A Momentary Taste of Being

The blogger at Bookphilia recounts difficulty in approaching Mishima's work after reading a biography --I sometimes find the same.  I may enjoy Joyce's work, but I don't really know what I think of him as a person because I don't really want my enjoyment spoiled by extraneous information.

is contemplated at Novels, Stories, and More

Febraury 17th, Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent and yet it is never too early for those to whom it matters to turn one's mind toward how the season will be marked in terms of personal habits.  One of the things I like to do is to alter my reading slightly to incorporate more reading of a spiritual nature--classic sources and more modern writing.  To that end, I offer some suggestion below of works that might be worth your time and effort in the Lenten Season. Non-Catholic Works: A Pilgrim's Progress --The grand allegory of the Christian journey.  Despite its sources deep in puritan tradition, the work continues to find a wide readership today, and shorn of some of the excesses indicative of the time of its writing, it stands solidly as a guide to how to make the Christian journey. Christ Altogether Lovely --John Flavel's marvelous sermon in which the description of Jesus is matched to teachings on the spiritual life.  For a series of sixteen reflection...

On revisiting books already read. If it's worth reading, it's worth rereading.

I have always been interested in reading the classics.  I have read some, perhaps many of the essay of Montaigne.  I haven't gotten from them what many reliable attest to being there and so I have felt a bit at odds.  However, Nigeness's review of How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell increases my desire to reacquaint myself with this master.

Once is a reminder, twice is synchronicity, three times confirms.  I have been reminded recently of the necessity to distinguish want from need.  Then I picked up a small book by Marietta McCarty titled How Philosophy Can Save Your Life .  The first chapter is dedicated to the simple life to the philosohy of Epicurus (amongst others) and to the idea of prudently distinguishing between what we want and what we truly need.  And finally I went today to see with wife and son, The Princess and the Frog . Besides being a delightful, colorful, musical film, it also imparted an essential message--go after what you need, not what you want.  Add to this that I was watching Up! again and something that had slipped by me the first time struck me upside the head.  In order to get his house to fly at a crucial point in the film, the old man needs to discard everything within--everything that is unnecessary to do what is necessary.  Now, I tend to be somewhat slow o...

While browsing yestereve, I stumbled upon an article at Granta more a blurb, that listed favorite books of 2009.  To my surprise and pleasure the person featured was Yiuyun Li and the book she chose was one that I happened to snatch off the shelves in my historic look for short novels tour a few days back. Naturally, given that Yiyun Li has captured my reading heart this year, I had to take a look at what captured hers and almost right off fell into this: from Tinkers Paul Harding But he was nearly a ghost, almost made of nothing, and so the wood and metal and sheaves of brightly printed cardboard and paper (MOVE FORWARD SIX SPACES TO EASY STREET!  Great Grammy Nodden, shawled and stiff and frowning at the camera, absurd with her hat that looked like a sailor's funeral mound, heaped with flowers and netting), which otherwise would have crushed his bones, dropped on him and fell away like movie props, he or they facsimiles of former, actual things. There he lay among ...

New talent, great writers are always wonderful to find.  When you stumble across one, it's amazing.  It's especially nice if you happen on one who you haven't encountered before in a list or in discussion elsewhere.  Yiyun Li was like that for me.  She's probably been discussed to death in the blogosphere, but I picked her up off the library shelf and discovered something new, different, wonderful for myself. Here's a list of promising new writers whose first books came out in 2009.

A nice list at Good Reads --go and gnash your teeth and tear your clothing with the many mourners.

This book sounds lovely. The excerpt below features a translation provided by the writer at Incurable Logophilia, but the French, to my relatively unexperienced eye, reads very fluidly, very smoothly.  I may have to look into getting this. from Incurable Logophilia citing Le Canapé Rouge Michèle Lesbre Voir un homme se rouler une cigarette, le perdre de vue très vite, me souvenir de lui toujours. Aujourd’hui encore, il m’arrive de penser à la brève apparition de cet inconnu surprise dans son intimité, à d’autres aussi qui de façon mystérieuse se sont installés dans ma mémoire, comme des témoins silencieux de mes errances. [To see a man roll himself a cigarette, lose sight of him quickly, remember him forever. Still today I find myself thinking of the brief appearance of this unknown person caught in his private moment, and of others who have mysteriously taken up residence in my memory, like so many silent witnesses to my wanderings.]

Which caused me to add to the ever-increasing to-be-read list.

Mentioned in the interview cited below, I happened upon The Collected Stories in a bookstore, thumbed through, and decided that I really needed to have the book.  I'll wait for all those generous sponsors I expect to flock by any time now.

