11 posts tagged “books”
Laying in a hospital bed, not making much sense, my dear friend M. brought me the first chapters of her novel to read and comment on. She knew, knowing me oh so well, that I needed something in my life to reboot my curiosity and that appealed on a bit more of an intellectual than Star Trek on a little hospital TV.
It was a slow process for me. Fatigue and pain often limited reading to a couple pages a day. Soon, however, I was looking forward to those pages. I read and reread her work. Criticism? That was limited, believe me. The novel was going to be good. It was true. It was her.
I have just heard that Harper Collins has bought the book. Yes! I am so happy. It really couldn't have happened to a nicer, more talented, more sincere person. Looking into my crystal ball I predict bubbly flowing this weekend.
What would you like for Christmas? It is a delight, rather than a predictable event, when a Christmas suggestion is taken to heart and given.
It is in that context that I received the wonderful book "King of Infinite Space, Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry" by Siobhan Roberts. In a world where mathematics has chosen to forget the numbers of shape and dimension Donald Coxeter laboured with love and genius to both preserve and advance geometry. The telling of his tale is beautifully done by Roberts in it's own symmetry.
Around the dinner table with colleagues gathered for the American Math Society conference in 1981, he asked: " Did you know that apples do not have cores?" They thought he was pulling their legs, until the hostess, Marjorie Senechal, a mathematics professor at Smith College, procured an apple and placed it before him with a knife, as requested. He filleted the fruit into thin horizontal sections, demonstrating that there was no stem-to-stern core, but rather elongated pods of seeds within. The piece de resistence occurred when he reached the center of the apple and sliced through the equator. There lay it's secret symmetry -- not nature's sloppy attempt at spherical symmetry, as suggested by an apple's exterior, but rather perfect fivefold symmetry, hidden at the apple's heart: the apple seeds were arranged in a five-point star. Everyone around the table gasped when they saw it. "It just shows," said Senechal, "that he was looking everywhere, and looking deeply. Coxeter delighted in the geometry of everyday objects, and, because he was so curious and astute, he found symmetries and regularities in these objects that the rest of us never suspected."
On one level many of us have unconsciously been participants in everyday applications of Coxeter's vision. We have seen amazing computer animations, received an immunization, or have mined or been mined as data. What I have received from Roberts is a view into the beauty of this world as realized and expressed by a profound explorer of mind and matter.
This volume was a lovely gift that was truly appreciated and will have a lasting impact in my life.
It's hard to believe it's been so long since I've posted on books. My reading abilities are still, somewhat, impaired but the enjoyment is there. Of course my friends know that I seem to alternate between "serious lit" and junk. I can't help it. I'll read just about anything if it's well done.
Here are some recent reads.
I have just finished rereading Michael Mallett's The Borgias: the Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Dynasty. Packed full of characters, dates and footnotes this is still quite easy to read and an excellent description of this fascinating period. You can certain believe that Machiavelli's inspiration was based on the Borgia politics he saw around himself.
I am just finishing John Burdett's Bangkok Tattoo. The "hero" of this novel is detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep who also helps manage his mother's brothel. Life and death, sex and the CIA, the East and West, all meet here and are interpreted through the eyes of our, usually, gentle Buddhist Sonchai.
"Rebirth ... You have been born into a human body hardwired with each and every transgression from the last time around, and now you must spend the next seventy years clawing your way back to the music. No wonder we cry."
Jonathan Kellerman's Rage brings back psychologist Alex Delaware. The story centers around a child murder and societal corruption. There's nothing deep here. It's just a well written, page turning, distraction. This is beach reading.
On deck is Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India. I have been deliberately avoiding knowing too much about this novel before I tackle it. Sidhwa, herself, I find quite interesting. She first came to my attention through her work with director Deepa Mehta. Cracking India was the basis for Mehta's film Earth. I've found I can enjoy, or not, a book and a film, based on a book, for different reasons.
Book: Show us a book that you like to give as a gift.
Submitted by Ross.
This is a wonderful book that I first received from my friend Cora. I have no idea how many copies she's given out over the years but all have found grateful homes. This is a perfect gift for anyone who loves literature but, perhaps, young women in particular. Odds are you may have to search for a used copy.
Born in England, the young Beryl Markham trained horses in Kenya. She later took up flying, becoming a bush pilot and the first person to fly the Atlantic Ocean east to west (solo non-stop flight). These experiences are the basis of West With The Night. There is some controversy that the writing was actually that of her third husband but the stories are all Markham.
"There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo."
Ernest Hemingway said
"... she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers ... it really is a bloody wonderful book."
I have just finished this book, a bit late for the anniversary ...
It's very good. However, it is presented as a series of academic essays so it may not be everyone's cup of tea.
Was Vimy the defining moment in establishing a Canadian identity? Let's just say I believe it was a primary one.
I was glad to see the involvement of so many students in the Vimy experience this year. Canadian history even after 1800 was certainly not well done when I was at school.
Standing in line at the pharmacy last week I browsed through their video bin. Laying among the "straight to video" DVDs was Field of Dreams, Anniversary Edition for $9.99. I've wanted my own copy for years and ten bucks was kinda painless.
You know, I still get pulled into this movie and in a dark, silent, room belief is suspended - except for one scene. Can you really believe Costner and James Earl Jones having a conversation in front of a Fenway frank and beer stall without getting asked to move along AND with three guys waiting to serve 'em? Total fiction, I say.
It's still a very good film and the bonus features were OK. I will dig up the book Shoeless Joe before regular season starts.
Every one and a while it's a nice treat to read something light(er) and very English.
The novel centers around a London restaurant critic who's most recent review has caused a chef to commit suicide. This launches the reviewer on a campaign of apologies. Sexual politics, world politics, food politics, chauvinism and more ... Written in a style that sometimes reminded me of Douglas Adams, in the tongue in cheek approach, Eating Crow was a nice distraction.
What to do when the insomnia and distractions set in? Well, I make Vox postings stupidly late at night and read, of course.
Here is a lovely little book, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. It is the story of two city boys sent to the country for 're-education' during China's Cultural Revolution. There they discover a stash of Western books in Chinese and the local tailor's daughter.
This is a well told story. I flew through it last night / this morning and will go back with a bit more care tonight.
Thanks for the loan, Beverly.
Book: Show us the latest book you bought, borrowed or received.
"... a brave attempt to fathom the world of deafness as well as the high-strung milieu of performing artists." Reed Business Information, Inc.
This is one of the books I received when I was in the hospital. I'm just getting to it now. So far so good ...
Update
Finished this yesterday and was sorry to see it end. I will look for more books by Vikram Seth at the local library.
I currently find myself, finally, reading Ian McEwan's Amsterdam. There's lots here to appeal to me - scandal, mortality, ethical dilemmas and the English upper class (don't get me going).
Somehow, however, I find myself disappointed. The charcters are only moderately compelling as they try to get the reader to ask the background question "How can the mediocre really rise to power and/or influence?" I also believe I know how the plot will unfold and these characters develop - usually a show stopper.
Will I finish the book? You bet. McEwan's prose is so tight and the descriptions feel so true I'll see it through to the end.
It turns out that even a weak McEwan (sorry Booker) is a treat if only in the craft.
