Robert Durick's reading in 2012

This is a list of the books I have read in 2012. The titles are not touchstones; they are links to the message below wherein I mention my reaction to the books. There I, so long as touchstones cooperate, touchstone the titles and authors.

1. January 2, The Novel by Steven Moore, literary history
2. January 4, The Psychology of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo edited by Robin S. Rosenberg and Shannon O'Neill, literary analysis
3. January 5, Affairs of Steak by Julie Hyzy, mystery
4. January 6, The Book of Genesis illustrated by Robert Crumb, Bible
5. January 9, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, novel
6. January 21, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, novel, literary analysis
7. January 23, Bossypants by Tina Fey, memoir
8. January 24, Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell, history
9. January 25, Factotum by Charles Bukowski, novel
10. January 29, Kim by Rudyard Kipling, spy novel

11. February 2, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré, spy novel
12. February 3, Why Read Moby Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick, literary analysis
13. February 9, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, American history
14. February 12, About Time by Adam Frank, cosmology
15. February 14, In Search of Time by Dan Falk, cosmology
16. February 23, Paul Robeson by Martin Duberman, biography
17. February 24, The Snark Handbook by Lawrence Dorfman, reference
18. February 25, The Snark Handbook, Sex Edition, by Lawrence Dorfman, reference
19. February 26, Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, collected fictional vignettes

20. March 4, The Snark Handbook, Insult Edition, by Lawrence Dorfman, reference
21. March 5, Voss by Patrick White, novel
22. March 6, Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised In Brief, 2nd edition, by Henry M. Robert, III, reference
23. March 12, The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch, science (sort of)
24. March 20, The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, novel
25. March 20, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, inspiration
26. March 23, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race by Jon Stewart and others, topical humor
27. March 28, Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips, Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder by Walt Kelly, comics

Robert

I listed my 2011 reading here in the 75 Books Challenge (n.b. the list is not complete because of touchstone issues; the count continues as the thread develops at the end) and commented a little more broadly on those books here in Club Read. These below are the best.

In 2011 I participated in the 75 Books in 2011 Challenge Austenathon 2011 in which we read all six of the adult novels of Jane Austen which are in the order that they were published:

Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Mansfield Park
Emma
Northanger Abbey
Persuasion

That reading was probably the reading highlight of my year.

I read some on the development of the world financial failure and found the following useful:

Chasing Goldman Sachs
The Greatest Trade Ever
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report
Aftershock
The Big Short
Gold, the once and future money
The Quants

Some of them are more readable than others, and some are more focused than others, but they all bear reading. It is a subject that all of us should be informed about.

In other non-fiction I found the following readable and useful:

The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature
Spinoza
The Invention of the Jewish People
Good Book
The Oxford Handbook of Fascism
Abigail Adams
The German Genius
Surpassing Wonder
The Book of Universes, this is for aficionados

The list doesn't mean that some of the other non-fiction of the year wasn't valuable, just that these were at least a cut above the others. Some books stank, but, for example, both Travels in Siberia and In Siberia stick with me even if they are not of championship caliber.

I read little drama or narrative poetry. The standouts were:

The Tempest
Beowulf

Both were in the Norton Critical Editions, and the latter was the translation by Seamus Heaney.

And so to the rest of fiction for the year; these were the best:

The Feast of the Goat has stuck with me even though I was dismissive of it when I read it.
The Portrait of a Lady
Out Stealing Horses reread for a book group discussion, but happily so.
Jane Eyre
Ethan Frome
Cooking with Fernet Branca was the funniest book of the year.
Wolf Hall was possibly the best novel of the year, but the Jane Austen corpus overshadows it, and it has some stiff competition.
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For was the warmest and among the most engaging reading of the year.

CURSE THE TOUCHSTONES

Robert

I first talked about the films I had been to in the Literary Snobs group. Shortly after I left there a film thread, since continued, opened up in Le Salon, and I talked about the films I had been to there. Films belong in the big discussion that is LibraryThing in my case because I think of them as a literary kind of thing in most cases, while remembering that they are not books. But they can be compared to books; some films are like comic books, and some films are like 19th century novels. They are part of my literary adventure -- that's why I've moved my mention of them over here to my literary excursion of 2012.

So I list a film I have watched in this thread, and connect it to a message below, where I mention my reaction to the movie and provide, when there is one, a link, usually to IMDB. I also list here plays, operas, and concerts, both screened and on stage, that I have seen. Screenings might even include DVD's. I'm not including baseball games here.

1. The Adventures of Tintin, 3D, IMAX, mainstream
2. Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol, IMAX, mainstream
3. Faust, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
4. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, movie theater, mainstream
5. Carnage, movie theater, limited release
6. The Iron Lady, movie theater, mainstream
7. Contraband, movie theater, mainstream
8. Enchanted Island, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
9. Shame, movie theater, limited release
10. Three string quartets, live on stage
11. Goat Rodeo Sessions Live, High Definition screening
12. Big Miracle, movie theater, mainstream
13. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, movie theater, mainstream
14. Dangerous Method, movie theater, limited release
15. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, movie theater, fewer theaters now
16. The Namesake, DVD
17. Chronicle, IMAX equivalent, mainstream
18. The Princess Bride, IMAX equivalent, revival
19. Götterdämmerung, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
20. Oscar Nominated Shorts 2012, live action, movie theater, limited release
21. Oscar Nominated Shorts 2012, animated, movie theater, limited release
22. Dudamel Conducts Mahler, High Definition screening
23. Red Tails, movie theater, mainstream
24. Safe House, movie theater, mainstream
25. Ernani, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
26. The Pearl Fishers, opera live on stage
27, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, BBC DVD
28. Travelling Light, National Theatres Live screening, drama
29. Norwegian Wood, movie theater, limited release
30. A Separation, movie theater, limited release
31. Dr. Seuss' [sic] The Lorax, 3D, mainstream
32. John Carter, 3D, IMAX, mainstream
33. Let the Bullets Fly, movie theater, foreign (Chinese)
34. Jeff, Who Lives at Home, movie theater, limited release (in my area anyway)
35. 21 Jump Street, movie theater, mainstream
36. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, movie theater, limited release
37. Jiro Dreams of Sushi, movie theater, limited release

Robert

Here are the books I've acquired in 2012. The links are not touchstones; they are links to the message below in which I give the circumstances of the acquisition and attempt to touchstone the titles and authors.

1. Affairs of Steak by Julie Hyzy
2. Seeing Together: Mind, Matter, and the Experimental Outlook of John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley by Frank X. Ryan
3. The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
4. Bossy Pants by Tina Fey
5. Factotum by Charles Bukowski
6. France by Russell Lamb and Dan Harder
7. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
8. Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
9. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré
10. The Literary Guide to the Bible edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode
11. Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick
12. A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
13. Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
14. Stoner by John Williams
15. Paul Robeson, a biography, by Martin Duberman
16. Happiness, a history, by Darrin M. McMahon
17. Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata
18. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
19. The Myth of the Eternal Return by Mircea Eliade
20. Pogo: Through the Wild Blue Yonder by Walt Kelly
21. Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised in Brief, 2nd edition by Henry M. Robert, III, and many others
22. Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
23. The Snark Handbook by Lawrence Dorfman
24. The Snark Handbook, Sex Edition, by Lawrence Dorfman
25. The Snark Handbook, Insult Edition, by Lawrence Dorfman
26. The Hemlock Cup by Bettany Hughes
27. Eifelheim by Michael Flynn
28. Freedom Flyers by J. Todd Moye
29. The Shift by Lynda Gratton
30. Doc by Mary Doria Russell
31. Selected Writings by Heinrich van Kleist, edited and translated by David Constantine
32. NOOK Book: An Unofficial Guide: Everything you need to know about the NOOK Tablet, NOOK Color, and the NOOK Simple Touch (3rd Edition) by Patrick Kanouse
33. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
34. Dear Mr. Unabomber by Ray Cavanaugh
35. The Gift of Thanks by Margaret Visser
36. Island Fire edited by Cheryl A. Harstad and James R. Harstad
37. Voltaire by Theodore Besterman
38. Voltaire Essays and Another by Theodore Besterman
39. Wildfire Season by Andrew Pyper
40. Pepita by Vita Sackville-West
41. The Time of Light by Gunnar Kopperud
42. Young Adolf by Beryl Bainbridge
43. According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge
44. Dr. Thorne by Anthony Trollope
45. The Last Valley by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.
46. The Odyssey, a modern sequel, by Nikos Kazantzakis
47. Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About by Donald E. Knuth
48. The Routledge Atlas of Jewish History by Martin Gilbert
49. True Enough by Farhad Manjoo
50. How To Be Pope by Piers Marchant
51. Authentic Faith apparently edited by committee

Robert

This is my cat:

His name is Kitten.

Robert

Your cat looks exactly like one of mine!

Do you have a picture?

Robert

I've joined the Patrick White 100th Anniversary Challenge. I don't think I'll let it become for me anything like the 75 Books in 2011 Austenathon, but I do expect to meet the challenge of reading at least one of his books.

Robert

Robert--I don't currently have a picture of her, but I will take one and post it soon, since I've now learned how to post pictures.

As I posted in Le Salon I expect to start the year like this:

I expect first of all to finish The Novel by Steven Moore. I have a timely interest (the first American movie of The Millenium Trilogy is out, and I have recently read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy) in The Psychology of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. My church's book group will have me read Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake for discussion on the first Wednesday of February.

In conjunction with Le Salon... I hope to read Crumb's illustrated version of Genesis while others are reading Alter's The Five Books of Moses. And I hope to read The Norton Critical Edition of Moby Dick as folks discuss it. I have not yet broached Laura Warholic and don't know whether I will; Steven Moore mentions it and Darconville's Cat often enough in his history that runs only through 1600 that I think maybe he would recommend it. I also have, right now within view, The Gormenghast Trilogy and am also unsure of whether I will turn to it.

For a challenge proposed in another group I intend to read Patrick White's Voss.

I have a bag full of novels any of which I have been meaning to read next.

I don't like to read more than one fiction at a time, and mostly I'd prefer to be reading only one book at a time.

Robert

Robert, I am always interested in your brief comments on the films you see. When I lived in London I used to see about four films every week in the movie houses. Now I live out in the country in deepest S W France my trips to the cinema are rather more limited.

Thank goodness for satellite TV, where I can still indulge in my addiction to the movies.

Hope you enjoy Voss I plan to re-read it this year.

Robert - my advice is to skip your churches February read. Either way, looking forward to following along.

oh, and your cat looks like my kitten...

My cat's name is Kitten.

Robert

1: I'm not sure I can take that cat all year.

Happy New Year!

It will go away Tuesday or so when I post my first book finished in 2012.

Robert

One of my new year's resolutions is to spend more time in interesting threads other than my own. Looking forward to following you again in 2012!

Maybe you could keep one iconic cat picture just for the heck of it.

I have to keep Kitten's picture in 5 so that arubabookwoman's comment in 7 is scrutable.

Robert

17: I am not convinced that the picture in 5 needs to be life size.

But Kitten is lifesized, and I like him that way. (I have a 17" laptop screen, and the picture actually doesn't take up very much of it.)

Robert

I love your cat. Keep it.

19: Well then, it's your thread. :-) My life size cat would occupy your entire screen and spill over the edges.

I'll scroll.

Robert

Urged on by Macumbeira in Le Salon... I drove towards town yesterday to see The Adventures of Tintin and Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol, the former in 3D, the latter not, both in IMAX.

Like The Artist, Tintin is about a goofy looking guy with a clever white dog who follows him everywhere. Both have a high speed urban driving scene. Both have happy endings. Both are in unusual formats, although you have to opt for the unusual format with Tintin. The 3D is solid in this movie and contributes to the high craft of the making of the movie. In fact the craft may be the chief reason to see this movie; it is exquisite.

