The Far Side of the World, by Patrick O'Brian: 5 stars

I have grown to realize that everything I am reading these days just gets sucked down immediately under the surface of my being, down into the bubbly depths, to be more fully digested and understood. My reading appetite is insatiable whereas I find any thoughts I have on what I’ve just read rather unformed, even though I’ve finished reading it.

I have decided to blame it on the changing of the seasons. Now that the harvest is over, it might be a long winter before I start writing anything much useful in the spring.

Treason's Harbour by Patrick O'Brian: 5 stars

finished this one last night.

started the next in the series, The Far Side Of The World, this afternoon.

_{I’ve decided not to review or try and summarize the books in this series the first time around. but they are AWESOME}

About Love by Robert Solomon (5 stars)

it has taken me over a month to read this book. why? every page, every half-page, every sentence of this book made me stop and think. and no, I wasn’t looking up all the words to see what he meant- the language is precise and candid. none of the puritanical jargon one expects from academia although he does mention phenomenology , and none of the oversimplified patter often offered up by relationship gurus or other love pundits, either. just a clear, sane voice, illuminating love in a way that reveals both new things and things you already knew but took for granted. and, by illuminating love, it illuminated everything from conversations I’ve had to whole portions of my life in a new light.

it is a fabulous read. a life-improving read, no doubt.

I am not sure I can sum it up nicely… the book builds from the first page to the very end, and there are so many important details. I will try maybe quoting bits and pieces, to just give you a brief, kaleidoscope idea of it all. although looking at all the poor pages I dogeared for that purpose, I doubt I can quote from all of them.

oh, and yes, I must point out, this book is on romantic love. he does briefly contrast it against other types of love, but he focuses on what romantic love is and how/why it works.

...[L]ove is not a mysterious “union” of two otherwise separate and isolated selves but rather a special instance of the mutually-defined creation of selves. Who and how we love ultimately determines what we are. (24)

We too easily tend to conclude that great feeling constitutes love, and the greater the feeling, even if incapacitating, the greater the love. But this is dangerous nonsense. Feelings follow, they do not lead the psyche. They are the body’s attempt to keep up with the mind and its intentions. Feelings are not the whole nor even the measure of love. (81)

Perhaps this is also the place to say something about the familiar query, whether it is better to love or be loved. My answer, very quickly, is that to be loved is not an emotion or an experience at all. Without loving, it is at best a compliment or a convenience, often an unwanted obligation, and at worst a burden or a curse. It is loving that counts, and then being loved is the most important thing in the world. (85)

It is tragic and absurd that our idealized storybook romance should be so different and so detached from the real story of love and our conception of love should, consequently, be so divided into two wholly separate parts, one romantic and exciting but unrealistic and the other a dull tale of domesticity and endurance, devoid of the excitement that many of us now insist upon to make life worthwhile… The romantic story is all about the thrill of newfound love, but it is so filled with suspense and excitement or pathos that it cannot bear the weight of the future. “Forever” is thus an evasion of time rather than a celebration of it. The infinitely less romantic part of the story is about the formation and working out of a partnership, legally defined as such by marriage. It is a topic fit for accountants, advisers and counselors, in which the market virtues of honest and fair exchange and the business skills of negotiation and compromise are of great value… In other words, first there is the thrill, then there is the coping. (100-1)

Fantasy is an extension, an embellishment, an enrichment of reality, not an alternative to it. Fantasy should be opposed only to that dull, practical planning that is too often rationalized as “realism.” Love, like music, lives in the imagination, but it is no less real for that. (163)

The essential thing to remember is that it is the identity itself that is crucial to love and its lasting and not one or two of the dimensions that may contribute to it. Sex may hold love together for a certain period but then get superseded by less passionate shared experiences and roles which nevertheless bind love with no less success, and it is tragic that we should so often confine our definitions of love to sexual passion and ignore the fact that the bond of love may be equally served by any number of shared and reciprocal activities and attitudes. (238)

We have said a great deal about the creation of self, but the simplest formula for self-creation is that, insofar as we create ourselves, we do so by caring… Life has meaning not because of what we have or what we know or what we are “in ourselves” but because we care about something. (260-1)

Intimacy is an experience of mutual availability. It is not just openness of expression but an openness of the self to share and to change. (278)

The need to rethink the rules of love and reinvent love for ourselves is in fact one of the most powerful inspirations of love. Love thrives by being thought about; it is not just a feeling that goes on its way whether we pay attention to it or not. .... Love must be reinvented, but it is being so right now, by all of us, two at a time. (349)

I am sad all over again that I never got to meet him. I had the chance but as usual didn’t realize how short time is for us. I wish he were still in the world; it needs people like him, I think.

ब्रेइफ्ली

The Pursuit of Loneliness 8/15-8/24
The Ionian Mission 8/25-8/30
The Vulnerable Observer8/31-9/02
Weapons of Choice 9/03-9/06

started Kinship and Gender on 9/07

I'm Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers, by Tim Madigan. 3-1/2 stars.

Madigan shares some of the most trying times of his life and his most difficult hurdles to overcome, and celebrates the friend who was there with him through it all: Fred Rogers. unlikely as it seemed to him, a newspaper reporter who had never watched the Mister Rogers children’s show but who was sent to interview the icon, Tim and Fred bonded almost instantly and remained very close until Fred’s death in 2003. by honestly and openly telling of his marital problems, difficulties with his father, minor setbacks, the slow death of his brother to cancer- and how it affected him and how he, with Rogers as his mentor, made it through them all a better person, he touches on the deep common humanity in us all and gives us hope.

and in this way he continues the work of Fred Rogers. as one reviewer put it: Fred Rogers inspired people because he saw the good in them; he challenged people because he wanted them to see the good in themselves. even just reading about Rogers’ friendship with Madigan reinforces the idea that there is good in you, and that at least one someone out there somewhere knows that, and will believe in you no matter what happens.

the style is straightforward prose, much like one would expect from a newspaper article, but the story is moving and revealing as well.

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Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson: 5 stars

Housekeeping was a very haunting book. Gilead certainly seems haunting at times, and Robinson’s main character is leaving this life, which lends palpably to its ethereal quality. but Gilead seems more revealing and mature somehow, and, whereas I lent my copy of Housekeeping back out to the world, I’m keeping Gilead for a reread or two, right here on my shelf.

John Ames is a preacher who married young, but lost his wife and child young too. he remarried very late in life, and now he is 80 years old and dying, with a 7 year old son. this book is written as if a letter to that son, who otherwise will never know his father.

it tells about his [John Ames’] childhood, and his father the pacifist (who was also a preacher), his grandfather the radical abolitionist (who was a preacher as well), and his best friend (you guessed it- also a preacher)’s son, who was named John Ames in his honor and grew up to break the hearts of all who loved him. three wars are encompassed in this tale, as well as the Great Depression, the advent of television, and the ending of a way of life.

