Robert Durick's 2010 reading

I have no idea what I will be reading in 2010. In early January my book group at church will be discussing Outliers, but I have already read that. In early February the group will discuss The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin; so far I have four Supreme Court books to read and am reading The Brethren by Bob Woodward now. I may not be through all of them by 2010. I am slowly making my way through Life and Fate by Vasili Grossman and may still be reading it on New Year's Day.

I have also joined the 25 in 2010 challenge. I will be deciding on those books as I finish them and reporting on them in both groups.

Bimbos of the Death Sun came in today's mail. It may cause a divergence along a different route.

Robert

I always enjoy your posts on LT, Robert. I look forward to hearing about your reading.

Robert,

I thought The Brethren was an excellent book and that The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court was not so good. I did not review the first, but here are my thoughts about the second:

Not very secret; not very inside.

Let me preface this by admitting my biases. I am a lawyer, and would be considered to be a “liberal” by most people who know me. I generally do not agree with Justice Thomas or Justice Scalia, and found the decision by the Court in Bush v. Gore abhorrent. It is my opinion that the court is going too far in rulings interpreting the Miranda decision. One might think I would like this book. I did not.

Toobin’s book is thin on notes, anecdotal and biased. Toobin claims that the book is based upon exclusive interviews with the justices and more than seventy-five of their law clerks that were not for attribution. In addition, he “steeped” himself in the “vast literature about the Court”. He also relied upon the coverage of the Court by the popular press and various “blogs” about the Court. He made very poor use of his sources.

In all of his discussions of the important decisions, Toobin does not provide analysis of legal reasoning. His explanations of the processes are simplistic and gross generalizations. The average reader must conclude that the justices engage in little reasoning when rendering their opinions. One might believe that the rulings from the highest court are made based upon personality quirks and political bias.

Toobin portrays the justices as one-dimensional personalities whose decisions are driven by their political leanings. In discussing Justice Thomas, he is condescending. Describing Justice Souter’s reaction to the Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, he engages in melodrama.

The Supreme Court deserves a more thoughtful critique.

Hope you don't mind me already messing up your thread!

Lisa

Robert,

I'm also wandering through Life and Fate and am about 100 pages in. I'm intrigued by it, but have been waylaid by other books that are more compelling, at least for me right now. As for Bimbos of the Death Sun, enjoy! It's great fun.

Lisa, I saw Toobin speak about about his book right before it came out and his talk struck me about the same way you described the book. I have it, but it's way down the TBR. Too bad, I generally like his New Yorker pieces.

Thank you both for your comments. It is likely that I will convey them to my book group.

The picture that Bob Woodward painted was a little like what you, Lisa, are claiming for Toobin. I came away thinking that despite the claim that the Supreme Court decides on the narrowest basis possible, the court actually decides on whatever basis jibes with the justices' judicial opinion. Stare Decisis seems to have considerable sway; my definition of the term from the usage is, "We've made up our minds; live with it."

I was still in a Supreme Court mood when I finished The Brethren last night, so I picked up Supreme Conflict. The first 28 pages (I think) make it seem like a latter day follow up to Woodward's book.

I am about 300 pages into Life and Fate. I can assert that it bears reading even if not as special as some make it out to be. I just don't pick it up very often.

Robert

Hello Robert. Good to see you here.
I appreciated Life and Fate and think the Grossman writes masterfully. This was the first (other than a history type book) that I have ever seen a war in and of itself become a main character. Pretty fascinating stuff.
I am glad to know where you will be for 2010 as I always appreciate the comments and remarks you share with us.
I wish you a happy new year and a lot of good reading for 2010.
hugs,
belva

Okay, the start of the year.

I am clearly reading The Case for God.

I have started and read enough to keep going:
Life and Fate
Shadow and Claw

I have read in and will probably keep dipping into Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult.

I have to read The Nine for a book discussion group on the first Wednesday of February.

Here's a hug in return, Belva. Have a good year, all.

Robert

Robert,

I will be looking forward to your thoughts about The Nine. You already know my biases. It will be good to hear from a thoughtful reader.

Lisa

I cited you in our church newsletter. I'm looking forward to reading the book just to pass judgment on it.

Robert

I finished The Case for God by Karen Armstrong last night. I rated it four stars because it could have been great and disappointingly wasn't. She acknowledges four editors; I wish one of them were actually practicing. I think she could have used a fact checker too.

The purpose of the book seems to be to show that a notion of a God does not have to be a factual one. Faith is a commitment that arises out of practice. She plentifully recapitulates the history of this idea, but because she doesn't identify ideas as different from the received ones or show how a change in somebody's thinking came about, she cannot be fully trusted, I think, on the facts.

So the book gives me plenty for organizing and understanding my own faith, but it is not something I could recommend to somebody who is antagonistic to faith.

Our recently departed minister asked a group of us one Sunday before the service what we could make of reckoning faith to be commitment rather than belief. Right away the notion appealed to me, so right away I turned skeptic. We have it from Wittgenstein that meaning is in usage; we have little room for deciding who's in charge, the word or us. I kept my eye open, and I saw that in purely linguistic circumstances from way back faith has been identified with belief. But there were practitioners in societies that would not allow dissent who may have been committed to that society without believing what was expected of them. Those same people may have agreed with every practice they were called to do -- feed the poor, gather as a community. So I've been coming around to the faith as commitment (or practice) stance.

This book seriously informed my faith about faith.

There are a number of subsidiary topics she talks about that interest me. She talks about Aquinas's notion of the existence of God, that it must be different from the existence of rocks and people. She talks about being able to talk of God's attributes only in what we know is not true of him. Things like that are always good to get back to; I wish her references had been clearer.

Robert

I always enjoy your posts, Robert. You are now starred.

Regarding >10 Mr.Durick:, you wrote, So I've been coming around to the faith as commitment (or practice) stance. How do you square that with something like the Book of James, where the author asserts, "Faith without works is dead"? Doesn't this suggest that faith is something distinguishable from works/practice/commitment, and has been conceptualized as such since quite close to the beginning of Christianity?

I enjoyed your review of The Case for God. I have read William James essay "The Will to Believe" several times. James, like Karen Armstrong, says that belief in God does not have to be factual. He establishes that belief in God is a choice, a choice to have faith. He says it is a rational choice in the face of questions that do not have answers that can be empirically proven.
I wonder if Ms. Armstrong cited him at any point?

Robert,

I must admit I am not sure what she was saying--maybe I should read it.

But from your comments I ask: is she proposing that if one commits to good works, one comes to faith, i.e. belief in God? Anecdotally, we all probably know of people committed to good work who do not and probably never will believe in God. Does this fit into Armstrong's theory?

Oh, help me God! I have more responses here than I ever expected.

My faith and my religiosity are a single work, I think, and they are a work in progress. In the New Testament I have read at least once the Gospels, Acts, the works ascribed to Paul, and Revelation; I have read little in the other books. I have however glanced at the book of James just to see that assertion, and I have taken it under advisement. I have also taken under advisement the Lutheran notion, as it has been explained to me, that salvation is in faith. I have sympathy with both stances and would think that a synthesis would not be expressed in a single paragraph.

But I don't know the book of James. Not all good people are people of faith. I think any person of faith would have to show some good action but might appear to the world as an ogre. I think, then, moving onto Lisa, that it is practice of faith that leads one deeper into faith; that practice may include good works, but good works do not require a basis in faith (except in a technical way that I don't want to discuss right now). I think my thinking in that is congruent with Armstrong's.

I am deficient in my reading of William James. I read The Will to Believe in the sixties waiting for training flights in Naval aviation basic flight training, and I don't remember much. I don't think deciding to have faith, which as I said I am beginning to distinguish from belief (but there is more to that), is incongruent with what Armstrong says. I could have sworn that he was at least mentioned in the book, but he is not mentioned in the index or bibliography.

I am sorry that I am not lucid, but I think that it is good that I am put on the spot once in a while.

Robert

PS Lisa, wait for the paperback, or borrow it.

R

>14 Mr.Durick:, I hadn't meant to put you on the spot, and the more I thought about it while I waited for your reply, the more I thought that perhaps my question in >11 polutropon: was unfair. After all, there are at least two different ways to parse James' admonition that, "Faith without works is dead." The first is, "Faith without works doesn't really mean very much," which would imply that faith and works are distinguishable, since it's possible to have one without the other.

On the other hand, he could mean, "Faith without works isn't really faith at all," which actually is quite compatible with the identity you proposed between faith and commitment/practice.

Last night I finished the first book in the two book volume Shadow and Claw which is the first half of The Book of the New Sun. Its lack of resolution has led me to consider the whole thing one work, and I will henceforth treat it as one and refer to it as The Book of the New Sun. I hope to keep the touchstones straight. I will not claim to have finished it until I have finished all four books (both volumes).

So far it is weightless.

Robert

I finished The Book of the New Sun so that you don't need to. It is a book of multiple conceits, none of them more than trivial either in original conception or in presentation. One that I liked anyway was of people voluntarily having parts of their brains surgically excised so as to make them more natural, that is wild.

It remains to be seen whether anything in this will carry with me through the rest of my life, but I doubt it.

Curiously, I won't rule out reading something he may have written continuing or following up on the story. I don't think I want to bother figuring that out.

Robert

the group sci-fi reading group (dormant at the moment) started off w/ Book of the New Sun which i disliked rather a lot..
"i just felt that Wolfe was showing off in a rather unpleasant and, to me, unappealing and boring fashion, as opposed to engaging me. Obviously he succeeds with many careful readers which justifies, in my mind, having TSotT as a selection! Agia (sic) was the only character i found at all intriguing. I realize that Severian is something of a idiot-savant, but he IS observant and what he observes and what we should infer, for me required too much effort w/ relatively little reward.

But then i happen to like China Mieville a good deal and the same could easily be said about him! In fact has been, by every friend to whom i've loaned his books so far......" - that was before Un Lun Dun and the city and the city where the "grotesqueness" quotient is dialed way down.

I've tried a fair bit of Gene Wolfe's works and nothing has appealed - which may be a failure of mine, but wtf.

Hmm. I have both books on Mt TBR. Maybe I can lighten the load by ditching them...

Oh, dear, I have The Book of the New Sun on my TBR, too. I have heard better opinions of it from other people, though... I'll keep my fingers crossed, assuming I ever actually get around to reading it.

I have heard the better opinions and believed them, so I ordered the books and read them. I was disappointed. I think, though, that if they call to you, you should at least start them to make up your own mind. I would add, though, that you might not want to feel compelled to elevate them unnecessarily in your to-be-read file.

I might point out that I am almost indifferent to genre. For those compelled to live in the alternate worlds of science fiction and fantasy, as I once was, these books may be much more important than they are to me although they have little literary merit. It may be a remnant of my earlier allegiance to science fiction that made me give these books two stars rather than half a one.

Robert

Robert - Just stepping in to say Hello. I've been looking forward to following your thread, and it has already been quite rewarding.

I finished The Nine last night. In many regards, especially compared to the other books I read about the Supreme Court at the end of 2009, it is skimpy. It even reaches conclusions without bases; I dislike that even when I agree with the conclusions. Nevertheless I learned stuff I hadn't learned from the other books; exactly what I learned I suppose will come out in our church book group discussion. Let me quote Lisa Curcio, "Toobin’s book is thin on notes, anecdotal and biased." She goes on to say,

In all of his discussions of the important decisions, Toobin does not provide analysis of legal reasoning. His explanations of the processes are simplistic and gross generalizations. The average reader must conclude that the justices engage in little reasoning when rendering their opinions. One might believe that the rulings from the highest court are made based upon personality quirks and political bias.

Toobin portrays the justices as one-dimensional personalities whose decisions are driven by their political leanings. In discussing Justice Thomas, he is condescending. Describing Justice Souter’s reaction to the Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, he engages in melodrama.

I noticed considerable difference in emphasis in this book about certain matters from the emphasis in others. I expect if I looked closely I'd see differences in nuance too. I inferred from one book I read that Rehnquist's decision to stay on when O'Connor wanted another year was almost a betrayal of her; this book gave only the history that led O'Connor to retire when she did rather than a year later. Is one book more accurate or the other more restrained? I don't know.

