Robert Durick's Reading in 2013, third quarter

This is a continuation of my second quarter thread which followed my first quarter thread.

As I open the quarter I am reading Trapped in the Mirror and Much Ado About Nothing. The latter is an oddity; I should have read it one take, but I fell asleep.

I have The Martian Chronicles to read before a book group discussion on August 7, and Garden of the Evening Mists is on its way for discussion in the same group on September 4.

Temple of Dawn The Decay of the Angel is also on its way for discussion in Le Salon...'s reading of The Sea of Fertility series.

I have also read on my Nook the first seven pages of What Maisie Knew inspired by the very good movie showing now that is derived from it.

And I have all the promises I made to myself in the first messages of my earlier two threads for the year.

Robert

My 2013 reading so far, probably all books, but possibly articles or magazines. The links are to the message in which I mention what I have read, and in that message there will likely be a touchstone.

January 4, The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt
January 18, Mary Stuart by Friedrich Schiller
January 31, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

February 6, Anthill by E.O. Wilson
February 11, The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
February 26, Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima

March 2, Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt
March 5, Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen
March 14, Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff
March 25, The Iliad by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles

April 4, The Cambridge Companion to Homer edited by Robert Fowler
April 5, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
April 11, Drift by Rachel Maddow
April 19, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
April 29, The New Yorker Book of Cat Cartoons

June 10, Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies
June 12, The Narcissism Epidemic by Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell
June 14, Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima
June 21, Quantum by Manjit Kumar
June 24, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

July 5, Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
July 22, The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

August 1, Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima
August 8, The Decay of the Angel by Yukio Mishima

September 4, The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
September 11, The Mystery of Existence edited with commentary by John Leslie and Robert Lawrence Kuhn
September 18, Einstein's Mistakes by Hans C. Ohanian
September 22, Boomer by Linda Grant Niemann
September 25, Hiking Through by Paul Stutzman
September 30, Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Plays, concerts, movies, lectures, screenings, and any other entertainments I might want to mention with links to the messages in which I mention them:

January 2, Jack Reacher, movie theater, mainstream
January 3, Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, 3D movie theater, limited release
January 3, Les Misérables, IMAX equivalent (Titan XC), mainstream
January 5, Les Troyens, Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition, opera
January 9, Labyrinth, IMAX equivalent (Titan XC), one night screening
January 13, Zero Dark Thirty, IMAX equivalent (Titan XC), mainstream
January 19, Maria Stuarda, Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition, opera
January 20. Rust and Bone, movie theater, foreign (France, Belgium)
January 26, Quartet, movie theater, limited release
January 30, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, 3D IMAX equivalent, mainstream
January 30, The Raw and the Cooked, museum theater, documentary
January 31, The Magistrate, movie theater, National Theater Live screening

February 2, Stand Up Guys, movie theater, limited release
February 6, Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013, Animation, movie theater, limited release
February 6, Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013, Live Action, movie theater, limited release
February 7, Step up to the Plate, museum theater, documentary
February 10, Lohengrin, museum screening from La Scala, opera
February 13, Die Hard, IMAX equivalent, one day and night marathon revival
February 13, Die Hard 2, IMAX equivalent, one day and night marathon revival
February 13, Die Hard with a Vengeance, IMAX equivalent, one day and night marathon revival
February 13, Live Free or Die Hard, IMAX equivalent, one day and night marathon revival
February 13, A Good Day to Die Hard, IMAX equvalent, mainstream
February 16, Rigoletto, Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition, opera
February 17, Amour, movie theater, limited release
February 20, The Savoy King: Chick Webb & the Music That Changed America, museum theater, documentary

March 2, Parsifal, Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition, opera
March 4, Jack the Giant Slayer, 3D IMAX, mainstream
March 4, Side Effects, movie theater, limited release I think
March 9, West of Memphis, movie theater, documentary
March 16, Francesca da Rimini, Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition, opera
March 23, Dawn Upshaw and Gilbert Kalish, museum theater, live concert
March 26, To Catch a Thief, museum theater, revival series
March 30, The Gatekeepers, movie theater, documentary

April 3, G. I. Joe: Retaliation, IMAX equivalent, mainstream
April 10, The NeverEnding Story, IMAX equivalent, one night revival
April 13, Trance, movie theater, limited release
April 14, The Place Beyond the Pines, movie theater, limited release
April 20, The Sapphires, movie theater, foreign (Australia)
April 20, 56 Up, movie theater, documentary
April 21, No, movie theater, foreign (Chile)
April 22, Oblivion, IMAX, mainstream
April 25, Na Kupu Mana'olana, museum theater, documentary
April 27, Giulio Cesare, Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition, opera (first act only)
April 28, Chasing Ice, museum theater, documentary

May 3, More Than Honey, museum theater, documentary
May 4, Mud, movie theater, limited distribution
May 5, Iron Man Three, IMAX 3D, mainstream
May 11, Jules and Jim, museum theater, foreign (France)
May 15, Une Estonienne à Paris, museum theater, foreign (Estonia, France, and, they say, Belgium)
May 18, Lore, movie theater, foreign (Germany, Australia)
May 19, Star Trek Into Darkness, IMAX 3D, mainstream
May 22, Pieta, movie theater, foreign (Korea)
May 23, 42, movie theater, mainstream (but running out of steam)

June 1, Frances Ha, movie theater, limited release
June 2, Fast & Furious 6, IMAX equivalent, mainstream
June 8, At Any Price, movie theater, limited release
June 15, Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's, movie theater, documentary
June 18, The Hangover Part III, movie theater, mainstream
June 18, Tai Chi Hero, movie theater, foreign (China)
June 18, The Internship, movie theater, mainstream
June 19, Man of Steel, IMAX 3D, mainstream
June 22, Before Midnight, movie theater, limited release
June 22, Kon Tiki, movie theater, limited release
June 24, This Is the End, movie theater, mainstream
June 25, The Untold Story: Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawaii, movie theater, documentary
June 25, Il Trittico, movie theater, opera
June 26, Yojimbo, museum theater, foreign (Japan)
June 27, Seven Samurai, museum theater, foreign (Japan)
June 28, The Bling Ring, movie theater, limited release
June 29, The East, movie theater, limited release
June 29, Much Ado About Nothing, movie theater, limited release

July 2, The Hidden Fortress, museum theater, foreign (Japan)
July 6, What Maisie Knew, movie theater, limited release
July 8, The Heat, movie theater, mainstream
July 9, The Lone Ranger, IMAX equivalent, mainstream
July 10, Armida, Metropolitan Opera high definition, summer encore
July 13, Twenty Feet from Stardom, movie theater, documentary
July 21, Only God Forgives, movie theater, limited release, kinda foreign
July 24, RED 2, movie theater, mainstream
July 24, Fight Club, IMAX equivalent, one night revival
July 27, Fill the Void, movie theater, foreign (Israel)
July 31, Only God Forgives, movie theater, limited release, pretty foreign

August 3, The Attack, movie theater, foreign (Lebanon, France, Qatar, Belgium)
August 7, Fruitvale Station, movie theater, limited release
August 10, Blue Jasmine, movie theater, limited release
August 13, Elysium, IMAX equivalent, mainstream
August 14, We're the Millers, movie theater, mainstream
August 17, The Act of Killing, movie theater, foreign documentary (putatively Denmark but mostly Indonesia)
August 19, Lee Daniels' [sic] The Butler, movie theater, mainstream
August 20, Don Carlo, movie theater, opera
August 24, The Spectacular Now, movie theater, limited release
August 26, Drug War, movie theater, foreign (China)
August 30, The Grandmaster, IMAX equivalent, mainstream
August 31, Blackfish, movie theater, documentary

September 1, La Traviata, museum theater, opera
September 3, Traviata et nous, museum theater, foreign (France) documentary
September 7, Short Term 12, movie theater, limited release
September 8, Walker Art Center's Internet Cat Video Festival, museum theater, feline
September 14, Hannah Arendt, museum theater, foreign
September 29, Enough Said, movie theater, limited release

Notes:

January independent movies to see
February independent movies to see
March independent movies to see
May independent movies to see
Summer 2013 movies to miss

Books, and maybe CD's and DVD's, that I have acquired in 2013 so far. The links below are usually to the message in which I comment on the acquisition. There should be a touchstone in that message.