John Ames’ reflection on all of this, his personal struggles with all of this, and his all-encompassing joy and love of life, even with its terrible sufferings and inexplicable turnings, is highly original and ultimately universal at the same time.

Gilead is earthier and more hopeful really than Housekeeping, with greater insight (if possible), and evokes shades of Faulkner while written in that resounding poetic bliss that is Robinson’s style.

I have so many pages marked for quotes that I cannot possibly type them all out here, but opening the book randomly to one of those pages, this is what I will share:

In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable- which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untransversable, and utterly vast spaces between us. (page 198)

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The Surgeon's Mate, by Patrick O'Brian: 5 stars

this is a novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series, which just gets better and better. I am trying so hard not to read them all in a row, as I can only read them for the first time once, and I will have the rest of my life to reread them in a row if I wish (and I bet I could do that forever). I’m trying to make the excitable tension of wondering what comes next last as long as possible, and O’Brian never fails me.

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since last entry I have read Watership Down, The Surgeon's Mate, Gilead, and I'm Proud of You.

Watership Down: 5 stars

honestly, I put off reading this for a long time. not outright, but I always had other books higher in the to-read pile. that and somebody once told me that they had to read it for school and absolutely hated it; but there is no way they were talking about this book. and I wonder how much attention they were paying in school, as I went back and asked someone else in the class, and they said the book they had read was Animal Farm!

I did not know what the book was about, except that it had to do with rabbits, and perhaps a boat. there is a boat, of sorts I guess, but that’s not where the “Ship” in the title comes from. for moon-calf Americans like myself, I will explain that Watership Down is a place name. it’s a hill.

so the book is about rabbits on a hill? well, yes, but no, of course not. honestly this is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I immediately went out and ordered it in hardcover as I know I will be rereading it at least once every two years for the rest of my life. that’s how amazing it is. so, no, not just rabbits on a hill.

and the rabbits are not Disney rabbits, or Lewis Carrol rabbits, wearing waistcoats and top hats or helping a princess with the household chores. Adams, with fantastic storytelling, weaves you into the world of real rabbits in a delightful, astonishing, and sometimes quite harrowing way. oh, if you only know rabbits to be fluffy little poopsies, you can think again. and you might not feel so comfortable wearing bunny slippers after this, either!

this book is an adventure unlike anything I was expecting. I was laughing; I was on the edge of the bed with my eyes wide open; I was even crying, and it takes one hell of a story to make me cry. I was practically blissful at the end of the book, even though it was over.

yay, Watership Down :D

I'd give it 7 stars, but my rating system only goes up to 5.

The Art of Happiness, by the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D.

_{and “happiness” doesn’t mean a cheerful facade or mindless puppylike feelings. it means real happiness; joy.}
.

the site

In this book, a typical western psychiatrist (Cutler) comes to understand the philosophy of the Dalai Lama, through a series of personal meetings with, and by attending teachings and lectures of, the Dalai Lama over the years. he doesn’t become a Buddhist or change any religious views as far as I can tell, but then again the Dalai Lama is committed to religious toleration and the working together of people of all faiths.

Cutler was trained in the Hobbesian tradition so pervasive in western society, which basically states that the nature of a human being is like that of a cornered wild animal: hateful, fearful, and vicious. We are miserable, guilty wretches. Self hatred is rampant and inborn, and you have to accept your anger and fear and misery and just try and make it less unbearable. Until the very recent movement of Positive Psychology in 2000, this was basically what most psychologists and psychiatrists were taught. Of course there are exceptions (this is a very broad picture I paint), but this is the underlying theme of most of western thought.

the Dalai Lama, on the other hand, obviously comes from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition: where it is a given that the nature of a human being is good and kind, and that suffering, in terms of how you deal with the circumstances you have, can be completely eliminated through awareness of the situation and changing of negative patterns of thought/cultivating positive patterns of thought. the Dalai Lama himself had never heard of self hatred at all, and wondered if he had understood the concept correctly because it was antithetical to anything he’d ever experienced.

so it was interesting to see Cutler start to come around. of course he was curious about the philosophy in the first place, and rather open, but he still had his reservations and wanted to be convinced.

the Dalai Lama comes across as a very warm and open person, very honest and self-assured yet not afraid to admit his faults. this is so refreshing. (and inspiring, personally.) the basic philosophy (towards attaining happiness and living a happy life) is simple, pragmatic, and powerful. the book takes special care with how to apply the philosophy to real life, regardless of your religious preferences, and also to show how this eastern philosophy is being supported more and more by western medical and scientific studies (even as the more traditional theories based on mechanistic or hydraulic views of the self are overturned).

The art of happiness has many components. As we’ve seen, it begins with developing an understanding of the truest sources of happiness and setting our priorities in life based on the cultivation of those sources. It involves an inner discipline, a gradual process of rooting out destructive mental states and replacing them with positive, constructive states of mind, such as kindness, tolerance, and forgiveness. In identifying the factors that lead to a full and satisfying life, we conclude with a discussion of the final component: spirituality. (293)

The Art of Happiness has strains in common with some of the books on Toltec tradition (Carlos Castaneda’s books and The Four Agreements), especially on seeing your enemies positively as opportunities for personal growth. (I am not really surprised, as such ideas might be much more common in non western philosophies in general; I don’t know.) however, I think The Art is by far a much more inspiring yet practical guide, and also easier to apply to life than those books.

the book is written by Cutler, with excerpts from the Dalai Lama’s speeches and their dialogue together. the wording is not particularly graceful or imaginative, but it is clear and precise. it communicates the material quite well.

I know there are those who roll their eyes at “the power of positive thinking”, but when it’s based on a fearlessly honest and realistic view of life, it does wonders. it does wonders for me. I am by no means very advanced in this kind of thing, but I started making consistent efforts down this road several years ago, and I am much happier and calmer and balanced now than before. (and we won’t even talk about when I was a teen.) a lot of life really is the way you see it. The Art of Happiness goes into this in more detail than I’d ever thought about before, and makes some very elegant points (which point out areas I still need to work on, but that I’d been completely unaware of before now).

a bit more here .

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The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli

it’s a remarkably short book. the whole thing with introduction by translator and glossary of important people to know is less than 150 pages. and reading it in the modern age, it doesn’t seem near the scandal that it caused previously. if Machiavelli was a devil, he was at least an honest devil.

nothing very surprising in it, infamy and distortion aside _{much of it I already read quoted anyway. a related book is The 48 Laws of Power – wonderful read}. I read it to know firsthand what it says, and as a counterpoint for the next book up: The Art of Happiness.

