Heretics of Dune, by Frank Herbert: 5 stars

#35 for 2011:

Heretics of Dune, by Frank Herbert

This is a really strong series!  It keeps going strong- better, even. 

Random thought, or clarification:  I've always been drawn to the Bene Gesserit, because of their extreme self-knowledge and self-control.  I've always been repelled by them by their aim to manipulate other people.

Humans live best when each has his place to stand, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things and what he may achieve.  Destroy the place and you destroy the person.  (p. 41)

What we must strive for always! is to find the natural flow and go with it.  (p. 97)

At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers.  Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet came be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play.  For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force.  Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events.  If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist.  Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order.  (p. 131)

Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power.  Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is:  Who has the clout?  (p. 151)

Some people never observe anything.  Life just happens to them.  They get by on little more than a kind of dumb persistence, and they resist with anger and resentment anything that might lift them out of that false serenity.  (p. 154)

He felt his awareness constricted to its tightest purpose and yet that purpose filled his universe.  He was open to infinity.  (p. 157)

... was a two-edged sword.  You might learn to flow along the edge of the blade but you could be cut by it.  (p. 167)

What was it that we spent and what was it we bought?  (p. 331)

Historians exercise great power and some of them know it.  They recreate the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations.  Thus, they change the future as well.  (p. 380)

Yes, it was a matter of opening doors, he thought.  You opened one door and that let you into a place where there were other doors.  You chose a door in this new place and examined what that revealed to you.  There might be times when you were forced to try all of the doors but the more doors you opened, the more certain you became of which door to open next.  Finally, a door would open into a place you recognized.  Then you could say:  "Ahhhh, this explains everything."  (p. 388)

Memory never recaptures reality.  Memory reconstructs.  All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short.  (p. 404)

It occurred to Lucilla that the people of these streets pursued a fleeting dream, that the fulfillment they sought was not the thing itself but a myth they had been conditioned to seek the way racing animals were trained to chase after the whirling bait on the endless oval of the racetrack.  (p. 405)

"To those out there, a great issues is:  'Will I eat today?'
Do I have shelter tonight that will not be invaded by attackers or vermin?' Luxury?  Luxury is the possession of a drug or a member of the opposite sex who can, for a time, keep the beast at bay."
And you are the beast, he thought.
....
"It's just that you think of the muck in the wrong way," she said.  "Luckily, they are the most self-limiting.  They know this somewhere in the damps of their deepest consciousness but cannot spare the time to deal with that or anything else except the immediate scramble for survival."
"They cannot be improved?" he asked.
"They must not be improved!  Oh, we see to it that self-improvement remains a great fad among them.  Nothing real about it, of course."
"Another luxury they must be denied," he said.
"Not a luxury!  Nonexistent!  It must be occluded at all times behind a barrier that we like to call protective ignorance."  (p. 444)

It was a smile full of compassion, of understanding and real pleasure in his own existence.  He knew it for the most deadly insult he could hurl at them and he saw it hit.  (p. 446)

It was true, Teg thought then, that the process of arranging conflicts involved the hoodwinking of large masses.  How easy it was to fall into the attitude of the Honored Matres.
Muck!
The hoodwinking was not as difficult as some supposed.  Most people wanted to be led...  There were deep tribal instincts (powerful unconscious motivations) to account for this.  The natural reaction when you began to recognize how easily you were led was to look for scapegoats. .... How easy it was to produce scapegoats and how readily they were accepted!  This was especially true when the alternative was to find yourself either guilty or stupid or both.  (p. 467)

There were no words in the language, only a moving, dancing adaptation to a moving, dancing universe.  You could only speak the language, not translate it.  To know the meaning you had to go through the experience and even then the meaning changed before your eyes.  (p. 480)

Theodore Roethke (The Vigil)

Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer: ~3 stars

#34 for 2011:

Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer.
Jots and thoughts:

Monotony collapses time [I'd say compresses it; zip-files it, even]; novelty unfolds it....  If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next- and disappear.  That's why it's important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exciting locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories.  Creating new memories [actually, anchoring memories to memorable events- we are ALWAYS creating new memories; they just don't stick if we judge them unimportant.  At least this way they can be important in context of an important event/time in our life.] stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perceptions of our lives.  (p. 77)

This shows in a way why the writing doesn't grab me; he says one thing and then when he restates it, he actually undermines or distorts what he just said.

And he doesn't clarify or integrate points often, for example in the continuing excerpt:

William James first wrote about the curious warping and foreshortening of psychological time in his Principles of Psychology in 1890:  "In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day.  Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are something intricate, multitudinous, and long-drawn-out," he wrote.  [See, here is where he needs to explain, or refer too, or at least later in the book tie together, why it is so difficult to remember early childhood, when everything is REALLY really new:  because our brains are still forming.  I don't know why, but the lack of qualification is disorienting and off-putting.]  "But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse."  Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older.  (p. 77)

It is hard not to feel as though a tremendous devolution has taken place between that Golden Age [of memory] and our own comparatively leaden one.  People used to labor to furnish their minds.  They invested in the acquisition of memories the same way we invest in the acquisition of things.  But today, beyond the Oxford examination hall's oaken doors, the vast majority of us don't trust our memories.  We find shortcuts to avoid relying on them.  We complain about them endlessly, and see even their smallest lapses as evidence that they're starting to fail us entirely.  (pp. 134-5)

When the Egyptian god Toth presented his gift of writing to King Thamus, the king's response was:
"If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls,: he told the god.  "They will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful' they will rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from withihn themselves, but by means of external marks.  What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminding.  And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them anything, you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing.  And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellow-men."  (pp. 138-9)

Well, there's the modern world summed up for you, eh?


The OK Plateau
Rhetorica ad Herennium
Phoenix by Peter of Ravenna

God Emperor of Dune, by Frank Herbert: 5 stars

#33 for 2011:

God Emperor of Dune, by Frank Herbert.

How anyone can take a story and a character this bizarre and unfathomable and make it work, much less make it great, is amazing.  I mean, really:  a prescient boy whose every ancestor is alive and conscious within him, and turbulently so, enters into a physical symbiotic partnership with the great sandworm of Dune, allowing him to live thousands of years in exchange for the slow inevitable loss of his humanity and a fate perhaps more terrible than death, in order to have the time (and means) to bring about an evolutionary change in humans without which humanity will violently cease to exist at all.  Nobody likes the arrangement, or the absolute political and religious reality it necessitates, least of all him. 

In the immortal words of the L.A. Times:  "Heady stuff."

There is a lot of sophistry involved, but mercifully this is mostly from the mouths of the characters and thus itself a commentary.

