Good Links:
Books to read, with recommendations and warnings
Books on:
Harry Potter.
Buddhism.
How to Write Poetry.
Handwriting.
Learning Spanish.
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Best books read:
2002.
2003.
2004.
2005.
2006.
2007.
2008.
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The Children of Men
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The Pesthouse (2007)
by Jim Crace. Remarkable novel about a dystopia in a future world where North America loses its population and its nationwide organization. What is of rare and great value, however, is loyalty and love. Book log of The Pesthouse. |
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Autobiography of Red: a Novel in Verse (1998)
by Anne Carson. Brilliant. Striking movement of a legend into the modern world. Other writers have compared Anne Carson favorably to Louise Glück. Carson has a more interesting voice, in this book, compared with anything by Glück. Book log of Autobiography of Red: a Novel in Verse. |
| The Brief History of the Dead |
The Brief History of the Dead (2006)
by Kevin Brockmeier.
Web log of The Brief History of the Dead. |
| The Almost Moon |
The Almost Moon (2007) by Alice Sebold.
Web log of The Almost Moon. |
| Arcadia |
Arcadia (1992)
by Jim Crace. Wonderful. Read it. |
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A Year of Living Your Yoga (2006)
by Judith Hanson Lasater. A book of daily aphorism, spoken by Judith Hanson Lasater over thirty years of Yoga classes and jotted down by her faithful student and scribe Kathy Vasquez. Lasater adds a suggestion of how to put each aphorism into practice. Light-handed, unpreachy, and delightful. Book log of A Year of Living Your Yoga. |
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blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005)
by Malcolm Gladwell. Terrific book. Very readable. Insightful about practical social psychology and cognitive psychology. Biopsychology, Cognitive Psychology, and Personality Psychology. Includes one of the best impressions for a non-autist for how a person with autism experiences situations with people. Book log of blink. |
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Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels
by Scott McCloud. A great introduction (with lots of exercises and notes) to creating the images and words of comics. Includes many frames drawn by (and credited to) other comics authors. Book log of Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels. |
| The Niagara River |
The Niagara River (2005)
by
Kay Ryan.
Great. Maybe her best yet. Keeps her at the top of my list of best poets that I read and reread. Web log of The Niagara River. |
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Lullaby (2002)
by Chuck Palahniuk.
The core question that the book asks is: what would you do if you discovered an ancient 'culling'
lullaby poem that, after being incanted to someone that you want to die, causes that person to die
painlessly and without a mark -- SIDS for everyone, as it were.
It seems that anyone can
behave like a criminal.
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East of Eden
by John Steinbeck. In the nine months of 1951, when John Steinbeck was writing East of Eden, he warmed up for the day by writing in his Journal of a Novel, to help him warm up before he began the writing for the day. It is fascinating to see how Journal of a Novel records his clarity of story and intention. And very creepy to see how wicked characters of the story develop. More at web log of East of Eden. |
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Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient
Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages (2003)
by Richard E. Rubenstein. A delightful fast-paced chronicle of the influence of Aristotle (384-322 BCE), the fourth-century-BCE philosopher, on major Western religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), and the enthusiasms, obsessions, insights, and wars among Christian followers and opposers of Aristotle's teachings. Aristotle created a new system of philosophy that focused on the material world, whose operations he explained by a series of causes. In the second and third centuries C.E., Western Christian scholars suppressed Aristotle's teachings, which seemed to challenge their doctrines of faith and God's supernatural power. By the seventh century, Muslims discover Aristotle's writings and his rationalist philosophy and principles of logic. In the mid-twelfth century, Europe scholars translated Aristotle's great works from Arabic into Latin, particularly Aristotle's De Anima [On the Soul]. The religious establishment reeled under the re-covered new concepts of the natural world and the soul of man. More at web log of Aristotle's Children. |
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The Lovely Bones, an amazing first novel by Alice Sebold.
