The June 23rd Project

5. Fortunes of War by Patrick O'Brian

2011-09-30T21:40:00.001-04:00

Dear Meezly,

You are going to absolutely LOVE this one!

I loved it mostly because everything that happened so far has consequences in this novel. Up until now I felt like the books have been telling stories, but the events and actions have been independent of each other. Sure, they are sequential, and certainly there are links between the causes and effects, but in Fortunes of War, which begins on the eve of the War of 1812, O'Brian locks everything up tight. And in some really nice ways: some characters return, some characters are new, but are associated with old ones, and we have some new locations, too. And a lot of surprise turns that frustrate Jack and add a lot to Stephen's story. In the some of the earlier books I found myself merely enduring Stephen's story, but on FoW, man oh man, it gets good! Spy stuff!

I also especially liked the way O'Brian highlighted some of the conflicts I hadn't thought of: the new Navy and the old both in technology (the guns, for example), the clothes, and the character/attitude of the officers. Jack's old school and at the start we meet another old school captain and then, near the end of the book, we met a new school captain. There are a few others, but I don't want to tip into spoiler territory.

There are some good sea battles, but most of the novel takes place on shore. That might sound boring, but Stephen's troubles kept me so stressed out I had to keep reading.

And I see that the next book, The Surgeon's Mate, takes place directly after this one. In truth, I've started it, but I'm still in the first dozen or so pages, fighting through the annoying, but necessary review that begins sequels. But I expect the dovetailing to continue, at least until we get to those books that don't exactly fit into real life's timeline

Kindle @ the library

2011-09-24T08:26:00.003-04:00

This week Amazon announced that Kindle owners could finally DL books from their local libraries. I tried the night of the announcement, but somehow I let my card lapse. I just used it ten days ago, but since then it had run out. After a quick stop to renew I was back in business.

I tried from school, but the student wifi account doesn't allow access to Amazon, and you have to DL your books via wifi.

But I tried again this morning and had success!

If you have a Kindle and a library card for a LI library here's how you do it:

Go to: http://live-brary.com/

Click "free downloads" on the list on the left
Click "My Account" from the toolbar across the top
Select your local library from the list
Put in your barcode

Then search for books and follow the directions...

I was happy to see four Patrick O'Brian novels - Books 1, 2, 11, and 12. That's an odd place to start, but I'm looking forward to seeing the rest go online.

But why can I borrow a digital edition from my library, but can't buy one from Amazon. It's a mystery. Anyone know the answer?

I checked out The Atlantic by Simon Winchester and Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World by Maya Jasanoff.

Irene

2011-09-11T08:41:00.005-04:00

We completely survived Hurricane Irene. We were sweating it out pretty good at Allison's parents house, getting text updates from neighbors, and then from the TV news once they showed up on our corner/block. That was a little stressful: "hey! you're house is on TV showing the flooding in your town." But after everything was over, we fared very well. The water came close to the house but never came inside. This is the street in front of the house; that's our white fence.

And this is our driveway. You can see how high the water got, there at the rubble line on the front lawn.

We didn't lose our magnolia tree, either!

Here's a link to our friends' house - two videos showing the storm's fury, one inside and one outside the house: Miss Gracie's page.

4. The Happiest Baby on the Block

2011-08-19T11:40:00.002-04:00

If I was asked to write a blurb for the back cover of this little books I'd say: "This shit really works!"

We got this as a hand-me-down and left it on the book shelf with all of the other hand-me-down books on the "we'll get to it later" pile. Then Mrs Crumbolst came over and said it was a good book, so we checked it out sooner rather than later.

There's a lot of clutter - annoying examples of what not to do, what we have done as North American/yuppy parents for generations, and what other cultures/non-yuppy parents do for their crying newborns - before they finally land on the practical advice of how to calm your freaking out newborn. When our newborn starts to freak, we apply the advice in the book and within a few seconds we have a non freaking out newborn. Rarely does it take a whole minute.

I strongly, strongly recommend this book if you are about to have a baby.

3. What to Expect When You're Expecting

2011-08-19T11:33:00.000-04:00

We were expecting so I read it. It helped me manage my expectations. A lot of it is stuff you already know if you are a big brother or have a niece or nephew, but it's good to review when you're the parents responsible for the decisions.

2. Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian

2011-08-19T11:29:00.000-04:00

We begin again at Ashgrove Cottage, with Jack Aubrey zealously spending the prize money and earnings from The Mauritius Command. This time new orders come in for Jack and Stephen at almost the same time. They are to take the Leopard, an old 50-gun, fourth rate ship, to Australia and restore order after William Bligh (of the Bounty) suffers another mutiny. Since they are going that way, they are tasked to bring a set of prisoners, including a spy, for delivery in Australia's penal colony.

Doldrums; gaol fever (typhus that infects a lot of the crew, including our beloved Pullings); a stop to drop off the sick in Brazil; a long and stressful chase with the Dutch 74 Waakzaamheid in bad weather and stormy seas in the Roaring 40s that finally, finally comes to blows; icebergs; and a very near sinking from icebergs where Jack allows some of the crew off in lifeboats; Desolation Island where the Leopard attempt some repairs; and a visit from an American whaler. There is also a lot of neat natural science research for Stephen on Desolation Island.

This was a good combination of Jack and Stephen's character development. The entire book is one, long passage, where nothing in particular happens. Stephen does have a lot of opportunities for development with the health of the prisoners, trying to figure out what the deal is with the American spy Mrs Wogan, and all of the research he is able to conduct on seals, albatrosses, and penguins once they reach the Southern Ocean and Desolation Island - which my Harbors and High Seas companion book suggests is probably Kerguelen Island. Jack is developed in the usual way - long letters to Sophie and ruminations on the effectiveness of the crew he inherits and collects - but we also get to see him in two emergencies, the slow, long run from the Waakzaamheid, and the near sinking from the iceberg. The first is a chess match played in foul weather and the second is a frenetic puzzling while the ships slowly sinks into frigid seas.

I enjoyed this one as much as I did the first book. And the next book, Fortunes of War, is a direct sequel to this one.

Here's a nice sentence: "The sun rose on a sea in labour, the crests riding ahead of the swell and breaking: creaming water from horizon to horizon except in the bottom of the troughs, much deeper now; while from every height the wind tore foam, drops and solid water, driving it forward in a grey veil that darkened and filled the air" (245-46).

1. The Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Brian

2011-08-19T10:54:00.003-04:00

Captain Jack Aubrey is sent to Mauritius to beat on some Frenchies who have established a base in the Indian Ocean. This French naval base is a real problem for the East India merchant ships, and so Jack is sent to take the islands and establish a British naval base on them.Another great book by Patrick O'Brian, the fourth in the series. We get a lot of gunpowder porn, some Marine work on the beach at La Reunion and Mauritius, and some Naval bureaucracy.

2011-03-15T23:20:00.001-04:00

changing the language in Huck Finn

2011-01-07T21:28:00.002-05:00

Briefly:

1. If you think the language in Huck Finn should be changed, you are missing the point of the story. It's not simply a tale of a two runaways drifting down the Mississippi. That's just what happens in the story. What the story is about is Huck's journey to discovery that Jim is an actual human being. Huck has to defy culture, old social codes, and hundreds of years of law and tradition. True, changing the language doesn't change that story or Huck's eventual illumination. But it definitely weakens the impact of certain scenes in the novel; to be more specific I'm thinking of the scene right after Huck and Jim reunite after the fog when Huck has to "humble himself" to Jim. And I'm thinking of the scene where Huck is talking to Aunt Sally about injuries aboard a steamboat after a boiler explodes.

2. Twain's not here to defend his decision to use that language or comment on the decision to correct him as you see fit to make you feel better (see 3).

3. I suspect this is a decision to make white people feel better. We don't like that word now and we don't want to be reminded that we used to freaking LOVE it.

4. I'm not sure how to articulate this and I wish I could just send you the images in my head and a translation key for their emotional and intellectual meaning. We shouldn't soften the edges of a history we don't like to think about: we should say that yes, a long time ago, damn we were shallow and stupid and afraid and this is how we talked. This book here, this represents how we used to look at each other in all its ugliness. Twain's book is a protest against that very ugliness. His hero finally says, fuck it, I may go to hell and I may never be able to go home ever again, but I'm not going to live by these dehumanizing rules.

5. Thank you Twitter, for making me laugh about all this.

6. And to my students who had an opinion about this and could explain why (and who will likely never find this): Thank you for reading and thank you for thinking.

2010 in review

2011-01-07T21:02:00.003-05:00

What a Disappointment in Reading!

I blame work. I love my job, and when I think of the 200 minutes a day I'm talking with my students about books and narratives and poems and essays and ideas I can't believe I actually get paid to do it. But all the rest of my working time, 160 minutes at school and an uncountable number of hours at home, is spent reading (submitted papers and homework, prep for those 5 shows every day, and grad school). It's one of those jobs where you could literally, and I literally mean literally, work all the time and still not be doing enough. And it's not even one of those "you must not be doing it right" kind of things; if you want to phone it in, you could have lots of free time, but to do a good job requires a lot of effort and an unbelievable amount of time. Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be English teachers.

Over the past five days I have done two experiments. With the first, I grade things the second they come in, as soon as I can, whether that's the next period I don't have class, say my Duty period or lunch, or right after my after-school snack. In the second, we have been constantly picking up after ourselves - things go back to where they belong, the house gets company-ready before bed and before we leave for work: dishes put in the dishie, crumbs wiped up, couch blankets folded and put away, and so on: a constant tidying up. The results, after a mere five days, are pretty positive - I find myself in a clean house, with less schoolwork that MUST be done RIGHT NOW, and I've found a little bit of time to read.

I've also found that having a reading mandate to be helpful. Looking back over the 108 books I've read since I started this, many of them have been read for grad school or for classes I'm planning to teach. And lately I have been feeling the Gaming itch, and so have been reading in prep for a game of Beat to Quarters.

Whatever it takes, I'm aiming at 20 books in 2011. And better blog posts, too - I think that writing them right away even if I'm not happy with them is the best way to go (instead of waiting for the elusive Spare Moment to sit down and Do It Right).

10. The Sound and the Fury Wm Faulkner

2011-01-07T20:33:00.003-05:00

Man, was this a great, great book. I'm not even sure how to describe it. First of all, it's damned difficult. My beloved Moby-Dick is also a difficult book: it's long, it's about a lot of things, and the things its about are heavy. But The Sound and the Fury is difficult in a different way. The story is told in such a bizarre fashion that you almost have to read it twice. And there's almost no way I could have read the story in isolation, outside of the class I took; without that I would have needed a guide of some kind. The first section is told by...well, maybe I shouldn't tell you...the joy in this book is puzzling out of the narrative. I'm sure you think this is a cop-out, but I could write a review ten times as long as the book and still not do it's majesty justice.

9. As I Lay Dying Wm Faulkner

2011-01-07T20:31:00.002-05:00

The craziest, saddest story you ever heard about a family's journey to bury their mother in her home town; it's told in small vignettes, each from a different family member, including the dead mother.

8. Go Down, Moses by Wm Faulkner

2011-01-07T20:11:00.002-05:00

Five stories, one of them the famous longer story "The Bear," arranged out of order. The five stories tell the long tale of the McCaslin family. It's Faulkner, so you know what you are going to get before you start: partial narrative, a very limited point of view, lots of history mixed up with family secrets, race, racism, the Old South and the New South, and sex.

7. Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

2010-07-09T09:15:00.003-04:00

I can't believe how long it has taken me to read anything Roth has written. I was so into Goodbye, Columbus that I immediately went to the library and took out Portnoy's Complaint and American Pastoral. And the hype was definitely worth it.

Portnoy's Complaint is actually a complaint: Alexander Portnoy ranting about his parents to his psychoanalyst. The whole book seems like a first meeting between therapist and patient.

And it is hilarious. I thought Goodbye, Columbus was funny, but that was nothing compared to this. At more than a few points I was actually laughing out loud, laughing so hard I had to put the book down and wipe my eyes.

Alex has grown up to be a successful lawyer working for NYC as a Commissioner of Equality, or something. But, he feels, this is not good enough for his parents. He feels trapped by their expectations of him. They have raised him to be a perfect gentleman, to be so nice, and kind, and polite, but whenever he exercises any free will, makes any decision of his own, they act like he is murdering them with his lack of gratitude. And there's his trap: he wants to be himSelf but he also wants to be a good son (mostly, it seems, to keep the bitching to a quiet minimum).

And mostly he expresses himself in two ways: whacking off (the title of the famous second chapter) and having sex. No woman is ever good enough, physically, socially, emotionally, or culturally (even when he goes to Israel), and so he winds up treating his girlfriends like his parents treat him: carping on them, insulting them, never letting any praise sink in long enough to be felt, if any is to be dished out in the first place.

The end left me a little unsatisfied; it ended kind of abruptly for me. But don't get me wrong, the journey was very satisfactory and I'm looking forward to American Pastoral.

6. Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

2010-07-06T08:44:00.002-04:00

My first experience with Philip Roth, who I have been wanting to read for so long. I'm definitely headed to the library for some more, maybe Portnoy's Complaint, or American Pastoral.

Goodbye, Columbus is a novella about the summer love affair between Neil and Brenda. And as Neil tells us the story, we realize it's also a story about the different experiences of Jewish immigrants as they get more experience points in American culture.

Neil lives with his aunt, an immigrant who still leans on her Yiddish speech patterns and vocabulary. He is done with college and has also spent a year in the Army.

Brenda's family has been here a few generations, and they have assimilated into American culture and built a successful business manufacturing sinks. She is going to Radcliffe, the woman's college of Harvard (this I did not know).

And so we have the conflict of class. Brenda and Neil don't think of it that way, they just want to hang out and have fun. Brenda's mom doesn't quite like Neil in that he's-not-good-enough-for-my-daughter way. And Neil's aunt is suspicious of Brenda's family in/with a working-class snobbery kind of way.

The writing was great: Roth has a subtle use of detail that, like Dickens, makes you realize how awkward people, or certain situations, really are. And he's also very funny. I won't copy out any text, because out of context I think it would lose some of its rich flavor.

Goodbye, Columbus is one of Roth's early works, and it won the National Book Award in 1959. It's short, too, and you should be able to read the whole thing in those quiet hours you spend drinking coffee waiting for your wife to wake up.

5. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

2010-07-04T10:00:00.001-04:00

I heard so many great things about this book that even as I collected significant evidence to the contrary I finished it anyway. Beware, a SPOILER lurks below:

The plot/setting: Okonkwo is a great warrior and leader in his small African village. He thinks everyone around him is soft, especially his son. Unfortunately for him, he accidentally kills someone on a high festival day and so must be exiled for seven years. In this seven year absence Christian missionaries come and ingratiate themselves to the villagers. When he returns Okonkwo realizes that things have changed too much, that things have fallen apart, that the old traditions and cultural rules are lost forever. So what does this fearless warrior do? He hangs himself from a tree behind his hut. Lame!