"Lady, we all have to live," he protested.
"You are not alive," she said.  "Be gone!"  (p. 52)

"Rules change with each surprise." 
----
"For what do you hunger, Lord?"  Moneo ventured.
"For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions.  Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?"
"You have said it many times, Lord.  It is the ability to change your mind."  (p. 66)

Your soul suffices this day as a reckoner against you.  I need no witnesses.  You do not listen to your soul, but listen instead to your anger and your rage.  (p. 70)

[T]he struggle with humankind's view of itself- a sweaty contest on a field where motives from our darkest past can well up out of an unconscious reservoir and become events with which we not only must live but contend.  (p. 79)

[The trance state of prophecy] is an ultimate pragmatism in the midst of Infinity, a demanding consciousness where you com at last into the unbroken awareness that the universe moves of itself, that it changes, that its rules change, that nothing remains permanent or absolute throughout all such movement, that mechanical explanations for anything can work only within precise confinements and, once the walls are broken down, the old explanations shatter and dissolve, blown away by new movements.  (p. 180)

"The mind imposes this framework which it calls 'reality.'  That arbitrary framework has a tendency to be quite independent of what your senses report."  (p. 19)

"I try to dispense with casual laws and prisons wherever possible."
"You have to have some prisons!"
"Do I?  Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective.  They're a kind of job insurance."
---
"You talk of prisons and police and legalities, the perfect illusions behind which a prosperous power structure can operate while observing, quite accurately, that it is above its own laws."  (p. 225)

"You always know the creative because it is revealed openly.  Concealment betrays the existence of another force entirely."  (p. 227)

"Here's an interesting fact about that story:  Eve was not the first to pluck and sample the apple.  Adam was first and he learned by this to put the blame on Eve."  (p. 233)

"Reason is valuable," he said, "only when it performs against the wordless physical background of the universe."  (p. 258)

"Words are often almost useless in sentient affairs," Leto said.  (p. 266)

"The insect has no more freedom from its hive than we have freedom from our past," he said.  (p. 325)

"Nothing is certain," he said.
This dropped her into despair.
That had not been Leto's intention, but he knew that it often happened- an accurate, though ambiguous, answer was taken as confirmation of one's deepest fears.  (p. 344)

"There's a lesson in that, too.  What do such machines really do?  They increase the number of things we do without thinking- there's the real danger."  (p. 346)

These poor creatures lived on the margins, trying to retain parts of an ancient wholeness.  And all the while, that lost reality slipped farther and farther from their grasp.  ... [They] were lost to everything except a bare existence and the rote mouthing of old words which they did not understand and which they did not even pronounce correctly!  (p. 369)

"Now, you're beginning to know the responsibilities which come as a result of actions. ....  It is human to have your soul brought to a crisis you did not anticipate.  That's the way it always is with humans."  (p. 419)

Children of Dune, by Frank Herbert: 5 stars

#32 for 2011:

Children of Dune, by Frank Herbert. The quality, the caliber, keeps going strong.  Sure, it's weird as hell, but revealing, and compelling, and it stays with you.

"An army," she said, "is composed of disposable, completely replaceable parts.  That is the lesson of the Levenbrech."
"Replaceable parts," he said.  "including the supreme command?"
"Without the supreme command there is seldom a reason for an army..."  (p. 47)

"The universe as we see it is never quite the exact physical universe," she said.  (p. 75)

"A large populace held in check by a small but powerful force is quite a common situation in our universe.  And we know the major conditions wherein this large populace may turn upon its keepers-
"One:  When they find a leader.  This is the most volatile threat to the powerful; they must retain control of leaders.
"Two:  When the populace recognizes its chains.  Keep the populace blind and unquestioning.
"Three:  When the populace perceives a hope of escape from bondage.  They must never even believe that escape is possible!"  (p. 108)

This is the age of the shrug.  He knows I've heard all the stories about him and he doesn't care.  Our civilization could well die of indifference within it before succumbing to external attack.  (p. 149)

"All proofs inevitably lead to propositions which have no proof!  All things are known because we want to believe in them."  (p. 150)

The universe neither threatens nor promises...  [T]he realities of the universe... must be faced regardless of how you feel about them.  You cannot fend off such realities with words.  They will come at you in their own wordless way and then, then you will understand what is meant by "life and death".  (p. 179)

In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words.  From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same.  A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe.  In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of the reach of common understanding- symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity.  (p. 201)

He gave the impression of being self-contained, an organized and firmly integrated whole.  (p. 217)

I think this just spelled out my greatest wish...

The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop.  It is to the characteristics of change itself that the mentat-generalist must look.  There can be no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual.  You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself, "Now what is this thing doing?"  (p. 221)

"If you would possess your humanity, let go of the universe!"  (p. 223)

"Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk?  Is your religion real when you fatten upon it?  Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name?  When comes your downward degeneration from the original revelation?"  (p. 225)

"Abandon certainty!  That's life's deepest command.  That's what life's all about."  (p. 226)

"To exist is to stand out, away from the background," The Preacher said, "You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgement of your existence."  (p. 227)

Daly would say, away from the Foreground; and I bet that The Preacher would reply, yes, away from the foreground and the background both- to be in your own space, in a life of your own creation, your own world, never again to be repeated in all of eternity and only existing now if you make it so!

"The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires.  Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas.  We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence we share and create."  (p. 305)

The patterns could guide and they could trap.  One had to remember that patterns change.  (p. 307)

[T]here exist no intransigent opposites except in the beliefs of men....  You know then that the universe is a coherent whole and you are indivisible from it.  (p. 377)

"It is my strength as a human  that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be."  (p. 384)

Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert: 5 stars

#31 for 2011:

Dune Messiah, by Frank Herbert.

Profound and strange enough to allow one to see reality reflected in it.  Not so strange that one can't recognize the reality, either.

One could wish Herbert hadn't chosen "Jihad", but one recognizes it as merely a vehicle which fit the setting and purpose, not a commentary on that specific religion.

This sequel is as good as Dune.

"I was enjoying the silence," Scytale said.  "Our hostilities are better left unvoiced."  (p. 14)

"It requires only the slightest shift in emphasis, a glissade of the emotions, to transform envy into enmity," Scytale said.  (p. 27)

He felt that some element of himself lay immersed in frosty hoar-darkness without end.  His prescient power had tampered with the image of the universe held by all mankind.  He had shaken the safe cosmos and replaced security with his Jihad.  He had out-fought and out-thought and out-predicted the universe of men, but a certainty filled him that this universe still eluded him.  (p. 81, emphasis mine)

And so it is with all human power.

Here lies a toppled god-
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.  (p. 141)

"You can't stop a mental epidemic.  It leaps from person to person across parsecs.  It's overwhelmingly contagious.  It strikes at the unprotected side, in the place where we lodge the fragments of other such plagues.  Who can stop such a thing?  Muad'dib hasn't the antidote.  The thing has roots in chaos.  Can orders reach there?"  (p. 187)

No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals.  (p. 209)

Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler: 4.5 stars

#30 for 2011:

Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler

In short, the main character is a modern black woman (California, 1976) who has just moved into a new apartment with her new husband Kevin when she is inexplicably transported to the antebellum South (Maryland, 1815).  There she rescues a drowning boy and finds a strange connection with him, returning to her own time just in time to save her life.  For Kevin, only seconds have passed, but she reappears wet and muddy and on the other side of the room.  In the course of what is a month in California, she is called repeatedly back to the past to safeguard the boy who is growing by leaps and bounds into the shoes of his plantation-owning, slave-holding father.  Forced to live for longer stretches in the complex and brutal realities of that former time, it becomes less certain that she will eventually escape back at all, or that either she or her husband can live with how they both have changed.

