tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64041199891555677522024-02-20T17:13:54.353-08:00MY READING ROAD MAPA Bibliophile Takes a Journey Through Her Book CollectionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-22330154922312794922017-03-08T09:23:00.001-08:002017-03-08T09:24:52.117-08:00International Women's Day 2017Today I am reading Colette.<br />
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<a href="https://myreadingroadmap.blogspot.com/2015/10/lets-bury-wine.html">Let's Bury The Wine</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-81411455734278772562017-03-01T17:42:00.000-08:002017-03-01T17:47:09.586-08:00It's March -- Time to Catch Up<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Yes, please READ BOOKS! Really, it is our only hope. Enough said.<br />
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Sitting here at the computer, thinking about how to begin blogging again, I decided to just do it and to mark the beginning of March with a new post. The first day of March has been sweet as a lamb around here. How about where you are?<br />
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<b><i>Where I Left You:</i></b><br />
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In August I had read some of Thoreau's <i>The Concord and the Merrimack </i>and shared a bit of that with you. I will get back to this one and we will catch up on it soon. It was about this time that I had a health setback and decided to take a break from blogging. I am still dealing with some things and will have surgery in late April. Nothing life threatening, just a nuisance. After a winter of laying low, I am back. Am still not sure how the blog will develop, perhaps it will find its own way. I feel the need to write so we will see how it goes.<br />
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<b><i>BBC Radio 4:</i></b><br />
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A sweet little thing happened yesterday. I was cooking and listening to "A Good Read" on BBC Radio 4. Each 30 minute program has two guests and the interviewer. They discuss three books, one chosen by each person. It is kind of like belonging to a book club in a very passive way. This is one of my favorite programs on BBC Radio 4. My very favorite is "The Archers", but I will save that for another post. Most of the time the books discussed are ones I have heard about before, sometimes have read, most of the time not. Well, I listened to two programs while making dinner and it turns out I own three of the featured books! Here they are along with links to the programs. If you have not listened to "A Good Read" before, you are in for a treat.<br />
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<b><i>Memoirs of Hadrian, Good-Bye to All That, Song of Solomon</i></b> </div>
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All three are now in my To Be Read (TBR) stack. I have started the Morrison before, but cannot remember why I did not finish it. As I read these, I will let you know how they go.<br />
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BBC Radio 4 "A Good Read" Links:<br />
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<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08ffvp8">Graves and Morrison</a>, <i>Goodbye to All That, Song of Solomon</i><br />
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<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0076gm8">Yourcenar</a>, <i>Memoirs of Hadrian</i><br />
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<b><i>My Italian Year:</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>2017 is my "Italy" year. This is why:<br />
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<i><b>Frances Mayes Bramasole Olive Oil</b></i><br />
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<i><b><a href="http://www.bramasoleoliveoil.com/">Bramasole Oil</a></b></i></div>
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We gave our family and friends cans of this oil for Christmas gifts this year. It is really quite good. Actually, it is pure nectar! One of our friends said she has to keep it hidden from her husband because he will drink it. It is surprising the difference between the "real deal" and oils available here; even the "good" ones do not come close. Here is what we did when our shipment arrived:</div>
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<b><i>Oh My...</i></b><br />
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We have had it on practically everything except Sunday morning waffles.</div>
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To pay homage to Frances Mayes and her excellent oil, I decided to read about Italy in 2017 and to learn to cook the real Italian way. I will share some of my reading and cooking with you as time goes by. The Vegetable Lasagne recipe in Frances Mayes' "Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life" is superb.</div>
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<b><i>2017 Reading So Far...</i></b></div>
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<i>Sweetwater Creek</i>, Anne Rivers Siddon</div>
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<i>The Thirteenth Tale</i>, Diane Setterfield</div>
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<i>The Patience of the Spider,</i> Andrea Camilleri</div>
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<i>Divisadero,</i> Michael Ondaatje</div>
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<i>The Girl of My Dreams, </i>Donna Leon</div>
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<i>Barchester Towers, </i>Anthony Trollope</div>
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<i>The Fall of Troy,</i> Peter Acroyd</div>
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<i>Rumpole and the Primrose Path</i>, John Mortimer</div>
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<i>The Song of Achilles</i>, Madeline Miller (5 stars, the best so far!)</div>
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<i>The Thirty-Nine Steps</i>, John Buchan</div>
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<i>The Birth of Venus</i>, Sarah Dunant</div>
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<i>Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life</i>, Frances Mayes</div>
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Most of these have been audio books. I have needed to zone out a bit this winter. Quiet days, resting, knitting, and listening.<br />
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That's it for now, see you soon.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-89679552534411417062016-09-13T13:43:00.000-07:002016-09-13T13:43:06.101-07:00Break TimeThank you all for visiting my blog. I have had a strange summer, and as we go into fall, it looks like I will need some quiet time to hibernate.<br />
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As John Lennon said, "Life is what happens while you are busy making plans". Well, life is happening. Hopefully, I will get a lot of reading done as I hibernate and come spring will be energized and ready to move forward with my blog.<br />
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See you around the corner!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-70195413299212355582016-08-12T13:25:00.000-07:002016-08-12T13:25:06.762-07:00The Concord and the Merrimack, Part I: The White Water-Lily<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Keeping in the spirit of nature and adventure writing, I decided to read this after <i>Desert Solitaire.</i> Written in 1849, ten years after the river cruise he took with his brother John, it is an account of their journey along the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Leaving on a Saturday afternoon in late August, Thoreau describes the end of summer flowers along the river bank and in the meadows nearby, and then recalls the "queen of the river flowers":<br />
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<i>"In short, Nature seemed to have adorned herself for our departure with a profusion of fringes and curls, mingled with the bright tints of flowers reflected in the water. But we missed the white water-lily, which is the queen of river flowers, its reign being over for this season. He makes his voyage too late, perhaps, by a true water clock who delays so long. Many of this species inhabit our Concord water. I have passed down the river before sunrise on a summer morning between fields of lilies still shut in sleep; and when, at length, the flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open before me, as I floated along, like the unfolding of a banner, so sensible is this flower to the influence of the sun's rays."</i><br />
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Can't you just see it?<br />
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I am just beginning this book, but could not wait to share this lovely passage with you.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-56477382363098699172016-07-24T17:10:00.001-07:002016-07-24T17:10:52.825-07:00Thoreau of the Desert<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<i>It is not the answer that enlightens,</i></div>
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<i>but the question.</i></div>
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<i>---Eugene Ionesco</i></div>
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<i>Desert Solitaire, </i>a 2016 Reading Challenge book, has been in my mental To Be Read (TBR) stack for many years. The title beguiles me and has kept me from reading the book because I was afraid it would disappoint, as if the title was too beautiful for what may follow. I have not been disappointed.</div>
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<i>Desert Solitaire</i> epigraph:<br />
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<i>Give me silence, water, hope</i></div>
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<i>Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes</i></div>
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<i>-- Neruda</i><br />
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<i>Delicate Arch</i></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey">Edward Abbey</a> worked as a seasonal Park Ranger at what was then called <a href="https://www.nps.gov/arch/index.htm">Arches National Monument</a> in Utah, in the late 1950s. He lived twenty miles away from the nearest house in a "little tin government house trailer". Mice-ridden, (an adopted gopher snake took care of them), freezing cold in April, stifling hot in July, equipped with the bare necessities for living, the trailer became a place to store food and belongings. When the weather turned warmish, he built a lean-to "ramada" and a fire pit and moved outdoors, where he slept under the stars. <i>Desert Solitaire</i> was written ten years later from the journals Abbey kept during his seasonal work at the Arches.<br />
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From Abbey's Introduction:<br />
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<i>This is not primarily a book about the desert. In recording my impressions of the natural scene I have striven above all for accuracy, since I believe that there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth, in simple fact. But the desert is a vast world, an oceanic world, as deep in its way and complex and various as the sea...If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree which grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument. What I have tried to do then is something a bit different. Since you cannot get the desert into a book any more than a fisherman can haul up the sea with his nets, I have tried to create a world of words in which the desert figures more as medium than as material. Not imitation but evocation has been the goal.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>Edward Abbey held strong views about modern America's attitude to wilderness. He could not abide the superficial way most tourists visited the Arches. His "word of caution" regarding "industrial tourism":<br />
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<i>Do not jump into your automobile next June and rush out to the Canyon country hoping to see some of that which I have attempted to evoke in these pages. In the first place you can't see <b>anything</b> from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you'll see something, maybe...</i><br />
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Some have attributed Abbey with the beginning of the Earth First! movement and ecoterrorism. His book <i>The Monkey Wrench Gang</i> is about sabotaging a dam construction project in the Southwest, so it is kind of understandable that he would be seen as a proponent of drastic means to stop man's destruction of the natural environment. Abbey strenuously denied that he supported ecoterrorism. However, in <i>Desert Solitaire</i>, he admits to tearing out several miles worth of new road survey markers near his trailer house. A very naughty protest, but not ecoterrorism.<br />
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Rattlesnakes, wildflowers, poisonous water springs, fresh water springs, cliff seeps and hidden grottoes, flash floods, quicksand, range cattle, and uranium are described in beautiful prose in this masterpiece of nature writing. One of the most interesting things to me is that according to Abbey, the beautiful land forms in the Arches are not the result of wind erosion, but of the slow drip of water and the effects of contraction and expansion of cold and heat over eons of geologic time.<br />
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<i>Lake Powell, Glen Canyon</i></div>
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Abbey describes not only his surrounds in the Arches, but a river raft trip down the Colorado through Glen Canyon, as the dam was being built. It is heartbreaking to know that the beauty he describes is now deep under water and silt, buried forever. Even if the dam is not permanent, the silt is. His solitary foray up the side canyon where the Escalante River enters the Colorado is my favorite part of the book. He finds the ruins of a cliff dwelling perched high up the canyon wall. It is all now buried forever. And sadly, Glen Canyon Dam was built not for irrigation but for electricity so that hordes of people could live in the desert southwest.<br />
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<i>Mt. Tukuhnikivats in the La Sal range</i></div>
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We accompany Abbey on a camping trip and solitary climb up one of the highest mountains overlooking the Arches, Mt. Tukuhnikivats. And, we go to the bottom of Grand Canyon where Abbey spent 35 days camped near the Native American village of Havasu. While there he nearly trapped himself on a ledge while exploring the area around his camp. He worked his way down a cliff side and was stranded. Piling rocks and then centering his walking stick in the pile, he climbed up to the tip of his stick and used it as a launch to jump up to a handhold in the rock above. Risky.<br />
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<i>Havasu Falls, Grand Canyon</i></div>
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<i>The Maze</i></div>
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This same fearless attitude sent him and a friend to The Maze, a no-man's-land of canyons (now part of <a href="https://www.nps.gov/cany/index.htm">Canyonlands National Park</a>). At the time, they were barely able to get into the area with a Land Rover. They repelled down a cliff face to the maze itself, not knowing if they would find a way to climb back up. Yes, risky but Abbey described himself as "not an atheist but an earthiest". He believed one should "be true to the earth". He was not afraid because he did not separate himself from the environment.<br />
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He believed in the desert.<br />
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<i>"The finest</i> <i>quality of this stone, these plants and animals, this desert landscape is the indifference manifest to our presence, our absence, our coming, our staying or our going. Whether we live or die is a matter of absolutely no concern whatsoever to the desert."</i><br />