Anyone involved in grieving and mourning for the dead and the dying might find this a consoling book, especially when listening to the calm and sensitive reading on CD by Alyssa Bresnaban. An added benefit of the CD is an interview with Alice Sebold. Web log of The Lovely Bones. | |
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Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code:
See our review. |
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Feet of Clay (1996)
by Terry Pratchett.
A hilarious murder mystery in a parallel universe. Explores issues of freedom and trust. Centers on Sam Vimes, Captain Carrot, Angua, Cheri, and Dorfl. The Patrician Vetinari puts in a death-defying act. More favorites from the many reviewed books by Terry Pratchett: |
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Gilgamesh (a new English version)
translated by Stephen Mitchell. Brilliant. The world's oldest epic (from 1700 BCE) tells of Gilgamesh, psychopath, two-thirds god, and king of Uruk (today's Iraq), his criminal behavior against his own people, his brotherhood with the wildman Enkidu, his preemptive attacks, and his journey to the underworld of death. Web log of Gilgamesh. |
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The Power of Negative Thinking:
Using Defensive Pessimism to Harness Anxiety and Perform at your Peak (2001)
by Julie Norem.
Compare with Seligman's Learned Optimism (Seligman). Page devoted to The Power of Negative Thinking by Julie Norem. Web log of The Power of Negative Thinking. |
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Never Let Me Go
( 2005)
by Kazuo Ishiguro. This is his best yet. I'm especially admiring how precisely he has captured the voice of the type of English woman that is his protagonist. It's a macabre story though: 'Set in late 1990s England, in a parallel universe in which humans are cloned and raised expressly to "donate" their healthy organs and thus eradicate disease from the normal population, this is an epic ethical horror story, told in devastatingly poignant miniature.' (Publishers Weekly.) Should be nominated for the the 2005 Booker Prize. |
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Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
( 2004)
by Steven Johnson. Great! One of the Best of 2004. "Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal story telling, and fresh scientific discovery, Steven Johnson describes how the brain works, its chemicals, structures, and subroutines." |
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Homage to Catalonia (1938)
by George Orwell.
A riveting book, and one of the few to clarify the mysterious Spanish Civil War. In 1936, Eric Blair (the novelist, critic, and political satirist who used the pseudonym George Orwell) went to Spain to write about the Spanish Civil War, and to enlist in a Socialist Republican militia. During 1936 and 1937, he fought in support of the Republican government, against the attempted take-over by Franco's Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. But Franco and his fellow-Fascists defeated the legally elected socialist Republican government of Spain. Orwell has said: "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it." See our review. |
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Number 10 (2003)
by Sue Townsend.
More than a farce, Number 10 is an epic journey around Britain in the Tony Blair years. See our web log review. |
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Walking to Martha's Vineyard (2003)
by Franz Wright.
This book is a blessing of amazing poems - poems that met Emily Dickinson's test, for they take off the top of my head. Many of Franz Wright's poems begin in the physical of what is happening just here and just now, and they leap through space and time, and between the outside world and the heart's interior. |
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The Master (2004)
by Colm Toíbín.
A historical novel that probes the fictional mind and passions of author Henry James much as he once probed the fictional minds and passions of his relatives and friends. A worthy short-listed nominee for the 2004 Booker Prize. See our web log review. |
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The Body Artist
by
Don DeLillo.
See our web log review. |
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Nine Horses (2003)
by Billy Collins.
See our web log review. |
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An Instance of the Fingerpost (1998)
by Iain Pears.
A murder mystery set in the year 1663, in Oxford, England, during the Restoration and its hydra head of political intrigue. Written in 4 different voices, by 4 men each with different social rank, political allegiance, and personal agenda, and each with his own link to the mystic Sarah. |
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Borderliners (1994)
by Peter Høeg.
