Starting Point 1979 - 1996
Hayao Miyazaki
-collection of interviews and lectures and articles, by the maker of my favorite movies (so far).
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Monday, March 01, 2010
The Book of Disquiet
Fernando Pessoa
(Extraordinary Classics)
-finally finished this after years (?) of off and on reading. It seems like the right way to read this book, with its short, dense meditations. I'll keep dipping back into it, it's a mental space that's good to return to from time to time. But I couldn't live there. I loved the book and felt a fondness and kinship with the author, even though at times I disagreed with the philosophy and attitude toward life he set forth in some of the meditations. He changes his mind often, however, and experiments with ideas, plays with them, and so it seems wrong to hold him firmly to anything he says. Irony and dreaming and play, not dialectics. The book is not about setting forth arguments, though he does try, arguing as an absolute aesthete, the real deal. This book was never even published in his lifetime. ...anyways...look it up... It goes on the shelf with favorite, wise, dense books I'll return to over and over during the years I have left.
Fernando Pessoa
(Extraordinary Classics)
-finally finished this after years (?) of off and on reading. It seems like the right way to read this book, with its short, dense meditations. I'll keep dipping back into it, it's a mental space that's good to return to from time to time. But I couldn't live there. I loved the book and felt a fondness and kinship with the author, even though at times I disagreed with the philosophy and attitude toward life he set forth in some of the meditations. He changes his mind often, however, and experiments with ideas, plays with them, and so it seems wrong to hold him firmly to anything he says. Irony and dreaming and play, not dialectics. The book is not about setting forth arguments, though he does try, arguing as an absolute aesthete, the real deal. This book was never even published in his lifetime. ...anyways...look it up... It goes on the shelf with favorite, wise, dense books I'll return to over and over during the years I have left.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
33 1/3 - Another Green World
- not much new to me, but easier to read than Aja or DNation
Time
by Eva Hoffman
-small books, big ideas series by Picador. Intro was good, so I was excited to read this, but the bulk of it was just "notecard writing" (is there a term for this?) If you're interested in the broad topic "time," like me, I'd say read the Intro and the final chapter.
Recent noteworthy articles and essays (off top of my head):
Adam Ciralsky in Vanity Fair on Blackwater
James Fallows in the Atlantic on “How America Can Rise Again"
Believer essay by Bachelder about kid and surprises. (Tried reading Bear vs Shark, couldn't get through it, despite the occasional good joke)
David Owen on smells in NYer (loved this, and the nickname one a while back. I'll buy this book when it comes out)
Article on Tea Party in New Yorker got terrifying with the Creation Museum cameo!
Friday, February 19, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Monday, August 03, 2009
Monday, June 08, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Angels and Ages
by Adam Gopnik
Herbie Vol. 1 and 2
--
skimmed/didn't finish
A Biographer's Notebook
by Hector Bolitho (good, funny)
The Scramble for Africa
by Thomas Pakenham (good, not funny)
Breaking the Headache Cycle
by Ian Livingstone and Donna Novak
(I don't get migraines, but I was curious the relaxation exercises)
There's a few more but I can't remember offhand.
by Adam Gopnik
Herbie Vol. 1 and 2
--
skimmed/didn't finish
A Biographer's Notebook
by Hector Bolitho (good, funny)
The Scramble for Africa
by Thomas Pakenham (good, not funny)
Breaking the Headache Cycle
by Ian Livingstone and Donna Novak
(I don't get migraines, but I was curious the relaxation exercises)
There's a few more but I can't remember offhand.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
by Alvaro Mutis
-I can only recommend the first 3 novellas, which I really enjoyed...but considering what came after, I now doubt my reaction to those stories. As the book goes on, the interesting structures and adventure gets dialed way down, and the cliches and fake world-weariness and self-regarding bullshit gets to be too much, and it turns into almost a self-parody. By the end I was rolling my eyes big time! and almost quit reading, but kept with it. Sorry Katie.
by Alvaro Mutis
-I can only recommend the first 3 novellas, which I really enjoyed...but considering what came after, I now doubt my reaction to those stories. As the book goes on, the interesting structures and adventure gets dialed way down, and the cliches and fake world-weariness and self-regarding bullshit gets to be too much, and it turns into almost a self-parody. By the end I was rolling my eyes big time! and almost quit reading, but kept with it. Sorry Katie.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
(These are the interesting and noteworthy articles and essays I read this month.)
March
(open)
The Last Book Party
Gideon Lewis-Kraus
Invisible Hands
Ken Silverstein
Curtain calls
By Edward Hoagland
Fatal Distraction
by Gene Weingarten
-Overwhelming. Be sure to read to the end.
