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My chocolate of choice for a NaNoWriMo attempt:
Books read recently by J. Zimmerman
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Booker Prizes
Chocolate.
Books read
Best books read in 2010.
Best writers of poetry and prose
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My chocolate of choice for a NaNoWriMo attempt:
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Reader's Bill of Rights [after Daniel Pennac in Better than Life
from November 2003 Utne Magazine] includes the rights to:
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"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry."
[Jefferson's 1785 statute] |
{ December : juu-ni-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2011 }
(12.31.2011)
Delightfully informative — great for a geek (of any age). Lots of illustrations and surprising juxtapositions.
An historical novel or creative-nonfiction: Henry James still comes across as maniacal for praise.
Better to listen to than to read, thanks to Rintoul.
Karin Fossum is a Norwegian detective novelist with excellent psychological insights. She is particularly discerning in her understand and defense of the 'psychologically different', the people that 'normal' people tend to scapegoat. The book centers on Emil, a man who can say only one word, "No" and on Tomme, potentially a criminal-in-training.
See Karin Fossum's:
A 206-page text book with 788 exercises — and their answers! At one page per day, I might complete it in July 2012!
Advantages:
An insightful nonfiction book in which James discusses work in the crime fiction genre and how the genre's writers (predominantly British) explore its challenges, and what achievements they've accomplished.
P.D. James' books read include:
A serial killer in Henry VIII's 1543 London is tracked down by hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake. [Shardlake works on commission (from Thomas Cromwell in Dissolution and Dark Fire; from Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in Revelation and Sovereign; and Queen Catherine Parr in Heartstone).] The historical-fiction context is well-handled even if some of the fictional events are predictable. At times a little too knowing of relatively modern psychological insights. And rather a lot of subplots. Otherwise very readable.
Julian Barnes' books "read" include:
A horrible man is murdered on a private island and Adam Dalgliesh is called to investigate. Unfortunately he gets sick with SARS so it's left to his assistant to complete the job, in a way that Dalgleish would probably not have. Every one becomes a suspect but the murderer is finally unveiled.
P.D. James' books read include:
Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal (issue 11, 2011)
which includes a
Tanka of J. Zimmerman.
Listened to
The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos (2011)
by Brian Greene, read by the author.
This actually turned out to be more interesting and palatable than the identical text in his hard-copy book The Hidden Reality!
The discussion of the holographic mapping between quantum theory and string theory in particular actually made some sense. Though it still remains a book of flights of fancy and math-supported hedged bets.
Sounding like a younger, hipper, but no less psychotic Carl Hiaasen (e.g., Star Island), Dorsey gives a fast-paced romp around Florida. Because of Dorsey's self-appointed executioner of evil-dooers, plus someone who wears a shower-cap as a regular hat, plus a relatively honorable ex-governor, I have to wonder if Dorsey is an alias for that other Florida author, Carl Hiaasen.
Episodes seen:
{ November : juu-ichi-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2011 }
(11.29.2011)
A lively collection from the leaping mind of this twice-Pushcart-nominated poet. Includes "All Kinds of Shipwrecks" which ends:
| Now, I am watching TV upside down, and what would I rather be:
the diver, or O lucky wreck to have been found. |
About 50% inaudible — or a recording of group meditation — but her talks on the twenty-point path and the medicine wheel and associated meditation practices were interesting.
Ribbons
(7, 3) Autumn 2011 issue.
Includes a couple of
Tanka of J. Zimmerman.
In the late 1960s, the protagonist, Alan Turner, of the British Foreign Office, arrives in Bonn, Germany, to investigate the disappearance of Leo Harting and a lot of files from the British Embassy. Rawley Bradfield, the embarrassed security chief of that Embassy, resists helping.
A satisfyingly complex story, with writing marred only by Le Carré's use of simile every few lines.
John Le Carré's read:
The Best American Poetry 2011.
A good issue this year, including some haiku-like series.
Issues previously read:
Episodes seen:
Children from 19 different countries have their haiku presented in their original language and in English in this book sponsored by JAL (Japanese Airlines) Foundation.
My favorites include one from Russia by Shipkova Lara (age 8) on p.69:
| Tonight, owlets,
I will teach you To count the stars. |
His retired protagonist, George Smiley, talks informally to new graduates of secret-service training, and awakens memories in one of his old soldiers in arms, Ned.
