The Robin Hood Guerrillas by Pablo Brum. I found it! It's a history of the leftist Uruguayan guerrilla group the Tupamaros. Unusually, the title on the side is upside down when the book is right side up. First time I've had that. Looks like a very good read.
Kurt Vonnegut -- Player Piano. I'm about to finish Player Piano which will leave The Sirens of Titan as the only Vonnegut novel (of 14) I will not have yet read.
John Mark Comer is a pastor in Portland who stepped down from a burgeoning megachurch, and its 6 sermons per Sunday schedule, to take up a position at a smaller church downtown with a lighter schedule. That was the beginning of his move towards a simpler, slower life that takes a Jesus-centric view of things like mindfulness, meditation, minimalism (both digital and lifestyle, planning and productivity, etc. What it results is a closer look at spiritual disciplines and several interesting, thoughtful chapters from someone who is farther left politically than most in the conservative Christian realm and thus adds a unique voice at a time when it's most needed. His final section gives insight into four areas for eliminating hurry: 1. Silence and Solitude 2. Sabbath 3. Simplicity 4. Slowing
Their Ancient Glittering Eyes: Remembering Poets and More Poets, a book in which one poet, Donald Hall, presents accounts of an earlier generation of poets whose lives interstected with his; it's an expansion of a book alluded to in the subtitle, Remembering Poets. In this book, he writes about Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, Dylan Thomas and (added to this edition) Yvor Winters, Archibald MacLeish, and Marianne Moore. The book concludes with Paris Review interviews with Pound, Eliot and Moore which Hall conducted for the magazine. Most of the writers profiled were challenging in various degrees to be around, and Hall narrates such tales that illustrate that point, but he also mentions moments of generosity and decency. Well, in most cases. Thomas was so given over to his booze addiction and Pound was a megalomaniac who became a fascist because he thought he could convince Mussolini to do good things for the arts.
Now reading Abigail by Magda Szabó. The first two I read by Szabó are excellent (The Door, Katalin Street) and this is shaping up that way too, 1/4 of the way in.
A couple of months ago I received a rather random email from an author of puzzle/ books. O.V.Michaelsen specializes in anagrams though he does much else related to word play, and he had found an anagram about Senator Borah upon the occasion of his death. And since I direct the cumbersomely-titled William Edgar Borah Outlawry of War Foundation, he forwarded the anagram to me: The demise of Senator William Edgar Borah. A death I will remember of Idaho's great son. Anyway, it prompted me to pick up one of his books, Words At Play: I've enjoyed many parts of it, and the prompting of me to read it has been fun.
Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner "Old man, have you lived so long and forgotten so much that you dont remember anything you ever knew or felt or even heard about love?"
After reading a series of bad books recently, I went back to a classic. I picked this book because I was trying to re-watch the Godfather Trilogy, but I fast forwarded the entire Godfather One because i remembered the movie very well. Then, I went back to the book for more details or background story. I forgot when I first read the book, but I remembered the story well. Now, I understood why some of the characters or side stories were omitted from the film. I am about to start "The family Corleone" by Ed Falco. I actually wanted more of Luca Brasi's story. Let's see if I come back here and post about it here.
Now reading Valentino and Sagittarius, an NYRB Classics collection of two short works by Natalia Ginzburg.
My favorite NYRB Classic was when Joe Willis saved that penalty and then Nick DeLeon tore their heart out of their chest, squeezed it like a sponge, and then devoured it.
The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War Two an interesting book that revolves around a football game between two marine divisions that were loaded with former college football players (like captains of major teams, all Americans, etc) played on an improvised field on Guadelcanel as the players were waiting to be deployed to Okinawa, where 15 of the 65 players died as a part of the invasion force. An interesting story of the roll of college football in American culture and how that was changed/incorporated into the war effort. There's very little on the actual game, since there's only mentions of it in a few marine newspapers and in letters, even though it was broadcast to the Pacific fleet on Armed Forces Radio, and mostly about the marines and the invasion of Okinawa, which was a gruesome war. Author Buzz Bissinger struggled to write it, because he mostly does immersion journalism (Friday Night Lights and one of my favorite baseball books, Three Nights in August) and this is closer to history. But he decided to finish it because his father was a marine who invaded Okinawa, and based on his research, was in all likelihood in attendance at the Mosquito Bowl, and doubtless had money riding on the outcome. Some harrowing storytelling about the war that's for sure.