The story sucked. The writing was very average. I suspect (white) college undergraduates who feel bad about European colonialism in Africa and the slave trade have given this book way too much credit as a means of appeasing their pointless, guilty feelings.

4. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

2010-07-04T09:00:00.001-04:00

You've read this gem, too, I'm sure.

3. Hard Times by Charles Dickens

2010-07-04T08:00:00.000-04:00

I have a lot of catching up to do! I'm way behind and plan to spend some time during this very busy week getting current.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens was a great book! Dickens uses this book and its characters to satirize Utilitarianism and capitalism's naked pursuit of profit no matter what. There's also a certain whiff of criticism about government looking after business concerns before or rather than the people.

And there's a great quote in there that I think a lot of successful North Americans carry around as their general philosophy on life: if I can do it, then so can you. Unfortunately, as you already realize, a lot of being successful is based on chance, luck, racism, and timing.

"This, again, was among the fictions of Coketown. Any capitalist there, who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn’t each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every one for not accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why don’t you go and do it?"

Great characters; great writing.

2. Bleak House by Charles Dickens

2010-03-10T22:21:00.002-05:00

This was a very difficult book to read, particularly in the beginning. It clocks in at 350,000 words and 770 pages, with 79! characters. The first 100 pages took me about a week. I do have to say, though, that it was very good. And the climax was a very fast read, say, pages 600-750 went by in a quick clip.

But what's it about, Redwing, you ask me. Well, it's Dickens, so it's about a bunch of stuff.

There are two main plots here, and a lot of smaller eddies.

First, we have the legal case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. This is a case between two friendly brothers who, in their best effort to be fair to each other, have asked the Court to determine a question about their father's Will. Countless years and 70,000 pounds later, the case is still undecided. The original brothers have died, and now their heirs are awaiting judgment, even though it hardly matters anymore.

Second we have the story of our...wait for it...orphaned narrator, Esther. I won't say much about her story because to say anything would be to spoil the many discoveries you know Dickens has laid before you. Of course, the two narratives are intertwined - Esther is the ward of John Jarndyce.

There is some really spectacular writing here; Dickens is a master craftsman.

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time—as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth.

And there are some really great characters. None as good as, say, The Artful Dodger, or Fagin. But some very close. I loved the policeman, "Bucket of the Detective," the character who does the most to weave together all of the loose strands of Dickens's narrative. Dickens has a way of putting character details just so, so you see the character as if he was walking across the room you're sitting in. He's a genius.

1. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

2010-02-09T23:52:00.002-05:00

My second Dickens novel! I have read Tale of Two Cities a couple of times now, and have taught it once (you really get the feel of a book's structure after teaching it. I highly recommend it!). But while I had never read OT, I was kind of familiar with the story.

Here were my expectations: an orphan asks for more porridge, he gets kicked out of the orphanage, and he is impressed (in the Navy way) into a band of thieves.

What I got was much, much more.

Young Oliver is born in a work house, not an orphanage. And he does ask for more of the thin gruel the boys are barely fed in order to keep them barely alive. And he is kicked out and sent to work for a coffin maker. But even there he is met with more cruelty and abuse, and so he runs away to London. On the way to London he meets Jack Dawkins, the Artful Dodger himself, pickpocket extraordinaire, who takes him back to what I would call the Thieves Guild. And here is where the real narrative begins, with all its Dickensian twists and turns.

For the gamer, you have a great book for research on pickpockets and rogues of all kinds, especially Fagin, the evil, manipulative, and exploitive Guild Master. You get descriptions of the seedy side of the city: thieves hideouts, great pubs, and the back alleys of a grand urban area. And there are quite a few bad guys in here for any kind of campaign: Sikes, Fagin, Monks, and Noah Claypole.

For the English teacher you get essentially three kinds of narrative twisted into one challah of a story (and I am borrowing heavily from the essay by Janet Larson in my Norton anthology, because she puts it so succinctly): basically, OT is three parables. The first is the story of the triumph of good over evil, that Virtue will be rewarded and Vice will be punished. This is true of many of CD's novels. Second, we have a long-running parable of the Good Samaritan. Dickens uses this to demonstrate to his readers that there is a big gap between saying you're a Christian and acting like a Christian. And finally, the critique of social conditions. Dickens showing just how deplorable the conditions of the workhouses are and the absolute misery and hopelessness of 19th century poverty.

12. H.M.S. Surprise by Patrick O'Brian

2009-12-31T11:30:00.000-05:00

I stormed through this third book of the Aubrey series on my honeymoon, and I don't have it in me to write the review right now. But I'll get on it asap. And I'm into Book 4 already...

11. Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

2009-12-31T11:00:00.000-05:00

This Dickens guy is alright.

Backstory:
The Noble Evremonde brothers are bad. But Dr. Manette good, tries to help. But he feels bad. So he writes to the cops. The bad boy Evremondes block it and send him to jail. 18 long years go by.

Story:
His old assistant Defarge gets him released. Jarvis Lorry comes and gets him. Lucie, the Doctor's daughter, and Lorry bring him back to England. And they meet a young Charles Darnay on the ship. So helpful. So kind. So cute. It's LOVE! Darnay goes on trial. But is acquitted because this guy Carton looks JUST LIKE HIM!

The wine flows in the street like blood.

The end:
The strands of the web get tighter and tighter.

The Epilogue:
It IS a far, far better thing that he did.

10. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

2009-12-31T10:30:00.001-05:00

Another reading! And I'm'na have yet another in 2010 when I teach it (though I have not been counting books I have read, say, to teach year after year. Like, homw many times can I count To Kill a Mockinbird, or Macbeth, books I have taught every year for ten years. I practically have them memorized.).

But this time I read it for a grad class on HM. What a difference reading the book with a professor is. I see a lot more than I have ever seen, but there's still more to discover. Like seeing a whale, I guess, for just the fourth time.

9. Typee by Herman Melville

2009-12-31T10:00:00.000-05:00

A travel narrative in the style of authors like Jonathan Swift and books like Utopia. Satirical. Critical of the Western worldview as saviors of the savage natives.

Tommo abandons his whaling ship when it lands at the remote Marquesa Islands. He lives among the natives, with the Typee tribe, for a few months and then escapes/leaves.

Recommended if you have someone else to talk to about the book, like me, say. But if you are going to read it in a vacuum of companionship, pick something else.

8. Peter Simple by Frederick Marryat

2009-11-26T07:08:00.003-05:00

It's hard to believe I haven't finished a book in nearly four years. It's hard to believe because it's simply not true, no matter what you hear on FOX "news." I have been reading. I'm teaching: Tale of Two Cities, one of my favorite books; The Crucible, which I can't really express how bored I am of it; and Hamlet, which is so good, especially on this second reading. And I'm taking a course on Herman Melville, but until now, we have read all things that I've already read: Moby Dick, Pierre, and "Bartleby the Scrivener." For next week we are reading something new to me, Benito Cereno, one of the Piazza Tales, along with Bartleby and Billy Budd. SO far it has a very Joseph Conrad kind of feel to it. And I'm getting married in about three weeks, so there is that. I'm counting on the honeymoon's sitting around to end 2009 with a mass reading spree.

But, I've invited you here to talk about this book, Marryat's Peter Simple, published for the first time in 1834. The copy I have is from Dean King's excellent "Heart of Oak" series (Dr. Dogbody's Leg was another.). I can't recall where I heard it, but I understand that Marryat inspired Patrick O'Brian to write (and whose model for Jack Aubrey was Thomas Cohrane, an actual British Navy man).

Peter Simple is the son of a curate and is considered the fool of the family. His Uncle, Lord Privilege, is a rich baron nearby. Circumstances (that I can't recall, and really aren't that important) force Peter's father to send him to the Navy. Lord Privilege hooks him up with a position that allows him to follow the path of an officer, as opposed to serving before the mast, with the men. When he arrives at his first ship his country boy naivete is taken advantage of by his new shipmates. Quite badly. They trick him into insulting the captain, get him on the wrong side of the First Lieutenant, and all other smaller kinds of hazing that the good-natured, and rightly-named Peter Simple takes in stride. You'z guys are just funnin'!

Eventually, and ever so slowly, Peter gets the hang of the Navy. He finds his Garth/Ted/Han Solo/Louise/Stephen Maturin sidekick character in Terence O'Brien and they team up for pretty much the rest of the book: they have a good and kind captain, they fight some sea battles, they are taken prisoner, have to escape, fall in love, and then O'Brien gets his own ship. After that they fight some sea battles, remmet their loves, are caught in a hurricane, and get taken prisoner, are released, and then, sadly they are separated. O'Brien is sent to the East Indies and Peter is made First Mate on the Rattlesnake with the ineffective weasel Captain Hawkins.

And so here we must pause for a bit of a breather to explain the subplot.

Lord Privilege is Peter's grandfather. He's old and grey and full of sleep and nods by the fire. Peter also has an uncle. The uncle is a regular old Worm Tongue and has ingratiated himself into the grandfather's trust. And so he, the uncle, does a little tinkering of the grandfather's will, leaving Peter's father nothing, and himself everything. This destroys Peter's father. And puts Peter at risk in the service, especially once he is assigned to the Rattlesnake, where the uncle's friend Captain Hawkins is the commander. But before that there is much letter writing back and forth to England, and even Ireland (O'Brien tries to help, too) and many setbacks and dark days. Peter goes through many, many troubles - he even has to sit through a Court Martial! But, as Hamlet says, "Foul deeds will rise,though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes."

I'll leave the ending to you to figure out, of course, but if you have read much 19th C. Lit, you know there are a lot of happy coincidences and just-in-the-nick-of-timeses, and lots of karmic judgments to go around.

I definitely recommend you read it, especially if you're a Friend of Patrick O'Brian.

NY Harbor School

2009-09-12T22:49:00.002-04:00

I interviewed at the NY Harbor School three years ago. They offered me a job teaching Social Studies the day after 'Pequa gave me an offer I couldn't refuse (teaching English). I was convinced that NYC would not do the right thing and put them on Governor's Island. They were in Bushwick! It's about 40 minutes by subway from the Harbor.

The school, the principal, and Murray Fisher deserve recognition. Harbor School deserves the 10k. Can you imagine the dedication it takes to run a maritime-based high school that is almost an hour from the Harbor?

Vote early and vote often in this GQ poll.

7. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

2009-09-12T15:02:00.003-04:00

A damning indictment of American conformity.

This was one of the best books I have ever read. The writing was sharp, fresh and interesting. Even though it was written in 1920, the problems facing George Babbitt are surprisingly modern.

Babbitt is a real-estate salesman and member of all the booster clubs and business associations in his town - think Elks and Rotary club and all that. But something is nagging his conscience. Facing the beginning of his middle age, his regrets begin to pile up. He yearns for a break out. But as his restlessness grows, so does the resistance from his community, putting a friction on his revolution.

I very strongly recommend this book. Lewis is a master as diagnosing the problems with too much commercialism. Unfortunately, he doesn't offer any solution, but maybe he thought that simply showing us the mess we're in would be enough for us to reform our ways. Obviously things have only gotten worse in the last 90 years, but that only makes the book more important now. Read it!

6. Post-Captain by Patrick O'Brian

2009-07-21T23:29:00.002-04:00

Book #2 in the Aubrey-Maturin saga.

This was a good book, despite the fact that there were fewer sea battles: this was more a good look at Aubrey and Maturin dealing with the politics of the Navy, falling in love, and riding the shifting sentiment of Society.

5. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

2009-07-04T22:57:00.002-04:00

My 3rd time through.

I got to teach it to my 12th graders, this time. Only one of them read the whole thing (out of 19).

And I'll be reading it again in the Autumn for a class on Melville.

If you haven't read it, you should.

4. Dr Dogbody's Leg by James Norman Hall

2009-07-04T22:40:00.002-04:00

You may recognize Hall from his more popular book Mutiny on the Bounty.

This was a pretty good book. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, the ten chapters each explain how Dr Dogbody lost his leg. Some were better than others, but all were very entertaining. Dr Dogbody would make a great NPC! And I really want to go to a place like the Cheerful Tortoise, where Dogbody tells his tales. The stories are distinct, yet, the narrative is continuous: each night Dogbody's friends implore him to tell his story, and he pretends he won't. But eventually he yields.

Recommended if you like sea stories.

2009-03-29T13:33:00.000-04:00

Written in March

While resting on the Bridge at the foot of Brother’s Water

The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The plowboy is whooping- anon-anon:
There's joy in the mountains;
There's life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!

-William Wordsworth

3. The Light of Men by Andrew Salmon

2009-03-25T16:57:00.004-04:00

Another book from the 50 Books Book Club, which, so far, has accounted for 2/3 of my 2009 reading. I do have some books in the works, and plan to have a late spring flurry. I will also preface this by saying that I have not read the other comments as I write this review, though I will once I finish this post. I will include links to Olman's review, so you can find the others.

This was a difficult book for me to get into. Though by the third chapter, when I thought I had it figured out, it picked up pace until it was clear that I didn't have it figured out at all. Then it kind of dragged while I got over my disappointment.

Set in a WW2 concentration camp, we begin with the arrival of a boxcar of new prisoners that includes our main character, Aaron. Unnaturally savvy and cagey about prison-camp survival, Aaron soon blends in. And then he begins to work his way up the unofficial/prisoner pecking order until he can earn a meeting with Kreuger, the prisoner who runs the prison-mafia.

Aaron promises Krueger access to some exceptionally valuable diamonds in exchange for a few favors. Deal in place, Aaron moves into the Jewish section of the prison. There he meets John, a evangelic Rabbi who wants to recruit everyone he meets for a Revolution against the SS.

As part of the deal with Krueger, Aaron is able to befriend and protect one of the newly-arrived prisoners, Sol Liebman. Why he wants to do this is unclear until about halfway through the book.

I have to say that I was not really what kind of book I was reading. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be expecting some kind of WW2 survivor narrative, fictional or not, or some kind of alternate history. But when the first big reveal came, I have to admit to a certain level of satisfaction. I figured it was something like that. Aaron just knew too much about the camp, the prisoners, Sol, Krueger, and the real end of the war. So, I read on, and figured that I was reading some kind of alternate-reality story. But I had a sneaky suspicion I was being duped along the lines of "For the Love of the Game" which seems to be about baseball, but turns out to be a cheesy love story. Fortunately this fear was misplaced.