"It is a shattering work of art with much to say about love, hate, slavery, and racial dilemmas, then and now."—Sam Frank, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

Yes, quite.  Only they forgot gender relations as well.  Honestly, in the introduction, this book is compared to Kafka's Metamorphosis.  What more need be said?  It needs to be read.

My memory of my aunt and uncle told me that even people who loved me could demand more of me than I could give- and expect their demands to be met simply because I owed them.  (p. 109)

I felt as though I were losing my place here in my own time.  Rufus's time was a sharper, stronger reality.  The work was harder, the smells and tastes were stronger, the danger was greater, the pain was worse... Rufus's time demanded things of me that had never been demanded before, and it could easily kill me if I did not meet its demands.  That was a stark, powerful reality that the gentle conveniences and luxuries of this house, of now, could not touch.  (p. 191)

The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd: 3 stars

#29 for 2011:

The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. 

Exactly what I thought it would be- a light day's read.

I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being one.  (p. 9)

That's because "girl" is a sociocultural role, a construction, as much as anything else.

"Actually, you can be bad at something, Lily, but if you love doing it, that will be enough."  (p. 167)

&

"[W]hen you get down to it, Lily, that's the only purpose grand enough for a human life.  Not just to love- but to persist in love."  (p. 289)

Rats, Lice, and History by Hans Zinsser. 4 stars

#28 for 2011:

Rats, Lice, and History by Hans Zinsser.  My edition was actually printed 1967 by Bantam Science and Mathematics.

This was surprisingly entertaining and insightful.  Probably deserves more like 4.5 stars if I had the patience for some of the more intricate explanations, or 5 stars if I had actually sat down with a mind for the biography of typhus and not just a good read. 

quotes later

Let Your Body Win -Stress Management Plain & Simple, by Jacquelyn Ferguson. 2 stars

#27 for 2011:

Let Your Body Win -Stress Management Plain & Simple, by Jacquelyn Ferguson.

If you are not already familiar with the things in this book, you have probably been living in a cave (probably a cave without a saber tooth tiger in it).  Basically an exposition on the fabled Fight/Flight Response role in chronic stress today and an admonition to take better care of yourself.

As if I don't do that shit already people

Nothing new here at all

I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced; by Nujood Ali

#26 for 2011:

I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced; by Nujood Ali with Delphine Minoui. 

Nujood was the first child bride in Yemen to win a divorce- and that was in 2008!  The tradition of marrying small children to grown men (who proceed to abuse them physically and sexually) is not a geographically or culturally isolated phenomenon, and it is not changing without a fight.

May there be enough fight inside us all.

No, I didn't understand, and I couldn't understand.  Not only was he hurting me, but my family, my own family, was defending him.  All that for a question of- what was it?  Honor.  But this word everyone kept using, exactly what did it mean?  I was dumbfounded.  (p. 97)

Honor?  How can there be talk of honor here?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.  /Inigo Montoya

The defiant child bride is not the one who has broken the code of honor.  The rapists and pedophiles, the abusers and abandoners- they themselves have brought the dishonor upon their families.  The child only brings this dishonor to light.


Always the victims are blamed.

[A] girl of nine married to a Saudi man died three days after her wedding.  Instead of demanding an investigation of this scandalous situation, her parents hastened to apologize to the husband, as if trying to make amends for defective merchandise, and even offered him, in exchange, the dead child's seven-year-old sister.  

This is the world we live in...  Dune really isn't so far-fetched at all...

Dune, by Frank Herbert: 5 stars

#25 for 2011:

Dune, by Frank Herbert

"I must not fear.  Fear is the mind-killer.  Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.  I will face my fear.  I will permit it to pass over me and through me.  And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.  Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.  Only I will remain." (p. 8)

Presently, she said, "I'll pay for my own mistake."
"And your son will pay with you."
"I'll shield him as well as I'm able."
"Shield!"  the old woman snapped.  "You well know the weakness there!  Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he'll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny." 

The old woman's voice softened.  "Jessica, girl, I wish I could stand in your place and take your sufferings.  But each of us must make her own path."

In a low voice, she said, "I've been so lonely."
"It should be one of the tests," the old woman said.  "Humans are almost always lonely."

(How many truths can you cover on one page?  This is all from page 24.)

"I think she got mad.  She said the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience.  So I quoted the first law of Mentat at her:  'A process cannot be understood by stopping it.  Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.'  That seemed to satisfy her."  (pp 31-32)

"Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere.  Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain.  From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain."  (Bene Gesserit proverb, p. 69)

Seeing all the chattering faces, Paul was suddenly repelled by them.  They were cheap masks locked on festering thoughts- voices gabbling to drown out the loud silence in every breast.  (p. 129)

The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen"-  which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.  (p. 288)

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.  (p. 321, and taken with the admonition the Reverend Mother gave to Jessica about shielding on page 24, it is especially true.)

She was the mote, yet not the mote.  (p. 354)

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense.  But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.  (p. 373)

You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion.  This power struggle permeates the training, educating, and disciplining of the orthodox community.  Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably face that ultimate internal question:  to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.  (p. 401)

"Hadn't we best be getting to a place of safety?"
"There is no such place," Paul said.  (p. 449)

"Use the first moments in study.  You may miss many an opportunity for quick victory this way, but the moments of study are insurance of success.  Take your time and be sure."  (p. 484)

The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.  (p. 493)

"Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.'  It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied."  (p. 506)

Oh, and this is interesting:  an online Azhar book.

It Came From Ohio: My Life As A Writer, by R. L. Stine/ Joe Arthur

#24b for 2011:

It Came From Ohio:  My Life  As A Writer, by R. L. Stine/ as told to Joe Arthur.

The Murder of Tutankhamen, by Bob Brier

#24 for 2011:

The Murder of Tutankhamen, by Bob Brier

The above is the cover on my edition.  The newer cover is pretty awesome in comparison!

The Brain Has a Mind of Its Own, by Richard Restak

#23 for 2011: 

The Brain Has a Mind of Its Own, by Richard Restak

Wow, when I picked this up at first I didn't think to check the date.  It's twenty years old now.  (I'm not used to thinking of 1991 as being twenty years ago; I feel ancient!)  The book still stands as far as I can see, although of course our understanding of the brain (and its mutually influencing interactions with the body) has grown ever so much more complicated. 

We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin: 5 stars

#22 for 2011:

 
We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin.  The granddaddy of all dystopian novels, written in 1920-1, precursor to 1984 and Brave New World.  Must read.  (I read the Mirra Ginsburg translation in the cover pictured above.)

As in Flowers for Algernon, We is written as a kind of journal/series of personal notes; that made for some interesting correlations between the two, as their main characters both undergo a rather profound psychological/mental transformation that is dangerous, emancipating, and ultimately unpredictable (with potential for complete disaster and an unknown possibility for redemption).  I do very much recommend reading these two one after the other!


Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.  (p. 59)


You, who read these notes, whoever you may be- you have a sun over your heads.  And if you have ever been as ill as I am now, you know what the sun is like- what it can be like- in the morning.  You know that pink, transparent, warm gold, when the very air is faintly rosy and everything is suffused with the delicate blood of the sun, everything is alive:  the stones are alive and soft; iron is alive and soft; people are alive, and everyone is smiling.  In an hour, all this may vanish, in an hour the rosy blood may trickle out, but for the moment everything lives.  (p. 81)
Is it just me, or isn't that incredibly Russian?  


"[W]e shall break down the Wall- all walls- to let the green wind blow free from end to end- across the earth."  (p. 157)-  Sounds good to me!

"Their mistake was the mistake of Galileo:  he was right that the earth revolves around the sun, but he did not know that the whole solar system also revolves- around some other center; he did not know that the real, not the relative, orbit of the earth is not some naive circle..."  (p. 175)


And I learned from my own experience that laughter was the most potent weapon:  laughter can kill everything- even murder.  (p. 210)  I had never known this before, but now I know it, and you know it:  laughter can be of different colors.  It is only an echo of a distant explosion within you.  (p. 220)


"Remember:  those in paradise no longer know desires, no longer know pity or love.  There are only the blessed (with their imaginations excised- this is the only reason why they are blessed) angels, obedient slaves of God..."  (p. 214)

Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes: 5 stars

#21 for 2011:

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes is definitely one of the best books I have ever read.  It vies with Watership Down to claim the top spot in my affections...  If you haven't, do read it, and keep in mind when it was actually written, and how far ahead of its time it was, to not feel outmoded or dated at all.  Simply amazing and quite powerful.

I think this definitely wins the award for Best Title Ever, too.

Irony:  I read this first about fifteen to twenty years ago, and was very profoundly moved by it; it seared itself into my brain.  Yet recently I found myself unable to remember what happened exactly; and when I reread it, it almost felt like I was reading it again for the first time.  It's not as if this were a casual memory--- It's as if I'd forgotten how the Bible ended or something similar...  I worry for my mind. 

I see now that the path I choose through that maze makes me what I am.  I am not only a thing, but also a way of being- one of many ways- and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.  (p. 154) (!)

"But I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damned thing.  Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols.  But I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked:  intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn."  (p. 173)

How strange that light should blind!  (p. 204)

Life with Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse

#20 for 2011:

Life with Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse- An omnibus containing The Inimitable Jeeves, Very Good, Jeeves, and Right Ho, Jeeves.  (Yes, this is where the name Jeeves is so popular from.)

Quite wonderful!

Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

#19 for 2011:

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Intricate plots woven together to form a mesmerizing storyline, amazing and realistic world development, great character development- except for the women, who were one and all blithering idiots too wrapped up in themselves to care about anybody else and too stupid and insecure to do anything but have dramatically emotional meltdowns.  (Don't even go into the "but I maybe I wanted him to rape me" bit- you will never see this in a work by a female author; it is only males who project this onto women as a means to justify rape, which is unjustifiable.) The men, too, seemed amoral and apathetic and too caught up in their own egos and games of war...   But unfortunately both these are a sign of the times, and a product of the society, and therefore too believable (except for the rape bit!).

Ah, Rorshach, it wasn't the dog's fault.  And yet you were probably the sanest of all.  At least you cared, and meant to do something to make things better (and not just for your own ego).

May the cats in my life be blessed

for taking time out of their busy schedule to remind me:

Mostly by lying on any book, laptop, or reading material whatsoever that I am trying to see; but they have an impressive repertoire of additional techniques, ranging from touchy-feely to ouchy-bleedy.

Custer Died For Your Sins, by Vine Deloria Jr.

#18 for 2011

Custer Died For Your Sins, by Vine Deloria Jr. 
(1969)

-Quotes, notes, thoughts in progress...

Life on this continent and views concerning it were not shaped in a post-Roman atmosphere.  The entire outlook of the people was one of simplicity and mystery, not scientific or abstract.  The western hemisphere produced wisdom, western Europe produced knowledge.  (p.18)

x

Some tribes keep their rituals and others don't.  The best characterization of tribes is that they stubbornly hold on to what they feel is important to them and discard what they feel is irrelevant to their current needs.  Tradition dies hard and innovation comes hard.  Indians have survived for thousands of years in all kinds of conditions.  They do not fly from fad to fad seeking novelty.  That is what makes them Indian.  (p.23)

x

Three books, to my way of thinking, give a good idea of the intangible sense of reality that pervades the Indian people.  When the Legends Die by Hal Borland gives a good picture of Indian youth.  Little Big Man by Thomas Berger gives a good idea of Indian attitudes toward life.  Stay Away, Joe, by Dan Cushman, the favorite of Indian people, gives a humorous but accurate idea of the problems caused by the intersection of two ways of life.  Anyone who can read, appreciate, and understand the spiritual forces brought out in these books will have a good idea of what Indians are all about.  (p.23)

On my list...

"What," people often ask, "did you expect to happen?  After all, the continent had to be settled, didn't it?"

We always reply, "Did it?" And continue, "If it did, did it have to be settled in that way?"  For if you consider it, the continent is now settled and yet uninhabitable in many places today.  (p. 55)

x

America has always been a militantly imperialistic world power eagerly grasping for economic control over weaker nations.  The Indian wars of the past should rightly be regarded as the first foreign wars of American history.  As the United States marched across this continent, it was creating an empire by wars of foreign conquest just as England and France were doing in India and Africa.  Certainly the war with Mexico was imperialistic, no more or less than the wars against the Sioux, Apache, Utes, and Yakimas.  In every case the goal was identical:  land.

When the frontier was declared officially closed in 1890 it was only a short time before American imperialistic impulses drove this country into the Spanish-American War and the acquisition of America's Pacific island empire began.  The tendency to continue imperialistic trends remained constant between the two world wars as this nation was involved in numerous banana wars in Central and South America.

There has not been a time since the founding of the republic when the motives of this country were innocent.  Is it any wonder that other nations are extremely skeptical about its real motives in the world today?  (p.57)

Speaking in 1969 (about Vietnam in particular) but applicable in every aspect still today and for all the foreseeable future as well.

Into each life, it is said, some rain must fall....  But Indians have been cursed above all other people in history.  Indians have anthropologists.  (p.83)

x

The explanation of the book [Man's Rise to Civilization as shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State, by Farb], as found on the jacket, indicates sufficiently the assumptions under which the book was written.  In the foreword, by Elman R. Service, Professor of Anthropology at Michigan, it is noted that "beginning with the most pitiful and primitive Indians found by explorers, the Digger Indians of Nevada and Utah, Mr. Farb shows that even they are much above the highest non-human primate."  Thank you, Mr. Farb, we were pretty worried about that. (p.100)

x

One classic statement [from the above]- "Modern American society has little place for institutionalized rites of rebellion, because it is a democratic society; it is characteristic of a democratic society always to question and challenge, never to be certain of itself"- blithely dismisses social reality.