Books

1. January 2, Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 1 translated by Thomas Cleary
2. January 2, Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 2 translated by Thomas Cleary
3. January 2, Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 3 translated by Thomas Cleary
4. January 2, Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 4 translated by Thomas Cleary
5. January 2, Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 5 translated by Thomas Cleary
6. January 5, Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt
7. January 5, The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
8. January 12, Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
9. January 12, Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima
10. January 15, The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo
11. January 15, The English Language by Laurel J. Brinton and Leslie K. Arnovick
12. January 15, The Maine Woods by Henry D. Thoreau and edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer
13. January 15, The Book of Enoch translated by R.H. Charles
14. January 15, The Conquest of a Continent by W. Bruse Lincoln
15. January 15, Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life by Mark Francis
16. January 16, A House for Hope by John Buehrens and Rebecca Ann Parker
17. January 19, The Language Wars by Henry Hitchings
18. January 26, I Could Read the Sky by Timothy O'Grady, photographs by Steve Pyke
19. January 26, Moscow, December 25, 1991, by Conor O'Clery
20. January 26, Soul Dust, by Nicholas Humphrey
21. January 26, Reading Music, by Marc Schonbrun
22. January 26, The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones
23. January 26, The Secret Life of Pronouns by James W. Pennebaker
24. January 28, B.S. Johnson Omnibus by B.S. Johnson

25. February 3, Quiet by Susan Cain
26. February 3, Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander
27. February 7, The Art of Living According to Joe Beef by Frederic Morin, David McMillan, and Meredith Erickson
28. February 7, Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith
29. February 9, Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare and edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen
30. February 9, The Victrola Book of the Opera by Samuel Holand Rous
31. February 9, Opera People by Robert M. Jacobson
32. February 9, Fifty Years of Glyndebourne by John Julius Norwich
33. February 9, Opera edited by Rudolf Hartmann
34. February 9, Opera by David Ewen
35. February 9, Opera! by Karyl Lynn Zietz
36. February 11, The Iliad by Homer and translated by Robert Fagles
37. February 12, Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
38. February 19, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
39. February 23, A History of the Connecticut River by Wick Griswold
40. February 23, The Wisdom to Know the Difference by Eileen Flanagan
41. February 23, The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction by Wendy Northcutt

42. March 4, A Brief Guide to Jane Austen by Charles Jennings
43. March 4, Mapping the Lands and Waters of Hawai'i by Riley M. Moffat and Gary L. Fitzpatrick
44. March 6, Trapeze by Simon Mawer
45. March 6, Drift by Rachel Maddow
46. March 7, A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
47. March 9, Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff
48. March 9, Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon
49. March 9, Man in the Woods by Scott Spencer
50. March 13, Countee Cullen Collected Poems edited by Major Jackson
51. March 16, Beloved by Toni Morrison
52. March 16, When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson
53. March 16, Revelations by Elaine Pagels
54. March 16, Complete Price Guide to Watches 2013 by Tom Engle, Richard E. Gilbert, and Cooksey Shugart
55. March 23, The Ninth by Harvey Sachs
56. March 23, Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton
57. March 26, The Cambridge Companion to Homer edited by Robert Fowler
58. March 27, James Weldon Johnson, Writings, by James Weldon Johnson, edited by William L. Andrews
59. March 27, Chesnutt, Stories, Novels, and Essays by Charles W. Chesnutt, edited by Werner Sollors

60. April 11, Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima
61. April 13, Red Star Rogue by Kenneth Sewell with Clint Richmond
62. April 13, Blind Man's Bluff by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew with Annette Lawrence Drew
63. April 13, What Money Can't Buy by Michael J. Sandel
64. April 17, Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden
65. April 17, 1493 by Charles C. Mann
66. April 20, The Decalogue Through the Centuries edited by Jeffrey P. Greenman and Timothy Larsen
67. April 20, New Beethoven Letters translated and annotated by Donald W. MacArdle and Ludwig Misch
68. April 27, Unintended Consequences by Edward Conard
69. April 27, The New Yorker Book of Cat Cartoons by a whole bunch of cartoonists

70. May 1, Lost Kingdom by Julia Flynn Siler
71. May 1, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
72. May 1, The Narcissism Epidemic by Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell
73. May 1, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollen
74. May 1, Meat by Susan Bourette
75. May 2, The Realm of Prester John by Robert Silverberg
76. May 2, Wild by Cheryl Strayed
77. May 4, The Cat by Edeet Ravel
78. May 7, Jem (and Sam) by Ferdinand Mount
79. May 7, The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
80. May 10, Google Secrets by Yvette Davis
81. May 10, Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies
82. May 11, American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-1956 edited by Gary K. Wolfe
83. May 11, American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1956-1958 edited by Gary K. Wolfe
84. May 11, Cather, Early Novels and Stories, by Willa Cather and edited by Sharon O'Brien
85. May 11, Cather, Later Novels, by Willa Cather and edited by Sharon O'Brien
86. May 11, Cather, Stories, Poems, and Other Writings, by Willa Cather and edited by Sharon O'Brien
87. May 11, The Seventeen Solutions by Ralph Nader
88. May 15, American Journal of Numismatics 24 edited by Andrew R. Meadows and Oliver D. Hoover
89. May 15, Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
90. May 18, The Toughest Show on Earth by Joseph Volpe
91. May 18, Opera Anecdotes by Ethan Mordden
92. May 18, Operatic Lives by Alberto Savinio
93. May 18, Opera 101 by Fred Plotkin
94. May 18, The Operagoer's Guide by M. Owen Lee
95. May 18, The Maestro Myth by Norman Lebrecht
96. May 18, An Illustrated Guide to Composers of Opera by Peter Gammond
97. May 18, Demented by Ethan Mordden
98. May 25, The Black Count by Tom Reiss
99. May 31, The Art of Happiness by Epicurus
100. May 31, Travels with Epicurus by Daniel Klein

101. June 5, Big Machine by Victor Lavalle
102. June 5, Wild Dogs by Helen Humphreys
103. June 5, Melissa Miller by Susie Kalil
104. June 8, Words for the Taking by Neal Bowers
105. June 8, Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood edited by Mary Strong
106. June 8, Something Wicked this Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
107. June 8, Quantum by Manjit Kumar
108. June 12, Einstein's Mistakes by Hans C. Ohanian
109. June 12, The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
110. June 14, John Milton by Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns
111. June 15, Art As Experience by John Dewey
112. June 15, The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco
113. June 15, The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer
114. June 15, Trapped in the Mirror by Elan Golomb
115. June 20, The Annotated Collected Poems by Edward Thomas and edited by Edna Longley
116. June 29, Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
117. June 29, The Most of P.G. Wodehouse by P.G. Wodehouse

118. July 8, Longitude by Dava Sobel
119. July 8, A Glossary of Literary Terms by M.H. Abrams
120. July 9, American Transcendentalism by Philip F. Gura
121. July 9, The World of the Oratorio by Kurt Pahlen
122. July 9, The Literary 100 by Daniel S. Burt
123. July 9, Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
125. July 9, Dorothy Parker by Marion Meade
126. July 12, The Garden of the Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
127. July 12, The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima
128. July 24, The Mystery of Existence edited by John Leslie and Robert Lawrence Kuhn
129. July 27, Thought and Language by Lev Vygotsky
130. July 27, Coming Apart by Charles Murray
131. July 27, Predator Nationby Charles H. Ferguson
132. July 27, Dearie by Bob Spitz

133. August 1, The Oxford Handbook of Transcendentalism edited by Joel Myerson, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, and Laura Dassow Walls
134. August 1, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Syntax edited by Guglielmo Cinque and Richard S. Kayne
135. August 5, The Decay of the Angel by Yukio Mishima
136. August 6, The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology edited by Paul K. Moser
137. August 9, Gödel's Way by Gregory Chaitin, Newton da Costa, and Francisco Antonio Doria
138. August 10, The Indian Heritage of America by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.
139. August 10, The Portable Chaucer edited and translated by Theodore Morrison
140. August 19, Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
141. August 21, Boomer by Linda Grant Niemann
142. August 22, The Capitalism Papers by Jerry Mander
143. August 24, Our Sunshine by Robert Drewe
144. August 24, Fortune by Robert Drewe
145. August 26, Dersu the Trapper by V. K. Arseniev and translated by Malcolm Burr
146. August 31, Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
147. August 31, What It Is Like To Go To War by Karl Marlantes

148. September 3, Voices of Long Term Sobriety by A.A. Grapevine, Inc.
149. September 10, The New Jerusalem Bible
150. September 10, Ezra Pound: Poet, volume 1, by A. David Moody
151. September 10, Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor
152. September 14, How to Read a Photograph by Ian Jeffrey
153. September 14, Ansel Adams in Color introduced, commented on, and edited by a bunch of people but mostly by Ansel Adams
154. September 14, Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: The Hawai'i Pictures by Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
155. September 14, Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities by Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and maybe a couple of others
156. September 23, Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
157. September 26, How Music Works by David Byrne
158. September 26, The Box by Marc Levinson
159. September 28, Hope, a Tragedy, by Shalom Auslander
160. September 28, Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick
161. September 28, Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
162. September 28, From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp
163. September 28, The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane
164. September 28, Germania by Simon Winder
165. September 28, Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks
166. September 28, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
167. September 28, A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee
168. September 28, Griftopia by Matt Taibbi
169. September 28, You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier
170. September 28, Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs
171. September 28, The Pot and How to Use It by Roger Ebert

CD's

1. January 26, Cold Fact, Rodriguez
2. January 26, Babel, Mumford & Sons
3. January 26, Sigh No More, Mumford & Sons

4. February 23, Love Ella, The Original Versions, Ella Fitzgerald

5. March 14, Strictly Jive, Chick Webb

DVD's

1. February 2, The Heart Is a Loney Hunter
2. April 13, BBC Jane Austen set
3. May 25, Memphis

As the original seems to come and go but is best in the original I am adding an alternate without removing the one that's already here. Two of this little guy is good.

