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jonscott9's reviews
206 reviews
To Be Told: Know Your Story, Shape Your Future by Dan B. Allender
2.0
Oh, books -- I just can't quit you. Usually.
It's very seldom that I stop reading a book before finished, but I did with this one. I was more than halfway through, to note. Not to entirely lump this read in with them by any means, but as with a lot of self-help-y Christian books, To Be Told just gets repetitive, with a side dish of "I know you wish to inspire, but I've heard it all before."
Dan Allender's story of recovery from abuses and addictions in his own life to become a leading spiritually-minded psychologist and counselor is a captivating one to an extent, sure. His writing is just a bit bland, though sometimes vivid and engrossing, especially in links or metaphors or analogies he makes (ever the therapist).
I think this could've been a better long-form magazine article or essay or journal article rather than an all-out *book*.
It's a bad sign when what I look forward to most about a next chapter is the quote from a trusted, revered other writer that will start it. Shew. Allender does read and quote from some of the best, be it the psalmist or The Velveteen Rabbit.
That said, faves from this book (I'm so mean) from a couple of personal all-time authors:
"Why must holy places be dark places?"
-C.S. Lewis
(this quote, from Till We Have Faces [the retelling of the Cupid & Psyche myth:] could have me thinking for hours)
"God acts in history and in your and my brief histories not as a puppeteer who sets the scene and works the strings but rather as the great director who no matter what role fate casts us in conveys to us somehow from the wings, if we have our eyes, ears, hearts open and sometimes even if we don't, how we can play those roles in a way to enrich and ennoble and hallow the whole vast drama of things including our own small but crucial parts in it."
-Frederick Buechner
It's very seldom that I stop reading a book before finished, but I did with this one. I was more than halfway through, to note. Not to entirely lump this read in with them by any means, but as with a lot of self-help-y Christian books, To Be Told just gets repetitive, with a side dish of "I know you wish to inspire, but I've heard it all before."
Dan Allender's story of recovery from abuses and addictions in his own life to become a leading spiritually-minded psychologist and counselor is a captivating one to an extent, sure. His writing is just a bit bland, though sometimes vivid and engrossing, especially in links or metaphors or analogies he makes (ever the therapist).
I think this could've been a better long-form magazine article or essay or journal article rather than an all-out *book*.
It's a bad sign when what I look forward to most about a next chapter is the quote from a trusted, revered other writer that will start it. Shew. Allender does read and quote from some of the best, be it the psalmist or The Velveteen Rabbit.
That said, faves from this book (I'm so mean) from a couple of personal all-time authors:
"Why must holy places be dark places?"
-C.S. Lewis
(this quote, from Till We Have Faces [the retelling of the Cupid & Psyche myth:] could have me thinking for hours)
"God acts in history and in your and my brief histories not as a puppeteer who sets the scene and works the strings but rather as the great director who no matter what role fate casts us in conveys to us somehow from the wings, if we have our eyes, ears, hearts open and sometimes even if we don't, how we can play those roles in a way to enrich and ennoble and hallow the whole vast drama of things including our own small but crucial parts in it."
-Frederick Buechner
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
4.0
This book receives 4/5 stars from me purely because it's poetry masquerading as prose. It's not because of the story, which I found rather thin at times.
A lot of people struggle with reading Ms. Robinson, I know. I may well appreciate this book more with age, if I return to it again in 10, 20, or even 40 years. I'd no doubt find it an all-time novel then (as Time mag did, in its list of the 100 best of the 20th century). For now I am part of a generation that prefers instant gratification; we are the Veruca Salt-"I want it *now*, Daddy!" g-g-generation. Sadly.
To be sure, Housekeeping is a grower. The payoff does not come speedily at all here. I did not lay into this book with the verve that I did with twin books Gilead and Home. That may be due to her knack for archaic word choice and long, fluid sentences. The longer it tarried, Housekeeping became like a very good soup that I just soaked in through my eyes.
This is a book that demands to be read slowly. Not a lot of people are all right by that, wishing for their Dan Brown-esque page-turners or their sentence candy, be it a novel or nonfiction. It's also a book that should really be read aloud. It feels like an oral history, a retelling passed down through the ages of a particular, tragic family.