There is, however, no really good reason to see this Mission Impossible. I have seen none of the others; this one got some favorable mention. A couple of scenes, a skyscape and a desertscape in particular, made me glad for the IMAX; some of the scenes looked like they had left the IMAX camera in their other pants. The plot revolves around an interesting premise, a person who wants to generate a peaceful remaking of the world through nuclear holocaust. The producers apparently thought that was enough interest for one film.

That uses up the films in town that I want to see except for the iffy Won't Last a Day Without You. It'll be a long wait until Friday.

Robert

Last night I finished The Novel by Steven Moore, a history of the novel from earliest times to 1600. I have been reading it since December 23. His claimed prejudice is that he likes innovation in presentation. His other prejudices revealed in his exegesis favor depictions of sexual activity and disfavor religious exposition. He asserts enthusiasm in several cases. His enthusiasm is not strongly contagious, however; I may never read a novel written before 1600 although one by Thomas Nashe that this author liked has been recommended to me, and there are a couple of Chinese behemoths about which I am curious.

My greatest use of this book will be to recognize that I have heard of something when somebody else mentions it.

Robert

My greatest use of this book will be to recognize that I have heard of something when somebody else mentions it.

LOL!

The Psychology of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo seems a little obvious, but it does make some conclusions concrete. Lisbeth Salander is different from most people. She may have some Aspberger's syndrome, but maybe not. She is a super hero. This book is probably for people very taken by The Millenium Trilogy, as I was, and is not quite as informative as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy.

Robert

Somebody mentioned on LibraryThing that they had happily finished Affairs of Steak by Julie Hyzy. For 50 years or so I have thought I might write a novel and taken a stab at it over and over. The latest stab has steak in it, so I thought I might like to see how a professional handles it. My usual Barny Noble's brick and mortar had a copy. I brought it home.

I also started to read it. Although the author's ability to construct a sentence seems not fully developed, the tale carries itself along.

Robert

There was a surprise in today's mail, a premium from my membership in the American Institute for Economic Research. I now own a copy of Seeing Together: Mind, Matter, and the Experimental Outlook of John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley by Frank X. Ryan. If I met the author I would like to ask him whether his name is in fact Francis Xavier Ryan.

Robert

I don't often read mysteries, but I heard about Affairs of Steak by Julie Hyzy and wanted to read how a published author treated steak in fiction. I was saddened at the end by there being no steak in the book.

The author had some problems assembling a sentence. The reading was, however, fluid, but I was getting towards the end of the book and feeling that there wasn't enough room to finish it. The author wrapped it up more than wrote an ending. The book is not without interest, but there is also no good reason to read it.

Robert

A few people over in Le Salon... are reading Robert Alter's translation of the Pentateuch. I wasn't quite ready to join them, although I've read some of those books. I have, however, had Robert Crumb's illustrated The Book of Genesis around for a couple of years and thought this might be an opportune time to read it. The text is largely the Alter text without his notes; there are a few notes, presumably by Crumb who did some serious reading before imposing his interpretation on the text.

Crumb's illustrations are remarkably even handed and respectful of the text, although he makes it clear that he likes exposed breasts and that they be of a certain shape. Even the seemingly gratuitous genealogies are made to have some interest by his developing a pantheon of faces to fit the lists. I have read Genesis before now and think that my attention was never held quite so steadily as with this illustrated version. I suppose another illustrated version could do just as well; I lack experience in that regard.

I can easily recommend this book to anybody interested in the Bible.

Robert

I couldn't help but wonder what I would say here as I read The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. First of all because of the source of the recommendation and a comment on LibraryThing about it I expected to dislike it. As I read it, however, I got to, "This is okay."

Themes I saw in the development of the story were existential loneliness, change, and success in various manifestations, but I don't want to go on at any of these without going on at length, and I don't want to go on at length.

The sadness of this story is immense even though it is all drawn as if from real life. I wonder whether Lahiri is showing us the ubiquity of what is sad.

Anyway, this book is okay. I recommend it to anybody whose book club is going to discuss it.

Robert

I committed a single order for three books. Barny Noble listed them in three shipments. They should have been here yesterday, but apparently the post office had more pressing things to do. There was only one box in my mailbox. It had all three books in it. The three shipments that the web site showed all had the same tracking number.

The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. I read this book about every ten years. A woman brought up Hesse's name at the last book group meeting, and I turned it to my advantage for discussion in April. I don't know where my copies from earlier are.

Bossypants by Tina Fey. This book has been blessed it seems. I haven't watched teevee in many years and know the author only by reputation, but I am hoping that the book is fun to read.

Factotum by Charles Bukowski. Club Read's first challenge for 2012 derives from our birth years. This book was mentioned to me as taking place in 1944. I have not yet read any Bukowski except a poem here and there. I don't know what to expect, but I look forward to the challenge.

Robert

#31 - I agree with that, actually. The reason I recommend against it is because there are many other books to be read that are better than "okay".

I hope you run across a book that you can recommend with wild enthusiasm to all and sundry, but in the meantime, thank you for your very funny, deadpan comments.

Would it be an example of schadenfreude, the way I prefer it when your reading is less than you would like it to be, just to get to enjoy your reviews without them adding too my TBR?

I have wondered about shades of meaning in 'schadenfreude' and haven't pinned it down. I'm happy to let you have your fun where you find it, even if it is in my mention of what I've read.

Robert

I saw the encore performance of Faust from the Metropolitan Opera live in HD last night. Early in the second act René Pape as Mephistopheles stops on stage to sing and lets go of his cane. The cane just stands there. That was cool.

The singing was grand. The production was something of a reinterpretation; this is the first time I've seen this opera, and I didn't like the production. The story was a grand opera kind of story but felt thin; this may just be an opera I don't especially like. But as a French opera it had to have dancing; the dancing could have been better.

Oh, well.

Robert

Robert sed: The author had some problems assembling a sentence. (re Affairs of Steak.)

The woman titled one of her books "Eggsecutive Orders." Nuff said.

RG: it's great when someone is willing to weed out the stinkers for us. Thanks, Robert.

Bossypants is verra funny. I hope you like it, too, cuz it made me laugh, and laughing is good.

On the way to a movie I was lured into the very cheap bookstore downstairs from the multiplex entrance. Two one dollar books caught my eye even though I may never read them. I got out a two dollar bill and a buncha pennies and got them:

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, a novel set, I guess, in Pakistan

France by Russell Lamb and Dan Harder, a book of photographs arbitrarily selected with text limited to picture captions.

Robert

I'm wondering whether I should buy and read the book so that I will know better what happened in the movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The story was told so dead pan that it was just exquisite to watch it wind and unwind. But I don't actually know all of what happened despite paying attention; I especially don't understand the resolution. I'm even tempted to see the movie again to get a better understanding; it certainly was good enough to sit through a second time.

Robert

Edited to replace 'ravel' with 'wind and unwind.'

R

Hi Mr.Durick – I also saw the Faust screening. What did you think of the end? I couldn’t tell if it was all supposed to be a dream or something or if Mephistopheles had kicked him back.

I also did not like the production. It felt like they just put all the characters in WWII-era costumes, had modernish sets and did nothing else. I do actually like the music though – at least the baritone/soprano parts and the choruses.

Well, I took the end to be in sequence, but I didn't actually work out what it might have meant. I thought that Mephistopheles had probably prevailed, but, not actually up on my Faust mythology (I wish I had reread Goethe's version before I saw the opera), I had thought that Faust somehow recanted his allegiance to the devil in the usual story -- so I was lost.

I liked the music well enough, but not so much as ever to watch the opera again (actually if someone said that a particular DVD had great dancing in it I might just go ahead and get it).

Robert

I think Gounod’s version was based on a French play that was a pretty bastardized version of Goethe (just the Faust/Gretchen romance). The one thing that made me think of Goethe in that production was all the weird extras in the hell scene – at the end of Goethe’s version there are some demons (or something?) called lemurs (sp?) and I was wondering if those guys were supposed to be lemurs. Faust is saved in Goethe, but I know other versions (Marlowe) have him damned at the end.

The Met production actually cut some of the dances – there’s a ballet in the hell scene that I saw in a live version. I don’t love the ballet music though – rather tame for dancing in hell.

I think that you are way ahead of me on this. Although I would like to read Goethe, I'm not very eager to dig deep into the Faust legend -- if it were spoon fed, however, I might go for it. But I read at least Faust part one a long time ago; that and talk about it, apparently, led me to the notion of Faust's being saved. I can do opera only when I can watch it, so the choreography would be as important to me as the music if I got to a version with more dancing. I thought the music in this production was pretty tame all through, but I often can't hear the music for the singing and other diversions.

Robert

Hmmm....maybe a movie version of Faust? I don't know that I've seen one but they must have some. Sometimes I try to recommend takes on the Faust legend, but it looks like you already have The Master and Margarita - I love that one.

I agree that seeing an opera is the best way to experience it, but I usually have to listen to something several times before I can figure out if I love it or not. Have you seen anything recently that had good choreography/dancing?

#39 Mr. Durick,

Lucky you! The Reluctant Fundamentalist and a book of pictures of France for $2 and change. I have read The Reluctant Fundamentalist more than once to consider what really happened. You should read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, another book I have read more than once. There is much to think about beyond the discovery of the spy's identity. I am rereading the entire Smiley series this year and will watch the old mini-series of TTSS before seeing the new movie.

>46 June: – Yes, that old BBC/Masterpiece Theater version with Alec Guiness as Smiley was marvelous, and quite enigmatic as well. Well worth watching again I should think.

My usual Barny Noble's didn't have Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but I've been pretty much convinced that I should read it and perhaps order some earlier screen adaptations if they are available.

I have seen some operas over the past couple of years the dancing in which I would have been happy to watch longer, but I can't now identify the operas the dancing was in. I am not an expert, so my evaluation could be meaningless to anybody else. I'm thinking that maybe I should get a copy of The Damnation of Faust, assuming such a DVD exists, to compare takes on the subject.

Robert

Two movie releases are exquisitely excruciating.

In Carnage the ensemble captures what can go wrong among four people in an apartment dealing with things that are important to them and that they do not agree about. It is just wrenching because it nails what would be wrong in one of the worst days of one's life, at the same time it is funny because what is said is just incongruous with civil rationality or rational civility.

The Iron Lady is framed by Margaret Thatcher in old age losing touch with reality. It was excruciating because I could go there and be out of touch like that. That portrayal was right on. The whole story, however, was too big to tell in two hours, and the director or screen writer was not able to condense things into a feeling of fullness. Margaret Thatcher in this story from humble beginnings got into the establishment university and decided to become a political character. She married in order to cement that which naturally led to her becoming the first female prime minister. As simple as that. We might want to credit Meryl Streep with mastery in her portrayal; that acting was a lot better than the movie.

Robert

Definitely read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy -- Le Carre is much better than the film -- I saw it a couple of days ago, and if my recollection serves, it wasn't nearly as good as the Alec Guinness version.

I'm not sure Yasmina Reza would translate well to the screen. I've seen Art and Life x 3 on stage, and the Asolo has just opened God of Carnage -- so I'll see that one soon. Her plays need the enclosure of the stage, I think.

Planning on seeing The Iron Lady so I find your comments intriguing.

>48 Mr.Durick: I don't think your opinion would be meaningless - it sounds like you know about opera/dance and what you like and don't like. I'm not sure how widely available it is, but I saw a video performance of Boito's Mefistofele that was a pretty spectacular production. Need to hear the music several times, but I do remember liking some of the first act music in heaven. It's a little closer to Goethe than the Gounod.

I read a couple reviews of The Iron Lady and they were pretty similar to your opinion - Meryl Streep is great, the movie spends about 2 minutes on all the major events that occurred when she was prime minister. Do you think it's worth seeing in the theater?

I looked a few minutes ago for The Damnation of Faust on DVD at BN.COM; they didn't have a new copy available. I will try to remember to look for Mefistofele, but I'm done the immense tedium of browsing BN.COM for tonight.

I go to a lot of movies, and yes The Iron Lady was worth it to me to go see. If I didn't go to as many movies as I do, I would pick Carnage over it, or perhaps not go to either.

