Stuff I’ve Been Reading August 2019

Books Read

1. The Girl Who Could Not Dream by Sarah Beth Durst (audiobook and library hardcover)
2. Blood in the Water: The Attica prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy by Heather Ann Thompson (audiobook)
3. The Witch Elm by Tana French (audiobook and ebook)
4. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (audiobook and ebook)
5. Aristotle: the desire to understand by Jonathan Lear
6. The Basic Works of Aristotle
7. When You Reach My by Rebecca Stead
8. The Pentagon’s Brain: An uncensored history of DARPA, America’s top-secret military research agency by Annie Jacobson (audiobook)
9. Folsom Untold: The strange story of Johnny Cash’s greatest album by Danny Robbins (audiobook)
10. Independence Hall by Sandra Steen and Susan Steen

Books Purchased

1. The Girl Who Could Not Dream by Sarah Beth Durst (audiobook)
2. Delirium by Lauren Oliver (audiobook)
3. Solitary:Unbroken by four decades in solitary confinement.My story of transformation and hope by Albert Woodfox (audiobook)
4. Truman by David McCullough (audiobook)
5. Encounters at the Heart of the World: A history of the Mandan people by Elizabeth A. Fenn (audiobook)
6. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (audiobook)
7. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder (audiobook)
8. The Geography of Lost Things by Jessica Brody (audiobook)
9. The Second Mountain: The quest for a moral life by David Brooks (ebook)
10. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (ebook)

Some Thoughts on Reading

It has been a few months since I posted on this blog. But I do keep track of my reading and book acquisition privately in a journal and as a google doc, and I do post my reading publicly on goodreads.

Obviously, I read a good amount in audiobook form. And, often, i like to do immersive reading — reading the book in a print form and listening to the audiobook at the same time. I find that I get a lot out of a book that way; I find myself less distracte4d. My mind wanders less. Although I am also less likely to stop and write down notes in my journal. And writing in my journal is the most immersive method of reading I do.

About specific books. I am glad that I read Thompson’s Blood in the Water, although it could have been a little shorter, at least in my opinion.

I was inspired to read When You Reach Me based on Jia Tolentino‘s recommendation in the New York Times. When asked about her favorite book no one has heard of she had this to say about Stead’s novel:

Rebecca Stead’s “When You Reach Me” won the Newbery Medal, so it’s certainly not unheralded, but everyone tunes me out when I recommend it, since it was written for kids. Their mistake! A really good middle-grade novel — and this book, a “Wrinkle in Time”-esque mystery set on the Upper West Side in the late 1970s, is a phenomenal one — will supersede a lot of contemporary fiction in terms of economy, lucidity and grace.

I like Tolentino’s attitude that one should take the books in the children’s section as just as worthy as those on the other side of the library or bookstore. With that in mind, the book Independence Hall did not win any major awards, but I was thinking about a trip to old Philadelphia and wanted some background knowledge about the first and second continental congress. This book served the need better than the history books in the adult section of the public library. At first I thought I would look at the encyclopedia entry, but my library no longer has print encyclopedias. So much of my childhood I was about to get an answer to my question in my family’s Collier’s Encyclopedia. Is bing or google the same?

And continuing on with Tolentino’s point that one should pay attention to children’s fiction, I highly recommend The Girl Who Could not Dream. It is a real adventure story with nightmares gone wrong, among other things.

Where The Crawdads Sing was good. It was not quite the phenomenon I though it might be given how it has jumped off the shelves at bookstores. Or at least it has sold well by 2019 standards. I liked the Witch Elm and read it based on a New Yorker Radio Hour interview with Tana French. The trouble with the book, at.least in my opinion, is that the protagonist is not likeable enough. And it takes a long time to get to something you might call page turning. Still I can see why some might love this book.

Aristotle is a lifelong project. His writing is among the list of towering figures of human civilazation that one can spend a lifetime studying with a true sense of satisfaction. But, his ideas are, without a doubt simultaneously profound and difficult. Lear does an excellent job clarifying for the non-specialist.