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The title <i>Desert Solitaire</i> is perfect for this book. It is beautiful. The book is beautiful. I will read it again.<br />
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P.S. While recuperating from hand surgery, I could hardly hold a book in my hands for more than a few minutes. This is what I did as I inched my way through <i>Desert Solitaire:</i><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-68176964256486285412016-07-11T14:38:00.000-07:002016-07-11T14:38:05.895-07:00Tunnel ReduxI am recovering from my second carpal tunnel surgery, doing well, but not ready to take up where I left off before this medical flurry.<br />
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One thing I am going to do in the next week or so is re-visit the purpose of this blog so I can focus on getting along with some serious reading. Using LibraryThing's Legacy Libraries, find authors I like, and read the books I have in common with those authors. Simple.<br />
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See you around the corner.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-43927812948878217572016-06-03T15:16:00.004-07:002016-06-03T15:17:28.622-07:00Still in the Tunnel and Mystery Bookmark<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2ZE5AMy_CrAoIZvG9jnXgNN2Hc3AxVl2vB_xEIfgGDNPq5R_qgCiv32lSk_cDUqPvuaQbeog4MyQGVH2rVVIPO1PSQUuhB_ezeXvzvvry7CJK81F4Y19MQdqKvchSHulqlyD4vYR6FSI/s1600/female-hand-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2ZE5AMy_CrAoIZvG9jnXgNN2Hc3AxVl2vB_xEIfgGDNPq5R_qgCiv32lSk_cDUqPvuaQbeog4MyQGVH2rVVIPO1PSQUuhB_ezeXvzvvry7CJK81F4Y19MQdqKvchSHulqlyD4vYR6FSI/s640/female-hand-2.jpg" width="482" /></a></div>
Sorry for the abrupt interregnum here. I should have let you know that I had carpal tunnel surgery on my right hand so would be absent for a bit. The surgery was not scheduled to happen until this coming Monday but there was an opening so they whisked me in on Friday, May 13th (yikes!!!) so it was all a big whirlwind. Anyway...three weeks into recovery and I am nearly back. Very satisfied with the procedure and expect to be fully recovered in another week or two. Left hand is scheduled for June 28, so fair warning, another pause to come!<br />
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Enough about that.<br />
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With lots of time to dawdle, I finished two 2016 Reading Challenge books. I will post on the Lopez book soon, and the Farrell book later as it is part of trilogy I need to finish.<br />
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Also, I have listened to many audio books while playing one-handed Churchill Solitaire on my iPad. As usual, my genre choice is British mystery but I also listened to a short history of Greece and a mystery with a knitting theme. Random, but I do tend to choose my reading matter based on the most shiny thing I see at the moment.<br />
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Here is what I am currently reading in the physical book world:<br />
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<i>Provence</i> by Ford Madox Ford<br />
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<i>Desert Solitaire</i> by Edward Abbey<br />
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<i>In the Skin of a Lion</i> by Michael Ondaatje<br />
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I have "dipped into" <i>Plutarch's Lives</i>, <i>The Game of Kings</i> by Dorothy Dunnett, and <i>The Singapore Grip</i> by J.G. Farrell. I will save those for later. The Dunnett is quite dense. So much so, I have a companion volume to refer to when I do not understand her historical references. I love the challenge but am not quite ready for it right now. Plutarch is part of my mental "must read the classics" obsession and the Farrell is part three of a trilogy so I will wait to post about it when I can speak to all three books. I need to re-read <i>Troubles, </i>the second book in the trilogy because for who knows what reason I began reading them out of order and it was several years ago and I cannot remember much about <i>Troubles</i>. The first book, <i>Siege of </i><i>Krishnapur, </i>winner of the Booker Prize, is shown above. I am still thinking about that one so am looking forward to the next two.<br />
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Here is a teaser for you ~~<br />
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Side Two of a Bookmark</div>
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I found this in one of the books I am now reading...more to come. Now, I have to grab some ice and rest my hand.</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-85133655136223184402016-05-09T15:14:00.002-07:002016-05-09T18:38:10.997-07:00Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"It ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out."</i></div>
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<i>--Heraclitus</i></div>
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In the opening epigram, facing the Table of Contents page, Heraclitus, over 2,500 years ago, said in twenty words what Annie Dillard used 279 pages to say in her masterpiece of nature writing, <i>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</i>. Using keen observation and much research, her chronicle of a year of life near Tinker Creek and its surrounds is a much more nuanced and detailed look at the Fire that keeps each of us and the rest of the Universe in constant aliveness and motion.<br />
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A <i>2016 Reading Challenge</i> book, I finished my well-worn ex-library copy of <i>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</i> last night, and have some thoughts about it before moving on to the next book on my list. This book reminds me of a project begun in 2013 by my favorite book blogger who blogs as <a href="http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/dovegreyreader_scribbles/">dovegreyreader</a>. She had been reading nature writers <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Macfarlane/e/B001IOFAN4">Robert Macfarlane</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wildwood-Journey-Through-Roger-Deakin/dp/1416595325">Roger Deakin</a> and decided to learn as much as she could about the area covering a one mile radius surrounding her English country home. She has written about her explorations here: <a href="http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/dovegreyreader_scribbles/beating-the-bounds/">Beating the Bounds</a>.<br />
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From the frontispiece of <i>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:</i><br />
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<i>"One day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance...I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck."</i><br />
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"It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen..." From the beginning, Dillard is "beating the bounds" of her neighborhood in western Virginia while using what she sees and hears as evidence for her personal abiding faith in a Creator. We are with her as she walks along Tinker Creek and then stands stock still as she watches a frog collapse inward, like a leather purse being slowly folded flat. She then reports what she found through research that an aquatic water bug with pincers holds the frog in place from behind, injects a liquefying agent, and quickly sucks the frog to death. Poor innocent frog! But wait, does not the frog eat something else alive one second and dead the next? As Alfred Lord Tennyson said in a poem, nature is "red in tooth and claw" and that is quite apparent from the start in <i>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</i>.<br />
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Organized by season, Dillard takes us around her suburban surrounds. From the sky to the quarry we learn how to "see" nature. Once seen, we learn a little more about how to understand what we are seeing. And, for some of us this understanding is a spiritual experience, for others a confirmation that physics and biology work together in mysterious ways.<br />
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For Dillard, the journey's ultimate goal is spiritual. For me, reading about the journey resulted in a better understanding of what is over my head, in the water around me, and under my feet. Satisfying enough for this reader. The ongoing confirmation of Dillard's faith actually seemed "preachy" at times and nearly caused me to put the book down and not finish it. However, reminding myself that not everybody is the same (thank you, Jane Austen!), I stuck with it and am glad I did.<br />
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For me, the most incredible bit in the book takes place in a quarry, in the fall. Dillard has decided to contemplate the sunset as she looks over a quarry. She notices a curved "something" on a rock ledge over the way. Deciding to take a look, she walks in that direction but stops as soon as she realizes it is a small copperhead snake resting on the rock, still warm from the last of the day's sunlight. Knowing the risk she is taking, she moves closer to the snake and sits down within four feet of it. She sits very still and observes the snake, its scales, how its tail decreases in size to nothingness, how its head is raised up above the rock. Then, in amazement she watches a mosquito land on the snake's back and begin sucking its blood. This lasts for about two minutes. She imagines how much effort the mosquito has to expend to reach between the scales and find the perfect place to insert its needle-sharp snout. After this is over, Dillard wonders if the snake could feel the mosquito as it went about its work. She also tells the reader that copperhead snakes are abundant in her area, account for most poisonous snakebites in the U.S., and are not quite poisonous enough to kill an adult human. There are timber rattlers in her woods too and she always carries a snake bite kit with her wherever she goes.<br />
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I admire her courage. Copperheads are found in the hill country of Texas too. When we visited relatives there I was always worried sick about one finding my kids as they played in the brushy areas around their grandma's house. We should have thought of a snake bite kit!<br />
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Here are a few of the notes I took as I went along:<br />
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Dillard quotes Arthur Koestler: <i>"Gravity, to Copernicus, is the nostalgia of things to become spheres."</i><br />
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From a physicist: <i>"Everything that has happened is a particle, everything in the future is a wave."</i><br />
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Dillard: <i>"Beauty itself is the language for which there is no key."</i><br />
<i>"I find it hard to see anything about a bird that it does not want seen. It demands my full attention."</i><br />
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This is a GOOD book. If you are interested in nature and like nature writing, even down to the gory bits, I highly recommend it.<br />
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<a href="http://www.anniedillard.com/">Annie Dillard</a> is now in her early 70s and lives on an island in the Puget Sound. Here is what she has to say about her book <i>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</i>.<br />
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"<i>In 1971 I wanted to try my hand at prose. My journals were full of facts that I used to write Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), a sustained nonfiction narrative about the fields, creeks, woods, and mountains near Roanoke, Virginia. Because I "Named" its chapters, in the style of 19th-century narratives, many reviewers took it for a book of essays. The book attempted to describe the creator, if any, by studying creation, leading one writer to call me (wonderfully) 'one of the foremost horror writers of the 20th century' ".</i><br />
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It's that "nature, red in tooth and claw" bit.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-15422232353981149682016-04-29T17:16:00.001-07:002016-04-29T17:16:10.233-07:00The Sea, The Sea and The Sea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The sea. My favorite, most favorite place is the seacoast. I love how the sea changes. I love the smell of the sea air and the feel of the biting wind. I can never get enough of sea gazing.<br />
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A friend is traveling to Ireland later this year. She is reading Irish writers for the culture, history, geography, and to take the pulse of the country. She mentioned that she was reading <i>The Sea</i> by John Banville. At the time of our conversation I was reading one of my 2016 Reading Challenge TBR books, <i>The Sea, The Sea</i> by Iris Murdoch. Both Irish writers, both winners of the Booker Prize for these books. I had read Banville's book several years ago but hardly remembered it. We agreed that we would get together soon to talk about our respective books. I decided to re-read <i>The Sea</i> and have just finished it.<br />
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The books are quite different, but also eerily the same. Murdoch's <i>The Sea, The Sea</i> is a chunk at 495 pages. Banville's is a quick read at 195 pages. I say "quick read" with tongue firmly in cheek. He packs a lot into one sentence. Both books are about memory and its vagaries. The protagonists are both men approaching old age. The setting of both is by the sea and the sea is a main "character" in each.<br />
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In <i>The Sea, The Sea</i> Charles Arrowby, recently retired from the theatre, has moved to an isolated house somewhere in coastal north England. His property includes an old Martello Tower, a remnant of the Napoleonic Wars. The house has no electricity or central heat. He is a lifelong bachelor who cooks hideous meals from canned goods, and he hints at a grand romantic disappointment in his early years. Charles intends to write his memoirs, but the book is barely begun before he is frantically writing about current events, of his own making, as they spiral out of control.<br />
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Here is Charles' proud description of one of his meals:<br />
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<i>"Spaghetti with a little butter and dried basil; spring cabbage cooked slowly with dill; boiled onions served with bran, herbs, soy oil and tomatoes, with one egg beaten in; with these a slice or two of cold tinned corned beef; a bottle of retsina."</i><br />
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Sounds good, eh?<br />
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Charles is self-regarding, manipulative, jealous, obsessive, treats people very badly, and thinks his house might be haunted. He has delusional visions which he ascribes to possible LSD flashbacks. He swims in the sea daily and is eventually visited by many of the old acquaintances he is meant to write about in his memoirs. Due to an obsession about his lost love, he commits a crime and finds himself in the middle of a horrible mess.<br />
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I could not put this book down. Murdoch's writing compels the reader to find out what crazy thing Charles or one of his visitors is going to say or do next. But it is not only Charles who is a main character. The sea, the sea is ever present. Murdoch's descriptions (written by Charles) of the sea are simply breathtaking. Rather than describing the sea in relation to someone or something happening at the time, it stands alone as its own separate entity, never just background for the action.<br />
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<i>"There was nothing upon the luminous faintly-wrinkled expanse except wavery yellow replicas of the evening star and the low crouching moon. The sky was still a dimmed glowing blue, not yet sunk into the blackish blue of night."</i><br />
