A Momentary Taste of Being

The Hare with the Amber Eyes --Edmund de Waal I've heard about this on and off in many places and I'm intrigued by it.  I think I really want to read it.  This review practically drags me into it.

Read all about it: Joyce inscribed on a synthetic genome.  Joyce's estate is not amused.

Booker International Prize Judge shares the burden of Judging. The Booker International Prize honors a body of work rather than a single work.  Past recipients include Alice Munro, Chinua Achebe, and Ismail Kadaré.  Candidates for this year's award include a very mixed bag: David Malouf, Anne Tyler, John Le Carr&eacute:, Phillip Pullman (really, you couldn't manage better than that?), and Philip Roth.

A kind friend gave me the gift of an Kindle copy of Fr. Stinissen's magnificent book Into Your Hands Father.   Being a Kindle edition, my highlights and notes are made available online (another fact that I owe a great debt to my friend for making clear to me.) Having my highlights available online makes it so much easier to write and comment about the book.  One of the point that Stinissen makes is that God speaks to us in the ordinary events of life, even those events with which we are not so pleased. from Into Your Hands Father Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen If God is the creator of heaven and earth and the great director guiding the drama of the world and mankind, then I can encounter him everywhere. He pours out his love upon me in and through all that happens. “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Ps 81:10). I do not need to consider when it is wise to open my mouth and when it is better to close it. I will always have my mouth wide open. I live in a land where...

The Dispossessed- -Ursula K LeGuin reviewed Many like Left Hand of Darkness better.  As with much of the fiction from that time, I found it too heavily laden with agenda to be a worthy work.  It's a shame because the central notion is so compelling, but that's how I viewed/view it.  The Dispossessed on the other hand while still agenda-laden, stands out from the concerns of the agenda and manifests as a complete and interesting novel.

Why the Death of the NYT book review online is GOOD for literature via James Russell Ament Technically, from what I've read, it isn't really a "death"  nonsubscribers to the NYT can still get up to 20 articles a month gratis, after which access would be blocked.  But the points made in the articles are at least interesting discussion starters. Lovely supporting quotation with which I could not agree more: If we believe that literary taste in America today is debased--weighted toward the transitory and derivative, rather than original advances in writing--then the Times bears its share of responsibility for propagating the collective delusion: for example, that Philip Roth is a writer worthy of the Nobel Prize, or that Jonathan Franzen is a writer in the league of Balzac.

The Rainbow reviewed I have to admit to a profound deficiency with regard to D. H. Lawrence.  I've only read some short stories, too much poetry, a few essays, and Sons and Lovers .  I read at Lady Chatterly's Lover which so profoundly bored me that I made no further attempt at Lawrence though I knew I ought to have at least Women in Love and The Rainbow under my belt.  Perhaps this will stir enough interest that I can take it up again and read.  Or perhaps not.  Those of you who are Lawrence fans--any suggestions to reignite interest?  Or is there such a thing as a Lawrence fan?

The Illumination reviewed I checked this out from the library this weekend, and I am now avidly looking forward to reading it--but it follows Exiles in the Garden .

Some insights from Houellebecq

As I Lay Dying reviewed So accessible, indeed that a good many students in high school read it.  I did.  I didn't get much out of it at that time except a life-long abiding love for Faulkner.  I didn't attempt much more at that time, but have dipped in from time to time, returning within the past three or four years to discover a deep an wide treasure-trove of story-telling and technique.  For those with fear of Faulkner, As I Lay Dying is a very good place to start--accessible, but still deep within the Faulknerian technique and sensibility.

Of recent date, I have been so preoccupied with getting things done for home and work that I haven't had the wherewithal to indulge in any extensive or demanding reading.  Sometimes my brain just needs candy (as you've probably noted with some of my reviews).  This is an example of candy, but intriguing candy. Midnight Mass is a story about vampires.  Not your sparkly teen-angst vampires, nor your tortured byronic (I call them moronic) hero vampires.  No, this hearkens back to the bad old days of Salem's Lot and They Thirst.  There's nothing noble or exalted or wonderful or thoughtful or kind or meaningful about this bunch.  They are about destruction and blood.  Period.  Could care less about art, science, technology, literature, or humanity (except as a food source). The story starts with the Vampires having taken most, if not all of Europe and Connected Asia.  They made it to the East Coast of the United States and the assault on the...

I had read of Neil Gaiman's tribute to Diana Wynn Jones yesterday but had been unable to find it. Today, thanks to Happy Catholic, I'm pleased to make it available to all.

I found the news at Biblioklept , googled to assure, and found this appreciation by Christopher Priest. What a tremendous loss to the world of fantasy.  I'm so sorry to hear this news.

BH speaks of the rumor Gossip, and its close cousin, rumor, were both well addressed by George Harrison who referred to the one as "The Devil's Radio."

Prophet of the Sexual Revolution Yet one more reason to look askance at Mr. Wells.  Some wonderful work, but some dubious thought.

Woolf in London I am an inveterate "literary tourist."  On a geology field expedition to a GSA convention in Macomb, Illinois, I felt unavoidably dragged to Spoon River and the birthplace of Edgar Lee Masters.  I took a trip up to Amish Country in Ohio to visit Winesburg (which is not at all situated as Sherwood Anderson would have us believe).  I've walked through Dublin with Joyce and on my one trip to Fort Lauderdale when I was on my own, I went looking for Slip 17 at the boat club where Travis McGee docked "The Busted Flush." So, naturally, articles like this really appeal to me.

Rooting your Nook I guess this falls into the category of  "Because I could."  I'm not certain that I fully understand the attraction of doing this given that tablets are not all that much expensive to start with and they are undoubtedly going to become more affordable.

A quotation from a review on the USCCB movie review site: "Religiously honorable, but aesthetically tentative drama" If that doesn't describe the vast majority of the art labelled Christian, I can't think of anything better.  While I would be ecstatic over successful "Christian" Art, too often the label is used to indicate substandard writing and art in the Name of God.  It's a shame that this should so often happen.  Not all, but at least enough to give one pause when it comes to the purchase of "Christian" artwork.

"The Gray Champion"

Horrific as it is, it shouldn't come as any surprise--the war on girls/women And the future looks even more ominous for baby girls. Nick Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute points to “the fatal collision between overweening son preference, the use of rapidly spreading prenatal sex-determination technology and declining fertility.” As the magazine adds, “Over the next generation, many of the problems associated with sex selection will get worse. The social consequences will become more evident because the boys born in large numbers over the past decade will reach maturity then. Meanwhile, the practice of sex selection itself may spread because fertility rates are continuing to fall and ultrasound scanners reach throughout the developing world.” While imbalances such as now found in China and India are unknown in the West, the practice of sex-selection abortion is found here as well. Indeed, there is no current law against the practice in the United States,...