tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52319522024-03-17T21:04:12.696-06:00The Frugal ChariotReading Notes of a BibliophileJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.comBlogger2264125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-8350413105681398552024-03-05T10:44:00.003-06:002024-03-05T10:44:46.506-06:00Two ArtistsPeacock & Vine: On William Morris and Mariano Fortuny by A.S. Byatt“If Morris and his contemporaries were possessed by the medieval Christian imagination and the ancient sagas, the moderns looked further back to the ancient world, and rewrote the Greek myths and legends to suit their own ideas about society and history.” ― A.S. Byatt, Peacock & Vine: On William Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-26451129178063452672024-03-01T04:15:00.000-06:002024-03-01T04:15:00.801-06:00Lost in AfricaScoop by Evelyn Waugh“News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read.” ― Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
Scoop (London, 1938) by Evelyn Waugh is a satire on journalism. It is based on Waugh's 1935 assignment to cover the conflict between Abyssinia and Italy while working as a war correspondent for the London Daily Mail in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). Waugh acknowledged Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-24324632096324947682024-02-28T10:31:00.000-06:002024-02-28T10:31:06.498-06:00Colonial TaleTropic Moon by Georges Simenon“My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven’t read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may — need is the word I use — to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill’s history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-40188760311004326512024-02-08T09:42:00.002-06:002024-02-08T09:42:56.940-06:00Apolline vs. DionysianThe Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner by Friedrich Nietzsche“Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche not only narrates the origin of tragedy, but he also offers a Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-68981693150383155662024-02-07T13:24:00.000-06:002024-02-07T13:24:10.269-06:00Regrets from Time PastI Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
“it was easier to believe she was lying than that lightning loves a scarred tree.” ― Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions For You
This was a real challenge for me from beginning to end. I can't say that I was thrilled to read this book, even though I managed to slowly proceed through it. I was not inspired to flip the pages, and I Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-56003287484519378562024-02-05T09:39:00.000-06:002024-02-05T09:39:14.159-06:00A Historic MomentThe Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague by Timothy Garton Ash“In this crowded world, we must learn to navigate by speech, as ancient mariners taught themselves to sail across the Aegean Sea.” ― Timothy Garton Ash, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World
Written by a brilliant Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-67521395314460921842024-01-25T10:07:00.000-06:002024-01-25T10:07:08.162-06:00Do Humans Want to be Good?All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays by George Orwell“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.” ― George Orwell, All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays
All Art is Propaganda is a collection of George Orwell's essays bound by the theme of philosophical and aesthetic commentary. It includes such masterpieces as "Propaganda and Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-26210163163111467922024-01-17T05:21:00.000-06:002024-01-17T05:21:25.147-06:00Scientific WomanLessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus“Whenever you start doubting yourself, whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change and change is what we're chemically designed to do.” - ― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in ChemistryMy experience reading this book was at times unpleasant since the characters were often caricatures and the events appeared forced, especially Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-80661153732124114622024-01-09T13:06:00.000-06:002024-01-09T13:06:12.346-06:00Insights and DiscoveriesThe Heart in Exile by Rodney Garland"It was all clear now, or at least as clear as it could be. I had discovered and could explain many things, but there was so much, of course, that I could never hope to explain." - Rodney Garland, The Heart in Exile
Although this book is a mystery set in the gay community of post-World War II London, it is much more than that. It explores the nature Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-14854697468514496452024-01-04T17:05:00.001-06:002024-01-04T20:54:09.199-06:00Interesting but UnconvincingTrust by Hernan Diaz“they all believed, without any sort of doubt, that they deserved to be heard, that their words ought to be heard, that the narratives of their faultless lives must be heard. They all had the same unwavering certainty my father had. And I understood that this was the certainty that Bevel wanted on the page.” ― Hernan Diaz, TrustThis novel is an interesting Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-30624429278158135232023-12-17T07:15:00.000-06:002023-12-17T07:15:22.583-06:00Sunday Poetry SelectionPaul CelanPaul Celan was not an easy man—why would he be?—and his poetry, as his translator Michael Hamburger writes, is not easy either. Celan, Hamburger says, “calls for an application and effort so intense that it may have to be broken off and resumed over the years.” That is definitely true of “Death Fugue.” It is hard to take in without a break. But to take in even a portion of it is to haveJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-17596195043998027042023-12-16T16:58:00.000-06:002023-12-16T16:58:31.996-06:00A Commonplace Entry Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry longes; And specially from every shires ends Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende, The hooly blissful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.- from the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey ChaucerJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-8236139471968392552023-12-14T10:08:00.000-06:002023-12-14T10:08:03.662-06:00Top Ten Books for 2023 Annual Top Ten Favorites Top Ten Favorite Books of 2023Since January 1, 2023, these books have been my favorites. They span a wide range of reading genres, from non-fiction to fiction, from lengthy to short works, and from the Classics to modern literary fiction. The inclusion of Samuel Beckett's Trilogy is one example of an exception, and the pairing of Cormac McCarthy's Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-54498334972829168752023-12-10T11:50:00.000-06:002023-12-10T11:50:33.623-06:00A Modern TrilogyMolloy / Malone Dies / The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett“In other words, or perhaps another thing, whatever I said it was never enough and always too much.” ― Samuel Beckett, Molloy