Stuff I’ve Been Reading February 2019

I especially enjoyed Nick Hornby’s book Ten Years in the Tub. With that in mind, I thought I’d post an entry inspired by Hornby’s in which I list things bought and borrowed, things read, and comment.

Books Acquired from the library

1. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (audiobook)
2. The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang
3. The Leavers by Lisa Ko (audiobook)
4. Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea (audiobook)
5. Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan (audiobook)
6. Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley (audiobook)
7. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
8. Circe by Madeline Miller
9. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (audiobook)
10. The Leavers by Lisa Ko
11. The Residue Years by Mitchell S. Jackson
12. What They Found: Love on 145th street by Walter Dean Myers

Books Purchased

1. Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
2. The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen
3. Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham
4. The Short Stories of Ernest Hemmingway
5. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
6. Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Tye
7. The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers by Bridgett M. Davis
8. Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham
9. One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams Garcia
10. The Short Stories Volume III by Ernest Hemmingway
11. Frederick Douglas: Prophet of freedom by David W. Blight
12. My Brilliant Friend: The Neapolitan Novels Book 1 by Elena Ferrante
13. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
14. So Much Things to Say: An oral history of Bob Marley by Roger Steffens and Linton Kwesi Johnson (later returned)

Books Read

1. Charcoal Joe (An Easy Rawlins Mystery) by Walter Mosley (audiobook)
2. Your Duck is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg (audiobook)
3. Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Tye (audiobook)
4. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (audiobook)
5. Bud, not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis (audiobook and ebook)
6. The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers by Bridget M. Davis (audiobook)
7. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (ebook and audiobook)
8. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (audiobook and ebook)
9. One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams Garcia (audiobook and ebook)
10. Dreamland Burning (ebook audiobook)
11. The Library Book by Susan Orlean (audiobook)
12. The Residue Years by Mitchell S. Jackson (audiobook)
13. Greek Religion by Walter Burkert

Looking at the list now, I see that, despite some great success in finishing books, I still purchased more. On the plus side, a lot of the things did come from the library.

I have started reading a lot of audiobooks and restarted an audible subscription. I originally purchased a subscription for my father in late 2002; he did not use it and passed it and the Audible Otis on to me and I used the subscription for a couple of years. The Otis was a pre-iPod mp3 player that worked well with audiobooks but was discontinued many years ago.

I discovered that I still had quite a few audiobooks left in my account that I could still listen to. And amazon bought audible about ten years ago and now my amazon account is linked with my audible content. There were a few hiccups in migrating my old content and audible gave me some compsenatory credits to smooth things over and that explains why I ended up with quite a few audiobooks purchased in February.

I also recommend overdrive through the public library as a low cost method of getting ebooks and audiobooks.

My reading in February reflected the fact that it was black history month. I did my best to stick to the theme. Bud not Buddy was a great lighter book that is a middle grade reader or chapter book written for an elementary school audience. It is good to read children’s books as a switch from adult books. It focused on a ten year old boy walking from Flint to Grand Rapids in search of his father, who he believes is a jazz band leader. One Crazy Summer and Brown Girl Dreaming were other great middle grade readers I read in February.

Overall, I think every one of the books I read this month was worth reading and I think I broadened my black history horizons with biography (Satchel), memoir (Fannie Davis), young adult fiction (Dreamland Burning) detective story (Charcoal Joe) and literary fiction (Sing, Unburied, Sing and The Underground Railroad). That is, in addition to the middle grade readers I already mentioned as worth reading.

March is women’s history month and I am already getting a start on the theme.

College Visit to the University of Pennsylvania

Tags

colleges, michal, philadelphia

Michal is finishing his junior year of high school and seems determined to attend a college or university after he graduates. As part of his process of figuring out which institution is best for him we have visited two institutions so far: Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). On the Penn campus, we walked inside just three buildings:

College Hall (with Ben Franklin in front. The oldest building on campus and home to the admissions office.)

