Books read recently by J. Zimmerman

Disclaimer. Links. Booker Prizes. Chocolate. Books read. Best books read in 2014. Best book read in 2014: Hannah Kent's Burial Rites: a Novel (2013), her first: a historical fiction set in Iceland. Gripping and brilliant, it's set in the early nineteenth century, in rural Iceland, where a woman accused of murder is temporarily housed at a farm as a servant. Kent's plot, characters, and writing are all powerful and memorable. Her structure is especially excellent, interleaving historical documents and events with her invented scenes and actions and conversations. Blog entry. Best writers of poetry and prose Harry Potter; also Harry Potter en Español. Why read a book?. New books on Spirituality by Pagels, Ehrman, et al.

My chocolate of choice:

Reader's Bill of Rights [after Daniel Pennac in Better than Life from November 2003 Utne Magazine] includes the rights to: Skip pages Not read Not finish Not defend your tastes

Part of the pleasure of knowing Latin is that you don't have to learn to say, "Where is the cathedral" or "I would like a return ticket, second class, please." You actually get to the literature. You don't have to be always making yourself understood. Mary Beard, as quoted by Rebecca Mead in her New Yorker (September 1, 2014) article "The Troll Slayer: A Cambridge classicist takes on her sexist detractors".

{ December : juu-ni-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2014 }

(12.28.2014)

• The Best American Poetry 2014.
  Guest Editor Terrance Hayes; Series Editor David Lehman.

  An ok issue this year. Includes part of a tanka-like series.

  Issues previously read:

  • The Best American Poetry 2013.
  • The Best American Poetry 2012.
  • The Best American Poetry 2011.
  • The Best American Poetry 2010.
  • The Best American Poetry 2009.
  • The Best American Poetry 2008.
  • The Best American Poetry 2007.
  • The Best American Poetry 2006.
  • The Best American Poetry 2005.

• Gave up on John Ashbery's 1972 collection Three Poems, his prose poem collection of "The New Spirit" and "The System"; and "The Recital".

  He is so popular at college his college readings and his poems do seem more interesting on the voice and on the page. This is not for me, despite his opening to "The New Spirit"

  I thought if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave all out would be another, and truer, way. clean-washed sea The flowers were. These are examples of leaving out. But, forget as we will, something soon comes to stand in their place. Not the truth, perhaps, but — yourself.

• Finished listening to Kate Atkinson's (2013) Life After Life, marvelously read with a huge range of accents and tones by Fenella Woolgar.

  Over and over the story returns to a snowy night in 1910, when Ursula Todd is born. Ursula appears to be reincarnated as herself at that same moment every time she dies. This remarkable novel lead us through the British experience of the Great War in the early 20th century and the subsequent Second World War.

  Gradually we come to experience the déjà vue that Ursula experiences. Also we clearly see how the event of a moment can alter the course of a life, which raises in the readers the memory of some of those points in their own lives. And how, if one became increasingly conscious of each life being the same but different, one might act differently.

  One of the best books read in 2014.

• Stephen T. Asma's (1996) Buddha for Beginners.

  The Buddha rejects the idea of a substantial self that migrates from body to body — there us nothing like an immaterial soul (whether it be Christian, Hindu or Platonic) that can exist independently of body. [p. 55] The Buddha dispels the myth of the metaphysical self (atman) as an underlying entity through life spans and between life spans. But he understands that each person feels a sense of themself as a self of ego. This palpable experience of the "I" is not completely illusory, for the Buddha claims that it is produced out of the combinations or conjunctions of feeling (vedana), perception (sanna), disposition (sankhara), consciousness (vinnana) and body (rupa). These are the five aggregates (khanda) or bundles of personhood and though each of these is impermanent and always fluctuating, they combine into the "felt" sense of the personal ego. [p. 59]

  The Buddha's Noble Eight-fold Path [p. 86 onward]:

  1. Right Understanding: "when one pierces through the veil of naive consciousness (thinking of ourselves as Ego) to arrive at the true nature of things. The Buddha, and Socrates after him, understood that clarity of thought was most difficult regarding issues where the passions had a strong interest." [p. 87]
  2. Right Mindedness
  3. Right Speech
  4. Right Action
  5. Right Living: "the Buddha himself never claimed that the path to enlightenment was self-torture. . . . Poverty is not a necessary requirement for enlightenment; it is but another harmful extreme like opulence." [p. 90]
  6. Right Effort
  7. Right Attentiveness: "Meditation . . . a method of inquiry that divides into four subjects of contemplation . . . of the Body . . . of the Feelings . . . of the Mind . . . of the Phenomena" [p.92]
  8. Right Concentration

  "One who lives nirvana is able to receive the impressions (the 'substrate' of experience) but stop at the second step — the entrance of the ego-consciousness.

  The Buddha suggested that:

  It is absurd and meaningless to ask 'Where does a flame go when it goes out?' And it is likewise absurd to engage in metaphysical speculation about events after death. Since we can not have a full experience of ourselves after death, we cannot claim any real knowledge about this condition. The Buddha teaches that we must remain neutral on such questions and again walk the 'middle way' between the dogma of afterlife belief and the dogma of annihilation. [p. 106]

• Reread the 2007 poetry collection Front Street Poets at the East Village Coffee Lounge.

  The highlight for me are the poems by Bernice Rendrick, particularly "Burning Light" and "After Reading Adam Zagajewski's 'The Small Apartment'"; and Phillip Wagner's "How Sweet It Is".

• Reread Betty Edward's (1979) Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhanced Creativity and Artistic Confidence, which collected tools for the non-drawer to focus on shape instead of meaning, in order to represent what you see.

  Her emphasis is helping the hands to perform by keeping the right brain busy with that work, and the left brain relatively mute in its analytical modes of naming and being correct. The main way to achieve this is primarily "to present the brain with a task the left brain wither can't or won't handle" (p.78).

  Tools include:

  • copying an image upside down (one of the most remarkable art exercises ever);
  • completing the second side of a face vase;
  • contour drawing;
  • perceiving the "shape of a space" (the negative space);
  • guidelines on proportions;
  • beginning to draw light and shade.

  Includes a helpful glossary with terms such as:
  "Expressive Quality: The slight individual differences in the way each of us perceived and represents our perceptions of a work of art. These differences express an individual's inner reactions to the perceived stimulus as well as the unique 'touch' arising from individual physiological motor differences."
  "Learning: Any relatively permanent change in behavior as a result of experience or practice."
  "Negative Space: The area around positive forms which shares edges with the forms. Negative space is bounded on the outer edges by the format ['the particular shape of a drawing or painting surface']."
  "Zen satori, or 'no mind,' a brilliantly clear state of mind in which the details of every phenomenon are perceived, yet without evaluation or attachment."
  "Symbol System: In drawing, a set of symbols that are consistently used together to form an image, for example, a figure [of a person]. The symbols are usually using in sequence, one appearing to call forth another, much in the manner of writing familiar words, in which writing one letter leads to writing the next. Symbol systems in drawn forms are usually set in childhood unless modified by learning new ways to draw."

• Dipped into and abandoned G.L.S. Shackle's (1962) Economics for Pleasure.

• Reread the 1990 non-fiction small book The Rediscovery of North America by Barry Lopez: the greed of Christopher Dove and his companions and followers, from 1492 to the present, with a glimmer of how we might live with the land as a companion rather than something to mutilate, rape, and kill.

  See also Jack Turner's 1996 The Abstract Wild

• Finished dipping into the 2006 The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems of Tomas Tranströmer, translated and introduced by Robin Fulton.

  The most interesting portions are Tranströmer's essays about his youth. The most disastrous poems are the so-called haiku: the relentless 5-7-5 pattern of the translation suggests that Tranströmer used that same pattern. The lack of season words and the prosy nature of the translations are hopefully untrue to the original Swedish. This example from p. 224, translated from his 2004 book:

  Death stoops over me. I'm a problem in chess. He has the solution.

  And this example from p. 210, translated from his 1996 book:

  Mediaeval keep. Alien city, cold sphinx, empty arenas.