The book is very readable which is probably to be expected from a staff writer at the New Yorker writing anecdotally.

Oh dear, I'm incoherent and almost substance free, intellectually speaking.

Robert

Blushing to be quoted here :-)

Robert, the book is quite readable, and many people have liked it a lot. Rightfully so, the Supreme Court engenders much interest. The nature of the institution makes it difficult to write about the current Court, however. The desire to do so combined with real-time biases results, I think, in anecdotal rather than analytical works. This same problem results in emphasis on different aspects of the available anecdotal information, depending on the writers' biases. It is always easier to write about "yesteryear"!

A History of the Ancient Near East should have been done as tables, graph, charts, lexical entries, and time lines. It is dry as dust. It is also limited in scope pointing mostly to the existence, and only a little to the character, of dynasties. There were some wars fought, so such and such a dynasty came to power. Literature was in such and such a language or writing system, so such and such a dynasty prevailed. Some pottery was used so such and such a dynasty had influence.

There is dynastic detail after detail. No one could master them all from reading this book. Mastery of them would not amount to much.

What about Gilgamesh, Van de Mieroop?

Robert

Shadow Elite tells a tenth grade story in sixteenth grade sentences. Actually it must have taken a lot of work and attentive experience to research and pull together this book, but all we get from it, besides a few new details, is that there are people (in the Harvard University conspiracy) who use high level governmental functioning to their own ends. That use is so intertwined with governance that there is not anything we can do about it except maybe applaud a few prosecutions for our experience of schadenfreude.

I could've waited for the Readers Digest Condensed version of this.

I was so dispirited by a fifth book this year that had failed to engage, that I had a hard time picking a successor. I picked up A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues by Andre Comte-Sponville. His introduction is desultory. His first chapter is on politeness. The two comprise, I suspect, his givens. They are different from mine; that is okay, but I didn't feel like wrestling with them.

So I set that book aside and picked up Essential Dr. Strange, volume 2, to read a little over half of it. I began to feel like I could enjoy going back to Comte-Sponville's conceit, but I went to sleep instead.

Robert

The former city council member who probably led our interest in The Nine asked me at church this morning whether I thought it ironic (or some such) that we were paying attention to the book at a time when the Supreme Court is being scalded by criticism for what most believe to be a bad decision. I didn't know how to answer her.

Another puzzlement: I cannot believe that there is some other person with a dime in his pocket who enjoys Dr. Strange, yet Marvel publishes the comics. I finished volume two of the Essential Dr. Strange last night. It was as egregious as I expected, and I wallowed in it. I have two more volumes to bail me out of despair when bailing out is called for.

I wish I could recommend him, and I wish I could hold my hands in the positions he uses to cast spells. Oh well.

Robert

Robert,

I would not know how to answer her either!

In response to your question about Sen on the "What are you reading now" thread, Idea of Justice is so far very readable. I say this from the standpoint of someone with no academic background in philosophy.

I cannot comment on anything else he has written, however. What I have learned about him is that he is also an economist, and that some of his writing might contain discussions focusing on social economic theory could contain a lot of mathematical calculation. The math would drive me crazy, but perhaps you would not be intimidated.

Lisa

Thank you, Lisa. I think I will put Sen's book on my waiting-for-the-paperback wishlist.

Robert

Well, I did read them, so I am mentioning the two volumes of Asterix Omnibus that I read last night. I am thinking of trying to get some of them in French because some of the translation, full of puns and cultural expectation cannot have come literally from the originally.

I like my Asterix spread out in time. I think the publisher is encouraging me in that. I would like to read more at one swoop if there were more in it like the little conceit I found last night. The authors converted centimeters to alexandrines via feet; I think that is a very special recognition.

Robert

Having been through a spell in which I read book after inadequate book, I have been picking up meritorious book after meritorious book without becoming engaged with any. I think, however, that I am now making contented headway in The Classical World by Robin Lane Fox. It could be a little denser with both detail and explanation, but as a popularization I think it is okay. Furthermore it is not all politics and war; the book talks of living conditions and what people were doing. It is full of speculation, but the speculation is labeled ("...in my view...") and is that of an expert.

Robert

32 - I've got that one on a shelf here somewhere. Not sure how soon I'll get to it though.

Robert,

The Asterix are really quite funny in French. I have a few I have managed to get over the years, and am always on the lookout for others. I, too, looked at Amazon France, but by the time we are hit with the exchange rate, the tax and the shipping, it is just a little too pricey. If I should find a U.S. source, I will keep you in mind.

Lisa

I picked up The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court yesterday from a remainder table to use as a defensive weapon at tonight's church book group discussion of The Nine. I came home last night to read the introductory matter; so much has happened since 2005 that I might feel the book is incomplete, but I think it will be serviceable.

I also read the entries on 'nullification' and on the 'ninth amendment.' The first didn't tell me any more than routine histories of the lead up to the American Civil War do; it was in fact a little thin. The second on the other hand was going to take more attention than I was ready to give it lying in bed with another book to turn to; it is clear, however, that my other five books on the Supreme Court have scanted the subject.

I would have expected that the Court had considered sometime the matter of jury nullification, but there's no main heading for it, and it doesn't appear as such in the index.

In the short run anyway, I am glad to have the book.

I am within shouting distance of the end of The Classical World. He could have earned five stars by writing a little more densely and twice as long.

Robert

Robert,

Given that an acquittal by a jury is the end of a criminal case without any right by the state to appeal, it is not something one would see discussed by any reviewing court. In these here United States, "not guilty" is the absolute end of the road for any criminal prosecution, regardless of the reason.

I cannot wait to hear what your group says about The Nine.

Lisa

Lisa,

You must be thinking of jury nullification, which is quite different from the nullification Robert seems to be talking about. Nullification was a centerpiece of the Southern states' rights movement before the Civil War, pursuant to which it was claimed that individual states could refuse to apply federal laws within their borders.

Yes, Andrew, of course you are right about the difference. In the middle of his post Robert said I would have expected that the Court had considered sometime the matter of jury nullification . . .. It was that to which I was responding.

In the context of his post, it looks like that was not what he meant; it was probably a slip of the keyboard to put jury in there. I can relate to those keyboard slips! :-)

Robert,

I will have to see if any of my Civil War books address the issue. I have one about Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney. I will let you know if I find anything.

Lisa

Have just found your thread and am enjoying it very much. There is a fantastic bookshop (with English books) here in Basel that I'm still exploring. I didn't buy The Nine because of Lisa's comments last year, but I nearly bought The Classical World today. I'll succumb to it soon now that I've seen that you're enjoying it.

>38 LisaCurcio:, Wow, my eyes totally passed right over the word "jury" in Robert's post, or else I forgot having read it after I was done. My apologies, Lisa.

(BTW, this isn't Andrew, although our usernames are similar enough that I am frequently mistaken for him.)

>40 polutropon:: And MY eyes slipped right over the last letter of your name! My apologies.

Robert, would you like your thread back?

Gnaw, I'm likely to be the profit maker here.

I can distinguish between 'nullification' and 'jury nullification' and thought I had. I think if I stare at Lisa's explanation for a few minutes, the matter of 'jury nullification' will clarify itself, although...

I thought that when there is misbehavior by a jury a mistrial could be declared, that jury nullification is construed by some of the players in power as misbehavior, and the declaration of mistrial could be appealed. Oh well.

Lisa, are you saying that if I am on a jury and convince the other members that the law stinks regardless of instructions from the judge and we acquit that's the end of it?

Meanwhile, mine is a lightweight group. They liked The Nine most explicitly for the depictions of the characters. I pointed out that I had read books with better depictions. They didn't like Clarence Thomas, so I stood up for him even though I don't like him. Then they mostly wanted to discuss the recent notorious corporate person decision, and I went to bat for free speech and the standing of corporations as persons (I see that Clarence Thomas spoke in terms of free association rather than corporate personhood at Stetson). The former city council member was limited to spending $7,000 way back when she ran which she seemed to think was a good thing, and the discussion turned to how we could control campaign spending (she called upon a Maine model; I rebutted with my right to express myself without restriction in support of a candidate when I am not contributing to that candidate). That discussion went on with multiple accusations of 'you don't understand' until we decided to read Bel Canto for April discussion.

Robert

cmt, I don't know how much is new in The Classical World, but the book is tremendously readable. It is fairly complete (I suspect) and shows a real flow, not just a chronological juxtaposition, from Homer to Hadrian.

I would have liked more detail and explanation. At the start, for example, he does not deal much with the informed conjectures about the reality of a person, Homer, and I would have liked him to. It would, however have taken more space, and the book runs well over 500 pages as it is. If he had made his density a wee bit thicker and doubled the number of pages I would have been happier, but he would have sold fewer (1100 page) books.

I'm giving the book four stars because he does better than keep his promise and because I wanted more that he didn't give, however understandably.

Robert

Robert:

Lisa, are you saying that if I am on a jury and convince the other members that the law stinks regardless of instructions from the judge and we acquit that's the end of it?

Short answer: yes. This is not generally considered to be misconduct by a juror or jury which would result in a mistrial. In my experience, very few findings of "not guilty" are as a result of a jury's decision to disregard the law. Juries as a whole and jurors individually usually are very intent on following the law and making a decision based upon the law and the evidence. Anecdotally, cases in which there is "jury nullification" come about as a result of a particularly bad set of facts causing the jury not to want to punish the accused even though he/she violated the law, or what is considered by the group to be a particularly unjust law. In any event, it seems to occur when the jury believes that a finding of "guilty" would result in terrible injustice.

It is not usually discussed going the other way--where a jury disregards the instructions and law and finds a person "guilty". The reason is, of course, that the accused has a right of appeal, and a trial judge or a reviewing court can overrule the jury's finding if the evidence and the law do not support the finding.

Okay, lecture over.

LOL about your discussion, and you are a good man. I am not sure I could have defended Justice Thomas! It sounds like Bel Canto is a good choice for your next read.

Lisa

Right then, I am even more definitely buying the Robin Lane Fox book. I was about to say that I have lots of gaps and it sounds perfect, but it's more that I have a few spots of knowledge with craters all around them! (They're the usual ones for a former Latin student.)

I picked up Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy last night. It is way over my head. I found myself reading about 15 pages per hour with minimum comprehension. Nevertheless I am reinforcing patterns form other works, and one question I have long had was addressed (sadly, I don't remember what it is now). The sentences are magnificent despite repetitive obscurity.

If I were a good typist I would copy the first page and a half of the chapter on Marx as prophet into a new thread in Pro and Con (Religion).

I will probably keep at it. I don't expect to be able to discuss it much.

Robert

Robert,

On two things you have mentioned above:

French language Asterix--some can be found at http://www.schoenhofs.com/, but they are expensive. They do have free shipping on orders over $50. :-)

Nullification: I took a look at two books I have and there is not much in either. In The Court and the Constitution by Archibald Cox there is a couple of page long discussion of Ableman v. Booth. This was a case arising out of the state of Wisconsin's refusal to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law in the wake of the Dred Scott decision. I think it was the last time that any real issue arose as a result of a state's defiance of federal law. After the Civil War, there was little question about the federal government's powers to enforce its laws over the laws of the states.

Lisa, thank you for the Schoenhofs link. Right now it looks like they are strong on the German versions, or I don't know how to search. $21.95 for Tour de France seems not outrageous, although something to be planned for, but I'd like to get enough together to avoid shipping.

I wonder if that's in French or in German.

Robert

After an hour or so of Schumpeter last night, I picked up The Secrets of the Temple last night. It has respect even from those who stand politically apart from the author, William Greider; it seems readable and seems to have good information.

I will try to keep both rolling.

Robert

>48 Mr.Durick:, Robert,

You should be able to tell by the title what the language is. If the title listed was "Tour de France", that sounds like French! They seemed to have all languages. I also noticed they seemed to use the same cover for various titles. If I decide to order anything there, I think I will call first, just to be sure I get what I want.