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<i>"The sea was a choppy dark blue, the sky pale, with a smooth gleaming buff-coloured cloud just above the horizon like a long tatter of silk."</i><br />
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<i>"Cool summer weather had come back with a misty sky and a calm sea. The water was a very pale luminous grey-blue almost white the same colour as the sky, shifting with a quick small dancing movement, and scattered by the misted sun with little explosions of metallic pale-gold light. It had the look of a happy sea..."</i><br />
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<i>"The sea had regained its bejewelled purplish look, inlaid with spotted lines of emerald."</i><br />
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Sounds idyllic doesn't it, this deadly, beautiful sea?<br />
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Murdoch is known to be a difficult writer to "get". I have read several other works by her, and found them to be a bit inaccessible. Not so with <i>The Sea, The Sea</i>. She was a moral philosopher and this comes through in her writing.<br />
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<i>"Emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. In the middle they are acted."</i><br />
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Agree or disagree? Worth pondering. Personally, I think we are all actors most of the time.<br />
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Without giving away spoilers, I will leave it at that. Charles lands on his feet but is left with the prospect of aging:<br />
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<i>"That is a dreadful land, old age."</i><br />
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I could not help thinking of Iris Murdoch's own "dreadful land" as she slowly succumbed to Alzheimer's disease.<br />
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Moving on to John Banville's <i>The Sea</i>. What a treat! I am so glad I decided to re-read this book. I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Banville either unconsciously put in bits he gleaned from <i>The Sea, The Sea</i> or he was paying homage to Iris Murdoch. She won the Booker in 1978, Banville in 2005.<br />
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Both books include the word "plimsoll", a type of rubber-soled canvas slip-on leisure or sports shoe. The usage of this word is not very common nowadays so it seemed funny to me that both Murdoch and Banville would choose it to describe a pair of shoes.<br />
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In <i>The Sea, The Sea</i> Charles visits a churchyard cemetery. He finds a headstone with no name, just the word "Dummy" on it. Apparently a deaf-mute sailor from the 1800s is buried there. In <i>The Sea</i> Banville has given the nickname "Dummy" to one of the characters, a young boy who is mute and also has webbed toes.<br />
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As I said earlier, both characters are late middle-aged men, both remembering their lives, and dealing with those memories in their own way.<br />
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After his wife dies of cancer, Max, an art historian, moves to a lodging house called Cedars to grieve. The house is located on the seacoast. Max has been there before. As a young adolescent he stayed nearby with his parents in a lower-class beach shack for a few weeks each summer. Cedars (the entire house) was being rented by an upper class family called Grace. Max was befriended by the Grace twins, Chloe and Myles, who were about his age. He was swept into the family life of the Graces and referred to them as "the gods" because of their carefree, grand style of life.<br />
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Max worshipped Mrs. Grace. He watched her, relaxing on the beach:<br />
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<i>"She lifts a hand up high to brush a clinging strand of hair from her damp forehead and I fix on the secret shadow under her armpit, plum-blue, the tint of my humid fantasies for nights to come."</i><br />
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Max is a complex character. He is from the lower classes but he marries the only child of a well-to-do businessman so he moves up in society. He had aspired to move up after his summer with "the gods" but has always thought of himself as a fraud in that world. He has had a career as an art historian and is supposed to be writing a book on the French artist Bonnard, but it is languishing, and Max thinks of himself as a dilettante. His daughter Claire has given up the pursuit of an art history degree for social work and Max is determined to steer her back on course because he expects his daughter to be a serious scholar, not half serious as he considers himself to be. Max shows us glimpses of his cruel side. As a boy, he used to beat his little dog so he could enjoy how it came cowering back to him for love and affection in spite of the beating. He bullied a village boy in the presence of one of the Grace twins so as to appear "better" than the low class boy. Max's version of events in the book make him seem like a good person, but memory is unreliable and the cruelty in some of his actions and his sudden anger at his dead wife belie his belief in his own goodness.<br />
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<i>The Sea</i> bounces back and forth between the present and the past. Max recalls his wife's last year as she is dying. He remembers that long ago summer when he was first introduced to death but it is not until the end that we find out how. As with Murdoch, the sea is also ever present in <i>The Sea.</i> However, not as a character, but more as a setting for the action. The writing is, like Murdoch's beautiful:<br />
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"<i>...air like scratched glass..."</i><br />
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<i>"...last spikes of sunlight..."</i><br />
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<i>"...the water racing in over the flats, swift and shiny as mercury, stopping at nothing..."</i><br />
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<i>"A breeze smacked down on the beach and swarmed across it slantwise under a skim of dry sand then came on over the water, chopping the surface into sharp little metallic shards. I shivered not from the cold now but as if something had passed through me, silent swift, irresistible."</i><br />
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<i>"The mud shone blue as a new bruise..."</i><br />
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Overall, <i>The Sea</i> is, as reviewed by the NY Times, "about grief, the misery and confusion the narrator feels on losing his wife." It is also about memory and how we view the past through a small lens, in bits and pieces, usually static, and not necessarily as events actually unfolded.<br />
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Finally, from another reviewer:<br />
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"...Banville's prose is sublime. Several times on every page the reader is arrested by a line or sentence that demands to be read again. They are like hits of some delicious drug, these sentences. One has to stop for a while, and gaze smiling and unseeing into the middle distance, before returning to the page for one's next fix. For a shortish book, it takes a long time to read."<br />
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As I said, Banville packs a lot into one sentence.<br />
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I can highly recommend both of these books. Not light reads, either one, but good reading to take with you if you are planning a long visit to the seacoast. Just the descriptions of the sea are enough to keep one gazing out over the water for hours and hours.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-10159484294879428752016-04-24T10:55:00.000-07:002016-04-24T10:55:23.444-07:00Spotify and Desert Island Discs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Do you listen to music while reading? I do. Sometimes because I find it easier to concentrate without random noise, or because I am in the same room where television is on and cannot read otherwise. My favorite way to listen is <a href="https://www.spotify.com/us/">Spotify</a>. I subscribe to the ad-free premium version.<br />
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I first heard of Spotify when listening to the podcast <a href="http://booksonthenightstand.com/">Books on the Nightstand</a>. Ann Kingman, one of the pair of publisher reps who created the podcast, was talking about listening to music while reading. She said she uses Spotify to find music to suit the mood of the book she is reading. This idea intrigued me, so I went looking for Spotify.<br />
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Now, several years later, I have many playlists that reflect my taste in music and I go to for enjoyment, background, or to set the mood for reading a particular book or author.<br />
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While reading Virginia Woolf, I play my "Woolf" playlist which includes Wagner, Beethoven, and Mozart (so far). I built this playlist from mentions of London concerts attended by the Woolfs in Virginia's diary.<br />
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Rainier Maria Rilke came from an old Bohemian aristocratic family. His letters and poems are accompanied by music from "old Bohemia", now part of the Czech Republic. I have downloaded Czech and Slovak folk music for my "Rilke" playlist.<br />
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A fun way to learn about an author's taste in music is to listen to BBC Radio 4's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/find-a-castaway">Desert Island Discs</a>. I love this podcast! There is a treasure trove of programs in the archives on the website. I am a big fan of Ian McEwan. He was interviewed on Desert Island Discs and his favorite music includes jazz, Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Donizetti, and Van Morrison. If I am reading one of his books, I might create a "McEwan" playlist including some or all of these. Just to set the mood.<br />
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Spotify has become part of my reading life. Not for everything, but today as I work my way through John Banville's <i>The Sea,</i> I am listening to music about the sea, like:<br />
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<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/cf97f8c4-f287-4c0c-a07e-6ca2fdd8e8c2">La Mer</a><br />
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Now I need to go find some more quiet sea music for my playlist "The Sea". Thank you, Ann Kingman, for introducing me to Spotify.<br />
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I will be back soon with a post on two books, <i>The Sea, The Sea</i> by Iris Murdoch and <i>The Sea</i>, mentioned above. Both Irish writers, both Booker Prize winners for these particular books.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-70567126792965627432016-04-05T12:53:00.000-07:002016-04-05T12:53:42.336-07:00The Leopard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I finished <i>The Leopard</i> last week and have waited to write about it so I could gather my thoughts a bit. I share this book with the <a href="http://www.librarything.com/profile/RobertGravesLibrary">LibraryThing Legacy Library of author Robert Graves</a> and it is one of my <a href="http://myreadingroadmap.blogspot.com/2015/12/back-to-almost-normal-falling-off.html">2016 Reading Challenge</a> books. It is a treasure, and I will definitely read it again. In fact, when finished, I was tempted to turn back to the beginning and start over. Beautifully written by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, and a fascinating glimpse back in time to old Sicily when Princes ruled their isolated estates like Kings.</div>
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Our Prince is Don Fabrizio. He is based on the author's great-grandfather, Don Giulio Maria Fabrizio Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa. Set mostly in 1860 at the time of the "Risorgimento" led by Garibaldi, when Italy ceased to be two states, "...and the whole Italian peninsula would soon be one state for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire". Don Fabrizio realizes this means the end of his way of life, and probably much of his fortune. He chooses to embrace it all hoping, as his nephew Tancredi tells him, "...everything must change so that everything can stay the same."</div>
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For an excellent review, go to <a href="http://jeffreykeeten.com/blog/the-leopard-by-giuseppe-tomasi-di-lampedusa">JeffreyKeeten.com</a></div>
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Also, here is a link to the 1963 movie starring Burt Lancaster: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057091/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Leopard</a></div>
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I highly recommend the original version of this beautiful movie. It is long and slow-moving, but a feast for the eyes.</div>
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My copy of <i>The Leopard</i> is a TIME Reading Program Special Edition, published in 1966.</div>
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Giuseppe di Lampedusa</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-10540623469212139532016-03-17T14:10:00.000-07:002016-03-17T14:13:53.774-07:00Library2GoI love my local library. As a reader, of course I love it! Nowadays it has taken on a fresh new look. Comfortable easy chairs in a sleek art deco style, bright colors, indoor "patio" tables with bright colored umbrellas, a huge teepee, interesting displays, a full-sized plastic skeleton, "trader" paperbacks free for the taking, a wonderful dollhouse for my granddaughter to populate with her choice of toy people, dinosaurs, furniture, and a tiger (her favorite), plus the usual assortment of books, etc. For the past two years or so, I have been using the <a href="https://oregon.libraryreserve.com/10/50/en/SignIn.htm?url=Default.htm">Library2Go</a> Oregon Digital Library Consortium service too. This comes free with my library card.<br />
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I especially like to download audio books that I can listen to as I go about my daily routine. Usually I listen to British mysteries, you know, stories set in "peaceful" country villages where nothing ever happens. Ha!<br />
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I like writers such as P.D. James, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, M.C. Beaton, Agatha Christie, Elizabeth George and Deborah Crombie. The last two are American writers whose stories are set in Great Britain. There are many more I could list. Besides mysteries set in Great Britain, I also like to listen to Donna Leon's Detective Brunetti mysteries. These are set in Venice so I get a vicarious visit to that magical city with each new story.<br />
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And, I like Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series, set in Sicily, so more vicarious travel.<br />
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One caveat with my choice of mystery books. I do not like realistic detective fiction. Spare me the autopsies, and psychopaths who build snowmen in the yards of their victims, or put body parts in the car boot. No thanks. Some of my writers throw in gruesome scenes but one is not taken into the mind of the killer. Elizabeth George is an exception, I guess. My "cosy" mysteries, where there IS murder, it is (for the most part) sanitized such that my delicate sensibilities can handle it.<br />
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So far in 2016, I have listened to sixteen audio books. They are not all mysteries. I have "read" Rosamunde Pilcher, Emile Zola, Anthony Trollope, and listened to an Arthur Miller play. OK, I'm a dreamer but isn't reading an escape, no matter how it is accomplished? At least with audio books, I get my chores finished!<br />
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And, a trip to the library is as easy as picking up my iPod. However, these days, I am making more trips in person to my local library. Sitting in a teepee is fun!<br />