• Abandoned the 2005 Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge. Mainly it tells you to exercise (aerobics 4 times per week for 45 minutes getting your heart rate up to 75% of your age-adjusted maximum; weight-train twice per week; a monthly bout of long (up to 3 hours) and slow) and to eat right.

• 2014: Listened to Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin, in a recording narrated delightfully but James MacPherson.

  Ian Rankin's 2014 return of Rebus, this time in collaboration with another (but more by-the-book) detective, Malcolm Fox. Great to have Rebus back, even recognizing he may not be able to do this eternally.

  FOX books read include:

  • 2014: Saints of the Shadow Bible
  • 2011: The Impossible Dead
  • 2009: The Complaints

  REBUS books read include:

  • 2014: Saints of the Shadow Bible (with Fox as a significant character).
  • 2012: Standing in Another Man's Grave
  • 2007: Exit Music
  • 2006: The Naming of the Dead
  • 2004: Fleshmarket Ally ['Fleshmarket Close' in UK]
  • 2003: A Question of Blood
  • 2002: Resurrection Men
  • 2001: The Falls
  • 1995: Let it Bleed
  • 1993: The Black Book
  • 1992: Strip Jack
  • 1991: Hide and Seek
  • 1987: Knots and Crosses

• Finished (2006, translation 2011) Ludmilla Ulitskaya's Daniel Stein, Interpreter: A Novel. Told in a series of letters and other written documents, it shows the protagonist's life as viewed by many different personalities and opinions.

  From Ulitaskya's Introduction:

  Brother Daniel was a Jew born in Poland who received a German education. ... While working as an interpreter in the Gestapo he organized the escape of three hundred Jews from the ghetto ... He survived through a fortunate concatenation of circumstances, but was personally convinced that he had been saved by God's help. He was nobody's secret agent, and found his true vocation when he became a Christian — a Catholic monk and a priest. ... By the fact of his existence Daniel demonstrated that contemporary Christianity, for all its historical and moral ills, is still alive, and that beneath the crust of corruption and hypocrisy, beneath the formulas and adjudications now bereft of meaning, the spirit of Love, Compassion, and Mercy lives on. Brother Daniel professed a Christianity of the poor that retained the link with its source, the same Christianity professed by St. Francis of Assisi and St. Seraphim of Sarov.

• (2014) The ever-exciting AAII 2014 Individual Investor's Guide to Personal Tax Planning by AAII.

• (2014) Take-out Window, the 2014 Haiku Society of America Members' Anthology, a collection of haiku. edited by Gary Hotham.

• (1988; translation 1993) Catherine Certitude by Patrick Modiano with the warmth drawings by Jean-Jacques Sempé. Translated from the French by William Rodarmor. A child ballerina and her black-market-shipping papa.

• Finished my Samuel Beckett Experience through Becket on Film: 19 films x 19 directors:
  • 1949: Waiting for Godot
  • 1950's: Rough for Theatre I
  • 1950's: Rough for Theatre II
  • 1956: Act Without Words I
  • 1956: Act Without Words II
  • 1956: End Game
  • 1958: Krapp's Last Tape
  • 1960: Happy Days
  • 1962: Play
  • 1965: Come and Go
  • 1966: Breath
  • 1972: Not I
  • 1973-74: That Time
  • 1975: Footfalls
  • Late 1970's: A Piece of Monologue
  • 1980: Rockaby
  • 1980's: Ohio Impromptu
  • 1982: 7 Minutes
  • 1983: What Where

• Abandoned rereading The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self (1979 with the author's new 1981 Foreword) by Alice Miller. The book so popular with narcissists in the 1980s now seems their excuse to be histrionic and self-indulgent.

• Abandoned How Spanish Grew by Robert K. Spaulding. Now that I am studying Japanese, I can spend little time on Spanish, delightful as it is to see how words entered Spanish from Arabic, German, French, and so on.

• Catherine Certitude (1988) by Patrick Modiano (2014 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation") pictures by Jean-Jacques Semp&eacut; in a 1993 translation by William Rodarmor.