I had feared that I had missed The Hidden Fortress*, but it was shown again last night at the museum. I could see at least some of the inspiration for Star Wars, two clowns on a desert planet, a roving princess who has to reestablish her reign. But the movie seems mostly to be about climbing and sliding back on gravelly slopes. The movie is okay and is a cultural curiosity, but it is not necessary.

Before that the museum screened a couple of episodes of Samurai 7†, a television series based on Seven Samurai. I saw a couple of episodes earlier; I will not be seeing any more of them. They were, I think, my first exposure to anime. From this experience I am not attracted to the genre.

Robert

I haven't fully decided whether I will try to see The Lone Ranger, but my affection for trains is leading me in that direction.

Robert

>Mr. Durick,
We went and saw it yesterday. It was fun but a little more violent and gruesome than expected. The white horse (Silver, of course) was the best part of the show. Tonto throws in some funny one-liners too. There's a big finish with trains.

It made me want to watch the old Lone Ranger episodes again. XD

I expect that I'll try to get to it if I can do my trying while it is still on one of the giant screens in town.

Tomorrow it looks like I'll be taking in What Maisie Knew*.

Robert

Mr. Durick, have you seen any of Hayao Miyazaki's films? Those would qualify as anime. I've really enjoyed the ones that I've seen, even those that are targeted at children. There are also classics and highly-regarded films like Akira or Grave of the Fireflies.

I haven't seen any of those. I'll try to file the names in my recognition memory so when I stumble across one I'll know to pay attention, but I don't think I'll go hunting for any of them.

Robert

So, if it is a play, one would normally watch it in one sitting, with intermissions or, as they say at the National Theater, intervals. So one might think it likely that when one reads a play it would be fitting to read it in one sitting. In recent years I have tried to do that, but I failed entirely with Much Ado About Nothing. I read two acts, the third act, and finally the fourth and fifth acts over a period of about five days. I read it mostly for some clarification (who is this Don John to take it upon himself to mess up people's lives?) and to see what I missed with the cuts necessary to the movie.

Don John was a bastard who fought his family and then was taken back into the family, but he held a grudge. The cuts were judicious. The movie missed some humor and some side issues or development, but nothing big. What was gone was not the peak of Shakespeare's game. Still the bard being the bard there was some glorious language. I noticed that the language isn't merely glorious; it is also clever, befitting a comedy of course. This is a rich enough play even if it is much ado about nothing.

(It might also be said of largely clever language that is exceptional that it is not merely clever; it is glorious.)

Robert

Nice comments about Much Ado About Nothing, Robert. I intend to see the production at the Old Vic this fall, which will star James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave:

Much Ado About Nothing

Thanks for the link to the Old Vic page, Darryl. I think that I have thought of Beatrice and Benedick as young folk, but there is nothing in the play that I remember forbidding them from being older. The older performers may be an interesting take on the story.

Robert

Even if I am not particularly well read in him, I am a fan of Henry James. As I have said often enough I am not a fan of anachronistic productions, well, except for the exceptions. The reviews of What Maisie Knew* were favorable enough to lead me to it, and I am so glad they did. There are no missteps as far as I'm concerned in the production. The characters are right for the story, and they are acted just right. The story is a human one and rich enough to bear the telling.

The child actress brings up comparison with Quvenzhané Wallis, but the roles are so distinctive that I can only say the performances were both exquisite. Beasts of the Southern Wild† is the richer movie because it is about (and delivers on) life, the universe, and everything, but this movie is up ahead of the other very good movies of the year, Mud say, and The Place Beyond the Pines as a story about human relations.

Robert

Two movies and two book lots in two days.

I stepped into the used book store on the way to The Heat at the local multiplex on Monday. For a dollar each:

Longitude by Dava Sobel. For a dollar I thought I ought to have this finally. I know some of what's in it and should probably put it all together by reading it one day. I have happily read her Galileo's Daughter so I don't know why I have been reluctant to pick up this one.

A Glossary of Literary Terms by M.H. Abrams. I think that my first course as an English major, a sophomore course, was led by Mr. Abrams. He is a respectable professor. I like reference books. I even like literary study even though I think I don't get it after all, especially the new stuff.

On Tuesday on the way to lunch before going on to The Lone Ranger I parked across the street from the big Friends of the Library's daily outlet and went in after lunch. I put it into LibraryThing Local when that function was new, but this was my first visit to the store.

The Literary 100 by Daniel S. Burt. Although I already had his The Chronology of American Literature, my attention was drawn to this author by @EnriqueFreeque in Le Salon... back when he was active there. It turns out that I already have this book.

Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. I don't know whether I already have a version of this, but this is an annotated version edited by John E. Hallwas.

Dorothy Parker, What Fresh Hell Is This? by Marion Meade. I like Parker even though I think that the whole Algonquin Roundtable clique might be rated more literary than they really were. I have seen a movie about her life, and my curiosity could lead me back to the book.

American Transcendentalism by Philip F. Gura. I think of myself as being an Emersonian transcendentalist although I often enough disagree with the sage of Concord (conquer nature any one?). I am not surprised that I already have a version of this book. I bought the book because I didn't recognize the author's name.

The World of the Oratorio by Kurt Pahlen. This also about other big musical works which are listed in the subtitle. I think that the only oratorio I have paid attention to is The Messiah, and I like it. I'd like to know more about what it is and about what the other kinds of work are (I have listened to a lot of masses and to, at least once, all of the Bach cantatas).

Robert

What I hoped for from the movie The Heat* was that it be fun. From the reviews, from having seen Melissa McCarthy† in Bridesmaids‡, and from the previews I thought that there was a good chance of that. The movie delivered. There is some cheerful violence. One or two scenes seemed to have been phoned in. A couple of others seemed to have been inspired by if not borrowed from other movies. But it was fun. Melissa McCarthy's foul mouth is a treasure.

The reviews for The Lone Ranger**, which were wrong, made me think that I could miss it. The constant attention in the press to it, the notion that railroads featured in it, and avidmom's take on it convinced me to see for myself. I decided that for the scenery and the railroads I needed to see it on a big screen which was an IMAX equivalent screen in town. That paid off in the detail, despite that it was computer generated or in models, that I could lose myself in. The violence is much more vicious than the violence in The Heat, but the movie is still very much a comic play. There is a great giggle in a "Don't do that again!" scene at the back end of the movie, but the humor is throughout the movie. There is a corny old time western good prevails story behind it all. I liked this movie.

Neither of them are think pieces. Never will we say, "As Verbinski showed us in his quintessential Western..."

There is an American Indian take on Tonto in this film. The take linked to finds him inoffensive because he is fictional.

Robert

Fun reviewing your year. I want to see Tonto and Heat also, now more than ever.

The Heat did not need a very big screen, but I recommend it for The Lone Ranger

Robert

Glad you liked "The Lone Ranger." The article linked to about Tonto was good too. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "When will our sense of humor reassert itself and dominate our foolish fears?"

I hadn't seen Armida when the Metropolitan Opera first screened it in 2010. It is about a sorceress so the story should be good. The sorceress is played by Renée Fleming so the singing should be good. So I overcame inertia to get out to their summer encore screening of the opera.

The story didn't compel my attention. It is told poorly and ends abruptly. It is probably just an excuse for the music; operas that don't have a compelling narrative are not my favorites, and I know that opera story lines can be bizarre. But the work was very musical. There was almost none of the problem of not being able to hear the music for the singing. And there was a long ballet of some interest. Renée Fleming lived up to expectation.

This was pleasant to listen to as I watched the story such as it is to unfold, but I won't be buying up DVD's of the work to see various interpretations of it.

