Owner: Magnificent Octopus URL:http://magnificentoctopus.blogspot.com Join Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 11:30:52 -0500 Rating:1 Site Description: I love books. I write about my life and literature (mostly contemporary, but classics too), and how they feed each other. It's about responding to literature rather than analyzing it. I'm a freelance copyeditor (of nonfiction) raising a bilingual toddler. Site statistics:Click here
Dedication 2008-03-01 20:53:00 I continue (to try) to weed. Franny and Zooey, by JD Salinger — I don't remember reading it. I'm not sure why I have it; I mean, apart from it being Salinger, I never felt a particular draw to reading this or any other of his work, no matter how much I love-love-loved The Catcher in the Rye. It's sat there for years. Occasionally my eyes set upon it, and I think I should get round to reading it one of these days. I start reading on the metro platform the next morning. Inside the front cover is a brief dedication. My heart breaks a little.love to iziaon her 21st'lainieFrom my best friend, a very long time ago. We were messed up at 21. And somehow I managed to cast aside this gift she gave me. That is, I kept it, on a shelf, but I failed to receive its message. Or non-message. And this mak Read more:Dedication
Things I can't find 2008-02-23 15:48:00 (and it's driving me crazy!)My cell phone. Which I hardly ever use. Last seen on the shelf by the front door sometime during the Christmas season. If I don't find it soon, really soon, and charge it up with credit (which I suppose I could do without actually finding it — hmmm...), I will lose my phone number. I don't understand the ubiquity of the cell phone when the terms and conditions of using one are so inconvenient.My daughter's birth certificate. Which we'll need in order to cross the border, to enjoy a planned kind-of-roadtrip, 2 weeks from now, in which the kid and I will be dropped in DC to hang with my sister. I can see it in my mind's eye — it's in a plain white envelope along with the letter from J-F granting me permission to take her cross-border; I came across it relative
Still life 2008-02-22 20:32:00 As I've begun to weed, inevitably covers are drawn back, pages are turned, and snippets are read. While this is mostly an act of instinct, a lack of self-control, it is, on the whole, useful to the decision process.Some books I don't remember reading at all; I just remember liking them. What do I do with those books?Take for example, the prologue from Tom Robbins's Stll Life With Woodpecker (a beat-up mass-market paperback):If this typewriter can't do it, then fuck it, it can't be done.This is the all-new Remington SL3, the machine that answers the question, "Which is harder, trying to read The Brothers Karamazov while listening to Stevie Wonder records or hunting for Easter eggs on a typewriter keyboard?" This is the cherry on top of the cowgirl. The burger served by the genius waitress.
Truth (and beauty), out of the corner of your eye 2008-02-16 19:38:00 I'm not sure who the madman is, and I'm still thinking about what it means to dream of Turing machines. A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines is by cosmologist Janna Levin, and it's lovely. Potential madmen dreaming: Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, and Levin herself. This reader, too. Dreaming, perhaps, of some quintessential truth, just beyond reach.Kurt Gödel:He is still all potential. The potential to be great, the potential to be mad. He will achieve both magnificently.Everyone gathered on this Thursday, the rotating numbers accounting for some three dozen, believe in their very hearts that mathematics is unassailable. Gödel has come tonight to shatter their belief until all that is left are convincing pieces that when assembled erect a powerful monument to mathematics, but not an unassailabl Read more:corner
, Truth
Weeding 2008-02-15 20:04:00 I've decided to weed my books. There's just not enough room.There is various shelving around the house, for the kid's books, for cookbooks, for colouring books, for board games, for dictionaries and the atlas. But 4 bookcases are mine, and they're bursting at the seams. More bookcases is not an option.For this reason mainly, as well as a few others, I'm ready to go digital. (Not tomorrow, but I'm preparing.)Books by some authors I will not part with, such as Calvino, Saramago.I have duplicates of Douglas Adams, and of 1984. I don't think I will ever read Anna Karenina again; if I do, it will be in a different translation. I'm keeping Bridget Jones's Diary, but not the sequel.I'm taking each book off the shelf and carefully weighing its worth before sliding it back into position. I am formu