But when the real big reveal came, I have to admit to a certain level of disappointment. I didn't reject the idea with the now-legendary disdain that I rejected the warrior polar bears of the Golden Compass, but I have to admit that it was pretty, pretty, pretty close. Time travel was one thing. This was another. I'll just say that I felt like Ripley in Aliens and leave it there.

The end, then, was just playing out my hand and seeing how it all came together. I am glad I read the book, but it didn't offer me anything new. I feel like I have been in that concentration camp before. I felt like I had worked that black-market prison structure before. I knew the moves; I knew the reactions; I knew when to duck and when to jump.

Maybe I would have enjoyed it better with a little more clarification on the back cover. Even as I was getting deeper into the story, I just didn't care that much about the new prisoner's "mysterious agenda," or whether he was an "allied spy or a Nazi collaborator" (neither of these were alluded to in the text, either. Everyone just seems to accept Aaron for the cryptic he is.).

(And I also know what you are going to say, snobby-English teacher doesn't like anything written after 1969, but that's not it at all.)

2. Lolita by V. Nabokov

2009-02-04T00:02:00.003-05:00

What a book! Such great, fine writing. And English isn't even his first language! In the author's note at the back of my edition (more on this in a second) VN apologizes, saying, "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses - the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions - which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way."

I find it infinitely interesting that the punning, and nicknaming, and playful experimentation with language is coming from someone who is not native to English (and so perhaps bored with routine constructions, etc) - like Joseph Conrad, one of the greats of English Lit, whose English wasn't even his second language.

So, let's get the reputation out of the way right off - the book is about a grown man, Humbert Humbert, sleeping with a 12 year old girl, Dolores Haze, or Lo, or Lolita. The book is also cited every single time a teacher crosses the line and gets with a student, especially if the teacher is a man.

Told as some kind of police statement, or a rationale for crimes committed, the book follows the adventures of Humbert as he explains the circumstances leading up to his meeting with Lolita, and her consequent two year long kidnap-and-rape roadtrip.

Humbert has the misfortune of renting a room in Lo's mom's house. Right from their first meeting Humbert feels an attraction for Lolita. She reminds him of his first child-lover, Valeria. And it seems Humbert has an eye for detail, and he pores over Lolita's body, in detail, over and over.

When Lolita is sent to camp her mother leaves a note explaining for Humbert and asking him to leave. Not able to break away from Lolita, Humbert decides he will marry the mother and then keep Lolita as a side project. Unfortunately the mother unit discovers Humberts journals and tries to kick him out of the house. On her way to mail some hastily written letters describing Humbert's perversions, Mrs Haze is run over by a car and killed (an echo of the Great Gatsby?).

Now Lolita is all Humbert's! How exultant he is! He can barely keep his composure. He rushes through the funeral and races to the camp to pick up Lolita, his Lolita. And for the next two years he keeps Lolita his prisoner and sex pet.

At first, in their very first physical encounter in the house as she is leaving for camp, Lolita makes the first move. She runs into the house and kisses him full on the lips. But even this has been built and stoked by Humbert by way of little "innocent" kisses and pets.

Then, when they are finally alone in the hotel room, Humbert drugs her in order to take advantage of her as she sleeps. But the pills are not strong enough and as he lays next to her, pretending to be asleep, she crawls over to him and jumps his bones. He is astonished.

Sometimes it was difficult for me to remember that she is 12-14 years old as the story progresses. He speaks of her in adult terms, and in our newspapers (and our webpages of "barely legal" porn) the term Lolita has come to mean young, but almost old enough.

But always before US is her childishness; she wants to ride her bike with her friends; she wants to go to dances and get sodas and hang out with her friends from the school play. But jealous Humbert won't have it and keeps her captive. He even apportions her allowance based on sexual favors and promises of loyalty! When he comes for her more than once in the night she says, "oh no!" but yet he persists.

The book, Humbert's road trip sex adventure, was published just a year after On the Road. I'm sure the Grown Ups thought the country was headed off a cliff.

Eventually Humbert and Lolita separate. And for good. She runs off with another child molester, this one a movie producer, and eventually she gets married. Humbert goes insane. When he comes out of it he tracks down Lolita and finds her a pregnant 17-year old. He gives her all of his money, and her mother's money, and asks her one more time to run away with him.

When she declines, he moves on with his mission to kill the guy who took his Lolita away from him. And this is what he iwnds up in jail for - this is the crime that compels him to write the story which is the book. All throughout he addresses us readers as members of the jury - as if we are to judge him. Are we to pass judgement on his actions, or decide a sentence?

I read an annotated copy and I think I would have missed out on a lot if I hadn't had the notes to accompany me on the journey. And not just for elaboration of the hundreds of puns in the book. More for the references that Nabokov is making on purpose:

1. the Haze house is 342. The hotel room where Lo and Humbert get together is 342. When he goes searching for Quilty after Lo is gone, he stops at 342 places.)

2. There's a lot of james Joyce in there, some of it direct and obvious (at one point HH actually uses the phrase "portrait of the artist as a young" (and I think he says pervert, but I can't find the quote now). Nabokov was one of Joyce's groupies (Nabokov considers Ulysses a masterpiece and Finnegan's Wake a piece of garbage. But more of that later.)

3. Quilty is there in the whole book. In my book's Notes he has his first reference on page 4. Clare Quilty's mistress is Vivian Darkbloom, an anagram of..wait for it...Vladimir Nabokov.

4. Edgar Allan Poe references galore (including Annabell Lee/Lo-lee-ta explanations and correlations).

There's tons more but we'll start there...

1. Master & Commander by Patrick O'Brian

2009-01-24T15:48:00.005-05:00

It was with a great deal of anticipation that I opened the first book of the new year, Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander.

I have been reading sailing books, sailing magazines, sailing websites, and sailing stories for years now and have passed by many many references to O'Brian's books and each time I read mention of O'Brian's series I thought, I should get to those. I begin this year by beginning to get to them. The final push to finally pick them up was Olman's excellent review, here.

My anticipation and excitement was also mixed with some fear that I would be disappointed. To my great relief, I was not disappointed at all. As Olman says the writing is excellent. The descriptions of the sea, the sea battles, and the maneuvers are rendered poetically. I felt very drawn into the world. There were a few moments when I felt I had mismanaged the field of battle, so to speak, but that was a more lapse of my attention than O'Brian's description. Sometimes I wasn't sure where the wind was coming from, who was upwind/downwind, or even sometimes, the basic layout of the geography (in particular the battle where the go into that cove and fight under the guns on the cliffs).

I've also seen the movie about half a dozen times, so I couldn't help but picture Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey, which is fine, since I find RC kind of studly. But I should shut up about this or it'll be what drives the comments instead of O'Brian. (The movie, by the way, covers some of the action in this book and some of the action in another.) (Also, check out the obvious use of plywood in the movie ship's captain's quarters, when Aubrey/Crowe is talking about how tough the Surprise is.)

More confusing to me than what happened at sea was what happened on land: who are all of these ladies, and what exactly is their relationship to the officers of the fleet? And who is hooking up and whose husband cares and doesn't, and so on. I could have used a bit more description or explanation about the political situation with the Royal Navy's upper crust and the social politics that always mean so much in these hierarchies.

One of the subplots I particularly enjoyed was the uneasy friction cause by the lack of communication between James Dillon and Commander Aubrey. Dillon is some kind of Irish ex-Revolutionary who, at one point, is tasked with going aboard an American ship in search of an escaped convict. Of course, the ex-convict is one of Dillon's former freedom fighters and so Dillon must choose between his official duty to the Navy and his homeland and former comrade. His plight very much reminded me of the cop in The Rising of the Moon. And it reminded me agin that we all have that decision to make: do I do what's good for me or what's good for the union? Or the relationship? Or the family? Or the team?

And so after his decision is made, Dillon can barely live with himself, and hates Aubrey for putting him in that position. It's also interesting, to me, that Aubrey only sent Dillon because he thought the mission was a waste of time, that, of course, there was no way the guy was going to be on the American ship.

I read this book solely with the aid of the internet and the good dictionary on my desk at work, but I highly recommend two companion books. I mean, you want to do it right, right? First is A Sea of Words, edited by Dean King (who also edits the Heart of Oak series of which you will be hearing more of very soon), and the second is the coffee table book Patrick O'Brian's Navy, edited by Richard O'Neill. This is great for getting a look at what the ships look like (good guys and bad guys). I also have a few sailing encyclopedias around that I looked at, but for the remaining 20 1/2 books I'll be relying on these two.

And, in an example of how things generally work out for me in the rest of my life, I was in San Diego recently, reading this very book while I was there. When i got home and had a more regular access to the internet I found out that the ship used in the movie version is docked in..wait for it...San Diego. We drove by it, saw it, marked it down as something to return to check out; then we ran out of time before we could get back. I thought it was a whaler or some merchant ship (all I could see from the driver's seat was miles of standing rigging) like those at South St Seaport or Mystic Seaport. I kind of feel like a dufus.

And like Olman has already told us, the writing is excellent. What amazes me about this, beyond the description, is the reality it represents. This kind of thing happened all the time. Ships would purposely try to line up next to each other so they could fire cannons at each other. Like the Redcoats lining up to fire volley after volley into lines of men across from them. I can't imagine the fear and the stress of the gunners and captains. They were tough. I get annoyed that my car won't warm up fast enough in the morning; these guys are firing cannons at each other miles and miles from home. I get stressed when my boss comes to observe a lesson about poetry I'm about to teach; these guys were prepared to board an enemy ship and take it over by rapier and pistol. And yes, sure, I was on a submarine once, and went far away, and would have done my damned best to sink any other submarine who messed with us, but, to me, firing a torpedo or two and then melting away into the great, big ocean is a little different than taking a huge man-of-war bristling with cannon and lining it up next to another huge man-of-war bristling with cannon to fire a whole mess of cannon balls at it. Yeah, just a little.

I leave you with this section from one of the fights:

"The first of the Desaix's shot whipped through the topgallant-sail, but the next two pitched short. There was still time for manoeuvre - for plenty of manoeuvre. For one thing, reflected Jack, he would be very much surprised if the Sophie could not come about twice as quickly as the seventy-four. 'Mr Dalziel,' he said, 'we'll go about and back again. Mr Marshall, let her have plenty of way on her.' It would be quite disastrous if the Sophie were to miss stays on her second turn: and these light airs were not what she liked - she never gave of her best until there was something of a sea running and at least one reef in her topsails.

'Ready about...' The pipe twittered, the sloop luffed up, came into the wind, stayed beautifully and filled on the larboard tack: her bowlines were as taut as harpstrings before the big seventy-four had even begun her turn.

The swing began, however; the Desaix was in stays; her yards were coming round; her checkered side began to show; and Jack, seeing the first hint of her broadside in his glass, called out, 'You had better go below, Doctor.' Stephen went, but no farther than the cabin; and there, craning from the stern-window, he saw the Desaix's hull vanish in smoke from stem to stern, perhaps a quarter of a minute after the Sophie had begun her reverse turn. The massive broadside, nine hundred and twenty-eight pounds of iron, plunged into a wide area of sea away on the starboard beam and rather short, all except two thirty-six pound balls, which hummed ominously through the rigging, leaving a trail of limp, dangling cordage. For a moment it seemed that the Sophie might not stay - that she would fall impotently off, lose her advantage and expose herself to another such salute, more exactly aimed. But a sweet puff of air in her backed headsails pushed her round and there she was on her former tack, gathering way before the Desaix's heavy yards were firmly braced - before her first manoeuvre was complete at all."

That's the stuff!

2008: A look backward

2009-01-04T17:41:00.000-05:00

Well, I just managed to exceed the 2007 total, but still didn't make 30, the goal I had in mind last January.

Looking back I see that of the 28 books, only six of them were of my own choice, and two were because I was teaching them (I don't count the other books I teach that I have read a million times, like Mockingbird, or Othello.).

I'm satisfied with what I read, but most of it was assigned and that's no way to live. I do like the mandate a class provides - a set list that must be read and deadlines - but I much prefer to live by interest-based choice.

Looking forward I am excited by what 2009 promises. I've started the Patrick O'Brian series (20 books plus another unfinished), a class on Herman Melville in the Autumn, and a group project among the book bloggers I know.

(We're reading Lolita by V Nabokov by 1 February. Then I'm posting my review here. Each participating blogger posts a review both on their own blog AND in the comment section of this blog. Then we'll have a conversation in the comment section. Please join us! Read this classic by 1 Feb and then post your review on your blog and here in the comments, on Sunday 1 Feb.)

28. Hamlet by the lord my god William Shakespeare

2008-12-31T17:00:00.000-05:00

Hamlet! I hadn't read this in such a long time that I almost forgot what happened. And what happens is bad.

Hamlet's dad dies, so he comes back from university to attend the funeral. Before the funeral meats are cold, his mother has remarried his uncle, his father's brother. So his uncle is actually his stepdad and his mom is his aunt.

Then one foggy night the ghost of his dad comes and tells Hamlet that he didn't just die, but that he was killed by his own brother, Claudius, the new king (Hamlet's uncle-dad). The ghost wants Hamlet to avenge his death.

Then Hamlet's girlfriend Ophelia suddenly stops talking to him (as her dad (Polonius) and brother (Laertes) request).

Hamlet has trouble completing the ghost's mandate, and this has caused the play to be interpreted solely about a man's inability to act because he thinks and thinks. But there is so much more here: Fathers: Hamlet Sr, Polonius, and even, sort of, the King of Norway gets involved; Sons: Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras; and spying (everyone seems to be spying on everyone else).

Rather than reading it, I recommend the Branagh movie version. He's such a great actor and he faithfully presents the play in all its length (4 hours). Shakespeare is meant to be seen, so see it.

27. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

2008-12-31T16:30:00.002-05:00

Isabel Archer is a classic individualist. She is unique and exotic. And everyone wants to marry her.

She grew up in Albany, NY, but we follow her story as she lives and moves about in Europe. She resists the advances of an industrialist New Yorker who follows her to England and the advances of a British nobleman, too.

Finally, after she inherits a great deal of money, she feels free to make choices without the influence of material wealth to come.

And so she marries, and marries badly. Does she flee? Does she stick it out?

I am really giving this novel a short review because I could speak about it for days and days. It's James, so it's dense and about much more than a simple tale of an expat getting married. We also have the observer character in the form of Isabel's consumptive cousin, who arranges the inheritance as an experiment on Isabel, to see what such a unique and rare person will do with such opportunity. And we have the idea of place - why England? And why does Isabel have to be an American? How does this novel fit into the James pantheon? And American literature?

I'm'na have to reread it to even come close to those answers.