Lisa

If are interested in books from Europe why don't you have a look at Bookdepository - they have free shipping worldwide. I don't know what they will charge to the US but a French Asterix book costs about £8 ($12) in the UK.

I'm in an art history study group with several other artists, and over the past year we've finally arrived at Classical Greek art. I criminally neglected history during my formal education, and I am now reading The Classical World, as well as listening to a Yale Ancient Greek History course given by Donald Kagan at Yale on iPod university. For a newbie, this is fascinating stuff.

Lisa, I did some conjecturing like that around the title, but I wasn't ready to order anyway, so I didn't pursue it. I think I will have to copy your prudence if I decide to order. I think also that Jargoneer, next message after yours, may have a good idea, but I haven't looked yet.

arubabookwoman, what is your take on The Classical World? Is it as readable for you as it was for me? Do you feel it has enough substance? Do you trust Fox with the facts?

Last night I pulled Schumpeter off the pile. After wrestling for five or ten minutes with a single sentence at the beginning of the chapter and seeing that there were many more I put it back on the pile. I pulled down The Secrets of the Temple and read a couple of hours in it. Still I went to sleep a couple of hours early; there might have been something besides literacy going on there.

After tangling with a private agent of a public bureaucracy today I was convinced that I would take on something mindless tonight, probably one of the softer books in today's shipment. But I had a nice nap which, uncharacteristically for him, included a cat. So I'm probably headed for William Greider at least for awhile.

I'll tangle with the world and entropy more tomorrow.

Robert

After a pleasant couple of hours last night with William Greider I turned for awhile to Colin Wilson. After I think 48 pages I can almost safely say that The Tower is not very good, but I will probably keep at it because it is easy and I have no responsibility to it.

Robert

Robert--I'm finding The Classical World very readable. I'm only 3 chapters in, but as a neophyte in exploring this period of history, it definitely is substantive enough for me. I don't have any way of knowing whether Fox has his facts straight--first of all, what I understand so far is that there often aren't "facts" per se, but educated guesses. At this point, I'm simply relying on Fox, since the book seems to be highly recommended.

Just as a matter of interest, are you a classical scholar, or do you have a professional interest in this subject?

Gnaw, I'm a dilettante.

Robert

I am reading the Spider World series by Colin Wilson so that you don't have to. I am treating the series as one work because at least the first volume was not an integral work itself. Fortunately the third volume seems not to be readily available, so I will be skipping it.

Robert

I am 65 and retired. Apparently I am just biding my time until I die. I have finished all three of the volumes of Spider World at hand. Please, if you read them don't tell anyone, but even more please don't read them. I can admit it because there seems to be nothing left, but I am sure you can be more hopeful.

I expect to get back to Secrets of the Temple tonight.

Robert

I did get back to Secrets of the Temple, and I am sure that I am still reading it.

Nevertheless: Yesterday I lay down for a nap. I felt like reading something a little light before drifting off. Before I knew it I was 100 pages into Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. When I went back to bed last night I decided to finish it. I have been to meetings where we hear a story like hers from the podium and occasionally chuckle in self-recognition. She captures that mind truly and literately if not otherwise specially. There are a couple of laugh out loud lines in the book. What does a good mother do when her daughter is out of touch in London? If she is Debbie Reynolds she calls Ava Gardner and asks her to go by the hotel to check on the daughter. I don't know Debbie Reynolds from beans, but I like her from this portrayal.

I was in that kind of mood, and it wasn't time yet for lights out, so I picked up and read Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler. I don't do teevee so this book is the only way I know the author; I bought this book for the title and the cover. I laughed out loud so often reading it that I would say that this book is funny. I may have to read her earlier book.

I am attracted to both of these women, and they are both dangerous. It is good to be reminded of one's own qualities by literature. These were not for me mere entertainment, but, by golly, they were entertainment. I would like to ask about the workings of womanhood prompted by both these books, but my questions would seem tasteless to a good many people so I will proceed in life in ignorance.

Robert

I picked up Chelsea Handler's My Horizontal Life yesterday because of Are You There, Vodka?.... I read the first couple of chapters between movies at the multiplex. I finished it abed when I got home hoping that it would get better. Late in the book I laughed aloud a few times. I guess what I got from reading the book is that I at least know what's in it. I've given it three stars, but I think I'm going to downgrade it to two.

Then, not having enough time to take on a full chapter of Secrets of the Temple, I read a chapter in the obfuscatory and maybe bullshit Poststructuralism. I'll read more and see whether I actually know anything about it at the end.

Robert

I finished Secrets of the Temple last night. It is a very scary book even after discounting the author's left bias. Lots of people who are not us have huge power and use it to screw things up in general but to profit for themselves.

Dumping the Federal Reserve no longer sounds radical, either left or right, to me. Locking the value of the dollar, say to an equivalent commodity, no longer seems radical right to me, except for its difficulty (we don't have enough commodity). Balancing the budget no longer seems merely to be a nice but dated thing to do.

I don't think there will be a revolution. We can look forward to a banana republic or to an all encompassing crash. I wonder whether it will happen before I am dead, or whether there will be some salvific force to redeem mankind, say nuclear holocaust or a runaway lethal virus.

Let me recommend this book highly.

Hopelessly yours,

Robert

Robert,

You have scared the heck out of me. I guess I will have to read that book!

Lisa

Lisa, if you do read it, take a look at whether your profession or your personal economic position (I distinguish those advisedly) color your reaction. And, if you do, please let me know. It is a pretty big book but it is the subject of recommendations both left and center.

Robert

I had to chose a book last night, having finished the pick-up-automatically one. I had read close to 300 pages of Life and Fate and thought it would be in the pile of books on my bed. I actually had to chase it out my bedroom door into the hall, but its broad spine made it pretty obvious.

I read maybe 80 pages of it. The reading goes well, but 380 pages into a work I should have some idea what the book is about. Maybe it is about people getting by in totalitarian circumstances.

Robert

I keep at Life and Fate and find myself despairing of humanity. I sometimes wonder, now that I know about these horrors (and others), whether I should continue to read these things. This book is sufficiently well written that I'm not going to abandon it, but should I forgo that which horrifies me and about which I already know something? Do I need to read any more about Stalin, Hitler, and their minions, especially their minions? I don't know much about Pol Pot; should I read about him knowing that evil is banal and that I will despair?

Oh well,

Robert

I finished Life and Fate last night. I'm done with despair for awhile. I will talk about the book when I have something to say. The word 'mimesis' comes to mind repeatedly, but I think there is something psychological-philosophical there that mimesis doesn't obviously capture.

Although I have started The Constitution of Liberty I felt weak last night and started Bel Canto by Ann Patchett instead of continuing in the Hayek. As it turned out I had to turn out the light at about 100 pages, but I would have liked to read it straight through. This could turn out to be a great comic novel or an immense tragedy; so far she seems to be playing for laughs.

I took the Hayek and the local newspaper to court today to fill the dull spots in jury duty. I was there from 8 am until a little after 2 pm. I never got beyond the newspaper. I told the judge that I believed that if I found the case hogwash no matter how completely proven that I could vote for acquittal and that I believed that that was called jury nullification and furthermore that she had said I couldn't do that. From her nodding I got the impression that she thought that I could not do that. I didn't, however, get excused until the prosecutor's first peremptory challenge. The attorneys in their questioning of the prospective jury members made it look like the prosecutor had an iffy case. I had made it clear that the prosecutor was going to have to go the distance to get me to vote guilty. So my involuntary servitude has ended for two years, and Hayek is back on my bed. Going to sleep tonight I will read Bel Canto.

Robert

Robert--just catching up a bit. I have not yet purchased Secrets of the Temple, but it is on the list. I will certainly be looking at it from the perspective of my profession and my personal circumstances, (hard not to, don't you think?) but I tend to lean left in my politics despite those factors.

Life and Fate--mimesis? I had to look that up and I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on that. The book is on the shelf and I keep looking at it. Have not picked it up because I have a couple of others going that I would like to finish first.

Watching your thread . . .

I finished Bel Canto with its surprise ending (in the epilog) and immediately picked up The Given Day by Dennis Lehane.

There is wry humor in Bel Canto some of which even amounts to joking. The soprano's depiction in the first hundred pages paints her as a real diva, and that description is funny. That slacks off after that, but Patchett still tells some jokes. None of them are in isolation so they color the novel as an entity. I picked the book up immediately following Life and Fate, a book of considerable heft; the comparison may have helped float Bel Canto. There had to be a resolution to Bel Canto, and the abruptness and sharp consequence to the characters of the main story resolution amounted almost to a punch line however tragic. The twist in the epilog is, again, wry; whoda thot?

For the continued development of civilization among us it is important that artists depict important circumstances of the development. Totalitarianism in the twentieth century is a set of important circumtances. Life and Fate was a marvelously artful depiction of that. Grossman did get into his characters' heads although he told us about that more than showed it. My constant comparison in reading the book was Europe Central which I thought the better book; how people respond to extraordinary circumstances and to the challenges of "fate" was the important theme of both these books, but I thought Vollman wrote the more compelling story. I suspect that other reasonable readers could get it the other way around.

My reading of Life and Fate was also informed by my having read The Gulag Archipelago, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, another book on the gulag, the first half of Ian Kershaw's life of Hitler, Montefiore's first installment of the life of Stalin, and maybe a couple of others. I think I am going to have to read more. I have The Kindly Ones at hand.

I am a few hundred pages into The Given Day. If a novel is about character and this is a novel, then the character is the American character. When I was a boy there were people about me who had known World War I Boston first hand. We never much talked about it; that kind of talk was mostly limited to off hand references to James Curley as mayor.

Robert

Having finished The Given Day I can say that there are credible characters in the story, but Boston is the star. The riots are a surprise to me. I was reared, sort of, in mid-century Western Massachusetts and had a mother from considerably farther east. There was mention there of Curley and of World War I. I have also read a pretty thorough history of Massachusetts within the past couple of decades. I don't remember ever hearing about riots. The lies about the constant growth of civilization especially in America would have kept the matter out of the schools, but I think I should have heard about it anyway.

I would recommend The Given Day to someone who wanted that history as a human story. As a story of people finding their integrity, good or bad, it is pretty good, but the book does not stand alone in literature as a source on that.

I wanted something light when I finished The Given Day. I looked around, without getting up, for A Handful of Dust, but it didn't stand out. Happy Hour is for Amateurs was cockeyed at the bottom of a book pile, but I pried it out and read a hundred or so pages of it. Only because it is easy will I finish it. I think the subject might not be as compelling as I had hoped.

Robert

If I had the inherent strength to be an existentialist, I would be one. I don't, so I claim some allegiance to stoicism while admiring the existentialists from a distance. The Philadelphia Lawyer, at least to his current age, seems to have the strength. His getting loaded seems dull anyway. He asserts the tedium of his various jobs as attorney believably, but doesn't much show that tedium (which may be a tough job for a writer). There are people who enjoy doing law; I have met them. There are also many, many lawyers who do law because that is where they want to be; I have met them and found many of them to be lacking in competence.

There is a little here that is informative about what you might be getting when you pay for legal counsel. The book is easy to read and has some entertainment value. It is not exactly a waste of time.

Robert

Thanks for your comments about Bel Canto. Your earlier post reminded me that I’d felt “absurdity” in the novel -- surely intentional; what’s more absurd (incongruous) than the concept of Stockholm Syndrome? What stays in my mind is Simon Thibault’s fabulousness in the kitchen -- true, almost comic considering the circumstances and how profoundly he missed his wife.

I was thinking of Stockholm Syndrome, too, and wonder whether labeling the circumstances might amount to dismissing them. I think I'll bring that up at the book group. If we didn't know about Patty Hearst would the prisoners' behavior have been believable?

I think I saw some joking along the way that was just the author getting to snicker at something delightfully funny that had occurred to her. I read abed, so I don't have any of those things high-lighted.

Moving on, the past few days of reading have been dismissible. I read The Broom of the System which added up to maybe a collection of stunts. Last night in one gobble I read Bimbos of the Death Sun; that was something of a delight, but it was a weightless one.