John Le Carré's read:
Invented by the Night (2011)
by Len Anderson.
Stoppard's read (or seen) include:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: the Film (1991)
Artist Descending a Staircase (1973) — brilliant play for the radio:
involves three artists from their youth to their decrepitude as well as a blind young woman who admires
one of them (but which one depends on the figure-ground problem);
various misunderstanding that are more plausible and less surreal than in earlier plays;
the absurd cleverness is delightful. One of his best, especially
as a radio play.
The Dog It Was That Died (1983) — a clever response to the
Cold War novel such as
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974).
Also one of the best.
The Dog It Was That Died (1983).
One of the best.
Tougher and clearer than the John Wain movie version.
Rather boring and sometimes muddled; seven interconnected short stories and novella; the mainly subject-verb sentence structure gets monotonous; the last story (same title as the book) seems the most creative.
One of the Marcus Didius Falco mysteries, set in ancient Rome. It's very clever in taking modern idioms and placing them in the Roman Empire.
A series of murders in Paris, Nice, and Tunis tail the sophisticated Paul and Steve Temple, much as they used to on the BBC radio 1938 onward. Lightweight and a delight.
Wodehouse's imbibed include:
{ October : juu-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2011 }
Rather lurid. Set in Japan at the 1861 New Year. Shogunate internal wars and the arrival of guns and western warriors in Japan.
A little too painfully cruel in its punishments of the Evil Doers. The ending is flamboyantly 'right' but getting there is sometimes slow. Intertwined greed plots — the greed of the flash-in-the-pan pop star and entourage seem amateurish compared with the greed of the real-estate developers and investors.
Have enjoyed his:
The Weak Anthropic (or Selection) Principle and the Strong Anthropic (or Selection) Principle are cogently presented. Includes multi-world hypothesis.
Brilliant and insightful overview of the poetry (especially the tanka), poets, and esthetics of the Japanese court before 1500.
Includes book review and a haiku by J. Zimmerman.
A collection of poems "from Catullus and Chaucer to Robert Browning and James Wright".
Read with great delight
Horoscopes for the Dead (2011),
by Billy Collins.
Again I delight in the accessibility of his poems, written in common speech that one might use in conversation, with a cheerful humor and yet a willingness to look death in the face.
The best part of the book is Kronenberger's introduction where he says that Pope (1688-1744):
| happened to be the greatest master of rhymed vituperation in the history of letters...
He was also the greatest master of the heroic couplet in the English language. In the new age ... Pope was not merely condescended to for writing unfashionable poetry; he was all but ostracized for not writing poetry at all. For he made no appeal to the senses, or to the soul... What made him both [a poet and great] was his satire — a body of work in which he mingles autobiography and abuse... His is not the noblest tradition of satire; chastising evil-doers interested him far more than reforming them. [pp. xxii-xxv] |
| Newton had discovered calculus during his more creative years of 1665 and 1666... He had intended to publish his calculus works at the same time as his optical works but, when he published his theory of colors in 1672 he took such a beating from his contemporaries that he swore off publishing in general. Newton was an old man before he published any of his work in calculus, although he wrote letters, sent private, unpublished copies of papers he had written to friends [pp. 5]. |
| Leibnitz discovered calculus during the prolific time he spent in Paris between 1672 and 1676 ... he pulled together all the mathematical discoveries of his contemporaries to devise calculus. And since Leibnitz believed in simple explanations rather than jargon, he invented a completely original and ingenious system of notation to go with it [p. 9]. |
The writing is a little too informal.
Slightly more interesting than the abandoned Cuba Libre (1998). Unconvinced that the author was listed as number 5 in the April 17, 2008 Times (the original great London Times of course) list of crime novelists. The top five were:
Tanka from the ninth to twelfth century.
Ping.Pong Journal (2011),
which includes
a poem by moi.
Beyond the Reach of My Chopsticks: New and Selected
Haiku (2011),
brilliant sometimes a little surreal
haiku by Fay Aoyagi.
Finished Touch and Go (2011)
by Thad Nodine.
A terrific first novel: An exciting cross-country journey by a blended and extended family of five, as they crash their car and each other ... and take off ... time after time.
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Related pages:
Books on Buddhism.
Books on Learning Spanish.
Poetry - Learn How to Write Your Own.
Forests of California and Trees of the World.
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