26. Beast in the Jungle by Henry James

2008-12-31T16:15:00.000-05:00

What an idiot is John Marcher!

All his life he believes that "something wonderful," to borrow a phrase, is going to happen to him. So for all of his life he waits, watching, wondering when this momentous event will occur.

Eventually he meets and remeets May Bartram, who, for reasons of her own, agrees to watch with him.

So they live as life-long friends, each of them watching the events of Marcher's life, until one day May is diagnosed with a fatal blood disorder. By this time she has also figured out what beast is stalking Marcher. But she won't tell him; he has to figure it out himself. And of course, Marcher, selfish to the last, believes that this, May's fatal disease, is the terrible thing that is to happen to him. And then, when she won't reveal what the horrible secret is, what the beast in the jungle actually is, he believes that that is the terrible thing, that May will die without revealing the secret, and so he'll never know.

And then, sadly, May dies; Marcher is left to watch alone.

I won't reveal the ending, but here we have James's observer character taken to the extreme: all Marcher does is watch.

And he's a first class idiot.

This was a great book with a moving ending. Not just for English majors!

25. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

2008-12-31T16:00:00.000-05:00

Poor Jane Eyre!

Misfit! Everywhere she goes!

Separated into five sections, each set in a different area, this book chronicles Jane's attempts at fitting into her world. Four attempts at figuring out who she is and where she belongs end in failure. Until finally things swing her way. But in classic 19th C. british lit fashion, not until the very last second.

I really quite liked this book. The writing is divine: her descriptions of places small and large are excellent.

And because Jane knows herself so well, or expresses herself to herself so well even if she doesn't know exactly what her conclusions mean, the inner voice of the character is portrayed really well. We are with Jane all the time, and yet we never tire of her. I usually resist first-person narratives, too, but not here, in the hands of an expert like Bronte.

24. Daisy Miller by Henry James

2008-12-31T15:30:00.000-05:00

Another book for the Hawthorne-James class.

Young Daisy Miller is an American living in Europe and she is not quite behaving herself abroad. In fact, her behavior is quite scandalous. In one scene she goes for an unchaperoned walk on a busy street with a man who is not her husband!

How does one maintain individuality amid such rules and customs and traditions? Is it possible?

And again we have the Jamesian observer who is content to sit and watch, to experiment without judging. An observer stuck wanting to join the revolution yet held back by rules, customs, and the expectations of the defenders of the status quo. Cowardice? Prudence?

23. Dubliners by James Joyce

2008-12-31T15:00:00.001-05:00

Technically, this is a reread.

And another read for my Irish Renaissance class.

And still delicious bites.

Read it.

22. Washington Square by Henry James

2008-12-31T14:30:00.002-05:00

Poor Catherine Sloper.

Her dad won't let her date who she wants. And with good reason, Morris Townsend is after Catherine's money (really, mostly, her dad's and hers when he dies). How will she handle it? Will she defy her father? Or will she submit?

But the real question the novel answers is whether or not impressions and feelings can count as experience: do we have to act to have an experience?

21. Some Irish Plays

2008-12-31T14:00:00.000-05:00

Not really worth an entry by themselves because some of them are three pages long, I list and comment on them here and count them all together:

The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory: A cop with a family to feed has to decide if he turns in a rebel for a reward and promotion or lets the man go. If he lets him go it's good for a free Ireland. If he turns him in the cop is just a bitch for the British, the Man, and the oppression of the Irish.

Cathleen ni Houlihan by Yeats: An old lady comes to a tavern on the eve of a man's wedding and tries to persuade him to fight for a free Ireland. She is not just an old lady, but Ireland herself and the man can never come home and is likely to die. implied is that this is the question all young Irishmen must face.

Riders to the Sea by J. M. Synge: Set on the Aran islands just to the west of Galway in the violent and stormy Irish Sea. With three sons already gone a mother tries to persuade her only remaining son to stay home and not go fishing.

Playboy of the Western World by J. M. Synge: This play set off riots when it was played in Dublin because the main character says that he is so in love with a girl that if some one set up all the girls in Mayo in front of him, and them wearing only their nightgowns, he would still choose her. Scandalous. A guy comes to a small pub and tells a story of killing his dad. The daughter of the pub owner falls in love with the wild traveler and breaks up with her steady, local boy. The townies celebrate his bravery and honesty. But then the traveler's dad shows up very much alive and the townies try to run the son out. But then the son actually kills the dad! And then the townies try to hang the son (for doing the very deed they were celebrated but an hour ago)!

Juno and the Paycock by Sean O'Casey: Might be my favorite of the lot, though I do like the ethical dilemma posed by The Moon Rising. First, paycock as in peacock pronounced with an Oirish accent. We have a family here on the brink of disintegration. Father: drunk, lazy, selfish. Son: a rebel, haunted by the fact that he turned in his best friend (who was killed) for being a rebel. Daughter: dating a fancy-pants Englishman. Mother: working hard to keep it all together. Then a settlement is promised and the dad goes on a spending spree. Settlement falls through! Daughter gets knocked up! Englishman flees! Son is abducted by his fellow rebels for being an informer! What's a mother to do?

These were all part of an Irish Renaissance class I was taking. I quite enjoyed the curriculum and I'm glad I read these. I had read Riders to the Sea a long time ago, what with it being about boaters and fishermen and men of the sea and all, but I absolutely did not get it. I definitely needed the economic and political context that I got from being in the class. I also benefitted from the Norton editions of these plays. I do not work for Norton. But the Norton anthologies give tons of context and criticism, the bread and butter of literature students and teachers, without overdoing it and killing all the joy of discovery of the lit.

I liked the symbolism of Riders to the Sea and Cathleen ni Houlihan, and the gritty realism of The Moon Rising and Juno.

20. Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne

2008-12-31T13:00:00.001-05:00

Hawthorne's memoir-ish tale of the Transcendentalist experiment in socialist living at Brook Farm, not far from Concord and Salem.

More than just an observer/participant's commentary and reportage on what happened this fictionalization is about the act of observing, commitment, manipulation and community, and social change.

And you don't necessarily have to know a lot about the Transcendentalist's to understand the events at Brook Farm because this, like many of Hawthorne's stories, can serve as an allegory for the limits of reform and social change. The course of the experiment is not as bad as, say, Orwell's Animal Farm, but it ends in failure anyway (as you already know because you've probably never heard of it unless you majored in English or 19th C. history).

19. Hawthorne by Henry James

2008-12-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

Henry James critiques Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I read this book for my class, and hadn't heard of it at all before this. I haven't read any of James's longer works (in fact, I've only read one or two short stories), so it was interesting reading something by him that is non-fiction and about another author.

I think I learned as much about James as I did about Hawthorne. Mixed with some praise is James's scorching criticism of American Literature as it stood in 1879. James had moved to Europe by then in an attempt to reinvent the American novel as something of World Lit and not merely American. James felt that because America was still relatively young, and that the land hadn't been fully civilized, that no American literature could be any good: even Hawthorne, who James thinks basically invented American literature, is a provincial upstart. Because he has nothing to say about America, Hawthorne is forced to write allegorical tales that speak about the human condition more than they speak about a place and time, so Hawthorne's literature fails to even be uniquely American - it isn't essentially American.

This is a good book if you have read just about everything by Hawthorne and have a good understanding of what James was attempting to be/do. Knowing what James's aims were is essential because it gives his criticisms context.

18. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

2008-12-19T15:17:00.000-05:00

I had already read the Dubliners and quite enjoyed it, so this was a book I was looking forward to, and one that, as an English teacher, I should have under my belt (along with about 100 others).

This autobiographical novel was published in 1916, a fact that Joyce insisted on because of the political events in the same year. That was the year of the Easter Rising, the beginning of the end of the British dominance of Ireland.

This was a tough book, and I’m still trying to figure it out. I suspect that I’ll be thinking about it for a long time. And I’ll be teaching it, so I will have the opportunity to talk about it at length later in the year. That definitely helps with understanding a text.

The novel is divided into five sections, each of them covering a time period of young Stephen Dedalus’s life. This is the kind of novel that we English teachers call bildungsroman – just a fancy way of saying that the character is trying to find his way in the world, trying to find where he fits. This book is a great example of that theme (along with, say, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and Jude the Obscure by the great Thomas Hardy, two books that I am also teaching this year).

Joyce leaves a lot of the political and social context out which makes the book a bit harder to get into. But I found it to be quite liberating. If I wanted all of the context to be handed to me in the text I’d read Dickens. And I was taking a course on the Irish Renaissance – my reason for reading – and so I had a lot of that knowledge from the others. I strongly recommend a heavily footnoted edition, or better, a Norton copy that has political and background documents in it.

I’ll leave you to discover the subjects and themes of the five sections, but we follow Stephen as he grows up. We begin as he is getting ready to go to boarding school and we leave him as he finished college and decides to leave Ireland for good.

I don’t really even know what to say about the book except that it follows Stephen’s struggle with home, church, and state. Set in the early 1900s as Ireland and England are battling for control of the Irish state, we have to deal with issues involving Stephen’s mom, his feelings about the church (as he contemplates becoming a priest), and his feelings about his Irishness.

It’s complicated.

But the writing is most excellent.

Here’s a section from Book II, where Stephen and his father have traveled to Dublin together on a train:

“At Maryborough he fell asleep. When he awoke the train had passed out of Mallow and his father was stretched asleep on the other seat. The cold light of the dawn lay over the country, over the unpeopled fields and the closed cottages. The terror of sleep fascinated his mind as he watched the silent country or heard from time to time his father’s deep breath or sudden sleepy movement. The neighbourhood of unseen sleepers filled him with strange dread though they could harm him; and he prayed that the day might come quickly. His prayer, addressed neither to God nor saint, began with a shiver, as the chilly morning breeze crept through the chink of the carriage door to his feet, and ended in a trail of foolish words which he made to fit the insistent rhythm of the train: and silently, at intervals of four seconds, the telegraphpoles held the galling notes of the music between punctual bars. This furious music allayed his dread and, leaning against the windowledge, he let his eyelids close again” (II 967-83).

And here is another section, this from Book III. Stephen has spent his time in sinful, sexual pleasures with himself and others. After hearing a hellfire sermon he goes back to his room and feels sick. As soon as he can he heads into town, to a strange church where he won’t meet anyone he knows so he can give a confession. Here, he has just stepped into the confessional and the priest has slid back the bolt:

“His blood began to murmur in his veins, murmuring like a sinful city summoned from its sleep to hear its doom. Little flakes of fire fell and powdery ashes fell softly, alighting on the houses of men. They stirred, waking from sleep, troubled y the heated air” (III. 1422-27).

And another section, this one from Section IV. Stephen is torn about joining the priesthood, and as he thinks he wanders down to the beach. He paces along the beach, looking for some kind of answer, and finally he comes upon a beautiful girl fishing in the shallows. Stephen has his answer! He walks to clean his mind of the image of the girl.

“He climbed to the crest of a sandhill and gazed about him. Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of sky like the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand: and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools” (IV. 916-22).

I’ll leave the last book to you to discover; it’s a very satisfying end.

And now I have to go read Ulysses.

17. Goin' Down the Road by Blair Jackson

2008-12-09T23:32:00.001-05:00

I liked this book so much that after I read a library copy I bought a copy on the amazon. For $2!

Subtitled as "A Grateful Dead Traveling Companion," this is a collection of some articles and interviews from the Golden Road newsletter, a fan newsletter organized for the fans of the Grateful Dead. The book has an interview with each of the band members, a section on the history of all the traditional folk songs songs that the Dead have covered/reinterpreted, and a section that highlights concerts of note for every year the band played shows.

This last section is what drove me to buy the book. I mean, I surf the Archive every day, looking for specific songs, shows, or song combinations, and see what interesting shows were recorded that day. And I'm sure that I could have found some sort of comprehensive review of concerts online instead of buying the book. But having a copy, with the pics of the band, and Jackson's comments on some of the shows, is interesting. What I especially liked was knowing when the first Stella Blue was (1972), or the first show after Pigpen died (3/15/1973, at our very own Nassau Coliseum). Stuff like that.

It's a good reference book, especially if you are a collector of Grateful Dead shows. Like, say, you want to hear Janis Joplin singing with the Dead, or the darkest Dark Star, or the very first live version of Eyes of the World, or a 17 song first set. You could find these things surfing the Archive, and reading the comments, but that takes so freaking long.

2008-09-03T22:47:00.002-04:00

So, here's a former student who is setting up shop in the graphic design universe - check out her stuff!

http://mreiter.com

2008-08-21T10:03:00.008-04:00

Not quite as spectacular as Cosme's adventure, Alli and I went for a bike in the preserve next to the apartment.

Here's a snap of a pond that has a lot of action going on in it. At least one loon lives there, usually sitting in his high castle of weeds and sticks. And there's about a dozen ducks and swans always lurking about. I haven't seen any turtles, but I'm sure there are some. It must be fished out by now, by the birds/people combo, but something must be living there if the birds stick around.

And this is the very same pond that we saw turtles in during our January bike ride. I have no idea what They are doing, but it looks like meddling to me. They have two giant diggers driving around the perimeter of the pond scooping out mud and junk and dumping it into piles on shore. And there's no signage to indicate what is happening. If They were just cleaning up the garbage we saw in January, that would be great, but it looks like They are defining the borders of the pond, making a bluff/shore on the side by the houses. And They have these huge drainage hoses set up, but not being used. I'm pretty sure the terrapins are pissed.

Cosme & his mother's most unprecedented adventure!

2008-08-17T18:45:00.001-04:00

Here is a former student of ours who is riding his bike from NYC to Maine! With his mom! How cool are they?

Cosme & his mother's most unprecedented adventure

And the coolness continues: Cosme built his bike!

Visit this blog early and often!

We're engaged!

2008-06-24T23:35:00.002-04:00

Allison said yes!

16. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

2008-05-01T22:41:00.003-04:00

Crumbolst's review here. Along with Sandy's grade. And the review from Print is Dead. And, of course, Mt Benson Report has trod this path as well.

Sandy, I'd give it a B.

dsgran, I feel like I agree with you when you write, "but as a graphic novel, it doesn't have a life of its own" even though I'm not certain I know what you mean (in that as I have read just one graphic novel (this one) I don't feel qualified to comment on this one's qualifications/merits with regard to the genre).

And, Crumbolst, I think you have it right when you say, "Even the most terrible moments are conveyed with an unflinching matter-of-fact tone that seems to simply pass any appropriate angst on to the reader."

15. Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank

2008-04-26T08:37:00.003-04:00

Recommended by the good folks at Olman's Fifty and the Mt. Benson Report.