Yvgenie, by C.J. Cherryh, and The Professional Stranger, by Michael H. Agar, and Colleges That Change Lives, by Loren Pope

I finished Yvgenie (the third in the trilogy) towards the end of June, just as I was coming down with a cold. I think this may have affected my brain because I’m still not quite sure about the ending.

and I want to reread it a bit later before I do a review or anything.

I went ahead and read The Professional Stranger, which is an informal introduction to ethnography/how to go about writing an ethnography, directed towards anthropology students, and those who wonder about the methods anthropologists use when learning about a group to whom they’re a complete stranger.

it was written in the 70s, and I haven’t read many other such books yet, so I don’t know how up to date or comparable it is. it was recommended, though, and pretty interesting.

I skimmed through Colleges That Change Lives (I read the main premise and skimmed through the actual colleges) last night. it was really eye-opening, and I wish I had read it twenty years ago! (sadly, none of the colleges mentioned were in California. the only ones on the west coast were in Oregon and Washington.) I had no idea there were colleges like St. John’s and Reed and Antioch out there. if you’re interested, the web site is: http://www.ctcl.com/

The City of Dreaming Books, by Walter Moers. 3-1/2

The City of Dreaming Books reads like an overnight collaboration between Dr. Seuss Theodore Geisel, Shel Silverstein, Roald Dahl, and maybe even Robin Williams. Wacky and whimsical, this parody of everything to do with books is inspired and sometimes extremely bizarre. Moers recounts the adventures of a prospective young Zamonian author on his quest to the legendary city of Bookholm to find the world’s greatest writer, personal fame, and the ever-elusive Orm.

A humorous delight for all who like to spend their time reading, or writing too.

The Fortune of War, by Patrick OBrian: 5

I finished this book May 30, but just now got around to typing anything in। I want so much to share these books with you but I don’t want to disclose any of the plot, as there are so many twists and turns along the way, so I hope the following is a somewhat satisfactory summary of why I believe them to be wonderful:

O’Brian pulled off another sensational book, a tale set during the Napoleonic wars but which engenders such a strong human connection to the characters one would never think of the story happening long ago and far away। With that in mind, all the more amazing then is the attention to historical detail and accuracy:

It seems to me that where the Royal Navy and indeed the infant United States Navy are concerned there is very little point in trying to improve the record … and the only liberty I have taken is to place my heroes aboard. And even so, although they are not quite as peripheral as Fabrice on the field of Waterloo, they do not play a decisive part nor bend the course of history in any way. [Author’s note]

As much as microscopic interactions between atoms are what constitute the chair you sit upon, and as interaction between subatomical particles constitute those atoms, and all of these levels _{chair, atoms, subatomic particles} exist at the same time and to the same extent of importance, so the Aubrey-Maturin novels can indeed serve as a reminder that personal experiences _{adventures, calamities, and otherwise- plenty of all!} of individual people are indeed what make up any kind of historical event, and that intrapersonal conflict, struggles, and growth make up those individual people. Layers upon splendid, splendid layers.

O’Brian is a master of the English language, and I always thoroughly enjoy how he administers it and how the characters themselves play around with it _{especially Aubrey and Maturin, who often mix metaphors in jest}. Also I love the shipspeak almost as much as the plot and the characters, which are all so well done- but the shipspeak to me is a new and vibrant way of using language to describe and communicate, and therefore it is poetry. Quoting a section for you here, with Captain Jack Aubrey and the surgeon and intelligence agent _{but not mariner!} Stephen Maturin:

“Boat your oars,” said Jack. “Clap on to the halliard- no, the halliard. God’s death- haul away. Bear a hand, Stephen. Belay. Catch a couple of turns around the kevel- the kevel.”

The scow gave a violent lurch. Jack dropped all, scrambled forward, caught two turns round the kevel and slid back to the tiller. The sail filled, he brought the wind a little abaft the beam, and the scow headed out to sea.

“You are cursed snappish tonight, Jack,” said Stephen. “How do you expect me to understand your altumal cant, without pondering on it? I do not expect you to understand medical jargon, without giving you time to consider the etymology, for all love.”

“Not to know the odds between a halliard and a sheet after all these years at sea: it passes human understanding,” said Jack.

“You are a reasonably civil, complaisant creature on dry land,” said Stephen, “but the moment you are afloat you become pragmatical and absolute, a bashaw- do this, do that, gluppit the prawling strangles, there…” (p. 272)

The Arm of the Starfish, by Madeleine L'Engle.

a gifted American sixteen year-old named Adam gets the opportunity to work for a prominent scientist whose lab is on a little island south of Portugal. his innocence (along with his ability) is the reason he has been chosen for such an internship, but it’s also the reason other forces target him as a way to get to the scientist’s secretive work. dangerous and baffling events keep him wondering who is telling him the truth, what is really going on, and what he should do next.

sometimes I found it a little incredible that the adults in charge of him would let him into some of those situations at all, or leave him alone and unattended as often as they did. sure, it is a coming of age story, but he is a sixteen year old boy in their care.

the story is not particularly amazing, and certainly it does not compare very well to the Time Quartet or even And Both Were Young, but the plot is fast-paced and should keep the younger readers surprised and suspenseful until the dramatic conclusion.

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Desolation Island, by Patrick O'Brian. rating= 5

http://www.wwnorton.com/pob/pobtitles.htm#aubrey

I finished Desolation Island today.

Makes me happy, and sad. I am always happy to be reading such books but never want them to end- even when I have the sequel right there on the shelf and know it already to be a great one.

O’Brian has such descriptive powers and plumbs the depth of the human soul as well as he weaves his myriad threads of war, espionage, family life, politics, the natural world, and survival at sea. Honestly, he blows me away every time. I feel a resounding urge to visit the harbour.

Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson: 5

this is a stunning book, ostensibly about two sisters being raised by their eccentric aunt. the language and story-telling is simply brilliant: amazingly poignant, natural, surprising, and poetic.

a quote to show what I mean:

Water is almost nothing, after all. It is conspicuously different from air only in its tendency to flood and founder and drown, and even that difference may be relative rather than absolute.