American society has, in face, institutionalized rebellion by making it popular.  Once popularized, rebellions become fads and are so universalized that not to be rebellious is to be square, out of it, irrelevant.... [In America] Unless a man is rebelling, he is not really a man.  And to achieve relevance in American society a person must always be the pioneer, the innovator, against the establishment.

[]

Democratic society is always absolutely sure of itself.  It could not be otherwise, for the be unsure would call into question the very basis of the political institutions which gave it existence.  Even more horrifying would be an examination of the economic realities underlying the society.  (pp.101-102)

x

For the time is coming when middle class America will become credit-card-carrying, turnpike-commuting, condominium-dwelling, fraternity-joining, churchgoing, sports-watching, time-purchase-buying, television-watching, magazine-subscribing, politically inert transmigrated urbanites, who, through the phenomenon of the second car and the shopping center have become golf-playing, wife-swapping, etc etc etc suburbanites.  Or has that dawned?  If so, you will understand what has been happening to Indian communities for a long, long time.  (p.103 )

x

For the wheel of Karma grinds slowly but it does grind finely.  And it makes a complete circle.  (p.104)

x

At one time or another slavery, poverty, and treachery were all justified by Christianity as politically moral institutions of the state.  Economic Darwinism, the survival of the fittest businessman, was seen as a process approved by God and the means by which He determined His Chosen for salvation.... Few mastered the harp before departing for that better life, however.  (p.108)

x

The Great Spirit was exchanged for Santa Claus with some misgivings.  Substituting toys for spiritual powers created a vacuum, however, and the tribes secretly preferred their old religion over the religion of the Easter Bunny.  (p.113)

 x

Christianity has proved to be a disintegrating force by confining its influence to the field of formula recitation and allowing the important movements of living go their separate ways until life has become separated into a number of unrelated categories.

Religion today, or at least Christianity, does not provide the understanding with which society makes sense.  Nor does it provide any means by which the life of the individual has value.  Christianity fights unreal crises which it creates by its fascination with its own abstractions. (p.122)

x
Pages 122-123, death, esp:
When it is suppressed- as it is in the Christian religion- death becomes an entity in itself and is something to be feared.  But death also becomes unreal and the act of an arbitrary God.  When death is unreal, violence also becomes unreal, and human life has no value in and of itself. (p.123)

More, less, or no responsibility is irrelevant to the problem.  When we talk about ["giving"] responsibility, in these terms we are talking about play acting.  Responsibility can never be given unless it is welcome and desired.  I could no more give my children responsibility than I could give them the far side of the moon.  They must have a real status and stake in the process or they will recognize my overtures as tricks.  (p.145)

There is no real freedom without responsibility, and no responsibility without real freedom.

The more desperate the problem, the more humor is directed to describe it.  Satirical remarks often circumscribe problems so that possible solutions are drawn from the circumstances that would not make sense if presented in other than a humorous form.  (p.149)

x

When a people can laugh at themselves and laugh at others and hold all aspects of life together without letting anybody drive them to extremes, then it seems to me that that people can survive.  (p.168)

x

During the 1964 elections Indians were talking in Arizona about the relative positions of the two candidates, Johnson and Goldwater.  A white man told them to forget about domestic policies and concentrate on the foreign policies of the two men.  One Indian looked at him coldly and said that from the Indian point of view it was all foreign policy.  (p.157)

x

For Indians to continue to think of their basic conflict with the white man as cultural is the height of folly.  The problem is and always has been the adjustment of the legal relationship between the Indian tribes and the federal government, between the true owners of the land and the usurpers. ....

It is foolish for a black to depend upon a law to make acceptance of him by the white possible.  Nor should he react to the rejection.  His problem is social, and economic, and cultural , not one of adjusting the legal relationship between the two groups.  (pp.174-175)

x

Before the white man can relate to others he must forgo the pleasure of defining them.  (p.175)

x

When we begin to talk of Civil Rights, therefore, it greatly confuses the issue and lessens our chances of understanding the forces involved in the rights of human beings.  Rather, we should begin talking about actual economic problems; and in realistic terms we are talking about land.

No movement can sustain itself, no people can continue, no government can function, and no religion can become a reality except it be bound to a land area of its own.... So-called power movements are primarily the urge of peoples to find their homeland and to channel their psychic energies through their land into social and economic reality.  Without land and a homeland no movement can survive.  And any movement attempting to build without clarifying its goals usually ends in violence, the energy from which could have been channeled toward sinking the necessary roots for the movement's existence.  (p.179)  Peoplehood is impossible without cultural independence, which in turn is impossible without a land base.  (p.180)

x

Civil Rights is a function of a man's desire for self-respect, not of his desire for equality.  The dilemma is not one of tolerance or intolerance but one of respect or contempt.  The tragedy of the early days of the Civil Rights movement is that man people, black, white, red, and yellow, were sold a bill of goods which said that equality was the eventual goal of the movement.  But no one had considered the implications of so simple a slogan.  Equality became sameness. .... In the minds of most people in 1963, legal equality and cultural conformity were identical.   (pp.179-180)

And another word bites the dust.  Oh, equality. (Coming soon to join you:  unity.)  Of course, it bit the dust a long time ago, and was resurrected as a zombie to do its master's bidding.  People are always appropriating words and distorting the meanings thereof in order to manipulate and deceive other people.

In our hearts and minds we could not believe that blacks wanted to be the same as whites... As far as we could determine, white culture, if it existed, depended primarily upon the exploitation of the land, people, and life itself. (p.180)  Blacks seemed to be saying that white society was bad, but they wanted it anyway.  (p.186)

x

Indians simply cannot externalize themselves.  Externalization implies a concern for the future.  Indians welcome the future but don't worry about it.  (p.219)

x

What, after all, is unity but the fellowship of people? ....

Indians have always rejected unity as a weapon, though a number of young Indians want unity precisely for that reason.  Most of the tribes want unity as a fellowship of equals where they can play their Indian games with a minimum of outside interference.  Indian unity is what the churches mean when they say brotherhood, but which they dare not practice.  It is what the white man seeks in his fraternities and exclusive clubs.

Like everything else, the white man has turned the idea completely inside out when he has put unity into action.  He has defined the right to be oneself as the right of exclusive privacy, never realizing that to be alone is to be dead.  (p.220-221)

x

In place of the traditional family has come the activist ["active"] family in which each member spends the majority of his time outside the home "participating".  Clubs, committees, and leagues devour the time of an individual so that family activity is extremely limited....  At best it is a standoff, with each member giving half-hearted recognition of the multitude of tribes to which the family as a conglomerate belongs.  (pp.227-228)

x

Hippies, at least as I came to understand them, had few stable clan structures.  They lived too much on the experiential plane and refused to acknowledge that there really was a world outside of their own experiences.  Experience thus became the primary criteria by which the movement was understood.  Social and economic stability were never allowed to take root.

It seemed ridiculous to Indian people that hippies would refuse to incorporate prestige and social status into their tribalizing attempts.  Indian society is founded on status and social prestige.  This largely reduces competition to interpersonal relationships instead of allowing it to run rampant in economic circles.  Were competition to be confined to economic concerns, the white conception of a person as part of the production [and consumption] machine would take hold, destroying the necessary value of man in his social sense.