Beginning just days before a nuclear exchange that wipes out most of North America, Europe and the Soviet Union, Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon tracks Randy Bragg as he sets up for, and deals with the aftermath of the attack. Bragg is a man in need of direction and the crisis helps focus him, and, actually, rescues him from destruction from that seductive mistress of alcohol and sheer laziness.

Randy's brother works in Air Force intelligence and realizes that a nuclear war is about to go down between the Russians and the Americans (instigated, of course, by a crisis in the Middle East). So as he heads for SAC in Omaha, he sends his wife and kids to stay with Uncle Randy.

From when they were boys, the two of them have had a code, "Alas, Babylon," which comes from the book of Revelation. Whenever anything bad happened, one brother would say to the other, "Alas, Babylon." When Randy gets a telegram (for readers born after 1985, this is a text message on paper) with the code he springs into action.

His first stop is the grocery store where he buys three carts of groceries, including meat. After the power goes out, the family must eat all of the meat they can in one day and preserve the remainder.

In the midst of his preparation (he hasn't filled prescriptions, gotten candles or other dry goods) the bombs go off. I, too, liked the way this was handled - fishing poles swaying on the rack, a rumble and a shake through the house, and a bright, white light. Just south of Orlando, the town (of Fort Repose) is spared by its distance from cities and military bases.

As soon as the crisis becomes apparent, the town is split into two groups of people: those who can make it (the librarian, the Western Union operator) and those who cannot (the banker and the elderly).

I'll leave the rest of the details to you to discover.

And I could not help but compare this book to George Stewart's Earth Abides. Stewart spends a bit more time on how the environment reacts to the disappearance of so many humans, but maybe Frank does not do so because so much of the earth has become wasteland.

One commonality is the situation that the selfish will impose on the communities of survivors. For Stewart's clan, the threat came in the form of a sexual predator who tried to take/buy/possess one of the community's young women, and who, when warned that this would not be allowed, would not take no for an answer. In Frank's Fort Repose, highwaymen set up shop nearby, robbing people on the road, and then begin raids on outlying farms/houses.

Both situations reinforce that man is his own greatest enemy - both communities were dealing quite well with the lack of social, governmental protection and, for lack of a better word, amenities (like power, water, transportation of goods, etc), but were threatened by the actions of a few individual people. So even after we wipe ourselves out on a large scale, we have to defend against small scale mayhem.

(And I have modified my "shopping" list for when the Troubles come: fish hooks, more band aids, gasoline, and booze (the last two for trade, mostly).)

14. Holes by L. Sachar

2008-04-05T22:27:00.000-04:00

Just like the movie!

The Common Earth, the Soil

2008-04-05T14:16:00.001-04:00

from Specimen Days
by Walt Whitman

THE SOIL, too—let others pen-and-ink the sea, the air, (as I sometimes try)—but now I feel to choose the common soil for theme—naught else. The brown soil here, (just between winter-close and opening spring and vegetation)—the rain-shower at night, and the fresh smell next morning—the red worms wriggling out of the ground—the dead leaves, the incipient grass, and the latent life underneath—the effort to start something—already in shelter’d spots some little flowers—the distant emerald show of winter wheat and the rye-fields—the yet naked trees, with clear interstices, giving prospects hidden in summer—the tough fallow and the plow-team, and the stout boy whistling to his horses for encouragement—and there the dark fat earth in long slanting stripes upturn’d.

1892

13. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

2008-03-04T21:45:00.003-05:00

First, a plot overview: Over the summer between 8th and 9th grade Melinda and her friend Rachel get invited to a party hosted by seniors(!). She chugs two beers and shortly thereafter finds herself outside, receiving the attentions of a very hot senior boy named Andy. Soon the flirting stops and he gets rough, raping her. She goes back inside and calls the cops. Too scared and unsure of what to do, she bails as soon as the fuzz rolls up. But when she gets to school everyone hates her for busting up the party. She carries the secret of the rape, and tries to deal with the emotional consequence all by herself for most of the school year.

I think this book owes a lot to Blume's Forever. Melinda's voice had its own quirky style, and the rape was handled well by Anderson - not too graphic, and just scary enough to make it real.

Anderson also does a great job slowly revealing the layers of the character and Melinda's story. She brings us slowly to a simmer and then to a boil and we hardly notice the heat or the pace.

What I most admired was the style of the writing (this goes to voice, too). For example, page 70, "I'm just like them - an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies." And again, on page 133, "Underground, pale seeds roll over in their sleep. Starting to get restless. Starting to dream green." And 169-70, when Melinda is demonstrating tennis for her gym class and she is about to fire the ball right at Nicole, "Her pride is at stake, her womynhood." I found that word, slipped in there nice and quiet, tells us a lot about Melinda.

And what was with the token reference to cutting?

My special deluxe "Platinum Edition" has an interview with Anderson where she explains the book is less about rape than it is about depression. I think that that is an important issue to discuss and to relate to the rape - Melinda's friend asks if she got pregnant or got a disease. She didn't, but she did have her personality crushed, and without art class, or Mr. "Free"man, who knows how she would have ended up.

As far as using the book in class...I definitely would like to try, especially with an 8th grade class. I feel like it would be a good time for kids to read this, maybe even at the end of 7th grade, depending on the, uh, maturity level of the student body. And I especially think it's one of a number of important books for young boys to read.

on the hand-copying of Animal Farm

2008-03-03T20:48:00.003-05:00

I haven't read Animal Farm since I taught it two years ago, but the other day I found myself thinking about the book, and recalling two teachers from Belarus who visited my old school. They traveled with half a dozen of their students to NYC as part of an exchange program with our school and stayed for about a week and a half.

While they were here I was teaching Orwell's Animal Farm. The guy teacher, whose names escapes me unfortunately, sat and listened for the entire day, as I covered the same material three times. As a courtesy I gave him a copy of the book so he could follow along with the passages we were reading. He came back for some, or all, of every day we discussed the book. He never joined the conversation but spent the entire time copying the text into his notebook.

When I found out what he was doing I urged him to take the book with him, to take copies enough for his students, even. But he said that he'd never get it out of the airport and that he would probably get in trouble for trying, but having it buried in his notebook meant that he had the book. He couldn't believe such a book existed and I quietly marveled to myself that he didn't already know about it. And then marveled at what I take for granted.

I think of him often, head down in concentration, one hand writing away and the other marking his place. And I wonder where his notebook is, who has read it, and how it's simmering somewhere over there. Waiting.

12. Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

2008-02-26T23:37:00.003-05:00

Now, you may think I am going a little soft in the mind, but I loved this book. It's another selection from my prime motivator this year, that YA Lit class. When I taught middle school many of my students were obsessed with this book. I never got around to reading it, and would probably have forgotten about it altogether if not for this class.

This book is narrated by Leo, a HS senior in Arizona who falls in love with Stargirl. She is new to the school after being home-schooled her whole life. And she doesn't exactly fit in: she plays her ukulele in the cafeteria; she has a pet rat; she dresses completely crazy (her mom is a set designer, or wardrobe or something); and she sings happy birthday to kids, drops candy on their desks, and commits all kinds of random acts of super kindness.

And I think I have Post-Terabithia-Stress Disorder. The entire time I was reading I was afraid to turn the page for fear that some natural or unnatural calamity was about to overtake the high school and wipe out our dear Stargirl.

I really think Spinelli captured the voice of the teenage mob: their distance in the beginning wrought by misunderstanding; their embrace of the leadership demonstrated by our little bodhisattva Stargirl listening to her inner voice (her confidence in her rightness, her confidence in her kindness); and then their grudge-holding punishment for her going too far.

I think the ultimate lessons (to not judge so quickly, to not reject outright, and, since Leo is our narrator, to embrace the unexpected gifts) are very important for students to read about and discuss. The regret Leo feels after she leaves is palpable, and I think would hit a teen reader even harder than it hit me.

So much of high school literature is about characters listening to the inner voice, their true Self, that I think this book would be an excellent primer. Cuckoo's Nest, Catch 22, and Walden come to mind most immediately.

And perhaps I am being a little too hopeful, but perhaps if the book is read, say, as the second book of the year, or early enough, that it may be possible for teachers and students to start creating a safe space for kids to be themselves. A little nudge toward being more accepting of others. And resisting conformity. And Sameness.

Now I have to get back to reading everyone's outrage at that damnable Nader! Ahem.

the mean streets of Huntington Village

2008-02-22T11:19:00.002-05:00

11. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

2008-02-21T23:37:00.002-05:00

Another classic from the Master. I have to say I am really digging the HGW this year. I'm adding The Time Machine to the list and may get to it sooner than some other candidates that have been on the list for a longer time.

This story is told with a narrative frame of "this is someone else's story that I am relating." In this case, the narrator is Charles Prendick, but the story is framed by his nephew.

Charles was a passenger on a ship that catches fire and goes down in the Pacific. He boards a life raft and is rescued by a passing ship. He slowly recovers from his ordeal and manages to see some of the ship that rescued him. It's a filthy mess because the deck is jammed with animals in cages. Prendick meets Montgomery, the man who saved him, and Moreau, the doctor who has brought the animals on the ship. He also meets M'Ling, the attendant to Montgomery.

After they are dropped on Moreau's island Prendick realizes he is on for a long stay, perhaps even as much as a year, depending on when a ship happens by the island. Soon after that Prendick gets a glimpse of Moreau's twisted experiments.

Afraid that he is to be one of Moreau's specimens, Prendick makes a run for it. He leaves the huts that Moreau and Montgomery live in, and finds himself in the thick, leafy jungle. Almost as soon as he is clear of the huts he realizes he is being followed. What he sees terrifies him even more - a half man half beast creature.

After a long chase Prendick takes refuge with the monster and learns that the island is populated by all sorts of mixed human/beast kinds of animals of varying shapes and intelligences. Soon Montgomery and Moreau catch up with him and rescue him from the beasts.

Back at the huts, Moreau explains that he has created these beasts in the name of science, in the pursuit of the godlike power of creation by metamorphosis. Moreau explains that he works on raw (natural) animals and tries to turn them human by way of surgical and chemical manipulation.

Is it so far from our own genetically modified foods like square tomatoes to better fit our sandwiches, or non-seed bearing corn (thank you Monsanto!), or hormone manipulated cows (more milk!), or cloned and hyper-drugged animals we eat?

Prendick understands even though he thinks it's twisted and everything is calm.

Until one of the animals busts loose and goes on a rampage. The power structure (between beasts and humans) of the island is threatened. Prendick, Montgomery, and Moreau's lives are in danger.

I skipped over a lot of the intricate details, but I'll leave you there.

What I find amazing about Wells is his fantastic imagination. His foresight is impressive, taking the science of his day and drawing conclusions that bear out in our day.

I definitely recommend this book and I'm very much looking forward to The Time Machine.

10 The Giver by Lois Lowry

2008-02-19T16:33:00.003-05:00

Another YA lit book for class.

This one starts in some kind of controlled world, a planned community right down to how many children will be born each year (23), and how many each family can have (2). Jobs are assigned by a committee of Elders, but so are husbands and wives (who apply to have a child, and ask for a boy or a girl). One of the jobs in the community is Birth Mother, and these are the only women authorized to have children. After three births they are sent to be field hands and manual labor. Other jobs are Nurturers, who tend newborns until they are placed with families.

There are rules such as no touching, no anger, and the suppression of all sexual desire (by taking a pill every morning). Lying is forbidden.

We follow the story of Jonas, who is 11 when the story starts. At age 12 each of the kids is assigned their life-long job. In the Ceremony he is skipped over and not given an assignment. The Elder calls him up last, and explains that he has been selected to be the Receiver of Memories. Because the populace is so suppressed, they have virtually no communal memory (old people are removed. Once kids leave their parents' home the parents are reassigned). Jonas will be tasked to meet with the Giver, who is to pass him memories telepathically.

Jonas and the Giver get to talking about why memories are stored in one person. At first Jonas sees the wisdom in it. When every single aspect of life is controlled there is no reason for choice to exist, and if there is no choice, then no memory is required - no need to make decisions based on wisdom. The Giver, and Jonas when he takes over, serves as the community wisdom. If the elders get stumped, they come to the Receiver of Memories and ask for advice.

Jonas eventually comes to see this as a bad plan. So he escapes to make a new life, and help disrupt life in the community he leaves behind.

At just 179 pages, this book left me wanting more. It's a good idea for a story and could have been developed a lot more. I mean, it's a book for middle school kids, but I could see the same idea being worked a bit more thoughtfully in the hands of an Aldous Huxley, etc...

Crumbolst's brief review here.

9. Forever by Judy Blume

2008-02-12T22:59:00.003-05:00

It really felt like it was going to be forever until I finished this book. Because I'm not a 13-14 year old suburban girl each page, each paragraph, each sentence was pure torture.

This book details the senior year of Katherine, who is contemplating losing her virginity to an extremely patient Michael.

There are the two friends who serve to act as Scylla and Charybdis (I've never been able to use this simile! Thanks Judy Blume!) Sybil the slut and Erica the girl who just wants to get it over with before she gets to college (how many high school boys scoop up some booty just this way?). Katherine wants to find the right guy. Sigh.

He patiently waits. They make out a lot. He patiently waits. They undress each other, but nothing happens. He patiently waits. They give each other hand jobs (described from Katherine's point of view it's quite a dull, dare I say, dry (nay!) experience). He patiently waits. FINALLY! she gives it up. Are you still awake, dear reader?

Sybil gets pregnant (has the baby "for the experience" and then gives it up for adoption). Erica is still waiting (she was dating the male lead in the school play and guess what!? He's geh!).

So then (you're still reading this? why?), Michael gets a summer job far away and so does Katherine. And she gets feelings for Theo, the tennis instructor. Buh-bye Michael. Thanks for the memories.

And get that cover! Thank Jeebus I didn't have to read this book on the subway.

8. War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

2008-02-10T22:06:00.000-05:00

More tripods! My first Wells!

This was an excellent book, and if you haven't read it, you should go get yourself a copy right now. The writing is excellent.

This is Wells's classic about Martians coming to Earth to attempt colonizing. Things go really well for the Martians and really badly for the humans. All of England is smashed, except for London. The people are in chaos and disorganized.

I won't spoil the ending, but I will admit that it completely took me by surprise.

I especially like how Wells described the breakdown of order and government. As the Martians are gassing the Englishmen, Wells writes, "Before dawn the black vapour was pouring through the streets of Richmond, and the disintegrating organism of government was, with a last expiring effort, rousing the population of London to the necessity of flight."

Just a little while later our narrator, trying to get back to his wife, tells us, "By ten o'clock the police organisation, and by midday even the railway organisations, were losing coherency, losing shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in that swift liquefaction of the social body."