 

 

 

 

 

The Penn Museum (said to be the largest museum on any college campus)

 

 

 

 

 

The Arch (with the CURF center for undergraduate research and fellowships)

Stuff I’ve Been Watching November 2015

• The Secret of Kells (Hulu)
• The Peanuts Movie (big screen)
• The Martian (big screen)
• The Good Wife (iTunes)
• Homeland (Hulu Showtime)
• Fargo season 2 (iTunes)
• Dr. Who (amazon)
• The Sting (DVD)
• The Muppets (Hulu)
• Modern Family (Hulu)
• Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (DVD)
• Alive Day (HBO Now)
• The Diplomat (HBO Now)
• Casino Royale (iTunes)
• Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (iTunes)
• The Great Escape (iTunes)

I do not go to see movies on the big screen very often. There are many reasons for my dislike of the experience:

• The cost of the tickets and the popcorn.
• The behavior of the patrons in the theater. Is there anyplace inappropriate to respond to a text?
• The commercials before the screen followed by an interminable number of previews making for a long wait before the movie starts.

Those issues aside, Marta and I did enjoy the Peanuts movie. Not quite as good as the Charlie Brown movies from the early 70’s, at least in my opinion, but it was a reasonably good movie.

I did very much enjoy watching The Martian with Michal. He had read the book and he probably liked it even more than I did. One thing I liked about the movie is that it is, essentially, a story about the importance of science and problem solving. Perhaps the film and/or book could inspire a few more young people to pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). We certainly need more young Americans pursuing science.

My Thanksgiving movie, following the late Roger Ebert, is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Steve Martin and John Candy engage in a Homeric quest to go from New York to Chicago in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Lots of laughs and seasonally appropriate. And The Great Escape, is without a doubt, one of my favorite movies of all time. Quentin Tarantino calls it one of the all time greats and once referred to the film as the shortest three hour movie you will ever see. I concur.

Stuff I’ve Been Reading November 2015

Books Acquired

• Robert Paul Weston Zorgamazoo (hardcover amazon)
• Jeff Kinney Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School (hardcover amazon)
• Stephen King The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (kindle)
• David Markson Wittgenstein’s Mistress (paper amazon)
• Marlon James A Brief History of Seven Killings (hardcover library)
• Ludmila Ulitskaya The Big Green Tent (hardcover library)
• David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (kindle overdrive library)
• Stephen Graham Jones The Least of My Scars (kindle)
• Katherine Applegate Crenshaw (kindle)

Books Read

• Reginald Dwayne Betts Bastards of the Reagan Era (poems paper)
• Fred Saberhagen Berserker (collection of stories kindle)
• Stephen King Bazaar of Bad Dreams (kindle)
• David Finkel Thank-You for Your Service (kindle)
• Jeff Kinney Diary of a Wimpy Kid Old School (hardcover)
• Charles McCarry Miernik Dossier (kindle)
• David Mitchell The Bone Clocks (kindle)
• The Bumber Vol 1 (comic)
• Ali Benjamin The Thing About Jellyfish (hardcover)
• Fred Saberhagen Berserker (kindle)

Perhaps my favorite book this month was Benjamin’s book. I don’t read children’s novels that often these days; but this one is worth the time. Definitely. You learn about grief, the challenges of early adolescent girls, and quite a bit about jellyfish. Worth the time.

I wrote a separate post with some thoughts about Danielewski’s the Familiar Volume 1.

I came across one memorable quote in Thank-You for Your Service:

[In Iraq] Michael Emory was shot in the head and the bullet ruined the part of the brain that … regulates emotions and impulse control. It also left him partially paralyzed. [He wears] a T-shirt that says “What have you done for your country?” on the front and”I took a bullet in the head for mine” on the back, so people who stare at him won’t think they’re looking at the results of some drunk in a car wreck.

David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks was a satisfying read in many ways. But two things about the book disappointed me. The first was that I really did not come across any lines that impressed me so much that I just had to write them down; in a book of literary fiction that exceeds 500 pages, I think such a thing is reasonable to expect. The second thing that disappointed me about Mitchell’s book was that he had some trouble handling the fantasy/sci-fi elements in the story. He wrote some less than elegant lines like this:

“Give me a minute,” murmurs D’Arnoq. “I need to revoke my Act of of Immunity, so we can merge our psycho voltage (p. 519).

or this:

The monk’s skin is emerging and the gold halo is starting to shine. Worse, the black dot of the Chakra-eye’s returning. Once it’s fully dilated, the Cathar will be able to decant us one by one (p. 529).