I wish that they were rerunning Giulio Cesare this summer, but I don't see it on the list.

Robert

I had two packages from Barny Noble in today's mail, two books bought with coupons for two different reading groups.

The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima, the third volume of The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, is being discussed in Le Salon...

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, the very well received novel by readers on LibraryThing, will be the subject of discussion in my church book group in September.

Although I haven't been reading I am reading a couple of other books and don't know how to fit these in. Maybe something will happen.

Robert

From Trains magazine at Natural Tunnels State Park, Virginia

Robert

Some marvelous, very professional singers participated in the greatest glories of American pop music from the fifties up through a diminished present day. Some of them have the musical temper of stars and should be; some of them are just very good at what they do and deserve to be hired over and over. Twenty Feet from Stardom* is supposed to be their story, and to a great degree it is. I wish the story had been made to cohere more. I wish there had be a few straight recordings of whole songs with attention paid to these singers. I wish...

This is a very entertaining film. And it is not uninformative. It draws on a lot of historical footage and some serious interviews. I couldn't have done better. But it just seemed like it could have been better.

Robert

PS I would like to know who the blonde is.

R

I would have liked to have posted this article in the Interesting Articles thread, but it is not literary, so I'll keep it here. I may have posted this top illusion in an earlier thread, but I think that I have never posted the article before.

Robert

>12 Mr.Durick: - Glad to read your comments about Much Ado About Nothing. I haven't read it since middle school (when I read it for the first time and saw the Emma Thompson movie) so was wondering about the cuts also. I do remember Don John being a rather boring villain - Shakespeare has so many great ones. Also didn't help that he was played by Keanu Reeves in the Thompson film.

>17 Mr.Durick: - Good to hear that you found The Lone Ranger worthwhile - I read mixed reviews. Any Guillaume Tell references?

>21 Mr.Durick: - I agree that Armida was just sort of so-so, but I always like seeing weird operas. Hmmm....I think some of my favorite operas are ones that might be said to not have a compelling narrative - like Tristan und Isolde or Pelleas et Melisande. I think they're compelling of course, but some people are bored to tears by those two.

I don't know that I would recognize any Guillaume Tell references. I'd like to hear about them.

I've seen Pelleas et Melisande only once, although I also read it as Maeterlinck's play. I found it enthralling, but more after the fact than during -- like when it was over I realized that it was special. I remember it as having a love story, though, and an unresolved mystery about Melisande's origins. I remember that it was one of the first operas I saw without arias, at least that I could discern. I haven't seen Tristan und Isolde but may have a DVD of it here somewhere.

Robert

Regarding the movie Only God Forgives*:

DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE UNLESS YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT YOU MUST. It is very violent, explicitly and viciously so. It is directed in a very mannered way, which may be the source of all of the sour reviews -- if it is not watched deliberately it is likely very tedious.

I didn't know what to make of this movie from the trailers. I pretty much expected not to like it, though, from the one star review carried in the local paper and the mediocre rating on IMDb. I may be the only one who likes it. As the movie progressed I thought that it either was as bad as the review said, that it was that bad but there were things to talk about, or that it was very good. And I leaned more and more to thinking it very good. It is rich enough that I want to see it again.

The filming is mannered. We can see an actor start a scene. We can see the construction of the film from vignettes that progress the plot from moment to moment and that reveal the thematic elements as they are built. What that does for the viewer is it shows that the film is constructed as a revelation. It is about life and the continuity of it up against the fragility of it, a big theme, and it is about parenthood. It think it is likely about other things too.

Art conceals art except when it is bad or when it wants to reveal itself. This film wants to reveal itself. So there are scenes that are clearly constructed to represent that scene, banquettes on which a single character waits, for example, but without a clearcut setting. The film is mostly dark and lets in light only when that is important. It can be pretty. There is a fight that is not only choreographed but represents choreography.

Ryan Gosling is entirely adequate to the role, but he is not necessary to it as he was to the laconic driver in Drive. Vithaya Pansringarm made me believe in an angel of vengeance.

Oh, my.

Robert

Ray Bradbury is a beloved American author. He died last year. One of the women in my book group wanted to read something by him, and the group decided that each of us could read anything by him. Then we'd discuss his writing in some as yet unexplained order. In June I read Something Wicked This Way Comes. The story did not beckon to me although it was easy enough to read. I remember much of it, but nothing has stuck with me as something that should stick with me.

Last night I finished The Martian Chronicles. It also was easy to read. It warns us that we may destroy ourselves. There were some interesting ideas, and there was some interesting use of language, but much of it was florid or merely clever.

I may read a story or two from Bradbury Stories, but I will mostly leave the author his fame without looking too closely at his writing, beyond what I've seen so far.

Robert

Stealing image. I love him.

This one is going to come alive again -- giant beauty.

Robert

On my return from my quasi-daily walk today I was happily surprised to find my latest Barny Noble order in my mailbox.

The Mystery of Existence edited by John Leslie and Robert Lawrence Kuhn. As far as I'm concerned the interesting question is why is there something rather than nothing. This is a collection of essays on the matter collected by a philosophy professor and a "public intellectual."

Robert

>29 Mr.Durick: - I remember liking Bradbury when younger but on re-reading Something Wicked This Way Comes a couple of years ago I had the same reaction as you. I also thought Bradbury's writing was overly florid (if he could add an necessary adjective to a sentence he did) and the tale is very thin, lacking any real substance. In the end I found that I liked the idea behind the book more than the book itself.

I saw a film like that last night, where the ideas behind it or the ideas that I could impute to it were more interesting than the production.

But first I saw RED 2*. I liked the film's predecessor, and the reviews supported my seeing it again. Also RED are my initials. I saw it on a fairly big screen to pre-position myself for the evening movie, and even though it didn't really need the big screen I liked it. There are some good scenic shots of London and of Paris. The movie is about a lunatic and his nuclear weapon. But mostly it is about the fun these characters have, so the movie is fun and funny. And Helen Mirren is beautiful. Oh yeah, there's some action movie violence, some of which is funny. After a car blows up early in the movie, one of its doors comes to ground, on fire; why would a car door burn? Answer: action movie. I enjoyed it.

Then I saw Fight Club† in a one night revival on an IMAX equivalent screen. I had not seen the film nor had I read the book before last night. The idea that one could lose one's existential despair by joining a group of men in being violent to one another is fairly interesting, I suppose, and a number of other matters came up. They didn't come up substantially enough for me to reflect on them. There is also a Silver Linings Playbook‡ lunatic romance in it, but the latter movie got it right and did it clearly. I think that it is just as well that I have seen this movie, but it is not special. I will not be reading the novel to refine my understanding.

Robert

Not content at home I went out on Saturday as soon as I could and caught the first movie on my list coming up at the multiplex across town. It was Fill the Void*.

I want to call it a Hasidic version of The Age of Innocence, and it may, ceteris paribus, be. But I can't hold to that too much because there are too many matters in which to trace the equalities. The void to be filled is one of affection and family necessity. In the Hasidic world that family necessity is compelling. The men decide many things. But emotions have their place, and women have a say. I was not absorbed by the movie. Most of what I got out of it was the images of conservative Judaism in Israel today, in the home and in individual lives and the small coteries around them.

There is one fascinating and delightful scene of a woman breaking into a consultation with a rabbi to seek some important advice.

Robert

After the movie, as more often than not, I went upstairs to Barny Noble's. I found an issue of Pen World magazine that I think I didn't already have. I looked around a little and lit on the buy two get one free table. I really wanted Predator Nation by Charles H. Ferguson about the theft of America; it was already on my wishlist.

I was drawn to Coming Apart by Charles Murray putatively about the great gap between classes in America.

So I had to decide on a third. I was drawn mostly to Dearie by Bob Spitz, whoever he is, which is a life of Julia Child. Earlier in life I wanted to be a foodie and a competent home cook, and in that light I used to watch her teevee program. So I got it.

Just a little while after that I passed by the free book shelf outside a thrift shop at the church where I was going to attend a function. There was Thought and Language by Lev Vygotsky. I don't know whether general semantics, which I think that this is an example of, is a fascinating mode of reflection on life and social structures or bunkum. For the price I thought I could have the book in my house.

Robert

(no words)

In the face of its ending its local run on Thursday, on Wednesday night I crossed town to see Only God Forgives* again.

My warning not to see it unless you know that you must stands. It remains to me an exquisite film. As excruciating as the violence is, it is styled to a tee. The deliberateness of the directing and acting, which could look ham handed, is immensely absorbing. It is not quite a great film, but it is an exemplar of what a film can do.

