Books Mentioned in The New York Times Book Review, 30 September 2012

May 13, 2013 at 1:32 pm (Books, Lists, Recommended, Women Writers)
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Isn’t it wonderful how self keeps finding NYTBR issues from last year?

Here’s one that isn’t too long ago:  it’s from September 2012.

In this issue, the “By the Book” interview is With Michael Chabon, who just happens to be reading Moonraker, by Ian Fleming (written 1955).  He also mentions Cloud Atlas, and Ben Marcus (author of The Flame Alphabet) and three of what he thinks are classics of “genre fiction”:  The Turn of the Screw, Heart of Darkness, and Blood Meridian.  Next on his reading list:  Beyond Black, by Hilary Mantel, and Diamonds are Forever.

There is a review of Love Bomb, a novel by Lisa Zeidner, that refers to a previous novel by Ayelet Waldman, Red Hook Road (which self will try and read).

Finally, there is a review by Christian Bauman (who served with the United States Army in Somalia and Haiti) of Fobbit, by David Abrams, a novel whose hero is assigned to a public affairs team in a “Forward Operating Base,” or FOB, in Iraq. (“Dead soldiers,” according to Abrams’ hero, “were now little more than objects to be loaded onto the back of C-130s somewhere and delivered like pizzas to the United States.”)

Interesting.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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This Is What Happens

May 9, 2013 at 7:47 am (Books, Links, Surprises, television, Weather)
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Umm, self simply cannot let go of this “Game of Thrones” Jamie Lannister/ Brienne of Tarth thing!  So, until self gets to a really interesting, quotable part of The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James (she managed to breeze through Little Heathens, the remaining 150 pages, which were all about milking, walking to school in deep snow, etc)  –  which might, actually, already have happened, because in the very first paragraph of the Preface, James reveals that he wrote this novel over three months in Florence and several weeks in Venice!  And what self wants to know is:  How can anyone get any writing done in Italy?  That country is the buzz-kill of all buzz-kills!  In the future, she will only go if she wants to eat.  And eat.  And eat –

Back to “Game of Thrones” things.  And all the wee digressions leading there-to.

Self fell asleep right after The Man got home.  It’s like, everything inside her builds and builds, and then The Man gets home, and she is all normal again.

So, she was all normal ten minutes after The Man got home.  He decided to walk The Ancient One, because it was hot enough.  Seriously, what’s with this weather?  It was cold all the way until 3 p.m., and then it became scorching hot.  This is definitely not the kind of weather pattern self enjoys.

In fact, self was so normal, she fell asleep.  For six straight hours.  She vaguely remembers The Man asking her where the trash can in the bathroom was.  She vaguely remembers telling The Man that she made his dinner:  ravioli with every left-over in the fridge chopped up and sprinkled on top.  With minced oregano from the garden.

Then, self woke at midnight, feeling completely energized and ready to get started with her day.  So she naturally continued her internet explorations of Jamie Lannister and Brienne of Tarth (She has no intention of reading the books, mind you.  Which makes her a total Philistine.  Stop reading right now!)  And now she has stumbled on a site called winteriscoming.net.  And here is an excerpt from an interview that FaB and three other journalists conducted with the intrepid pair, March 21 of this year.  It’s very, very entertaining:

FaB:   You were very muddy through all of last season.

Nikolaj:   That doesn’t change though.

FaB:   Nothing?  No bathing?   No one’s thought to wash you down . . .  ?  Give you a bath . . .  ?

FEEL FREE TO MENTALLY INSERT THE SLY MICHAEL MYERS DR. EVIL RAISED PINKIE LOOK I WAS GIVING BOTH OF THEM.

Nikolaj (after a casual shrug):   Maybe we . . .  might have a bath.  At some time.

Terri catches on quickly, leaning forward, and asks, “May we say there could be bathing in season three?  Or . . .  is that in future seasons . . .  ?  This . . . POTENTIAL bath . . . ?”

Some polite coughing ensues.  But I cannot stress enough how each reporter is now . . .  slowly . . .  beginning . . .  to lean forward.  We’re so eager!

Gwendoline (casually):  I think everyone washes.  Don’t they?

Terri has the tail of a fish and refuses to let go, saying, “In the woods?  Do they?  I guess there are streams (innocently).  Maybe . . . “

Nikolaj (smiling casually):  I think Jaime would love a bath.