Status: normal 2008-02-11 21:52:00 Head-yA few weekends ago I went to the hospital. I thought my brain was going to explode. I get migraines quite regularly, and I've learned to cope — some ibuprofen at the first signs and a couple hours' sleep in a dark room as soon as the day-to-day allows will usually head it off. But they've been getting worse over the years.I'd been battling a virus, even worked from home that Friday, as the effort of wearing something other than pyjamas just seemed a bit much that day. Was it a migraine I felt coming on? The pain of it woke me up; the pain of it had me throwing up for hours; the pain of it had me clutching my head and walking round in circles, scared that my eyeballs might squeeze out or that I'd start bleeding from the ears. This wasn't normal.Of course, at the emergency room they Read more:Status
A multiplicity of languages 2008-02-01 22:49:00 The European Commission's "Group of Intellectuals for Intercultural Dialogue," chaired by Amin Maalouf, one of my favourite writers, this week delivered its report on its discussions on the contribution of multilingualism to intercultural dialogue.The report — A Rewarding Challenge: How the Multiplicity of Languages Could Strengthen Europe — according to the press release "makes proposals on how languages can foster intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding, establishing a clear link between linguistic diversity and European integration." There are some introductory comments on the question of identity (a matter on which Maalouf has previously written eloquently about) and a discussion of the general implications of what it is to live in community of 23 official languages, with t
TUATW 2008-01-27 09:37:00 I had it in my mind for some time to post a discussion topic on a Doctor Who forum (a couple of which I follow). Finally I muster the courage (nerds can be so intimidating), but in doing a little background check for my write-up, I find my topic is a nonstarter.Doctor Who was created with the intention of teaching kids a little something about science and history. I'm not so sure about the science bits: Much of it is beyond theoretical — purely fictional. Other science is of the sort I take for granted but Helena cannot yet fully grasp the implications of or get excited about (for example, cooling systems).History on the other hand, is an unexpected source of delight for me and education for Helena. My 5-year-old daughter reveres Madame de Pompadour, l'amoureuse of the king of France, as
Change your mind 2008-01-23 22:11:00 Something to think about for the rest of the year...The Edge Annual Question — 2008:When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.When God changes your mind, that's faith.When facts change your mind, that's science.WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?I won't pretend to have read all the responses; I've skimmed them at random. There's enough there to keep you reading for days, and thinking for weeks.Kevin Kelly, editor at Wired, has this to say:Everything I knew about the structure of information convinced me that knowledge would not spontaneously emerge from data, without a lot of energy and intelligence deliberately directed to transforming it. All the Read more:Change
Please, sir. I want some more. 2008-01-21 16:44:00 Some months ago, amid casual small-talk at the office, a coworker piped up, "Hey, does anyone want my copy of Oliver Twist? I just can't get into it."While it's not the Dickens I had in mind to read next — and I am determined to read many more; say, one a year or so — it is one of his better known works and a popular favourite. And it's hard to turn down a free book besides. So I took R up on his offer.It languished in my desk drawer for some time; then the day came that I was ready for it — I turned it over in my hands, examined the illustration on the cover, checked for introductory notes (none), read the blurbs only to discover: it's abridged!R was the brunt of some jokes for this, and the book stayed in my desk drawer. Till the day I faced a metro ride home with no reading materi Read more:Please
I marveled to the limits of marveling 2008-01-16 21:32:00 I don't know why I like this story so much:The emperor said: "O Amar! You speak verily, and your words are to our liking! The gates of the city are two farsangs from here. Both of you take an arrow and remove yourself thither. Whoever shall return first after handing his arrow to the guard on gate, shall win precedence over the other!"The two acquiesced, and at the emperor's orders they were each given an arrow. Both arrayed themselves and set off like lightning, running shoulder to shoulder, flying like sparks, like arrows shot from a well-strung bow. They had gone some distance from the royal procession when Amar purposely lagged behind, and Aatish managed to put half-a-league's distance between them.Those who witnessed this said, "To no purpose Amar lost all his prestige and distinction
On Pamuk's Other Colors 2008-01-13 13:05:00 I missed Claire Berlinski's review of Pamuk's Other Colors