  This, however, was a brief, mainly graspable, and certainly adorable tale of a woman who lived as a child in Paris for 3 years with her adoring smuggler papa before they rejoined her mother in New York.

  The Semp&eacut;'s art is brilliant as always.

  Modiano's father was a black marketeer (and possible Gestapo collaborator as "Jewish businessman who worked with the Nazis during the occupation" according to NPR) during WWII.

• Finished listening to Buddha's brain: the practical neuroscience of happiness, love & wisdom (2009) by Richard Hanson with Richard Mendius in a 2010 recording read by Alan Bomar Jones.

  It's basically 'how to meditate' with a hyped version of the classic info that all teachers know: you can rewire your brain. Adds some neurological terms for various brain parts to enhance the reader's confidence that this is très moderne and speaks to the Western geek.

  Its blurb: "Draws on the latest research to show how to stimulate and strengthen one's brain for more fulfilling relationships, a deeper spiritual life, and a greater sense of inner confidence and worth. Listeners learn how to activate the brain states of calm, joy, and compassion instead of worry, sorrow, and anger."

• I can returning to reading at last, after taking JLPT level N5 (the beginning-most level): 2% chance I've pass; JLPT reports that only 50% of N5 registrants pass; seemed to be 12-15% no-shows, so maybe the pass rate is 56-59% for the show-ups.

  Very difficult even though this is supposedly an even easier level than that in the old-version N4 kanji (the new N5 is advertised as an entry level to N4) described by Kanji de Manga (2005) by Glenn Kardy and Chihiro Hattori.

• Finished listening to My first summer in the Sierra (published 1911) by John Muir, in which he describes his 1869 thrilling exploration of the Yosemite area of the Sierra, nominally as a sheep herder. (Reader unspecified.)

  A poetic and nature-loving contrast to Mark Twain's materialistic and nature-wrecking silver-mining adventures in Roughing It (1871).

• (2014) Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal (issue 17, 2014) which includes two tanka by J. Zimmerman.

{ November : juu-ichi-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2014 }

(11.21.2014)

• (2014) Red Wheelbarrow Volume 15, a collection of prose and poems, has two poems by J. Zimmerman including one haibun.

  Gorgeously illustrated with terrific writing.

• (2014) The Children Act: a Novel by Ian McEwan.

  A year in the life of a British high court judge, as she struggles to cope with personal and public problems.

  One of the best books read in 2014.

• (2013) Where the River Goes: The Nature Tradition in English Language Haiku, a collection of haiku. edited by Allan Burnes.

  It works very well, with 15 or more haiku by each of 40 English-language poets, primarily from the USA, with a few from the UK, Australia, and Canada. The poets are sequenced by the year when the poet began having an influence, the earliest being James W. Hackett (b. 1929) in 1963. Burnes gives a 2 or 3 page summary essay for each poet as well as a 60-page introduction to the book. (A little less Burnes and a little more poetry would have been welcome, especially if could cut out many of his snide remarks about the 5-7-5 form.

• Finished listening to Roughing It (1871) by Mark Twain, his semi-autobiographical story (read by Norman Dietz) of his five years, originally intended a merely a quarter of a year to the silver mines of Nevada, but he extended his stay there, and then added in California and ultimately the Sandwich Islands (later absorbed by the USA as its state of Hawaii). Delightfully rambunctious. Also full of historical information of those parts in Twain's era.