I also looked at BN.COM for earlier videos of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Only the earlier movie was available, and it was very expensive.

Robert

I saw God of Carnage on Broadway several years ago, with Jeff Bridges, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden; it was superb.

>53 kidzdoc: - that must have been pretty exciting! Was that the original cast? I'm intrigued by Reza because it sounds like her plays are either love/hate.

The trailer I kept seeing for Contraband made the movie look good enough. The bad guys were very bad, but the good guys weren't anything special. The plot depended too much on happy accident to advance. It was a movie that was good enough if you were already there. I didn't make the trip to town to see it on an IMAX like screen, and I don't think the movie would have been made good by it.

Robert

The Metropolitan Opera's Enchanted Island which I had supposed could be just too too as a paste up of A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest set to the music of a bunch of baroque composers turns out to be marvelous. At one point I counted the toes on the exposed foot of the character Herma; she had five toes on that foot. I object for dramatic reasons to the use of counter tenors in heavily masculine roles; there were two in the presentation -- their music was impressive but their register was a distraction. And I object often enough to trouser roles; Danielle de Niese's beautiful face just disallows her being a male sprite.

But Danielle and Joyce DiDonato delivered the musical goods as did Helena, not credited on the cast sheet who had a rich, solid voice; I want to hear more from her. Placido can sing beautifully but his English enunciation is imperfect, while the Italian who played Caliban, Luca Pisaroni, and who claimed in his interview that singing in English was hard would have seemed American if we weren't clued in to his origins. Anyway, the singing was all special, even that of the counter tenors.

Baroque music can be beautiful as well; it was here, and it could be heard over the singing. The dancing advanced the plot and was fun to watch.

A person who likes opera should probably watch for the encore presentation of this (or possibly the Met Player presentation) in their neighborhood.

Robert

So that's what I heard on my car radio yesterday afternoon when I was out running a brief errand: baroque music, English libretto, and characters from The Tempest. I intended to check the program schedule when I got back home but forgot about it.

After the opera and a plate of spaghettini I found myself in my usual Barny Noble outlet buying periodicals but also looking at books. I came away with three periodicals: Trains, Foreign Affairs, and Daedalus. And I came away with two books, books I expect to be entertainments more than character builders:

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré. I recently saw the current movie, liked it a lot, but came away not fully understanding it. I could go back or, now, I can read the book. Other people like the book a whole lot, so that is probably the route I will take. That reading will determine whether I read the rest of the Karla series.

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. As a recreational apocalyptician I am constantly on the lookout for credible constructions of apocalypse; this one has gotten good marks at LibraryThing and is out in an edition introduced by Connie Willis. I hope to see how it might be like when most everybody isn't.

Robert

Steven, I've heard from a couple of folks who heard that same broadcast and thought highly of it. I suggest though that if you have a chance to see it you do.

Robert

I finished the Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick last night after being with it for 12 days. I don't know how many novels are on my top 100 list, but Moby-Dick is one of them. It has so many faults that it should probably sink beneath the waves, but it is great, and its greatness keeps it afloat. It is beautifully written, and for every confusion about the ship's structure and for every cast change there is a marvel like the Cetology chapter that draws us into this cosmic, bloody battle. I loved this book in a way that I couldn't when I was a teenager reading it for the first time.

The Norton Critical Edition is comfortably staid. Sexuality in the commentary gets out of hand only in the piece by Camille Paglia and so that becomes more of an entertainment than postmodern posing. I did have to pass over some longeurs in the commentary, although one man's meat is another man's poison -- someone else on LibraryThing in a posting I saw only accidentally found fundamental an essay by Melville that I wondered about as to why it was there. On the other hand a good bit of the stuff at the back of the book illuminated the industry (those ships were tiny!), the writing, the structure of the book, the after-effects on the author's life, and its reception in a still religious Anglophone world, and was welcome.

Besides its discussion in Le Salon... the book will be discussed in my church's book group in March. I walked around church after the service this morning telling people to get an early start on it and cornering a fellow who wasn't going to read it to tell him he should.

Robert

Robert,

Will the church group focus on the biblical references? I found it fascinating to find so many in Moby Dick.

Lisa, it is a Unitarian Universalist church. The sources for the denomination include the Bible, but most of the congregants from my experience pretty much don't care. I also found the various references fascinating and wouldn't have noticed them in more cases than not without the notes to the Norton Critical Edition; so in my walking about after church I included that I recommended an annotated edition -- they mostly won't bother with that except by accident.

In answer to your question I think that the focus is likely to be on the beauty of the writing. Those Biblical references might be mentioned but probably each as an isolated instance. I put in the newsletter who Ahab, Ishmael, and Elijah were in the Bible; I don't know whether anybody will bring any of the names up.

Robert

Congratulations Robert on finishing Moby-Dick. I am still slowly reading through it and I generally agree with your assessment of it. It is such an unruly novel and little wonder it did not sell so many copies when it was published. I am a great fan of the Norton Critical editions, but this time I am reading The Penguin English Library edition. There are so many references to the bible and to Shakespeare that it is almost impossible to take it all in. However there is some marvellous writing and it fully deserves its classic status.

I am sure I would have missed many of the references if I were not reading Moby Dick with le Salon and at the same time reading Five Books of Moses. It is beautiful writing, but it is so much more fun with at least a basic understanding of many of the biblical (and other classic) references. Good luck, Robert.

Lisa

I take care of some book shelves at church. At church one of the fellows said he had some books he'd like to unload. He brought them to a meeting last night. I told him when I saw The Literary Guide to the Bible edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode among them that it was more likely to end up in my house than on the church's book shelves. He said that that was all right, and so now it is at home. And subsequently soon I will have to weed out some of the less interesting books at church because of lack of shelf space.

Robert

Last night I finished Bossypants by Tina Fey. It was easy to read. Tina Fey seems like she's a nice person.

Robert

>56 Mr.Durick: - I saw that one too and enjoyed it though I don't love Baroque operas. The sets and costumes were very creative and I liked the fact that they had a traditional deux ex machina at the end and that Propero was chastised for being something of a marauding imperialist. Were you planning on seeing Gotterdammerung?

As a recreational apocalyptician

Hmmmm....what do you think sounds like the most reasonable type of apocalypse? I read an article once that described a shift in apocalypse causes in movies/books/etc - aliens to nuclear wars to disease/climate change. It was interesting.

Glad to see more posts on Moby Dick. I have the ebook and am slowly reading it with several other books. Beautiful prose.

Gotterdammerung will be on screen from 12:55 pm until 7:20 pm according to the schedule I have now. I am not going to drink coffee on the way to it so that I can sit still until the first intermission, and I will probably fall asleep during it. I am looking forward to it.

I think that we will be surprised by apocalypse, but I have no idea how. I liked Martin Rees's book about it especially. He concludes from his various possible schemes that we will not last intact past mid-century, which, fortunately, was just when I was planning to die. I hope that there are enough human beings left around to tend to some of the better artifacts that I hope will be left around.

Robert

I usually get a coffee before I go to the Met broadcasts but I am not sure if I should do so before this one. When I saw it live, the prologue and first act were about 2.5 hours which is a long time to not have a bathroom break. It was only 5.5 hrs, though, instead of 6.5. Maybe they need longer breaks to move their machine. What do you think of that whole production?

I think I read somewhere that bronze survives very well and that things made of bronze would be the last traces of humanity to survive after some sort of apocalypse. I don't know if anyone has taken that into account when thinking about architecture. I'm sure no one wants to make predictions about specific apocalypse dates or they may end up like Harold Camping.

I have read the same about bronze, as I remember in a periodical question and answer column. There could be, if I remember correctly, bronze artifacts of humanity out to 100, 000 years or so.

Martin Rees was willing to give a probabilistic guess -- mid-century was the extreme. I have seen cited, without copying the citation, an Australian scientist, biologist of some sort I think, who thinks humanity will have largely had it by the end of the century; I don't remember whether he gave a cause. Martin Rees gave several possible causes in his lively book. In general I agree that it is foolish to make too specific a claim, other than the outside limit of life on earth is about a billion years when we will be baked dry.

One of the reasons I got taken in by opera is that I in a silly compulsive act bought the DVD's of a Ring production. I watched the tiniest bit of it and said to myself, "That is something special." I never got back to it, and now it is buried so deep that it would take a day to get to it. I have seen no other production although I have one other set of DVD's of it. I don't know how likely I am to take on watching such a big production again after this one. So...I like this production although I'm not committed to The Machine. I like the music, but I prefer opera with more song-like singing. I think that Bryn Terfel and Deborah Voigt have sounded more musical in other contexts, but I like what they are doing here. The story so far is good enough. I don't know it, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it works out. The Twilight of the Gods -- Wow!

Robert

For many technological debacles, Rees places much of the blame squarely on the shoulders of the scientists who participate in perfecting environmental destruction, biological menaces, and ever-more powerful weapons.

I will have to check to see if I know any of these scientists. Most of them seem to do basic research but there are some who work with HIV or other viruses. Probably not looking at menace strains though. I did know of a team that had fruit flies engineered to be resistant to pesticides.

The Rees book looks interesting but also sounds pretty depressing.

Do you remember off the top of your head what productions you have for the Ring Cycle? That was actually how I got addicted also - went to see a production of the whole thing in a week. I thought that the Machine can do some pretty clever effects, but the director doesn't seem to know what to do with all the singers and I felt the costumes were pretty bad. I do love Wagner's music and was happy to hear it sung well, though I think Voigt's voice isn't quite right for the part. I am very interested to see how they will do the end of the opera.

I just started reading The Literary Guide to the Bible. I would like to read it along with the appropriate books in the bible...but my copy is owned by the library. If you get there, I'll be interested your reaction.

David Malo, a Hawaiian who learned to write and learned the importance of writing from the missionaries, gave Sarah Vowell the title for her fluent history of Hawaii from Cook's finding the islands to about now, Unfamiliar Fishes. We white Americans, for the most part, are the unfamiliar fishes. Hawaii was taken over by ones who would seize souls and money and history and culture, missionaries followed promptly by profiteers, many from the ranks of the missionaries' families. The Hawaiians were the familiar fishes who, Malo predicted, would be swallowed up by the big fishes from strange seas.

Greed prevailed. But not all the greed was in the foreigners. The Merrie Monarch seemed willing to sell his people's birthright for cash. And some of it was encouraged accidentally; land ownership was taken over by haoles partly because Hawaiians were unable to move fast enough.

Ms. Vowell does not actually say what is wrong with Hawaii nowadays, the results of the haole thievery. Perhaps The Price of Paradise is the way to go for that.

Robert

I'm now interested in The Price of Paradise. Have you read it, or is your "perhaps" based on expectation?

Expectation, but from owning it and reading reviews. I also think, from about the same sources, that it won't be the final answer.

Robert

I like these two quotes from Richard Powers' novel Generosity: An Enhancement (not his best book), which to me represent the polar philosophies of scientific research:

"Enhancement. Why shouldn't we make ourselves better than we are now? Why leave something as fabulous as life up to chance?"

"All good science pauses."

Prompted by The First Challenge I have read Factotum by Charles Bukowski set towards the end of World War II or the beginning of my life (General MacArthur famously said to the Philippines, "I shall return." On my birthdate, he returned). This book tells me that there was life on the West Coast way back then, that there was cross-continental bus travel, that alcoholic beverages were widely available, that casual sex was common... I wonder what I wanted it to tell me. But those things were not what.

In my fiction writing courses in college, after I settled down, I wrote at an 'extended prose fiction.' I still respect such a genre, and I will not fault Bukowski for doing that instead of writing a novel in this case -- the publisher might be taken to task for misrepresenting the work. Also little as I found in this book, I have wanted to write something similar and am sorry that I'm not capable. Bukowski's or his hero's isolation in his daily and well-remembered dealings with other people, lovers and coworkers mostly, is not obvious without reflection, so there is something here that runs to depth. I just don't know whether the work has any depth.