With competition confined within social events, each man must be judged according to his real self, not his wealth or educational prowess.  Hence a holder of great wealth is merely selfish unless he has other redeeming qualities besides his material goods.  Having a number of degrees and an impressive educational background is prerequisite to prestige in the white world.  It is detrimental in the Indian world unless the person has the necessary wisdom to say meaningful things also.  (pp.229-230)

x

Non-Indians must understand the differences, at least as seen in Indian country, between nationalism and militancy.  Most Indians are nationalists.  That is, they are primarily concerned with development and continuance of the tribe.  As nationalists, Indians could not, for the most part, care less what the rest of society does.  They are interested in the progress of the tribe.

Militants, on the other hand, are reactionists.  They understand the white society and they progress by reacting against it.  First in their ideas is the necessity of forcing a decision from those in decision-making positions.  Few militants would be sophisticated enough to plan a strategy of undermining the ideological and philosophical positions of the establishment and capturing its programs for their own use.

Nationalists always have the option of resorting to violence and demonstrations.  Militants shoot their arsenal merely to attract attention and are left without any visible means to accomplish their goals.  Hence militancy must inevitably lead on to more militancy.  (p.237)

x

No one is going to hand over decision-making authority to people who have no base within the community other than their ability to articulate commands  (p.250) 

x

Consider the history of America closely.  Never has America lost a war.  When engaged in warfare the United States has always applied the principle of overkill and mercilessly stamped its opposition into the dust. ....  But name, if you can, the last peace the United States has won.  Victory, yes, but this country has never made a successful peace because peace requires exchanging ideas, concepts, thoughts, and recognizing the fact that two distinct systems of life can exist together without conflict.  Consider how quickly America seems to be facing its allies of one war as new enemies.  (pp.250-251)
x
The United States operates on incredibly stupid premises.  It always fails to understand the nature of the world and so does not develop policies that can hold the allegiance of people.  It then alienates everyone who does not automatically love it.  It worries about its reputation and prestige but daily becomes more vulnerable to ideologies more realistic than its own.  (p.251)

x

Ideological leverage is always superior to violence.  People are always open to ideas even though they may appear to reject thought itself.  (p.251)

Then there is hope yet!

Tribalism looks at life as an undifferentiated whole.  Distinctions are not made between social and psychological, educational and historical, political and legal.  The tribe is an all-purpose entity which is expected to serve all areas of life.  (p.259)

x

Consider what he said on page 83:  "Churches possess the real world" and combine it with what he said on page 270:  "I have no realistic hopes that the churches will become real." 

The church as an organization is real, it has real power in the world.  But the religion itself isn't "real", the culture it fosters isn't "real", and nothing about it encourages people to deal with the real world- rather the opposite.  It encourages people to "abide" this world and set all their hopes and sights on the afterlife, because to the church, that's what's "real". 

Pages 203, 216 leadership, flexibility on issues, insistence on indirect action, general consensus, silent understandings.

Page 234, compensation instead of retribution in criminal law, Bill of Rights as stifling.
-
You should read this book.

You should also read this:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_Deloria

In and Out of Time, edited by Patricia Duncker

#17 for 2011

In and Out of Time, edited by Patricia Duncker

This reminds me very much of This Bridge Called My Back- except that it isn't American (South Africa and other former-British-empire locales) and that it is a collection of fiction.  The fiction, however, is just a means of telling about real life...

The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

#16 for 2011

The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson


It is quite trippy (actual level of perceived trippiness depending on how trippy you already are, so, not nearly as trippy to me as to, say, an ordinary person).  (Seriously, I am trippy.  At one point I picked up this book and carried it all the way to the other room to read, before realizing I had actually picked up Do Penguins Have Knees?  And yes that is a book and yes I have it.  And yes penguins have knees.  And no it looks nothing like The Illuminatus! in size or color or design.)

And it is quite quite raunchy (actual level of raunchiness may blow your mind if you are conservative).  You have been warned.

-Notes, Quotes, & eTc.ness

"I really don't think so," I say politely.  "They don't think it makes any difference whether Eisenhower or Stevenson is in the White House.  They say the orders will still come from Wall Street." [<--]
.... "That's the wonderful thing about this country," she finally gets out, "even people with opinions like that can say what they want without going to jail."
"You must be nuts," I say.  "My dad's been in and out of jail so many times they should put in a special revolving door just for him.  My mom, too.  You oughtta go out with subversive leaflets in this town and see what happens."  (p.61)

Observe nowadays, where green is the new red (ie, green activists are considered to be the top domestic terrorist threat in America)...

"If you work within the system, you come to one of the either/or choices that were implicit in the system from the beginning.  You're talking like a medieval serf, asking the first agnostic whether he worships God or the Devil."  (p.86)

x

“Don’t you see, Barney? Whatever they’re really up to, they keep creating masks so all sorts of scapegoat groups will get the blame for being the ‘real’ Illuminati.” He shook his head dismally. “They’re smart enough to know they can’t operate indefinitely without a few people eventually realizing something’s there, so they’ve taken that into account and arranged for an inquisitive outsider to get all sorts of wrong ideas about who they are.”
“They’re dogs,” Muldoon said. “Intelligent talking dogs from the dog star, Sirius…. Lord God, I’m almost ready to believe it.”  (p.107)  

x

"It isn't only political power that grows out of the barrel of a gun. So does a whole definition of reality. A set. And the action that has to happen on that particular set and on none other. "
..."That's just Marx: the ideology of the ruling class becomes the ideology of the whole society."
"Not the ideology. The Reality." He lowered his handkerchief. "This was a public park until they changed the definition. Now, the guns have changed the Reality. It isn't a public park. There's more than one kind of magic."
"Just like the Enclosure Acts," I said hollowly. "One day the land belonged to the people. The next day it belonged to the landlords."
"And like the Narcotics Acts," he added. "A hundred thousand harmless junkies became criminals overnight, by Act of Congress, in nineteen twenty-seven. Ten years later, in thirty-seven, all the pot-heads in the country became criminals overnight, by Act of Congress. And they really were criminals, when the papers were signed. The guns prove it. Walk away from those guns, waving a joint, and refuse to halt when they tell you. Their Imagination will become your Reality in a second." (p.150) 

x

Why do we never use language to convey meaning? Why must we always use it to conceal meaning? Why do we never speak from the heart? Why do we always speak words programmed into us, like robots?  (p.157)

You don’t act from the heart; where the hell do you act from? What in God’s name does motivate you?  (p.158)

x

"All human beings consider themselves sinners.  It's just about the deepest, oldest, and most universal human hangup there is.  In fact, it's almost impossible to speak of it in terms that don't confirm it.  To say that human beings have a universal hangup, as I just did, is to restate the belief that all men are sinners in different languages. " (p.248)

x

"...To arrive at a cultural turning point where you decide that all human conduct can be classified in one of two categories, good and evil, is what creates all sin- plus anxiety, hatred, guilt, depression, all the peculiarly human emotions.  And, of course, such a classification is the very antithesis of creativity.  To the creative mind there is no right or wrong .  Every action is an experiment, and every experiment yields its fruit in knowledge [notice, not necessarily wisdom].  To the moralist, every action can be judged as right or wrong- and mind you, in advance- without knowing what its consequences are going to be..."  (p.248)

x

"This study demonstrated graphically what many psychologists have long suspected: the life-history which most of us carry around in our skulls is more our own creation (at least seven percent more) than it is an accurate recording of realities. As Malignowski concludes, 'Reality is retroactive, retrospective, and illusory.'" (p.281) 

Depends on what he means by "reality", but if he means what most people mean by it, then, yeah.  Although I bet it's more than 7% our own creation/interpretation!