Everyone in the room pretty much agrees that yes, yes he would.  And yes, a bath would be a good thing.

And there’s more!  But for the rest of the interview, you will just have to go here.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Trieste Day 2: Reading

May 1, 2013 at 8:42 am (Books, Lists)
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The bookshelf is directly over her bed.

The bookshelf is directly over her bed.

The writing beckons now.  Stronger than ever.  When self is writing, she feels almost invincible.

Today, Trieste is overcast.

Self is making great headway with her book (Still the one she was reading when she arrived in Venice, almost two weeks ago:  Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses).  This book is a wonder, a narrative of truly gripping power.  At dinner in the Antico Convento last night, over pork with porcini, she read the scene with the poor old man who shows up at the farm, dressed only in a thin suit and “summer shoes,” and about the German soldiers who are after him (The book is told in flashback, and the events of World War II blend almost seamlessly into the present).  Self must have read 50 pages in the restaurant.

Afterwards, she spent the rest of the evening watching “Mississippi Burning” in Italian.

Self has decided that she will list all the books on the shelf above her bed in this little apartamento.  She may not finish listing all today, but here goes:

  • La Vie de Cézanne, by Henri Perruchot
  • Das Monstrum, by Stephen King
  • La Ragazza in Blu, by Susan Vreeland
  • L’Ombra del Vento, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  • Sol Levante, by Michael Crichton
  • Die folgenschwere Ermordung Ihrer Majestat Konigin Elisabeth I, by Keith Roberts
  • Maggie:  Una Ragazza Di Strada, by Stephen Crane
  • Come Fratello E Sorella, by Sandra Petrignani
  • Uscita per L’Inferno, by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)
  • Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D. H. Lawrence

And now, to write.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Trieste Day 1

April 30, 2013 at 1:50 pm (Books, Conversations, Lists, Places, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling)
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And now, dear blog readers, self is in Heaven.

No, not in Heaven.  She is in Trieste.

La Serenissima is hours away.  Here, the Adriatic is cold, pewter.  There are boats lining the harbor.  And a giant aquarium.

The taxi she took to her new digs (for at least three more days) cost 7.5 euro (about $10).  The man refused a tip.

Ah, thanks much, Alexei J. Cohen who wrote the Moon Handbook:  Italy.  Because of the five-page section he included about Trieste, self was determined to get there.

For a brief couple of minutes, she wondered if she were in her right mind, for every available seat in her train compartment was taken up by a group of very young, very athletic-looking men, who were oh so bursting with energy and high spirits.  And self had the mean thought that if these young men were all bound for Trieste, she would have to return to Venice bright and early tomorrow morning.

But, lo and behold, the young men all stayed until Trieste, and just when self was reaching up for her roll-y, one of the young men swung it down for her without having to be asked.  Ah, grazie, grazie!  He smiled and said, It was nothing.  So there you go, another of her mean assumptions exploded.  Traveling is certainly good for self, as it forces her to abandon her old thinking.

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At the moment, self is unwinding in her all-white room (with its rather florid chandelier) and waiting for the kettle of water to boil so she can have some tea.

A Sweet Little Kitchen

A Sweet Little Kitchen

There’s a TV (Perhaps self can get caught up in “Game of Thrones”!), but she has not turned it on just yet.

There’s a shelf of books:  John le Carré’s A Most Wanted Man, Jo Nesbo’s The Redeemer, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and a travel book:  36 Hours:  125 Weekends in Europe, by The New York Times.

Self pulls down 36 Hours:  125 Weekends in Europe and browses through the Table of Contents:  London, Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh are all in a section called “North Atlantic.”  Paris, Lyon, St. Tropez, Madrid and Pamplona are in a section called “Southwest.”  Berlin, Frankfurt, Vienna and Salzburg are considered “Central.”  Rome, Naples, Capri, Florence and Milan are considered “Southeast.”  And Copenhagen, Moscow, St. Petersburg and all of Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Finland are of course “Northern.”

Time to stop posting and start rejuvenating!

Arrivederci, dear ones.  Stay tuned.