• (2014) David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks, a collection of sequential novella told in different voices but focused on decades in the life of Holly Sykes (she's psychic, geddit? And maybe saintly in a kick-ass way):
  1. 1984: "A Hot Spell" told by Holly Sykes, a rebellious teen who sometimes hears hallucinated voices.
  2. 1991: "Myrrh is Mine, its Bitter Perfume" told by Hugo Lamb, a sociopath, who briefly meets and despite himself falls in love with Holly Sykes (a heavy-handed "This Will Be Important Later" arrow is implied), whom he then dumps.
  3. 2004: "The Wedding Bash" told by Ed Brubeck (now a war correspondent and sort-of spouse to Holly Sykes).
  4. 2015: "Crispin Hershey's Lonely Planet" told (and this is the funniest section) by an author named Crispin Hershey, who plots and executes and attempts to atone for revenge upon a fiendish reviewer (of one of his books, of course): the "six-foot-wise, corduroy-clad, pubic-bearded, rectal probe Richard Cheeseman". Holly Sykes, by now a famous author, is a friend of Hershey, who may or may not denote Mitchell himself or Kingsley Amis or both.
  5. 2015: "An Horologist's Labyrinth" told by "Marinus", also a friend of Holly Sykes, even though Marinus is a migratory soul. A very peculiar and overly long Harry-Potter-esque battle between the forces of good soul migrators and cannibalistic soul migrators.
  6. 2043: "Sheep's Head" told by Holly Sykes, now an elder with two grandchildren, is a satisfyingly dystopian ending to this soul-migration book. Sykes now lives in a failed civilization on Ireland's west coast, "getting by in our ever more makeshift country ". Marinus (in a new incarnation) lives up the road.

  It's a terribly clever book, but I felt impatient with all of it except the 4th section. For each of the other sections, one quickly gets the idea of the character and genre that Mitchell is experimenting with. He is having fun, it looks like, but a dozen pages into each novella, you will have got the idea so save yourself some time and skim read.

• (2014) Ribbons (10, 3) Fall 2014 issue. Includes an essay, "A Responsive Tanka Workshop" and a Tanka by J. Zimmerman, a responsive tanka with poet Susan Diridoni.

• (2014) All These Shells, the TSA 2014 Members' Anthology of tanka, edited by M. Kei. Includes a Tanka by J. Zimmerman.

• (2014) Yuki Teikei's 2014 member's anthology, Scattered Acorns, a collection of haiku and tanka and essays.

• (1994) Simplify Your Life: 100 Ways to Slow Down and Enjoy the Things that Really Matter by Elaine St. James.

• (2014) I Wait for the Moon: 100 Haiku of Momoko Kuroda, translated with commentary by Abigail Friedman.

  The mentor of Kuroda-san (b. 1938) was Yamaguchi Seison (1892-1989), "had been part of [Takahama] Kiyoshi's circle . . . and often referred to his work". Takahama Kiyoshi (1874-1959) was the traditional-form one of Shiki's two main disciples.

  Page on Momoko Kuroda, haiku poet.

• Finished listening to The Lacuna (2009) by Barbara Kingsolver in a narration by the author.

  Beautifully read, this book tells the life of character Harrison Shepherd in Mexico and America in the mid-twentieth century. It blends fiction and history and connects Shepherd to several historical figures including Frieda Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky, with eventual sorrows in the Red-baiting times in the USA as the Cold War escalates. The interleaving of historical fact in news-clippings with fictional personal journals and letters is handled with great skill.

  One of the best books read in 2014.

  Books by Kingsolver:

  • 2012: Flight Behavior, one of the best books read in 2013.
  • 2009: The Lacuna, one of the best books read in 2014.

• 2004: H. Gilbert Welch's Should I be Tested for Cancer?: Maybe Not and Here's Why.

  Improved technology detects smaller cancers earlier. Cancer discovery rates therefore rise. Smaller cancers are usually less life life-threatening that the large ones discovered by the old method of palpation; this is a major contributor to the appearance of an increase in survivals (e.g. probability of survival five years after discovery).

  Well-worth reading if you are thinking about going for cancer screening. Be sure to read his introduction, though, which makes it clear that this is not a book for people who have cancer and need treatment.

  Part 1. Problems you should know about:

  1. It is unlikely that you will benefit [from cancer screening].
  2. You may have a "cancer scare"] and face an endless cycle of testing.
  3. You may receive unnecessary treatment.
  4. You may find a cancer you would rather not know about.
  5. Your pathologist may say this is cancer, while others say it's not.
  6. Your doctor may get distracted from other issues that are more important to you.