Here’s a short article that Saberhagen wrote reflecting on his Berserker stories in 1977 in a now forgotten magazine called ALGOL:

The Berserker Story by Fred Saberhagen

Time: early summer, 1962. Place: the sweltering (or freezing, it must have been one or the other) Chicago apartment of neowriter Saberhagen, who is laboring over what he considers to be a jim-dandy of a story idea, viz: the construction of a functional, checker-playing computer without any hardware more advanced than a game board (simplified from regular checkers), a few small boxes, and a stock of beads of various colors.

Having got well along with plotting and writing the story, which he has chosen (without thinking about it) to make an adventure set in interstellar space, Saberhagen realizes that he has yet to name, describe, or even begin to think about the deadly menace whose destruction by his clever hero is already scheduled for the penultimate page.

“I know what,” says Saberhagen to himself, off the top of his then-ungrayed and crewcut head. And without giving the matter any more conscious deliberation than that he types a new opening paragraph:

The machine was a vast fortress, containing no life, set by its long-dead masters to destroy anything that lived. It and many others like it were the inheritance of Earth from some war fought between interstellar empires, in some time that could hardly be connected with any Earthly calendar… Men called it a berserker.

The rest, as someone has said in another context, is history. Or at least it has been going on ever since. Some fifteen years and eighteen stories (if my count is correct) later, readers in Japan, England, Brazil, France, and who knows where have had a chance to read about berserkers. Some of them (and even some editors) are still asking for more. There are now berserkers in computer games, though I believe that in that alternate universe they are still vastly outnumbered by the Klingon forces. What was to have been an ephemeral menace has turned into something approaching a lifelong career.

I still have Fred Pohl’s acceptance note for that first berserker story, which he bought and renamed ‘Fortress Ship,” a title I still have not learned to love. The note reads, in part:

I like the berserker ship in ‘To Move and Win”1 very much; I’m not quite as fond of the rest of the story. (The concept of the wild, huge ship seems to promise much more color and drama than the checker game provides.)

In subsequent notes (and in conversation, when Fred and I finally met at a convention) he urged me to write more berserkers, and solemnly assured me that a series of connected stories was the most certain road to fame.

And you know, he was right. Or, anyway, the berserker series has, and has rubbed off on me, a name-recognition potential far greater than anything else that I have ever written, though the series actually makes up less than half my published output of science fiction. That first berserker has brought in many times the $50 earned by its first showing in Worlds of If, and new requests for reprinting are still at hand in 1977.

In mathematics there are series that converge and others that diverge. So, I think, it is in story-telling. In a convergent series of the literary type (I had one, I believe, in my trilogy The Broken Lands, The Black Mountains, and Changeling Earth) the writer sooner or later feels increasingly constricted by what he has already put down about his characters and settings. As in real life, choices once made must be lived with. Not as in real life, the author retains the prerogative of bailing out of his cornered position in that world, to another world that he already knows; and sooner or later the prerogative is exercised.

The divergent series of stories, on the other hand, is more like the succession of football seasons, or Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. One chapter’s victories or zdisasters mean nothing when the next chapter starts.

Sherlock Holmes grew old, converged, and retired, though he had the (in his case, delightful) habit of coming back for a long succession of last bows. How can the berserkers grow old? It’s been established that in their secret automated bases they can repair and improve themselves, and add to their numbers by new construction. Fred Pohl, in his editorial capacity, was a little worried upon reading one of the stories (“Stone Place,” If, March 1965) that I had decided to wipe out the berserkers and wind the series up. No, by then I was already too smart for that. The metal killers came back from near-extinction as briskly as dandelions. Nor are they presently an endangered species.