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Venice Love: Scenes From a Vaporetto, and an Island

April 30, 2013 at 5:26 am (Books, Surprises, Traveling, Venice, Weather, Women Writers)
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Could this be a sundial? (Seen on the island of Torcello)

Could this be an ancient sundial? (Seen on the island of Torcello)

Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta, on Torcello (No pictures were allowed inside -- sigh)

Outside the Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta, on Torcello (No pictures are allowed inside — sigh)

Most of the pictures self took yesterday were grey.  True to form, she decided to bring her umbrella, for the second day in a row.  It is quite an annoyance, this bringing-along-of-an-umbrella, because she is already so laden down with maps, guidebooks, her travel notebook, and the book she is currently reading (Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses; good thing she didn’t bring The Portrait of a Lady.  That book weighed a ton.  More to the point, she wouldn’t have gotten to it:  since arriving in Venice, she’s only gotten halfway into Petterson’s novel which incidentally, she found out from googling, received the Dublin IMPAC Prize).

Yet another contest announcement today, this time from Flyway.  True to form, self doesn’t even remember joining.  What is interesting about the announcement, however, is that a Filipina named Catherine Torres has earned second place.  According to the Flyway announcement, Torres is “a diplomat and writer, and her work has appeared in magazines and journals in the Philippines, the United States, and Singapore.”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Beginning: OUT STEALING HORSES, by Per Petterson, Anne Born, Translator

April 17, 2013 at 3:46 pm (Books, Recommended)
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p. 13:

At some point while I was asleep it started to snow; and I am sure I was aware of it, in my sleep, that the weather changed and grew colder, and I knew I feared the winter, and I feared the snow if there was too much of it, and the fact that I had put myself in an impossible position, moving here.  So then I dreamt fiercely about summer and it was still in my head when I woke up.  I could have dreamt of any summer at all, but I did not.  It turned out to be a very special summer, and I still think of it now when I sit at the kitchen table watching the light spread above the trees by the lake.  Nothing looks as it did last night . . .

There is such a beautiful and evocative stillness in this passage!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Going

April 17, 2013 at 5:40 am (Books, Links, Lists, Recommended, Traveling, Venice)
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There are things she has to decide:

  • Should she bring a pound of Peet’s coffee, because Margarita said it would be nice to be able to make coffee in the apartment and her supply is getting low?
  • Should she forget toting along a few of her favorite magazines:  One Story and The New Yorker?
  • Should she bring along Traveler’s Tales:  Italy?

Here are the books she is definitely bringing with her:

  • Alexei J. Cohen’s Moon Handbook of Italy
  • DK Eyewitness Guide to Venice
  • Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses (She began it last night:  yes, she did indeed read to the very last page of Don Quijote)
  • Little Heathens:  Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm in the Great Depression, by Mildred Armstrong Kalish (The book title is almost as long as the book!)

She’s also bringing a print-out of all the movie locations used in the Nicolas Roeg movie Don’t Look Now (Just to show you the difference in approach:  Margarita’s all-important print-out is of the walks taken by Donna Leon’s Inspector Bruni!)

There are the directions to the apartment where Margarita will be waiting:  Vaporetto to San Toma, Stop # 2.  At end of calle, make a right.  Continue towards Campiello S. Toma.  Pass a bar (Ciak Uno).  Pass a little bridge.  Pass Casa Goldoni. Pass Nomboli Café.  Follow calle all the way down to the water, then make a right.  Look for apartment.  (Margarita’s directions read, verbatim:  “There is a right turn that needs to be made after the Casa Goldoni, but no street appears on the map, so the line running through the map just ends on the street Goldoni is on –  but there’s a right turn there somewhere!”)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Distractions of a Monday: Last Night’s MTV Movie Awards, Among Other Things

April 15, 2013 at 7:12 pm (Books, Lists, Movies)
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Watched the MTV Movie Awards last night, and of course, self cannot keep from sharing a few of her thoughts, even though she hasn’t finished packing and cleaning the house and watering the garden and answering her mail and lavishing Bella The Ancient One with an excellent breakfast and planning for her next UCLA Extension class (which begins right after she gets back from Venice):

Rebel Wilson is a hoot!

Bradley Cooper got 10x more hot!

Tom Hiddleston was such a suave Brit!

Zach Quinto was in a powder-blue suit!

Chris Pine lost weight!

Logan Lerman looks like a girl!

Amanda Seyfried had on a wonderful dress!

Emma Watson had on a not-wonderful dress!

The best spoof was the one at the beginning, with James Franco!

The next-best spoof was the one featuring shaved-head Anne Hathaway singing in Les Miserables while Rebel Wilson did her funky bits behind her!

Kerry Washington was gorgeous!

And now, only 32 more pages to go of Don Quijote!  And self can finally return it to the library and pay her fine.