I am still waiting this year for my 'you gotta read this' book. Secrets of the Temple comes close, but I have no standing to demand that everybody I respect be informed about the Federal Reserve. Perhaps I should give up and just go look at matrons at the mall in the better part of town.

Robert

I read ¾ of Last Exit to Brooklyn last night. I expect to finish it tonight. I have to ask myself why we might need to read such relentless disheartening emotional and physical violence. I think it may be for forgiveness or to relieve our despair. I'll try to think more about that.

Robert

I have finished Last Exit to Brooklyn. I am convinced that it is about redemption. In trying to figure that out I looked up the author on Wikipedia, and apparently writing was his redemption. His redemption is not mine, yet this book is part of my redemption. I came to this notion by thinking of the characters (initially the star of the segment 'Strike') as, "You poor sad bastard." Well, alas. In sympathy we gain understanding and in understanding we ...

Don't rush out to buy this book unless you can handle things very raw.

This was a rereading. I read it as an undergraduate; it was in vogue among us then I think just because of its extreme posture. It holds up, 45 years or so later, as a scrutable examination of our lot.

After finishing Last Exit to Brooklyn I read the short first chapter of The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell. I don't know whether I will continue in it.

Robert

*pops in*

I'm not familiar with most of your reading, Mr. Durick, but I did read and enjoy Bel Canto last year. It's an interesting perspective, to see the roughly abrupt ending as a punchline of sorts. I did get the understated humor throughout the book. It seemed more incidental than intentional to me, but maybe I'm not giving Patchett enough credit.

I did continue in The Kindly Ones.

It is a murder mystery set in World War II Europe. The murder of a couple is compared to the murder of the many.

It is not pretty. Do not read this book unless you have a very strong compulsion to.

Robert

http://www.librarything.com/work/1500148#

Having finished a long, dreary book I was looking for lighter fare last night. I dug out The Prisoner by Thomas M. Disch and got through it in one reading.

The story about my relation to the 60's television series is long, geographically and orthographically, and uninteresting. I will say, however, that last week or so I finished watching all of the episodes on line. I had already purchased this book to illuminate my understanding of the program. The book had only a few commonalities with the world of the teevee series although some conceits might be hard to imagine without having seen a program or two, but it could be a television program of its own. It is, it says, inspired by the program and is an inspiration for the recent mini-series which I have not seen.

The themes of the book (we don't know reality, we act on passion, our reality may be manipulated for us) are not trivial, but this book is not very illuminating about them. The book has as much value as an evening of acceptable teevee, and I don't have teevee.

Robert

I am stuck in low gear in dry sand. Snoop does not compel my attention. Introduction to Rabbinic Literature is written too hard for the material it covers. I will get back to both, but not avidly. I set aside Neusner's book shortly into the second chapter last night to thumb through my recentest issue of Pen World magazine. There must be something here that I just want to start and keep going in, that is readable, fulfilling, and engaging.

Robert

So with a loss of real direction I diverted into The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, a collection of miscellaneous short pieces I like for its quirkiness, Collected Stories of Somerset Maugham for his lushness and cosmopolitanism, and Raymond Carver: collected stories because of his fame. I read willy nilly among them although from front towards the back in each and just wondered when some idea would call out to me.

A couple of nights ago The Best of All Possible Worlds by Steven Nadler ended up in my hands. So I read it and finished it last night. Is God's will free or must he do what is best? Is perfection in the doing or in the result? This is my kind of meat. I know that there are materialists who will say it is calorie free, but I'll keep chewing. I and the book could bear a rereading, but I think, instead, I'll let it be the basis for further reading. And I think sometime soon I'll order his book on Spinoza.

I don't know what is next. I could go back to those collections I mentioned and someday finish them.

Robert

I am reading chapter by chapter a couple of computer books (Using Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Windows 7 in Depth) with my new laptop in my lap. I am not wildly happy about the laptop, the software, or the books, but they are what I have at hand.

I finished the book Snoop by Sam Gosling last night. It had some clues, but I don't think, having read it, that I can tell much about your personality by seeing your stuff or tell much about what I am projecting by considering my stuff. The book basically says you can tell some things about a person's character by looking at what they have (and a few other things) but it is all unreliable.

I have a half dozen non-fiction works started that I believe are still active although I haven't cracked them in weeks. I have three books of short forms that I am likely to turn back to. And I have several novels calling to me including A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh to read for discussion in early May. There are other possibilities -- unread but potentially interesting magazines, some so far unbroached non-fiction. I will get home late tonight and make a decision for the last hour or so of the day.

Robert

Is God's will free or must he do what is best?

Great question. I would say that He always does what He wants; He can only choose what He wants (just as we can only choose what we want). Because He is perfect, what He wants is always best. His will is perfectly free because He is perfect and not dependent on anyone or anything else.

I'll be interested in your thoughts on A Handful of Dust. I really liked Brideshead Revisited which I listened to on audiobook last year (read by Jeremy Irons, and very well done), but it's the only Waugh I've read yet.

Did Time Begin? Will Time End? put me to sleep early two nights in a row. I need help with the physics; he needs help with the writing. Decreasing entropy in his bouncing universe most likely scenario is a killer, but he thinks it will be resolved. This is conjecture; conjecture by an expert (he's a physics professor) can be fascinating, but this isn't.

I have to read A Handful of Dust within a month. Also last night in the blind but at my suggestion the book group chose Kafka on the Shore for its June book; I will have to read beyond the first page.

wisewoman, conventional wisdom is that Brideshead Revisited is not representative of Waugh. From reading his book about the pet cemetery as well as Brideshead Revisited I can see how that might be true. The people in the group who have already read A Handful of Dust have really liked it.

Robert

Last night I read Undateable and started Rules of the Game. They remind me of how and why I am not in 'the game.' It remains to be seen whether I finish Neil Strauss's book. I know that as I was reading it (and not practicing it as he directed us) I was drawn towards Beyond Totalitarianism; I wonder what I will pick up tonight.

Robert

I stayed up way too late last night avoiding doing taxes. When I finally went to bed I thought it was too late for me to take on a chapter of Beyond Totalitarianism, so I picked up The Holy Man by Susan Trott. A person came by Book Talk looking for this book, and I referred them to Name That Book. Then someone responded with this book on Book Talk. It sounded curious to me, so I found it at Barny Noble's.

I ended up reading the whole thing. It is a sweet didactic little book. Its simplicity would count towards a judgment of simplistic in many worlds; it is not for those readers.

So now I am sleepy and still have taxes to do, but I have to spend time with a bureaucrat straightening out my health insurance vis a vis Medicare. All I want to do is read and play on LibraryThing.

And a box of three books got to my delivering post office just after 6 this morning. I wonder whether it will be in my mailbox.

Robert

I meant to read The Theory of Clouds in one reading. Tribulations, fussiness, errands stretched that to three. I read it because a woman at church who had read it asked me to explain it to her. I have no explanation so far, but I can mention some themes.

I find this vulgar, but people around here seem to demand it: CAUTION, POSSIBLE SPOILERS.

There is the inevitable tedium of enthusiasm. I think it comes out in other ways too, but the more purely amateur the enthusiast the less likely the enthusiasm palled. The designer's enriching livelihood had almost no place in his spiritual life. His last visit to Amsterdam ended in ennui. See also the other sexual affairs.

It seems that nothing is rectilinear. The curviness of clouds matched the curviness of female flesh. Life does not go in straight lines. This was made explicit in the last part.

Rigidity has its role with the dead orangutan's bones being broken for a better pose. (Had I known there would be simian murder in the book I might have refused to take it on.) The designer met his end against the pavement. This may be related to the rectilinear issue; stuff that is squared off does violence. See also the family structure of the world traveler and for that matter the change in his travels.

Incidentally, the author makes some technical errors which would have been better corrected but which were not too disturbing to the story.

I read a chapter on 'the new man' in Beyond Totalitarianism last night. I think that the reason I didn't take much away from it is that it didn't say much although it took forty pages.

Robert

I woke up early this morning but wasn't ready to get up, so I finished Beyond Totalitarianism and went back to sleep. This book recapitulates much of mid-twentieth century European totalitarianism, that is German and Russian totalitarianism, mentioning only briefly Spain and Italy. It sets its considerations in the theme of comparing Russian and German actions in specific contexts.

What the book did for me was inform my reading of salient history and inform my reading of important novels set in that time. I read in both areas for general reasons, but I always have in mind the question of what my neighbor or I would do or be in similar circumstances. I can ask myself that latter question directly when I read a book like this one.

It is a collection of articles, each about 40 pages, written by two experts together on a specific element of governance. The articles are a little uneven, but on balance I can recommend this book highly at least to those who may have similar interests to mine.

Robert

I had The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes and added The Science of Liberty by Timothy Ferris; then I decided to read one after the other as a unit. Ferris dismisses the Romantics as stifling truth and therefor liberty; Holmes sees the major Romantic players as having interests in the arts, in the sciences, and in the freedom to do their research.

My feeling was that Timothy Ferris, whom I very much respect as a science journalist, was over his head writing about governance. He, nevertheless, hits on some correlations that intrigued me. I think he just isn't a big enough thinker to encapsulate the whole story.

Holmes, on the other, hand has taken a jillion facts, got several of the best together, and made them all palatable (except maybe the last days of Humphrey Davy which may have been as tedious to the reader as to the chemist). I think I probably have learned a lot from this book. Among other things, I thought that it was still discussed when I was a boy whether it was right to speak of the Milky Way galaxy as the universe, but William Herschel was talking up island universes back at the turn of the nineteenth century. Facts notwithstanding, this is a smooth narrative.

I am going to be a little bit insistent about The Age of Wonder at our next church book discussion meeting.

Robert

I have finished A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh. It was a fluently told story for the most part, but I am not as enamored of it as many are. It did engage me enough actually to feel bad about Tony, though. I am, not quite exactly, relating his fate to the fates of some of the explorers in The Age of Wonder, especially Mungo Park.

I have started and expect to finish Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky to reacquaint myself with existentialism and to follow tomcatMurr's reading of it in one of the Salons.

Robert

I finished Notes from the Underground last night. It is about me. I am not very interesting except of course to me. The Underground Man would not be surprised by my reaction.

I have started Reason, Faith, and Revolution. Terry Eagleton is reputedly a Marxist, so I would expect to be bored by him. I have, however, been engaged by him in The Meaning of Life and now in his attack on Ditchkins or whomever. This book has a narrow focus; he rebuts the attacks on Christianity with a kind of Christian response. To me that is clearly not the whole story; nevertheless his story is literate and rich, and I look forward to continuing.

Robert

I ended up disappointed with what I took away from Faith, Reason, and Revolution. Just to have someone to agree with points I have considered is no longer enough for me. I could have asked for better, that is more compelling, argumentation or for more points of consideration. Also long lists are not comprehensible no matter how representative they may be. I gave up trying to master what he had to say, although I got to the end.

Then inspired by the movie The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo I bought and read The Girl Who Played With Fire. I think I would not have cared for or been able to distinguish the characters had I not seen the movie. I had though and was compelled to see this exciting mystery through to the end.

I would, however, like personally to kick in their soft spots the people who have made some of the entries that come up when I try to enter a touchstone for the latter work.

Robert

Last year or the year before I read a very favorable review of The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith. It was also mentioned that he was the author of the competent Child 44. Waiting for the paperback publication of the former I ordered the latter. Knowing that the paperback of The Secret Speech was coming I read Child 44 and then in quick succesion The Secret Speech. There will be a third, in paperback probably in two years. The third will be a flashback, and I may ignore it. If it were available now I would have read it in conjunction with these two.

Anyway, these novels are about an enforcement bureaucrat in Soviet Russia. They deal with man's inhumanity to man in a totalitarian society, a subject that has interested me and in which recently I have been reading. The stories are page turners, are credible, and are affecting. There may be other books to read instead, but it is not a mistake to read these, and for my interests they did well.

I have also read Inside the Stalin Archives by Jonathan Brent, non-fiction that I hoped would inform my interests. It is a bit of narcissism that also gives a little color to the muddiness that is present day Moscow. It speaks so little of the title subject that I can reckon the book a lie. The author had to do with negotiating contracts for the Yale University Press to publish works compiling the Soviet archives; those Yale works might be better to look at.