A few hours ago (as I write this) I mailed off to my agent a new berserker short story, called “The Smile.”2 I’m also working on Berkerker Man, a novel which I think may be the best of the family to date. With a whole galaxy to range over, containing scores (at least) of Earth-colonized planets, and an occasional alien race if I need one, I don’t feel the least bit crowded. Particularly with several thousand years established as a rough time-frame.

This is not to say that suitable ideas for new stories are always at hand. I believe it works something like the nation’s proven reserves of oil; at times there may seem to be no more anywhere, but let a whiff of money stir the air, the metaphorical rod smiteth the rock, and lo, the needed material gusheth forth. Or trickleth, anyway; enough to meet the absolute necessities of the time.

Lack of ideas as a difficulty is peculiar to the series story, of course. About the only difficulty I can think of that is, other than convergence, is really no more than an irritant.

It has to do with background material; the establishing of the story’s setting for the reader. For example, in how many different ways (limiting oneself to the English language) is it possible to repeat, restate, or paraphrase that explanation that the machine was a vast fortress, containing no life, et cetera? You can’t leave the background out, or new readers won’t know what is going on, and some of them will care. You can’t keep sticking in the same sentences and paragraphs, or old readers (not to mention editors) may have the sensation of dropping their money in a too-familiar turnstile. So the writer, the one being paid here to do some work, has to keep on making the same old beloved background look fresh each time it is revisited. Of course when series stories are gathered into a book, even varied discriptions of the same thing quickly become too numerous, and background material so carefully created for the individual stories must be taken out. No more, as I said, than an irritant.

To return to origins. The idea of automated war machines that no one can turn off was original with me, in the sense that at the moment I began to use it I was not aware that anyone else had done so. There seems to be no doubt that I was wrong. I stand ready to be corrected, not having the evidence before me, but I believe Sturgeon’s “There Is No Defense” is an example of an earlier use, dating from 1948. Others have used the same basic idea since I began, and others will use it in times to come.

The point I want to make, though, is that this idea fit me, worked well for me, almost became identified with me, precisely because it came out of the bottom of my subconscious and through the top of my head. Writers who have had things suddenly go right, as if of themselves, will know what I mean.

To repeat another bit of advice, this one, as I recall, from Damon Knight: Find something that you do well, and stick with it, or at least come back to it. For myself, I seem to do best with the far, far out; with ungodly and unlikely worlds and monsters; robot killers, the demons of Changeling Earth, sympathetic vampires. (My own feeling is that The Dracula Tape may be my own best book. Publishers’ Weekly liked it. You’ve never seen it in a bookstore? Neither have I. Another story.)

1. How’s that for a title?
2. Somewhere, someday, you may see it in print as “Fortress Face.”

Copyright (C) 1977 by ALGOL magazine; reprinted here by permission of Andrew Porter, the publisher, and Fred Saberhagen, the author.

Thoughts on the First Volume of Danielewski’s The Familiar

Tags

house of leaves, reading

Danielewski’s book is not something one should attempt to summarize without a good amount of trepidation. The story has somthing like nine different narrrators, each with their own geographic location, time, font and typography as well as, at least in my opinion, colored tabs in the upper corners of the page to differentiate one from another. Truly difficult to imagine copy editing and typesetting the book. The book is definitely meant to be read in paper, not electronic form. Let me put my thoughts about the book so far in the form of favorite passages that I jotted down while reading.

Astair’s “No question: no” didn’t stop speculations about the risks inherent when turning to romances, grimoires*, something about a defiant lightbulb, the Bible, the Qur’an, books devoted to computers and game programming, Watchmen, American Psycho, Emily Dickinson (of all things!), even the I Ching made the list (Anwar (much to his dismay) was quoted incessantly: “Dad always says reading is risky business.”) p. 257

*grimoires: from wikipedia: A grimoire is a textbook of magic, typically including instructions on how to create magical objects like talismans and amulets; how to perform magic spells; charms and divination; and how to summon or invoke supernatural entities such as angels, spirits, and demons.