The ghosts of sisters Ruth and Lucille's family blanket every page in this book. They appear everywhere -- their grandmother, their mother Helen, their grandfather. All have gone before, in one way or another, but more than once it involved the lake by the Washington village called Fishbone in this novel. Grandfather went off a bridge in a massive, historic train wreck. Mom decided to play "Thelma & Louise" solo style, going rogue and driving her car off a cliff into the waters.
Parts of this book plod along, to be sure. The chapters involving the girls' aunts come to live with and care for them were especially dull to me, if not morose. (I did imagine the aunts in my mind as being Marge's chain-smoking sisters from "The Simpsons," though. That kept me going.)
When their aunt (their mother Helen's sister) Sylvie appears, train-hopping transient that she is, to tend to the orphans' needs, the story picks up. The last 4 chapters in particular, about 75 of the book's 220 pages, make for some of the most taut writing I may have ever read. (Summons to mind the last 3-5 pages of Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm, frankly -- and I do wonder what Dillard and Robinson might think of each other and their work, for I feel they're literary sisters themselves.)
As with the third Stars Wars prequel film, the story sort of ramps up to its conclusion in those final 4 chapters, in a way that it's basically forced to because so little has happened along the way. This is a rather existential, slow-burning book. It's also a marvel of craft, of imagery and wording. Robinson is truly a poet, and she knows it. Sometimes it's as though she's etymologically pleasuring herself, tho' not in a bad way.
Listen to the Gillian Welch song "Orphan Girl," even grant it repeated listens, and you will get the gist, the sullen and yet somehow still-hopeful gist, of this story. Were I to write for the screen a script for this story, I'd surely include that as my closing-credits song.
This book is a wordsmith's delight. It's fraught with meaning and thoughts and perspectives on loss and survival and so on. Robinson's writing is so dense and so simple at the same time. Take just the first line of chapter 9: "In the weeks that followed the sheriff came twice." Brilliant.
The beautiful thing about Housekeeping is that its main theme, transience, is the very thing that will propel it into readers' hands for generations to come. This is simply not a book you read on a Kindle device. Glory be.
Excerpts!
"I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected--an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows."
Now about that sheriff:
"I knew that his function was more than ceremonial. The people of Fingerbone and its environs were very much given to murder. And it seemed that for every pitiable crime there was an appalling accident. What with the lake and the railroads, and what with the blizzards and floods and barn fires and forest fires and the general availability of shotguns and bear traps and homemade liquor and dynamite, what with the prevalence of loneliness and religion and the rages and and ecstasies they induce, and the closeness of families, violence was inevitable. There were any number of fierce old stories, one like another, varying only in the details of avalanche and explosion, too sad to be told to anyone except to strangers one was fairly certain not to meet again."
And some of her writing on drifters, the homeless, is just amazing:
"They were like the people in old photographs--we did not see them through a veil of knowledge and habit, but simply and plainly, as they were lined or scarred, as they were startled or blank. Like the dead, we could consider their histories complete, and we wondered only what had brought them to transiency, to drifting, since their lives as drifters were like pacings and broodings and skirmishings among ghosts who cannot pay their way across the Styx. However long a postscript to however short a life, it was still no part of the story. We imagined that if they spoke to us they would astonish us with tales of disaster and disgrace and bitter sorrow, that would fly into the hills and stay there in the dark earth and in the cries of birds. For in the case of such pure sorrow, who can distinguish mine from thine? The sorrow is that every soul is put out of house."
She gets downright biblical at times, in the best way:
"Cain murdered Abel, and blood cried out from the earth; the house fell on Job's children, and a voice was induced or provoked into speaking from a whirlwind; and Rachel mourned for her children; and David for Absalom. The force behind the movement of time is a mourning that will not be comforted. That is why the first event is known to have been an expulsion, and the last is hoped to be a reconciliation and return. So memory pulls us forward, so prophecy is only brilliant memory--there will be a garden where all of us as one child will sleep in our mother Eve, hooped in her ribs and staved by her spine."