An unusual and fascinating book about an attempt to integrate children with mental illness into a "normal" school (Biehl's Academy), and how the school fails them, and how the children try to help and heal each other. The "borderliners" are children that don't fit in to "normal" categories of children, such as for having psychological difficulties. The "borderline" children intermix with "normal" and privileged children, and struggle to understand who they are and what is happening. A surreal and haunting story. |
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Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance
[or should that be 'Zero-Tolerance' with a hyphen]
Approach to Punctuation
(2003)
by Lynne Truss.
A hilarious and readable (5 sunny hours) book on punctuation.
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The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life by Twyla Tharp.
This, the best book I read in 2003, inspires the reader to move into the creative zone and do the work essential to being any kind of professional artist. Twyla Tharp (the leading and innovative choreographer) is a brilliant mentor and a no-nonsense delight. Brendan McCarthy, in her marvelous review in Ballet Magazine, writes: [Twyla Tharp] is a Puritan, has great certainties and is impatient of ambiguity ("I don't like grey. That is how I am."). ... The core of her argument is in the book's title: that creativity is less a matter of genius than of disciplined work habits. Her rituals ... matter; not merely because they shape her day, but because they are a source of strength when creativity is barren and inspiration comes slow. Read the book. Do the exercises. Do your art. And check our review. |
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Life of Pi
by Yann Martel.
A tale of a sea voyage, survival, a tiger (even though I don't believe the tiger existed), animal training, and hope laced with terrified vigilance and the intelligence of the spirit. |
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Poetry Speaks
edited by Elise Paschen and Rebekah Presson Mosby; CD advisory editors Robert Pinsky,
Rita Dove, and Dana Gioia.
Best collection of poetry read this year. A book with 3 audio CDs. Hear the voices of 42 poets reading their own work. Curious on what you might have heard at a reading by the Victorian, Alfred, Lord Tennyson? Or T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, William Butler Yeats, Gertrude Stein, Robert Browning, or Ogden Nash? Hear these and more. The book, organized chronologically by date of birth of each poet, shows for each a picture of a poet, notes on the poet's life, and a critical essay by a modern poet or essayist. Handwritten notes by the poet and several of their poems complete each section. |
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Interpreter of Maladies
by Jhumpa Lahiri.
This collection of 9 stories won Jhumper Lahiri a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize. The prose is strong and delicate, like a sword with filigree on its handle. The endings of many of these stories are sad or poignant, and yet just and "true" in the way Hemingway meant that word when he said, "Write something true." These stories are set among families immigrating from India to Europe or North America. The humanity of Jhumpa Lahiri characters, and their struggles, have a background of customs of food, dress, and veneration of families in or from India. Our empathy with the characters lets that background become more familiar. Her tales of immigrants abroad and outcasts at home reminds us of our own possibilities to be immigrant or outcast. |
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One Hundred Poems from the Japanese
by Kenneth Rexroth (Translator)
Classical Japanese poetry, selected and translated by Kenneth Rexroth. Mostly from Manyoshu (A.D. 759) and Kokinshu (A.D. 905) collections of poems. Most of his selections are 5-line "short poems" or tanka (though Rexroth writes them as quatrains), such as: The mists rise over
The still pools at Asuka.
Memory does not
Pass away so easily.
with a sampling of Naga Uta (long poems) and
haiku, such as:
The long, long river
A single line
On the snowy plain.
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Odd Nerdrum: Paintings, Sketches, and Drawings
text by Richard Vine, art by Odd Nerdrum. Scandinavian artist and rebel Nerdrum (believed now moved from Norway to Iceland for tax benefits) is unique in rendering the figure in the manner of the Old Masters while drawing mythical and often startling images. The pictures are even more grand and entrancing in reality (because of their size) than can be conveyed by this magnificent book. |
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Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood (2003).
Think bioengineering is a good and well-controlled area? Read this engrossing book and think again. More comments in our quarterly book log. |
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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) by J.K. Rowling.