There is also a now discontinued Linux distribution called Sorcerer. Instead of using acronyms such as rpm or dpkg, Sorcerer’s tool terminolofy was based on magic words. For example, a recipe for downloading, compiling, and installing software is called a spell. The software catalog was called a grimoire.

“What does societal static mean?”

“signage, cellphones, web traffic, YouTube, the modern buzz of electronic alienation.” p. 259

***

“You might say these graphics represent, in a way that’s instantly quntifiable, the parametrics of code:…

“You lost me Dad.”…

“Image subitizes language.”

“Subitize?”

“Ah ha! Your word of the day!”…

“Subitize is easy, ” Anwar continued. “It means to quantify without counting. So when you see a 5 or a 6 on  the side of a dice you don’t count the five or six dots individually but know at once the number.” p. 346

***

A comic strip [without the drawings]

panel 1: A spoon crossed with a fork is a spork.

panel 2: Our lab has successfully crossed a spork with a spoon.

panel 3: With your funding, we could breed hybrids in proportions corresponding to any binary function.

spoon – – 1/8 – – 1/4 — 1/2 – – 3/4 — fork

fork-spoon spectrum

panel 4: “You’re toying with powerful forces here.”

“We know what we’re doing.” p. 374

***

There is a Czech writer whose work was extremely political but it was also so extremely convoluted it communicated nothing to anyone except himself and in that way, because he was the one writing it down, offered some personal exculpation for reporting crimes made by the state even if his reports failed to alert anyone to those crimes. I’ve said what matters, he seems to have shouted, but all that matters he had shouted in an unintelligible way. p. 403

***

No one remembers everything, which I assure you is a blessing. A memory of everything would be a curse [one day Borges.] p. 544

Here Danielewski is referring to Jorge Luis Borges’ story “Funes the Memorious” in which, one day Funes falls off a horse and finds that he has perfect memory. Contrary to what one might at first think, perfect memory is a real problem. Funes is incapable of talking in generalizations, summarizing, or even using numbers like most people would.

***

As the old Narcons put it: “There is not space in the universe to the universe. Therein lies the peculiar beauty and sadness of stories: to tell it all without all at all.” p. 566 (pages not number in this section of the book.)

***

To be born in a country is not to know a country until you’ve left your country. This applies to ideas and beliefs p. 610.

***

(In the course of writing her paper) Astair had come across The Lost Horizon Case (out of Kissimmee Florida (the woman in question referred to as K.)). K. had purchased a Powerball ticket with sizable winnings at stake (over $300 million). (when the numbers were announced) K. saw that every number she had picked (according to meticulous reasons and noted omens and signs (from death dates to license plates)) was a match and her life had forever changed (and it had).

(furthermore upon presenting her winning ticket ) K. saw how every winning number she’d read off was echoed by the same winning number announced by lottery officials (and yet her ticket was declared ineligible for the prize). K.’s confusion escalated to aggression until on-hand security (and finally officers (of the peace)) were called upon to remove her from the premises.

In fact it took K. months before she could see (correctly) the numbers on the (losing) ticket (which she still held in her possession (greasy, crumpled, intcat:. intact.:)). Her desire to win (rooted in a neurotic disposition toward denial) had created a hallucination so strong that the numeric order she had summoned (by both reason and whim) imposed its order on every announcement, publication, confirmation pertaining to those actual numbers drawn by the lottery committee.

In fact not even one of K.’s numbers matched the winning numbers. Her victory was entirely (and always (only)) in her mind p.675.

***

Stuff I’ve Been Reading October 2015

Tags

books

Books Acquired

• Katherine Applegate Crenshaw (kindle, for Marta)
• Ali Benjamin The Thing About Jellyfish (hardcover, Books a Million)
• Charles McCarry The Miernik Dossier (kindle)
• Viktor Frankl Man’s Search for Meaning (overdrive, kindle)
• Samuel R. Delaney Babel-17 (kindle, on sale for $1.99)
• Ray Bradbury Bradbury Stories: 100 of his most celebrated tales (kindle)
• Mark Z. Danielewski The Familiar Volume 2 (paper, amazon)