The morning that my grandmother did not awaken, Lucille and I had found her crouched on her side with her feet braced against a rumple of bedclothes, her arms flung up, her head flung back, her pigtail trailing across the pillows. It was as if, drowning in air, she had leaped toward ether. What glee there must have been among the few officials who lingered, what a tossing of crepe-banded hats, what a hearty clapping of gloved hands, when my grandmother burst through the spume, so very long after the clouds had closed over the disaster, so long after all hope of rescue had been forgotten. And how they must have rushed to wrap their coats around her, and perhaps embrace her, all of them no doubt flushed with a sense of the considerable significance of the occasion. And my grandmother would scan the shores to see how nearly the state of grace resembled the state of Idaho, and to search the growing crowds for familiar faces. (p. 164-165)

the story itself starts as matter-of-fact as the small Idaho town it is set in, and proceeds (in a manner immeasurably disconcerting to me and as strange as that same small Idaho town) towards a counterintuitively inevitable conclusion. the themes of life and death, loss and memory, reality and imagination are beautifully interwoven and expressed amid an otherworldly sense of nature.

this book should be read and experienced like a poem:

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

_{From The Apple that Astonished Paris by Billy Collins.
Copyright © 1996 by Billy Collins.}

Chernevog, by C.J. Cherryh. 4.5

In Rusalka’s sequel Chernevog, we are once again transported via historical fantasy to pre-Christian Russia with Sasha and Pyetr, who had thought their adventures were over. Sure, they were still living in an enchanted forest whose population included wizards, magical river-things, house-things, yard-things, forest spirits, banniks, and people in various states of being dead... but things had pretty much settled down, and so had Pyetr with his new wife, whom Sasha was ever dutifully trying to appease.

Sasha was not a young boy anymore, and felt out of place in the young couple’s house, and yet he would not leave his best friend Pyetr, and even if he did, there was nowhere for him to go. This, however, was not the reason Pyetr’s wife felt increasingly uncomfortable with him; nor was it because both she and Sasha were wizards, and wizards find it hard to get along together. Rather, she had a most disturbing premonition about who Sasha reminded her of more with each passing day: Uulamets, the wizard who had stifled and tormented her, and who had healed Pyetr just to use him for his own purposes. And yet, as Sasha and Pyetr looked on, she herself was becoming more and more like someone from her past.

A series of unexpected and seemingly trivial occurrences takes a cataclysmic turn, separating the three of them in a forest gone suddenly wrong. Their usual protections failing, doubts proliferate and undermine their alliances, and a most bizarre and unnerving exchange of hearts threatens Sasha and Pyetr’s friendship and the life of them all. One thing becomes resoundingly clear as they struggle to survive: once a wish has been made, it lives on, no matter if the one who made it is now dead and gone…

;)

here is a very apt quote to end with, I think:

“God,” Pyetr said. “I’m going to go talk to my horse. Books make you crazy, you know.” A motion at his head. “Thinking all those crooked little marks mean real things, that’s not sane, you know.” He waved the same hand toward the front door. “Out there is real. Don’t lose track of that.” (p.42)

_{and I note a beautiful wish on page 141.}

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The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank, by Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck, the legend. I didn’t realize how old she was, either. ;) In this book she chronicles her family’s move from a cramped city apartment to the wonders of Suburbia.

mind you, this was back when Suburbia was brand-spanking new, a wild frontier. before there were post offices and schools there. they actually moved in before television became popularly available, which, when you think about it, is a huge cultural change. and fodder for some delightful parodies.

I can relate to her completely in some instances:

“Let me lay it on you, Cleavie, the high spot in my day is taking knots out of shoestrings- with my teeth- that a kid has wet on all day long.” (p. 29)

“For a moment, there was only the silence of a toilet being flushed consecutively, two dogs chasing one another through the living room, a horn honking in the driveway, a telephone ringing insistently, a neighbor calling to her children, the theme of “Gilligan’s Island” blaring on the TV set, a competing stereo of John Denver, one child at my feet chewing a hole in the brown-sugar bag, and a loud voice from somewhere screaming, ‘I’m telling.’” (p. 94)

oh, can I ever relate. ;)

but in other ways, I’m too atypical to relate to her. it really hit home when she was parodying/conveying her desperate loneliness to her friend, who was sitting with her in the house having coffee, and she was constantly interrupted by friends calling her on the phone and showing up on her doorstep out of the blue. and I thought, wow, that is so not my life. that is so not my life that if I dreamt something like that at night, I’d frame it and put it on the wall as it would be the most unrealistic thing I’d dreamt all year, even compared to the dancing rhinoceroses.

it’s brilliant, mind you, but you have to be close enough to her experience for the humor to really shine through. and I never realized how different my personality was from Erma Bombeck’s. (I only read her all the time when I was growing up.) I’m just such an odd duck.

Still love her, though.

---

between the reaction I had to her and to Dave Barry (a growing melancholy!), I think I will just not even pick up Lewis Grizzard’s work. he used to be my favorite of all. but I’m not in the South anymore, and I’m afraid to look and spoil the good memories. ever since he wrote once about being in an airport in the North and being brought Pepsi instead of Coke, and the waiter saying, “It’s the same thing”, and him jumping up out of his seat with “No, By God, it’s not!”... that endeared me to him forever. ;) so, I guess I’ll leave him be, at least for now. even though I’ve always wanted to read his book Elvis Is Dead And I Don’t Feel Too Good Myself.

sounds like my kind of book. but I'll wait.

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Dave Barry Turns 40

or, he turned 40. about 20 years ago! jeesh, I didn’t realize it had been so long.

as usual, Dave Barry had me laughing out loud on and off throughout the book:

on marriage
“Because all of the grand claims your husband made, back when you were dating, about how you two were going to be Equal Housework Partners, turned out to mean in actual practice that he occasionally, with great fanfare, refills the ice-cube tray.” (p. 37)

on politics
“But the biggest problem I have with both major political parties is that they seem to be competing in some kind of giant national scavenger hunt every four years to see who can find the biggest goober to run for President.” (p. 124)

on memory
“If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you’d find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Right? Even as you read these words, your brain, which cannot remember more than two words of your wedding vows, is cheerfully singing:

Come and listen to my story ‘bout a man named Jed…” (p.165)

and on the aging body. etc.

Yet.

and yet. I don’t read the paper anymore, and I hardly ever read Barry’s column online (though sometimes gems are sent my way), so it had been a while. and I realized reading through it now that his humor works because he is, in his own words, his own description of his humor here, “irresponsible and vicious”. and it was funny but it was way too true sometimes to be really funny, you know? so I had mixed feelings all the way through.

Barry is not always just making jokes, and there is a short section of the book in which he is deadly serious, and makes a brutal point, and I’m glad he did that; what he said was important. but it lead me even further into this strange melancholy.

what a strange creature I am if I get depressed reading Dave Barry. I think it is a sign of how detached I’ve become from my “own” culture…

See more progress on: read all the books on my lists, type them up in my reading journal, and catalog them with LibraryThing

The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz.

ok, this could take a while to discuss, as it is meant to be how to change your life and is meant to provide you with a practical philosophical guide for doing so.

even if the book is incredibly short.