I also don't know whether to make anything of his obliviousness to dirt or his comfort in squalor. Oh, and the ease of his life, except for the not very well-reported hunger getting by on two candy bars a day and the nails coming through his shoes, is another puzzle.

I hope that Bukowski made enough from his writing to have died with a comfortable amount of money.

Robert

There's a movie on that one. Your comments are wonderful and the book stays on my radar.

71, Die Fledermaus, I was entertained by Martin Rees's book. The whole idea of a strangelet, for example, got my attention for days. The notion of the universe's tunneling from a false vacuum to a true vacuum reifying some of those exotic notions that are just words and diagrams on a page is vision creating even as it threatens in a phase change to wipe out the cosmos as we see it all at once.

I have noticed along the way in the past few days that there is a case of tuberculosis in India that is everything resistant. We may most of us die just because some impoverished sufferer didn't complete his or her round of antibiotics.

I remember in the first scene of the buried version of The Ring whatshisname shows up in a bowler. The cat has piled up stuff in front of the DVD cabinet in which the other set resides, and I lost my DVD list with my last computer (curse Dell). So no, I don't know what versions I have. I think I may also have an English version on CD; if not I have something that makes me think I do.

One of the reasons I like Deborah Voigt is because of all the weight she lost and pray she doesn't regain. Just looking at her makes her voice good for me.

Robert

I did not know that a strangelet was a thing and had to look it up on Wikipedia. This is how they described the end -

Earth is reduced to a hot, large lump of strange matter.

I can see that a description of this would be entertaining though maybe disquieting.

I don't think TB would be a great apocalypse bug, but the treatment is certainly a pain. 18 months on antibiotics or surgery for the worst kinds. Avoid Russian prisons.

Sounds like it could be one of those weird or updated modern Rings - could be a lot of fun. I would like to see a crazy, possibly German, high-concept production sometime. The Machine is interesting but the rest of the staging is mostly traditional.

I read an interview with Deborah Voigt and she said that she wanted to do "pretty girl roles" now that she had lost all the weight. I haven't heard her in anything pre-weight loss so I can't say if her voice is still the same. Some people complained that it was not. I will say I enjoyed looking at Jonas Kaufmann as well as hearing him sing in Die Walkure. It was unfortunate that that one has the hardcore incest scene, but I tried not to look at the subtitles for that part.

Also - beautiful cat pic on #5.

Sorry to go back to Moby-Dick since your conversation has already moved on, but I just have to say that I just finished reading it as well. I did not have time to follow the thread in Le Salon, but it turns out I had quite a bit to say about it on my own thread. I agree with you that it is one of the great works of literature. It's been a good while since I read a book that left me wanting to go back to page one immediately and read it again. I wrote a review if you're interested.

/review/75345797

Charles Bukowski was big in the seventies and a friend forced one of his books onto me. I can still remember being revolted by the squeezing of pimples and the skid marks on the sheets. I have never read another.

Shame's three star review in the local paper made me want to miss it, but I needed a movie at that multiplex and didn't want to see the Freud-Jung film that reviewers like. I also read an article about films that deserved more attention; Shame was on that writer's list. It is a film about sexual addiction. It is 101 minutes of tedium. It does not deserve more attention.

Robert

After the movie I had spare time before going on to my evening engagement, so I went upstairs to read all the spines in Barny Noble's literature section (which now seems to have a lot of what once would have been in the mystery section). I didn't buy everything that caught my eye, but I spent too much.

Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick. As Poquette recognized above and as I hoped to say above, I very much admired Moby-Dick. I read the Norton Critical Edition but felt a little more attention to it could be congenial. This book is way too expensive; I bought it anyway.

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel. I also admired Wolf Hall, and this book seemed to come up most often in conversations about what one should read next if one wanted to go on reading Mantel.

Stoner by John Williams. I have a personal policy not to buy novels on speculation unless their author's last name begins with Z; I violated that policy with this book and the next. I can partly justify it by reporting that if I got struck rich, I would hire a librarian and have her get me all of certain runs of books, all of the NYRB books among them; these two are NYRB books. I really got it because of what it says about itself on the back cover; it is about solitude in society.

Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. The back of this book says that the author is a surrealist. I may not be interested in surrealist writing, but I am interested in writing that depicts surrealist worlds. I thought I could look at this book to see whether it does that.

I would like to read each of these right away, and of course I have maybe four dozen other books immediately at hand to be read right away not to mention my backlist. At least the Hilary Mantel was on my wishlist.

Robert

Poquette, I had already read your review of Moby-Dick and found it rich. I have a take on the book that differs from yours and the others I have been reading. It has do with the White Whale as heroic figure, but I don't know, and may never be expert enough to know, whether that could hold up. It is reviews like yours, however, that informs my reading regardless of my final conclusions. Thanks.

Robert

82, Pamelad, I too wondered whether there was anything there or whether what was there justified the squalor when I read Bukowski, but as I was writing what I wrote above I realized that my wonderment had been provoked. That doesn't mean that I am likely to go hunt for another novel or putative novel by him, but I am not dismissive of him.

Robert

First of all, thank you, Robert, for your kind words. Second, regarding the "White Whale as heroic figure," I don't believe you are entirely alone there, except some will argue that heroism cannot be assigned to a mere beast. I have no dog — or beast, as the case may be — in that particular hunt. My own response to Moby-Dick was quite emotional as it turns out, in a ridiculously school-girl kind of way and, funny enough, heroism really didn't enter into it. And isn't the wonderful thing about Moby-Dick that it lingers in one's thoughts regardless of literary theories, conclusions and all the rest?

>84 Mr.Durick: - It seems that everyone I've talked to has really enjoyed Stoner though can't personally vouch for it.

I highly, highly recommend Memories of the Future - there's some gorgeous, evocative prose and the plots tend to be surrealist takes on or reactions to Soviet times.

Okay. I'll put them in my bag of novels to be read as soon as I can. Sadly, I haven't dipped into that bag in months.

Robert

Robert, You might have enjoyed "A Dangerous Method". That Jung-Freud pic. I live with a psychotherapist and so I had to go along. I was entertained.

If A Dangerous Method is still playing next Saturday, there is a good chance I'll see it. Thank you for the recommendation.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has reviewed Götterdämmerung saying this about Deborah Voigt:

The soprano Deborah Voigt received a rousing ovation for her Brünnhilde, and it is hard to imagine that she has ever been as gratified. In recent years she has gone through a rough period as a singer. Whether her vocal problems were precipitated by weight-reduction surgery in 2004, which she discussed openly the following year, is hard to say. But her voice has lost gleam, warmth and power.

Still, she took on Brünnhilde, her first performance of the role in a complete “Ring,” and in each of the operas since “Die Walküre” opened last spring she has fared better. Her singing in “Götterdämmerung” was sometimes patchy and tremulous. Her lower range continued to be a problem. And sometimes sustained midrange tones wavered. But through sheer force of will, she proved herself as Brünnhilde here, especially during the complex confrontation scene in Act II, when her character lashes out at Siegfried, who she thinks has betrayed her, with blazing phrases of accusation and bitterness.

I believe she was the only performer who got two paragraphs.

There is more fun to be had than there is time to have it.

Robert

The story of the spy-child, Kim, being led from clever to smart is pretty entertaining and calls to mind some images of India for some of us who have never been there. I am glad to have read it and seen the substantial story telling capacity of Rudyard Kipling, but I don't, so far, reckon it very rich. It may be that the description of the protagonist who grows up will stick with me. To pay much attention to the Empire's subjugation of Indians I needed Edward Said's introduction to the volume I had; there are a few of those words we no longer use, and there are some attitudes proposed, but they don't weigh down the story (the bad guys are Russian and French).

Robert

Kim is another of my all-time favorite books despite its flaws and cultural gaffes. It is one of the few novels I have read more than twice. Again, I have a kind of sophomoric attachment to it and am always touched by the boy's devotion to his Holy One—and vice-versa.

>89 Mr.Durick: - I have one of those also but it's a box. Things in there are supposed to get read pretty soon but it usually ends up taking several months if not longer to read them.

>91 Mr.Durick: - Deborah Voigt was indeed the only performer to get two paragraphs (poor Eric Owens only had half a line in parenthesis) but the Machine got even more space. I'll have to disagree with Mr. Tommasini about the Machine though - I like it when it's doing something and isn't just a static backdrop. They spent all that money on it, they may as well use it.

Last night the local art museum hosted a local professional string quartet.

I had either never heard or never paid attention to Frank Bridge's Phantasie for String Quartet in f minor. It seemed romantic and sweet and did not distinguish itself to my ear from any other sweet assembly of four stringed instruments making music. I am, however, not a musician.

I have listened to most of Janáček and liked most of that, but I didn't know which piece was which except for the Sinfonietta. So I wondered as it approached what String Quartet No. 1 after Tolstoy's "The Kreutzer Sonata" would be. Two notes and I recognized it; furthermore I loved it. The number one violinist explained to us before playing it tremolo at the bridge, among other things, so it was great to see it and hear the effect at the same time; it was musically eerie as predicted.

I go to concerts to watch them as much as to hear them; I can hear music on the radio or from CD's, but, for example, a musician would unthinkingly recognize a viola in Dvorak's American quartet. I said, silently, "Of course," when I saw and heard it, but until then I didn't know. Red blooded as I am I loved this too. A good bit of the audience stood at the end, but thinking that that is overdone here I kept to my seat; I applauded heartily though.

Robert

Goat Rodeo Sessions Live screened at a multiplex in town last night. The adepts Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan, and Chris Thile kept bluegrass flavored classical and classical flavored bluegrass in our eyes and ears for about an hour and a half. Except for Yo-Yo Ma each played more than one instrument. Chris Thile who varied on mandolin should have stayed away from guitar; his squeakiness sliding his fingers up and down was just annoying in an otherwise pleasant song. The two big instrument guys in the middle, Ma and Meyer, are just so obviously at home with their instruments and Ma is just so obviously happy playing these things with these people that it is easy to sit agape and admire.

This was live (or maybe sort of live) from the House of Blues in Boston. I didn't know that they had blues in Boston.

Robert

The movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy left me puzzled about the resolution, so I have read the book. Now I know, but I'm a little at sea about who is who in the development of the plot. The movie is still in town; I think I'll be going back tomorrow to see whether I can get the whole picture.

Meanwhile the book and movie have nothing going for them but entertainment value. I suppose that could amount to art if done well enough. Still there isn't much to take away from the experience of either. Still further I want to know what happened to Smiley's cigarette lighter, so there's a good chance I will be buying into the rest of John le Carré's Karla series.

Odd.

Robert

>95 Mr.Durick: - A bit jealous about the Janacek - it's hard to see live performances of his music. It is interesting to watch the musicians, especially the strings - they're always doing some plucking or something worth watching.

If without knowing anything else about Moby-Dick I had read Why Read Moby-Dick? I wouldn't know why. That it is a pet of an author I have liked in one other book (Mayflower) is not sufficient. It works to some extent as a review, but that is only a saving grace after having read it. There are, I think, reasons to read Moby-Dick, and I may be no better at enumerating them than Philbrick, but I paid over twenty dollars and two nights for him to do better than I.

This book is unnecessary.

Robert

Friday I got out of myself at a nearby multiplex.

Big Miracle is a feel good movie about whales. It made me feel good about feeling good. It was, as a movie based on fact probably should be, credible. I recommend it despite the sourness of some people who might think it too light.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was not as bad as the reviews made it out to be. There was too little time to ogle Sandra Bullock, and ogling her can be reason enough to watch one of her movies. The boy actor, Thomas Horn got plenty of camera time and deserves a lot of attention; his performance was, roughly put, great. The story was okay, and the filming was good.

On Saturday afternoon I wanted to be across town anyway and had a movie mission I could accomplish at the multiplex there.