As he travels the countryside, dodging the merciless, killing Martians, and crazy, sometimes violent humans the narrator meets with all kinds. He briefly teams up with a curate who loses his mind, meets up with an artilleryman whose dreams are bigger than his ability, and once, a group of would-be socialists who confiscate his pony and cart for the good of the people. (Maybe that was his brother, actually, who shares part of the narrative, but you get my point.)

And sparing me the political, thematic English teacher spiel is the afterword by Isaac Asimov who explains how the book relates to the Europeans' technological advantages and how they used them to colonize and spread uncaring destruction in their path.

And I thought it was a critique of how we don't take care of dangers until they have already passed. The artilleryman makes a long speech about how this invasion has, basically, thinned the herd, leaving behind only the strong, able, and independent.

Strongly recommended, though you have probably already read it.

Doc's review here and Olman's review here.

7. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

2008-02-07T20:16:00.000-05:00

Such a sad little book.

Jess is isolated from his family (dad works far away and he's left home with his many sisters and mom), has few friends, and is scorned by his father for his obsession with art and drawing. His only friend, really, is the cow he has to milk twice a day and, sometimes, his young sister.

Then Leslie moves in down the block and the two become fast friends. Leslie is the daughter of hippies and is very much a free spirit. The two misfits spend the better part of a school year hanging around together, and create their own magic kingdom (Terabithia) in the woods near their houses.

They act as king and queen and fight off imaginary invaders and rule Terabithia as benevolent monarchs.

The one day while Jess is on a trip to Washington DC with his hot music teacher, Leslie has an accident and is killed. (Technically, this is not a spoiler, since this information is on the back cover.) Jess's reaction and recovery is the focus of the last chapter of the book. He builds a bridge to cross the creek where Leslie died trying to get to Terabithia. To honor Leslie's life and their friendship, Jess invites his sister to co-rule Terabithia with him.

~~And then Tripods come, destroy everything in sight, enslave Jess, defile Leslie's shrine, and kidnap Jess's cow.~~

6. I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier

2008-02-04T22:21:00.000-05:00

How did this book get published?

You know in the movies when you watch a character get tortured and that character twists and struggles and tries to escape the clutches of the villains, and then at the end of the movie the character wakes up and says something to the effect of "wow, that was one hell of a bad dream" and you just want to kill someone, anyone, whether they were responsible or not, for wasting your time?

You know that feeling?

Well, I'm feeling that feeling.

~~At least have the got-damn decency to explain the friggin' title.~~

if sailing isn't possible...

2008-02-02T20:40:00.000-05:00

there's only one thing to do:

put your feet by the fire ~~and ignore the fact that you are getting older and your ankles are going bald~~, enjoy a good book, and fix yourself a black and tan.

5. The Pool of Fire by John Christopher

2008-01-31T20:59:00.000-05:00

The stunning conclusion to the Tripods trilogy, and a satisfying end at that.

Everyone is back, Will, Beanpole, and Henry. And again, I hesitate to mention any element of the plot because it will spoil this book and the second.

This final installment tells the tale of the continuing free-human resistance to the Tripods. And it also begins to outline possible conflicts of a post-occupation world. Ah, the possibilities of a blank slate. Ah, the perils of the lack of tradition and the excesses bound to be a result of a long oppression.

But, really, The Pool of Fire is about the fight between a society with high technology and a scattered, moderately organized society of low technology. And the first 46 pages or so details how this moderate organization works. It's almost Qaeda-like in its simplicity.

There were more than a few pleasant surprises along the way. I recommend all three books.

Sending them out to Mt Benson tomorrow!

2007: a reflection

2008-01-29T22:54:00.000-05:00

Well, I increased my output, and had a good range of books.

4. Love that Dog by Sharon Creech

2008-01-29T22:49:00.000-05:00

An outstanding little book.

It's told in a series of responses that young Jack writes to his English teacher, Miss Stretchberry, about the poems they are reading in class. Creech includes the poems discussed in the back of the book, but if you took an intro to lit class in college, you'll be in good shape.

The responses chart the growth of Jack as he goes from "that poem was stupid" to writing poetry and reflecting on poems, writing poems, and the experiences that can be mined (exploited) for poetic purpose.

This is another YA Lit book, and one you can read in a few minutes standing in the kids section of your local bookshop, but I think it's worth buying, especially if you think you'll find yourself teaching poetry to the uninitiated.

3. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

2008-01-29T22:44:00.000-05:00

The classic tale of greasers vs preppies.

I don't think I ever read the book. I definitely saw the movie, but so long ago all I can remember is Johnny hurt in the hospital and that the movie had Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, and Ralph Macchio.

It's a pretty good little book. I had to read it for my YA Lit class and I'm glad I did.

Ponyboy lives with his two brothers, Darry and Sodapop. Their parents died in a car accident and now Darry is the parents. They run with a bunch of hoods and have a running battles with the Socs, the preppies in town.

After one of the Socs is killed in a fight, things go from bad to worse. But in that journey Ponyboy learns a lot about life, and his family.

It's definitely worth reading, and gets credit for launching the YA Lit movement.

2. The City of Gold and Lead by John Christopher

2008-01-26T16:46:00.000-05:00

The City of Gold and Lead, the sequel to White Mountains starts with the heroic threesome from the first book training for the Games, an annual Olympic-like competition that pits athletes from nearby villages against one another for the privilege of winning a one-way ticket to the Tripods main city. There the champions will serve the Tripods. Because nobody ever comes back, what exactly this services entails is anyone's guess.

There really isn't much I can say about the plot that isn't a spoiler, so let me talk about the style - this is a much faster paced book than the first. While the first book had some "philosophical" talk weaved into the action, while Will tried to figure out what to do with himself, this one has Will focused on his mission with little side discussion about personal goals or impact on the Self.

It's probably not a surprise that Will wins the Games and heads to the City of Gold and Lead, but what he finds there is surprising. I thought I already had the Tripods figured out, and I am happy to admit I was wrong.

While Will is in the city he learns about the Plan and what will happen to mankind. This makes the book more than a simple science fiction tale and makes it a metaphor for colonization and the fight against imperialism. Or maybe that's my English teacher brain forcing an interpretation onto a text (in itself a form of imperialism?).

And Christopher knows how to tell a story: lots of action, drama, cliffhangers, twists and turns, and foreshadowing. I'm eager to start the third and final book!

1. The White Mountains by John Christopher

2008-01-23T23:11:00.000-05:00

A great recommendation by Mt Benson Report.

His is as good a review as I could write and I don't have much more to add. But I will say this, it took me a little bit longer than I expected to get through the book (though it is a fast read) because I just didn't really care until the last 50 pages or so.

I do feel for Will's struggle though, facing the same question we must all face at one time or another: do I strike out for what I think is right, or do I conform and sacrifice my Self?

I think the differences in our world are less stark, or, rather, the two moral positions aren't as far, or as fatal as I pretend they are, but for Will it's a question of life or death.

I recommend this book, too, and I look forward to reading the remainder of the trilogy. I have book three, but will have to look around a bit more for book two. And then I send them to Vancouver...

27. The Wreck of the Dumaru by Lowell Thomas (as told by Fritz Harmon)

2008-01-01T18:11:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Olman for the recommendation and the present of the actual text! His review is here.

Simply told this is a tale about 32 guys in a 20-man lifeboat adrift in the Western Pacific for 24 days. Fourteen of them survive.

The Dumaru is a wooden supply ship transporting gasoline and munitions from Guam at the close of WW1. After the ship is hit by lightning in a storm it catches fire and explodes. The ship sinks, but not before three life rafts are set adrift. We ride with the First assistant engineer Fred (Fritz) Harmon in an overcrowded life raft. After thirteen days they are out of water and sea biscuits. It doesn't rain, so they rig an evaporator (designed to boil sea water so they can collect the fresh water from the steam that results). As the men begin to die from dehydration, starvation, injuries, and exposure, the survivors make the grim decision to eat the recently deceased by making a broth/stew. Some of the scenes of the cannibalism are quite grizzly - before they decide to actually eat the meat of their shipmate (the former first engineer) they drink his blood mixed with a bit of seawater. To get the blood out of the body the hatchet off the dude's head! One time they do it and leave the head lolling around in the bottom of the boat!

Eventually they land on the island of Samar and are rescued.

I thought this was a great book. It's right up my alley - shipwreck, survival at sea, and the battle between man and the environment and between man and his own endurance. I feel like reading these stories is like research for an eventual test - although I sail in water not much deeper than a good-sized backyard swimming pool and never out of sight of developed civilization.

I'm going to pass this one on to Uncle Jack who is always up for a good sea story.

26. Spring Tides by Samuel Eliot Morison

2007-12-19T18:43:00.000-05:00

A short little number published in 1965. This is a sailing book that I have never heard of before. I have heard of Morison, though. He's written quite a bunch of books about WW2, especially the War in the Pacific.

The book is divided into six sections: Spring Tides; A Yacht's Cabin; An August Day's Sail; A September Cruise; The Ancients and the Sea; A Summer Cruise in the Aegean.

Some good insights into the beauty of sailing. And Morison tries to explain the mystery of why a yacht's cabin, despite it's cramped quarters and mix of funky aromas, is as cozy as it is. And the chapter on late summer sailing is excellent.

The chapter on the Ancients could be better explained. I mean, reading it made me wish I had studied the Ancients.

25. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

2007-12-19T17:41:00.000-05:00

Joseph Conrad's classic that was turned into a great movie, although mediocre version of this story.

In the story Marlow and his pals are sitting around on the deck of the cruising yawl Nellie, waiting for the tide to shift and the sun to go down. To pass the time Marlow decides to tell a story of the time he was a freshwater sailor and had to taken a steamer up a river in the Congo. He had gotten a position with an ivory trading company through the influence of an aunt and as his first job he was tasked with taking a station manager up the river to retrieve Kurtz.

Now Kurtz is a trader who has gone nuts with his own unlimited power over the natives. His followers are not willing to let him go and attack the steamer as it draws closer to the clearing where he has set up camp. Marlow and the station manager dock the boat and meet up with Kurtz, who, it turns out is quite sick and near death. He resents the fact that he is being called back. After all, he's gotten so much ivory for the Company that it's piled up at camp.

The end of the movie is not exactly the same as the book, so I'll stop here.

There is some really great writing here.

24. Learning to Sail by H.A. Calahan

2007-12-03T22:46:00.000-05:00

Also posted at: http://theredwing.blogspot.com/

First off, let me just say that I have wanted to read this book for a good, good long time. Published for the first time in November 1932, it's not an easy book to find. And by find I mean find, not search for, if you get my meaning.

This book has everything - nice thick paper, great illustrations and photographs, no author bio about his living on the Maine Coast with his wife, three kids, and two cats, one of whom enjoys sailing, and all that modern luggage a new book must ship. This one is just pure salt.

Now, naturally, one cannot learn how to sail from a book. It's one of those learn-by-doing jobs, so this is a book for people who have just finished, say, their third or fourth lesson. They know the vocab, they feel good, and have enough experience to be able to listen to advice.

And this book has a lot of old-time advice. And some plain old good writing.

From the chapter on Helmsmanship:

"After the beginner has learned to maneuver his boat with a fair degree of confidence, he is quite certain to slump and become careless. If at this point he could understand that he has mastered the very rudiments of sailing and the finer touches are still to be acquired, he would progress rapidly. As a rule, however, the beginner continues as a beginner until he starts to enter races. Then with the other boats passing him as if he were standing still, it begins to dawn on him that he has not mastered the fine art of helmsmanship" (135).

And again from the same chapter:

"A sailboat is the most alive creation ever made by man. She has her whims and moods and there must be a sympathy and understanding between the helmsman and the boat" (135).

From the "What to do in a Thunderstorm" chapter:

"A thunderstorm is carried in the direction of the tide and may pass out with the ebb and return again on the flood. When you see a thunderstorm approaching, try to get in the lee of a shore or rather hide behind the shore that will be to windward when the thunderstorm breaks. It is easy to forecast the exact direction of the wind of the storm by watching the movement of the approaching clouds. Rest assured that the wind will not be blowing from the pre-storm direction when the storm breaks. Just before the storm comes, it irons out the wind and you find yourself in a flat, ominous calm. The longer and more pronounced the calm, the more violent the storm will be when it breaks" (176-77).

From "Fitting out:"

"Springtime! What does that mean to the sailor? Not the sinking of the plowshare into the moist, brown earth nor the return of the birds, the first green buds upon the trees or the gay new apparel in shop windows.

"No, spring expresses itself to the sailor in the tapping of the caulking mallet, the pungent smell of copper paint, the good will and the hard work and the cheery good fellowship in the shipyard; the warm sun overhead and the cold, forbidding, empty blue water just beyond. Spring is a joyous time in a shipyard. The boats emerging grimily from their winter covers seem to stretch and yawn and cast an eye seaward. There is a joy in the scraping and painting and puttying; in the overhauling of gear and equipment. And when at last the old hooker slides down the ways and bobs gayly in her new coat of paint, it is a moment of sheer, unalloyed joy" (307).

And finally, from the afterword of the printing I found (at my university's library), from a section called, "What it's all about:"

"There is a fraternity of the sea, not understood by landsmen. You may golf or ride or drink with a man and never see below the surface. But sail with him and you know him. Go through danger and hardship and adventure together and the knot of friendship is firmly tied. Yachtsmen visit one another in the ports they touch. The yacht clubs compete in extending hospitality. Yachtsmen help one another whenever possible. There is more genuine good fellowship among yachtsmen than among among almost any other group of humans. Perhaps it is the salt water in the blood" (318).

23. Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry by Mildred Taylor

2007-12-03T22:37:00.000-05:00

The other side of the To Kill a Mockingbird coin - the sad situation of the Jim Crow South with the friction, heat, and armed conflict that is missing from Mockingbird.

Set during the 30s, the Logans own their own farm, 200 acres that have been in the family for going on three generations. They farm but are left with so little money left over that the father is forced to leave the family to work the railroad in Louisiana. The mom holds down the fort, teaching at the local black school (with hand me down books from the white school), and organizing a community boycott of the white grocery.

The main conflict comes from this boycott, which is in response to a half-lynching by the family that runs the store, the Wallaces. They are a mean bunch, and they light two guys on fire for flirting with the checkout girl. One of the guys dies immediately and the other lingers.

Naturally nobody is punished for this crime and the black community is split between the that's-just-the-way-it-is crowd and the we're-not-going-to-take-it crowd.

The story is told through the voice of Cassie, who is about twelve. She's one tough cookie, getting into fights, mouthing off to her elders, and disobeying direct orders from her mom.