[Simon] shouted "Bingo!".... Behind him, the luminous figure said, "Do this in commemoration of me."
"I thought we were supposed to do the bread the wine bit in commemoration of you?" Simon objected.
"Do both," the ghostly one said.  "The bread and the wine is too symbolic and arcane for some folks.  This one is what will bring in the mob."  (p.324)

*cough cough*

We never know for sure whether we're diving or just sinking.  (p.325)

It is sometimes impossible to tell the difference.... :(

Drake read what was to become the National Security Act of 1947.  "This abolishes the Constitution," he said almost in ecstasy.  (p.347)

He would have loved the Patriot Act.

"Don't get pedantic."
"Can I get semantic?"
"Yes.  You can get semantic.  Or antic.  But not pedantic."  (p.395)

Yeah I just wanted to save that.  :D

"Why did you never tell us before that all categories are false and all Good and Evil a delusion of limited perspective?"  (p.489)

x

Every citizen in every authoritarian society already has such a "radio" built into his or her brain.  This radio is the little voice that asks, each time a desire is formed, "Is it safe?  Will my wife (my husband/ my boss/ my church/ my community) approve?  Will people ridicule and mock me?  Will the police come and arrest me?"  This little voice the Freudians call "The Superego," with [which?] Freud himself vividly characterized as "the ego's harsh master".  With a more functional approach, Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, in Gestalt Therapy, describe this process as "a set of conditioned verbal habits".  (p.497)  All authority is based on conditioning men and women to act from the logogram [these conditioned verbal habits], since the logogram is a set created by those in authority.  (p.498)

"Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you'll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you'll be tempted to say to the people around you, 'How can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?"  /Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

"You've got to realize," Hagbard went on, "that life is a coming apart and death is a coming together.  Does that help?"  (p.500)

?

The redundant do not change their scrip; the flexible continually keep changing, trying to find a way of relating constructively.  Eventually, the flexible ones find the "proper" gambit, and communication, of a sort, is possible.  They are now on the set created by the redundant person, and they act out his or her script.  (p.518)

Story of my life.  Time to write my own script...

"What Mortimer [Adler] means by the Great Tradition," hawk-face interrupted rudely, " is a set of myths and fables invented to legitimize or sugar-coat the institution of privilege."  (p.552)
"Privilege implies exclusion from privilege, just as advantage implies disadvantage," Celine went on.  "In the same mathematically reciprocal way, profit implies loss.  If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trad:  neither or us profits and neither of us loses.  But if we exchange unequal goods, one of us profits and the other loses.  Mathematically.  Certainly. .... [In this society is observed] a steady profit accruing to one group and an equally steady loss accumulating for all others.  Why is this, professor? ....  You have named it yourself, or Mr. Adler has:  the Great Tradition.  Privilege, I prefer to call it.  When A meets B in the marketplace, they do not bargain as equals.  A bargains from a position of privilege; hence, he always profits and B always loses."  (pp.553-554)

x

"I know who I am and why I'm here.  Adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine."
"How did you ever forget?"
"Hagbard grinned.  "It's easy to forget.  You know that."  (p.585)

Easy to forget or just not fulfilling a basic need?  "Who am I- Why you're nobody really- Oh really wow Hey what is the meaning of it all- Oh there's no meaning- Oh okay well that was easy dum de dum de doo"  Sorry but I *need* there to be a meaning, so either I have to find the meaning or I have to find out why I have that need and deal with the root cause.  I can't simply shut off the need just like that, though- needs are NEEDS.  (And now I am thinking to myself, what a strange word, needs.  Who thought that one up?  Sounds Dr. Seussian...  Try it- say out loud "needs are NEEDS"- see what I mean?  Where's my Do Penguins Have Knees? book again...)

I loved doing it women who claim they don't are just liars
(p.640)

For all the philosophical trippiness and insight of the book, it is still written by a couple of males who have thoroughly pissed me off with their portrayal of women.  They don't know women; they know the myth of women, and guess what they wrote the damn myth.  How effing convenient.  Women are real people and we don't fit into your damn categories and boxes and desires.  Talk about not dealing with reality...

Welcome to the place prepared for you from everlasting to everlasting.  Now truly you will never die.  And the mind of Wolfgang Saure, imprisoned like a living fly in amber, knowing that it must remain so for billions upon billions of years, screamed and screamed and screamed.  (p.653)

Yeah, I really don't see how existing eternally within the presence of oblivion is supposed to be a reward.

"Here, let me show you.  The last card, Trump 21, is actually the first.  It's where we all start from."  She held up the card known as the World.  "This is the Abyss of Hallucinations.  This is where our attention is usually focused.  It is entirely constructed by our senses and our projected emotions, as modern psychology and ancient Buddhism both testify- but it is what most people call 'reality'.  They are conditioned to accept it, and not to inquire further, because only in this dream-walking state can they be governed by those who wish to govern."
Miss Portinari held up the next card, the Last Judgment.  "Key 20, or Trump 20, or Atu 20, whichever terminology you prefer.  It's actually second.  This is the nightmare to which the soul awakes if it begins, even in the slightest, to question reality as defined by society...."
"The next card is the Sun...  This is what happens if you survive the Last Judgement, or Dark Night of the Soul, without becoming some kind of fanatic or lunatic.  Eventually, if you miss those attractive and pernicious alternatives, the redemptive force appears:  the internal Sun...."
"Last," Miss Portinari said finally, "is the Fool, Key 0.  He walks over the edge of the cliff, careless of the danger.  'The wind blows wither it will; even so are all they that are reborn of the Spirit.'  In short, he has conquered Death.  Nothing can frighten him, and he can never be enslaved."  (pp.716-717)

That, the reinterpretation of the tarot, could have been its own book, and I would definitely have read it.

"At first, mountains are mountains.  Then mountains are no longer mountains.  Finally mountains are mountains again.  Only the name of the voyager has changed to preserve his Innocence."  (p.718)

when I have gone over the hill, and down the other side
and when I have known this hill and start another climb
I am still me, yet I am new again

"That's the very model of what a true scientific law must always be:  a statement about how the human mind relates to the cosmos.  We can never make a statement about the cosmos itself- but only about how our senses (or our instruments) detect it, and about how our codes and languages symbolize it."  (p.742)

It's all subjective.

The mystical number is 11, which means "a new start" in Kabalism and "error and repentance" in most other systems of numerology.  (p.751)

(Just noting that because I will forget where I got that from, later.) 

Look up She-Woman-Forever-Not-Change (Hopi) from page 435...

Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America, by Nick Rosen: 2-1/2 stars, maybe 3

#15 for 2011

Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America, by Nick Rosen

MEH

Some people should just stick to writing newspaper columns and magazine articles, because when I buy a book, I expect a WEE little bit more substance (!).

A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive, by Dave J. Pelzer

#14 for 2011

A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive, by Dave J. Pelzer

Wishcraft: How To Get What You Really Want, by Barbara Sher and Annie Gottlieb

#13 for 2011

Wishcraft:  How To Get What You Really Want, by Barbara Sher and Annie Gottlieb

I'm reading the original, not the 30th Anniversary edition.  I found it at, guess where, the thrift store.  Some really good finds there lately.

When you become aware of your own uniqueness, that's when you really begin to cherish and respect yourself- and to respect others!  If you met people on the basis of their style, you would respect each one instinctively, and they would respect you.  If we're not in competition with each other- if we're not threatened by our differences or busy trying to rank them- then our differences become resources.  I'm not like you, and I don't want to be like you, because then I wouldn't have anyone around who could tell me anything I didn't know, show me anything I couldn't see.  I'd only have me.  I want you too, because you're different.(p. 39)

[F]antasy comes before strategy.  (p. 53)

We're supposed to be able to pull in our belts, put off our pleasures, bear our disappointments, and face our fears without a squeak of pain or protest.
Hemingway called that kind of behavior "grace under pressure."  I happen to consider it mildly psychotic.  (p. 94)

That's what I call pathological individualism.  I don't mean the marvelous individuality that makes each of us unique.  I mean the cultural disease of extreme "self-reliance" that has cut us off from the most potent resource we have for achieving our goals:  each other.  The best ideas, the ones that really work magic, are the ones that draw on the knowledge, skills, and contacts of other people.  (p. 113)

If your children look into your eyes and see delight, they've got a good world.  If you're so tired and angry you can't enjoy them, what they're going to feel is, "I don't care about my Christmas present or my lunch.  Why don't you ever smile?'  (p.181)

Real listening, pg. 101

*in progress*

The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector

#12 for 2011

The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector

I can remember a time when I used to pray in order to kindle my spirit: movement is spirit. Prayer was a means of confronting myself away from the gaze of others. As I prayed I emptied my soul- and this emptiness is everything that I can ever hope to possess. Apart from this, there is nothing. But emptiness, too, has its value and somehow resembles abundance. One way of obtaining is not to search, one way of possessing is not to ask; simply to believe that my inner silence is the solution to my- to my mystery. (p.14)

Meantime, I want to walk naked or in rags; I want to experience at least once the insipid flavour of the Host. To eat communion bread will be to taste the world's indifference, and to immerse myself in nothingness. This will be my courage: to abandon comforting sentiments from the past. (p.19)

Most of the time, she possessed, without knowing it, the emptiness that replenishes the souls of saints. Was she a saint? It would seem so. The girl didn't know that she was meditating, for the word meditation was unknown to her. I get the impression that her life was one long meditation on nothingness. (p. 37)

I shall miss myself so much when I die. (p. 53)

Salvation ultimately comes in the form of self-discovery and authentic self-expression. (Afterword, p. 92, Giovanni Pontiero)

Interesting.  Reminds me of Kafka's beautiful nightmares, and Kopf's liminality, where you are never quite sure what is dream and what is real or what the difference is.  Maybe a bit of Gogol's sense of humor.

Clarice Lispector was an acclaimed Brazilian author; this was her last novel.  I shall have to find the others!  (This one was picked up on impulse at a thrift store.  I'm having the best impulses at thrift stores lately.)

A Dark Horn Blowing, by Dahlov Ipcar (& bonus: The Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner)

#11 for 2011

A Dark Horn Blowing, by Dahlov Ipcar

The search [for my true name] had been long and arduous.  I had journeyed deep into my own inner being, into a weird other world of dreams and nightmares.  There I had found not only my true name but also the inner Well of Power that I knew I would draw from again and again.  (p. 162)


"If I must do something that unbelievable," Nana said slowly, "I'd rather do it with my eyes open."(p. 236)

Quite, quite lovely!  Go read this one.

OH- also, the other day I reread The Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner. I hadn't read that since, well, when I was 7? no older than 10 at most. Talk about memory lane!  This book stands up remarkably well and is so timeless. 

This Bridge Called My Back, [edited] by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua

#10 for 2011

This Bridge Called My Back, [edited] by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua

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The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir

#9 for 2011



Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex.

All 800+ academic pages of it.  Yowsa.

I didn't have the new translation, though- I read the original English translation...  I didn't even realize they had a newer, more applauded one available.  Well.

*placeholder* may read SparksNotes or something before commenting much.  at least have to let my brain settle down a bit so it can formulate coherent word structures.

The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, by William Goldman: 5 stars

#8 for 2011



The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, by William Goldman

I absolutely love this book. I also absolutely love the movie. Both without concession. I'm not sure that has ever happened before.

The movie is different from the book, and vice versa, but they are both brilliant, brilliant, brilliant and exceptionally well done. I am forever indebted to William Goldman for his (father)'s discerning retelling of S. Morgenstern's story. It is, indeed, "one of the funniest, most original, and deeply moving novels I have read" (LA Times)- and it gives me quite a bit to think about. (I'm sure I'll formulate words to deal with Buttercup- dear, daft Buttercup- sometime in this life... That must come. Simply MUST.  But as far as I'm concerned, she's not really a concern!)

If you have somehow missed this, seek it out.

It was only when they found him funny that he found it, though he did not know the word, degrading. No more yelling. Just laughter now. Laughter, Fezzik thought, and then he thought giraffeter, because that's all he was to them, some huge funny thing that couldn't make much noise. Laughter, giraffeter, from here to hereafter.

Fezzik huddled up in his cave and tried looking on the bright side. At least they weren't throwing things at him.

Not yet, anyway. (p. 181)

"I'm getting very bored, Vizzini" came from out of sight. "Three months is a long time to wait, especially for a passionate Spaniard." Much louder now "And I am very passionate, Vizzini, and you are nothing but a tardy Sicilian. So if you're not here in ninety more days, I'm done with you. You hear? Done!" Much softer now: "I didn't mean that, Vizzini, I just love my filthy stoop, take your time..." (p. 210)

Seriously, if Fezzik and Inigo were not in the story, it would not be a great story. I care more about them than I ever did (or will) about Westley or Buttercup. (Don't get me started on Humperdinck- but what great names!) I love Fezzik and Inigo. And right now that scene of Inigo's is about how I feel.

I'm not trying to make this a downer, understand. I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all. (p. 283)

Adrienne Rich’s Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Editions) by Adrienne Rich (Author), Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi, and Albert Gelpi

#7 for 2011

Adrienne Rich’s Poetry and Prose(Norton Critical Editions)
by Adrienne Rich (Author), Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi (Author), and Albert Gelpi

VERY GOOD & a simple way to get a good overview of her work, sort out chronology and context, understand a bit of her biographically and society’s reaction to her.

*PLACEHOLDER*