Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Pages

To whom it may concern:

In addition to being a certified book addict, I've also done my fair share of collecting recommended reading lists. You know the kind, lists of books one should read before this, that, or the other thing. Many are just general recommendations. Others, on the other hand, contain the canon of literature on a given topic. Ask a long time sci-fi fan what are the essential books to get up to speed on the genre and you'll likely get a list. 

Having said that, I hate to admit it, but I even have a book of book lists. Yep, even spent real money on it. It's a listing of all the reading lists from major colleges and universities in the US (and maybe a few in Canada). As one might expect, there's a ton of over lap. 80% will make every list. I suppose it's that 20% which keeps me searching for the next sleeper in the stack. 

Regardless, I'm going to post some of the more interesting ones I've found or read from. Then, for ease of reference, I'll post them in a page in my side bar. 

Until next time,

Contemplate the mysteries, and remember to breathe.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Book it!

To whom it may concern:

It's becoming obvious to me that my main interest here is shifting to the discuss books. This should stand to reason given I spend several hours per day reading them. To this end, I've begun placing links to reading and book oriented blogs in my side bar. At present, I have only one linked. However, the one I have linked has a couple of dozen related blogs linked for your perusal until I have time to view them all myself. Eventually, I'll link to the ones I like best or visit frequently. 

I mention this only to say that I'll likely spend most of my writing time discussing books I'm either currently reading, or have recently finished. My goal won't be to review these works in a proper or technical sense. Rather, I'll give my thoughts, feelings, and impressions along the way - much like I did with Henry James in my last post. In these posts you'll quickly discover that I have a love/hate relationship with almost ever book I consume. So there will likely be something for everyone who loves a good read or wants to avoid a bad one. Few will get all my praise, but few will reap all my venom.

Of course, as other topics strike me as witty, clever, or important, I'll post on that too. I did see one blog linked which was about books and bicycles. That's a combination I'd love to cover myself - except that my bike, not to mention my body, needs an over haul. Maybe one day I'll get back on the road and share my adventures with you. Until then, maybe I'll include some of my adventures over the chess and checker board.

Until next time,

Contemplate the mysteries, and remember to breathe.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Complicated very, is it!


To whom it may concern:


In one of my early posts, I mentioned that my mentor in college routinely answered the question, "What do you do for a living?" with, "I teach people to read difficult books." Thank God I took him every chance I got, because he taught me well. Well, I'm not so sure how well I do, but he taught me how to persevere when the text gets rough, which it did this weekend.

I say all this because I'm currently on a short binge of reading Henry James. Nothing major, and maybe even this is a debatable point, just some of his novellas. The topic of difficult books must be raised in conjunction with James. He has a reputation for writing extremely dense prose. So much so that another of my professors, a brilliant man in multiple languages and great scholar, once told me that he didn't care too much for Horace because, like Henry James, he never felt rewarded by the text for the effort he had to invest in order to read it.

I'm here to relate that I cut my teeth on James's The Turn of the Screw this past weekend. From what I can determine, this story is hands down his most famous work. Wow! but talk about some convoluted prose. For a work in which the actual text covered only, and exactly, 100 pages, his sentences were long, complex, and the phraseology, most of the time was in the worst possible order conceivable. It reminded me of someone forcing a literal English translation out of formal Latin. One of my profs called this 'Yoda speak'. 

In all fairness, given James's genius and renown, and given the text's abruptness, all I can conclude is that it was intentional on his part. No mere appeal to stylistic considerations could rationally account for it otherwise. He's far too revered a writer to write so badly. And I thought Cicero, Melville, and Heidegger were tough.

Things were so disjointed in places that I honestly got into the habit of reading every other phrase then adding back the deleted phrases where they best made sense - much like, as I alluded to earlier, reading the crazy word order of a typical Ciceronian Latin sentence and translating it into grammatically proper English word order. Strangely, this strategy worked pretty well and I recommend it to you. One could easily delete the apparently misplaced phrases altogether and render it well edited reading material for 8th graders. 

Furthermore, if someone had mentioned to me that his typist was dyslexic I would not have questioned the veracity of the claim at all given the mind twisting arrangement of his prose. Again, to me, his style cannot be subconscious, but seemed deliberate for effect. I suppose it worked. By the time I finished The Turn of the Screw I sincerely hoped that his longer works weren't written this way. What would have taken me one long sitting to read, took three lengthy reading sessions spread over as many days. 

Whether my effort was rewarded or not, I can't exactly say as the story's meaning hid in many ways. Fair warning, the commentators run everywhere with this one too. Briefly, it's a ghost story involving children: two to be exact, thus the 'turn of the screw' reference early in the story. But you'll have to read it yourself to further flesh it out. Interpretation runs the gamut too. Some question whether the children really see the ghosts, but are affected by them anyway. It seemed likely to me that children knew they were there, invisibly, and maybe even communicated with them. This is something the main character, their governess, never could do even though she encountered the apparitions on numerous occasions. Others claim the ghosts are only symbolic of something else, something more abstract. Take your pick.

Regardless of one's interpretation, with a little patience and creative reading, the story is comprehensible. It lured me in and held my attention in spite of the difficulties of mining meaning from his oft obscured text. In the vein of a ghost story by Dickens, this one would be great if read aloud by someone gifted for the task in a dimly lit room late one night. Strangely, it wasn't really scary. I'm not sure James meant it to be. However, like any good ghost story, it grips and holds the reader almost against his will - sort of like a real ghost . . . .

As a follow up, I'm well into Daisy Miller and have dipped into a couple of the other pieces in this volume just to see if they were all like the title cut (The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction ISBN: 0553210599) and didn't find the same jarring, stirring of the verbal pot. I should probably reserve judgement then on Henry James until I gather a larger sampling of data and experience with him.

Until next time,

Contemplate the mysteries, and a good, stiff story, and remember to breathe.


Friday, February 15, 2013

The Best Laid Plans . . .

To whom it may concern:

Well, as is typically the case, my New Year's resolutions have virtually disintegrated. Evaporated without a trace might be a more accurate assessment. With the exception of reading 50+ books this year, which plan I'm well on track to accomplish, the others have never really begun. A casual glance at this blog since the beginning of the year should be proof enough that I haven't spent an hour a day writing (if the typos in this post weren't sufficient evidence). The desire is there at times, but the flesh is truly the weak link. In either event, this is an attempt to remedy the situation slightly. I do have ideas for future posts which, given the right balance of energy and relaxation, will result in more posts. 

On the plus side, I've done lots of reading. I've recently finished: 

Things Fall Apart  by Chinua Achebe
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erichy Maria Remarque
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

I'm also currently reading (I alternate between them):

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

All these books were great (or are great so far). Maybe I'll write a review or two about some of them. If you've got comments about any of these books, feel free to share them. Also, should you have recommendations, I'm all ears. 

Until next time,

Contemplate the mysteries, and remember to breathe.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Routine

I used to have a pastor who said, "A rut is just a grave with both ends kicked out." In a similar vein, a friend and I used to argue that the one who habitually wakes, showers, goes to work, comes back home, eats, watches re-runs of Survivor followed by the evening news, then goes back to bed only to repeat this regiment 4 or 5 more times in a week doesn't have a life, but a living death. 

So, get out there and take some risks. Yes, some of them can kill you, but the ones which don't can give you life! Besides, you're dead already if you don't try. 

Until next time,

Contemplate the mysteries, and remember to breathe - and take a few chances.




Sunday, February 10, 2013

Amazing

I fell asleep last night feeling as if I'd had one of the best days of my life.

I awoke this morning with a hunch that I was in store for another one.

I was right!