It was good, better in many ways than the Watson's book (#22), and would be a perfect pair with Mockingbird.

22. The Watsons go to Birmingham - 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis

2007-11-27T22:47:00.000-05:00

A great book about a very close family who lives in Flint Michigan. Because the oldest son, Byron, is becoming a juvenile delinquent the family decides he should live with the grandmother down in Alabama. So, off they go on a roadtrip.

About 9/10 of the book is dedicated to character development and establishing the close knit ties between the parents and the kids. The oldest brother constantly picks on our narrator, ten-year-old Kenny. And there is a little sister Joetta.

The voice of the main character and narrator is hilarious. Curtis does a great job getting inside the head of Kenny.

The family drives to Alabama and gets there just in time for the church bombing that killed four little girls and blinded two others. For such a climactic moment there is very little politicking and lecturing in the book. Kenny has a hard time with the bombing and the causes and consequences of the bombing, and his bully brother Byron helps him work through it.

It was a very quick read. This book won honors (I guess that means not-first place) in both the Newberry Awards and the Coretta Scott King awards. I think it would be a great companion to the recent Presidential Medal of Freedom Award winning To Kill a Mockingbird.

21. Fallen Angels by W. D. Myers

2007-11-21T20:54:00.000-05:00

I also read this for a class, and quite enjoyed it. It's classified as Young Adult literature (one of the things we are discussing is just what YA lit really is), but has some heavy ideas, some very grown up scenes in it, and clocks in at about 300 pages.

The story is about a recent HS graduate who enlists and is sent off to Viet Nam.

With fewer details about the intricacies of basic training, breaking down and cleaning one's rifle, and the irony of war (sent to help but actually harming) it's only just more than your typical VN war book/story, and fits neatly in the genre. What is most compelling to me is Richie's justification for joining: his family needed the money. With no dad and a little brother still in high school, Richie was the bread winner as soon as he graduated from high school.

I think this is important, especially now, as Bush's haphazard, aimless foreign policy puts young men and women in danger who were probably in the same position as Richie - no money for college, no decent job prospects, and few opportunities for upward mobility or economic independence.

20. Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison

2007-11-21T20:47:00.000-05:00

Read this powerful little book for a Multi-Cultural Education class.

In it Morrison attacks the representation and lack of representation of black Americans in American Lit. She discusses the demeaning and patronizing portrayal of blacks (think Huck Finn, especially the last third of the book), and the complete absence of effects of black Americans in the books. She asks how, since every single political decision made since the drafting of the Declaration of Independence has been about, or affected by, the presence of slaves, freed slaves, or the legacy of slavery, how can black characters, black people, black-ness not be prolific in literature. She provides some examples from Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, and gives some praise to Melville.

William Stafford

2007-11-05T22:41:00.000-05:00

"I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along."

And a poem:

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

19. Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

2007-09-17T22:48:00.001-04:00

Amazing. Guy's a genius, I swear.

18. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

2007-09-17T22:46:00.000-04:00

A great book, short, but my least favorite Steinbeck.

Steinhardt, the final update

2007-09-13T22:52:00.000-04:00

In case you have been following the continuing saga of me working to get admitted into the English Education program at NYU's Steinhardt School of Education (part one and part two) and perhaps wondering "what ever happened with that?", I offer you one more installment. The last, one hopes.

Professor P,

You will recall that I met with you and Professor S on 27 August for academic advising. You told me to submit an ENGP Application to the School of Education. The following morning I brought a complete application over to the admissions director, Mr. M. This application included the application fee, my philosophy of education, a copy of my certificate/license, a copy of my honorable discharge from the Navy, a letter from LW thanking me and my former school for hosting so many Steinhardt students and offering us a stipend, and transcripts from College of St Rose and NYU undergraduate/Gallatin.

Mr. M advised me to not register for classes as a non-matriculated student because "once my application went through, things would get messed up."

After one week I called the registrar's office to find out the status of my application and to get the classroom locations for my courses (Dr B's Teaching Reading and Dr S's Multicultural Ed).

After missing the deadline to register as a matriculated student, I planned to register late.

I went to the SoE admissions office yesterday (10 Sept) to determine the status of the application, and at the least, begin the process for non-matriculated enrollment (figuring that at this point I had to register as quickly as possible).

I was told that VB would not process my application because I had not submited transcripts from community college. Mind you, the community college transcript has been reviewed and processed/included/noted on my undergrad transcript.

So I said fine, let me register as a non-matriculated student until I obtained the CC transcript. Ms. VB said that she would not let me register as a non-matric unless I submitted a letter withdrawing my application for matriculated enrollment.

Considering I had six Steinhardt student teachers, countless observers (literally!), and coordinated the student-teaching program at my former school (including social studies, science, and english STs) I can't see what bearing my community college grades have on my graduate school application. In fact, I took on one of the student teachers, David S, mid-semester as a favor to Mr S and his advisor (Professor S) because his first CT was so unpleasant.

If in fact the community college transcript is that important, I will provide it as soon as possible (Thursday). I did not include it because it was already processed in my undergrad record (and doesn't NYU have an official copy on file?).

I'm not sure what is going on, or what my next step should be. I went to class last night with Professor S and she advised me to contact you this morning. Can you provide any advice or help?

If you need amplifying information please contact me at 718.***.****. I am also providing a list of people you can contact at the School of Ed and my former school if you need to.

Thank you, Professor P, very much for your time and attention. I appreciate whatever effort you make on my behalf and I look forward to speaking with you soon.

Jar

The next day Professor P sent this email to the admissions director and a few other professors:

[This] email narrates a horrendous tale of woe regarding a student who we want in the English Ed MA program and who by all accounts is eligible and has completed the paperwork. I realize that some deadline for fall applications may be been violated, but I don't think NYU wants to hit the national news as giving a hard time to a Navy Vet who further wants to serve his country by being a teacher. So will someone clean this up as soon as possible (Unless I am missing something and he is on some home security list--just joking.)

Later that day, the admissions director sent this email to all of us:

From your message it appears you will be able to complete the admissions process tomorrow by providing the requested transcript from Community College. A student copy at this point will be acceptable. If you are not able to hand deliver to Graduate Admissions you may fax it to my attention at 212.***.****.

I look forward to being able to finalize this process.

I had the transcript faxed today and was, FINALLY, admitted as a graduate student in the English Ed program at NYU's School of Ed.

At the advisement I learned that licensed teachers have a separate track that leads to their degree, the Professionals' degree. I have four classes to go, so two this semester and two next and then I am done with my Ed degree. I'm already plotting and planning to start my English Lit at CW Post. Hopefully their admissions department isn't staffed with jackasses.

17. Billy Budd by Herman Melville

2007-08-29T09:47:00.000-04:00

You may have read this in high school. I did not, so I had no idea what was in store.

Set in the 1790s, Billy Budd is a sailor on a merchant ship who is impressed into service on a British warship. Impressment is a forced enlistment - basically warships would stop merchants and pick off some of the crew to serve in His/Her Majesty's service. In fact, the British warships didn't even care if the merchant was English. One of the causes of the War of 1812 was that Britain would not stop impressing American sailors.

So, Billy Budd accepts, even embraces, his service and becomes a foretop man, working one of the yardarms atop one of the masts. So impressed with Budd, Captain Vere has decided to promote him to captain of the mast he works. Billy Budd's meek. He's beautiful. And he's quite popular with the crew.

Except with Claggart, the Master-at-Arms (a sort of the ship's chief of police), who has it in for Billy Budd. No explanation is given except that Claggart has a "depravity" that makes him twisted and evil.

So Claggart falsely informs on Budd, accusing him of plotting a mutiny. This is an exceptional charge because there were two big mutinies in 1797. Normally, and obviously, paranoid about any potential threat of rebellion, commanders were especially sensitive to any hint of it after 1797.

So the captain brings Budd and Claggart to his stateroom to sort out the charge. When he hears it, Budd's is overwhelmed and, unable to answer. Out of frustration he strikes the Master-at-Arms at kills him. This is a crime, for Billy Budd is a mere sailor and Claggart outranks him.

So Vere has to decide - does Billy Budd swing for his crime, or does he (and the jury) consider the circumstances and the actors involved in the crisis? Should they consider the crew's reaction to a death sentence for the very popular Billy Budd for killing the not so popular Claggart? Should he wait and refer it to the admiral?

A good book with some excellent writing, but my intellect has bruises on it from being clubbed repeatedly with the Christ/Satan and Adam/Serpent symbols.

16. The Road by Jack London

2007-08-29T08:33:00.000-04:00

This was quite an excellent little book. The text I read is buried in one of those thick American Library compilations, this one is London's "Novels and Social Writing." This was published in 1927 and accounts for a time probably about ten years earlier. Maybe even earlier, I don't know - there is no context given in these books (though I have not read the Introduction because of the inevitable prejudicing that occurs, and to avoid any spoilers).

First, the road that London is writing about is the railroad. I have no evidence to suggest it except for the books themselves, but I suspect that Kerouac named his 1957 classic after London's.

The first few chapters discuss how to beg for food. Tons of good hobo slang here. And he tells about how he can make up stories on the fly, making judgments about the people at the door in order to tailor his story for maximum effect. Later on, he regrets telling such whoppers because he may have been wasted his fiction.

The next section gets down to the railroad. Very interesting chapters on how to avoid getting thrown off a freight, where to sit, more importantly, where not to sit, and how to get on the good side of the engineer (offering to shovel coal for him). Also a lot of techniques about how to catch a freight, too.

And then, a section on how he got into tramping in the first place. When he began his life on the streets he was a thief. Then he met some kids who rode the rails and they taught him how to beg. He found the begging to be more noble than stealing - the begging was relying on your wits, charisma, and ability to spin a yarn.

Overall it was a pretty cool book. Lot of adventure running scams and avoiding scams, lots of lingo, and techniques about the tramp life. Seems like he saw a lot of the country, and saw a lot of the country that not many people ever even think about - the tramps, hoboes, and various outsiders who live away from the mainstream's conciousness.

15. The Great Gatsby by FS Fitzgerald

2007-08-20T10:35:00.000-04:00

Technically this is a reread, but since I had completely forgotten even the ending, I felt like a virgin, touched for the very first time, while I was reading it.

And since I had a vague idea of what happened I let myself be lazy and left the interpretation of the book to the simple line of chasing the false dream of wealth. It's closer to chasing the false dream of a girl, but you probably already knew that.

Some great writing there, though. Fitz has an eye for the insightful line...concise, succinct, clear, efficient, etc...

14. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

2007-08-19T18:56:00.000-04:00

Another sad book.

Jude Fawley grows up in a small English village, a burden to his aunt, and feeling generally out of place. He has great respect for his schoolmaster, Phillotson, and when his teacher moves to Oxford he vows to follow in his footsteps. He reads and has a passion for learning, which is out of place in his small farming village.

One day, on his way back from his wanderings, he meets a fresh-faced, beautiful Arabella. They soon start courting and soon enough Arabella says she is pregnant. Jude abandons his scholarly ambitions and settles down to be a husband. Arabella turns out to be not at all what she seemed - false hair, false dimples, and false pregnancy. As Jude and Arabella try to slaughter a pig by themselves (instead of waiting for the slaughter man) they have the fight that ends their relationship. Arabella packs it in, moves back to her dad's, and then ships off to Australia for a new start.

As for Jude, he decides to resume his scholarly pursuits and so moves to Oxford. When he looks up his old professor Jude finds that ol Phillotson doesn't even remember him. He gets work as a mason and studies at night. Eventually he realizes that the mighty Oxford is never going to let him study there. It's a bitter blow for Jude.

While he is adrift in Oxford he runs into his cousin Sue. Who he falls in love with. She is a school teacher, working with none other than Mr Phillotson. Worse yet, for Jude, she has promised to marry him.

Jude is in love with her, but technically he and Arabella are still married.

Sue does marry Phillotson, but she is so unhappy (she thinks marriage does nothing more than enslave the soul) that she asks for her freedom. Despite good advice from his friends, Phillotson agrees. It eventually costs him his career as a teacher (because he is not a good moral example).

Now that she is free, Sue and Jude get together and move far away from anyone who knows them. She is a new thinker and even though Jude wants to get married she resists. And so they revolve around and around.

Ah, but did you think that Arabella was going to just fade away? Hardy thinks not. And so she returns, with a child she swears is Jude's. She sends the kid on a train to Jude, who has since moved back to his original village. Sue and Jude adopt the strange little boy, who they call Father Time. This is called symbolism. Jude and Arabella divorce so she can remarry. Sue and Jude have two kids. The family falls on hard times (because they are not married).

The kids die (this is on the back of the book, so I'm not sure the reveal qualifies
as a spoiler). This oh-so-Victorian tragedy sends Sue toward religion.

As a consequence of this religion she decides she belongs with Phillotson and so she moves back with him.

Jude is desolate. He turns to drink. He is rescued by Arabella, of all people. She brings him home, keeps him drunk for three days, and then marches him off to the preacher to remarry him.

Jude sobers up.

And then he catches cold. Relies on Arabella to take care of him. He visits Sue one last time.

So the book is about a lot of things - an editorial on marriage, on duty and responsibility, about the battle between philosophy of intellect and the call of religious study and work.

I have to say I have very little pity for Sue - her stubborn, willful and selfish defense of her ideas that contrast so radically with society that it seems like Hardy is shortchanging her in some way - like how can she not see the damage she is doing to her family (families), and herself. She's a walking Pyrrhic victory.

As for Jude, it's a little more complicated - he's a victim of his desires, society's rules, and stronger characters like Arabella and Sue. But he does allow himself to be manipulated by these characters and society.

Hardy's poems are dark, and his novels have a reputation for being so too. This was his last novel - some say because of the harsh reaction it received at the hands of critics.

I'm still thinking about this one, and I guess that means it was meaty.

13. Caught by the Sea by Gary Paulsen

2007-08-04T08:12:00.000-04:00

Although it is very short, at 100 pages of large font, I'm counting it.

You may know Paulsen from his most popular kid book, Hatchet.

This one is about his history of sailing. It's told in a I-don't-know-how-I-didn't-get-killed style. And if everything that he told us in his book did happen, I don't know how he didn't get killed either.

He buys a 23' boat (the same size as Persuasion), buy a couple of cans of Spaghetti-O's and tries to go for a sail in the harbor. No experience, no sailing lessons, no trips out with someone who knows what they are doing. Naturally, it goes badly and he has to get towed back to his slip.

That night he sleeps over on the boat and is awakened by some weird boat-noice (there are many) and he sees how beautiful the moon looks on the water, and so on, so (get this) he decides to go sailing.

Out the harbor he goes. No weather report. Still no useful skills despite his brief experience. No idea what condition the boat is in, is rellay in, I mean.