Beckett's three great novels like his plays, break new ground in their structure and narrative. A bleak emptiness hovers throughout the three novels that one may consider a sort of trilogy. I was Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-64176511281238588502023-11-30T09:55:00.001-06:002023-12-07T08:59:28.907-06:00Dark Ideas in Another PlaceThis Other Eden: a Novel by Paul Harding“Other ideas still, though, were darker, underwater, or he underwater and they above the surface, clear and sharp and focused. He could hear them in his head, feel their weight in his chest and their shapes in his throat, but he was slow of tongue and they went unworded. He knew everyone had the same kind of ideas, but that his thoughts Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-46705812395483890612023-11-20T15:32:00.000-06:002023-11-20T15:32:14.135-06:00Plants and PeopleLab Girl by Hope Jahren"People are like plants: they grow toward the light. I chose science because science gave me what I needed---a home as defined in the most literal sense: a safe place to be." - Hope JahrenAre people like plants? Can you hear plants grow? These and other questions are raised and answered or at least discussed in this fascinating book by geobiologist Hope Jahren. I have Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-24817672255166404612023-11-07T14:35:00.002-06:002023-11-07T14:35:42.537-06:00Beasts on an IslandThe Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells“By this time I was no longer very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were, passed the limit of terror and despair. I felt now that my life was practically lost, and that persuasion made me capable of daring anything” ― H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau
Over the period of a decade beginning with The Time Machine in 1895, H. G. Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-54219356293641403692023-11-02T08:45:00.001-06:002023-11-02T08:45:54.749-06:00Darkness and GhostsAll Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt“There was desperation in his eyes. As he looked at me, it was as though he were looking into me from another world, trying to reach across some void, but everything he said was somehow falling short, not quite carrying its meaning across.” ― Seán Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide
This memoir is shaped by the story of a poet who writes of his Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-79102489864863197192023-10-29T07:36:00.003-06:002023-10-29T07:36:21.549-06:00Intellectual VacuityThe Temptation to Exist by Emil M. Cioran“For all sensation is a bond, pleasure as much as pain, joy as much as misery. The only free mind is the one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity.” ― Emil Cioran, The Temptation to Exist
When this eleven-essay collection was first released in France, it caused a literary frenzy on the Left Bank. Cioran writes Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-80448966247201908652023-10-26T08:24:00.000-06:002023-10-26T08:24:23.224-06:00A Smile and the WordsHopscotch by Julio Cortázar“She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.” ― Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch
Hopscotch could irritate more than it Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-87640351769176508492023-10-25T09:58:00.000-06:002023-10-25T09:58:32.898-06:00Hypnotic Novel of the SeaThe Death Ship by B. Traven
The death ship it is I am in,All I have lost, nothing to winSo far off sunny New OrleansSo far off lovely Louisiana. (from "Song of An American Sailor")This was B. Traven's first novel, published in 1934, and it is my favorite of his works. It is a sea story unlike any other in that it is a story of men at sea as a metaphor for men against what Jack London Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-90136481121402024162023-10-15T09:12:00.000-06:002023-10-15T09:12:57.398-06:00Memory is a WoundThe Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine“Memory is a wound, you said. And some things are released only by the act of writing. Unless I go in with my scalpel and suction to excavate, to clean, to bring into light, that wound festers, and the gangrene of decay will eat me alive.” ― Rabih Alameddine, The Wrong End of the TelescopeThe story narrates the travels of LebaneseJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-61692284064768783652023-10-08T10:19:00.000-06:002023-10-08T10:19:31.124-06:00The Year that Launched ModernismThe World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature by Bill Goldstein"In 1922, Eliot, Forster, Lawrence, and Woolf each discovered a private literary way to recapture and to bridge the lost time that the (Great) war represented."
Willa Cather stated in 1936 that "the world broke in two in 1922 or thereaboutsJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-13389785972487894832023-10-04T10:11:00.000-06:002023-10-04T10:11:56.014-06:00Leadership StrategyLeadership : Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger“A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.” ― Henry KissingerThis is a remarkable book about leadership, as the title suggests, but it also covers a wide range of other topics, such as history, global political strategy, and the value of moral character on the Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5231952.post-15459791654517707782023-09-20T10:15:00.001-06:002023-09-20T10:15:30.966-06:00Family Saga with ComplicationsHello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano“We’re part of the sky, and the rocks in your mother’s garden, and that old man who sleeps by the train station. We’re all interconnected, and when you see that, you see how beautiful life is. Your mother and sisters don’t have that awareness. Not yet, anyway. They believe they’re contained in their bodies, in the biographical facts of their lives.” &Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00561320676355168336noreply@blogger.com0