This latest and longest volume is a fascinating and enthralling book. The spells fly, the Quidditch players fly, and your heart flies when you read it! Reviews of the Potter books, the DVDs, the magic. |
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The Four Pillars of Investing : Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio
by William Bernstein.
Bernstein identifies four pillars: (1) theory of risk and returns; (2) history of the madness of markets; (3) psychology of the masses; (4) business (including how stockbrokers make their money off clients). Then he explains how to construct an investment portfolio that will let you sleep at night. John Bogle selected this book as the best investment book for 2002. Check our review. |
| In An Uncertain World by Robert E. Rubin (2003). |
| The Intelligent Asset Allocator: How to Build Your Portfolio to Maximize Returns and Minimize Risk by William J. Bernstein. |
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The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century
by Paul Krugman
Check our review. |
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Shackleton's Boat Journey
by Frank Arthur Worsley, Edmund Hillary (Introduction)
A startling story of the courage, skills, determination, and luck experienced by Shackleton, Worsley, and the rest of the crew of The Endurance, on their 2-year escape from Antarctica during World War Two. | |
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Girl With a Pearl Earring
by Tracy Chevalier.
An elegant and quietly bewitching novel. It explores the life of 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, his painting tools and methods, and how he interacted with a new servant that he brought to his house, Griet, an artistic and observant 16-year-old girl. | |
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Oscar and Lucinda
by Peter Carey.
A compelling romantic tragedy of the obsession of Oscar and Lucinda for gambling, and their resulting struggles with themselves and their lives. A Booker Prize winner, set in 19th century England and Australia. | |
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Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, by
Tom Robbins.
Another romp through the weirder side of life, wherein Tom Robbins entertains with a capitalism-meets-anarchism love story in Seattle. Robbins creates some of the most original metaphors being written today; almost every page of this book is more inventive and interesting than 99.9% of the poems published today. | |
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Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998
by Linda Pastan.
Poetry by Maryland's ex-poet laureate, full of deep feelings, shadows, and beauty. Learn from her subject matters as well as from her inner music and line breaks. Delicate poems of life and truth. | |
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The Gift of Stones
by Jim Crace.
This unusual story occurs at an ancient and pivotal time when a tribe moved from the Stone culture to the Bronze culture. The upheavals and fears in their harsh world tell of the attractions and terrors of embracing the new and unknown. Crace is a supple writer, inventing a fluid and plausible story much as those of the one-armed man in his novel. Poetically, much of the book is iambic. | |
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Spies
by Michael Frayn.
A cautionary tale of deception, curiosity, cruelty, and the dangers of spying on each other, especially when the spies are children. Set in rural England during the Second World War. | |
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The Constant Gardener
by John Le Carre.
British diplomat Justin Quayle becomes a spy to solve the murder of his young and desirable firebrand of a wife, Tessa. A drama of moral outrage surrounding scandal of world pharmaceutical manufacturers and their financial and murderously unethical dealings in Africa. For a special treat, check out the cassette-tape version, read by Le Carre himself. | |
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Selkirk's Island
by Diana Souhami.
A biography of the mariner Alexander Selkirk, marooned on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, where he thrived alone till his rescue in 1709. How he survived is fascinating. Almost as astonishing is the terrorism that went under the guise of privateering, as part of the British-Spanish conflicts at that time. Winner of 2001 Whitbread Biography Award. [Selkirk was the sailor behind Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe.] | |
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Atonement
by Ian McEwan.
A novel that is a crime story, a war story, and a love story, with McEwan again exploring the challenges of unrelenting love. As Alan Stewart of Amazon.co.uk writes, "at heart, Atonement is about the pleasures, pains, and dangers of writing, and ... about the challenge of controlling what readers make of your writing. ... thoughtful, provocative ..." It is a special treat to hear the cassette-tape version. | |
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Books on Learning Spanish.
| I'm learning Spanish - check out some of the resources that I find helpful. |
| Copyright © 2002-2008 by J. Zimmerman, |