The second Tom Rob Smith book is about redemption. I have a Bernard Schlink book apparently on that or forgiveness or somesuch in the post Nazi world. I also yesterday bought a life of Krushchev whose secret speech changed things (and was such an important part of that second book) while the Soviet Union remained totalitarian. I was put off enough by Brent's book that I may take a break from totalitarianism when I pick up a new book tonight.

Robert

A review of Sum when it first came out caught my eye, and I ordered it, I think, when it came out in paperback. It apparently went in the pile on my bed and rose and fell therein. In recent weeks it stuck out prominently on the near side of the pile, and yesterday Wandering Star mentioned it. I took it up to read and finished it last night.

It is ostensibly tales of the afterlife, although some of them are introduced by a statement that there is no afterlife.

It is pretty lightweight but not so light as to be trivial. There are alternative views mostly of what the creator might be like or of the ironies of being the creator. There are only a few vignettes of what death means in depth to the dead person.

This little book cannot be all things to all persons so when I mention that it lacks alternatives like the solitude of being bodiless or a proposal about the likely mind set of a person stuck in eternity (although the subject comes up) I am not condemning the book.

Reading the book is not a waste of time.

Robert

>93 Mr.Durick: Well it's funny (and not always apparent) exactly what in a review piques someone's interest, but your review did mine. Maybe it's the book's absence of depth? -- I like the introduction of ideas even if they aren't followed through.

detailmuse, I think you haven't wasted your time if you read Sum. The subject is inherently interesting and can be the leaping off point for long profitable thought.

Robert

Yesterday I read Craig Ferguson's American on Purpose which turns out to be autobiography. It does not speak much about his Americanization although his assertion that he wants to be in America comes early and his great success comes in America. It does talk about how driven he is, and that is fascinating.

I read the book very subjectively and was moved by his circumstances. We have similarities that brought tears to my eyes several times. He, however, has drive and talent that I don't at all. So he goes from being a drunk carpenter to being a world gallivanting show business star; I don't. I participate in his success by his book.

Because I took it so personally, I cannot tell whether to recommend this book.

Robert

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier held me charmed for the duration of its reading. I suspected, not quite predicted, the major turn of the story fairly early on. I liked the depiction of the early twentieth century posh life, but I think I have seen fuller descriptions elsewhere. Getting the feel of the ground with the trees and plants around at Manderley from the writing, though, is a very special pleasure. The characters were well drawn twits.

I had been reading The Book of Revelation for Dummies which turns out to be a very weak exposition. One night I needed something more engaging, so I picked up Rebecca and then Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling when I had finished Rebecca. I'm not sure when I'll finish either, but Kipling is pleasant word play, and I feel a duty to finish The Book of Revelation for Dummies.

By June 2 I have to have read Kafka on the Shore for my church's book discussion. I should probably start that soon.

Robert

I have finished Just So Stories. That was a pleasant excursion into word play and the light workings of imagination. It also filled a gap in my experience which other folks have happily filled either as children or as parents. Only How the Alphabet was Made seemed to grow longer than I really wanted.

Last night I was weary when I sank down into bed, so I wanted something I need not be too responsible to but that would prove compelling. That is to say I was setting aside at least for a little while the other book I have been reading and the book I have to read. I thought 13 Bankers might fill my need. I read the introduction and the first chapter; it seemed good enough despite some possible differences I have with the authors.

I turned out the light an hour early from that weariness. I don't know what, among the three, I will read tonight.

Robert

Hurray, hurrah! Last night I finally finished The Book of Revelation for Dummies. It has some utility, so I cannot reject it outright.

I read a bit more in 13 Bankers. It seems competent but not special. A little over 100 pages into it I suspect I will be glad to have read it but still able to imagine a more compelling work. I'll let you know.

Tonight marks one week before a church book discussion group discussion of Kafka on the Shore. I hope to have the will tonight, after a church potluck, to start it.

Robert

Finishing Kafka on the Shore I have had my introduction to Haruki Murakami. In one of the piles of books around my house I have The Wind-up Bird Chronicle; I will not be trying to find that, nor is it likely that if it surfaces spontaneously I will leap to read it right off. Kafka on the Shore seems to me to be an interesting enough story not very well told. My question at the book discussion Wednesday night, especially to the people who liked the book, will be, "What was it about?"

On finishing it I picked up Solaris by Stanislaw Lem and read the first couple of chapters. Two different movie versions of it on DVD are in the hands of the Unites States Postal Service in town making their way to me. I hope to watch them soon. On the other hand I read Thomas Disch's The Prisoner earlier this year having rewatched the original series on line and intent on watching the latest DVD version soon; I still hope to watch it soon.

Robert

I've been on something of a Prisoner kick lately myself, having just watched the whole series on DVD a few months ago.

What did you think of the Disch book? I've been going back and forth on the question of whether I'm interested in reading it. The descriptions of it I'd seen on LT and Amazon made me think that I might find its differences from the show irritating, but I recently read Fall Out: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to The Prisoner, and they made it sound pretty interesting.

I've heard nothing good from anybody about the remake, though, alas, so I've been avoiding it.

Oh, never mind, I see you did talk about it above. Although I'm still not sure whether I want to read it or not. :)

bragan, The Prisoner is a skinny book and won't cost much commitment to read it. In the end I thought it did not inform me about either television series and didn't really stand on its own (except maybe feebly). I think I have an older edition of the guide to the Prisoner; it lurked on my back porch for a long time, but now I don't know where it is, and I would like to read it. I may just have to order the new edition.

Meanwhile, I finished Solaris last night and hope soon to watch a couple of movie versions of it that I have on DVD. The lack of a story line, or the simplicity of the story line buried by the complexity of the ramifications, make me think that the book isn't exactly a novel, and I wonder what it might be instead. I also have to ask, "Did I get anything out of it?"

I read most of what interested me in the latest Scientific American after I set the book down.

Robert

I've watched the Solaris movies and let the triad (book, movie, movie) sink in and decided it will remain with me.

I have started in several periodicals and hope to make time to pursue them, say if a chapter break occurs in the book I'm reading and it's still a few minutes until time to turn out the light. The latest Philosophy Now, I think, has a section on the death of God.

I finished, except for the three page chronology at the end, The Forge of Christendom (because the Touchstone probably, but not certainly, won't work: http://www.librarything.com/work/6224536) last night. It is a smooth flowing and comprehensive narrative of political change in Europe, mostly around the end of the first millenium, and the coupling of that change with the spread of Roman Christianity. I have not mastered the wealth of details in it, but I believe I have a strong feel for what was going on. I do wish the book had mentioned more art and philosophy, and if it is possible dwelt more on common folk.

Awhile back I started 13 Bankers and expect to pursue it tonight. It is yet another book on the moral responsibility of bankers for the economic mess the country including most of us resident here is in. My start on it leads me to believe there is enough information to make it worth reading, and I want to finish it before I take on a special project.

That special project is a reading of Hamlet and of King Lear for discussion in my church's book discussion group July 7. I intend to start with A Thousand Acres and its companion Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres (a link, not a Touchstone). Then I expect to read Hamlet in the Norton Critical Edition with all the background and commentary. I will move on to King Lear (a link, not a Touchstone) in the Norton Critical Edition with all the background and commentary. Then I will scan, at least, King Lear: 1608 and 1623 Parallel Text Edition. If I can find my copy of Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human I will see what Harold Bloom has to say there about the two plays. And I will during the course of all this watch Time-Life/BBC DVD's of these two plays.

I will post my progress or failure here.

There is so much else to read.

Robert

I finished 13 Bankers last night, and there is no hope. Although the authors would disagree, I think they have presented sufficient evidence here. Their's is a measured recitation of the facts with prudent recommendations, but the United States of America is sunk.

I went on to start my project and am with Jane Smiley in spirit now.

Robert

Shakespeare by Anthony Burgess was not in my original plan, but I finished it this morning. It is very pleasant but unnecessary.

I have almost three weeks to finish my project, so I may divert from it tonight, or not.

Robert

I held off my diversion and read the Norton Critical Edition of Hamlet. There was some psychologizing by literary types in the criticism that seemed overwrought although some of the Freudian stuff was interesting in a literary way. The twist on Oedipal behavior struck me as an interesting possibility that just didn't seem to connect with the play even as the play was used as evidence. Lacan, from a couple of footnotes, is a vile con man.

The nature of women in the play is apparently much more undecided than some readers would believe. The lunacy of Hamlet is variously understood. There is a lot for me to continue with away from text.

I wish I had time for more peripheral reading. With Lear in the project, I just remembered that I have Fool here and don't know where it is. I have owned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, but I believe that died in the heat of a parked car.

Late though it was when I finished Hamlet, I couldn't wait and picked up The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I got a good start on it; I could have read all night.

the just so stories are why Kipling ought to have won the Nobel..not for his other empire uber alles crap...But Oh Best beloved...the just so stories are everything is more serious works and most certainly his egregious poetry ain't~

I have finished my compulsive and happy diversion. I hope to be back to my project when I go to bed.

Robert

And so I did. I will likely stay with Shakespeare until I am done my little project, although I suppose new bits could be added at the last minute.

I was unimpressed with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but people with the voice of authority in another thread think better of it and have made me think I ought to watch the DVD. If I have the energy later today, I will order it.

I liked the tone of Fool in the few opening pages that I read, and I am looking forward to getting back to it.

Robert

I can't imagine that I will voluntarily read novels about vampires or zombies, but I have liked Lamb and Fool enough that I think Christopher Moore will get more of my attention. There is a warmth to his humor even as a man's eyes are put out that keeps me in his books' embrace. Lamb helps me place the New Testament in the context of my own non-Abramic religiosity. Fool helped me follow the complications of King Lear. Both were substantial enough to draw my attention and fluent enough to hold it.

King Lear is reputedly the best play, or somesuch, by Shakespeare. Okay. This Norton Critical Edition has some silly commentary from Freudian interpreters and from gender studies, but there is enough in the back of the book to help understanding beyond that dreariness. I still don't know whether the King is tragic or an asshole.

I have left off the book reading part of my special project and don't know whether there will be any more. I have some DVD's to watch.

I have started Superstrings and Other Things. It is on its way to an adverse review when I finish or abandon it.

Robert

I'm very much enjoying your Shakespeare project. I agree with your ambivalence towards Lear as a person. I've never understood why decent, arguably intelligent characters such as Kent and Gloucester remain loyal to Lear through all his mistakes. Shakespeare never gives the viewer/reader an indication that Lear was ever a good person, or a good king. We only see his downfall, and I think this takes away from the tragedy. If we knew more of his good characteristics, then I think it would be easier to empathize with him.

I'm going to look into Fool. Thanks.

I hope you enjoy Fool. There is a warning at the front about the subject matter; I hope the book will not offend you, but look at the warning first.

There is a ton of novels waiting for me, but I feel like advancing more explicitly. This latest foray into non-fiction, Superstrings and Other Things is so off-putting, though, that perhaps I should wait and meanwhile learn from the fictional doings of others. The rest of the day will tell.

Robert

It took only a couple of days to get through To Kill a Mockingbird, and it was a great pleasure. If good story telling is sufficient to mark a book as good, then this is a good book. We have a really limited narrator describing the hero, though, but he comes through as a well developed character, so there's more than just a campfire story here.

I am likely to remain charmed enough to read more fiction right away.

Robert

I turned to Dave Barry last night because it was an easy choice in a difficult selection. I thought I could finish it before I fell asleep, but I kept nodding off, so I won't be back to the difficult selection until late tonight.

Meanwhile I found this from the Wall Street Journal on Arts and Letters Daily today. I think I understand that To Kill a Mockingbird may properly be considered a children's book, despite the notion of rape, but I was sucked into it anyway. I mean I don't let an aphorism just because it is often used diminish in its artfulness in my mind. Anyway I liked Atticus even if he was trite (I thought not), and I thought Maycomb might just have been a little merrier than any real Alabama town might have been, but it was still a tricky place to live, and so interesting.