Robert

I have gotten some use out of the Oxford Handbooks, so when they sent an e-mail promoting them awhile back I braved their demanding (and not very good) web site and found three of the heavy books to order at half price. Two of them were in the mail today.

The Oxford Handbook of Transcendentalism edited by Joel Myerson, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, and Laura Dassow Walls has been on my waiting-for-the-paperback wishlist for a long time now. With this discount I decided to give up on the wait although now I have a heavier book to juggle, and I won't be able to bend the covers back on themselves. I've read quite a bit about Emerson and his times, but not so much about the movement he was part of. I am hopeful that this is not one of those books that disappears and becomes just something that I know I have. I like to think of myself as a transcendentalist.

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Syntax edited by Guglielmo Cinque and Richard S. Kayne deals with linguistic universals. My getting it is a nod to my history in which I spent some time in linguistics. It is material I want to know, but it is not calling to me like the transcendentalism book.

Robert

I have finished Temple of Dawn, the third volume in Yukio Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy, for discussion in Le Salon.... I don't know yet what to make of it, but I have ordered the last volume, and Barny claims that it is winging its way towards me now.

Robert

I see what you mean about the lions :)

Some interesting reading here. I've read Longitude by Dava Sobel and seen the wonderful documentary based on it, recommended. Great pick up for a dollar, must get around to reading her Galileo's Daughter, you may have bumped it up the list for me.

I had seen the trailers for The Attack* and expected the reviews to be good. Because they were I saw the movie Saturday. It is set in the politics of Palestine versus Israel, set in Nablus and Tel Aviv, but it is about the people and who and how they are. A very successful Arab surgeon in Tel Aviv loses his Christian wife and looks into what happened, which requires going into their home city and confronting issues that he hadn't dealt with as an assimilated resident of Israel. As an exploration of character the film is very good.

Robert

OOO I need to see that! Are you going to read the book?

I think that the movie was enough. The book has received a mixed reaction on LibraryThing, although that seems partly because the reviewers wanted a book about the conflict and not about the people.

Robert

The USPS tracking system said that I'd be receiving two books today. My mailbox had one book in it. It is The Decay of the Angel by Yukio Mishima the last volume in his Sea of Fertility tetralogy. I don't expect that it will be too long before I get to this, although the discussion in Le Salon... seems stopped in its tracks.

Robert

What can we know? How can we know what know? How are is our knowledge constrained by limitations on what we can know? And so forth. So in today's mail, finally, there was The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology edited by Paul K. Moser. As important as these questions are and what they tell me about my thinking, I am amazed at how little I have been able to bring myself to read about them. I hope these essays will offer a lure and that I will get somewhere on these matters.

Robert

You just took me and probably many others right back to an early philosophy class. Your book might be an interesting way to jump back in.

I'm caught up. Maybe nonsense to post that, but I've working through your threads since Tuesday. I was about 170 post behind.

Always enjoy your film reviews -- you have much more tolerance for violence than I, but I take your recommendations seriously.

Wednesday afternoon I cried at the violence in a film, but I wouldn't have not seen it. Fruitvale Station* is the dramatization of the murder of an imperfectly innocent young man by a cop who attacked him for being a black youth in the wrong place. The movie has its longueurs showing the humanity of Oscar Grant, but that was necessary, and it all fit. Oscar Grant had not always been true to his girlfriend; he had not been a reliable employee; he had supplemented his income dealing drugs and used some of them. He loved his mom and treated her well; he loved his four year old daughter and treated her well; he tried to live a life that would not take him back to prison.

His mother talked him into taking BART into San Francisco, known as Frisco in this movie, to celebrate New Year's Eve to avoid traffic and the problems of drinking and driving. An opponent from prison spotted him on the train home and started a fight. The BART cops responded, beat up and harassed people, and murdered Oscar Grant.

I cried.

Robert

Sounds heartbreaking.

I don't watch movies very often, but I'll make it a point to see Fruitvale Station. Thanks for mentioning it, Robert.

No Fruitvale Station for me. I'm half way through Betty Shabazz Surviving Malcolm X and it's killing me. Just making me sick.

I finished reading The Decay of the Angel by Yukio Mishima last night. I'll let the informed folks of Le Salon... explain to me what I read. That ends the Sea of Fertility tetralogy. It also ends my reading of Mishima.

Robert

How pervasive or how widely applicable is Gödel's incompleteness theorem? Well some New Age priests would find it almost everywhere and say some things that seem just plain unfounded. But it may be applicable to a large part of mathematics. The book Gödel's Way by Gregory Chaitin, Newton da Costa, and Francisco Antonio Doria claims that "In a nutshell, this book makes the case for the following claim: Undecidability and incompleteness are everywhere in mathematics."

The book was in the mail from Barny Noble this afternoon.

Robert

Blue Jasmine* is Woody Allen's 2013 movie about the dissolution of a woman of privilege. He allows his title character to be as wretched as it takes to tell the story. His people are, if not entirely real, reasonably real. I think that the critics are probably right in admiring this film.

I didn't enjoy it.

Robert

Walking by the free book shelves Saturday night I found and took The Indian Heritage of America by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., and The Portable Chaucer edited and translated by Theodore Morrison. The latter is a translation which may keep me from actually looking into it.

Robert

MrD, you are the best film critic I have encountered and I've followed up on many of your recommendations, where possible, most spectacularly with Beasts of the Southern Wild. This is a long way of saying that based on your comments, I will have to find Fruitvale Station somewhere. I was wondering about the new Woody Allen too, so glad to see your thoughts.

Roger Ebert was the best film critic, and he was especially good when he had to justify himself in the face of Gene Siskel. I, on the other hand, am a casual commenter (not to be confused with commentator) on movies I have seen. That I see a lot of them and am willing to pay more attention to each than most folk lends some credibility to my opinions, but I am a dilettante.

If I call to your attention a movie that you end up liking, I am happy for the coincidence. And I am glad that I have helped muster support for a movie the likes of which we need more of, namely Beasts of the Southern Wild*.

Robert

In the movie Elysium* we get to see and hear Jodie Foster speak French. I thought that was pretty cool even if not reason enough to go to a movie. The rampant foreign language on the despoiled Earth of the film is Spanish. That distinction would be interesting if the movie were interesting. The movie is not interesting.

I saw it on the biggest screen within twenty five or so miles, an IMAX equivalent. There was nothing to see in the film that required that.

A vapid story, no eye candy, bah...

Robert

Jodie Foster's movies are all over the place. She has had some winners and some definite losers. It sounds like this is in the loser category.

It's making a lot of money.

Robert

Unfortunately the big box office doesn't always mean it's good.

Rated R for crude sexual content, pervasive language, drug material and brief graphic nudity

From the trailers I expected We're the Millers* to be light, funny, and probably sometimes cheap. I didn't read the review carried by the local paper, but the reviewer hung four stars out of four on it. Rotten Tomatoes has overcorrected the four stars, and IMDb has got it about right. This is a fun film with a lot of gags, but nothing to inform you about how to face the second decade of the millennium. Jennifer Aniston is eye candy and wry. Jason Sudeikis's drug dealer character could have been a little more carefully constructed to make this a comedy about humanity. Nevertheless this will last for awhile. I neglected a couple of foreign films at the local multiplex that I can't get to today and that won't be there tomorrow.

Oh yeah, one of the credits was for a tarantula wrangler.

Robert

The trailers for The Act of Killing* made me expect a gruesome film of political murder and torture. I thought about not going to it, but then duty called. It turns out that the gruesome bits are reenactments so obviously simulated that they are not horrifying bits of bloodiness. The horrifying comes from the blasé telling of what was inflicted on the people of Indonesia for thuggish and political ends. It is about the banality of evil, and that banality is cringe inducing. The main thug is shown calling to have his sleeping grandsons brought in to watch a simulation in which he is tortured. Government officials are complicit in the horrors, and although it is not discussed much the CIA supports the anti-communist stance of the gangsters.

Duty should call a lot of democratic citizens to this film, but people won't go. People don't watch documentaries in movie theaters.

Robert

Joshua Oppenheimer was on The Daily Show last week. John Oliver said it took him "two hours to watch and three days to get over..."
Sounds brutal.

>64 Mr.Durick: - that's disappointing to hear. After District 9 I had some (I wouldn't high, it's hard to that much for an expensive film) expectations for it. The fact that the major language on the despoiled Earth is Spanish sounds like a reflection of (some) American fears about the Latino population.

I bought a second copy of Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky because it was only a dollar in like new condition. I ought to read it. (Or maybe a third. I think I may have a copy in French too.)