I have a goal just for this book.

first off I will say that, yes, I’ve read Carlos Castaneda’s books and, no, I don’t consider them to be very anthropological! they are also an exploration of and discussion of the Toltec tradition that The Four Agreements draws from. I consider all these works to be a kind of grand thought experiment which is highly interesting to read sometimes and always gives you something to think about, including your own cultural assumptions that you might not even have been aware of before. that is about as anthropological as it gets.

I don’t really want to go into the whole nagual thing; primarily as it isn’t necessary to the rest of the discussion.

The four agreements (through which it is said you can change your life from being a passive victim/active judge caught up in a never-ending cycle of condemning yourself and everyone around you for not attaining some mystical perfection that is the cultural ideal… to being more in control of your own thoughts, emotions, actions, and reactions and therefore free to live your life in love and contented peace even in the midst of this crazy world of ours… are, basically, one agreement. with three more specific aspects of the first agreement.

So, really, for the sake of honesty and felicity, the book should be entitled: The Agreement. ;p

Be impeccable with your word. That’s the main agreement.

What am I talking about, agreement? Ruiz says that we are conditioned in childhood to agree to things that we don’t really want to, but as children cannot argue much with, and that we come to think of those ways of thinking as the only possible or real ways. In fact, we forget that we ever agreed to anything at all, we just think there is only one way and that’s the way it’s always been. Mostly they are a lot of small agreements that even cancel each other out or are in conflict with each other. The example is given how a small child is happily singing and playing and her tired mother snaps at her because of a headache. The child unwittingly believes that yes, her singing must be horrible, or her mother wouldn’t have snapped. And so she no longer sings in that carefree childlike manner, ever again, because in the back of her head she thinks she sings badly, and this causes her doubt and grief. She doesn’t sing around other people, or even just for the joy of it, but only reluctantly, and if anyone overheard her, they’d hear how timid and uncomfortable she is with her singing, and so reinforce the idea she cannot sing well.

And yet, the idea that she sings badly has no real ground. Her mother just had a headache and snapped mindlessly at her. She actually sings fine. Or she used to, before she became hesitant and guilty about it, before she started comparing herself unfavorably to those who sang very well.

By agreeing with her mother’s comment, and notice the mother did not even do that on purpose, she would never have done that on purpose, the girl has actually changed the way she sings (except she doesn’t even sing anymore). As an adult she may not even remember the incident or know why she feels so self-conscious about singing. But she still has this agreement in her head (that she sings badly).

There are billions of such agreements we make in the course of a lifetime, and this book discusses how to become aware of them, change them, or get rid of them altogether.

It is, rather obviously, a formidable task.

Yet the first, and main, agreement can eventually, when followed diligently, change those other agreements which are holding us down.

Be impeccable with your word. This means using what you say, including your self-talk, positively for the best for yourself. It also includes not lying, gossiping, or saying hurtful things to others, as this can only come back to hurt you, and therefore isn’t the best for yourself.

This agreement includes the other three (basically,):
Don’t take things personally
Don’t assume
and
Always do your best

Don’t take things personally. Nothing belongs to you, you belong to no one… in the context that death could take you (or your loved ones) at any moment (all the more reason to be alive). Also because all of us literally live in our own little worlds. We interpret reality subjectively and then project that subjective reality onto everything and everyone around us. (This is actually WHY the four agreements can change your life; the way you interpret things is how you experience them.) Nothing anybody ever does is because of you and your reality, but is always because of their interpretation of reality and events, even their interpretation of your behavior.

It really isn’t about you, so don’t take it personally.

I am trying to find a thought I posted about that before, about taking things personally. I asked something about, if you aren’t supposed to take the things your friends do personally, then how does that affect your relationship with your friends? Can you have any real connection to other people if you don’t take it personally? as this post is already huge, if I find that previous thought I’ll tack it on as a comment.

I am still wondering a bit about that one…

I think the idea is more that, another person’s behavior (good or bad) is not based on you or your behavior or even objective reality. it’s based on their own subjective interpretation of things. and when you interpret their behavior, keep that in mind. you have control over how you interpret what they say, think, and do; and you certainly don’t let to need their behavior dictate your response.

The way you live your life should be, well, like the prayer: with acceptance for the things you cannot change, with courage for the things you can change, and with the ability (by not assuming) to know the difference. The idea is toward a joyful acceptance of life and an unconditional love towards all life.

So, maybe you don’t have the same kind of connection with certain people (???) but you have more of a connection with everyone in general…?

Don’t assume includes don’t assume what others mean, and also don’t assume what others know… which has been my personal dilemma. I have (hopefully had as I’ve been working on this for months now and I don’t do it near as often anyway) been in the habit of assuming that other people knew what I was thinking or feeling, especially those close to me. They don’t. You have to tell them, show them. You have to make the effort, just like you have to make the effort of finding out what others mean or how they feel, by asking them, etc. You can’t know their reality any other way, and they can’t know yours any other way either.

Don’t assume also includes not assuming anything about yourself, either. Find out how you sometimes gloss over your abilities or weaknesses and be more honest with yourself, ask yourself the right questions about these things. Certainly I need more work in this department, as I usually think I can either walk through walls or can do nothing at all. At least, that is something I’ve been working on.

Always do your best. As Mr. Rogers often told us, your best will vary from day to day, under different circumstances. When you are hot, hungry, and sleep-deprived, your best will not be as good as when you are comfortable, well-fed, and well-rested. But by always doing your best, the best you can at any given moment, you need never feel guilty again. If a voice in your head says, You yelled at the dog again and you know better than that, you ought to be ashamed yelling at a dog, who doesn’t even understand and only wants to please you… You can stop all that negative self-talk with “I did my best, and my best will get better.” It also works when others judge you or speak down to you; you can always answer “I did my best”.

And, your best will get better, because practicing putting these agreements into action makes it easier to do over time.

This book leaves questions but perhaps that is a good way to get started on the road to reinventing your life: asking questions. Not saying it is a philosophical masterpiece, but surely an interesting think.

3-1/2 stars?