Robert

I finished Dave Barry Does Japan before my nap. He finds Japan and the Japanese to be different from the United States and Americans. He thinks that there are some things in their society to be admired. He also finds some things in their society that are funny or outlandish -- tentacles and eyes as food for example.

I still have When People are Big and God is Small to chip away at, but I think I'm going to try to pick up something else as the main book to pay attention to this evening.

Meanwhile I've got DVD's of three plays to watch before Wednesday evening.

Robert

What plays will you be watching?

I just watched Hamlet. I have King Lear and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead yet to go.

Our church book group is discussing the two Shakespeare plays Wednesday night. Most folks there will only have read them although some may have seen them earlier. I thought that I would take on a little more, and I saw things in the performance of Hamlet that I just didn't recall from the reading. I thought that the Stoppard play would add some special reflection to the whole endeavor; I've already read it.

Robert

I really enjoyed listening to To Kill A Mockingbird on audiobook a couple months ago, read by Sissy Spacek. Atticus Finch is one of my all-time favorite literary heroes. The movie is fantastic too. Glad you enjoyed it.

I'm delighted that you will be starting When People Are Big And God Is Small soon! Due to a medical emergency in our pastor's family, his wife, who was leading our study, has had to miss a few weeks, and so I and a few other women have been leading it. Isn't there a saying about how if you want to learn something, teach it? It's definitely true for me. We are going over chapter ten tomorrow evening. That leaves just three chapters to go. I can't believe how quickly it's gone. I've learned so much. I think half my book is underlined :)

#115 - re that article by Allen Barra...a strange take, IMO.

I thought that we might disagree with the article, but it didn't feel strange to me. I understand, however, that parents often teach their kids, when they are doing it explicitly, in platitudes. I understand that some people are not personally close to evil, and they come to believe that it doesn't exist in their world -- the KKK was no big deal in Maycomb because the residents for whom that was true didn't participate or were across town.

I liked the book.

I got a start on The Sunlight Dialogues last night. I am only a few pages into it. It is a 1972 60's novel which I read by the mid-70's. I am back to it because if it is as good as I recollect it deserves my return.

Robert

>110 Mr.Durick:

Hi, Robert. Well, I have absolutely no authority but loved the film of Rosencrantz. Thought is was very funny.

I watched it yesterday before I went out ultimately to the book discussion group. It would probably have pleased me more when I was much younger or if I hadn't just read a couple of Shakespeare's plays. It seemed not very substantial. Although it was entertaining, it was not a high point in entertainment.

It did, however, play a lot better than it read. A lot of what went on in the movie was not in the stage directions in the printed version that I read, and the movie was written and directed by the playwright if I spotted that correctly.

Robert

I've not read Rosencrantz - but have seen it stages and on dvd and liked both, a lot.

In re zombies...the one zombie book to read, if you're just reading one...World War Z. Treats zombies as an plague/epidemic and given the premise, treats it cleverly and seriously.

There's more talk around the web about To Kill a Mockingbird (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-kornbluth/to-kill-a-mockingbird-ann_b_641473.html; see also the links at the end of the page). The first point in favor for many it seems is that they loved the book so it must be good.

Meanwhile, last night I made a big mistake. I went to bed to read late. I had bought The Columbia Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophies yesterday. It is an anthology unsurprisingly enough, and I thought I could read a bit and then read in the current novel, The Sunlight Dialogues. The editor wrote well but not particularly lucidly, and it took forever to get through an introduction and half the first article. I didn't get to the novel. I wanted to get to the novel. I think now that that should be my first aim each time I set out to read. Now I am out the hour and a half the philosophy took me; I didn't even understand most of it because I got to reading in order to get it done rather than to get it.

CURSE THE TOUCHSTONES

Oh well, onward.

Robert

The Sunlight Dialogues, which I finished last night, is a powerful recounting of a fictional family in upstate New York in 1966, how it fits into the community, and the specific themes of fate and vengeance in the family and community. I was enamored of this book when I was much younger, in the mid-1970's, and hoped it would repay rereading. I am happy to have reread it although I think I am no longer enamored of the work.

It was my Summer, Club Read 2010, read-a-tome challenge book, advantageously but coincidentally.

I next wanted to read Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c.950-1300 but couldn't find it in my bedroom. My upstairs hallway, where it was next most likely to be, is ill lit. I settled for The Reformation and am now happy with that.

Robert

I didn't need a break from The Reformation, but I had Sh*t My Dad Says from a stop at Costco yesterday and wanted my funny bone tickled more than I wanted to understand the religious transformation of Europe. So I read the humor and will be back to the history tonight.

I can recommend Sh*t My Dad Says. The price at Costco and the time it took to read it made its entertainment value about the same as a full price movie ticket, and the book stays with the audience member. It is warmly funny. I don't have personal experience of that involved and straightforward a father, but the book is believable.

Robert

Last night when I finished the first part of it, I did need a break from The Reformation. It is so dense with fact, with circular reference, et cetera, et cetera that I just felt my eyes needed something they could cross over faster. I don't begrudge The Reformation any of the attention I have paid to it, and I will get back to it.

But first I will read Elif Batuman's The Possessed, her reflections on graduate studies of Russian literature. Too much unguarded intimacy can be icky, but this book could use a little more self-revelation kept light. And from the cover, one of the ways by which I judge books, I thought there might be a little more punchiness or pizazz to the narrative. Nevertheless, it is intimate and humorous enough and has some other virtues that will keep me at it.

Robert

The Possessed got icky for a few paragraphs. It has enough information to be useful in retrospect, but it is not really very good.

I am back for awhile to The Reformation. It continues to be rich and difficult. I cannot imagine finishing it without a couple more breaks.

Robert

For another break, I read Auntie Mame hoping to be entertained. Around page 200 I laughed out loud. I hope to be back to The Reformation tonight.

Robert

Yet another break took me through I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley. I wish it had been something else.

Robert

A strange thing happened last night. I was exhausted from getting up early, from being at a sort of trade show for four hours, and from shopping. Thinking that I was at a chapter break in The Reformation about a hundred pages from the end. I took two novels to bed with me, The Glass Room and Chef, expecting to read one of them as a break. I looked into The Reformation to confirm my location and found myself reading. I now have only a last forty page chapter to go in it. Then I started and read about 30 pages in Chef; it seems easy, but it's too early to tell whether it has any substance.

Robert

Robert,

I think you might like Chef. It seemed to me to have a bit of substance, and was a good story to boot.

Lisa

132 - I've had The Glass Room on my wishlist for a while now so I'll be interested to see what you think when get to it.

I'll probably read Chef later this month, as I received an ER copy of it in July. I'm interested to get your take on it.

I hope to satisfy you folks with my reading and comments on these two books. So far, at a little over 70 pages, Chef is readable but not strong. There is little doubt in my mind, though, that I will finish it; I think I could do that in one long sitting, but I haven't given myself that.

I have finished The Reformation. I am amazed at the erudition and narrative strength of the author. I said in my review that normally if there are things that didn't stick after I read a book I'll look for some future reading to fill my lacunae. Unusually I think that this book might be that future reading. It is a little scurrilous that I dunned MacCulloch half a star for the density of his material; not a sentence rang untrue -- it was just hard.

Robert

The novel Chef does not live up to the billing on the cover, but it is readable and may be about something after all. Kashmir is important because it has a military setting, is near a glacier, and is near the border with Pakistan. It is not made vibrant or lush in the book, nor is food made vibrant or lush. Food is listed much more than it is encountered.

There are relations of various kinds, between people, between people and the country, between people and the land, between people and institutions, between people and animals. What the book seems to talk most about in these relations is power and powerlessness and the effectiveness of control. It was not a waste of time; furthermore it was quick. I would not, however, knowing what I do now, read it on my own initiative despite its mention of the Mahabharata in a couple of places.

I didn't get right out of bed this morning. I reflected on Chef for awhile to get the little that I have just written. Then I read the first hundred pages of The Glass Room; there seems to be something there.

Robert

Mr. Durick, Congrats on finishing The Reformation. Now I have to finish Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. No more talking about it until I am done.

The Glass Room movingly shows us the distance between the people we are closest to, and on reflection I see that it also shows us the closeness of those we are closest to -- there are a couple of almost incredible coincidences that slide in as smoothly as good carpentry. I was unusually moved by the last page, and that emotion keeps coming back as I recall it from time to time since last night.

I am a hundred pages into Out Stealing Horses. I may need a break from novels when I am done with it.

Robert

And now I have finished Out Stealing Horses. I have from it so far forest solitude with a main focus and a couple of comparisons. I liked it, but following The Glass Room it seemed a little light. I don't think it was meant to be light, and I am pretty sure that that is not a fair evaluation.

Also I was happily surprised to be led to this by one of the several reviews of The Glass Room. Googling the subject leads readily to even more.

Robert

>140 Mr.Durick: you had me at msg 139, now your link is icing on The Glass Room.

139 - Now I must get this.

140 - Here's a couple more: Another Mies van der Rohe - the Farnsworth House in Illinois



and Philip Johnson's Glass House in CT

I am hopeful that I can encourage people to read The Glass Room.

After Out Stealing Horses which was good enough but kind of thin for having followed The Glass Room and remains to me to be reflections in solitude, I was, as I predicted, in need of non-fiction. I would kind of like to read about early eastern Europe, to know where the Russians came from. The one book I really want to read, The Emergence of Rus 750 - 1200 is hard to get hold of; the Book Depository is supposed to e-mail me if it becomes available.

So I read the author's (Simon Franklin) book related to that, Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c.950-1300. It was more specialized than what I was looking for, but full of information I am happy to have anyway. It could have used much more illustration and illustration embedded in the text. I don't begrudge the effort I gave to it although I can't recapitulate much of any of it.

Now I think I am ready to take on The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver whose red touchstone I think to be just fine. The first 26 pages proved tedious, but the book is only 500 or so pages long, so I'll likely get through it.

Robert

Ok, You've won me over. If Out Stealing Horses is thin in comparison, I have to read the Glass Room.

My antipathy to Barbara Kingsolver is plain. Before it developed I read and found well written a couple of her novels, the one with the train in it and the one set in Africa, and knew that I might find some substance in her The Lacuna despite that antipathy. I was happy to find the first 70 or 80 pages to be tedious.

The book developed a theme, however, that rings clearly to warn us of dangers to our liberty. I read that development avidly and found that that treatment made the rest of the work worthwhile. I didn't however care all that much about the characters who were the exemplars. The artifice at the end gave me no cheer, perplexity, or incentive to ponder.

Overall, I won't warn people away from this, but some warning is essential, I think, because it just isn't the wonder that some people claim it to be.

This was one of three books suggested by a book group member for discussion in October. I will mention them in her place again at our next meeting. They are The Lacuna, Out Stealing Horses, and The Glass Room. I will say that they all bear reading and discussion, but that my favorite by far is The Glass Room.

I pretty much expect to pick up Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman tonight, but I could turn immediately to the Weimar inflation either in Hans Fallada's Wolf Among Wolves or Adam Fergusson's When Money Dies. Or something else entirely different in one of the piles of books hereabout could catch my eye.

Robert

CURSE THE TOUCHSTONES

I've heard Ex Libris is delightful. Looking forward to your thoughts on it!

I have read Ex Libris. Fadiman uses 'quote' as a noun. She is not above capping a chatty essay with a punch line. What profundity one finds in reading her is profundity brought to the reading rather than profundity found there; for somebody who is way down deep pretty superficial that may mean little depth in the reading at all.

Nevertheless the book is a congenial entertainment for an inveterate reader and, wisewoman, could be reckoned by some as a delight.

Robert

I did finally finish Christianity:The First Three Thousand years. It was worth the effort. MacCulloch is an excellent author. I wonder if there would be too much repetition in The Reformation?

I don't think I will read The Lacuna. As an attorney I see danger to our liberties very day.

I'm willing to bet that there won't be too much. If he covered the Reformation in Christianity, he can't have gone into anywhere near the detail he covered in The Reformation, and the focus has to be at least somewhat different. As I mentioned I intend to read Christianity eventually, and I expect that he will remind me of the main points he covered in The Reformation. I can stand to be reminded.