A Dangerous Method tells about Carl Jung's cheating on his wife and on Sigmund Freud with a skinny woman and how he outlived them all. Meh.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy -- I really liked this movie when I first saw it, but I didn't fully understand it. I rarely go back to a movie, so I ordered and read the book. I went back to the movie and was able to follow it. I liked it a whole lot the second time too, making sense of what I couldn't follow the first time and for all the reasons I liked it the first time rerun.

Robert

Between movies on Friday I was in the used book store at the foot of the stairs up to the multiplex. I didn't find the titles I was looking for but came away with three books anyway.

Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata. I claim Kawabata as one of my favorite authors, so when I saw this book I had never heard of before for a dollar I scooped it up. It turns out, according to LibraryThing, I have another version of it.

Paul Robeson, a biography by Martin Duberman. This fat book stood out and because of its size has the potential to tell a whole lot about an important part of American history as well as about a man who seems to deserve our attention.

Happiness, a history by Darrin M. McMahon. I once thought I had an interest in happiness, so I started collecting books on the subject. I've read only a few books on the subject and may have lost interest in the notion. Some wheels in that part of the machine are still turning, so I came away with this book too.

Between movies yesterday I went up to Barny Noble's store to look for a Scientific American special issue on time. They didn't have it.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. Meanwhile people on LibraryThing had been saying appealing things about this novel, among which was that it is short. I checked several times for it, and they didn't have it until yesterday. I decided to get it without checking the online price and went back to the magazine racks for two railroad magazines and a fountain pen magazine. I spent too much money.

At church today a fellow said that he had left more books for our overfull shelves that I tend. Putting them away I found and sequestered for myself:

The Myth of the Eternal Return by Mircea Eliade. Nietzsche and latter day cosmologists and maybe even stoics think or thought that this is an important subject, although I think that Nietzsche made at least one juvenile mistake in the matter. I want to see what an important outside thinker has seen in the matter.

Robert

Last month I read The Namesake for discussion at our church book group early this month (with the help of an Indian man who has made the transition from India to the United States of America). The DVD of The Namesake was passed hand to hand at the discussion, and I expressed a desire to see it. It was handed to me on Sunday.

The movie is a fairly faithful rendering of the novel; my biggest disappointment is that it was set in New York City instead of in Boston. It was tightened up, but it still caught the pathos of emigration and loneliness. The mother is beautiful. Overall it was okay as the novel was okay and it was as good as most of the movies I have seen this year.

Robert

Last week I had a Barny Noble coupon I had to use. Fantagraphics has started a series of volumes of all of the Pogo newspaper strips. Walt Kelly, one of my favorite authors, bulked up twentieth century literature with his invention of Pogo and his neighborhood, and I have admired his creation since college days.

The United States Postal Service sensed the importance of this. The book came across country and into my mailbox in just over a day.

Pogo: Through the Wild Blue Yonder by Walt Kelly. I am hopeful that this is the first of many unwieldy hardcovers capturing the full scope of Kelly's achievement. I also can't wait to see the arrival of the bats and what set of names is used in this edition.

Robert

>101 Mr.Durick: - Any standouts from your readings on happiness?

I'm also interested in reading something by Eliade - have you read any of his other books?

My memory is exceedingly cloudy on the answers to both of your questions.

It seems to me that I thought when I read it that The Conquest of Happiness was valuable, but I can't remember any of it. I also found Emotion and Peace of Mind informative, but I read it more for what it said about stoicism than about happiness. I'll remember more after I post this.

I've cataloged five works by Eliade on LibraryThing, but I haven't read any of them. Looking over the rest of his books listed here I am pretty sure I haven't read anything by him. If you read something, let me know how it goes.

Robert

Chronicle's reviews made it out to be a plausible pastime, and its availability in Titan XC, an IMAX equivalent, offered the possibility of visual excitement. Meanwhile the very same auditorium was offering a two showing revival of The Princess Bride a couple of hours later. It looked like a trip to town was justified.

Chronicle offered some meat in the consideration of what we do when we achieve gratuitous authority or power and what it means to be powerful among other compelling parts of life, like friendship. There were scenes that offered opportunity to use high definition big screen projection for high thrills. But all of it, although watchable, fell short. I was never actually engaged by the film.

The Princess Bride, on the other hand, is the warm entertainment as I remembered it from my other watching a quarter century (already!) ago. "Hello. I am Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." It didn't need the huge screen; neither did the huge screen injure it.

Robert

I look forward to reading your thoughts about the Robeson biography, Robert.

A datum can be compelling, but data can be dry, even unreadable. Isabel Wilkerson has brought to life the very important data of the black experience in the United States from World War I to about 1970 in her book The Warmth of Other Suns by concentrating on three representative interstate migrants of that era. She does that without ignoring the whole environment from which these people fled and into which they fled, even through which they fled. This is a powerful and important book.

Robert

Enjoying your pithy notes on films seen Robert.

>105 Mr.Durick: - The Conquest of Happiness sounds like it would be of interest - thanks for the recommendation. I'll let you know about any Eliades that I read.

>106 Mr.Durick: - There was some buzz about Chronicle over here because the Space Needle was featured prominently in the film, but all the reviews I read sounded like yours - at times entertaining but ultimately meh.

The very long opera Götterdämmerung is a cautionary tale about the dangers one faces when offered magic potions by rich strangers. One of the Rhinemaidens in this production has acceded to babehood, and I was delighted when it was she who got the ring at the end of the opera.

There are some other real delights in this production, possibly the only one I will ever see. Jay Hunter Morris's adoption of the role of Siegfried is a delight, and he was delighted to be there. Deborah Voigt, who played Brünnhilde, is special in her craft even if her body issues intrude on her voice, something I am not competent to judge. Hans-Peter König brought real evil to the stage as Hagen. The chorus brought musical relief to the intense six hours of operatic production.

This was something to do. It might not be something to do again.

Robert

About Time (the touchstone is correct; the book has undergone a name change) by Adam Frank comes up short. He asks a lot of good questions, but then, if he addresses them at all, he doesn't get a handle on them. There are inexcusable typos -- neutron for proton in a description of lithium for example, and there are non-explanations that claim to be explanatory -- as if mere mention of Einstein's cosmological constant delivers understanding of accelerated expansion. To the author's credit, he does mention a couple of less mainstream thinkers on the matter; my touchstone is Julian Barbour, but Julian Barbour was better covered in a recent issue of the typically superficial Discover magazine than he was here.

This book is more a recapitulation of current cosmology than a discussion of time, so it was disappointing. I cannot recommend it.

Robert

I've been wondering how the Freud/Jung film would pan out Robert (it hasn't arrive here in UK yet). Also I missed TTSS on its release but have it ordered on DVD - have heard mixed (but largely positive) reviews on it. Sounds like you got quite a bit out of it....

The Paul Robeson bio and the eternal return book both sound intriguing. Robeson is someone who stands out in 20th century culture and politics for me....

I suspect that I am going to pick up the Paul Robeson biography when I finish the book I am reading now.

When I find out the balance on my Barnes and Noble credit card, I am going to look into buying the other two books in the Karla series from John le Carre and the set of DVD's of the television adaptation. I did like the recent movie a whole lot.

Robert

a cautionary tale about the dangers one faces when offered magic potions by rich strangers

Ha ha ha! I think I saw one description of Das Rheingold as something like - a cautionary tale about buying real estate when you can't pay for it.

I enjoyed the production - I felt the director did more with the singers and that for the most part the singing was pretty good. The costumes really bothered me though - they weren't very cohesive and Gutrune's outfits had me wondering what they were thinking.

About Time had the fault that the pages weren't glued in carefully, and, if I wanted the pages to lie flat, I had to sort of peel them back. In Search of Lost Time by Dan Falk had the fault that they needed better publishing or type setting software: some words spread out over entire lines, one hyphenated word had a blank line between the first half of the word and the last half, many footnotes were on the page before the asterisk.

Otherwise the books were similar and never got beyond mentioning interesting aspects of time while indulging in long cosmological filler. These are not the first books one should read about cosmology, however, so I don't see any use for them.

Robert

Robert, if you are willing to try something a bit mind-bending, may I suggest Einstein's Dreams, which posits 30-plus different kinds of time that might have been dreamed about by Einstein while he was working on his theory of relativity. Written by a physicist, it is quite a charming read.

It is exactly that I want my mind bent, or somesuch. I have long heard of Einstein's Dreams and may even have a copy. To read it I'll have to get another copy given the lack of order in my house; I am hoping for a trip to see Barny Noble today, and I can look there. Einstein is not the last word in time, but it is true that he established a big difference between Newton's take on it and the modern understanding, limited though it may be, of it. I should probably also reread Julian Barbour's book on time or try something newer by him, although it is likely to be too technical.

Thank you for your recommendation.

Robert

The eleventh revision of Robert's Rules of Order is now out. We have a rogue director on the board of our association of apartment owners of which I am the secretary. We may have to rein him in with the rules, so I have bought Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised in Brief, 2nd edition to initiate myself in the arcana of bringing order to bedlam. I still have the major work to get, and I would like a couple of the interpretations as they become available.

Robert

The area theater that carries limited release films, among them the Oscar Nominated Short Films, doesn't screen the documentaries, but I saw the live action films followed by the animated films yesterday. They were all good enough, but only a couple stood out, and I agree with the New York Times's picks of the best.

A live action film set in Belfast about a man who left for the US and returned 25 years later with his daughter (The Shore) was marvelous in all that it captured in so few minutes. Pentecost on the other hand was an 11 minute joke with a not very clever punch line. Raju and Time Freak were built on interesting notions, but I was willing with each to move on to whatever came next. The intellectually hollow Tuba Atlantic was so charming that it deserved attention on that charm alone.

A couple of the animated films were more interesting in retrospect than in the theater. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and Wild Life certainly have compelling aspects, but they didn't add up to compelling films. La Luna, from Disney and Pixar, however, was just gorgeous and is to be watched for its gorgeousness. The rest of the films, despite a cool chicken in one of them, can pretty much be dismissed.

These were, taken altogether, worth the trip across town, and I think I will complain to that chain about their not carrying the documentaries.

Robert

Yesterday between a plate of very fat pork from Whole Foods and a large (power size) smoothie from Jamba Juice, looking unsuccessfully for the special issue of Scientific American on time in Barny Noble's shop upstairs, I found a copy of Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman on the shelf; it hadn't been there Wednesday. I bought it. It was recommended to me above by Poquette after I had read a couple of popular expositions on time.

Robert

The Los Angeles Philharmonic screens at least some of its concerts. The orchestra's music director is Gustavo Dudamel, a native of Venezuela and a product of its El Sistema, a music education program for children. The orchestra has been performing a complete cycle of the Mahler symphonies.

The orchestra went to Venezuela, teamed up with another orchestra, two men's choirs, two women's choirs, a children's choir, seven solo singers, and a few additional instrumentalists to perform Mahler's Eighth Symphony, his Symphony of a Thousand. It was a huge production, and it was screened yesterday. It was a special experience not likely to be repeated but one that I would like to take in live for the listening as much as for the watching; a brass section was off in a box, and one of the solo singers with just a few lines looked out over the stage.

The faults did not make of it a bad performance, but they were there. The balance seemed bad; there were times when I was watching a meadow of bows stirring simultaneously but couldn't hear violins at all. The video direction was inattentive; there were long shots of people (audience or musicians) applauding, but none of what they were applauding -- a big mystery.

Robert

The reviews of Red Tails were not very favorable. One theater chain locally dropped it pretty quickly. The other kept it in the same multiplex where I saw Dudamel conduct Mahler, and I had a free ticket. So I watched it.

The story is not an unimportant one, and a good bit of it came through this production. The adolescent script and the comic book portrayal made its credibility sink as airplanes performed maneuvers that are impossible or, if possible at all, possible only in very special acrobatic airplanes or maybe F22's. I liked it because it capped my being convinced in favor of the Tuskegee airmen, but I wasn't at all convinced of the movie.

Robert

Safe House is a shoot 'em up, crash 'em, CIA rogue film with not much to it but action, but it coheres. I enjoyed it.