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Do you listen to audio books? What have you "read" lately?<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-11582283528935418422016-03-12T15:21:00.000-08:002016-03-12T15:21:01.707-08:00Truth and Vipers<br /><i>"There are many ways to the recognition of truth, and Burgundy is one of them." -- Isak Dinesan</i><br /><br />Earlier today I pulled some books off the bottom shelf of my study bookcase. I had decided it was time to add more books to LibraryThing and these had been lurking in a dusty corner for far too long. As you see, there is a theme:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMdenh-ziD6MYiCSUZESVziCe9-1thlkrvden7cxN0eSL-T7sZizLkjq45-YaBflAESQXJQ3S6SHubH09d6YeUxFUz16ELrzzJpLUyBt71yKSnfurn8kgoT4oGMjb_5sSiY7V-wCP_CzQ/s1600/IMG_2852.jpg"><img border="0" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMdenh-ziD6MYiCSUZESVziCe9-1thlkrvden7cxN0eSL-T7sZizLkjq45-YaBflAESQXJQ3S6SHubH09d6YeUxFUz16ELrzzJpLUyBt71yKSnfurn8kgoT4oGMjb_5sSiY7V-wCP_CzQ/s640/IMG_2852.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitl6jyt9PA6eGv1kyhyphenhyphenng4ZwMqpB1v9g-aZTtsOAn8pbHejQnBw5Imj8zPuNIaT7CD34uHcuKmLyAEvXGk5DyVr9hyphenhyphen8iz1_93X9fpfHgFBb6K8lyCZuz_xBW9r0TMp0-7F8Ga5BLC2RVU/s1600/IMG_2854.JPG"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitl6jyt9PA6eGv1kyhyphenhyphenng4ZwMqpB1v9g-aZTtsOAn8pbHejQnBw5Imj8zPuNIaT7CD34uHcuKmLyAEvXGk5DyVr9hyphenhyphen8iz1_93X9fpfHgFBb6K8lyCZuz_xBW9r0TMp0-7F8Ga5BLC2RVU/s640/IMG_2854.JPG" width="478" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Jwz536hdgR4cvrGxgHXgQq0G1xnc1VWAzfnKOMW3kEMpOslY45rTz9AOHnS1htgoSt08OrYfm2ZlM4iBoST9wkqqsFGTthwjpourNgne8eOknyHDBLqXCqvZ2F5hdKPejM1_HhVY3ho/s1600/IMG_2850.JPG"><img border="0" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Jwz536hdgR4cvrGxgHXgQq0G1xnc1VWAzfnKOMW3kEMpOslY45rTz9AOHnS1htgoSt08OrYfm2ZlM4iBoST9wkqqsFGTthwjpourNgne8eOknyHDBLqXCqvZ2F5hdKPejM1_HhVY3ho/s640/IMG_2850.JPG" width="640" /></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW2F33sIuOks4R6JDTPXTD_qExMFUGe3JlZu_3N9hrPOMDSR6IUvkDc7CJ3_I1A2ruhKSgXbf3_SGSt29zHnTYHhAXEeZYMVOP-OixN5-wUvcCADPm-2nKCbcCJALtgJLRySgUgAT9qUI/s1600/IMG_2851.JPG"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW2F33sIuOks4R6JDTPXTD_qExMFUGe3JlZu_3N9hrPOMDSR6IUvkDc7CJ3_I1A2ruhKSgXbf3_SGSt29zHnTYHhAXEeZYMVOP-OixN5-wUvcCADPm-2nKCbcCJALtgJLRySgUgAT9qUI/s640/IMG_2851.JPG" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkVY_ptQZg1Cx5DFwD9fEzXe61GWupRJduHDA2Q7RHSb0_CepDXtl25KnIVK0RkW8K-i25OEJ7R_cGZFoGejAszaGOKaVCE7BNqhMvjdUt46hxIX14LXfGtOVx_dC4VSQwozSf1J4LMiA/s1600/IMG_2853.JPG"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkVY_ptQZg1Cx5DFwD9fEzXe61GWupRJduHDA2Q7RHSb0_CepDXtl25KnIVK0RkW8K-i25OEJ7R_cGZFoGejAszaGOKaVCE7BNqhMvjdUt46hxIX14LXfGtOVx_dC4VSQwozSf1J4LMiA/s640/IMG_2853.JPG" /></a><br /><br />Back in the day, we were avid home wine makers (and drinkers!). We planted twenty pinot noir (Burgundy) vines in the backyard and took several wine making and tasting classes. It was so fun! We made our own wine for a few years. It was so-so, and eventually we moved on. But one of the best things we did was travel to France. We used <i>"Adventures on the Wine Route"</i> by Berkeley wine importer, Kermit Lynch, as our guide through French wine country. We had many of our own adventures and have never even once been sorry we made the trip.<br /><br />We traveled by train from Paris to Dijon. In Dijon we picked up a rental car and spent the next two weeks driving around Burgundy, Provence, the Languedoc, and Bordeaux. Here are few pictures of Burgundy:</div>
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Wine "growler" shop in Gamay</div>
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Burgundy Scenes</div>
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<br />The center photo was taken near Savigny-les-Beaune. We were there looking for a particular vineyard, "Les Serpentiers". We were never sure, but hoped this picture was the vineyard. According to the wine making brothers Pichenot, Kermit Lynch tells us in <i>"Adventures on the Wine Route"</i>:<br /><br /><i>"Having always loved the vineyard name, "Les Serpentiers", which goes back to at least the thirteenth century, I ask if they know its origin.</i></div>
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<i><br />"There are a lot of vipers there."</i><br /><br /><i>"Not really. There in the vineyard?"</i><br /><br /><i>"It's true Just ten days ago a young woman was bitten and spent a day in the hospital."</i><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEvlGlvWA-msEWsvjRz9k_J2UBav_znBd2ImW_i-Rrvco4H7DfwiLODcCQrPN8GQcVC2lfuHS8kZCMCZicbqbC03QcWpEfL4itM57lsXTXcsYgqW6UCIqSVUKiGnxP_F5ZQoxMoypY8v4/s1600/IMG_2861.JPG"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEvlGlvWA-msEWsvjRz9k_J2UBav_znBd2ImW_i-Rrvco4H7DfwiLODcCQrPN8GQcVC2lfuHS8kZCMCZicbqbC03QcWpEfL4itM57lsXTXcsYgqW6UCIqSVUKiGnxP_F5ZQoxMoypY8v4/s640/IMG_2861.JPG" width="478" /></a><br /><br />We did not encounter any vipers, but we did encounter friendly people, breathtaking scenery, and some fabulous wine. Truly.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-28846576101481447052016-03-01T14:48:00.003-08:002016-03-12T13:38:12.001-08:00A Horde of Rebels<i>"...reading, you know, is rather like opening the door to a horde of rebels who swarm out attacking one in twenty places at once..." -- Virginia Woolf</i><br />
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It is past time for an update on where we have been and where we are going on the Road Map journey. I have had the "rebels" on my tail for the past few weeks and I am glad to report they are harmless, and in fact, quite enlightening and entertaining.<br />
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Firstly, I can tick two of my 2016 To Be Read books off the list:<br />
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Millions of words have been written about Virginia Woolf, one of the early 20th century's vanguard novelists. She helped to bring the <i>stream of consciousness </i>style into being and because of this, her work is considered difficult. <i>The Virginia Woolf Reader</i> is like a See's Candy Christmas box. We get to taste bits from here and there, every one wrapped in bright foil paper with plenty of bows. Editor Mitchell Leaska chose well. There are bits from essays, novels, short stories, diaries, and letters. I did not read the diaries section because of this:<br />
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I really do not like to read extracts from diaries. I want the whole life story, as written by the diarist. This is Volume One of the definitive 4-volume set edited by Anne Bell with an introduction by her husband, Quentin Bell. Quentin is Virginia's nephew, son of her artist sister Vanessa. Quentin wrote this excellent biography:<br />
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Many years ago, I read <i>To the Lighthouse</i> and <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i>, two of VW's most well-known works. I then read this biography and have been a "fan" (aka "Bloomsberry") ever since. Much more to come about Bloomsbury at a later date. VW lived in a time of great upheaval. She experienced the pain of loss at an early age and suffered from intermittent mental and emotional instability. This instability led to VW's suicide by drowning in 1941. Speculation has ranged from bi polar to schizophrenia. In the early 20th century, her malady was called "insanity". She was fortunate to have been born into the upper middle class or she might have spent her life in an asylum. Instead, she was cared for in hospitals and at home with private nurses. She was lucid most of the time and was a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group, the famous set of authors, artists, intellectuals, and hangers-on who lived or met in the Bloomsbury area of London in the early years of the 20th century. Her life was rich, her writing was sublime, and I encourage you to investigate VW. Do not be "afraid".<br />
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In the 1920's, Virginia began a mild love affair with Vita Sackville-West. Vita was an aristocrat. Her family, the Sackvilles, have lived at Knole, one of England's largest country houses, since 1603. The vast estate was given to Vita's ancestor, Thomas Sackville by his cousin Queen Elizabeth I in 1566. The house dates to the late 15th century, with many additions over time. Vita became a celebrity in England in the early 20th century because of two famous court cases. In the first, Vita's mother was proven to be the legal heir to her father Lord Sackville (there was a question as to whether Lord Sackville ever married the Spanish dancer, "Pepita", Vita's grandmother). In the second, Vita's mother was proven to be entitled to a bequest made to her by one of her admirers. The English public was enamoured with Vita, the beautiful young heiress, and could not get enough of her and her family's public humiliation followed by triumph in the courts.<br />
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Vita was also a prolific writer. Her best known work these days is the novel, <i>All Passion Spent.</i> She married the diplomat, Harold Nicolson, at Knole in 1913. They were both bi-sexual and each had love affairs with both sexes. Vita and Virginia's affair was mild, mostly a meeting of great minds, as Vita was aware of Virginia's fragile emotional state, and did not want to harm her in any way.<br />
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In <i>Portrait of a Marriage</i>, Nigel Nicolson, Vita's son, presents us with a view of the unusual marital arrangement between his parents, Harold and Vita. Theirs was an unbreakable love, a bond strong enough to withstand the emotional turmoil of passionate love affairs. By agreement, they gave each other the room to live their own separate lives, knowing they were each other's ROCK.<br />
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The book is divided into parts written by Vita and by Nigel, as well as excerpts of letters written by Vita and Harold. Vita had written an autobiography but locked it away in her tower writing room, unseen by anyone until after her death in 1962. Her son Nigel includes Vita's autobiography and his wider-view version of the same events Vita writes about. Most of the book is taken up with the drama around Vita's passionate love affair with Violet Keppel, which lasted over two years. Vita and Violet wanted to live together but had to run away from England to do so. This planned arrangement created turmoil and tremendous upheaval for everyone involved. Finally, getting as far as France, they break up and Vita returns to her family and begins a much quieter life of seclusion in the Kentish countryside. She and Violet were to meet and travel together a few more times, but the affair gradually wound down.<br />
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Vita and Harold had two sons, and created one of England's great tourist attractions: the gardens at Sissinghurst castle, their family home. Now owned by the National Trust, Sissinghurst was a refuge and the gardens their major project after the stormy first years of their marriage. As a female, Vita could not inherit Knole due to the laws of primogeniture. She mourned the loss of her family home to a male cousin. Virginia Woolf was aware of Vita's great sadness over the loss of Knole. She penned <i>Orlando</i>, her well-known novel of gender bending and time travel with Vita and Knole as her inspiration. I am currently reading <i>Orlando</i> and will give you my thoughts on it at a later date.<br />
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Sissinghurst Castle</div>
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(note the tower, upper center -- Vita's writing domain)</div>
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Finally, <i>Portrait of a Marriage</i> is a lasting tribute to a great love. The love of a man and woman for each other -- come what may. To most, it seems scandalous and a bit naughty that they were tolerant of each other's affairs, and they even refer to this perceived naughtiness in their letters to one another (Harold, as a diplomat, traveled extensively). In their view it was not naughty, rather a mature and generous agreement to allow each other the freedom to live, really live, their own one life in this world.<br />
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Referring to Vita's feelings for Virginia and for the effects on her husband Leonard, Harold says in his 2 December 1926 letter to Vita:<br />
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"<i>I am far more worried for Virginia's and Leonard's sake than for ours. I know that for each of us the other is the magnetic north, and that though the needle may flicker and even get stuck at the other points, it will come back to the pole sooner or later."</i><br />
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Quite civilized, I must say.<br />
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Reading update:<br />
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Listened to two cosy mysteries using my library's digital download feature.<br />
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Read my cousin's first novel, <i>The Wish and the Waterfall</i>. Quite the good book, and a post on it to come at a later date. Way to go, Ken!<br />
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Currently reading <i>A Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek</i>, also on the 2016 TBR challenge and <i>Orlando</i> by Virginia Woolf.<br />
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I think that is it for now. I am not worried about the hordes! Ciao!<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-37650007031244272232016-02-06T13:24:00.003-08:002016-02-06T13:24:15.133-08:00The Song of the Lark<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Book One of Sixteen</div>