Robert

I went out because a local chain of family restaurants was running a special for the day that I like, I could run an errand, and I could take a look at a used bookstore, where I bought Suite Française, and that put me at a multiplex.

There was a movie made in 1916 named The Butler so the current movie is called Lee Daniels' [sic] The Butler*, and there is no global warming.

Some people may not like the star turns taken in the movie or a possible soap opera-ish feeling to it. but it is a family drama and a national drama that worked for me because it is both. I, as a tyke, new the name Harry Truman, but my first President, whom I knew as President, was Ike, and this movie's first president is Dwight D. Eisenhower. It ends with the election of Barack Obama. It covers the span of my life so far. It covers a social world that was not my world but that had floodlights aimed at it, and illusions worked on it, for that whole time. The parts that were hard were hard in this movie and made of the movie something to be taken seriously.

Forest Whitaker, a personal favorite, and Oprah Winfrey may have been a little old for their roles at their introduction and the contrivance of their makeup at the end may have been distracting. Still they did a credible job of showing us their characters, although either could have been developed for a few hours more. How some people have to plod to do what needs doing and some people dash is made plain.

I liked this film.

Robert

Yesterday evading responsibilities at home that I will have to get to today I set out across town to see a screening of the 2008 La Scala production of Don Carlo. Some of the Italian audience booed it, but there were bravo's, brava's, and bravi's at the same time and sometimes without contradiction. There is a French version of this opera, which I've seen once and so far prefer; it has more of the backstory. There is more than one Italian version with varying levels of backstory. This was the Italian version with a little backstory narrated by the character Don Carlo; some of the back story also came out ever so briefly later on. So it is hard to tell why this prince may have hope in a romantic relationship with his stepmother.

The production also struck me in the opening as a parody of opera. There were overwrought gestures without real or appropriate acting. The competent singer Stuart Neill did not look the part. A song among the ladies of the queen's court should be lively but lay there as lead on a floor.

It got better, once actually during one of my favorite parts. King Philip, not to be liked, sings a song opening, I think, the third act in which he laments, "She never loved me." I was knocked out of my seat by it when I saw a production in French. In this I was not drawn in until later in the same aria; at its end, though, I was with the audience in their bravo's.

I took this production as more important to refreshing me in a work I like than as entertainment or new appreciation.

Robert

I don't know anything about it. It just showed up in a Classic Trains e-mail.



I added a width narrower than this, but it also has sizing info built into the url which apparently has precedence.

Robert

I had two coupons so I placed two orders for three books from Barny Noble. They split one order. Two books were in today's mail. The third book shipped, for no good reason by UPS is scheduled to be here Monday when I can hope either to find it lying on my front porch or at an office too far away to get to casually.

The Capitalism Papers by Jerry Mander. I am not a capitalist; I am a retired government bureaucrat. I nevertheless think that capitalism is the best bet for liberty and prosperity although I believe in meaningful regulation. The author, from the cover, believes capitalism should be done away with. I think that I need to know about that.

Boomer by Linda Grant Niemann. I like railroads. I am interested in alcoholism. I want to see how the author put the two together. This may go well with Wild.

Robert

.

I wasn't up to the sadness of orcas in captivity, so I skipped, for the time being, the movie Blackfish* and took in The Spectacular Now† instead. It is about two high school seniors from single mother families, a boy who drinks and a vulnerable girl who is unwittingly strong. Both of them are likable and good, but the boy is frighteningly dangerous. Having just looked at my list I think that this is the scariest movie I have seen this year. The end was a little bit pat, but it did not not fit.

Shailene Woodley, who played the girl, was the daughter in The Descendants who told George Clooney that his wife had cheated on him. She's good. I thought I recognized Miles Teller, who played the boy, but was surprised to see that it must have been from Rabbit Hole. He did a commendable and intimidating job.

Robert

Saturday night a friend who gathers books from such noble places as Goodwill sat down next to me and pulled from his bag, among others, two books that he hadn't been able to get into. He thought that rather than throw them away himself he could give them to me to do with as I will, including possibly throwing them away. That is not likely.

Fortune (a link, not a touchstone; the touchstone was not available) by Robert Drewe. This novel is set on the West Australian coast. I flew from Darwin, via Northwest Cape, down to Perth and back a few days later once in 1969 or 1970 and have felt some, maybe not avid, attachment ever since, so I may get to this.

Our Sunshine by Robert Drewe. This is a novel about Ned Kelly. I saw the movie Ned Kelly back when it was in theaters. That might have been enough.

Robert

Well, finally. Private industry comes in second to quasi government. Five days ago the other half of this order shipped the same day came by U.S. Mail. Today this half came by UPS. The former was left in a locked box protected from the elements and from theft; the latter was left out by my front door while I was away from home. I must admit that it was private industry's decision to split the order and to send half of it the wrong way.

So now I have Dersu the Trapper by V. K. Arseniev. There is something about that vast forest land that, except for the Russians, appeals to something primal in me. I will put this in the read-as-soon-as-I-can pile of about fifty novels (maybe I'll count them one day and report the number).

I'd start reading this tonight except for the other novels in the pile and the fact that my next novel should be Garden of the Evening Mists for book group discussion a week from Wednesday.

Robert

"I will put this in the read-as-soon-as-I-can pile of about fifty novels"

I have one of those...except I never seem to read any books from that pile.

That's how it works for me. Additionally I don't even know whether this is fiction or non-fiction, but I'm still going to put it among the novels.

Robert

The Chinese shoot 'em up drug movie Drug War* is bad in many ways and good in only a couple of places. It does not deserve the four stars out four that the review carried by the local paper put on it. There is a good car crash at the beginning. And there is some of the police procedures that we don't normally look at that has curiosity value. The cops always have exactly the right technology; they are always in the right place. They have access to whatever place they need and... I don't want to work on this any more. I sat through it mostly waiting for it to be over. Its end was tidy, and I left.

There is a theme about loyalty and self-preservation that some watchers might take seriously. I don't think that the movie supports the exploration of that theme.

Robert

From Trains Magazine:



Robert

I ordered a copy of Dersu yesterday. It just sounds so wonderful to me. Hope you read and review it sooner rather than later.

I also want to see The Act of Killing.

Before going out Saturday I looked at my Barny Noble wishlist and found Karl Marlantes's What Is It Like to Go to War available in the store for less, with a membership card, than online. When I got there after a movie I found it and picked it up. I also knew that he had written a novel, Matterhorn; I found it too and picked it up without checking on the economics of the transaction.

It is not quite a book. I picked up a one-off from the magazine rack on the Concorde. It didn't have an ISBN that I saw, so, at least for the time being, I'm not cataloguing it.

Robert

A dental appointment got me into town on Friday. I turned that into an opportunity to see The Grandmaster* on the biggest screen in town. It has an opening fight scene in the rain that was just gorgeous. And that gorgeousness, pretty well sustained, is the reason to see the movie. It probably doesn't deserve the four stars out of four that accompanied the review carried locally because the story is, though good and serious, not all that revelatory. It is about mastership. There are three masters in the film and one person who wants power more than mastery and who suffers for that. The three masters are individuals, but they all have dedication to their one main aim. This is a film worth seeing for the seeing, and I am not a martial arts movie fan.

Saturday was my usual trek across town. I decided that despite the risk of excessive sadness I had a duty to see Blackfish†. There are too many people. Our hubris is astounding. There is suffering because of it. That's made specific to orca's, and it is sad.

From my familiarity with the title, La Traviata, I suspected I had seen the opera and wasn't going to go see a screening of it. But I was looking at the museum theater's web page before going out on Sunday and saw that besides the opera, there was later in the week going to be a documentary on the preparation to present the opera in France with Natalie Dessay starring. I wanted to see the latter and thought it best to see the former first because I couldn't remember it. It turns out that I had never seen it. In the 2007 La Scala La Traviata‡ there is lots of beautiful music over a simple love story. The hero is played by Ramón Vargas; he does not sport a heroic physiognomy so he has to justify himself with his singing; I thought it did the job. I've seen him in other roles and had pretty much the same reaction. The heroine is played by Angela Gheorghiu; she is credible as a woman for whom a man would give his life. I thought her singing was a little shrill at the opening, but as the work played on I grew to like it. If the work had been cheap, the ending would have been cheap. The work is not cheap; the ending is exquisite.

Robert

I watched the DVD of Dersu last night and enjoyed it very much.

I don't have any of the DVD services that so many younger people have, so I'd have to buy it. It is about $28 from BN.COM which is too expensive for me. Maybe someday I'll be walking by a living room where somebody is watching it; I'll be able to sit on the chair in the corner and leave as the credits roll.