On p. 701, Don Quijote is sighing over having to give up being a knight errant, when he and Sancho encounter Doña Rodriguez’s footman, Tosilos.  After a short exchange, they part ways with the footman, and Don Quijote tells Sancho:

” . . .  do you still think he’s a real footman?  How can you?  It has slipped your mind, apparently, that you saw Dulcinea transformed into a peasant girl, and the Knight of the Mirrors turned into our friend Samson Carrasco, all accomplished by the magicians who keep hounding me.  But tell me:  did you ask this Tosilos, as you call him, what has happened with Altisidora?  Has she wept over my departure, or has she already forgotten all those loverlorn thoughts that, when I was there, so afflicted her?”

“What was on my mind,” replied Sancho, “kept me too busy to worry about nonsense.  My God, my lord!  Is this the time for your grace to start examining other people’s thoughts, especially the amorous kind?”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Books of The Economist, 16 March 2013 and The New York Review of Books, 27 September 2012

April 10, 2013 at 2:02 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Lists, Recommended, The Economist)
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Self has Don Quijote so much on the brain (it’s overdue at the Library: she better hurry up) that she even sees a theme in the latest book list:  it seems to be a list of Quijotic Endeavours.  After you read the capsule descriptions, see if you don’t agree, dear blog readers:

  • A first novel, Ghana Must Go, by Talye Selasi (Penguin Press):  A brilliant medical student from Ghana becomes the scapegoat in the death of a 77-year-old “Boston socialite, wife, mother, grandmother and alcoholic.”
  • The “agony” of Iraq, described by Toby Dodge in Iraq:  From War to a New Authoritarianism:  “The collapse of the Iraqi state” allowed ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ — “political manipulators of sectarian fears –  to flourish.”
  • An artist talks about his process in The Lost Carving:  A Journey to the Heart of Making, by David Esterly (Viking):  Esterly’s medium is wood.  His inspiration was a 17th century woodcarver who went by the name Grinling Gibbons.  When “a fire at Hampton Court Palace damaged a series of Gibbon carvings . . .  Mr. Esterly was chosen to recreate” one of them, a “seven-foot-long cascade of fruit and flowers . . .  This book is the story of the year it took him to do it.”

And, from The New York Review of Books of 27 September 2012, two very interesting reviews:  the first by Jerome Groopman, reviewing God’s Hotel:  A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet (Riverhead) and the second by Ezra Klein, reviewing The Obamas, by Jodi Kantor.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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In Which Don Quijote and Sancho Panza While the Night Away (Volume 2, Chapter 12)

April 5, 2013 at 5:00 pm (Books)
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And self is really hoping and praying she finishes this book before her upcoming trip, because it is a bear to bring an 800-page novel (Don Quijote, translation by Burton Raffel) into an airplane, she did that once before, she thinks when she went to Berlin . . .

Self!  Stop!  Enough!

Okey dokey, self has arrived at Volume 2, Chapter 12.  And this is the perfect time to have landed on this chapter, because aside from making a quick run to Wegmans for gypsum and peat moss, self has decided to take it easy today.

So, here we go.  In this particular scene, Don Quijote and Sancho Panza are taking a brief respite from their various adventures:

They spent most of the night discussing these and other matters, but then Sancho felt the need to close the hatches over his eyes (as he used to say when he wanted to sleep), so he took everything off the donkey’s back and turned him loose to graze as he pleased.  He did not remove Rocinante’s saddle, because his master had expressly ordered that so long as they were in the field, or not sleeping under a roof, Rocinante should not be disturbed:  from time immemorial, knights errant had removed their horse’s bridle and hung it from the saddlebow — but unsaddle the horse?  Heaven forbid!  So Sancho did as he’d been told, and let Rocinante too go grazing at will, for between the two animals there existed so strong and special a friendship that, according to rumor, it was a tradition passed down from father to son, and indeed the author of this truthful history penned a number of chapters specifically on the subject, but in the name of the dignity and decorum due to such a heroic tale he felt himself obliged to exclude them –  though at time he forgets this resolve and tells us how close the two animals were, each helping the other to properly scratch himself, and how, when they were tired and well-fed, Rocinante would lay his neck across the donkey’s (and it stuck out a foot and a half on the other side) and the two of them would stand there, contemplating the ground, sometimes for three days on end, or at least for as long as they were allowed to, or they weren’t driven apart by hunger.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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