Robert

Yesterday, I was going to be out in the evening, and I felt like getting out of the house and into the world early, so I plotted a trip to the bigger Barny Noble store in town with a short list of books available in store for not much more than on line. I found them all and then some, but the story of the DVD is altogether different.

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. I like the genre of science fiction; I just don't like most realizations of it (in books; I'm a sucker for a science fiction movie). This book was mentioned on LibraryThing with some admiration and an intriguing plot. I thought I'd give it a shot.

The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the search for the good life by Bettany Hughes. I mostly gave up on self help books (except certain 12 step works) some time ago and turned to philosophy to learn how to live the good life. I also admire Socrates despite his crankiness. Athens, properly edited, showed us how to live the life of the mind. And here is a book about all that that has received some acclaim -- I think I heard the acclaim on LibraryThing.

Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II by J. Todd Moye. I just saw a movie about the Tuskegee Airmen. I heard about them long ago but never learned much about them. I was once a military pilot. This was on the Black History Month table at the store. The good thing about black history is that you can read it all year round or during Black History Month or both.

The Snark Handbook by Lawrence Dorfman. I like snark.

The Snark Handbook, sex edition by Lawrence Dorfman. I used to like sex.

The Snark Handbook, insult edition by Lawrence Dorfman. I have admired some insults in the past. Although I often enough let my cynicism show, I have tried to restrain myself from insulting; this I hope will prove a surrogate.

About the DVD: From the thread above it is obvious that I am taken by Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, recent movie and book. I heard from several people that the BBC mini series was excellent. It is available from BN.COM for about $35 and in store for about $40. Every time I tried to get it at the local stores (willing to pay a five dollar premium to keep the brick and mortar in business and actually put my hands on the package) it showed up in the computer list, but they couldn't find it on the shelf; that was repeated yesterday, and I had checked before going to see that it was there as shown on line. Oh well. So I went to Costco to get dessert for the potluck that was my main mission out of the house and, necessarily, wandered through the book, CD, and DVD section knowing that the DVD would not be there. Except it was! For $27! Hurray...

Robert

There is justice in the world after all!

(willing to pay a five dollar premium to keep the brick and mortar in business and actually put my hands on the package)

I invite you to my thread http://www.librarything.com/topic/130501 to see an interview with author Ann Patchett on "The Colbert Report" who opened her own bookstore (I love the name she chose for it) in Nashville since the brick and mortar bookstores there (big and small) were forced to close. Your trips to Barny Noble leave me feeling a bit envious.

Note to myself. Thank you, avidmom. I have read Bel Canto and found a great deal of humor in it; there seems to be a great deal of humor in her. I had scanned your thread already, but I hadn't clicked on the link until now.

Robert

Enjoyed you reasoning for the Snark books. Coincidentally I read a couple articles today about Snark. Here's one in defense of snark, especially snark in book reviews

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/02/23/etymology-of-the-day-snark-...

Paul Robeson by Martin Duberman is a a hell of a book -- 550 pages of information filled text followed by 200 pages of richly informative notes; I did not read the notes.

Robeson suffered a tragic affection for (and blindness to the evils of) Soviet communism and other communisms; at the same time he was a genuine American hero up against those who would use a whole great country for their own personal pleasure. He apparently had great natural talents, but he also had the capacity to practice and improve. He also had great strength, physical and emotional, that got him through a challenging life. Watching his deterioration at the end of his life in this book I felt that he deserved a rest.

Small world department: I mentioned that I was reading this book at a church potluck Wednesday, and a woman said that she had interviewed him in his hotel room in North Dakota when she was 18. Stretch Johnson was quoted often enough, and I believe I met him, thence to have a nodding acquaintance with him, back in the late 80's. Robeson's wife lived a long time two towns (one state) over from the city in which I lived my first 17 years. Robeson's son got his Bachelor of Science degree from my alma mater.

Robeson's life was also tied to important American history, some of which I lived through. As a child and callous youth I didn't know all that much about what was going on. Here, then, is a big story about the country I lived in back then. You know, some things we just couldn't do anything about -- we knew J. Edgar Hoover to be a criminal, but he was so firmly ensconced we had to wait for him to die. Other things we might have done more about, and I sometimes wonder whether I made a wrong turn back then.

This book is too big and dense for most people to take on, but those who do will be richly rewarded.

Robert

Enjoyed your review Robert.

Robert, your posts frequently make me laugh. I particularly enjoyed the Lawrence Dorfman comments in post 125.

The Snark Handbook was fun to read, but it was not worth a special trip to the bookstore.

Robert

Too lazy to finish Einstein's Dreams last night I read all of The Snark Handbook, Sex Edition. Fun to read, again, and more of the same. I am not remembering, from either of the books read so far, anything to use in conversation.

Robert

The Metropolitan Opera's screening of Ernani was as competent as usual, but I think this might be another opera that doesn't engage me. Four marvelous singers on a nice set, attended by some good choral singing and good music, didn't add up to a solid drama. There were some dramatic moments, as when Carlos sings about the value of being elected Holy Roman Emperor, but I never felt the telling of the story motivated the emotions or postures of the characters.

Mind you, I am not an expert. A more knowledgeable friend crossing my path as we came out was really happy with the performance. She credited the libretto to Victor Hugo and said that he never missed an opportunity to zing nobility. She was delighted in the way he did that.

Robert

A woman at church offered me a ticket to a live performance of Bizet's The Pearl Fishers; although she wasn't going to be there, I took it. From the rambunctious music and convoluted plot of Carmen we can be surprised at this work's lyricism and the straightforwardness of the story of screwed up love. This is a very musical drama with dance built into it; this production may have taken as many opportunities to put the dancers in as it could, and I liked it.

Robert

Great review of the Paul Robeson biography, Robert. I should have read this years ago (since Robeson is a fellow Rutgers alumnus), but I'll add it to my wish list and read it later this year.

130, 137: Prompted me to check the status of his house in Philadelphia (http://www.paulrobesonhouse.org/index.html). Undergoing restoration, but parts open to the public by appointment, which was also its status when I lived within walking distance.

I'm in the awkward position of thinking not very much of Einstein's Dreams; so many people have liked it and been moved by it. The author, Alan Lightman, is an astro-physicist or the like, and too much in this book he is a dancing bear. There are poetic moments followed by paragraphs that he has managed to write. It appears, by repetition of the fault, that he thinks it is okay to get one bit of imagery right disregarding consistency in the rest of the imagery; there is, for example, something qualitatively different between stopped time and slowed time that he fails to see.

In short, I am glad that this book was short. I think that there is no trope in this book that a thinking and deliberating reader couldn't come up with on his or her own, and that reader could put himself or herself into the trope.

Oh well.

Robert

Darryl, I think that the book is so rich in information and so effective at capturing character that you won't regret reading Paul Robeson, and Rutgers does get considerable play in it.

qebo, In the book, Robeson's sister's house in Philadelphia itself doesn't get much mention, but his going there and what was happening in his life there is fairly well covered. I would also like to know more about the house he had in Harlem and his house where his wife lived in Enfield, Connecticut. I suppose that there are English people who would be interested in his London flat. Those things can add volume to the notions we get from the printed word.

Robert

>139 Mr.Durick: — Oh, well, indeed!

I once saw The Pearl Fishers in London. The production was supposed to be in English, but at the last minute they had to substitute a singer who only knew the opera in French. When they got to that wonderful duet, one was singing in English and the other responding in French. This perplexed many in the audience, but to a visitor from Canada, it seemed wonderfully apt.

This production was in French. Usually I can hear some of the language, but in this case my understanding was entirely from the supertitles.

I've heard French in Canada, and I have heard English, of a sort, in Canada, but the only time I heard both in a conversation, I think, was when I was involved. I would go to Quebec resolved to get by in French and fail in my resolution the first time I spoke.

Robert

The Shift by Lynda Gratton was mentioned respectfully quite awhile back on LibraryThing, and I set out to buy it. I found it listed but unavailable at the Book Depository and asked them to let me know when it was in. On February 14 they let me know; I ordered it immediately; it arrived in the mail today, two weeks later far away in America.

From the table of contents it starts out talking about alienation and ideas around that subject. I am looking forward to it; I wonder when I will get to it.

Robert

I spent the late afternoon and evening watching the BBC version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on DVD with Alec Guinness starring as George Smiley. It is longer than the recent film, and so it carried more detail. It was excellent, but the acting was sometimes mannered and was better, I think, in the tighter film adaptation. I am enamored of this story and could probably watch yet another adaptation, but I will be moving on to Smiley's People, book and BBC adaptation.

Robert

I awakened yesterday to the lovely sound of continuous rain and decided I would go to A Separation in the afternoon rather than to the third game of a four game series of college baseball. So I looked up the starting time of the movie on the world wide web and, without forewarning, spotted Travelling Light from the National Theatres playing at the same theater. I had no time to find out anything about it, so I just reckoned on experience of the company and headed out for it. I'll catch the Iranian movie later. This was screened world wide for the privileged on February 9.

If a datum given to accompany the play is correct, namely that all of the Hollywood moguls were from within a hundred mile radius of Vilnius, then this play has real human insights into how that might have played out for one of them. Set mostly in a shtetl it shows a young man who, by the death of his father, came into a Lumiere projector and camera and was led to directing movies. There is a variety of people who come close to him in his movie making, a starlet, a money man and man of the earth (sawmill actually), the people of the town, and, later, a young Jewish actor in Hollywood. What was important to him and how he changed over the years to accommodate what was important is shown in some cases and described in some cases.

There is a richness to this play that one wouldn't expect in a a movie on the same themes. The panel afterwards also thought that this as a play about early movies posited an important contrast -- three dimensions of life (or of the stage) against the two dimensions of the screen, for example. They didn't get into the awkwardness of the screening of a play, done in two dimensions and with a moving camera.

I am glad that I opted for this.

Robert

You certainly get out and about Robert.

Not enough. There's more fun to be had than there is time to have it.

Robert

Although I skipped the church service this morning, I went there for a couple of going away parties, for a centenarian leaving for California and for a retiree leaving for Spain. I ended up washing the dishes and coming home stiff from that at nap time. Before I closed my eyes I finished the last snark book I have, The Snark Handbook, Insult Edition by Lawrence Dorfman. Like the others, it was easy and fun; I wish I could remember a few of the insults.

When I go back to bed I will either go back to Voss or take up for imminent use Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised In Brief, 2nd edition.

Robert

This is a very scary video, almost eight minutes. I could not do what is depicted here.

Robert

I get vertigo climbing a step ladder. I couldn't watch.

Voss by the Nobel laureate Patrick White is a novel based on an early expedition across Australia. I read it because it popped up as a favorite when I decided I would like to participate, to the extent of at least one novel, in the Patrick White 100th Anniversary Challenge. It is likely the only one of his novels that I will read.

It is mostly about Laura Trevelyan, a well-positioned orphan living in Sydney with relatives. She and the title character, the exploration leader, are taken with one another and are deeply aware of one another as they are separated by his expedition. Things happen. Women develop depth; men develop depravity. A story is told. I liked the title character until the mid-point of the novel when he did something that made me dislike him, an opinion that held until the end.

Life deceives us, I think, and Patrick White shows us that.

Robert

I was prompted to read Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised In Brief, 2nd edition by Henry M. Robert, III, by our AOAO board's acquisition of a rogue board member. It turns out to be interesting reading, at least for someone like me who has participated in meetings, especially those putatively operated under Robert's Rules of Order.

Has anybody ever heard, "Call the question!" from the noisemakers at a meeting thinking that they could squelch a discussion that they didn't enjoy? It is not a motion from Robert's Rules of Order. It can stand in for "moving the previous question" which is a motion requiring a second and a two thirds vote to pass; if it passes it stops the discussion, and the vote on the main motion can be taken.

The next time our rogue says at a meeting when I am discussing the matter at hand that I am 'taking it personally' I am going to call point of order and ask 'Madam Chair' to squelch his psychopathic clamoring.