when it first appeared in The Globe and Mail, which is just as well seeing as I was just then having a tough time of getting through the final pages and, by the sounds of it, this review would've reinforced my sense of its paralyzingly depressing nature, but the ongoing reactions (1, 2, 3) to that review are asking me to reexamine my own response to Pamuk's essays.I agree with Berlinski's characterization of Pamuk as a "melancholic egomaniac." It did indeed become quite tiresome to be repeatedly told 1. how much he loves books and 2. how depressed he is. But she misses the boat in not acknowledging him as a significant novelist.This week Keith Gerebian comes to Pamuk's defence.Pamuk reveals why writing begins for him with disquietu
Big books 2008-01-12 09:05:00 A challenge to sink my teeth into: Chunkster Challenge 2008.I wasn't able to meet my own self-designed standards last year, but I better know my limitations for it, and I'm willing to play by more relaxed rules this time: 4 books of >450 pages, read between January 1 and December 20. (Hosted by So Many Books, So Little Time. Sign up before March 1!)Ahem. My candidates:1. Currently reading: The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction, by Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami (948 pages, including notes). This is the first book I started reading this year; I'm on page 162.2. Up soon: The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon, by Alexandre Dumas (751 pages, including appendix), received recently. I've read a bit of th
Sisters 2008-01-08 06:45:00 Happy Birthday, Ivonna!(With regrets that we didn't manage to see it together this year.) Read more:Sisters
Colours and follies 2008-01-07 20:43:00 Weeks ago, I dipped into Orhan Pamuk's Other Colors: Essays and a Story, as I said I would. I start in the middle and find myself driven forward, wondering what happens next, and finally it occurs to me to ask what came before.Sampling these essays at random, it turns out, is not the best approach. The preface holds the key. (Sadly I was not forced to read the preface when first I opened the book.) Pamuk has arranged these ideas and fragments deliberately, into a continuous narrative.I have always believed there to be a greedy and almost implacable graphomaniac inside me — a creature who can never write enough, who is forever setting life in words — and that to make him happy I need to keep writing. But when I was putting this book together, I discovered that the graphomaniac would be Read more:Colours
On The Adventures of Amir Hamza 2008-01-05 21:20:00 Let us not forget its glorious subtitle: Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction (which has to be the very best subtitle ever!).From The Washington Post:The Adventures
of Amir Hamza represents a marvelous dovetailing of fantasy, history and religion. This book demonstrates the ways that colorful storytelling can be an important part of both religious texts and adventure yarns, and the way a charismatic figure may become something very like public property, capturing the popular imagination and giving storytellers a vessel for their ideas.From The New York Times:Even in translation, "The Adventures of Amir Hamza" is a wonder and a revelation — a classic of epic literature in an interpretation so fluent that it is a pleasure to sit down and lose oneself in it. The story line itself is
The best of the season 2007-12-30 22:47:00 Best read of the year, hands down the oh-my-gawd-this-book-is-so-devastatingly-inside-my-head book:The Gold Bug Variations, by Richard Powers.Best book published in 2007:Well, I didn't read them all, did I?, but I have a fondness for Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje.Book that made me cry:Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, by Patrick Hamilton, in particular The Plains of Cement, being Ella's story and the last of the trilogy of novellas published under that umbrella title.Book that didn't live up to its hype: The Post-Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver.Oh, and The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, was a pretty gawdawful excuse for a dystopian postapocaptic novel — hated it.Best "discovery":Last Evenings on Earth, by Roberto Bolaño.Book I couldn't finish:Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.B
Poet avenger 2007-12-11 13:23:00 Discuss:What we expect from poets is that they avenge evil somehow.— From "A Note on Poetic Justice," in Other Colors: Essays and a Story, by Orhan Pamuk.[In what must be a subconscious attempt at editorialization, I keep typing "pests" instead of "poets"...]
When books talk to each other 2007-12-09 13:10:00 Doris Lessing meets Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:It's a way of unprivileging our own position as readers, reminding us, as Ms. Lessing does, that we are only one of the many sets of people who will leave traces of themselves during this planet's existence.(Via ScribblingWoman2.)