The Unfinished
by D.T. Max
A Devil Obsessed Conglomeration of Christian Misfits
by William Giraldi
March
(open)
The Last Book Party
Gideon Lewis-Kraus
Invisible Hands
Ken Silverstein
Curtain calls
By Edward HoaglandFatal Distraction
by Gene Weingarten
-Overwhelming. Be sure to read to the end.
The Unfinished
by D.T. Max
A Devil Obsessed Conglomeration of Christian Misfits
by William Giraldi
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
I'm going to start keeping track of noteworthy articles, essays, and longer blog posts I read on month-by-month basis. I'll add to this entry until Feb. is done.
February
Speaking in Tongues
Zadie Smith
Wow, Fiction Works!
Colson Whitehead
Sick in the Head
Why America won't get the health-care system it needs
Luke Mitchell
The war on telephone poles
By Eula Biss
A brief personal history of altweekly comics in America
Tom Tomorrow
February
Speaking in Tongues
Zadie Smith
Wow, Fiction Works!
Colson Whitehead
Sick in the Head
Why America won't get the health-care system it needs
Luke Mitchell
The war on telephone poles
By Eula Biss
A brief personal history of altweekly comics in America
Tom Tomorrow
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
The Dolphin Reader
ed. Douglas Hunt
-This is 1000+ pages, an anthology textbook of essays, 1986 edition. There are several editions of this anthology. From what I can tell by a quick look around the Internet, different editions have sometimes very different content. I think it's pretty great; at times it felt like reading a great issue of a giant magazine--a lot of it is magazine-style writing.
It goes high on 2 of my lists: "Books That Give You a Decent Liberal Education w/o Going to College" and "How To Write."
These were some of the highlights:
"Twins" and "Progress and Change"
by EB White
"Lord Bacon"
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"On a Greek Holiday"
by Alice Bloom
"Why Paul Fussell Thinks He's Better Than You"
by James Fallows
(The section on "Art and Sport" contained the highest number of essays that I really enjoyed:)
"In the Country"
by Roger Angell (I was surprisingly moved by this, about loving baseball, of all things!)
"Georgia O' Keefe"
by Joan Didion
"Bullfighting"
by Ernest Hemingway
"Art for Art's Sake"
by EM Forster
"Benefit of Clergy"
by George Orwell
"Las Meninas"
by Kenneth Clark
(and...)
"Holy Dying"
by Jeremy Taylor
"Sightseer"
by Walker Percy
"Writing and Typing"
by John Kenneth Galbraith
"Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts"
by William G. Perry
(Left off this list are some classics which "go without saying," like "Civil Disobedience," "Letter from Birmingham Jail" or "Once More to the Lake" etc. Also Jessica Mitford's muckraking journalism makes a couple of inspiring appearances. She is new to me.)
As a service to future generations, I also kept track of what the LAME! essays, which I thought were either written in a weak or annoying style, or full of bad thinking, usually both:
"The Abolition of Man"
by CS Lewis (I have read this essay/book probably 4 or 5 times over the years, and I grow to despise it more and more. Someday I hope to write more about it...)
"Hugh Hefner" and "The Right Stuff"
by Tom Wolfe (These confirmed for me why my spider-sense has told me to avoid Tom Wolfe over the years. I don't like reading the way he writes.)
"The Middle Class"
by Paul Fussell
"In Defense of Snobs"
by William Manchester
"Going Home Again: The New American Scholarship Boy" and "Mr. Secrets"
by Richard Rodriguez (Not really that offensive...just mediocre navel-gazing.)
"The Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson"
by Robert Frost
"Suburbia: Of Thee I Sing"
by Phyllis McGinley
"Sunrise with Seamonsters"
by Paul Theroux (I have liked some of his writing in other places, but this was like being told a long anecdote by a person you wouldn't want to hang out with.)
"The Faith"
by David Bradley (skippable memoir)
"No Essays, Please!"
Joseph Wood Krutch (What a name! Not that bad, just particularly skippable.)
"Enlargement of Mind"
by John Henry Newman (This one has some meaty ideas to think about, but Newman is one of THE classic versions of my arch-enemies, the Disingenuous Intellectual Christian Krusader, whose schtick goes something like, "here's an argument showing how I'm right and you're wrong...but by the way, just so you know, also you're going to burn eternally in hell...so there's that to consider as well...")
----
Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
by Umberto Eco
ed. Douglas Hunt
-This is 1000+ pages, an anthology textbook of essays, 1986 edition. There are several editions of this anthology. From what I can tell by a quick look around the Internet, different editions have sometimes very different content. I think it's pretty great; at times it felt like reading a great issue of a giant magazine--a lot of it is magazine-style writing.
It goes high on 2 of my lists: "Books That Give You a Decent Liberal Education w/o Going to College" and "How To Write."