Yea, so starts chapter 10, and those pages are delicious. Furthermore:
"Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting. I (and that slenderest word is too gross for the rare thing I was then) walked forever through reachless oblivion, in the mood of one smelling night-blooming flowers, and suddenly--My ravishers left their traces in me, male and female, and over the months I rounded, grew heavy, until the scandal could no longer be concealed and oblivion expelled me. But this I have in common with all my kind. By some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it. So they seal the door against our returning."
Just how poetic and high-end is that description of what is the everyday occurrence of childbirth? The ordinary is just extraordinary -- that's Robinson in a nutshell. As C.S. Lewis has written, "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."
Oh, Marilynne Robinson is an acquired taste. But once you get into it, you can taste and see that the words are good. So good. She is wine.
A lot of people struggle with reading Ms. Robinson, I know. I may well appreciate this book more with age, if I return to it again in 10, 20, or even 40 years. I'd no doubt find it an all-time novel then (as Time mag did, in its list of the 100 best of the 20th century). For now I am part of a generation that prefers instant gratification; we are the Veruca Salt-"I want it *now*, Daddy!" g-g-generation. Sadly.
To be sure, Housekeeping is a grower. The payoff does not come speedily at all here. I did not lay into this book with the verve that I did with twin books Gilead and Home. That may be due to her knack for archaic word choice and long, fluid sentences. The longer it tarried, Housekeeping became like a very good soup that I just soaked in through my eyes.
This is a book that demands to be read slowly. Not a lot of people are all right by that, wishing for their Dan Brown-esque page-turners or their sentence candy, be it a novel or nonfiction. It's also a book that should really be read aloud. It feels like an oral history, a retelling passed down through the ages of a particular, tragic family.
The ghosts of sisters Ruth and Lucille's family blanket every page in this book. They appear everywhere -- their grandmother, their mother Helen, their grandfather. All have gone before, in one way or another, but more than once it involved the lake by the Washington village called Fishbone in this novel. Grandfather went off a bridge in a massive, historic train wreck. Mom decided to play "Thelma & Louise" solo style, going rogue and driving her car off a cliff into the waters.
Parts of this book plod along, to be sure. The chapters involving the girls' aunts come to live with and care for them were especially dull to me, if not morose. (I did imagine the aunts in my mind as being Marge's chain-smoking sisters from "The Simpsons," though. That kept me going.)
When their aunt (their mother Helen's sister) Sylvie appears, train-hopping transient that she is, to tend to the orphans' needs, the story picks up. The last 4 chapters in particular, about 75 of the book's 220 pages, make for some of the most taut writing I may have ever read. (Summons to mind the last 3-5 pages of Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm, frankly -- and I do wonder what Dillard and Robinson might think of each other and their work, for I feel they're literary sisters themselves.)
As with the third Stars Wars prequel film, the story sort of ramps up to its conclusion in those final 4 chapters, in a way that it's basically forced to because so little has happened along the way. This is a rather existential, slow-burning book. It's also a marvel of craft, of imagery and wording. Robinson is truly a poet, and she knows it. Sometimes it's as though she's etymologically pleasuring herself, tho' not in a bad way.
Listen to the Gillian Welch song "Orphan Girl," even grant it repeated listens, and you will get the gist, the sullen and yet somehow still-hopeful gist, of this story. Were I to write for the screen a script for this story, I'd surely include that as my closing-credits song.
This book is a wordsmith's delight. It's fraught with meaning and thoughts and perspectives on loss and survival and so on. Robinson's writing is so dense and so simple at the same time. Take just the first line of chapter 9: "In the weeks that followed the sheriff came twice." Brilliant.
The beautiful thing about Housekeeping is that its main theme, transience, is the very thing that will propel it into readers' hands for generations to come. This is simply not a book you read on a Kindle device. Glory be.
Excerpts!
"I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected--an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows."
Now about that sheriff:
"I knew that his function was more than ceremonial. The people of Fingerbone and its environs were very much given to murder. And it seemed that for every pitiable crime there was an appalling accident. What with the lake and the railroads, and what with the blizzards and floods and barn fires and forest fires and the general availability of shotguns and bear traps and homemade liquor and dynamite, what with the prevalence of loneliness and religion and the rages and and ecstasies they induce, and the closeness of families, violence was inevitable. There were any number of fierce old stories, one like another, varying only in the details of avalanche and explosion, too sad to be told to anyone except to strangers one was fairly certain not to meet again."
