A Momentary Taste of Being

The Annual Tea-Steeping Championships! The scoop from World Tea News (same info, different venue, for all you tea enthusiasts). Personally it's the Gunpowder green and the Jamine White Dragon Pearls that always trip me up.

From Jonah Lehrer The Essence of Pleasure.

J. G. Ballard "secret archive" now placed with a library Given how little respect (relatively) the man was given by the literary establishment when alive, it is more than a little annoying to see him typified as one of the most visionary writers of the 20th century.  But perhaps that is just the literary way of saying--a weird crank like Blake.  Donnoh.  But it is good to see his work being preserved.  It is worthy of study and of scholarly interest that it will only get after it has aged a bit--I suppose.

Reading what our inner (or outer) teenager bought Who doesn't love a super-low-price booksale?  You can risk a quarter on any sort of literary nonsense--who knows what will turn up?

Why the rejection letter of the future will be silence

An interesting article on the Border's Business models and other possible models. I really like some of the thought behind it--but the question is whether or not we have a sufficiently skilled workforce to rise to some of the needs described.

Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature This may be old news to some, but I thought the list interesting and certainly something that was tweetable.  (I wonder if that is anything like treatable, because this list of symptoms does not appear to be.)

A notable article on Catholic Novelists in Asia, Africa, and South America

"Descent" by Frances Williams Not a poet with whom I am familiar, but based on this poem, one whose acquaintance I must make immediately.

The acquaintance of most with this cycle of sonnets is confined to a single line--oft quoted and oft played upon: "How do I love thee, let me count the ways. . . "  Most have not gone to the effort to find this entire poem (number 43 in the series) nor to understand the poem in its context--the lives of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning.  Often it is sandwiched between ornate covers with disturbingly mawkish imagery and a vaguely threatening Helen Steiner Rice sort of presentation.  The prospect, from that one line alone is daunting--shall we enter the den of the grey-eyed harridan who composed this in her draughty loft? But make no mistake about it--this is one of the most powerful sonnet cycles in the language.  Only Shakespeare, and perhaps Rossetti have written more powerful poems--and Shakespeare's is not a single cycle to an end--just a sequence of some of the most beautiful poetry written. The poetry is not in that single line, but all the way t...

Because it was short, and because I was casting about for something else during the time, and because I had it to hand, and because I was curious about the story, and because I was curious about whether I was missing something in Ms. Proulx's writing, and because it was Saturday, and because it was after midnight, and, well, just because. The story, made famous by the film, is a spare portrait of two men who discover and repress their little-more-than-lust-and-a-lot-less-than-love for one another.  This is not a criticism of the theme--nor is it actually a criticism of the writing which is spare to the point of vanishing.  I'm not certain it is a criticism of anything about it--simply the story line.  The arc follows a trajectory of first encounter, separation, and final separation. I suppose I wanted to be affected more--but Proulx's talent in writing is keeping you at so great a distance that you can either use the pythagorean theorem or other more algorithmic measu...

A splendid introduction to some of the perplexing questions that permeate Shusaku Endo's Silence. A book that everyone should have some exposure to--perplexing, aggravating, enlightening, endarkening, puzzling, mysterious, and, given that it is a translation, surprisingly lovely and, at times, gut-wrenching.  There is a read-along planned for 28 June, so you might want to check in and find out more.

Top 10 difficult Literary Works --found via So Many Books. What a curious list.  What is so difficult about War and Peace--mere length?  Hard to say--there isn't a sentence within it that is particularly perplexing or difficult.  And a list of difficult works that lacks a single thing by Henry James?  Where, for example is The Golden Bowl , a notoriously convoluted and difficult late work. And Thomas Pynchon does make it, but The Sound and the Fury does?  It frightens me a little to say this--but The Sound and the Fury is not a particularly difficult book after the first ten or so pages orient you to what's going on.  It's a great book, but not a difficult one. Perhaps the list author means to list the 10 most frequently started and never completed books.  And if that were the case, then the list makes a certain amount of sense.  I can, however, agree with the top choice-- Finnegans Wake --a notoriously difficult book--although many would ...

Read and find out--Why Bloomsday?

Review of The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall I checked this book out once, but didn't get back to it--perhaps I'll pick it up again.  I wasn't turned off, just overwhelmed by the number things I had checked out.

Andrei Rublev and Stalker available for viewing online via Open Culture Recall that Andrei Rublev was on the list of 100 top films, I recently referenced here. Stalker and Andrei Rublev The downside--I don't see subtitles--you may need to speak or read Russian to enjoy them.

The announcement of a record auction for a post-apocalyptic vampire novel put me in mind of a theme I have thought about for some time.  With respect to this trend of vampire and zombie books and mash-ups, it seems that we are going through  a period of profound sickness, perhaps even societal depression. I need to think more on this to articulate clearly what I'm really trying to get at.

I wanted to find fault with this book.  I looked for fault.  I looked for bad reasoning, bad characters, bad writing, bad anything.  I didn't want to be persuaded of the possible reality of what Ms. Durrow wrote about.  And ultimately, I was not completely persuaded.  I did not find the actions of one of the central character completely comprehensible or even, given the slender thread of what we know, logical within the cracked and warped world of though even of that character. However, that took no part away from the power of this book.  I allowed me a little escape hatch, admittedly, but not much of one.  And I found myself loving this story, these characters, this revelation of identity. The book centers around a mysterious and tragic act that takes place in some projects in Chicago and the life of a girl who survives the horror as she grows up with her grandmother in Portland.  The girl, Rachel, is half-Danish and half African American--a ...

I am going to post a mostly negative review for one of the few reasons I can think to do so--to warn prospective readers away from (or encourage those who are tempted by) what I see as the chief weaknesses of the book.  I have to say that my disappointment is entirely my own fault.  Had I paid careful attention to the blurbs on the back of the book, I would have realized that this was a book with an agenda--a poorly realized and all to tritely executed agenda--but an agenda.  You see, Alcestis is all about female empowerment, not that this in itself is a bad thing.  But one must wonder whether those who dream of female empowerment have learned absolutely nothing regarding their own state in life or the state of others they've seen as disempowered.  Why must empowerment always be accompanied by such an overwhelming gust of contempt?  Just because it has been so in the past and we must return like for like.  No, rather, I think it is failure of imaginat...

The God of Love--George MacBeth As always the Guardian does a superb job of some brief exposition/explication/appreciation.