröschen" and "Sneewittchen" the next, and "Rumpelstilzchen" (angry little person, who boasts too loud about his own cool name) the nineteenth, and "Der goldene Vogel", "Allerleirauh", "6 kommen durch die ganze Welt" next.

But I really like "Hans im GlĂŒck" most of all. It's so simple, just a guy going home after service, and powerful all the same. A careful series of exchanges
 Seven years to gold. Gold to horse. Horse to cow. Cow to pig. Pig to goose. Goose to grindstone. And then that falls down a well, so he's "frei von aller Last" and happy still. Who would have thought?

"Die GĂ€usemagd" the twenty-fourth, "Die zertanzten Schuhe" (take better care of your sweet kicks, so no one realizes you sneak off to dance) the twenty-fifth, and "Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot" and "Die Meisterdieb" the last. These Germans and their silly folk tales. They can spin one pretty well when they feel like it, it seems like, for eventual translation alongside they original words, to which you just gotta word up. Word.
]]> <![CDATA[Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous]]> 20601080
“A work of anthropology that sometimes echoes a John le CarrĂ© novel.” — Wired

Half a dozen years ago, anthropologist Gabriella Coleman set out to study the rise of this global phenomenon just as some of its members were turning to political protest and dangerous disruption (before Anonymous shot to fame as a key player in the battles over WikiLeaks, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street). She ended up becoming so closely connected to Anonymous that the tricky story of her inside–outside status as Anon confidante, interpreter, and erstwhile mouthpiece forms one of the themes of this witty and entirely engrossing book.

The narrative brims with details unearthed from within a notoriously mysterious subculture, whose semi-legendary tricksters—such as Topiary, tflow, Anachaos, and Sabu—emerge as complex, diverse, politically and culturally sophisticated people. Propelled by years of chats and encounters with a multitude of hackers, including imprisoned activist Jeremy Hammond and the double agent who helped put him away, Hector Monsegur, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy is filled with insights into the meaning of digital activism and little understood facets of culture in the Internet age, including the history of “trolling,” the ethics and metaphysics of hacking, and the origins and manifold meanings of “the lulz.”]]> 453 Gabriella Coleman 1781685835 Kyle 3 nonfiction, piracy 3.83 2014 Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous
author: Gabriella Coleman
name: Kyle
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2015/08/01
date added: 2015/08/02
shelves: nonfiction, piracy
review:

]]>