Then, of course, there is a squall (a short, gusty storm) - he gets knocked down, beat up. The boat doesn't sink, but it gets the worst end of the storm. I think the main sail blows out, but I'm not sure. Then he is becalmed for four days. He's got a couple of cans of food and a few gallons of water in his water tank.

Mind you, he has supposedly done no maintenance to the boat. He's owned it for two days.

Finally the wind comes up and he can sail home. Along the way he meets some lady on a wooden sailboat who shows him what to do. 400 miles out in the Pacific.

Not so much recommended, but if you are into Paulsen or into rookie sailing stories, I guess you might find this interesting.

12. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

2007-07-17T21:25:00.000-04:00

Another excellent book.

First, a word about the copy I have. I took it from the book room at school, a virtual used book shop. I am going to be teaching this book next year and so I took a look at the copies we have available. I found a bunch of copies that date back to the 60s. They have the covers that are glued stitching, the ones that if you hold it in your hand long enough your hand gets tacky from the glue leeching out from the humidity of your grip. I like to look through the old copies, checking out the names of the kids who checked them out, looking at the dates, wondering where those kids are now...and the teachers too. I found a copy of Ethan Frome that I am going to keep forever - a few months after my birthday someone with my own last name signed out the book. Bizarre.

So, the tale is about Ethan Frome. His wife is a malingerer who uses her "illnesses" as a weapon against him. She is so sick and needy that she needs a helper around the house. Her family sends Mattie Silver along to tend to her. Ethan and Mattie were made for each other and the mutual attraction between them draws them closer and closer together in that Wharton-glacier like way. Maybe less glaciers than tectonic plates. If you have read Age of Innocence then you know what I mean.

Everyone talks about how sad this book is. I didn't find it half as depressing as AoI. Ethan is no Archer and Mattie Silver is no Ellen. Sure, it's has a sad ending, but it doesn't hold a candle to Victory by Conrad or The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. Them are some sad books.

I won't discuss the ending any furthur in fear of giving away too much.

Ultimately, I recommend it.

11. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

2007-07-10T23:00:00.000-04:00

A great play and the first I have read by him.

Tom and Laura Wingfield live at home with their single mother Amanda. Their father, "a telephone man in love with long distances," deserted the family when they were young.

Amanda rides herd on Tom, telling him he smokes too much, eats too fast, goes to the movies too much, drinks too much, doesn't work hard enough, is too selfish, and on and on.

Tom works at a warehouse and writes poetry on his breaks. He does go to the movies a lot, but simply to get away from the house and have some adventures, if only by proxy.

Laura, unfortunately, is a very, very shy girl. She doesn't work, doesn't have any friends, and for the past six years since she graduated from high school, seems content to listen to old records and polish her menagerie of little glass statues.

All Amanda wants to do is get Laura set up with a gentleman caller.

That's all I'll say about the plot. The writing is exquisite. Check this opening description of their apartment building:

The Wingfield apartment is in the rear of the building, one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living units that flower as warty growths in overcrowded urban centers of lower middle-class population and are symptomatic of the impulse of this largest and fundamentally enslaved section of American society to avoid fluidity and differentiation and to exist as one interfused mass of automatism.

Like a crowbar to the side of the head, man!

A really excellent play; I wish someone would read it and then have a dialogue with me.

I'm very much looking forward to reading Streetcar Named Desire. And I understand that Williams also wrote a number of short stories and some of them he used as mannequins for the dressmaking of his plays, but I still want to read them. The guy can really turn a phrase.

10. Anthem by Ayn Rand

2007-07-10T22:45:00.001-04:00

This old classic...is is more a philosophical tract disguised in a thin plot than an outright story.

Living in some future hyperorganized state, the main character, Equality, is not like the others. He is smarter and more sensitive to the missing element in his society. His whole life is planned for him, right down to the schedule of his daily activities. One day in the midst of his job as a Street Sweeper he and his coworker Equality discover a secret tunnel leading down to some long-forgotten subway platform.

During the next few months he spends his evenings in the tunnel doing experiments and trying to discover some secrets of Mother Nature. He winds up rediscovering electricity.

Bringing his discovery to the Council of Scholars sets the book toward its not very surprising conclusion.

This is a philospohical tract about the evils of collectivism, or, as I read it, the evils of recognizing that we are a community and that we are in fact responsible for our brothers and sisters. In Rand's super-organized state, human emotion is suppressed and social interaction is limited. At one point, Equality reminds Liberty that "anything not permitted is automatically outlawed." Even friendship, because it prefers one individual over another, is banned.

I think this book/author has done more damage to the socialist movement by its gross misinterpretation of what socialism and communism are. Certainly if Rand wants to rail against totalitarianism, that's one thing, but to dismiss and satirize a philosophy that recognizes that we are a community is another. Equality's main goal in the story is to build his house into a fort where he is not obligated to any other person.

Unfortunately for Equality and for Rand we are not a world of self-involved, self-centered two year olds who can't think, feel, or see beyond our own limited field of vision.

9. Pierre by Herman Melville

2007-06-22T22:29:00.000-04:00

This was a book I read for a short-lived English-teacher book club. Three of us agreed to read this virtually unknown book by Melville specifically because it was virtually unknown. Only two of us finished it, and it took me a long, long time (blame the book itself, the boat, and the wooing of the new woman).

It was written right after Melville finished Moby Dick, and was looking to go in a different direction. The historical notes say that he had, "exhausted his supply of experiences from his stint in the U.S. Navy." (How the hell they, or
anyone, knows that, I have no idea.)

Pierre is a privileged, rich kid living on his family's grand estate with his widowed mother. He is a great outdoorsman, has a great mind, dotes on his mother, and is engaged to be married to the local beauty, Lucy Tartan. But he longs to know his long-dead father better and wishes he had had a sister to grow up with.

And guess what happens? From out of nowhere Isabel, a long lost sister turns up with some stories about his father!

And guess what? Pierre is absolutely smitten with her! For real. He comes apart and unseams his life from top to bottom: he breaks the engagement to Lucy, abandons his mother, runs off with Isabel, pretends to be her husband and sets up house in the city. His family abandons him - his cousin pretends to not know Pierre when he arrives in the city seeking lodging, and his mother cuts him out of the will (and then she dies of heartbreak, leaving all of the family's riches to the cousin).

But guess who doesn't abandon him?

That's right, Lucy!

She sends him a letter that she loves him so much, and she has figured he is doing something secret, yet brave, and that because she loves him and his secret project so much she is going to move in with Pierre and Isabel and tend to him with "nun-like devotion."

I won't tell you how it ends, but be assured, you can live without knowing.

8. Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki

2007-06-22T22:13:00.000-04:00

This book was absolute crap. Total.

For some inexplicable reason this book is on the reading list for the 11th grade curriculum. It's a great book for 8th grade and would fit perfectly in that curriculum, especially in a Humanities class.

Set in California just as WW2 is starting for America, FtM is a memoir of Wakatsuki's experience in the largest of the American concentration camps. Her father is a fisherman who is accused of supplying oil to Japanese submarines - totally false charges. The family, along with thousands of other people of Japanese descent are ordered to be evacuated from the West Coast.

This book had the opportunity to be a rivetting memoir of a harrowing time for so many people. In fact, the conditions were so bad at one point that there were food riots at Manzanar. Wakatsuki gives this riot about three paragraphs, one of the them setting the context for the riot and the other two describing what went down.

Wakatsuki misses every chance she has to make us sympathetic to her plight, and makes Manazanar sound like sleepaway camp - and I'm not even exagerrating: at one point she complains that she hates her piano lessons, at another tells us she is so mad at her dad she is going to break her baton in half (her one, favorite hobby is baton twirling), and that she hates ballet classes because the teacher is too fat and awkward.

And she is overly fond of the phrase, "it's as if" which removes the meaning/gravity/merit of whatever she is describing that much further.

You could read it in less than two hours, but shouldn't.

It's especially disappointing that this book is in the 11th grade crriculum because putting it next to Huck Finn, Othello, or Salesman makes it look even weaker, yet I have to get up there and pretend it's worthy of deconstruction.

I did do a lot of context stuff with this book and we did discuss Executive Order 9066 (FDR), the apology (Reagan) and the reparations (Bush I). That helped a lot and gave the book some meaning.

Still, the whole experience of "teaching" this book left a bad taste in my brain.

7. Black Boy by Richard Wright

2007-05-14T19:58:00.000-04:00

I read this book to teach it.

I did a crap job teaching it, but will do better next year.

My kids thought me writing "Bring Black Boy" as HW was funny. And they pretended that Black Boy was a superhero name, pronouncing the title of the book boldly, like the movie announcer guy.

Autobiography about Richard Wright growing up in the Jim Crow South. What a crappy life.

The language was amazing though; the guy can really write.

"(The essence of the irony of the plight of the Negro in America, to me, is that he is doomed to live in isolation while those who condemn him seek the basest goals of any people on the face of the earth. Perhaps it would be possible for the Negro to become reconciled to his plight if he could be made to believe that his sufferings were for some remote, high, sacrificial end; but sharing the culture that condemns him, and seeing that a lust for trash is what blinds the nation to his claims, is what sets storms to rolling in his soul.)"

and from the page before:

"Our too-young and too-new America, lusty because it is lonely, aggressive because it is afraid, insists upon seeing the world in terms of good and bad, the holy and evil, the high and low, the white and the black; our America is frightened of fact, of history, of process, of necessity."

Strongly recommended. And get the copy that has both parts, Part One: Southern Night and Part Two: The Horror and the Glory, the way Wright intended it to be published.

Alive to all things and forgetting all.

2007-04-01T20:15:00.000-04:00

POEMS ON THE NAMING OF PLACES
I

IT was an April morning: fresh and clear
The Rivulet, delighting in its strength,
Ran with a young man's speed; and yet the voice
Of waters which the winter had supplied
Was softened down into a vernal tone.
The spirit of enjoyment and desire,
And hopes and wishes, from all living things
Went circling, like a multitude of sounds.
The budding groves seemed eager to urge on
The steps of June; as if their various hues
Were only hindrances that stood between
Them and their object: but, meanwhile, prevailed
Such an entire contentment in the air
That every naked ash, and tardy tree
Yet leafless, showed as if the countenance
With which it looked on this delightful day
Were native to the summer.--Up the brook
I roamed in the confusion of my heart,
Alive to all things and forgetting all.
At length I to a sudden turning came
In this continuous glen, where down a rock
The Stream, so ardent in its course before,
Sent forth such sallies of glad sound, that all
Which I till then had heard, appeared the voice
Of common pleasure: beast and bird, the lamb,
The shepherd's dog, the linnet and the thrush
Vied with this waterfall, and made a song,
Which, while I listened, seemed like the wild growth
Or like some natural produce of the air,
That could not cease to be. Green leaves were here;
But 'twas the foliage of the rocks--the birch,
The yew, the holly, and the bright green thorn,
With hanging islands of resplendent furze:
And, on a summit, distant a short space,
By any who should look beyond the dell,
A single mountain-cottage might be seen.
I gazed and gazed, and to myself I said,
"Our thoughts at least are ours; and this wild nook,
My EMMA, I will dedicate to thee."
----Soon did the spot become my other home,
My dwelling, and my out-of-doors abode.
And, of the Shepherds who have seen me there,
To whom I sometimes in our idle talk
Have told this fancy, two or three, perhaps,
Years after we are gone and in our graves,
When they have cause to speak of this wild place,
May call it by the name of EMMA'S DELL.
William Wordsworth - 1800.

jacob and julia

2007-03-30T05:34:00.000-04:00

just wanted to let you see how they were getting along...

housekeeping

2007-03-28T19:25:00.000-04:00

My cousin is in the April issue of Coastal Living. Chris and Beth. Pg 178.

My brother KC is going to be in some British magazine owned by Conde Naste. Updates to follow.

Respect beer: an article today in the NY Times about a website dedicated to beers, the beer-making industry, and all other things beer. I figured there had to be a million of them out there, but this one seems alright. And since I mentioned that I keep a notebook for my beer tasting, I thought I'd pass this one along.

songs unable to be made Loud Enough

2007-03-27T18:17:00.000-04:00

You know those songs you just can't get loud enough, no matter headphones, car or house speakers, it just doesn't get real enough, and maybe even in concert, when even on the floor it's just not cutting it because you can't get the music to actually break your skin and get all through you and it almost makes you forget you're a body?

These are mine; feel free to play along (no judging, beauty is in the eye of the eye of the beholder):

Dimuendo and Crescendo in Blue - Duke Ellington (live)
Eyes Of The World - Grateful Dead (live)
China Doll - Grateful Dead (live)
Sugar Magnolia - Grateful Dead (live)
Big Fat Hen - W Marsalis (studio)
Don't Follow - Alice in Chains (studio)

[edit 28 March]
Tupelo Honey - Van Morrison (I have a live version by Galactic that Kills)
Apparently Bob Dylan himself said that "the song Tupelo Honey always existed, it was Van Morrison who brought it to earth."

and you know how much I love musicals...

2007-03-23T05:42:00.000-04:00

Lyrics from the song "An English Teacher" from Bye Bye Birdie

Rosie:
He's going in the Army
It's the best thing he could do
Now we're free to start to do
What we wanted to
Albert, Albert, A-A-A-Albert!
I remember how you told me
I should trust you for a year
It would just be for a year
But it's eight years, Albert!
Eight long years, Albert!

Albert:
Rosie, it takes time to go to business.

Rosie:
It was only a sideline
That's what you said
You just needed some money
That's what you said
You were going to college and get ahead
Instead of being a music business bum
You were going to NYU
And become an English teacher
An English teacher, an English teacher.
If only you'd been an English teacher
We'd have a little apartment in Queens
You'd get a summer vacation
And we would know what life means
A man who's got his masters
Is really someone
How proud I'd be if you had become one
It could have been such a wonderful life
I could have been Mrs. Peterson
Mrs. Albert Peterson,
Mrs. Phi Beta Kappa Peterson,
The English teacher's wife!

Albert:
Oh Rosie, I told you as soon as I get a few bucks ahead...

Rosie:
You said it before, Albert!
And along came Conrad Birdie...
And it was goodbye Jeffery Josser
Hello William Morris
Goodbye NYU,
Hello all ALMAELOU
'Cause when you wrote Canard's first hit
Agha-bagha-boo
Then I knew that was it
You were through with English
Forever...
An English teacher is really someone
How proud I'd be if you had become one
It could have been such a wonderful life
I could have been Mrs. Peterson
Mrs. Albert Peterson,
Mrs. Phi Beta Kappa Peterson,
The English teacher's wife!