Now I need to read a book on psychopathy, but I'm reading a book on scientific explanation instead.

Robert

I am a fan of Mary Doria Russell's novels. Between a trade show and my church's book group meeting last night I stopped at the bigger of the two area Barny Noble's stores. Another member of the book group is also a fan of Russell's novels, and we pick a book for two months out at each meeting (as it turns out we picked The Elegance of the Hedgehog last night). Anyway I had checked Doc in paperback at BN.COM; it was there at a discount of only 7%, but the site showed the local stores didn't have it. I know better than to trust them fully. Doc was not in any of the featured locations, but a single copy in paperback was in the author's location in the fiction section. So I am a proud owner now, with a 10% discount; I wonder when I'll read it.

Robert

I had to be way across town at 8 last night. Playing at a multiplex merely across town were two movies I thought I ought to see. They fit the schedule neatly so that I could see them both on my way.

I picked Norwegian Wood to see first because of the adverse review in the local newspaper. I expected not to like it, and ex post facto from a review on IMDB, "However, it is certain that those who have never read the novel will not enjoy the movie." From the start the movie was a long one, although an early suicide caught my attention. I listened, the little bit that I could, to the Japanese hoping to correct some impressions of the language that I picked up in Japan and Okinawa in the 1970's. I noticed some lingering shots of lush green hills and matched that to the name of one of the female participants, Midori. Naoko asked Watanabe to stop saying mochiron and he mostly did; on the other hand he continued to use it often with Midori. More and more details built into substance. I came away from the movie admiring it and suspecting that it would stay with me, although even at the end it was a long movie.

I expected to like A Separation and so capped my cinematic day with it. In the watching it held my attention. Life presents problems, and then it complicates them. The film is competent representation of that. Leila Hatami has a beautiful face, and from the trailers I had seen for this movie I had expected to enjoy watching her; I did. Those droll Persians, it turns out, are human and can interest us as they solve their problems, or not, and it is probably politically expedient to see this film.

Robert

I think you'll like Doc, I certainly did!

I wanted to see Dr. Seuss' [sic] The Lorax in IMAX 3D, but rain, a broken water main on a main road, and other events kept me from it the week it was available. I got to the 3D version yesterday. I still wish I had seen it in IMAX, but it was beautiful in any case. The story is tremendously simple, has been told many times, and has a simple moral or political point; all that is good enough. It is the pictures made on the screen that are to be marveled at and make this a movie worth seeing.

John Carter on the other hand has a story that is not quite good enough and despite some fascinating scene construction or photography is not in the first rank of pictures to be looked at. If it is to be seen at all it is to be seen in IMAX for the rich detail of some of the buildings and to ogle the voluptuous Dejah Thoris. I've seen this fellow who played Tardos Mors in a few films recently; old man though he is he may be worth watching for. Any comparisons one might see of this movie to Avatar or to Star Wars are by people with scant sensitivity to movie making.

Robert

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch took forever to read and didn't deliver. Evil is lack of knowledge or comes from lack of knowledge. Problems can be solved by developing knowledge. We do that through conjecture and criticism. The extent of things to be known is infinite. If we start solving problems now we are beginning an infinite exploration. And there was a lot of blather about memes. The writing didn't seem so much incompetent as it seemed denser than necessary.

Robert

To my surprise it is already nine days since I placed an AbeBooks order. On my way out to a movie I found one book in my mailbox already.

(1/22) Selected Writings by Heinrich van Kleist, edited and translated by David Constantine. Kleist was recommended somewhere on LibraryThing favorably enough that I felt I should have him at hand. I found this on BN.COM, but it was unavailable. I don't know anything about him.

Robert

Let the Bullets Fly is an over the top, bittersweet Chinese comedy with a moral or perhaps with morals. A bandit hijacks a sort of train and as a consequence goes to take over a town as governor. The town has a boss. The two collide. And the movie works out their differences. This movie has made a lot of money in China, but is no better than any of the Oscar nominees for 2011. That is it was good enough but only that.

Robert

Rae Dawn Chong looked familiar in Jeff, Who Lives at Home, but I think that the only other movie I've seen her in is Quest for Fire, a very long time ago; she looks very excellent. Also looking very excellent in a lot of extreme facial close ups was Susan Sarandon.

I have not been in Louisiana since the 1960's. My memory is weak, but I thought that there was a Louisiana accent. Jeff, Who Lives at Home is set in Baton Rouge, and everybody talks like an American, so I may be wrong. The movie also shows that black people play basketball and are violent; the movie may be off the mark in more than one way, and I may be right about the accents.

But as a movie on cosmic order it is pretty much right on. Where Tree of Life is two hours and twenty minutes of tedious pretension amounting to little, this movie is light and gets SPOILER the louver fixed END SPOILER. The plastic people in this movie are made out of plastic, and the human people in this movie are made of humanity. It would work on a small screen, so there is no rush to go out for it, but it is probably a good movie to keep in mind to see someday.

Robert

A Trip to Barny Noble's Which May Have Climaxed in a Big Mistake

I have long thought that an e-reader was in my future, but later rather than sooner. I have also for some time thought that that e-reader would most likely, making allowances for changes in the constitution of reality, etc., be a Nook. This weekend Barny offered a coupon with a 20% discount on the Nook and the Nook Color; meanwhile the price of the Nook Color had just been reduced. I did some online comparisons and decided that the Nook Color was the one for me. I haven't bought many books or magazines on my Barnes and Noble MasterCard in the current billing period, so I thought I might fit the price of the e-reader on it. I set out across town.

I had been told once before at the other Barny Noble's store in town that one could download books, et al., to one's computer and then copy them over to the Nook. The young woman who served me yesterday wasn't so sure about that. I don't have Wi-Fi; if someone sneaked in and installed Wi-Fi for me, I'd live with it, but I don't especially want it.

I bought the e-reader. I bought The NOOK Book: An Unofficial Guide: Everything you need to know about the NOOK Tablet, NOOK Color, and the NOOK Simple Touch (3rd Edition) (a link, not a touchstone) with it. I read most of that yesterday and last night on a once-through without having opened the Nook package (for this reason and that I am not counting it as a read book). I am not optimistic from that reading that I'll be able to use the e-reader without finding a Wi-Fi hot spot. I am fearful that my Nook Color will be an item in my household that takes up space and sees little use. Oh, well.

Perhaps tomorrow I will actually get to try things with it.

I did come away with three periodicals of which I can feel I got good value: Trains, an issue with railroad myths; Gourmet, a special issue on comfort foods; and Lapham's Quarterly, on means of communication. I buy Trains when there is something especially appealing to me in it. I used to get Gourmet regularly until my kitchen broke. The cover includes mention of "mac 'n' cheese;" to my way of thinking I have, long ago, been the best macaroni and cheese cook I've ever encountered, but I thought I'd give them a chance. I own all but about three issues of Lapham's Quarterly, but I haven't read one of them yet; I have good intentions though.

* * *

Tonight I will read on towards the end of The Glass Bead Game. The people in church to whom I mentioned it this morning seemed to be at a loss as to why they should have been led to this. In my reading, however, it is reminding me of why I read it every decade or so.

Robert

CURSE THE TOUCHSTONES

Those books you read every decade or so, combined with mac 'n' cheese sounds like the perfect way to recharge.

I'm not so sure about Gourmet any more since the format was changed, but a comfort food issue sounds tempting.

161 - I would never have gone to see Jeff Who Lives at Home, but now that you tell me it's set in LA I may have to.

Baton Rouge doesn't really have the Cajun accent, which is restricted to a triangular section of far south LA. BR is a touch north of that and tend to have more of the southern twang going on (though people from there would be loath to admit that fact). Since it's a big government and academic center, it also has some of the not-from-these-parts mixed in which lessens any accents. Certainly I've never met anyone from BR whose accent was anywhere near as strong as mine.

SassyLassy, this special issue is essentially a cookbook in magazine format. With my kitchen's being inoperative, I riffled through the issue last night looking at the pictures and reading a few of the recipes. They did not seem to be written with the diligence that characterized the magazine when it was alive; I wouldn't expect to get many of them right on the first try. Still if a kitchen comes back to me before I get too old I'll try some of them.

Jane, that it is Baton Rouge isn't very important to the story; it is probably more important to the tax breaks and state assistance with shooting sites. It is, nevertheless, explicit that that is the setting. There was no southern twang either. I don't think you'd be hurt by seeing this movie in any case; I'm glad I went.

Robert

(2/22) Another book from my AbeBooks order was in today's mail. lt was from Amazon; I did not, I believe, order anything from Amazon although I did, I believe, order this book.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. This looks to be a little book of inspiration for those of us who want more to be writers than to write, or something. I don't have high hopes that it will get me to write, but I thought I ought to pretend.

Robert

I saw the headline to an article in the New York Times that said that the film 21 Jump Street works. The review in the local paper was not adverse. I had seen the trailers, which don't exactly match the movie, several times over. I was reluctant to open the package with my Nook in it, wanting to put off disappointment a while longer. So I put on a shirt and went out.

The movie turned out to be funny. It is another Louisiana movie, set in New Orleans. It is set, more deeply, in a high school; that could be the kiss of death, but the story went into the streets which kept it from wallowing adolescence. It shows two markedly different young men coming to have respect for one another, but, better, it tells jokes and is simple on relationships better to serve the jokes and better to avoid going astray in a light movie. Oh yeah, one of the obligatory car chases is in stretch limousines, something new to me.

Robert

Congrats on your Nook! I have one and it's pretty useful. It was supposed to help reduce the piles of books but I don't think it has done that. I've downloaded a lot of free books from Project Gutenberg and Google books (have been reading Moby Dick on the Nook) and now I have a long list of ebooks to check out from the library.

>167 Mr.Durick: - Stretch limo car chase does sound new. Maybe the next step is a SUV limo car chase.

I read the last story at the end of The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse last night thereby finishing the book. It was a familiar story even though I didn't remember it from my earlier readings of the novel. I sometimes wonder between my every decade or so reading of the book whether my admiration for it is greater than it deserves, whether my rereading will prove it bogus, but as soon as I turned to the book this time I found myself admiring its unfolding the story of Joseph Knecht. That admiration persisted to the end. The scope of things considered, that is those things that Knecht experienced, is uncommon in novels, and they are so well exposed that one might consider this book one of the best ways to turn one's consideration to them. There are no philosophical conclusions although the ending to the structure of the work is competently wrought , but the cool delivery of what there is to consider in life is rich and full. Despite my being old I expect to read and gain from this again and to be transported into and back out of Castalia.

So then I picked up The War of Art because I have sketched a novel which I am clearly not writing. The book is yet another exhortation to write regularly despite lack of inspiration. Besides putting off writing, I have been putting off regular exercise and regular meditation, despite stabs at them, for enough decades now that I think I might better turn to a book that makes excuses for me. I think a better exhortation might be the one implied by a biography of Anthony Trollope.

Robert

Whine.

I woke up Wednesday planning on seeing the 75th anniversary screening of Casablanca. When I tried to confirm its showtime on Fandango it wasn't there, nor was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat originally scheduled for Monday. The Saturday showings in April of the Met's Live in HD performances of Manon and La Traviata, the last two of the season, were still listed. I happened to have a talk-to-a person telephone number for the multiplex. Without apology they told me that that auditorium was closed for at least a month, and all of those things were cancelled. A Grateful Dead to-do was not 'yet' cancelled in mid-April.

Oh well. At least I had Comedy of Errors from the National Theatres last night at a multiplex on the other side of town (a gallon of gas there and back). Oh, but people who don't stay home when they have a persistent cough came out for it; they were not the one or two cough people who do it and were done with it. I don't know how many of them overlapped the people expressing their right to freedom of speech in a dark movie theater. There were plenty of each. A woman got up, walked out, and returned with something that gurgled and hissed, on and on. Somebody with the theater helped her with it, but it kept coming back. The performers were doing interestingly well with the language of Shakespeare, but it remained difficult, and the performers' enunciation was idiosyncratic. I pretty much missed the first twenty five minutes of the play -- there was, I think, a shipwreck. The theater refunded my ticket price.

