The Picture of Dorian Gray -- Oscar Wilde The only thing better than reading Oscar Wilde is having already read Oscar Wilde. This work was both engaging and stultifying boring at the same time. Wilde can turn a sentence with the best of 'em, and looking back at how outrageously scandalous this work must have, this has been fun to experience. But Wilde's prose is wooden, which is perhaps why he stuck to writing plays. One weird note. In my mind for the past 30+ years, I've always considered this book to be titled The Portrait of Dorian Gray. It was Portrait the whole time I was reading it. It wasn't until I came here to post that I realized the book was titled something else. It would be like finding out that Harper Lee wrote a book called To Kill the Mockingbirds...
The Inward Morning: A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form by Henry Bugbee. I've had an earlier edition of this book on my shelves for awhile, so I finally got around to reading it. The version I have is published by Harper Torchbook in the 70s on recycled paper (it originally appeared in 1955). The book is falling apart as I read it. An interesting experience and fitting given the themes. If I'd paid more than a buck for it, though, I'd be ticked.
I made time to read a book this week. We've been so busy I just haven't made time for reading. A novel of 3 generations of a boat building/racing family on the Puget Sound. From the reviews it's supposed to be an excellent read even if you didn't sail. I got so much more out of it though from the years of boat owning and racing in some of the races he mentions. Great characters and often hilarious storyline. I personally loved it. "Before the Wind" Jim Lynch.
The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form of Lectures by Josiah Royce (1892) The reason why there is as yet no one final and complete philosophy may be very closely allied to the reason why there is no final and complete poem. Life throughout is a complicated thing; the truth of the spirit remains an inexhaustible treasure house of experience; hence no individual experience, whether it be a momentary insight of genius recorded in a lyric poem, or the patient accumulation of years of professional plodding through the problems of philosophy, will ever fully tell all the secrets which life has to reveal
I seriously have books going in all different parts of the house. I can't sit and read books in a linear manner, it seems. I have this one on the nightstand: This one in one bathroom: And this one in another:
Still plowing through some philosophy, but for my Intro to Lit class at a Catholic college, we ended with... The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by the frequently dubious and shady Carlos Castañeda . I've taught this in lit classes a few times. It works better in the American Literature of the 50s and 60s, where we start with the excellent Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and end with this (I teach it in the context of the "non-fiction novel" like Capote's In Cold Blood and Mailer's Armies of the Night. It works better there, but it did okay for this class. So far as I know, no one reported me, but since my wife is a dean there...
Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters -- Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon -- Tom Wright I don't usually post the overtly religious stuff that I read here. Don't want to sound preachy or anything. But this guy, Tom Wright, is great. Who needs yet another "modern" commentary on Scripture? And I do use the term, modern, lightly because this book (the first in his Everyone series) dates from 2000. Well, I think we all do. This is insightful, theologically sound, very interesting and it's practically twitterable. It's brief and concise and bite size and fascinating. I used to reserve a special scorn for the 2-minute Bible or the 3-minute devotion kind of work. This is much the same, only better.
Black Mountain: An Expolration in Community, a history of Black Mountain College, (1933-1957 or so) by historian Martin Duberman . I know a bit wbout the post WWII years because of the impact the college had on literature, art, music and dance, but I didn't know anything about its founding (in the great depression, by professors who'd been fired from other schools and who really had no idea how to go about founding an experimental college. It had a good run, considering it started from scratch and never really built up an endowment, and that artists and poets are not usually the most capable administrators...
I had a Joe Namath version when I was a kid, but the players all ended up in one corner. I have not played it since. But I enjoy the history of things and this was a robust-looking book, so I got it.
On mine, the only player not to wind up in the corner was the ball carrier. He would turn and go the wrong way.
The Pioneers – James Fenimore Cooper “A man can give up when he’s wrong, if you don’t crowd him too hard; but you crowd a man, and he gets to be like a stubborn ox—the more you beat, the worse he kicks.”
The wife and I have actually had a box lunch at the source of the Susquehanna in Cooperstown, about a quartermile of the baseball Hall of Fame. I almost said I need to check this out, but Cooper doesn't always work for me.
I bought The Federalist for my son for Christmas and my daughter saw it and said, "You could have gotten that for me!" Now *I* want to read the damn thing.
Osage Stories -- My father My dad has told me these stories for 40+ years and threatening to write them for 30, and he finally did. The book I wanted him to write was Russell Baker's Growing Up, but Baker wrote it first. My father's as gifted a storytell as Baker, though his youth may have been a little more dire. (My father was 5'2" when he entered West Point's prep school. After a year there and his first year at West Point, he grew over 6". I think it was because he got three square meals for the first time in his life.) Baker's mother is really the star of Growing Up, whereas this is more of a portrait of a small town and I think Dad does well. Bravo!
Be proud Val. Well I can see that you are. Well done dad. Nuffin to do with his achievement of course but at 15 in my first year working the shipyards in Liverpool I was 5-7" next year I was 6-2. Currently I'm down to 6-1" all those years have worn me down.
I believe that over the years I've read all of John Sandford's books. His Prey series, (F***ing) Flowers and Kidd books. So, when I saw a book of his from 2015 that I hadn't heard of I was really surprised. Especially when I saw that it was Scifi not his usual police driven sagas. I think I've mentioned how good his dialog is. This time he combines his dialog with the expertise of a double caltech degree and scifi guy "Ctein." Yeah, that's his name. In a book entitled "Saturn Run" The US and China race to be first to find an Alien base amid Saturn's rings. Best scifi novel I've read in quite a while. Not fantasy, I hate fantasy.
The thread opened for me on page one. Who looks at page one. but the Hardy book caught my eye. I watched "Far from the Madding Crowd" the other night with Carry Mulligan as Bathsheba Everdene. The "Hunger Games" auther took the Katniss Everdeen name from Hardy's heroine. Just another useless factoid.
I read Far from the Madding Crowd when I helped my sister with a school project. I did not enjoy that book. For some reason, the 19th century is my least favorite literary period in history. Its as if for most of that century writers decided "nah, ******** editing. More words! More!" Even some of my favorites from that century (like War and Peace, which I'm about to reread) could use a scalpel. There's a lot to be said for America's quintessential novel (The Great Gatsby) being a spry 190 pages or so. I'm not at all averse to reading long books, but I've always been a fan of Mandelstam's maxim* of "when you're done editing something, cut some more words to improve it". *Butchered from memory and translation.
I read: Far from TMC...back in the late 60's. I was going through that type of period and it was suggested to me by this USC co ed. At least if it gave us something to chat about, afterwards. I went through Gatsby, W&P the Brothers K, and the rest of Russian novelists about that time too. Then I found I wanted to take a razor into a warm bath with me. Gawd those books get to your mind. I guess you have to be Russian and drink lots of vodka.. I read a lot lighter fare these days. Hardy was an interesting character in his own right. He was a Justice of Peace first, author later. He sent a few people off on a trip to Australia on long vacations for minor offences. Another useless factoid. It's been a while since we chatted. Fun..