  Part 2. Becoming a Better-Educated Consumer:

  7. Understand the culture of medicine (and why we are pushed to test).
  8. Understand the statistics of cancer (and why five-year survival is the world's most misleading number).
     p.141: "Cancer testing inflates incidence. . . . In a perfect world, testing for cancer wouldn't influence how many patients are diagnosed, it would only influence when they are diagnosed. In reality, however, testing can dramatically influence the cancer incidence rate." Obvious as this may be to the thoughtful, not everyone grasps this point.
  9. Understand the limits to research — even genetic research (and why it it hard to be sure there really are benefits to screening).
     p.138: In terms of saving lives: "mammography doesn't add to a really well done clinical breast exam" (from the Canada 2 study).
     The HIP studies and the Swedish trials (reported on the same page) show respectively that
     • "some sort of breast exam is better than nothing": they compared mammography plus clinical breast exam with no intervention.
     • "mammography is better than nothing": they compared mammography with no intervention.
  10. Develop a strategy that works for you.
      p.182: To figure out what works best for you, ask your doctor three questions when they propose a test for cancer:
      • "Why are you suggesting this test?" You might ask the doctor whether she would undergo the test herself or suggest it for a parent.
      • "Have there been a randomized trial for screening of this cancer?" If there has been, the follow-up question would be "What did it show?" How much benefit is there? How were the people in the trial and the control group selected?
      • "What will we do if my test is positive?" How will you use the information?

{ October : juu-gatsu (see also books on learning Japanese) 2014 }

(10.29.2014)

• 2014 Haiku 2014: 100 notable ku from 2013, edited by Lee Gurga and Scott Metz.

  An intriguing collection. Their selection method [sampled from 2nd & 3rd pages of the editors' introduction]:

  we read all the English-language haiku we could find that were published in 2013 (both in print as well as on-line), some 100,000 of them in all. We then selected the 100 that interested us most, each by a different poet. ... One overriding concern was excellence. Beyond that, we wanted to cover the whole gamut of contemporary haiku, seeking out poems that demonstrate ambiguity without obscurity, and that demonstrate the full range of haiku: emotionally, intellectually, imaginatively, linguistically. In other words, poems that again answer the question, "What can a haiku be?" In addition ... Where might haiku be going? With this question in mind, we have tried to keep a keen lookout for haiku that are exploratory. ... showcasing the innovative, the ground-breaking, the experimental. ... innovation and experimentation in cognitive effect rather than in relation, for example, to typography or layout. At the same time, we sought to select ku that felt particularly fresh and unique in their use of traditionalist "classicist" approaches.

  Includes a haiku by moi.

• Read issue 33 (Autumn 2014) of Acorn.

  Includes a haiku by moi.

• Dipped into and let go of Eleanor Harz Jorden's Beginning Japanese. The problem is that their romaji in not the widely used Hepburn (or 'Standard') System, but the Shin-kunrei-shiki ('New Official System'), which reflects the kana characters used rather than the way those characters are pronounced to the Western ear. Jorden [p.xlvii] criticizes the Hepburn system but in my experience the system is more supportive of learning to read and to write Japanese than Jorden's system. Onward with JLPT:N5 preparation.

• Read issue 45.3 (Autumn 2014) of Modern Haiku.

  Includes two haiku by moi. The book reviews in this issue are particularly insightful and informative.

  See also comments on previous issues of: Modern Haiku:

  • 45.2 of Modern Haiku.
  • 45.1 of Modern Haiku.
  • 44.2 of Modern Haiku.
  • 44.1 of Modern Haiku.
  • 43.3 of Modern Haiku.
  • 43.2 of Modern Haiku.
  • 43.1 of Modern Haiku.
  • 41.2 of Modern Haiku.
  • 41.1 of Modern Haiku.
  • 40.2 of Modern Haiku.
  • 39.3 of Modern Haiku.
  • 39.1 of Modern Haiku.
  • 38.2 of Modern Haiku.
  • 38.1 of Modern Haiku.
  • 36.2 of Modern Haiku.

• Finally and 115 days after starting my consolidation on learning Japanese kana (the hiragana or 'flat' syllabary, and the katakana or 'side' syllabary) using P.G O'Neill's Japanese Kana Workbook (1967), I have answered over a thousand questions and completed the final tests. Phew! Onward with JLPT:N5 preparation.