Anyway, you are to be congratulated on your finishing that book. I hope it illuminates discussions in various places on LibraryThing.

Robert

At a church potluck last night a fellow well educated in economics told me that we don't need to worry about something destructive like the Weimar inflation because we don't have the inflation and we don't have punitive post war penalties, among other things, that Germany had in the twenties. If, however, Adam Fergusson is right in When Money Dies printing more and more money will eventually lead to monetary collapse. I suppose over a long run we will, contrary to his fears, adjust, but if it happens quickly there will be a lot of personal suffering and perhaps the collapse of the political entities behind the failure.

I have finished that book and barely started Hans Fallada's novel set importantly in the environment of the Weimar inflation, Wolf Among Wolves. At 46 pages it is not exciting, but it is as good as many good books are at that stage.

Robert

It was a pleasant, in a manner of speaking, two book ride. Wolf Among Wolves proved to be, I felt as I shut it at the end, a significant bit of literature. There are miserable people in it, people of all kinds of misery -- spreading it, having it imposed on them, overcoming it, dealing with it without getting out of it. The people are real, often seen from the inside, and it is important to know their stories.

The history is ever so much there, while this is nowhere near a book of history. The roots of National Socialism are in place, but we see that without being so much told that.

Robert

I have just read The Vanishing Face of Gaia. James Lovelock thinks that the Earth will take care of itself, but humanity may not be part of its plans. It is hopeful in a way -- we haven't destroyed life on earth and may survive as a species. If we can survive, perhaps we can protect our better artifacts and appreciate them. Perhaps also we can become stewards rather than conquerors. Ah well, maybe I am also indulging in wishful thinking.

Robert

I am happy enough with The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell despite its frothiness. She brings some enthusiasm to the subject and is not entirely condemnatory of the people behaving as people of the time. The book is readable and, although incomplete, provides plenty of early American Puritan history coherently. Some of her juxtapositions are fun.

Robert

Naming Infinity identifies a mathematical curiosity of the turn of the twentieth century (infinite sets), focuses on the researchers in the subject in France and Russia, and relates the mathematics to a specific brand of Russian mysticism (Name Worshiping). The book disappoints in its lack of coverage of the mathematics and lack of depth about the mysticism. But it sketches the lives of the participants in a fairly vibrant way.

The book also keeps alive the memory of the vile viciousness of the Soviet leadership, which I think is important.

Robert

The evangelical talk in Why Me? may be excessive to a non-Christian, non-Jewish seeker of truth in the Bible's book of Job. There is wisdom here, but I don't think just seeing God's magic at work in a few cases contributes to it. Furthermore anyone who has read Job closely and reflected on it will pretty much have covered all areas covered in this little book. That it is little, however, allows it to be read without major sacrifice, and there are serious things to be reminded of. The doctor provides a good list of amplifying references, not technical but artful ones.

I picked up Michael Sandel's Justice after that to finish the evening. The introductory chapter proves to be pretty dull, but I will likely keep at it for at least a little longer.

Robert

The writing in Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do never proved compelling, but the ideas did, and they are presented in good order. Sandel contrasts in various contexts notions of justice deriving from utilitarian, libertarian, and Kantian explications. He also is not afraid to mention Aristotle. He seems to come down mostly in favor of Kant and Rawls but with attention to where they may prove difficult. I do to, but I would still lie to save my niece from a gang.

Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin claims to be a continuous narrative of the financial collapse of 2008. I started it last night. The first chapter with some intimacy looks at the principals at Lehman Brothers as the world is collapsing around them. I've read some stuff already about the collapse and about finance earlier, sometimes way earlier, than the collapse, and this looks like it will be fun and informative to read, but I've got 500 pages to go.

Robert

It turns out that Too Big to Fail is a compelling narrative although not a pretender to serious literature. It is about people. None of these people, in banking or the government, should have authority.

I have another ninety or a hundred pages to go in Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It is tawdry and not very well written. I suppose we need to be told from time to time that there are awful people in power, even in a narrow context like the family, and that some people can pull themselves out of degradation. It could be this book or if someone competent comes along another one.

Robert

I have finished Infidel.

I have started French or Foe, a briefing for daily life in France. I am reading this, and have four or so more waiting, for an imaginary stay in France. It looks like at my age I probably would not want actually to try to adapt, but I once would have.

Robert

There were so many curiosities in French or Foe (by Polly Platt) that I found them spilling out today as I engaged people at church in conversation. I seem especially taken by the notion that if you go to dinner at someone's home in Paris you do not use the bathroom; aperitifs, wine, coffee, postprandial drinks, but not bathroom in four or five hours!

It seemed light weight as I read it, but now I'm wondering whether I should turn immediately to another from my French life stack rather than take on something more serious. I'll find out whether I do soon enough.

Robert

>159 Mr.Durick: if you go to dinner at someone's home in Paris you do not use the bathroom

What? What do people do, then? Did they say?

They relieve themselves somewhere before they go in, and then they hold it.

Robert

>161 Mr.Durick: Well, that's just plain sad.

Well now I want to pair French or Foe with Watching the English.

That sounds right. I've added it to my wishlist, and there's a copy at my neighborhood Borders.

Thanks,

Robert

Each off Augustine's sentences make sense, but he is a trial to read. Anyway, in On Free Choice of the Will he makes it clear that he believes that it's not God's fault -- what's good comes from him, and it's all good. But there's bad, and that's not His fault; it's just not.

The 50 Mathematical Ideas You Really Need to Know you may not really need to know. All or almost all of them are interesting though -- I think I still don't get the Riemann Hypothesis. The ones I had heard about were interestingly enough reviewed here, but I don't think this is a book to sit down with. I got this remaindered and dipped into it a little each night until I was done.

I have turned, in my imaginary foreign lives, to Watching the English. It promises to be interesting, and the author promises to be informative.

Robert

I agree with Augustine so yeah, that doesn't bother me. But I did have to chuckle a little at how you put it, Mr. Durick :)

>159 Mr.Durick: i was curious, never having been to France (or much of anywhere else) so i asked my niece who's been in Nantes for a year and is now teaching in a French HS near Dunkirk..maybe it's different in Paris?
------
"I don't think so. I've certainly gone to the bathroom while over to dinner at people's houses. Maybe it was rude, I hope not, but no one ever seemed surprised or shocked... It would certainly be remarkable because they really do give you all those drinks! :) "
Jane

I wonder whether it might be a Parisian, as you suggested, or an older people's peculiarity? The author of the book, an expatriate American, was concerned about all those drinks, and American businessmen, she quoted, were cited for their small bladders.

In the book I'm reading now I am told that in England we who aspire to be of the leisured classes don't use the word 'bathroom.'

I wonder how far I will pursue this imaginary living abroad. It looks like I'm not really cut out for the real thing.

Thanks for checking.

Robert

I took detailmuse's comment above as a suggestion and read Watching the English by Kate Fox. It was a tedious slog because of her redundancy, that is a specific, unnecessary verbosity. But there was a lot of interesting information in the torrent of words. I have found that I will never be a natural or convincing member of any of the social classes that she has identified. I have decided, however, to use 'howdoyoudo' as a greeting on being introduced to someone, and I will try to use 'smart' where I use 'posh' or occasionally 'tony' now. If what she says is correct my mere abstinence from alcohol would keep me out of social contact with 95% of the English people.

Can anybody point me to a video of upper-crust pea eating?

Robert

My daughter had the opposite problem when we moved to South Carolina. On her first day of school she asked to use the loo.

I didn't like Watching the English, although I did learn a lot. She has such a condescending attitude to everyone not exactly like her.

I find it hard to believe that I was eight or nine days with The Evolution of God by Robert Wright. Wright believes that morals evolve and that the context for that evolution is often non-zero sum games. God evolves with the evolution of morality. And this all may be tied to biological evolution, that is advantageous adaptation. None of that depends on a belief in the existence of God. He also seems to believe that inference is sufficient cause for belief in God and that there is plenty of material to infer a God of some sort, as there is material to infer the existence of electrons (cf. the disputes with rrp in Pro and Con). He also is attentive to those who disagree with him. There is enough subject of inquiry in all of that to keep me attentive to the matters for some time into the future; the book was worth the time.

Also I have had at hand The Philosophy of Set Theory and The Art of the Sonnet for dipping into. I have added to them Million Little Mistakes, a novel, the cover says, to be read at in various sequences. These three books all have their attraction or attractions.

The book I have started that I am probably going to read straight through is Looking for Calvin and Hobbes which should have been heavily illustrated but is not. It seems so far to be weak, but it is also easy so I expect it to go on.

I am not caught up in any of these, however, and hope to find something soon to cause me to cheer, "Hey, I am reading..." Maybe.

Robert

I gave Looking for Calvin and Hobbes a star and a half because it didn't take long and wasn't entirely devoid of information. But it is really weak and ill written; I would just as soon not have read it. I'll look into reading a novel or a popularization of science tonight.

Robert

How do you exactly adapt to an imaginary stay in France (per #158), just curious?

Oh, I don't do anything special. I don't seal myself off like Al Bundy on his imaginary cruise. Nor do I read only in French or eat only in continental restaurants. I read closely and think what it would be like to be there. I used to pick up the Saturday Le Figaro Magazine weekly at Borders, but the backlog got too big for me, and they stopped carrying it, so I couldn't even carry on a current conversation on, say, le chomage.

I spent time in Asia as a young man, and I know that living in a country is different from what one might assume about living in a country. I hope to get some of that kind of picture out of the books on France (and the one on Bhutan).

Robert

The older I get, the more fascinating the universe becomes. John Gribbin's In Search of the Multiverse takes us to the edges of cosmology and clearly unfolds expositions of the more fascinating aspects. I have read a number of the popularizations to which he refers, but he has done an informed gathering of what's important and added his own expertise. There is nothing to fault about his use of language. His wife apparently keeps his assumptions about what we should already know reined in, but he is never condescending.

Philosophically I am troubled by his ready acceptance of actual infinities, although he clearly has done some credible thinking on the matter.

He seems to believe that the small (I use small in a narrow way) successes of quantum computing are clear evidence of the existence of other universes.

We may be the product of intelligent creation, but if we are that does not amount to anything more than getting the universe started with the subsequent processes, among them evolution, running without intervention -- intervention by the creator in this sense being impossible.

The physics is all good and not a stretch as in the case of say Frank Tipler.

I enthusiastically recommend this book.

Robert

Sounds like maybe I should have read that instead of the moderately disappointing The Grand Design.

Maybe so. For no good reason, having heard only a little about The Grand Design, I am not tempted by it. I liked A Brief History of Time but as a review rather than as anything much new, and kinda didn't expect any more out of his latest.

Robert

PS For all that was new or made newly interesting by Gribbin the book went down quickly and easily.

R

Much of academics physics nowadays is as much a sham as post-modernism is in the humanities. Furthermore the multiverse is more of an excuse than a prediction. I get that out of Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit. I could follow some of his argumentation even though I could not at all follow his schematics of the mathematics. This is not a book, through its first two thirds anyway, for somebody who doesn't already know string theory to some technical depth, and I would say that depth is not the depth of somebody who has read closely several popularizations.

The book does, however, seem respectable and troubling. So much of what we have to endure today is wrong, from our government, from some of our neighbors who are not to be offended, from the bureaucracies we owe obeisance to as supplicants or employees, that to see academic research swallowed up in it just seems cause for despair.

For a more readable survey of the failures of string theory I recommend Lee Smolin's book, The Trouble with Physics.

Robert

When I finish a book and don't have a spontaneous reaction to it, but it seems important enough not to ignore, I can ask myself, "How am I better for having read this?" I have now asked myself that question about The Brothers Karamazov. I am hopeful that our discussion over in the group in which we are discussing it will help me with an answer to that question. So far the disputants have been tagging the trees rather than mapping the forest.

Robert

I'm thinking of ordering an analysis of The Brothers Karamazov.