See more progress on: read all the books on my lists, type them up in my reading journal, and catalog them with LibraryThing

The Mansion, by William Faulkner (5)

wow.

this is the third of the Snopes trilogy, which follows the life of a certain Flem Snopes in his rise from a crook-in-the-road tenant farmer to bank president in Jefferson, Mississippi. in the first two books, we got a good look at what makes Flem Snopes in particular and the Snopes clan in general tick, through various characters including the incredibly interesting V.K. Ratliff (he’s my favorite of them all). we were witness to various shenanigans, adventures, and plots; the shifting of power in a family dynasty, a hamlet, and a city; and one especially cold-blooded and disturbing murder. it is in turns bizarre, horrible, hilarious, and utterly believable because it’s just too absurd to be made up.

in this perfect conclusion, Flem’s wife Eula (easily the most disturbing character, to me) is gone but not forgotten as the daughter Linda has come of age. the city attorney Gavin Stephens cannot seem to wrest his fate away from the course Eula set it on; the ubiquitous, inscrutable V.K. Ratliff cannot seem to wrest Gavin back on the right track either; and the reader cannot help but wince knowing something is going to come down. but, after all, that is why it’s called fate.

together with Gavin’s now-grown nephew Charles, Gavin and V.K. maintain their vigil against all things Snopes (including a battle to keep one out of Congress itself) as the second World War changes the economy, the voting demographics, and the way of life in Jefferson.

shut away from the world and all its upheavals is the deceivingly diminutive Mink Snopes, serving life in the penitentiary for the murder mentioned above. but Mink has unfinished business on the outside, and he is just biding his time surely, steadily, with an unearthly patience and simple-minded insanity.

but with Snopeses, one never knows what exactly to expect: Gavin isn’t the only one caught up in fate, and Mink isn’t the only one with a score to settle…

See more progress on: read all the books on my lists

Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot, by Richard Restak (3.5)

Finished this last night (March 30). (and I actually finished Faulkner’s The Mansion before that on Friday night, March 28; so that’s coming soon.)

First of all, is it just me, and if so what does this say about my brain, but I didn’t find any passage explaining the title in the whole book. Did I miss something? I mean, I get it. Both Mozart and fighter pilots have practiced their skills and so developed their brains to be quite different from each other; the brain is very plastic and has the potential for one or more of a vast array of “intelligences”... That’s what he meant, right? Or did is there a big old paragraph right at the
front that compares the right/left hemispheres of the brain to Mozart/fighter pilots?

Well, anyway.

The book is about understanding how your brain works in order to better facilitate learning and memory. There are many exercises he mentions to improve your memory and help you from being scatter-brained or attention-deprived (so just about all the current generation could sign up, especially me). There are exercises to use one part of the brain and then the other. etc.

The most illuminating thing for me in the whole book was the revelation that, if your brain is “tired” from too much reading, say, and you need a break, then what you need a break from is not just the book/screen but language in general, especially written. It’s a certain part of your brain that’s tired. Switching the tv on and watching a soap opera isn’t going to help. You’re still listening to language (albeit corny melodramatic language). (That would be like, if your eyes got too tired to read anymore so you decided to watch tv. You’re not giving your eyes a break that way.) What you really need to do is to close your eyes and listen to some music (without lyrics), or maybe do a puzzle, or, in short, use another part of your brain and let the language part catch
up with whatever it’s processing.

A break of just five to fifteen minutes doing something else, using a different part of your brain, and you probably can go back to reading and feel fine again. (Unless you were reading something really hairy, in which case, maybe you should take an hour off!)

A related bit of information was that there are two types of tired: one type of tired (mostly just kind of drowsy) should be dealt with different that another (cranky and grouchy). If you are getting cranky, the only thing that is going to help is to sleep (or, at least, lying down with your eyes closed and relaxing in that way for about 20 minutes, just as if you took a nap).

Another important thing I learned (which I already knew but this put it into perspective) is that you need to use all these different parts of your brain, not just once in a while, but all the time. Take time to listen to music, do crossword puzzles, play chess, play a musical instrument, do some exercise that requires balance; without getting technical, learn what different parts of your brain do and then make sure to exercise all the different parts of your brain.

Being “smart” or intelligent is not just about learning geometry or speaking 12 languages. There are all kinds of smart, and, the more you practice each part of your brain, the better your overall brain will function. This is because when you learn something or reinforce something you’ve learned through practice, then your brain is stimulated to create new synaptic pathways and reinforce old pathways, not only in that specific part of the brain, but in the entire brain.

Play on your strengths in life, to be sure. But also try and practice those areas in which you consider yourself to be average at best and weak at worst. Your goal is not to heroically overcome these weaknesses, but to encourage your brain to build more pathways and make things overall easier for you, even those things you’re not so good at. Never good at band? Try to pick up a musical instrument now. Try something different. Planning to go to Hawaii some day? Who knows? The ukulele might be your thing. But it’s just for fun, for a change, for the betterment of your brain.

Which reminds me that I am woefully behind in learning how to paint, how to play chess, how to speak Russian, how to make a birdhouse, how to balance with both feet on the ground much less do yoga or tai chi… But now that I know how all of this could work together to my advantage, I’m going to look at my schedule and see how I can revamp it to my benefit. Hell, I might even get something done.

He (a neurologist, neuropsychiatrist, and clinical professor of neurology) advises keeping a journal. I’m not great at that, although I have become much better since I started 43things (I’m on LiveJournal). You can sit down and look at an entry from, say, two years ago, and what you’re actually doing is looking at you two years ago and how you were thinking. Just reading the entry will jog your memory about other things that were happening in your life then. Also, it helps you to keep track of your ideas and how they evolve over time.

He also recommends doing a reading journal. _grins Yes, like mine, which I never thought of as a reading journal but that’s a great name for it. I have to say, I hadn’t really thought about it, but writing my thoughts down about what I read and reviewing what I read has lead me to be a more critical and involved reader overall. He recommends wide reading and also reading more slowly the important things, maybe reading them aloud or listening to audio recordings of the books. And I have to say, that listening to the audio lectures I have for the last two years or so has slowed down my reading so that I’m not just skimming through everything.

Ok well I shouldn’t just tell you the whole book; and I haven’t, I assure you. Restak explains the workings of the brain quite simply, with ideas and exercises to help you better develop your brain, and with resources at the end of the book to help you even further. It’s a quick read at 200 pages, and I enjoyed it.

See more progress on: read all the books on my lists

The Trial, Franz Kafka. 4.5

I finished this one a while ago, actually. 2nd of March.

This is a hard one to review… it seems so much has already been said about it. In fact, the introduction basically states that nothing more could possibly be added to the conversation revolving around The Trial, because it has been analyzed and discussed for so long among so many people, and because the novella introspectively analyzes itself.

Joseph K, a high-ranking bank clerk, wakes up one morning to find that he’s under arrest. We never learn what the charge is, and neither does Joseph K. Yet he can live out his daily life (going to work, etc) as normal, and the court is very polite about accomodating his schedule as to when he needs to show up for interrogations. This entire court system, which is separate from the normal court system, is such an underfunded sprawling bureaucracy that the lower courts don’t know anything about the higher courts, the court magistrates confuse one defendant for another, and the entire process is carried out in the attics of the poorest tenant housing in the city, where the air itself is unbreathable.