What I read this past week 2007-12-09 11:36:00 (Whittling my way through the stack.)The Wasp Factory, by Iain Banks.Hmm. Didn't like it much. It's not exactly "Rubbish!" but nor would I name it one of my "top 100 novels of the century." There's some humour in it, the kind that makes you chuckle uncomfortably. It's unsettling, not least because you have to rely on a narrator that seems not entirely credible. Frank in his childhood killed a few kids, but it was just a stage he was going through. But Frank's boastful, and he exaggerates, and he's prone to melodrama of a macabre kind. So we don't know. So many things are left unexplained — the questions, of course, drove me forward. But. Hmm. Surprise ending, yes. The ending makes the journey worthwhile, though it only raises more questions, but it finally places the whole of the book in
Nobel words 2007-12-08 18:56:00 Doris Lessing's Nobel
lecture: On Not Winning the Nobel Prize.Writing, writers, do not come out of houses without books.
One down, far to go 2007-12-02 16:20:00 This week I read Doris Lessing's The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog, her sequel to Mara and Dann.It wasn't so much of a letdown as I'd been led to expect. On the other hand, while it could stand as its own story, I don't see it working for someone who doesn't have the baggage of Mara and Dann.For all the other characters named in the title, it's mostly about Dann. I'd've liked to hear more about Griot. But Griot doesn't seem to know himself very well — he doesn't remember his childhood; he realizes that he's not particularly clever, or charismatic, or ambitious even, and he's jealous of people who are; he's never really questioned himself or his way about things — no one's ever asked him "What did you see?" (but really see) — but maybe he's just sta
Easy Reader 2007-12-01 09:05:00 "Top to bottom and left to right, readin' stuff is outta sight!" Read more:Reader
The other books lying around 2007-11-26 18:43:00 In no particular order (except for maybe they happen to be piled this way, and ordering them in any other fashion is beyond me for the moment).(At this very moment I am between (fiction) books — but just for the moment, having finished New Grub Street last night and intending to choose one of the following for when I tuck into bed early this evening. Oh, but which one?)The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction, by Ghalib Lakhnavi.An Islamic saga dating back to perhaps as early as the seventh century, chronicling warriors, kings, tricksters, fairies, courtesans, and magical creatures. Which I received on my birthday actually, but it's a review copy, so I'm not really sure it counts. But it kind of does, cuz it's an awesome gift of a book. "Lord of the Ausp
Monsterpiece Theater presents 2008-03-04 20:33:00 Ali Baba and 40 Thieves, starring Ricardo Monsterban and 40 thieves.
Beatitude 2008-03-10 22:17:00 for every sweet lump of baby born that women croon over, is one vast rotten meat burning slow worms in graves of this earth— from Desolation Angels, by Jack Kerouac.How I came to know JackI've never read any Kerouac. That is about to change.The celebration of the 50th anniversary of On the Road (published in 1957), while I recognize it as an important landmark of American literature, blah, blah, blah, did not inspire me to read it. Nothing about it captured my interest, honestly; which is kind of weird actually, in light of those things that generally do capture my interest. But there you have it: I haven't read Jack.Then last week, I had to go to New York City, for meetings for work. And it so happens that our New York office is across the street from the New York Public Library. And it
Nothing as trivial as that 2008-03-20 21:34:00 " . . . but old Sam's just come clean with me. You know the way he drops in every afternoon to watch the sheets roll out. Well, this time he seemed rather excited, or at least as near as he'll ever get to it. When I told him we were on the last cycle he asked me, in that cute English accent of his, if I'd ever wondered what they were trying to do. I said, 'Sure' — and he told me.""Go on, I'll buy it.""Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names — and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them — God's purpose will have been achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won't be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy.""Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide?""There's no need fo Read more:Nothing
An abundance of riches 2008-03-25 22:51:00 Received last week, a box, a long time coming. Weeks went into considering what should go into it, weeks more into waiting.Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. An audio CD, wherein the story is read by Hugh Laurie. When I opened the box and pulled this one out, I was devastated to see that it's abridged. I immediately searched out my original order — there must be some mistake; I clearly remember investigating this edition and never in a million years would I have opted for abridged. But clearly I did; I am unable to duplicate my research efforts — nowhere is it shown to be a 15-hour recording (and surely not abridged) except in my imagination, and everywhere labeled as the product I received. I only hope my frustration with abridgements is offset by having Hugh Laurie read this one Read more:riches
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