These were some of the highlights:
"Twins" and "Progress and Change"
by EB White
"Lord Bacon"
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"On a Greek Holiday"
by Alice Bloom
"Why Paul Fussell Thinks He's Better Than You"
by James Fallows
(The section on "Art and Sport" contained the highest number of essays that I really enjoyed:)
"In the Country"
by Roger Angell (I was surprisingly moved by this, about loving baseball, of all things!)
"Georgia O' Keefe"
by Joan Didion
"Bullfighting"
by Ernest Hemingway
"Art for Art's Sake"
by EM Forster
"Benefit of Clergy"
by George Orwell
"Las Meninas"
by Kenneth Clark
(and...)
"Holy Dying"
by Jeremy Taylor
"Sightseer"
by Walker Percy
"Writing and Typing"
by John Kenneth Galbraith
"Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts"
by William G. Perry
(Left off this list are some classics which "go without saying," like "Civil Disobedience," "Letter from Birmingham Jail" or "Once More to the Lake" etc. Also Jessica Mitford's muckraking journalism makes a couple of inspiring appearances. She is new to me.)
As a service to future generations, I also kept track of what the LAME! essays, which I thought were either written in a weak or annoying style, or full of bad thinking, usually both:
"The Abolition of Man"
by CS Lewis (I have read this essay/book probably 4 or 5 times over the years, and I grow to despise it more and more. Someday I hope to write more about it...)
"Hugh Hefner" and "The Right Stuff"
by Tom Wolfe (These confirmed for me why my spider-sense has told me to avoid Tom Wolfe over the years. I don't like reading the way he writes.)
"The Middle Class"
by Paul Fussell
"In Defense of Snobs"
by William Manchester
"Going Home Again: The New American Scholarship Boy" and "Mr. Secrets"
by Richard Rodriguez (Not really that offensive...just mediocre navel-gazing.)
"The Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson"
by Robert Frost
"Suburbia: Of Thee I Sing"
by Phyllis McGinley
"Sunrise with Seamonsters"
by Paul Theroux (I have liked some of his writing in other places, but this was like being told a long anecdote by a person you wouldn't want to hang out with.)
"The Faith"
by David Bradley (skippable memoir)
"No Essays, Please!"
Joseph Wood Krutch (What a name! Not that bad, just particularly skippable.)
"Enlargement of Mind"
by John Henry Newman (This one has some meaty ideas to think about, but Newman is one of THE classic versions of my arch-enemies, the Disingenuous Intellectual Christian Krusader, whose schtick goes something like, "here's an argument showing how I'm right and you're wrong...but by the way, just so you know, also you're going to burn eternally in hell...so there's that to consider as well...")
----
Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
by Umberto Eco
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
picked up two books on a whim while cruising the Humanities Dept. at the library (they have an awesome fiction selection thanks to Sean P.):
The Adventures of Maqroll: four novellas by Alvaro Mutis (totally blew me away, so I checked out his site on Club Cultura (http://www.clubcultura.com/clubliteratura/clubescritores/mutis/) and based on his "recommended titles" started reading "Remembrance of things Past")
and
Wellsprings, essays by Mario Vargas Llosa
which led me to finally read
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (read in White River Junction, VT while visiting the Center for Cartoon Studies)
also while there read
Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth (borrowed from the Schultz library)
while in San Francisco this past week read
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (I'm counting each part separately in an attempt to read as many books if not more than Kevin)
The Adventures of Maqroll: four novellas by Alvaro Mutis (totally blew me away, so I checked out his site on Club Cultura (http://www.clubcultura.com/clubliteratura/clubescritores/mutis/) and based on his "recommended titles" started reading "Remembrance of things Past")
and
Wellsprings, essays by Mario Vargas Llosa
which led me to finally read
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (read in White River Junction, VT while visiting the Center for Cartoon Studies)
also while there read
Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth (borrowed from the Schultz library)
while in San Francisco this past week read
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (I'm counting each part separately in an attempt to read as many books if not more than Kevin)
Friday, August 22, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh by Mo Yan
I picked this up after I read a favorable review (which I only read because I liked the title) of his latest book, "Life and Death are Wearing Me Out." I couldn't get that one right away so this is an older book of his short stories, kind of hit and miss but I really liked the title story ("Shifu etc."), "Man and Beast," and "Abandoned Child." Here's a sample: "Just then, gusts of wind made the coarse sunflower leaves rustle coarsely as they brushed my head and face and, at the same time, rubbed against my pitted heart like sandpaper."
I picked this up after I read a favorable review (which I only read because I liked the title) of his latest book, "Life and Death are Wearing Me Out." I couldn't get that one right away so this is an older book of his short stories, kind of hit and miss but I really liked the title story ("Shifu etc."), "Man and Beast," and "Abandoned Child." Here's a sample: "Just then, gusts of wind made the coarse sunflower leaves rustle coarsely as they brushed my head and face and, at the same time, rubbed against my pitted heart like sandpaper."
Sunday, June 08, 2008
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