All very symbolic of course.

Joseph K. progresses from completely dismissing the importance of any such trial (seeing the state of the courts), to gradually becoming so obsessed (and mesmerized) with it and the special court system that he willingly, almost mindlessly, accepts the fate they hand out as inevitable and desirable. Perhaps it is because they are so quiet and polite about it, while they are leading him to a barbaric end.

An exploration of the absurdity of the individual’s conformity to culture, and yes of life itself (the major statement), this book examines the main character as ruthlessly as it does the society.

Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes once drew a comic that would sum up Joseph K. Imagine Calvin here as Joseph:

You get the idea.

The bizarre and astonishing description of the trial procedure (what we can ever know of it, told through the character of Joseph K’s lawyer and also a portrait painter of the judges), (which sadly presages terrors in the real world later) is, unbelievable but true, completely outdone by a parable told by the court’s parishioner (since WHEN do courts have their own affiliated parishioners?), which could make one severely question the idea of blind faith in anything.

This is a book that will leave you thinking for a long, long while, and have you rereading it again and again to see if possibly you can get a better grasp on it this time around. You never will; it’s absurdity, and Kafka’s statement on the point of life.

See more progress on: read all the books on my lists

Never in Anger, by Jean L. Briggs: 4.5

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/BRINEV.html

this book might be alternatively titled: Misadventures in Anthropology.

When grad student Jean L. Briggs signed on for an extended stay in the Canadian arctic with the Inuit Utku (Utkuhikhalingmiut, in full), she brought entirely too much baggage with her, both literally and figuratively speaking. Her head filled with a strange combination of romanticized notions of the Inuit, horror stories of arctic cold and famine, and Western cultural predispositions, she found it increasingly hard to study, much less understand, what was going on in the camp around her. It was only after her 17 month sojourn as an adopted Utku daughter was over that she could look past her frazzled attempts to speak the horribly complicated language, learn necessary survival skills, eat frozen raw fish, scales and all, and type up field notes without the igloo (iklu) dripping on them, as well as past her burgeoning depression; and see how her inward refusal to actually adopt the role of daughter as the Utku saw it, her inability to conform (or even to see the need to conform) to the cultural expectation of calm, happy behavior, and her insistance on every bit of her overwhelming load of supplies being carried during every move, all played a part in making her a burden to the society that eventually ostracized her in response.

_{I think I need to put more clauses in that last sentence. it needs to be longer. :P brain not quite up to par today}

To be sure, Briggs was working between 1963 and 1965, when there were no standards of ethics so to speak regarding being up front and honest with the people you want to study… by telling them you want to study them. Briggs surely was more ethical than some of the kaplunas (the Utku word for, roughly, “whitey”) they encountered during her stay; but when she said she wanted to learn the Utku skills, it lead to misunderstandings when she did not follow through, when she later said she only wanted to write about the skills and ways of life, instead of practicing the skills herself. (It is much different to adopt a grown daughter who will be another helper around the house and lighten the workload than it is to adopt a grown daughter who is as helpless and moody in many ways as a child.)

Also to be sure, she learned much about the Utku that had not previously been understood, and in some cases, she would have had no way of knowing the egregious mistakes she was committing beforehand. (In other cases, however, she was blinded by misconceptions and her own biases.) Her most fatal misunderstanding, and, later, insightful revelation, led to the title of the book.

In a small, isolated community surrounded by a merciless environment, being angry serves no good purpose. Life is full of hardships and sorrows, but taking it personally is childish and absurd. The blizzard did not descend upon you because it was trying to get you. The starving dogs did not break into your cache of fish to flout your authority. Your sibling did not get sick and die because of anything you did. Life just happens. Raging at life not only doesn’t change anything for the better, but it makes your view of the world darker and less enjoyable. Also, anger at any of the few people who share your life can only drive them away from you, or cause hostilities between you, and cause you more grief and pain. In Utku society, where people depend on each other for life and death, disruption of society is an unacceptable risk. A person who cannot accept the ups and downs of life (including generously and happily doing the work that such hardships entail or incur, and laughing good naturedly at the disjointed humor of it all) is childish at best and a danger to other people at most.

The Utku way of gradually teaching children to control their emotions (so that nobody over the age of 10 would dare be caught crying even at a death or losing their temper over anything) and their way of dealing with aberrations (at least during the time the book was written) is impressive as well.

This is a fascinating book, both because of what went right and because of what didn’t. Definitely worth reading.

_{Reading through, especially the last chapter where she explains in hindsight her snowballing faux pas, I kept thinking of Bren. Paidhis truly are a combination of anthropologists, ambassadors, linguists, and field agents.}

I am really losing steam now; I have to go to bed. It’s pretty bad if I’m falling asleep during my own review ;D

See more progress on: read all the books on my lists

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

finished it last Monday, before the flu.

what an eye-opener. I’d think that if, in an effort to get rid of mosquitos, an area was sprayed, and then ALL the birds and fish and small animals in the area DIED of obvious chemical poisoning, and people got sick, and the MOSQUITOS WERE FINE… then you’d stop spraying and try something else, not spray again and again year after year with same results. that’s the government for you.

yes, I know, they’ve banned DDT. but the same attitudes and lack of scientific method prevail overall. and specifically, they still use chemicals on our food (to the extent of genetically modified roundup ready crops)and there are still chemicals in the water that we don’t even know the effects of… or, we KNOW that they’re harmful, which is worse… organic, anyone?

chemical mutagens indeed. and when the book was written, in the 60s, predictions of a substantial increase in children born with developmental problems and defects, which has btw come true.

thank god she got the ball rolling. it’s not rolling real fast, mind you, but at least it’s rolling.

See more progress on: read all the books on my lists

H.M.S. Surprise and The Mauritius Command, by Patrick O'Brian. rating = 5

what wonderful, delightful reads O’Brian provides! you get all the real-life accuracy a historical novel can afford, the in-depth character studies that are rarely achieved without stream-of-consciouness (unless you are O’Brian or Achebe and their level), all the action of a thriller, and the suspense, plot twists, and carefully deliberated story of a spy novel. with such living and colorful prose!

I feel like I can’t tell you what they are all about, though, more than that… what if I gave something away? some absolutely dreadful things happen, along with some normal yet brilliantly wonderful things, as happens in life. I thoroughly enjoy these books and am glad I’ve only read 4 out of the 21 in the series. so many more to look forward too!

and then I can read them all again! :)

here is one bit from The Mauritius Command, that can’t give anything away:

“A capital notion,” said Jack. “It has always seemed absurd to me, that islands should not be English- unnatural.”