And some of her writing on drifters, the homeless, is just amazing:
"They were like the people in old photographs--we did not see them through a veil of knowledge and habit, but simply and plainly, as they were lined or scarred, as they were startled or blank. Like the dead, we could consider their histories complete, and we wondered only what had brought them to transiency, to drifting, since their lives as drifters were like pacings and broodings and skirmishings among ghosts who cannot pay their way across the Styx. However long a postscript to however short a life, it was still no part of the story. We imagined that if they spoke to us they would astonish us with tales of disaster and disgrace and bitter sorrow, that would fly into the hills and stay there in the dark earth and in the cries of birds. For in the case of such pure sorrow, who can distinguish mine from thine? The sorrow is that every soul is put out of house."
She gets downright biblical at times, in the best way:
"Cain murdered Abel, and blood cried out from the earth; the house fell on Job's children, and a voice was induced or provoked into speaking from a whirlwind; and Rachel mourned for her children; and David for Absalom. The force behind the movement of time is a mourning that will not be comforted. That is why the first event is known to have been an expulsion, and the last is hoped to be a reconciliation and return. So memory pulls us forward, so prophecy is only brilliant memory--there will be a garden where all of us as one child will sleep in our mother Eve, hooped in her ribs and staved by her spine."
Yea, so starts chapter 10, and those pages are delicious. Furthermore:
"Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting. I (and that slenderest word is too gross for the rare thing I was then) walked forever through reachless oblivion, in the mood of one smelling night-blooming flowers, and suddenly--My ravishers left their traces in me, male and female, and over the months I rounded, grew heavy, until the scandal could no longer be concealed and oblivion expelled me. But this I have in common with all my kind. By some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it. So they seal the door against our returning."
Just how poetic and high-end is that description of what is the everyday occurrence of childbirth? The ordinary is just extraordinary -- that's Robinson in a nutshell. As C.S. Lewis has written, "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."
Oh, Marilynne Robinson is an acquired taste. But once you get into it, you can taste and see that the words are good. So good. She is wine.
Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing by Elmore Leonard
3.0
This 3-star rating seems almost obligatory. Ugh, so Rolling Stone of me.
Be that as it may, this is an entertaining little jam of a book, 85 pages, with a charming, well-timed illustration or a blank every other page. (I can get behind that.)
Leonard is the author of crime/caper thrillers the likes of Out of Sight and Get Shorty, and plenty of his stuff's been filmed. This list is primarily for fiction writing, novels, but is well worth keeping in mind regardless of what you read and/or write.
His rules:
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues. ("They can be annoying, esp. a prologue following an introduction that comes after a forward.")
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. ("I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with 'she asseverated,' and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.")
4. Never use an advert to modify the verb "said." ("I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances 'full of rape and adverbs.'")
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose.
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. ("Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. ... I bet you don't skip dialogue.")
My fave's probably that last one. It immediately summoned to mind That Chapter in Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, an otherwise perfect read.
Leonard tags on one more rule, summarizing them all:
"IF IT SOUNDS LIKE WRITING, I REWRITE IT."
Brilliant.
"If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character -- the one whose view best brings the scene to life -- I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight."
I enjoy how he calls out a couple fellow writers by name. Ballsy. But you can do that when you're a success of his brand. He also name-drops all the right authors -- Hemingway, Steinbeck, Atwood, Wolfe, Proulx, and so on.
Be that as it may, this is an entertaining little jam of a book, 85 pages, with a charming, well-timed illustration or a blank every other page. (I can get behind that.)
Leonard is the author of crime/caper thrillers the likes of Out of Sight and Get Shorty, and plenty of his stuff's been filmed. This list is primarily for fiction writing, novels, but is well worth keeping in mind regardless of what you read and/or write.
His rules:
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues. ("They can be annoying, esp. a prologue following an introduction that comes after a forward.")
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. ("I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with 'she asseverated,' and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.")
4. Never use an advert to modify the verb "said." ("I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances 'full of rape and adverbs.'")