Meanwhile I have read What If the Earth Had Two Moons by Neil F. Comins. I think he could have made a more substantial book and thereby increased readability rather than feel he had to treat his speculations as science fiction and lightweight at that. Still, what he presented certainly has interest and is easy going down -- I've wondered about the livability of solar systems in the center of the galaxy, and now I know. Also he got his bachelor's degree at the same institution that I got mine, so I have to be fairly gentle with him.

I have read the first few pages of Christopher Hitchens's introduction to Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Gray Falcon which I already had and was prompted to read by The Add-a-Little-Color-To-Your-Reading Challenge for November & December. I realized in contemplating taking it on that it may inform my understanding of The Glass Room which my church book group will discuss next month; I should be able to do 1100 pages in a month. I'll put something on that thread when I actually get into the book.

If I can find the strength, I will also read the hefty The Dream of the Red Chamber for the challenge.

I say I already had Black Lamb and Gray Falcon, but I had little idea where it was. I was doubly motivated to dig, however, so I went at it and found it. I also found the other book which I was looking for, The Man Who Loved China, which the church book group will discuss in January. That was a happy day. If anybody else is looking for The Man Who Loved China, I see that Edward R. Hamilton has the hard cover listed in its October 8 catalog for $5.95.

Robert

I very much enjoyed The Dream Of The Red Chamber but I am pretty sure I read it, and nothing else, for some weeks... so that's an ambitious target! Which translation do you have?

I have the H. Bencraft Joly translation published by Tuttle if the listing on BN.COM is correct (the book is upstairs, and I don't want to forget to reply) -- the listing at the other end of the touchstone is pretty strange.

tomcatMurr who lives in Taipei and is handy with Mandarin had read it, I think in English, and he found it tedious, reporting that in Le Salon Litteraire du Peuple pour le Peuple the day after I bought it. I thought I'd read it anyway.

Robert

Mine was the David Hawkes/John Minford version. I read it the summer before I started my (Chinese studies) degree and basically got completely immersed in the world it describes. Actually thinking about that makes me want to read it again!

I did find Daiyu tremendously annoying, even though the reader is supposed to be on her side... all that moping around.

I hope you do enjoy it!

I have a couple of hundred pages to go in Black Lamb and Gray Falcon. Over the weekend I picked up some books and magazines. Last night before I returned to Rebecca West I read one of the books, Teh Itteh Bitteh Book of Kittehs, which was at least as dandy as candy, and I riffled a copy of Trains magazine reading some of the articles all the way through; it was a special issue on diesel locomotives -- I had wanted to see a lot more about them after seeing the movie Unstoppable.

I have not been reading most of the magazines that I get, and think that that is a mistake. I think that for the rest of the year, but with special attention to getting a fresh start in 2011, I will mention here the magazines or magazine articles I have read. I may even mention significant articles I read on-line. Time will tell.

Robert

That's a great idea, Robert. I'd like to know about interesting magazine or journal articles that you and others read, and I'll try to post the ones I come across, as well.

So I picked up a copy of the Economist on Tuesday which promises on its cover to tell me how to fix our economy. I read the first page while waiting to go pick up a friend. It said to cut expenses and increase income but prudently. I haven't been back to it; I hope to read it.

I have finished Black Lamb and Gray Falcon. People speak of sticking to a book because of the great writing. I often appreciate competent writing, but I don't immerse myself in it. I read a book to read the book, so to speak. I immersed myself in West's magnum opus, for 1150 glorious pages. We need the cautions of Christopher Hitchens in his introduction. West gets starry eyed about the Slavs, and the perfection of her writing can carry the reader off too. A little misplaced lavishness does not ruin this rich, rich book, though; it is so fertile you could grow the crops of Yugoslavia in it.

People joke about facing a tome of this size, and West mentions way into that people will not have read that far. But it is an experience to be taken up by anyone who loves great writing on big themes.

For what it is about, you could do worse than go to a bookstore and sit down to read Hitchens's introduction.

I then turned to Ha'ena. It is about a part of Hawaii and how it fit into the westernization of native lands; we American-Europeans are evil of course, but it is true that bad, greedy things were done. It is not all that well written, but it is short and does reflect an interesting way of life.

Robert

Having finished Ha'ena I am glad to be done, but it is true that I am glad to have some of the facts out of this ill-written book. I think I should constrain my interest in Native Americans (here used loosely) to those of the Northeast, at least mainly. I read this because a friend was happy to have read it.

I have started the droll Three Men in a Boat and was particularly happy to read about the delivery of some cheese from Liverpool to a home in London. I picked this up because when someone in my church book group casually mentioned it, it rang a bell.

Robert

It turns out that I also like Montmorency's lesson on cats in Three Men in a Boat.

Last night and this afternoon I read Darkly Dreaming Dexter. It was entertaining. I thought that there might be some satisfaction when the bad guys got murdered, but I wasn't satisfied. I'll probably read another in this series, eventually maybe even all of them, but it won't be right away.

I hope to turn to something with substance tonight, but I have plenty that is lightweight hereabouts.

Robert

What an unlucky night!

I lay down to read and picked up The Dream of the Red Chamber. I turned first to the introductory material and found (1) the book is not a complete translation by a long shot and (2) both introducers thought of the volume as a text book for people learning to translate Chinese fiction, not as a work of art itself. There is nothing on the cover to indicate either of these things. The book, a Tuttle paperback, is expensive for a single novel even of 1000 pages. I set the book aside not to be read.

So I picked up The Liberal Imagination, a collection of literary essays by Lionel Trilling that I bought the other day. I read the first three of them. I'm not sure that I cared, and I'm not sure that it's all my fault. I do have an interest in why a medical hack like Freud would be so influential among the literati, and I don't believe that Trilling's essay on the subject told me. I may go on in the book just because it is there and can be taken in short chunks, that is to say an essay at a time, but I fear I will be just passing time.

I have at hand The Man Who Loved China and an obligation to read it before January for my church book group. I was hoping to read it close to the meeting so as to have more detail on the tip of my tongue when we discuss it, but I may have to turn to it soon.

Robert

I have read The Man Who Loved China. It could have been twice as long covering science and civilization in some detail and covering the structure and writing of the great work in much more detail. I suppose, though, that it is more readable short, will sell more, and pay for Simon Winchester's Berkshires farm.

He doesn't really understand airplanes, and I cringed a little at several mentions of them.

I envy Joseph Needham his rich full life.

I thought having copies of the first couple of volumes of Science and Civilisation in China would be nice, but the cheapest new volume 1 was $180, so I think I will do without until I have a record breaking lottery win.

Robert

That gives me an idea. :) I could set up a charity fund for "starving book lovers" and help those who can't afford the books they like. But then the problem is, once they buy the book, they won't be as eager to read it as when it's not readily available, and the book will just sit on the shelf for months and years. That would be a waste.

BTW, how was your thanksgiving dinner? Did you bring cheese or something else to your church meeting?

I think when I die there will be more unread books on my shelves still than read ones. There are expensive books among them now, and so there may well be expensive ones then. I am not yet starving, however, so your charity would have to make an exception for me.

Thanksgiving dinner at church was a pleasure. Those of us who set up set up well. It was a crowd of people whom I have found I can get along with. People brought plenty of good food. I brought plenty (I just finished the last of it) of good cheese which people thanked me specifically for. In the morning for no good reason I watched a New York Times video on turkey carving; in the afternoon I was asked to carve a turkey and was commended on my skill. I had congenial help in the scullery. It was a good day. Thank you for asking me and reminding me.

Robert

I have three volumes of The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China by Colin A. Ronan, abridged from Needham's books. They may not be the real thing but they do have a great deal of fascinating information.

I have been reading Khrushchev by William Taubman.

I took a short break from Khrushchev to read Don Carlos by Friedrich von Schiller (in English). The Metropolitan Opera high definition transmission of Don Carlo is playing at a local theater on Saturday, and I expect to be at it. I have seen Don Carlo or its sister Don Carlos a few times, but I thought it would be informative to read one of the works in the tradition. Without looking it up I believe that the operas were at least influenced by Schiller if not based on his play, but there was a novel of roughly the same narrative.

The play is poetic, and the characters came alive for me. I didn't like any of them except one toady, who was neither great nor demeaned, a mensch. Too bad for the low countries.

I am back to Khrushchev now.

Robert

In my college days I read The Empire City, a novel by Paul Goodman (2) and thought that it had some beautiful scenes in it. I never read his non-fiction fearing tedium, but it was his non-fiction that inspired the activism of the sixties. I have since rooted around on line, found a copy of the novel, put it aside, and wonder whether I will ever read it (reread it).

So this showed up this morning on Arts & Letters Daily. Goodman may have been a poseur, or a provocateur, or, from the responses, a man of letters. It reminds me of the novel even though the article doesn't mention it; I may have to turn to it and give up wondering whether I will.

Robert

I'll decide in the next couple of weeks whether Khrushchev by William Taubman was a best of the year for me. It certainly carefully reflects a very important time in recent world history and one of the most important people behind the importance of the times. Khrushchev was a conflicted man trying to do good while pushing so hard that he often crushed that good. It took me some time to read the book, and I didn't pore over the notes which looked to be deserving of it; the time I spent was well worth it.

Kennedy and Krushchev could have overseen our being blown off the face of the earth, and neither wanted that.

Anyway, for lightweight after Khrushchev I picked up A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold by Peter L. Bernstein, a republication of a sixties work on national economics. I hope to finish it quickly then look at something more involved.

Robert

A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold took longer than I expected or wanted. It also paid off a lot less than I had hoped. I would like to find a longer more discursive book which is much more up to date on the same subjects, but I haven't seen one on bookstore shelves.

For Urania1's The Federalist Papers group I am reading the books I have about The Federalist Papers, but that is a bit at a time process, something to do for an hour a night. There is correlation to do between the papers, the anti-federalist papers, and the constitution itself. With enough time there is collateral reading which I may or may not get to collaterally.

I will be looking for something else to read through as a unit, maybe a novel.

Robert

I didn't pick up a novel, although I may tonight.

I read Who Are We? by Samuel P. Huntington. We have the American creed (The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, supporting works), a WASP background, the English language, and our territory to identify us each as Americans. Pluralism, generally regarded as a virtue, is costing us our Protestant heritage, or the meaning of it anyway. The giant influx of Hispanic people is part of that cost and also costs us our language. The territory is not very strong, and more and more the creed is available elsewhere. So our identity as Americans is going away. The elites are cosmopolitan leading the law away from identifying us as American.

Some people would see a large benefit in our globalization, not just for business but for our personal views on the world. I happen to think that we need a reemphasis on the creed and development into the future of that. I think we need to be the country to lead the rest of the world in liberty and virtue and get away from being the country that claims to be doing that while we poison the well.

Maybe; maybe not.

I have since picked up American Liberalism, one academic's take on the American way. I think that there's a lot good to it, but he stumbles distractingly from time to time, like claiming a Kirk conservative virtue as a liberal one.

I think I will continue to read it, but tonight I will probably turn to Conversation in the Cathedral.

Robert

I have finished Conversation in the Cathedral. It must have been a lot of work to write it.

I will probably go back to American Liberalism, but, having seen the recent movie The Tempest, I am pretty eager to read through it. It would be an evening's reading for the play, but I have the Norton Critical Edition and want to read all of the trappings too.

I also ought to make a list of my beginning of the year reading commitments somewhere. So maybe here: I have Feast of the Goat for my church book group discussion in February which will also count as a foreign read for this group's successor if I remember correctly. In Le Salon we will be reading Wallenstein. We have a spin off group reading The Federalist. Seamus Heaney's Beowulf will be discussed I think in the 75 Book challenge; I've read it but would like to hear him read it aloud and perhaps have a look at the trappings in the Norton Critical edition. Also for the 75 Book challenge I have Sense and Sensibility. I wonder whether there are more.

And there are a thousand books or so immediately at hand that I would like to read right now just because...

Robert

Last night I read the notes to American Liberalism to finish it and the year of reading. The book is commendable even though it has its serious flaws and bias. I wish people would talk about the issues he raises.

I cracked the spine and read the preface of The Tempest in order to get a start on it today.

As of posting this message I will be at Club Read 2011 and keeping count at 75 Books Challenge for 2011.

Happy New Year,

Robert