_{and I had to smile about St. Jago on 134 of HMS Surprise.}

And Both Were Young, by Madeleine L'Engle. 4.5- 5

I finally got to this one yesterday, and once I picked it up, I had to finish it all the way through. Ok, I did have to actually make supper and such, but it was only reluctantly that I did so.

One of L'Engle's earliest works, this edition rewritten once the traditional taboo against mentioning things like death and sexual attraction in young adult literature was lifted, and basically restored to the original manuscript L'Engle had in mind. Truly a delightful story for young readers from a young writer. A young girl from Connecticut matures into her own self-confidence and begins to understand greater social realities through the loss of her mother, the finding of a soulmate, and a year in a Scandinavian boarding school, not long after the horrors of World War II.

Someday I will make it to Scandinavia; I just know it. And I might even learn how to ski without impaling myself on my own said skis. If Flip can do it, surely I can too.

(I'm a name nerd, and I love the name Philippa. Yet I wouldn't call her Flip, Flippet, and certainly never Pill. The appropriate nickname is Pippin! Oh, well...)

The Town, by William Faulkner. 5

Jefferson, Mississippi, meet Flem Snopes.

And yet, can it be that Jefferson and Flem might actually get along?

Faulkner's stream of consciousness style does wonders for realism. The story is always being told by one character at a time, and when it switches to another character's point of view we may get an amazingly different take on events, and yet no point of view is much more believable than another. Ah, the human mind, as it imbues the world around it with subjective meaning. As it fugues along sometimes in self-argument, so that the premise or action which was completely dismissed out of hand a page or so ago has now been accepted as a wonderful solution and why didn't I think of that before? (I am never like that ;) ) Indeed it wouldn't be far from the truth to say that we all live in our own little worlds sometimes, from the lawyer Gavin to his kid nephew Charles to the ubiquitous V.K. Ratliff.

I have to say that I am quite relieved Faulkner did not try to write from a feminine perspective in this book (I believe he did in As I Lay Dying, though I can't remember, that was ages ago). Mostly because of the opinions of his characters regarding women. I don't know (probably don't want to know) if those opinions were Faulkner's own, but I'm still relieved. I think it is hard for an author to write such a personal, in-depth point of view as stream of consciouness from the other gender's perspective, man or woman; such that it may only be possible if the character in question is quite slow or eccentric or sick. And I certainly don't want to know what Eula Snopes was thinking... she quite disturbs me!

The names, a word about the names. I'm not sure that Faulkner was thinking, because I myself have lived in the South and, um, yes, back out in the sticks there are sometimes names like this. Especially from people like the Snopes. Still... Flem and Eck as given names? First and middle combinations like Wallstreet Panic, Montgomery Ward, and Admiral Dewey? Plus the lovely sibling combination of Clarence and the twins Vardaman and Bilbo. or the sibs Byron and Virgil. Although we do get one lovely Russian name hidden in there, unsuspecting. Certainly never a dull moment in nomenclature...

Or descriptions, as I said in The Hamlet, and will likely say again for every single Faulkner work. One long quote, permit me, please (and you can't know how perfect it is until you know the character and the situation):

There are stars now, just pricking out as you watch them among the others already coldly and softly burnin; the end of day is one vast green soundless murmur up the northwest toward the zenith. Yet it is as though light werenot being subtracted from earth, drained from earth backward and upward inot that cooling green, but rather had gathered, pooling for an unmoving moment yet, among the low places of the ground so that ground, earth itself is luminous and only the dense clumps of trees are dark, standing darkly and immobile out of it.

Then, as though at signal, the firelflies---lightning-bugs of the Mississippi child's vernacular---myriad and frenetic, random and frantic, pulsing; not questing, not quiring, but choiring as if they were tiny incessant appeaseless voices, cries, words. And you stand suzerain and solitary above the whole sum of your life beneath that incessant ephemeral spangling. 315

on Poetry:

But then, poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple natural instince are exalted and terrified by it. 88

on Berets:

... and a black thing on his head kind of drooping over one side like an empty cow's bladder made out of black velvet... 120

on Courtly Love (not Courtney Love):

"By Cicero, Gavin," Father said. "You're losing ground. Last time you at least picked out a Spanish-american War hero with an E.M.F. sportster. Now the best you can do is a Golden Gloves amateur with a homemade racer. Watch yourself, bud, or next time you'll have a boy scout defying you to mortal combat with a bicycle." 187

on Childhood (ok, this is long, too. so just part of it, then):

...when it occurs to you that maybe the sensible and harmless things they won't let you do really seem as silly to them as the things they seem either to want to do or have to do seem to you. No: it's when they laugh at you and suddenly you say, Why, maybe I am funny, and so the things they do are not outrageous or silly or shocking at all: they're just funny; and more than that, it's the same funny. 304 (& the rest of that paragraph)

A few last words (go read it yourself):

...that no man deserves love since nature did not equip us to bear it but merely to endure and survive it... 305

She didn't sound like a snake because snakes can't talk. But if dentist's drills could talk she would have sounded just like one. 180

The last little vingette of the story was really bizarre, and almost seemed like an add-on, but it was out-and-out Snopes for sure.

Oh, and, yes, this is where Snopes.com gets its name: from Faulkner's Snopes.

so in 2007 I read:

in order:

Anthills of the Savannah, Chinua Achebe (5)
Foreigner, C.J. Cherryh (CJC)
Invader, CJC
Inheritor, CJC
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Precursor, CJC
Defender, CJC
Explorer, CJC
Destroyer, CJC
Pretender, CJC
Deliverer, CJC (I was re-reading the series up to this new release here)
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Shirley, Charlotte Bronte (5)
Villette, Charlotte Bronte
The Professor, Charlotte Bronte
A Rage to Live, John O’Hara (5)
Bambert’s Book of Missing Stories, Reinhardt Jung
read part of Orlando Furioso, Ludivico Ariosto/Guido Waldman
Hunter of Worlds, CJC
No Future Without Forgiveness, Archbishop Desmond Tutu (5)
Too Far From Home, Chris Jones
Rider at the Gate, CJC
Hammerfall, CJC
Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brian (5)
The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka (5)
The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad
The Stranger, Albert Camus (5)
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
Arrow of God, Chinua Achebe (5)
The Hamlet, William Faulkner (5)
Post Captain, Patrick O’Brian (5)
The World According to Mister Rogers & The Mister Rogers Parenting Book
The Overcoat, and The Nose, Nikolai Gogol (5)
Rusalka, CJC

which makes a grand total of… about 35.

of those, 11 got my highest rating (5). it was a good year :)