Books Read

• Ali Benjamin The Thing About Jellyfish (with Marta)
• Ray Bradbury Stories (selections) (kindle)
• Emmanuel Carrere Limonov: The outrageous adventures of the radical poet who became a bum in New York, a sensation on France, and a political antihero in Russia
• Brandon I Koerner The Skies Belong to Us: love and terror in the golden age of highjacking (kindle)
• Harlan Coben The Stranger (kindle)
• Frank DeFord The Old Ball Game: how John McGraw, Christy Matthewson and  the New York Giants created modern baseball (kindle)
• Mark Z. Danielewski The Familiar volume 1: one rainy day in May

I read Coben’s book not looking for great literature, but a time passing thriller. I suppose it was that, but color me unimpressed. The plot was ok, but I kept waiting to encounter a paragraph, or even a sentence that impressed me so much I just has to copy it down. That moment never came.  I also read the book since I felt obliged to read something New Jersey based now that I have lived in this state for over a year. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the descriptions were so generic they could have been about just about any suburban community in the United States. I have read better books.

The highlight of this month’s reading was Danielewski’s first volume of the familiar. The book clocks in at over 800 pages and is only the first of a planned 27 volumes. I will put some of my thoughts about the book in a future entry.

 

Stuff I’ve Been Watching October 2015

Tags

movies, television

• Doctor Who (amazon purchase)
• Back to the Future (amazon prime)
• The Muppets (hulu)
• The Good Wife (amazon purchase)
• Homeland (Showtime Hulu)
• Good Morning directed by Yasujire Ozo (Criterion Hulu)
• Gotham (hulu)
• Penny Dreadful (Showtime Hulu)
• The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror (iTunes purchase)
• Inside Assad’s Syria (Frontline PBS)
• Pets Wild at Heart (Nature PBS)
• It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown (DVD)
• Fargo (iTunes purchase)
• Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Criterion Hulu)

Podcasts

Tags

podcasts, radio, thrilling adventure hour

When I get a chance to take a long walk or bike ride by myself, I like to bring my iPod (no, I do NOT own an iPhone, I refuse to purchase one until you can buy one without a data plan or buy a new one that uses prepaid cards) and list to podcasts. Podcasts are, I suppose, a kind of radio program that you download and listen to when you get around to it; alternatively, not listen to just like with a tivo or DVR. Many of the podcasts on my iPod are, fact, radio programs. The podcast I listen to most often is called the Thrilling Adventure Hour. It describes itself as as new time podcasts in the style of old time radio. I suppose that is accurate except for the fact that the stories on the Thrilling Adventure Hour have a campy sense of humor I am sure that was not found in old time radio shows like the Lone Ranger.

Stuff I’ve Been Watching September 2015

Tags

movies, television

• Inside Man (HBO Now)
• American Graffiti (Showtime/Hulu)
• Ray Donovan (Showtime/Hulu)
• Doctor Who (Amazon Instant)
• The War Room (Hulu/Criterion)
• The Muppets (Hulu)
• E.O. Wilson (PBS)
• The Martian (big screen)

If you have never seen it, I recommend The War Room. It is a documentary about the Clinton campaign of 1992 from the perspective of the campaign headquarters. So, if you are expecting to see a lot of Bill and Hillary, you will only catch glimpses of them. But you will get a sense of how modern political campaigns work. Plus you also get to see a lot of a young George Stephanopolous. And his hair.

Watching the Muppets again, thirty some years after the original show I used to watch with my family is fun. The basic idea is that Miss Piggy is the host of a late night talk and variety show and Kermit is the executive producer; and Kermit and Miss Piggy have broken up and there are lots of issues on the show about that. It seems Miss Piggy will never forget Kermit. One ubiquitous theme in the show is that Miss Piggy never gets along with the guest starr and Kermit spends most of the episode trying to get Miss Piggy to act more human toward the guest star. But I think the thing I enjoy the most about the show is that the jokes are topical and funny. Plus, it seems to be one of the few shows that Monika, Marta, and, occasionally, Michal all enjoy watching.