Really the only reason for posting this one is to fill the coveted X authors slot.  And to note that I was out and about yesterday and before and noted someone was reading The Landmark Herodotus   (It might have beenThucydides--I'd have to go back and find out who it was--sorry).  And I recalled having happened upon the latest of the three in the bookstore the other day-- The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika and thought, what a lovely addition that would make to the others--some kind investor should consider supplementing my library with it. Alas, I have no patrons!

After reading this I took my usual approach and locked down as many as I could get from my local library.  This author sounds like one who may well be worth the investment of time.  Perhaps he will become better known through our little underground networks.

Here . Thanks to Literary Saloon Read How It Ended --Jay McInerny In Other Rooms, Other Wonders --Daniyal Mueenuddin--to be reviewed shortly Love and Summer --William Trevor Nocturnes: Five Stories of Love and Music --Kazuo Ishiguro Reading Wolf Hall --Hilary Mantel Let the Great World Spin --Colum McCann Love and Obstacles --Aleksandar Hemon Want to Read The Casebook of Victor Frankestein --Peter Ackroyd Every Man Dies Alone --Hans Fallada (A nice counterbalance to present reading of The Kindly Ones .) Generosity --Richard Powers The Lacuna --Barbara Kingsolver Lark and Termite --Jayne Anne Phillips The Little Stranger --Sarah Waters My Father's Tears and Other Stories --John Updike Once the Shore --Paul Yoon Too Much Happiness --Alice Munro The Year of the Flood --Margaret Atwood Lit: A Memoir --Mary Karr Came Close to Reading The Anthologist --Nicholas Baker Invisible --Paul Auster One DOA, One on the Way --Mary Robison The Song is You --Arthu...

I'm a sucker for lists and I found this one at A Guy's Moleskine Notebook: Read / Want to Read / Don’t Care / Never Heard of It 1. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell ***** 2. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald ***** 3. The Grapes Of Wrath John Steinbeck (Tried to read, no longer interested) 4. The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger (too long ago to rate--suspect it would get a lower rating now. 5. Catch-22 Joseph Heller (Tried, may try again after some others) 6. One Hundred Years Of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez ***** 7. Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell **** 8. Ulysses James Joyce********************* 9. On The Road Jack Kerouac (Tried, read through half, decided I didn't care) 10. The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien***** 11. To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 12. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen**** 13. Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë**** 14. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis**** 15. Great Expectations Charles Dickens***...

As you may have noted, I am a sincere fan of James Joyce.  I am a true, non-scholarly fan of Ulysses . I've read it as a scholar-in-training (never quite made it to Scholar), and I have/am reading it as an ordinary reader.  And I find that when I abandon caring about what James Joyce intended, planned, thought, or said about Ulysses , I experience greater joy and more profound understanding and interaction with the real and wonderful world that Joyce has created. (Mind you, I find what he intended, planned, thought, and said interesting in itself, but really the subject for a separate study.) Ulysses is not easy reading, but when one gives up the need to try to wheedle out every nuance, every dram of meaning, and one begins to enjoy the story and the characters, the reading becomes richly rewarding.  Joyce deserves an audience greater than his academic readers.  He deserves to be read by the common reader, the person interested in great literature and great charac...

I've been thinking a bit about the purpose and meaning of rating a book.  What information does it give a reader?  What information do I intend for it to give a reader?  The answer to the latter is simple--it should tell a person reading a review how much I enjoyed this book relative to other books.  But enjoyment is such a complex of things, that even such a simple concept becomes fuddled.  Let's take for example The Sun Also Rises and a book I reviewed here today Broccoli and Other Tales of Love and Food.   Let's say that I gave both of these books a 4-star rating.  What would that indicate?  It would suggest that I "enjoyed" both books a great deal and would consider recommending them to readers.  But to say that I enjoyed them both begs the question.  I enjoyed The Sun Also Rises in a very different way than I enjoyed Broccoli .  While more than a toss-off light read, Broccoli did not demand from me or engage me in the way th...

(1) Should I read Ulysses ? Of course.  Everyone should. (2) But isn't it really just for college students and people who, like, study literature? No. (3) Could you be a little more forthcoming with that last answer? I could, but I won't.  It's clear enough.  Reading Ulysses is for every reader. (4) So are you saying I should be able to understand Ulysses ? No, silly person.  Why would you prefer understanding it to enjoying it?  It's a pretty certain bet that even the person who composed it didn't really understand it either at the time and especially not after a few years.  No artist really understands his or her own work, but if they do the job right, everyone, including the artist can thoroughly enjoy it. (5) Are you saying that I can enjoy it without understanding it? Obviously if you're in an absolute complete muddle, you'll be miserable reading it.  But you've got to get that English teacher out of your head who is pushing, pu...