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<a href="http://myreadingroadmap.blogspot.com/2015/12/back-to-almost-normal-falling-off.html">2016 TBR Reading Challenge</a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">My apologies for the sporadic posts. I am continually surprised by how long it takes to recuperate from serious illness at this age. Not feeling bad now, just low energy and low interest level in things that used to occupy my mind like an obsession. Some things remain constant -- I am reading several of the books from my 2016 reading challenge. This is a challenge to read through at least sixteen of the books in our "To Be Read" stacks. This is an update on the first of my sixteen. Have you joined the challenge?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">My personal reading road map has guided me through myriad detours and strange meanderings over time. Willa Cather is an American author I have known about but not really taken that seriously. Considered a "western" writer, Cather wrote in the late 19th and first part of the 20th century. Stories about pioneers and the hardscrabble life do not usually interest me much. You see, I prefer English literature and have pretty much ignored American writers. I have lots of their books, but usually pass them over when looking for something to read. Is the writing too raw and new? Not serious enough? Perhaps, as I do like the history, established tradition, and the legacy of the ancients found in English literature. Snobbish prejudice aside, many years ago I read <i>My Antonia </i>by Willa Cather. I remember being moved to tears by the beauty of the writing, the story, and the feeling of being there, on the Nebraska prairie, as I read. For reasons I cannot even now imagine, I never read another of Cather's works or thought about her much, until now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">About a year ago, I was reading through a collection of nature writing by women, <i>Sisters of the Earth, </i>edited by Lorraine Anderson. One of pieces was an extract from Willa Cather's <i>The Song of the Lark.</i> Here is a snippet from the biographical sketch of Cather at the beginning of the piece:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>"Cather's work has been praised for its lyrical and profound evocations of nature...The land is a central figure in her mature fiction; a primary theme is that if treated properly, the land is a source of well-being and -- in the case of struggling young opera singer Thea Kronborg, protagonist of Cather's third and longest novel, "The Song of the Lark" -a source of deep solace. Kronborg has tried to transcend the limits of her upbringing in the frontier Colorado town of Moonstone by escaping to Chicago; when that attempt has seemingly failed, she finds respite in Panther Canyon in the Southwest."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">When I read the extract from <i>Sisters of the Earth </i>titled <i>The Ancient People, </i>I knew I had to someday read <i>The Song of the Lark</i>. Once again, Cather's writing was so evocative, I felt I was there, in the deep, winding crack in the earth called Panther Canyon. Here, where long-abandoned cliff dwellings occupy the inner gorge within the canyon:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>"The dead city lay at the point where the perpendicular outer wall ceased and the V-shaped inner gorge began. There a stratum of rock softer than those above had been hollowed out by the action of time until it was like a deep groove running along the sides of the canyon. In this hollow (like a great fold in the rock) the Ancient People had built their houses of yellowish stone and mortar. The overhanging cliff above made a roof two hundred feet thick.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>In both walls of the canyon the same streak of soft rock had been washed out, and the long horizontal groove had been built up with houses. The dead city had thus two streets, one set in either cliff, facing each other across the ravine, with a river of blue air between them.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The canyon twisted and wound like a snake, and these two streets went on for four miles or more.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>All the houses in the canyon were clean with the cleanness of sun-baked, wind-swept places, and they all smelled of the tough little cedars that twisted themselves into the very doorways. One of these rock-rooms Thea took for her own...The day after she came Henry brought over on one of the pack-ponies a roll of Navajo blankets...and Thea lined her cave with them. The room was not more than eight by ten feet, and she could touch the stone roof with her fingertips. This was her old idea: a nest in a high cliff, full of sun."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Thea Kronborg, is a descendant of Swedish immigrants, and is one of a large family living in southern Colorado, desert country, in the late 19th century. Her father is a clergyman in the small town of Moonstone. Thea's mother recognizes a streak of musical genius in her daughter, and arranges for her to learn to play the piano. Her teacher, an alcoholic German musician, is a stern taskmaster. He too recognizes Thea's talent and pushes her to embrace her ability before she really understands what it is. Over time, Thea becomes aware that she is different from her brothers and sisters, and from her schoolmates. She feels the constraints of the small too-close community and finally breaks free. She travels to Chicago where she studies piano with a well-known concert pianist. When he has to leave because of a career opportunity, he hears Thea sing and is sure she is headed in the wrong direction with her piano studies. He arranges for her to continue her musical studies, and convinces her that her true musical talent is in her voice. Over time, Thea studies, learns the "ropes" of performance art, and then, just as she is about to launch her career, suffers a physical setback, contracting a serious case of pneumonia which nearly kills her. During her long recovery, she is invited to travel to the Southwest, to a friend's ranch for a healing rest. It is while visiting the ranch that she makes a personal breakthrough in her relationship to her art.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Thea stays at the ranch for weeks, making the trek into the canyon every day to occupy her "nest". There she finds badly needed solace and gathers into herself the canyon's raw energy and the spiritual echoes of the Ancient People.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"<i>Not only did the world seem older and richer to Thea now, but she herself seemed older. She had never been alone for so long before, or thought so much. Nothing had ever engrossed her so deeply as the daily contemplation of the cliff...Here everything was simple and definite...Her mind was like a ragbag into which she had been frantically thrusting whatever she could grab. And here she must throw this lumber away. The things that were really hers separated themselves from the rest. Her ideas were simplified, became sharper and clearer. She felt united and strong."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Thea emerges from the canyon with renewed purpose as she pursues her musical career. She had gone through a "vision quest" of a sort, and now understands and believes in her gift. As she explains to her mentor, "Dr. Archie":</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>" 'You see, Doctor Archie, what one really strives for in art is not the sort of thing you are likely to find when you drop in for a performance at the opera. What one strives for is so far away, so beautiful' -- she lifted her shoulders with a long breath, folded her hands in her lap and sat looking at him with a resignation which made her face noble -- 'that there's nothing one can say about it.' "</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to re-read <i>My Antonia. </i>It is on my Kindle. Many of Willa Cather's works are free for Kindle download, as they are in the public domain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I hope to see you back here soon with another reading challenge update. This seems to be the right time to zip through these books as they are there in my TBR stack and so I do not have to do a lot of creative thinking about what to read next.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-15828314577165710832016-01-15T16:22:00.004-08:002016-01-15T16:22:57.944-08:00Pepys Exhibition and a Bit of Poetry<br />
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<b>Samuel Pepys</b></div>
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You may recall, last summer I introduced my friend, the famous 17th century English diarist, <a href="http://myreadingroadmap.blogspot.com/2015/07/introducing-my-friend-samuel.html">Samuel Pepys</a>. Well, there is currently a <a href="http://www.rmg.co.uk/see-do/exhibitions-events/samuel-pepys-plague-fire-revolution-exhibition">Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution exhibition</a> at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, just down the river from London. Oh, how I wish I could go to this! Since I cannot, a bit of armchair travel is in order. If you are the slightest bit interested in 17th century English history, culture (think the movie "Restoration" starring Robert Downey, Jr.), or are just curious, check out the exhibition link. There you will find information about the exhibit, a link to expert Pepys blogs, and a YouTube introduction to the exhibit. The YouTube video is quite clever; I keep playing it over and over just because I am one of Samuel's most devoted fans!<br />
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He was a sexist pig by our standards, but I am over judging historical figures by our standards. It is an exercise in 21st century political correctness and ego. Things happened. They were bad things, and some people were awful racists, philanderers, etc., and that cannot be changed, just acknowledged. And we move on, hopefully having learned how NOT to behave. At least we should. The soap box just collapsed, so I am off it now.<br />
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Anyway, I have been reading <i>Pepys Diary</i>, kind of like the tortoise, plodding along, making progress, and enjoying it immensely. Still in 1668, the next to last year of the <i>Diary</i>. My next Pepys read will be to finish this Claire Tomalin autobiography, <i>Samuel Pepys, The Unequalled Self:</i><br />
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As you can see by the book's "well-loved" condition, I have been working on this one for several years. The snippet of one of my favorite Billy Collins poems mentions Pepys. Here is the text:<br />
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"...This is what Samuel Pepys did too,<br />
jotting down in<br />
private ciphers minor events that<br />
would have otherwise<br />
slipped into the heavy, amnesiac<br />
waters of the Thames.<br />
His vigilance paid off finally<br />
when London caught fire..."<br />
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--Billy Collins, <i>Tuesday June 4th 1991</i><br />
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Lots of reading to do before I get to 1666, the year of the Great Fire of London. 2016 is the 250th anniversary of the fire. Thanks to Pepys we know so much more about how events unfolded over the course of several days. His home and office came very close to being destroyed. The fire stopped only one street away.<br />
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In the Tomalin bio, I am just now reading about the role Pepys played in the logistics of the restoration of Charles II to the English throne in 1660. It would have been better to read the bio before the <i>Diary</i>, but of course I did not! Pepys was a low-level civil servant for the English Navy thanks to his cousin by marriage, Edward Montagu, later created the Earl of Sandwich by Charles II. Montagu was instrumental in the politics of getting Charles out of Holland to England when the Royalists regained power from the Cromwellians. Pepys was responsible for procuring the Royal Barge used to transport Charles back to England and accompanied Montagu as his secretary on the trip.<br />
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These experiences are just two of many in the remarkable life of Samuel Pepys. I hope you will find yourself just a little bit curious about this momentous time in English history and check out the exhibit links. If you do, maybe you will want to learn more about Samuel.<br />
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Next time, I will tell you a bit about my personal pilgrimage to the old City of London to see where Pepys lived and worked. Also, a bit about the journey by river boat down the Thames to Greenwich. There is a Royal Observatory and a pub involved.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-79241940639789266892016-01-07T13:45:00.000-08:002016-01-07T13:45:25.912-08:00A Rare Opportunity, The Huntington, and Reading Updates<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>The Bard</b></div>
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We are fortunate to live near a university town. World class art, drama, music, book shops, restaurants, and more are just a 30 minute drive from home. And now, we have a very rare opportunity to view a Shakespeare "First Folio" at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art located on the campus of the University of Oregon. The exhibit is ongoing through February 7, 2016.<br />
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If you live nearby, please do visit. If you do not, here is an article from our local newspaper about the exhibit and a link to the museum.<br />
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<a href="http://registerguard.com/rg/entertainment/arts/33891054-60/shakespeare-first-folio-making-its-way-to-eugene.html.csp">Register-Guard</a><br />
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<a href="http://jsma.uoregon.edu/">Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art</a><br />
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One of the great art and rare book collections in the world is in San Marino, California -- The Huntington.<br />
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<b>Library and Grounds at the Huntington</b></div>
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I think I have seen a Shakespeare "First Folio" once before. I say "I think" because it was ages ago during a visit to the <a href="http://www.huntington.org/WebAssets/Templates/content.aspx?id=560">Huntington Library</a>. I for sure remember seeing a <i>Gutenberg Bible</i> and Audubon's <i>The Birds of America </i>and have a niggling memory of strolling past the Shakespeare. Let's say I was a bit less aware of what was really important back in the day. Here is another link to the <a href="http://www.huntington.org/WebAssets/Templates/content.aspx?id=14526">Huntington</a>. Scroll down to see information about the major works on permanent display at the library. There is also an <a href="http://www.huntington.org/artcollections/">Art Museum</a> and a lovely <a href="http://www.huntington.org/webassets/templates/general.aspx?id=17082">Botanical Garden</a> at the Huntington. If you are ever in the L.A. area, schedule a visit to this wonderful place.<br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><b><i>2016 Reading Update:</i></b></span></div>
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<b><i>Finished reading:</i></b></div>
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<i>Rose Cottage</i> by Mary Stewart</div>
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<b><i>Currently reading:</i></b></div>
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<i>Pepys' Diary</i> - 1668</div>
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<i>The Song of the Lark</i> by Willa Cather from my <a href="http://myreadingroadmap.blogspot.com/2015/12/back-to-almost-normal-falling-off.html">2016 Reading Challenge</a></div>
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<i>Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell</i> by Susanna Clarke (also from the 2016 Reading Challenge)</div>
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<i>The Fairy Tale Girl</i> by Susan Branch (more about this book when I am finished)</div>
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><b><i>Audio Books Update:</i></b></span></div>
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During my recuperation I have spent many hours listening to audio books (mostly cosy mysteries and romances set in England because I find them very relaxing) while knitting, crocheting, doing Sudoku puzzles, etc. Here are the books I have listened to in 2016:</div>
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<b><i>Finished:</i></b></div>
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<i>The School at Thrush Green</i> by Miss Read</div>
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<i>Celebrations at Thrush Green</i> also by Miss Read</div>
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<b><i>Current listening:</i></b></div>
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<i>That Summer</i> by Lauren Willig</div>
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I should say that I plan to read more than 16 books in 2016. The Reading Challenge is focused on books I have had in my TBR stack for way too long. I hope to read or listen to at least 40+ books in 2016. I need to get with it or I will never finish all the books I have in the time I have left on this good earth!!!</div>
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My cousin just published his first novel, and it is coming in today's mail!!! Add another one to my TBR stack! See you next time...</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-65903899663928125242015-12-27T14:49:00.001-08:002015-12-27T14:49:05.995-08:00Back to (Almost) Normal, Falling Off the Mountain, A Reading Challenge**NEWS FLASH** I AM BACK!!!!!!!!!!<br />
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If you read my blog, thank you very much! I hope you missed me -- I missed you! Feeling much better, not quite 100%, but getting close. I have missed blogging very much and am quite happy to be back.<br />