• 2004: Hitomi Hirayama's Breakthrough Japanese: 20 Mini Lessons for Better Conversation.

  The lessons are built around topics, not skill levels, so you have to tiptoe through what you already know as well as what you have no clue about, to find your baby bear "just right" level. The topics have a somewhat grab-bag feeling, perhaps because the book is an assemblage of material that was mostly written for newspaper articles.

  1. Introductions and -san, -sama, -chan.
  2. Avoid anata ["you"] and use a person's name-san.
  3. Likes and dislikes; responding to praise; arriving at a house.

     Please come in.	douzou o-hairi kudasai
     Sorry to disturb you (while entering)	shitsurei shimasu
     This is a small present for you	anou, kore douzo
     Oh, thank you	a, sumimasen
     Please make yourself at home (in the house)	douzou o-hairi kudasai
     Thank you	shitsurei shimasu
     Thank you for the wonderful meal (after eating)	gochisousama deshita
     Thank you very much (when leaving)	arigatou gozaimashita
     It was a lot of fun	totemo tanoshikatta desu

  4. Various meanings of hai including "yes".
  5. Kanji numerals 1 to 10, and their readings as numerals (ichi, ni, san) and when counting objects (hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu, yottsu, itsutsu, muttsu, nanatsu, yattsu, kokonotsu, tou ).
  6. o- (before common words related to everyday life) and go- (before words with readings of Chinese origin).
  7. Pocket Phrases that you can learn for common conversational situations. [A particularly useful chapter.]
  8. "Wide face, light mouth" and other phrases to describe people's skills.
  9. Phrased for "I don't know": wakarimasen is safest.
  10. Particles including:
      • The place at which an action occurred: de
      • Location, time, or direction of (a usually continuous) action: ni
  11. Uses of ga including:
      • To select something out of a group.
      • To emphasize an occurrence.
      • To emphasize an ability.
      • In response to doko ("where"), itsu ("when"), nami ("what"), dare ("who").
      • With intransitive verbs that describe an action or occurrence.
  12. Days of the week.
  13. -mashita is not always past tense. It can also describe: present physical or mental conditions e.g. odorokimashita ("I'm surprised"). In contrast, use the present participle X-te imasu to describe conditions that are static or exist over a period of time.

      I've caught a cold.	kaze-o hikimashita
      I have a cold.	kaze-o hiite imasu
      I'm tired [after exercise]	tsukaremashita
      I'm tired [most of the time]	tsukarete imasu

  14. muzukashii and other refusals.
  15. Use of wordplay and puns in business phone numbers.
  16. Lengths of time: jikan ("hours"), shuukan ("weeks"), kagetsu ("months"). nen ("years").
  17. Abbreviation of words (foreign and Japanese).
  18. Colloquial phrases containing ("water").
  19. Conversational business phrases.
  20. Expressing reasons.

• 2014: I Wait for the Moon: 100 Haiku of Momoko Kuroda translated and with an introduction and commentary and timeline by Abigail Friedman.

• Read Chrysanthemum Issue 16 (October 2014), the on-line journal of Japanese-form poetry (haiku, tanka, haibun, and haiga) and related essays. The managing editor is Beate Conrad. Uniquely, this journal translates work in German and other languages to English, and translates English-language work into German. My own poem is on p.53:

  high sea cliffs a pair of ravens tossing the wind between them

  [German version] hohe Seeklippen ein Rabenpaar wirft den Wind zwischen sich hin und her