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose.
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. ("Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. ... I bet you don't skip dialogue.")
My fave's probably that last one. It immediately summoned to mind That Chapter in Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, an otherwise perfect read.
Leonard tags on one more rule, summarizing them all:
"IF IT SOUNDS LIKE WRITING, I REWRITE IT."
Brilliant.
"If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character -- the one whose view best brings the scene to life -- I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight."
I enjoy how he calls out a couple fellow writers by name. Ballsy. But you can do that when you're a success of his brand. He also name-drops all the right authors -- Hemingway, Steinbeck, Atwood, Wolfe, Proulx, and so on.
Hornet's Nest by Patricia Cornwell
3.0
Cornwell is very good at what she does, and she builds on her Kay Scarpetta protagonist's appeal and mystique with this crime novel. It's the only one I've read in the series, but I was engrossed. I don't read this stuff much at all (the James Pattersons, Dean Koontzes, and Tom Clancys of the world elude me), but her brand of it was enjoyable on this trip. I like that the heroine of this series is based on a real person, the (female) former chief medical examiner of Virginia. I also dig all the forensic science that Cornwell goes into detail about -- this was surely a literary precursor to "CSI" and other shows of that ilk.
Knowledge for Generations: Wiley and the Global Publishing Industry, 1807 - 2007 by Robert E. Wright, George David Smith, Timothy C. Jacobson
4.0
A fascinating look inside the history of the publishing company John Wiley & Sons, Inc., headquartered in Manhattan and then Hoboken and with an office (where I work) in Indianapolis also. Little-known fact: Indy is where all of the For Dummies reads (those yellow books, yes) are produced. It's the top brand within the company, and I work on the travel branch of those books, as well as with Frommer's Travel Guides, still the no. 1 travel-book brand sales-wise, if not the most tragically hip (hello, Lonely Planet, you who got the shoutout in Oscar-nominated animated short Logorama).
Wiley Publishing celebrated its bicentennial in 2008. That's simply uncanny for a publishing house, or for any company at this stage of the American experience. As Wiley's president famously said in '08, "Countries celebrate 200 years, not companies." Quite true.
Wiley has published Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, and many others of note. The storied history is deep and wide. This book tells it, interestingly, in color. Literally. It's chock-full of engaging photos and intriguing facts and tales.
It's a wonderful company, then and now, for the fact that members of that Wiley family remain actively involved in the company's daily decisions, as three of the heirs to its founders sit on the corporate board. They also promote wonderful charitable efforts for the environment, for animal protection, and (of course) for literacy.
Recommended for anyone with a stake in the publishing business, and for anyone who simply digs history. It's okay, I know no one seeing this review will read it. ;-)
Wiley Publishing celebrated its bicentennial in 2008. That's simply uncanny for a publishing house, or for any company at this stage of the American experience. As Wiley's president famously said in '08, "Countries celebrate 200 years, not companies." Quite true.
Wiley has published Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, and many others of note. The storied history is deep and wide. This book tells it, interestingly, in color. Literally. It's chock-full of engaging photos and intriguing facts and tales.
It's a wonderful company, then and now, for the fact that members of that Wiley family remain actively involved in the company's daily decisions, as three of the heirs to its founders sit on the corporate board. They also promote wonderful charitable efforts for the environment, for animal protection, and (of course) for literacy.
Recommended for anyone with a stake in the publishing business, and for anyone who simply digs history. It's okay, I know no one seeing this review will read it. ;-)
Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played by L. Jon Wertheim
3.0
Wertheim's a solid writer, period, and he makes any pro tennis storyline -- or match, as this fairly brief read is all about that more-than-classic '08 Wimbledon final, Roger Federer vs. Rafael Nadal -- immensely readable. The Ivy-educated lawyer turned sports scribe has an easy way with words, making his prose breezy and
It doesn't hurt when I'm passionate about the subject matter, either.
This book was ripe to be written, and few could have done it better. A couple of those who maybe could were advisers on the projects, according to LJW's acknowledgments at the end.