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During this hiatus, I have had lots of time for reading and reflection. Health issues have a way of focusing the mind. And, in times of crisis some important things are no longer important. Please pardon the confessional bits here -- I have always taken too much pride in my smarts. I have smarts. But, I also lack the common sense gene. I admit it! I set high expectations for myself because I have to live up to my smarts, but the reality is, I spend (spent!) a lot of time doing this and that because I thought it was absolutely necessary to accomplish these things. One of these "things" is reading <i>Ulysses</i>. So, in the spirit of stepping away from what I used to think was SOOOO important, I<b> am calling a halt to</b> <b>the Mt. Ulysses expedition</b>. I was very enthusiastic and enjoyed the endeavor at first. While down and out I felt guilty for not reading, listening, or researching <i>Ulysses</i> and Joyce. As I began to feel better, I started listening to the dramatization again and realized it did not appeal to me at all. In fact, it was boring, tedious, unintelligible, and too much WORK. It became obvious that I was no longer enjoying myself and if I am retired and in control of my own doings, why do something so awful? Clarity is good. So, thanks to the gods of recuperation, I am embarking on new adventures and leaving James Joyce and his genius behind. I hope no one is disappointed, (she smirks). We are officially OFF the mountain! Fair warning, this might not be the only project I abandon. If a book does not grab me I will let it go.<br />
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First things first before we can really move on. Let's clear our agenda for a fresh start in 2016. Taking stock of past reading projects I see we have three unfinished sojourns.<br />
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-- The Collected Stories of Colette<br />
-- The Mountains of the Moon<br />
-- Pepys' Diary<br />
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All are worth finishing, so look for coming posts on these in the new year.<br />
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I am still using <a href="https://www.librarything.com/">LibraryThing</a> and its Legacy Libraries feature as my reading guide. So far, I share books in my library with 52 Legacy authors (there will be more when I have cataloged my entire library). Homer's works are those most commonly shared, 34 out of 52 authors having at least one of his works in common with me. I have read and discussed <a href="http://myreadingroadmap.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-wine-dark-sea-to-snotgreen-sea.html">Homer</a> so we are done with him, unless his work becomes part of another discussion. Moving forward, I want to divide my reading and the direction of this blog into several "groups". Since I have always had more than one book going at the same time, I want to keep (loosely) to something like this:<br />
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-- History & The Classics<br />
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-- Biography, Diaries, Letters<br />
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-- Travel, Nature<br />
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-- Literature, Poetry, Essays<br />
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-- 2016 Reading Challenge<br />
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-- Everything Else (includes art, movies, and life in general)<br />
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Finally, at this time of year there are tons of "Best of" lists and reading challenges for the coming year. One of the challenges I have always enjoyed (but have never accomplished because I am easily distracted) is the "Read xx number of books in the coming year" kind of thing. Without formally joining a challenge on another blog, I am creating my own challenge. You, dear reader, are not required to join in, but it might be fun for you to stroll through your "To Be Read" stack and pick out your own books to read in 2016. Clear those decks, forget resolutions, just read!<br />
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So here is the challenge: Read 16 books from your To Be Read stack in 2016. Here are mine:<br />
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<b>Stack #1</b></div>
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<b>Stack #2</b></div>
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Stack #1:</div>
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<i>Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell</i>, Susanna Clarke</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Currently on page 234, so have a head start but will finish in 2016 so it counts</span></div>
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<i>Love Medicine</i>, Louise Erdrich</div>
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<i>The Song of the Lark</i>, Willa Cather</div>
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<i>The Leopard, </i>Giuseppe Di Lampedusa</div>
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<i>The Sea, the Sea</i>, Iris Murdoch</div>
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<i>Provence, </i>Ford Madox Ford</div>
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<i>Portrait of a Marriage, </i>Nigel Nicolson</div>
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<i>The Virginia Woolf Reader, </i>ed. Mitchell A. Leaska</div>
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Stack #2:</div>
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<i>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, </i>Annie Dillard</div>
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<i>Bad Land, </i>Jonathan Raban</div>
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<i>Venice, </i>Jan Morris</div>
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<i>Crossing Open Ground, </i>Barry Lopez</div>
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<i>The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume One 1915-1919</i>, ed. Anne Olivier Bell, Introduction by Quentin Bell</div>
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<i>The Siege of Krishnapur, </i>J.G. Farrell</div>
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<i>The Fact of a Doorframe, </i>Adrienne Rich</div>
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<i>The Art of Drowning, </i>Billy Collins</div>
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Happy New Year, and gather those books for the 2016 Reading Challenge!!!</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-55944911078147796242015-11-23T14:45:00.002-08:002015-11-23T14:45:46.009-08:00Windbags, Cannibals, and "Caught Between a Rock and a Whirlpool"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Aeolus, Ruler of the Winds</b><br />
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It is late morning in Dublin. Bloom is back from Paddy Dignam's funeral, and Stephen is off the beach. Episode 7 takes place in the <i>Freeman</i> newspaper offices.</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Headlines in Large Bold Type</span></b></div>
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disrupt the narrative text and the interior monologue of previous episodes is mostly absent. Leopold Bloom stops in to discuss a newspaper ad for one of his clients. Staff is gathered in the front office listening to one of their colleagues mock a political speech reprinted in the morning newspaper. Interspersed with this oration are various jokes, riddles, bragging, philosophical arguments, and predictions about today's horse race. Basically, it is a gathering of windbags, including the editor, dawdling through the late morning. Simon Dedalus, Stephen's father is also present.</div>
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"The episode parallels the aftermath of Odysseus's visit to Aeolus, the god of the winds in the <i>Odyssey</i>. One of Odysseus's men disobeys him, opening a bag of winds that then blows them off-course. In the "Aeolus" episode of <i>Ulysses, </i>wind is represented by the windy rhetoric used in journalism and oratory. The newspaper-room setting of the chapter, the episode's headlines, and men's own inflated speech, together with the conversation about rhetorical and journalistic triumphs, all support the theme of the episode." </div>
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And, as Odysseus was blown off course, so Bloom has a setback getting an ad into the newspaper. His client wants the ad only for the month of July; the foreman asks for "a three months' renewal". Bloom spends the rest of the episode attempting to reach his client and being rebuffed by the editor as he hopes to circumvent the foreman's three-month renewal dictate.</div>
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After Bloom ("the Father"), leaves the office, Stephen Dedalus ("the Son"), enters. He joins in the general conversation and is asked by the editor to write a piece for the newspaper. At one point, narrative changes to Stephen's interior monologue. Reacting to part of a bombastic speech, he thinks: <i>"Gone with the wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings." </i>My first thought on reading this was "a ha!, Margaret Mitchell took this line for the title of her masterpiece and the name of Scarlett O'Hara's plantation." No, both Joyce and Mitchell lifted them from lines in the poem "Cynara" by Ernest Dowson. Makes one feel very un-read.</div>
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At the end of the episode, Bloom and Stephen cross paths as they meet on the steps of the newspaper office as staff are leaving for lunch. Bloom approaches the editor about his ad but the editor has no time for him. He is more interested in what Stephen is saying.</div>
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<b>The Isle of Cannibals</b></div>
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"Bloom is primarily alone in episode 8, "Lestrygonians". He does not have any errands to run yet; he is merely strolling the city street and looking for lunch. In episode 4, we were first introduced to Bloom as a preparer and eater of food, and, most notably in the opening lines, a meat lover. Yet, now, outside his own home, the prospect of getting and eating food is more overwhelming and problematic. Episode 8 corresponds to Odysseus's visit to the island of cannibals in the <i>Odyssey</i>. Under this thematic menace, the meat-loving Bloom opts not to eat at the Burton, where men shove meat into their mouths, and heads instead to Davy Byrne's for a vegetarian lunch.</div>
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The episode opens outside a candy shop, and food pervades Bloom's thoughts and serves as a tie-in with many other disparate topics. Thoughts of food connect with thoughts of pregnant women, from Molly's hunger for certain foods while pregnant to Mina Purefoy, currently in labor with many other mouths to feed at home. Food connects with sex, in Bloom's memory of making love with Molly years ago on a hill as she fed him a seedcake out of her mouth, and in his thoughts of aphrodisiacal food." </div>
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As Bloom wanders, he thinks of the scientific term "parallax" and its meaning. The word is "an astronomical term that roughly refers to the way in which an object seems to be positioned differently when viewed from a different vantage point."<i> </i>This is a key to understanding <i>Ulysses</i>. The way we think of events and people in the novel will change as we read about the same events and people from a different character.</div>
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At the diner, patrons gossip about Bloom behind his back. Bloom daydreams while he eats and contemplates beauty. He thinks about the statues in the National Museum and wonders if there is anything under the statues' robes and decides to sneak a look later in the day.</div>
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Underlying Bloom's thoughts throughout this episode is his fear that Molly will be having sex with Blazes Boylan later in the afternoon, in their home. The episode closes as Bloom spots Boylan across the street and ducks into the gates of the National Museum to avoid him.</div>
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<b>Scylla and Charybdis</b></div>
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<b>or</b></div>
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<b>"Caught Between a Rock and a Whirlpool"</b></div>
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Episode 9 is all about Stephen and his "Hamlet theory". He is expounding it in the National Library (part of the National Museum) director's office to his literary friends, Eglinton, a critic; A.E., a poet; and Lyster, a librarian. "Stephen contends that Shakespeare associated himself with Hamlet's father, not with Hamlet himself." And, he says that Hamlet was based on Shakespeare's dead son Hamnet. He also says that Shakespeare's unfaithful wife, Ann Hathaway, was the inspiration for Hamlet's unfaithful mother. In episode 1, Stephen's friend Buck Mulligan teased him about this theory, saying that Stephen would explain it algebraically to the Englishman Haines after they had a few pints at The Ship bar.</div>
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"He never met Haines and Buck at the Ship pub at 12:30, as they arranged this morning...Stephen is trying to interest Eglinton and A.E. into publishing the theory and in his own talent in general...There are frequent interruptions and digressions, and Stephen often ad-libs, using thoughts or the words of others from earlier in the day. Episode 9 corresponds to Odysseus's trial-by-sea in which he must sail between Scylla, the six-headed monster situated on a rock, and Charybdis, a deadly whirlpool. The concept of negotiating two extremes plays out several times within the episode, most notably in the Plato-Aristotle dichotomy that Stephen mentions. Like Odysseus, Stephen sails closer to Scylla, and thus Stephen's thoughts and theories owe more to Aristotle's grounded, material, logical sense of the world (symbolized by the rock) than to Plato's sense of unembodied concepts or ideals (symbolized by the whirlpool)."</div>
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As Stephen contends that Shakespeare based his work on the realities of his own life, his friends argue that a writer's personal life should not be used to judge the works produced by that writer. During this conversation, Buck Mulligan enters the room and begins to mock Stephen with his extreme physical-based humor. Stephen is annoyed by Mulligan and wants to be accepted by his literary friends. And, he is sad that they have not included him in their upcoming compilation of young Irish poets.</div>
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Stephen and Bloom again cross paths as Bloom is following Stephen and Mulligan out the door of the National Library. Mulligan had earlier seen Bloom peeking under a statue in the lobby and jokingly warns Stephen that Bloom must be homosexual.</div>
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"The cameo appearances of Bloom in this episode remind us of the sonless Bloom's suitability as a replacement father figure for Stephen. The schematics of the chapter reinforce this sense. Though Stephen himself seems to be the Odysseus figure for a time in the 'Scylla and Charybdis' episode, in the schematic of Shakespeare, Bloom seems to be the father figure (Shakespeare) and Stephen, the son (Hamlet). Bloom is aligned with Shakespeare through their similarly unfaithful wives and dead sons, Hamnet and Rudy, respectively."</div>
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Episode 9 is especially down in the literary weeds. I relied a LOT on <i>SparkNotes </i>throughout this post, but especially for the episode 9 section. All quoted sections in this entire post are thanks to <i>SparkNotes. </i>I appreciate all of the online resources now available for interpreting <i>Ulysses</i>. No wonder this book has been considered inaccessible to the general reader since its 1922 publication. Even with reading aids, it is still WORK for me to understand it, but we are now just about halfway through the book, thank goodness!</div>
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My next Ulysses Project post will be on episodes ten, eleven, and twelve. See you then!</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-45693808959311552582015-11-09T16:50:00.004-08:002015-11-09T22:53:20.317-08:00The View From Here<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Fellow climbers, we have reached the 1/3 mark on our haul up Mt. Ulysses! Six "chapters" completed, twelve to go.<br />