Written in 2016, it's a fair bit out of date on the statistical side, but most of the ideas are still on point about the return to things like vinyl records, physical books, and starting the design process with an analog first draft. I've already pre-ordered his next book, The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World, which releases on November 15 this year. This one is divided into two sections, The Revenge of Analog Things and The Revenge of Analog Ideas. Part 1, the analog things, has sections on vinyl, paper, film, and board games. Part 2, the analog ideas, has sections on print, retail, work, school, and analog in digital. It's a fascinating read that rightly points out how much of analog use is being driven either by Gen Z or by people who work in a tech job. I'm in ed tech and nearly everyone in my department and our adjacent IT department has a vinyl record collection, reads mostly physical books, are very minimalist digitally - especially with regards to social media, and have at least one physical hobby where technology is merely a functional support.
The House of Broken Angels by Luis Antonio Urrea. I had read a non-fiction work by him, so I figured I would try some fiction. Looks like an interesting tale of a Mexican-American family. Looking forward to reading it.
FYI, Urrea was editor of and wrote a short introduction for the Anaya collection referenced above. https://www.loa.org/books/715-bless-me-ultima-tortuga-alburquerque
Finished Adam Jornter's look at the very early days of the Mormon Church, No Place for Saints: Mobs and Mormons in Jacksonian America. Interesting and delightfully succinct. What comes across most to me is 1) how unremarkable the emergence of a distinctive sect like the Mormons was at that time and place in the US, and 2) how Missourians re-defined Mormons as non-citizens akin to slaves and Indians to justify mobocracy and driving them away.
When I read an Orestes Brownson (1803-1876) biography earlier this year, one thing that struck me the number of sects he passed through on his journey. But that was far from rare back then. Lots of diversity and experimentation and open-mindedness. And lots of intolerance and bigotry.
Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me a memoir which could be a lot more self-indulgent than it is, which makes it worth reading. Basically, the author Ada Calhoun is the daughter of art critic Peter Schjeldahl, who had first crack at a biography of the poet Frank O'Hara, a major influence on P.S. Alas, that bio never got written. When Calhoun was in her 40s, she found a cache of audio cassettes and notes for the potential bio. Long story short, in order to win her father's approval, she took on the job of writing the book he failed to write. She fails too, for similar reason. But her dad, a 3-pack a day smoker, is diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, and then shortly after surprisingly successful treatment, his St. Mark's Place residence of 4 decades burns down, so there are other things to write about. And this is the book that results in lieu of the bio.
I've read it twice, and really enjoyed it--but FWIW, I used to know an assistant professor who had been one of the grad assistants who helped Howe with the research (he's thanked by name in the acknowledgements)--and he spoke rather derisively of it; thought Howe went out of his way to avoid volumes of relevant research from younger historians so he could stick to telling the uplifting narrative he wanted to tell. That said--this same guy also occasionally assigned a chapter from the book for his own classes, and he certainly thought it had some merit. I still have my copy; I've also read Howe's The Political History of the American Whigs and while it's been a while I remember it being a pretty solid read as well.
Putting this on my "check-it-out" list. As for how unremarkable Mormonism was at that time--Jacksonian America was a deeply weird place. Back when I used to teach Am. History at our local community college, that was one thing I always tried to get across, if only to try and pique a few student's interest (it's a long semester, and pretty much all the students are just trying to knock off three more credits of pre-requisites).
1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline. This is the 2021 revised edition; apparently there's already been a lot of new research published since 2014 when the first edition came out.