Ripe, why? Because Fed the Swiss and Rafa the Spaniard could not be more different and yet so similar at the same time. They had normal upbringings, were not exactly groomed for greatness so much as found it themselves, IN themselves, and proceeded to cultivate it because they (gasp) wanted to. There are no psychotic or abusive tennis parents in their histories, as with so many other great players.
But these guys are more than great. They are all-timers. In Fed's case, the nearly-inarguable GOAT (greatest of all time) now.
I did think Wertheim's prose about Federer got to be a bit too glowing and worshipful at times, and compared to Rafa's backstory and expounding -- and in light of the fact of who actually won this match. (This also makes the book's cover art a bit strange -- sure, Rafa was the relative upstart and the underdog, but does Federer really have to loom like a specter over the cover, as if it's Luke Skywalker taking on the Emperor? Well, then again, maybe it was something like that.)
Wertheim's thesis on why Federer isn't more popular stateside is also interesting, makes sense. Will let you read about that for yourself. And do pick this up, as, again, it's simple and speedy and informative all at once.
The Sports Illustrated writer does a solid job of keeping some suspense in these pages as he goes set by set and nearly shot by shot (really) through the match. Kudos to him for the job done, in light of the fact that every reader already knows what happened, ultimately.
Interesting stories about that fateful match's chair umpire also, and tidbits along the way about how Venus Williams regarded the match as she waited to head to the champions' ball herself, and about the two tennis gladiators' parents.
I found the childhoods and formative years of these two (super)human beings to be fascinating, and as that's usual the part of any (auto)biography that I find most compelling. You can tell a lot about who people came to be or presently are by where they've been, what's happened to date. "So much past inside my present," as one songstress put it.
It doesn't hurt when I'm passionate about the subject matter, either.
This book was ripe to be written, and few could have done it better. A couple of those who maybe could were advisers on the projects, according to LJW's acknowledgments at the end.
Ripe, why? Because Fed the Swiss and Rafa the Spaniard could not be more different and yet so similar at the same time. They had normal upbringings, were not exactly groomed for greatness so much as found it themselves, IN themselves, and proceeded to cultivate it because they (gasp) wanted to. There are no psychotic or abusive tennis parents in their histories, as with so many other great players.
But these guys are more than great. They are all-timers. In Fed's case, the nearly-inarguable GOAT (greatest of all time) now.
I did think Wertheim's prose about Federer got to be a bit too glowing and worshipful at times, and compared to Rafa's backstory and expounding -- and in light of the fact of who actually won this match. (This also makes the book's cover art a bit strange -- sure, Rafa was the relative upstart and the underdog, but does Federer really have to loom like a specter over the cover, as if it's Luke Skywalker taking on the Emperor? Well, then again, maybe it was something like that.)
Wertheim's thesis on why Federer isn't more popular stateside is also interesting, makes sense. Will let you read about that for yourself. And do pick this up, as, again, it's simple and speedy and informative all at once.
The Sports Illustrated writer does a solid job of keeping some suspense in these pages as he goes set by set and nearly shot by shot (really) through the match. Kudos to him for the job done, in light of the fact that every reader already knows what happened, ultimately.
Interesting stories about that fateful match's chair umpire also, and tidbits along the way about how Venus Williams regarded the match as she waited to head to the champions' ball herself, and about the two tennis gladiators' parents.
I found the childhoods and formative years of these two (super)human beings to be fascinating, and as that's usual the part of any (auto)biography that I find most compelling. You can tell a lot about who people came to be or presently are by where they've been, what's happened to date. "So much past inside my present," as one songstress put it.
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
2.0
Was not whelmed by this. Maybe lost in translation a bit, from the German. And maybe just not the right timing, you know? Happens.
Interesting thoughts at times on relationships and love, and on loneliness and the solitary life, which is to say, the life of a writer. Didn't agree with all of those thoughts, and it seems Rilke sort of worshiped the solitary life, exalted it. It got to be a bit cloying.
Just too much of it was esoteric, between Rilke and the young poet, and those pieces take the reader out of the letters. And sometimes Rilke just seemed a bit smug, a bit in love with his own words.
I do dig the idea of "living and writing in heat." Vivid.
some shards I did quite like:
"Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?"
"[B:]e patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers."
"Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen to you. ... Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case."