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The climb has been greatly aided by <a href="http://www.rte.ie/readingulysses/1982.html">RTE's</a> radio dramatization of <i>Ulysses</i>. Here is a link to the actual recording.<br />
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<a href="https://archive.org/details/Ulysses-Audiobook">Audio Recording of Ulysses</a><br />
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I listen to a chapter then read the text. This method makes it easier for me to follow the story as a character's thoughts are differentiated from narrative by a change in the voice of the narrator.<br />
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After finishing the first section, the "Telemachiad", we begin the "Odyssey" section. Whereas the Telemachiad is about the "Son", Stephen Dedalus, the Odyssey is about the "Father", Leopold Bloom.<br />
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A nice touch by Joyce is having Stephen and Bloom both notice the same cloud covering the sun while they wander through Dublin on their separate journeys.<br />
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<b>Calypso's Island</b></div>
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The first section of the Odyssey is "Calypso". In Homer's <i>The Odyssey</i>, Calypso is a nymph who keeps Ulysses captive on her island for seven years by bewitching him and using him as her lover.<br />
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Joyce introduces us to Leopold Bloom, the "Ulysses" to his wife Molly's "Calypso". Bloom is in advertising. He is middle-aged and lives with his wife Molly in a middle-class neighborhood in Dublin. He waits on Molly hand and foot, is obsessed with what she is doing when he is away, and suspects she has a lover, one Blazes Boylan, a concert producer. Molly is a singer and performs in musical revues and concert tours. She is preparing to go on the road with Boylan's production company.<br />
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Bloom and Molly have a fifteen-year-old daughter, Milly. She lives away from home and works as a photographer's assistant. She may be the young woman referred to by Buck Mulligan in Chapter One as the "photo girl" recently befriended by an acquaintance of his and Stephen's. The Blooms had a son, Rudy, who died several days after his birth. Bloom still grieves for his lost son.<br />
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Joyce has already shown us Stephen's morning on this June 16, 1904. Now we follow Bloom on the same day as he gets up, prepares Molly's breakfast, feeds the cat, and leaves the house to buy a pork kidney for his own breakfast. Not kosher...here we see Joyce setting up Bloom as a secular Jew in the very Christian Dublin. Remember Mr. Deasey, at the close of Chapter Two, telling Stephen the joke about Ireland not persecuting the Jews because "she never let them in". Obviously not true.<br />
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Bloom reads a letter from Milly while he eats his kidney breakfast and thinks about the funeral he will attend later this morning.<br />
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Where Stephen is cerebral, Bloom's physicality is in the foreground. He is a sensual man, practically a walking groin as he has carnal thoughts about most of the women he sees carrying on their own business around town. Joyce takes us along to the outhouse with Bloom, and in the next chapter into his head as he thinks about masturbating in the bath he plans to take before attending the funeral.<br />
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<b>The Lotus Eaters</b></div>
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In the second section, "The Lotus Eaters", Bloom walks through the streets of Dublin as he completes several errands. The Homeric parallel is Ulysses' telling King Alcinous about the land of the Lotus eaters where his men were drugged by eating flowers and no longer cared about returning home. Ulysses gathers his men together and returns them to the ship to set sail once again.</div>
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As he is wandering, Bloom daydreams about the exotic east. Molly was born in Gibraltar. She exudes a Mediterranean languor and as she is usually in Bloom's mind, this exoticism extends to other thoughts as well. He also has voyeuristic fantasies (the walking groin again) about women he sees on the streets. He stops by the Post Office to pick up a letter from a woman named Martha with whom he is having a surreptitious correspondence using the alias Henry Flower. He keeps the Post Office card in the sweatband of his hat, out of Molly's sight.</div>
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After he reads Martha's letter, he goes into a church and takes a seat near the door at the back. He ponders Catholic rituals, especially the idea of communion being the drinking of Christ's blood and the eating of his corpse. He also thinks the church would be a "nice discreet place to be next to some girl". Walking groin, in a church. Was it just Joyce, or were most men obsessed with sex in the repressed early 20th century? Maybe most men still are?</div>
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Bloom goes to a chemist's shop to have a lotion made up for Molly. He buys a bar of lemon scented soap to use in the public bath house. This section ends with Bloom's fantasy about masturbating in the bath before he goes to his friend Paddy Dignam's funeral which is at 11:00.</div>
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<i>He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.</i></div>
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<b>Hades</b></div>
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The third, and final section for this post, is "Hades" and is primarily concerned with Paddy Dignam's funeral. The Homeric parallel is Ulysses' trip to Hades to seek advice from dead friends and relatives about the course of action he should take to return home.</div>
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Bloom shares a carriage with three acquaintances as they travel in the procession behind the hearse carrying Paddy in his coffin. One of the acquaintances is Simon Dedalus, Stephen's real father.</div>
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The four make small talk and comment on people they see on the street as they move along. Bloom sees Stephen on the sidewalk and points him out to his father. Simon makes disparaging remarks about Stephen's friends, especially Buck Mulligan. The carriage passes Blazes Boylan at the same exact time Bloom is thinking about Boylan's upcoming visit to Molly this afternoon.</div>
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Bloom is set apart from the group in the carriage because he is Jewish and because the men consider Molly, a singer on the stage, to be a loose woman. A chance remark he makes about dying in one's sleep being the best way, causes a reaction as the other men silently disagree because Catholics fear sudden death since they would not have time to repent. They also refer to Molly as "Madame" (a veiled insult) when speaking of her upcoming concert tour. Bloom seems to be vaguely aware of these slights.</div>
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He also thinks of his own father's suicide and appears not to notice when a member of the party speaks disparagingly of suicides. </div>
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At the funeral, Bloom is preoccupied with thoughts of his own dead son, wonders how the cemetery attendant, living so close to a graveyard, convinced any woman to marry him and bear his children. He thinks about the horror of being buried alive and how telephones in coffins could prevent this. Rather than being respectful and thinking of his friend and his friend's family, Bloom is being self-centered and thinking irreverent thoughts.</div>
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So, there you have the most recent three chapters and are caught up to the end of this part of the Mt. Ulysses climb. I will be honest and say that except for the idea of "Why do you climb this mountain? -- Because it is there", I would not read <i>Ulysses.</i> It is not an enjoyable read, it is work, and frankly not very interesting. I still appreciate the literary genius of James Joyce, and will definitely finish the book primarily for the sake of his memory, and because it is there.</div>
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Thanks to <a href="http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/ulysses/">SparkNotes</a> and <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/notesonjamesjoyce/00-notes-on-james-joyce/calypso">Kate Topper</a> for the fine analysis of these three chapters.</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-67934273422185060822015-11-04T11:57:00.000-08:002015-11-04T11:57:31.883-08:00Ulysses On Archive.Org<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A short post to let you know I found an audio recording of <i>Ulysses</i> on <a href="https://archive.org/">Archive.org</a> and it is wonderful! Here is the link to <i>Ulysses</i>:<br />
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<a href="https://archive.org/details/Ulysses-Audiobook">Audio book link</a><br />
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This is much more than someone just reading the book. It is like listening to a radio play. The narrator's voice changes when the text is an internal dialogue which makes it so much easier to understand.<br />
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I have changed my approach now that I am finished with the first three "chapters". I am listening to a chapter before I read the text. And, I am continuing with the <a href="http://blog.frankdelaney.com/re-joyce/">Delaney Podcast</a>.<br />
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My goal is to finish the book by the end of the year. I will check in here each time I complete three chapters. In a few days I will post about chapters four through six.<br />
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I hope you check out the recording. It is a really good way to "read" <i>Ulysses</i> if you do not want to plough through the text.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-81207250312119002332015-10-29T17:06:00.003-07:002015-10-29T17:16:48.290-07:00Proteus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Proteus, the god of "elusive sea change"</b></div>
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Here we are again, climbing Mt. Ulysses. The end of the three episodes of Part One, the <i>"Telemechiad"</i>, is a good place to catch our breath.<br />
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We have discussed "Telemachus" and "Nestor", episodes one and two, <a href="http://myreadingroadmap.blogspot.com/2015/09/podcasts-and-planet-ulysses-update.html">here</a>. They describe the early and mid-morning of the young intellectual, Stephen Dedalus. Joyce has cast Stephen in the role of Homer's Telemachus, son of Ulysses, who goes on a journey to find his missing father. Stephen wakes up after spending the night in a Martello Tower rented by his ersatz friend Buck Mulligan. Buck's bullying and cajoling gets on Stephen's nerves and he vows to sleep elsewhere in future. Stephen goes on to teach a history class to a group of upper class boys in the school run by Mr. Deasey. Joyce has cast Mr. Deasey as a father-figure and mentor to Stephen. In Homer's <i>Odyssey</i>, Telemachus seeks out Nestor, a wise old man and friend of his father for advice on how to find the missing Ulysses. In Stephen's mind, his "Nestor" is a fool and a cranky old man. Mr. Deasey gives Stephen a letter he wants published in the prominent Dublin newspapers and he hopes Stephen will pass it along to some of his journalist friends.<br />
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Episode three, "Proteus", finds Stephen walking along the beach at Sandymount Strand. He is killing time between his teaching gig and an appointment at The Ship pub where he is meeting Buck Mulligan for lunch and a drink.<br />
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"Proteus" is the chapter that usually turns off new readers to Joyce and is where I have given up more than once. It is so multi-layered it took Frank Delaney 67 episodes to cover it. Mind you, these are weekly episodes, so more than one year! Delaney says that Joyce once told a friend he wanted "the professors to spend three hundred years figuring out <i>Ulysses</i>". I have twice read through "Proteus" and have listened to all of the podcasts and will now do my best to give you a summary. This is based on Delaney's <a href="http://blog.frankdelaney.com/2013/06/re-joyce-episode-157-proteus-redux.html">episode 157</a> where he outlines the major themes of the story so far and how they relate to Stephen's actions on the beach in "Proteus".<br />
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We already know about Joyce using Homer's <i>Odyssey</i> as a loose framework for the plot of <i>Ulysses</i>. Whereas Telemachus was looking for his actual father, Stephen is looking for a father-figure. His own father is alive and well but Stephen has rejected him as a basically worthless human being. The father-son relationship is a major theme in <i>Ulysses</i>. Joyce touches on Hamlet's quest to avenge the death of his own father, Christianity's trinity -- Father, Son, Holy Ghost -- and on Stephen's grief upon the recent death of his mother.<br />
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Joyce referred to this episode as "Proteus" because it is about the sea and about change, which creates uncertainty. While walking on the beach, Stephen is doing some major navel gazing. His inner thoughts, in a stream of consciousness form, are interspersed with Joyce's narrative and it is sometimes very confusing which is which. Here he sees a dog trotting along the shore:<br />
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"<i>Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull...He turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from father out, waves and waves."</i><br />
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The first, fourth, and maybe the last sentence are Stephen's thoughts, the rest are Joyce's narrative. See what I mean?<br />
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Like Joyce, Stephen has very poor eyesight. He has lost his spectacles, so everything appears as if in a mist. It is mid-day, when sunlight creates a sort of "miasma" along the shore, so Stephen finds everything sort of undefined. His mind goes off to Aristotle and his writing about how we perceive the physical world through our senses. The idea of "if you can't see something, does it exist?". Like the "if a tree falls in a forest with no one to hear it, does it make a sound?". Stephen closes his eyes and thinks about what he smells and hears. This leads to hazy snatches of memory about the time he spent in Paris where he met a friend of his fathers, an old Irish bomb thrower, Kevin Egan. He imagines a visit to his Uncle who lives nearby on Sandymount Strand. He thinks he sees two midwives and wonders if they are burying a dead fetus on the beach. He imagines Eve who had no navel. Then he thinks of the umbilical cord as a telephone line to "Edenville".<br />
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Delaney points out that Joyce is a master of "show don't tell" writing. Here is his description of a gypsy couple Stephen sees scavenging shellfish on the beach:<br />
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<i>"Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued feet out of turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick muffler strangling his unshaven neck. With woman steps she followed: the ruffian and his strolling mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and shellgrit crusted her bare feet. About her windraw face her hair trailed."</i><br />
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Word combinations, like "turnedup" written as one word convey a visual image of the man, as does "windraw" used to describe the woman's face. OMG Joyce. And, I just realized, OMG Dylan Thomas ("a springful of larks in a rolling cloud..." and "the heron priested shore"). I think I am beginning to understand "show don't tell".<br />