Here I am culturally starved, but I now have Bejewelled on my Nook Color and won't be needing any books.

Grumble.

Have a nice day,

Robert

>169 Mr.Durick:

Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game) is the only novel by Hermann Hesse I haven't read. I seem to be unconsciously avoiding it, as if I am waiting for refreshed interest for Hesse. My favourite has always been Siddhartha, which I have reread many times.

I've read Siddhartha, probably in the sixties, and enjoyed it, but I've never reread it. I think that if you read Das Glasperlenspiel or The Glass Bead Game you will find it denser in what it considers, but with the same kind of direct story telling.

Robert

>172 Mr.Durick:

Yes, I expect Das Glasperlenspiel to be Hesse's non-plus-ultra, his final opus magnum. Siddhartha has always given me a lot of consolation; I think Das Glasperlenspiel will go deeper.

Hermann Hesse is one of my favourite authors. I have read nearly all his works, except for diaries and letters, which in the German complete editions came out a few years ago. I have also visited the Maulbronn Monastery.

Interesting you are rereading that work every couple of years.

#162 - Robert, I have a Nook Color. It was a gift a year ago, and I must say it's not what I would have bought. I would have gotten a plain b&w Kindle for half the price because it's lighter weight and the battery lasts for weeks, not hours. Amazon's ebook offerings are also more extensive than B&N's, but I haven't actually bought any ebooks, so I can't say that has mattered. The Nook Color does give you a web browser, but that feature won't be of any use to you without WiFi.

You definitely do not have to have WiFi to read books, at least not the free ones you can get from Project Gutenberg or Google Books (which is all I've read on mine). The easiest way to start is to download a wonderful free program called Calibre to your PC: http://calibre-ebook.com/ It helps you manage your ebook collection on your PC as well as on your Nook. You download the books onto your PC, import them into Calibre, attach your Nook to your PC, and then tell Calibre which ones you want to load onto your Nook. It automatically converts the file format if needed.

So far Calibre does not see the books that are already on my Nook Color. Sooner or later I will read the manual. I took a brief look at Project Gutenberg earlier today; that's something else that is going to take some study to make easy. I saw that there are several formats available there and thought that the Nook might read some of them. It seems to read PDF's smoothly; I think I want to try it on HTML.

The browser is good at the store. I can look at my LibraryThing catalog and at my non-Nook BN.COM wishlist, albeit only my main one. I'll also be able to use it at church; I've been given the office's password for the WiFi there.

I found that I used half the battery's charge in two and half hours of intense Bejeweled today.

I think that there won't be many Nook books on it for a long time, but I want to get a couple of things that are nice to have with me when I am out and about and can encounter delays.

Robert

It seems to read PDF's smoothly; I think I want to try it on HTML.

The best format for the Nook is "EPUB." It's an option on most Gutenberg ebooks and many Google ebooks. That's what the books from B&N come in, and it gives you full use of all the Nook features. When you use Calibre to load books to the Nook it converts them to EPUB anyway, but some of the formatting, pictures, tables of contents, etc. are better preserved if you download the book in EPUB to begin with.

Thank you. I'll have to try to bend my will to comply with Calibre's functionality. I thought that EPUB was the Nook's format of choice, but the books at hand didn't say that, at least on the surface where I had read.

Robert

The book that I am reading about the Timaeus is too dense to admit sustained reading. I have diverted and will be diverting. Last night I finished Earth by John Stewart and many others, which I started a year or more ago. I had found it clever but not entertaining, at least after awhile. That was how I finished it. Avid followers of The Daily Show will probably admire it more than I do, and I know that other readers have been better entertained by it than I. What I like about humor is how it sometimes makes me laugh; I laughed only a few times reading this book.

Robert

Three more books from my AbeBooks order were in my mailbox today.

(3/22) Island Fire edited by Cheryl A. Harstad and James R. Harstad. I believe that Dan Chaikin recommended this anthology. It collects and updates the Hawaii section of the academic collection Asian-Pacific Literature. There are chants, stories, poems, and stuff in this book.

{4/22) The Gift of Thanks by Margaret Visser. Unfortunately this is a hardcover; I still may read it. The book is an analysis and history of gratitude and a study of its importance in society. I have been told that an attitude of gratitude can improve one's lot in life, and I at least partly believe. I am hoping that this book can provide a focus in that regard.

(5/22) Dear Mr. Unabomber by Ray Cavanaugh. This epistolary novel was probably mentioned on LibraryThing by MeditationesMartini.

Robert

Thinking that I had better check my mail before I took my afternoon nap I found eight packages to haul in. These almost finish my 22 book 10% discount order from AbeBooks of books not available new from BN.COM.

(6/22) Voltaire by Theodore Besterman. I have liked and admired (it took a long time for me to come to terms with his not being within the first ranks of philosophers) Voltaire since high school, especially Candide. I have read bits of his life here and there, but now I think I can find about how he put it all together in that heady environment of eighteenth century France.

(7/22) Voltaire Essays and Another by Theodore Besterman. And I may be able to learn more deeply the import of some of what he did and said.

(8/22) Wildfire Season by Andrew Pyper. This is a novel that must have been mentioned on LibraryThing with something about it that I admired.

(9/22) Pepita by Vita Sackville-West. The author's name is familiar; her work is not. Something said inspired me to wishlist this.

(10/22) The Time of Light by Gunnar Kopperud. This is a novel that must have been mentioned on LibraryThing with something about it that I admired.

(11/22) Young Adolf by Beryl Bainbridge. The Birthday Boys by Ms. Bainbridge was so well written and so horrifying that I have steered clear of her and of stories about Antartica in fear that I could be hurt again. something about this suggested that I could admire the writing in this without fear of injury.

(12/22) According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge. See above, and it had some positive charm in its description too, although I don't remember it.

(13/22) Dr. Thorne by Anthony Trollope. I went through a Trollope phase but missed this because for a long time before internet bookstores the only version of this available was an overpriced hardcover.

(14/22) The Last Valley by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.. This finishes my collection of The Big Sky series. I've read the first four, I think, and mislaid the fifth.

(15/22) The Odyssey, a modern sequel, by Nikos Kazantzakis. I just foolishly thought when I found that this was hard to find that I ought to find it.

(16/22) Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About by Donald E. Knuth. What's the truth behind the formalities? This is the algorithm guy whose impressive hard covers were in college bookstores back when computers were becoming hot.

(17/22) The Routledge Atlas of Jewish History by Martin Gilbert. An aid.

(18/22) True Enough by Farhad Manjoo. How can we believe what is patently not so? What is true in truthiness? Maybe how is that how do you feel about that? has replaced what do you think about that?

(19/22) How To Be Pope by Piers Marchant. This is a book of curiosities about Papal life.

Authentic Faith apparently edited by committee. This book on its back cover had the ISBN of a book that I wanted. It will be too much to try to correct things. Some other time I will order the book that I meant to get.

I have received 19 of the 22 books I ordered. One book I received was the wrong one. One vendor was reluctant to send a book to the address I provided and may have cancelled the order. I think I have one more book to expect.

Robert

#161 "My memory is weak, but I thought that there was a Louisiana accent. " - There are a few, but my understanding is that the accent in large parts of Baton Rouge is generic American.

#179 - I'm jazzed you might try out Island Fire...no clue whether or not you'll gain from it.

oh its such great fun to find book packages in the mail box.

I will be interested in what you think of the Voltaire biography and lit crit. I am reading Candide with my French book club at the moment, when I say I am reading it with the book club that is exactly what I am doing as they make me read it aloud at the group meetings. Apparently its good for my French accent.

I am relieved to find that I'm not the only person who will enthusiastically buy a book based on the vague memory that someone on LT said something interesting about it.

This very thread shows that I have read 26 books so far this year and bought 51 this year. That does not seem uncommon for me, so the question remains as to whether I will ever read any of these. I was probably enthusiastic about the books I bought when I put them on my wishlist based on what someone said; later I ordered them on the dull basis that they were on my wishlist and I was cleaning that out.

I wish,..I wish that my French were better so that I could tell whether Voltaire's language was admirable. The last time I read Candide was in conjunction with watching a couple of DVD's of performances of Leonard Bernstein's work. All of that was in English. Some concepts, such as having one buttock, are funny just in their conception, but paired with some linguistic sophistication could be glorious. Or considering the end, is the imperative to tend our garden put poetically?

Robert

>183 RidgewayGirl:

We are a legion I am afraid... :)

This one, from today's mail and probably the last of the order, may be the book I pick up to read tonight when I finish the Pogo that is entertaining me now:

A History of Russia, Central Asia, and Mongolia by David Christian. This book stopped being available new at BN.COM and so made it into this order.

After that my great craving for the inner parts of that vast landmass will need only something on the formation of the Slavic communities to be satisfied.

Robert

>180 Mr.Durick: - Impressive haul, Mr.Durick.

I'm interested in reading a book about truthiness - will have to watch for your review of True Enough (the subtitle is funny - Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society).

I recall having to order Dr. Thorne from the internet when I was reading Trollope's Barsetshire series. Now I can get all his books from Gutenberg to put on my Nook. I can finally learn the answer to the question Is He Popinjoy?

Ah yes, the Slavs!

The book I am reading on the Timaeus by density and narrow interest has declared itself a one chapter a night book. So I have, after that chapter the past few nights, read Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips, Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder and am quite happy about it. I have read a lot of Pogo in my life, but (1) there were things here that I have never seen, and (2) Pogo is always worth a revisit. There are a total of 12 volumes forecast for this series; I am hopeful that they will be published and that I will get to read them all. I hope they all contain at least something of the variations as this one did; I want to see for example that both sets of names applied to the bats are shown.

Robert

Fantagraphics are pretty good in putting these reprints out so I expect they will publish all of them :)

The movie Salmon Fishing in the Yemen got two and a half stars out of four in the local paper. I kinda wanted to see it anyway, and then yesterday it fit my schedule. Its a pretty good humorous, feel good movie. There's outrageous prospect; there's romance; there's crushing disappointment. And I liked it and recommend it. The portrayal of the Yemeni is a tour de force.

That was a pretty intimate movie, but Jiro Dreams of Sushi is far more intimate homing in on the dedicated life work of one man, a sushi chef. Now this sushi chef has three Michelin stars, so he can be picked out in a crowd, but who'd have guessed a movie with this narrow aim could be so rich? I want now to catch a boat to Tokyo, plunk down my san man yen, and eat the best sushi in the world for fifteen minutes. I also want to watch what happens in the restaurant live. I'd like to do it more than once. I'd like to come away understanding the difference in taste of the various levels of fattiness in tuna. I also liked this movie and recommend it.

Robert

Robert, I watched TTSS (the movie) for the first time yesterday. Quite different in feel to the Guinness series.

I thought it was excellent - the colours were superb, and that English middle class understatement!

The director is one to watch out for, a very finely constructed film.

I'm hoping they continue filming the Karla Trilogy. I have the BBC Smiley's People and would like to see a theatrical one. I've been waiting to watch it until after I read the book. I would also like to see The Honourable Schoolboy on either size screen.

Robert

I have continued this thread here.

Robert

The new movie version of Tinker. Tailor. Soldier. Spy has finally come to cable "On Demand" so I watched it, having followed your comments on it with interest. I was pleased that it was less opaque than the longer BBC version I had seen many years ago. As good as that one was, for once its length and attempt at telling the whole story may have actually impaired it. The casting was pretty good in this new one as well, with the possible exception of Benedict Cumberbatch as Peter Guillam – no slam against Cumberbatch, but having seen him as a 21st century Sherlock Holmes, this role did not compute for me. But on the whole, I thought it was a pretty good movie.

I actually liked both versions of it. I have on my to-do list to watch the BBC Smiley's People DVD's. I have to decide to watch it one day early enough in the day to commit to six or seven hours with a DVD player in my lap.

Robert