• 1999: Giles Murray's 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese.
  1. Abbreviations: How the Japanese cut out syllable to speak with increased efficiency.
  2. Explanatory phrases: plain-form + mono => things; plain-form + koto => actions; plain-form + joutai => states; plain-form + tokoro/basho => places; plain-form + hito => people; plain-form + tokoro/basho => places;
  3. Numbers 1 to 10.
  4. Numbers over 10,000.
  5. Hypotheticals: a manga story illustrates the grammar of "if".
  6. Synonym generators: the word you can't remember; its synonym; its litotes (or opposite, typically "not x"; exaggeration; a comparison; and a strongly exaggerated statement.
  7. Comparison forms.
  8. Adverbs: How to add spice to your opinions:
     • Appallingly: hidoku
     • Astonishingly: migoto ni
     • Awfully: taihen
     • Bizarrely: myou ni
     • Completely: kanzen ni
     • Excessively: amari ni mo
     • Extraordinarily: hijou ni
     • Horribly: yake ni
     • Really: hontou ni
     • Supremely: saikou ni
     • Terribly: sugoku
  9. Kids games: e.g. shiritori = bottom-grabbing = start the next word with last syllable of previous word.
  10. People suffixes:
      • -apprentice: -no tamago
      • -crazy/mad: -gurui
      • -devil: -no oni
      • -expert: -no tatsujin
      • -expert: -meijin
      • -faction: -ha
      • -ist, type of person: -kei
      • -ite, faction: -tou
      • -lover/phile: -zuki
      • lump of: -no katamari
      • -maniac: -mania
      • -monger: -ya
      • -person: -bou
      • -person: -jin
      • -tribe: -zoku
      
      Prefixes:
      • -apprentice: -no tamago
      • Completely, giant: maru-
      • -devil: -no oni
      • Extremely, top: goku-
      • -expert: -meijin
      • -faction: -ha
      • -ist, type of person: -kei
      • -ite, faction: -tou
      • -lover/phile: -zuki
      • lump of: -no katamari
      • -maniac: -mania
      • -monger: -ya
      • Ultra: geki-
      • Very (-ve sense): kuso-
      • Very/totally: do-
      
      Also general suffixes, phrasal prefixes, and verb suffixes
  11. Jokes and puns.
  12. Loanwords and Japanese English.
  13. Manga as a learning resource.

• 1908: G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare.

  A rather cartoony "metaphysical thriller", heavy with Christian symbolism, about anarchists and anti-anarchists in Edwardian London. Gabriel Syme (a Scotland Yard mole assigned to do "the work of a philosophical policeman" and infiltrate the London chapter of the European anarchist council) believes that the best poetry is based on law, as in formalism and the timetable for the London Underground. He becomes a delegate to the anarchist's central council. Lucian Gregory, an anarchistic poet, is the main anarchist of the book but ultimately ineffective; he considers that revolution and revolt are at poetry's base. The anarchists do not elect him.

  The terrible events reported appear at the book's conclusion to be but the dreamed-up nightmare of the author.

  Others are more impressed with it than I: in the 2006 "The book that changed my life : 71 remarkable writers celebrate the books that matter most to them" (edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen) Anne Perry picks this one.

• 1996: Eavan Boland's An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967-1987.

  Includes work that appeared in five books in the two decades covered. Her earlier poems are pleasantly rhymed, often on 'assigned' topics, with each line starting with a capital letter. Toward the end of her 1975 collection, she loosened her end-rhymes (though her work retains internal rhymes), adopted more domestic and personal topics, and let go of capitalizing every line.

  One of my favorites, from The Journey (1987), is "The Women" (pp. 173-174) which includes:

  This is the time I do my work best, going up the stairs in two minds, in two worlds, carrying cloth or glass, leaving something behind, bringing something with me I should have left behind.

• 2010: Denis M. Garrison's First Winter Rain: Selected Tanka from 2006-2010.

  146 numbered tanka, then 26 pages of "Tanka in Sets, Strings & Sequences", though as M. Kei comments in his 21-page introduction:

  Short footnotes explain his definitions of set, string, and sequence. The poems often carry a subtitle informing the reader what sort of group it is, e.g., 'a tanka string.' He is not the only poet to follow this convention, a convention that baffles me. One of the core features of tanka is that they show, not tell. Surely a reader can see for herself that it's a group and find the unity that binds it together. Or find something the poet did not see, something equally valid. . . . Possibilities for the manipulation of syllables and line counts are endless, and Garrison, who retains a love of formal verse, gives us the 'tanka sonnet,' a nonce form composed of three haiku and a tanka, as well as various other forms.

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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