Robert

Would you believe my local library had the DVD!? and the librarian who checked it out for me was grinning from ear to ear and told me she was the one who INSISTED they must get it. She quite enjoyed seeing me enjoy it. It made her smile just to be reminded of Dersu! (not worth $28 to me either!)

but Amazon does rent it for $2.99. Are you boycotting Amazon?

>85 Mr.Durick: Robert, if you're also interested in the containers on that train, you might take a look at a book I noticed on C4RO's thread, The Box by Marc Levinson.

Detail that is so fun isn't it? Such interesting stories out of so many different things!

Someday I may do libraries again. I respect them. I want my tax dollars to go to them. I have contributed to the library at my alma mater where I once worked for a little while. I am just uncomfortable with them. I am even more uncomfortable with Amazon who, having so many customers they can piss on them, has pissed on me, just enough that I stopped using them. I'm in buy mode vis-à-vis DVD's, but I'm a little bit cheap about it.

If my book group took up The Box I'd read it contentedly, but mostly it's one of those many things that is part of my life, could interest me, and just hasn't risen to the top. I do understand, however, that intermodal transportation is one of the things that revived the American railroad industry towards the end of the twentieth century.

Robert

Today I went back to the museum to see Becoming Traviata*, a French documentary about preparation for the Aix en Provence Chapelle production, especially Natalie Dessay's preparation, of La Traviata. It is pleasant watching her. The movie is also informative about the nuances that the performances try to capture and present. The documentary presents some of the music; I found comparing today's singing with Sunday's was fun -- the role of Alfredo Germont's dad must be good; both singers different though they are sound great.

The end part that I said was exquisite regarding what I saw Sunday is:

VIOLETTA
Cessarono
Gli spasmi del dolore.
In me rinasce m'agita
Insolito vigore!
Ah! io ritorno a vivere
(trasalendo)
Oh gioia!
(Ricade sul canape'.)

although I had remembered her last two lines reversed. So it was the Oh, joy! that got emphasized today rather than the ironic I return to life which I heard very much emphasized with the Oh, joy! on Sunday.

There will likely come a day when I will see this opera again in another production.

Oh. Today's documentary is not bad but is not something to go out of one's way for.

Robert

PS Oh, again. Apparently the lingua franca of opera rehearsals even in France is English.

R

Natalie Dessay

A google search for her height was not productive.

Robert

I have actually read a book...through to the end...a novel, and a mighty good example of one at that. Enough has been said elsewhere about the quality of The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng. I would like to note two things about why it is exemplary and add a bit that I found commendable. John Gardner said that the first purpose of a novelist is to tell a story; there is an absolutely coherently narrated story in this book, and comprehensible though it is it is all brand new, so far as I can see. There are those of us who think that a novel is not really a novel unless it is about character (it might be a romance or a Menippean satire or some such), and this book is deeply about character; it is about change in character; and it is about how we might know a person and not know, for sure, their character.

There is a sense of place in this book that is solid. I felt the tropical sweat in it even if that was never mentioned. If I ever wrote a novel, I would not dare to try to capture a place; I would make my place anonymous. This author identified his place and focused tightly on it. We know the truth of this novel partly in that we are there.

We'll be discussing this book at church tonight.

Robert

Sounds like The garden of Evening Mists might be one for our book club too.

After the discussion some of the people thought that we had a less interesting than usual discussion because everybody without exception liked The Garden of Evening Mists. The fact is that the discussion kept going even if some of it was pretty naïve.

So I brought up The Box for discussion in November. There was no yawning, but people claimed that there was. I think that I may order the book. We picked Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior despite my antipathy to the author.

Robert

I am a childless geriatric bachelor and have little respect for adolescents and adolescence, but the previews and a review of Short Term 12* made it look at least watchable. It turns out to capture emotions in a rare way. You can absolutely see how the two lead characters, almost adults, love one another. The intensity of the kids is as real. I don't think I had ever heard of a foster care facility before I heard about this film, and I don't know how real this one is. The drama is real, however. The successes and failures of the characters become meaningful to the audience. There is one story line not quite developed enough but the film hangs together. I think that this is a movie to see even though Sundance turned it down in its full length form.

Here and there on LibraryThing I and others have scattered feline internet clips. Many of them and many others have been collected into Walker Art Center's Internet Cat Video Festival which is being circulated to various venues around the country. It is playing repeatedly at the museum theater; that theater is normally kind of quiet on Sunday afternoon, but not for this showing. If you pay attention to cat videos you have seen many of these, but you will want to see the rest if it comes to your area.

Robert

I drove into town to meet a fellow for lunch, and I parked across the street from the Friends of the Library outlet.

The New Jerusalem Bible. This is my preferred single volume annotated Bible. I have one. I thought that I could put another by my bed for $3.

Ezra Pound: Poet, volume 1 by A. David Moody. Way back when I took a course in the theory of poetry. Our assignment for the semester was to pick a poet, learn about his or her theory or theories of poetry, and show the relationship between that theorizing and the body of work of the poet. I didn't do very well in the course, but I had chosen Ezra Pound and have felt somewhat attached ever since. This is volume 1; neither BN.COM nor Oxford University Press's web site show a volume 2. They do show this volume available for $55 with a pricy paperback available too; I'm glad to have found this one for a dollar and a half.

Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor. When Mr. Fermor died multitudes talked about the richness of his work, in particular of his volumes about his walk from Holland to Istanbul. I finally have the second volume to go with the first, and I hope to read them someday.

Robert

>101 Mr.Durick: Mr. Durick, I told my son about the "Internet Cat Video Festival." It took some doing but I finally convinced him it was a real thing.

 

This is the new cover image for Trains magazine on Facebook where you can see it full width.

Robert

My first serious foray into the fields of 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' was some years back with Bede Rundle's Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing? It failed to satisfy me, although later reading has shown me that I missed some of it or maybe a good bit of it. Just over a year ago I had a good look at Jim Holt's Why Does the World Exist? It was something of a sociology of the question although it, if I remember correctly, put the blame for the current construal of the question firmly on Leibniz. It scanned the beliefs of some of the important people researching the question without digging into them.

So The Mystery of Existence came out edited with commentary by John Leslie, a well regarded writer on the subject, and Robert Lawrence Kuhn, a teevee personality who has looked deeply into the matter. Why the universe is as it is is part of the question, and the book addresses that part, rather more than I would prefer for a book on the mystery of existence itself. Nevertheless there is a lot of serious thinking represented in this book about what could be the explanation of there being something. The question is not answered; it might not be answerable, but the pondering can be productive. We have the original writers represented here getting their hands dirty rather than just being quoted. The book has the common fault of never being entirely clear about what 'nothing' might be or be best described -- that's because it is hard, as you can see by my just trying to refer to it.

Anyway, this is a serious book that took me a long time to read but was worth it given my interest in the question. It is readable, but slowly readable.

Robert

I enjoy your ponderings on this question of why something instead of nothing...not sure I'm up for these books though...but I'm an curious why Holt blames Leibniz.

Blame was my cheeky word. The question, of course, has been around since ancient times. It was Leibniz who put it explicitly before the philosophic public in roughly those terms, whether Latin or German, and my spotty Google abilities aren't bringing up a source, but; see under the second bold heading here. He brought up a doctrine of sufficient reason and developed existence, particularly of God, out of the notion.

Robert

Thanks for that link!

From Trains Magazine's Facebook page:



It looks best full size.

Robert

The movie Hannah Arendt* has some atrocious acting and some seriously deficient staging, but it is so revealing about Ms. Arendt's development of the banality of evil that it should be watched. As far as I'm concerned Eichmann was a monster, but I fully understand her failings-of-bureaucracy take on him and the matter. Monstrous things are done banally by governments and corporations, by our neighbors who work there. It happens that the final solution was one of the most monstrous things done, but the Shoah was not the only monstrous thing done.

In the early sixties at college I first heard of Hannah Arendt from New York Jews. They seemed, then, to speak of her with respect as a person of ideas, which ideas were important to Jews and to the culture that these people I talked with lived in. I have read a little Arendt and a little about her, and respect her myself enough to want to reread some and read some more. So I was surprised to hear how she was vilified for her carefully developed opinions published in The New Yorker and presumably in Eichmann in Jerusalem which I have not been tempted to read. The lawyer who introduced the film at the museum has sent me a pdf of a Commentary article about her blameworthiness that I should get to soon.

Robert

I have long known not to trust Friday the thirteenth, but maybe I have to learn the lesson not to trust whole weekends that begin on the thirteenth.

I joined the museum some years ago because joining and getting in free was cheaper than paying admission without joining, and there was an Ansel Adams exhibition I wanted to see. I never went. But I'm still a member.