"And if there is one thing more that I must say to you, it is this: Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words."
Interesting thoughts at times on relationships and love, and on loneliness and the solitary life, which is to say, the life of a writer. Didn't agree with all of those thoughts, and it seems Rilke sort of worshiped the solitary life, exalted it. It got to be a bit cloying.
Just too much of it was esoteric, between Rilke and the young poet, and those pieces take the reader out of the letters. And sometimes Rilke just seemed a bit smug, a bit in love with his own words.
I do dig the idea of "living and writing in heat." Vivid.
some shards I did quite like:
"Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?"
"[B:]e patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers."
"Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen to you. ... Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case."
"And if there is one thing more that I must say to you, it is this: Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words."
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
4.0
Relished this, tho' I can't recall if it's my first time or a re-read. A couple rang familiar. Quirky, thoughtful, fun, poignant -- often all of these things at once.
There were maybe just 2-3 of the tens of poems in this collection that I thought fell flat or were just way too precious or earnest. As for the rest, I can see how kids would be spellbound by these tiny tales. There's a whole lot of head and heart both here.
I like how the drawings in the book feed off of the words, and vice versa. Sometimes the poems were housed *in* the drawings.
+ those that I really enjoyed or loved:
Invitation, Hug O' War, Listen to the Mustn'ts, Sick, Snowman, The Crocodile's Toothache, Lester, Drats, My Rules, No Difference, Ma and God, Skinny, The Land of Happy, Pirate Captain Jim, Fish?, Forgotten Language, and Just Me, Just Me
just a sampling:
FORGOTTEN LANGUAGE
Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers....
How did it go?
How did it go?
___________
JUST ME, JUST ME
Sweet Marie, she loves just me
(She also loves Maurice McGhee).
No she don't, she loves just me
(She also loves Louise Dupree).
No she don't, she loves just me
(She also loves the willow tree).
No she don't, she loves just me!
(Poor, poor fool, why can't you see
She can love others and still love thee.)
There were maybe just 2-3 of the tens of poems in this collection that I thought fell flat or were just way too precious or earnest. As for the rest, I can see how kids would be spellbound by these tiny tales. There's a whole lot of head and heart both here.
I like how the drawings in the book feed off of the words, and vice versa. Sometimes the poems were housed *in* the drawings.
+ those that I really enjoyed or loved:
Invitation, Hug O' War, Listen to the Mustn'ts, Sick, Snowman, The Crocodile's Toothache, Lester, Drats, My Rules, No Difference, Ma and God, Skinny, The Land of Happy, Pirate Captain Jim, Fish?, Forgotten Language, and Just Me, Just Me
just a sampling:
FORGOTTEN LANGUAGE
Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers....
How did it go?
How did it go?
___________
JUST ME, JUST ME
Sweet Marie, she loves just me
(She also loves Maurice McGhee).
No she don't, she loves just me
(She also loves Louise Dupree).
No she don't, she loves just me
(She also loves the willow tree).
No she don't, she loves just me!
(Poor, poor fool, why can't you see
She can love others and still love thee.)
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
3.0
A wonderfully and simply told children's story that every grown person should read.
"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.
"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams."
"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.
"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams."
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
4.0
Hadn't seen this since I was 6 "...and it was still hot."
Mesmerizing little story, engaging pictures. I'll take this over the Eggers novel or the tragically hip indie film (directed by Jonze, replete with Karen O-spearheaded soundtrack) any day.
I love the tale of a boy confined to his room who decides to go somewhere else, if in his head. I can actually recall this book launching a thousand imaginative ships in my own noggin back in the day.
Hope it doesn't land me in my room without dinner, but I firmly intend to say to someone this week, "I'LL EAT YOU UP!"
Mesmerizing little story, engaging pictures. I'll take this over the Eggers novel or the tragically hip indie film (directed by Jonze, replete with Karen O-spearheaded soundtrack) any day.
I love the tale of a boy confined to his room who decides to go somewhere else, if in his head. I can actually recall this book launching a thousand imaginative ships in my own noggin back in the day.
Hope it doesn't land me in my room without dinner, but I firmly intend to say to someone this week, "I'LL EAT YOU UP!"