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Since I do not want to spend three hundred years writing this post, and you, dear reader, do not want to spend three hundred years reading it, I will not recount the hundreds of other thoughts in Stephen's mind as he ambles along the beach, takes a break, sits on a rock, ruminates, masturbates, urinates, and picks his nose. Yes, really. I admit that I did not recognize the bodily functions as such on my first read through. Suffice to say, there is no doubt this is definitely Mt. Ulysses at its most steep.<br />
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Delaney concludes his summary by saying that at the end of this chapter, we "know who we are dealing with". From now on, when Stephen appears in the story, we will recognized who he is because we know him, we know what to expect. Joyce has given us a complete characterization.<br />
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And, finally, we are free to meet the next and even more major character. Coming up -- our introduction to Leopold Bloom.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-29224872850998969552015-10-23T11:50:00.002-07:002017-03-08T09:14:34.881-08:00Let's Bury the Wine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Curemonte, France</b></div>
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It is lovely, isn't it, this quiet medieval village in central France with its chateaus and imagined winding cobbled streets. Are the crumbling ruins of a chateau still hiding there, on a hill overlooking the village? Those ruins, where Colette, nearing 70, took refuge in the summer of 1940 after the German army entered the outskirts of Paris. Colette writes:</div>
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"<i>We have been here since 15 June. We had to leave on the fourteenth or the thirteenth, because the Germans had reached Mere. And I wanted to stay. And despite everything, I regret not having stayed. Curemonte, in ruins, has been loaned to my daughter by one of her brothers. We are waiting, and with such a hunger, to go back to Paris as soon as there is a route open. Not enough petrol...</i></div>
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<i>'When it rains, the damp soaks into and revives the colours of the little dome, twelve or fifteen feet above our heads, which forms the roof of a little circular room in the ruin. In dry weather, the same paintings, apparently dating from the Renaissance, turn pale and powdery. We gaze up at them from below, there is not a single wall solid enough to lean a ladder against. These inexpungeable frescoes, consisting entirely of geometric decorations converging on the keystone of the dome, are painted very closely over a background of dark stone. They once enlivened with their yellows, their blues, and their olive greens, the solitary state of a Lady who kept herself warm without the aid of a fire, her feet tucked up in her great skirt...</i></div>
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<i>'It is her bedroom that we are burning, its wooden panels carved into flowers and picked out in colours; under the paint it is crumbling away and as soft as sponge. From her little square window, the Lady used to see the invader, the ally, and the merchant mount the hill; she used to watch for the approach of what we lack: her freshly churned butter, her honeycombs, her rents paid in kind with chickens strung up by their legs, and the fine-ground flour...The curfew was not, as it is for us, the moment to be dreaded above all other, the moment when we all know that we can no longer count on anyone but ourselves until the coming of the clear dawn, cold as in all mountain districts, and heralded by a hundred goldfinches perched on the tips of the pea stick."</i></div>
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She remained in the chateau ruins with her husband, her servant Pauline, and her daughter Bel-Gazou's family for only a short time. In September she made her way back to Paris ("I'm used to spending my wars in Paris!"). The following year her husband, a Jew, was arrested by the Gestapo and interned. He was released several months later and left Paris to escape possible re-arrest. Suffering from arthritis, Colette remained in Paris.</div>
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I am continually in a swoon as I read Colette. Her writing is evocative, beckoning, picks me up and swoops me back in time. I hover over her shoulder while she, at her desk near a window in her beloved Palais-Royale apartment, scribbles on sheets of light blue paper (her "<i>fanal bleu</i>, or blue beacon light"). </div>
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Nearing the end of <i>Earthly Paradise, </i>her collection of memoir pieces, I think her writing is getting stronger, more alive. A lifetime of writerly observation has given her pen a knife-like edge. She chronicles her life with a keen sense of certainty. And, her mother, Sido, remains the major influence on her outlook.</div>
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Writing about her own experience during WWII, she remembers how Sido reacted to her first glimpse of a Prussian soldier on a country lane in Burgundy during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870: </div>
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"<i>It was up in Fox Lane...At dusk there is almost always a mist up there, along Fox Lane, because the spring is smoky then. So there I was, and I saw a soldier with a spike on his helmet standing in the middle of the lane. He was holding his rifle as though it was a shotgun. I could just make out that he had a thick, short beard. I think he was a Bavarian. Because of the dusk and the mist, there was no way of telling the colour of his uniform or of his beard. And for a moment I had the impression that the whole German Army must be composed entirely of grey men just like him, grey clothes, grey faces, grey hair, like people in engravings...</i></div>
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<i>'What did you do?</i></div>
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<i>'I went straight home and buried all the best wines."</i></div>
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Of course.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-42214817767373790352015-10-19T12:45:00.001-07:002015-10-19T12:49:04.510-07:00Cosy Blankets and Cosy Mysteries - - My Sweet Distractions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Cosy Stripe Blanket</b></div>
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I am just loving that summer is in our rear view mirror and my favorite favorite favorite season is here. I love autumn, especially when the rains return. One of my very best things is to be outdoors when a Pacific storm is rolling in. The clouds race by, gusty warm winds carry loads of negative ions, leaves swirl down and around, and I am standing, facing the wind. It is so exhilarating. I dream of it during the dog days of summer when my misery index is sky high. And, in the depths of cold, gray, sometimes icy winter when my misery index and my Vitamin D levels are hellishly low. Spring? It is my second favorite season tempered with the knowledge that summer is just around the corner.</div>
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So, now you know I am obsessed with the weather. It comes from being an Oregon native. Oregon, where the weather changes by the hour. At least it used to do. Fellow-Oregonians, is it just me, or does it feel like we are now living in the San Joaquin Valley of central California? Gosh, if I wanted to live in that climate, I never would have moved back home to Oregon. But, I digress from the subject of this blog post.</div>
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Distractions...the first big one is pictured above. I love to knit and crochet, and this is my latest project. A king-sized crocheted afghan. I am using a very nice Stylecraft Special DK ("sport weight") acrylic yarn. I order it from <a href="http://www.woolwarehouse.co.uk/">Wool Warehouse</a> in the UK. This yarn is soft, does not separate with use, and comes in a variety of eye-popping colors. Being acrylic, it is easy to care for. I have used it for several projects and have not been disappointed yet.</div>
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You might notice a new blog on the list to the right. I have been following Lucy at <a href="http://attic24.typepad.com/">Attic24</a> for several years. She is a master crocheter, very generous with her patterns, and her blog is a joy to read. She lives in Yorkshire, UK. As an aside, if you watch <a href="http://www.pbs.org/last-tango-in-halifax/home/">Last Tango in Halifax</a> you will see canal and small town scenes from Lucy's hometown! Anyway...the Cosy Stripe Blanket is one of her patterns. Bold bright colors are her trademark. The colors in this blanket are a bit muted because it is meant to be a fall project. Lots of warm autumn colors. Lucy has opened a Wool Warehouse shop on her website where you can buy "packs" of yarn for some of her specific patterns. It certainly takes the guesswork out of choosing yarn. Wool Warehouse shipping charges are about the same as if ordered from an online store in the U.S.</div>
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Since I am a little "antsy" (some people might say A.D.D.) I have to be doing something else when I am doing needle work. If we are not watching a movie (or the playoffs...GO METS!), I am listening to audio books downloaded from the <a href="http://library2go.lib.overdrive.com/12AC3E2F-DCF5-4BCC-AB96-3522EB4FC035/10/50/en/Default.htm">Oregon Digital Library Consortium</a>.</div>
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I love cosy mysteries. There are scores of authors I could name, but Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey, Deborah Crombie, M.C. Beaton, and now Charles Todd are my favorites. Usually set in the UK, preferably prior to 1950. Deborah Crombie and M.C. Beaton are exceptions as their stories are set in the present.</div>
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I first discovered Charles Todd when I was browsing through the digital library looking for a new-to-me audio book mystery. I found one of his later Inspector Ian Rutledge stories. Really very good! I was transported to the UK. The time period is just after WWI. A shell-shocked veteran, Scotland Yard Inspector Rutledge solves crimes (so far all set in the idyllic countryside) and battles his demons. His sidekick, Hamish is always present. He offers advice, insights, caustic comments, and is often downright annoying. Unfortunately, Inspector Rutledge cannot shut Hamish up because he lives inside Rutledge's head. It is embarrassing when Rutledge speaks out loud to Hamish.</div>
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What I like about this series is the multi-layered story. Not only are we with Inspector Rutledge as he methodically solves the crime, we are also with him as he fills in his and Hamish's back story from WWI. It is very compelling reading. Perfect for whiling away the hours as I work on my cosy blanket.</div>
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And it is all a very sweet distraction from serious reading for this blog. I am making progress on Ulysses and will report in with an update very soon. Stephen Dedalus is almost off the beach and we are about to be introduced to Leopold Bloom, the main character in the story.</div>
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Links to the blanket pattern and to the Charles Todd audio books I have listened to so far:</div>
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<a href="http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/cosy-stripe-blanket.html">Cosy Stripe Blanket</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061726206?keywords=charles%20todd%20inspector%20rutledge%20in%20order&qid=1445282835&ref_=sr_1_9&s=books&sr=1-9">A Lonely Death</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061726176?keywords=charles%20todd%20inspector%20rutledge%20in%20order&qid=1445282835&ref_=sr_1_11&s=books&sr=1-11">The Red Door</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006167270X?keywords=charles%20todd%20inspector%20rutledge%20in%20order&qid=1445283034&ref_=sr_1_19&s=books&sr=1-19">A Pale Horse</a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6404119989155567752.post-31339138330297737822015-10-17T13:11:00.002-07:002015-10-17T13:11:32.116-07:00Shakespeare & Company<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDYheAAYPfAY3BZSFzVe7Kedn4yDF4K2ktPW7kiOWEfY0qmUKFUoSCOd8k7IE75QQPCBUWqskMsvf9SIgrNyg9tOfvmOJmqzd_CuIeQqn_fDhJmfsGfaYrhj-Bf-d4Ffk2sxhk5oOVZJw/s1600/IMG_2444.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDYheAAYPfAY3BZSFzVe7Kedn4yDF4K2ktPW7kiOWEfY0qmUKFUoSCOd8k7IE75QQPCBUWqskMsvf9SIgrNyg9tOfvmOJmqzd_CuIeQqn_fDhJmfsGfaYrhj-Bf-d4Ffk2sxhk5oOVZJw/s640/IMG_2444.JPG" width="478" /></a></div>
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<b>Memoir of a Paris Bookshop in the 1920s</b></div>
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American ex-pat and arts scene insider, Sylvia Beach, opened her Paris bookshop and lending library, "Shakespeare & Company", in late November, 1919. It was an English language bookshop and the opening coincided with an influx of American and British artists and writers to Paris after World War I, now referred to as the "Lost Generation". The bookshop was an immediate success. As Sylvia says:</div>
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"A good many friends had been waiting for the opening of Shakespeare and Company; and the news soon got around that the time had come. Still I didn't really expect to see anybody that day. And just as well, I thought. I would need at least twenty-four hours to realize this Shakespeare and Company bookshop. But the shutters in which the little shop went to bed every night were hardly removed (by a waiter from a nearby cafe) when the first friends began to turn up. From that moment on, for over twenty years, they never gave me time to meditate...The news of my bookshop, to my surprise...spread all over the United States, and it was the first thing the pilgrims looked up in Paris...Often, they would inform me that they had given Shakespeare and Company as their address, and they hoped I didn't mind."</div>
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In the summer of 1920 Sylvia attended a party where she was introduced to James Joyce. This meeting proved to be a watershed moment for Shakespeare and Company and for James Joyce. He became a "regular" at the bookshop, often sitting next to Sylvia's desk and telling her of his life and the difficulties of being a poor writer with a family to support. At this time Joyce had been working on <i>Ulysses "</i>for seven years and was trying to finish it". Between 1918 and 1920, twenty-three installments had been published in <a href="http://modjourn.org/render.php?view=mjp_object&id=LittleReviewCollection"><i>The Little Review</i></a>, an American literary journal. When obscenity charges were leveled against the journal, publication of the installments ceased. Joyce was left in limbo and was seeking a publisher. Sylvia Beach offered to publish <i>Ulysses</i> and the rest is history.</div>
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<i>Shakespeare & Company </i>tells the story of the publication of <i>Ulysses</i>, but it is also a fascinating tale of the "Lost Generation" in Paris. We are introduced to Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Archibald MacLeish, Stuart Gilbert, Djuna Barnes, Sherwood Anderson, D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda (later a friend of Georgia O'Keefe when they both lived in the Taos, New Mexico art colony).</div>
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Although I read this book for background on <b>The</b> <b>Ulysses Project</b>, it proved to be about so much more. It has languished on my bookshelf for years but this was definitely the right time to read it. Funny how that works!</div>
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If you are interested in the "Lost Generation" and life in 1920s Paris, I highly recommend this wonderful book.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0