So I got to roam the museum Saturday when I got there too early for the movie. I saw some paintings and photographs that interested me and got to spend some more time with Melissa Miller's Leopard Dance which I posted on my thread sometime back. I also foolishly went into the museum book store and eyeballed some expensive books that I would have to pick up after the movie. As a member I got a ten per cent discount; in October I'll be a cheaper member and not get the discount.

Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities by Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. The two artists got to know one another, and they had some similar interests in the southwest.

Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: The Hawaii Pictures (the touchstone doesn't work even by forcing) by Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. They both did some work in Hawaii, and their take on the islands can be compared.

Ansel Adams in Color by Ansel Adams. Adams worked mostly in monochrome congruent with his zone system techniques, but he did some competent work in color that'll be pleasant to contemplate.

How to Read a Photograph by Ian Jeffrey. This is a collection of short monographs about photographers with representative examples of their work presumably showing what they have captured and how.

Robert

PS The painting

R

Union Pacific Big Boys from Trains Magazine



Robert

i ride a cow in goloka

 

Robert

Einstein's Mistakes by Hans C. Ohanian contains some unnecessary and distracting polemics and some faulty connections in some non-scientific assertions. That is unfortunate because it is an informative book. It is more a story of Einstein's development of his ideas in the context of the scientific milieu of his time with some history behind that development back to Newton and sometimes further. There is an emphasis on where he went wrong, and that emphasis sometimes feels awkward as if pasted in to justify the premise of the book.

I read this book to supplement Quantum by Manjit Kumar which some of us read for the discussion in the 75 Books Challenge Group.

Robert

I just noticed that there've been recent pictures of railroads but not of lions. Here's a corrective:



Robert

Love those train pictures! Both my parents worked for Union Pacific.

>111 Mr.Durick: I didn't know Ansel Adams did any color photography! I'm going to have to go hunt that book down.

Linda Grant Niemann was an alcoholic literature PhD who went to work on the railroad and got sober. She tells about it in Boomer. I expected to learn more about railroad operations from this book than I did, but otherwise this book did not disappoint at all. The life of a boomer, a worker who went from work site to work site around the railroad looking for work, was hard, and it grew harder as the railroads including hers, the Southern Pacific, modernized. A despairing drunk had plenty of room to despair in that sort of work and living combination, and plenty of company. Meanwhile women were new to the scene, and bisexual women were a mystery to the men; on both accounts there were attacks.

I read this in three nights and an afternoon. I turned off the light those nights because even retired I have to sleep; I didn't want to stop reading.

My book group will discuss Wild in October. I had seen this mentioned on LibraryThing and reckoned it might go well in anticipation of the discussion book. I also have on my Nook a book by a fellow who decided to find himself by walking the Appalachian Trail which I may try to dig out to complement Cheryl Strayed's book.

Robert

I had Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver in today's mail. We will discuss it in our book group in November. I dislike the author, so I am glad that I had a coupon for the order.

Robert

From Le Salon...



Robert

THAT is priceless!

I couldn't not post it, even though it was from so nearby.

Robert

Paul Stutzman (he has a web site) was a restaurant manager in Ohio and a liberal Mennonite when his wife died of cancer. He had to find himself in life and with respect to what is ultimate, in his estimation God, when she was gone. He had thought for years that he might hike the Appalachian Trail from one end to the other. His loss led him to do it. His book Hiking Through tells that story.

I am not a Christian, but I am a God-fearer. At first I found his theology facile, but then, though it is different from mine, I saw that it was genuine and suspected we had an important tale here, despite his corny humor and his occasional lack of depth. He and his wife had leaned on the 91st Psalm which essentially guarantees protection by God of people who accept His protection; I don't know the Psalms well and had to look it up when I finished the book. He did succeed at his hike, at finding the importance of other people as ends, and at growing closer to God.

I think even a non-believer could find out about acceptance from this book.

I recommend this book except to people whose antipathy to Christianity is overwhelming.

I have not read many books on my Nook, so this was also something of an experiment in that regard. It worked, but it did not lead me, as it does many, to make a wholesale switch. I am contentedly reading Wild in trade paperback.

Robert

A coupon order from Barny Noble was in today's mail.

The Box by Marc Levinson. I found on an earlier attempt that my Barny Noble coupon didn't apply to this book; they are making it less plain which books are text books. That got my hackles up; what's a hackle? So on another order I just went ahead and ordered it at their on line retail price. Anyway the picture in my 85 above prompted detailmuse in 93 above to suggest the book...

How Music Works by David Byrne. My tag 'music' is down to only my seventh most used tag. Also I listen mostly to classical music. But I listen to classical music because I like music, and outside of my becoming a musician there is still a lot for me to learn about music. This book has been mentioned here and there with respect. I glanced at it a few times in the store in its hard cover version. When I noticed that it was out in paperback I thought that it would be a good use for the coupon at hand.

Robert

>trade paperback
My favorite format. I recently read The Catcher in the Rye in mass-market paperback; it was so small and tight it was a constant fight to keep it open without breaking the spine.

I look forward to your comments on The Box. For myself and also thinking about it for gifts (husband, brother).

Well, I can only hope that I will get to The Box before the operation of the second law of thermodynamics on my library. At the time of your posting I had bought 158 books this year and read 29, sorta. Books I buy or bring home are almost always books I want to open and read right away.

Robert

I don't watch teevee, so I don't know James Gandolfini, but for a lot of people his death made him the reason to see the movie Enough Said*. The real reason to see it is that it is genuine (the word authentic comes to mind too). It is about people who could be real in every detail, all of them portrayed without a single misstep in acting. And it is about realistic problems, involvements, of people as they lead the important parts of their lives, work, love, parenting. They clash, but they are all good people. The plot twist mentioned in the précis on both IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes is a good part of the story, but it only supports what the film is really about, so it is probably better not to think of the movie being about that plot twist. The engagement of the people with one another is what the movie is really about...

Robert

There I was Saturday, in Barny Noble's after a movie, and they had a 20% discount on roughly everything for card holders. I had my Nook HD with me, and so I could refer to my BN.COM wishlist and find books on it that were discounted less than 20% on line. I got through the first page of my wishlist and then a few books onto the second page and came away with thirteen books.

The Pot and How to Use It by Roger Ebert. My main cooking implement any more is a rice cooker. I thought that a movie critic might be able to expand my repertoire from brown rice and quinoa.

Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs. The author has been entertaining and at least a little informative in his other books, so I expect that this book can be a pleasant reading experience. And it might tell me something important about how to care for myself. LibraryThing tells me that I have another version of this book in my catalog.

You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier. I think that I was impressed by the author on Tech Nation on public radio. Anyway I spend a lot of time on the internet especially on LibraryThing, so I will let him tell me how that is wrong.

Griftopia by Matt Taibbi. I am angry about what happened to America and to world finances in 2008. The author has a good reputation as a Rolling Stone writer. I am hopeful that he can inform my anger.

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. American justice is frighteningly shy of just. Several readers have reported on LibraryThing that this book is important.

Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks. The author has reported on oddities in medicine and the head and done it readably. I believe it was he who introduced me, figuratively speaking, to Temple Grandin. This book promises to show us how our brains can trick us with imagery.

Germania by Simon Winder. There is something goofy about Germany that I would like to understand someday.

The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane. I like walking although at this stage in life it is more in prospect than in plodding. This is about extensive walking and must have been recommended by someone.

From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp. Things seem to be going the other way. Can it be prevented?

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. Man's inhumanity to man is a constant puzzle. This is the North Korean picture of that puzzle. I am hoping that this book will go well with Escape from Camp 14 which I already have.

And three novels:

Hope: a Tragedy by Shalom Auslander.

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner.

A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee.

Along the way a reviewer or a reader must have said something that was convincing to me about these works.

Now if I can just finish the book I'm reading now by Wednesday.

Robert

Cheryl Strayed walked a long part of the Pacific Crest Trail damaging her feet along the way. She reported on the trek in her book Wild in which she implies a change in consciousness, a transformation, or a reentry into life as a result of that specific effort. I'll take her word for it. As evidence she offers that she is now married, for a second time, with two children.

Robert

I'm a fan of both Gene Sharp and Matt Taibbi. Hope you enjoy those. My husband was just saying yesterday he can,t believe someone hasn,t assassinated Taibbi yet and I sure can,t figure out how Jeremy Scahill is still alive. Love them both.

Think I'll check out The Old Ways. I like hiking books but have never thought about old trails. Sounds intriguing.

Roger Ebert wrote a cookbook!?!?!
Neat. :)