Robert Durick's reading in the second half of 2014

I finished 22 books in the first half of the year and expect to read more in the second half of the year.

1. January 31, Dr. Faustus by Thomas Mann

2. February 5, 3 am, Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick
3. February 11, Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell
4. February 12, The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell
5. February 20, American Transcendentalism: A History by Philip F. Gura

6. March 4, The Patron Saint of Liars by Anne Patchett
7. March 7, Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs.
8. March 16, Cool Tools by Kevin Kelly
9. March 31, 1861 by Adam Goodheart

10. April 8, What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe
11. April 10, The Oxford Handbook of Transcendentalism edited by Joel Myerson, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, and Laura Dassow Walls
12. April 11, Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden
13. April 15, Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick
14. April 19, The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
15. April 22, The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson
16. April 23, Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
17. April 26, Seven Weeks to Sobriety by Joan Mathews Larson

18. May 5, Plutocrats by Chrystia Freeland

19. June 1, The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
20. June 6, Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life, Vol. 1: The Private Years by Charles Capper
21. June 13, The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge edited by Frederick Burwick
22. June 13, Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley

23. July 22, Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life, Vol. 2: The Public Years, by Charles Capper

24. August 13, Religion from Tolstoy to Camus edited by Walter Kaufmann
25. August 15, Infinitesimal by Amir Alexander
26. August 18, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall
27. August 22, The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata
28. August 27, The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick

29. September 2, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
30. September 6, The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
31. September 9, Tracks by Robyn Davidson
32. September 12, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
33. September 21, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
34. September 26, A Love Supreme: The Making of John Coltrane's Masterpiece by Ashley Kahn

35. October 1, Time Reborn by Lee Smolin
36. October 8, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
37. October 16, Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
38. October 19, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
39. October 23, MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

40. November 7, The Cure for Everything by Timothy Caulfield
41. November 8, The Mantram Handbook by Eknath Easwaran
42. November 11, America Again by Stephen Colbert
43. November 22, Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
44. November 24, Old Filth by Jane Gardam
45. November 26, The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
46. November 27, Last Friends by Jane Gardam
47. November 30, 100 Simple Things You Can Do to Prevent Alazheimer's by Jean Carper

48. December 8, The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
49. December 14, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright
50. December 19, Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion by René Guénon
51. December 22, The Martian by Andy Weir
52. December 25, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
53. December 26, Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
54. December 31, Billionaires' Ball by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks

Movies, concerts, plays, lectures, events I want to list.

1. January 1, American Hustle, movie theater, mainstream
2. January 2, Philomena, movie theater, limited release
3. January 2, 12 Years a Slave, movie theater, limited release
4. January 11, Saving Mr. Banks, movie theater, limited release
5. January 13, Her, movie theater, mainstream
6. January 18, Frozen, movie theater, mainstream
7. January 24, The Great Beauty, movie theater, foreign (Italy)
8. January 25, Dallas Buyers Club, movie theater, limited release

9. February 1, Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films 2014, movie theater, limited release
10. February 6, The Bridge on the River Kwai, movie theater, one time revival
11. February 8, Rusalka, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
12. February 10, Gravity, IMAX 3D, mainstream
13. February 21, The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Documentary, museum theater, limited release
14. February 27, The Sting, movie theater, one time revival

15. March 1, Prince Igor, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
16. March 5, Stalingrad, IMAX 3D, foreign (Russia)
17. March 8, Omar, movie theater, foreign (Palestine)
18. March 15, Werther, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
19. March 17, Brahms Sextet and Schubert Quintet, live concert
20. March 23, Tim's Vermeer, movie theater, documentary
21. March 29, Bad Words, movie theater, sort of limited release
22. March 29, The Grand Budapest Hotel, movie theater, highly promoted limited release

23. April 5, La Boheme, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
24. April 12, The Unknown Known, movie theater, documentary
25. April 19, Under the Skin, movie theater, limited release
26. April 23, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, movie theater, one night revival
27. April 26, Cosi Fan Tutte, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera

28. May 2, Particle Fever, movie theater, documentary
29. May 3, Adam Johnson, author reading and commentary
30. May 7, The Lunchbox, movie theater, foreign (India)
31. May 10, La Cenerentola, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
32. May 12, Neighbors, movie theater, mainstream

33. June 7, Chef, movie theater, limited release
34. June 11, A Million Ways to Die in the West, movie theater, mainstream
35. June 14, Belle, movie theater, limited release
36. June 18, 22 Jump Street, RPX theater, mainstream
37. June 21, The Rover, movie theater, foreign (Australia)
38. June 28, Obvious Child, movie theater, limited release

39. July 1, Ilo Ilo, movie theater, foreign (Singapore)
40. July 2, Snowpiercer, movie theater, limited release or maybe foreign (Czech Republic, South Korea)
41. July 5, Begin Again, movie theater, limited release
42. July 8, Tammy, movie theater, mainstream
43. July 12, Henry IV part II, movie theater, Royal Shakespeare Company screening
44. July 19, America: Imagine the World Without Her, movie theater, dramatization and pseudo-documentary
45. July 26, A Most Wanted Man, movie theater, limited release
46. July 29, Lucy, movie theater, mainstream

47. August 2, Guardians of the Galaxy, IMAX 3D, mainstream
48. August 9, Boyhood, movie theater, limited release
49. August 12, The Hundred-Foot Journey, movie theater, mainstream
50. August 16, What If, movie theater, between limited release and mainstream
51. August 23, Calvary, movie theater, foreign (Ireland)
52. August 26, The Admiral: Roaring Currents, movie theater, foreign (Korea)
53. August 28, 2014 Sundance Film Festival Shorts Tour, museum theater, anthology
54. August 30, Ida, movie theater, foreign (Poland)
55. August 30, Island of Lemurs: Madagascar, IMAX 3D, documentary

56. September 3, Frank, movie theater, limited release
57. September 7, Code Black, movie theater, documentary
58. September 13, The Drop, movie theater, limited release
59. September 16, Kundo: Age of the Rampant, movie theater, foreign (Korea)
60. September 17, Atlas Shrugged III, Who Is John Galt?, movie theater, limited release
61. September 20, Love Is Strange, movie theater, limited release
62. September 27, The Skeleton Twins, movie theater, limited release
63. September 30, This Is Where I Leave You, movie theater, mainstream

64. October 1, To Be Takei, museum theater, documentary
65. October 4, My Old Lady, movie theater, limited release
66. October 7, Gone Girl, movie theater, mainstream
67. October 11, Macbeth, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
68. October 14, The Judge, movie theater, mainstream
69. October 18, Le Nozze di Figaro, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
70. October 21, Fury, movie theater, mainstream
71. October 25, Dear White People, movie theater, limited release
72. October 28, St. Vincent, movie theater, mainstream
73. October 30, Björk: Biophilia Live, museum theater, concert film

74. November 1, Carmen, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
75. November 4, John Wick, movie theater, mainstream
76. November 5, The Tempest, movie theater, Globe Theater screening
77. November 8, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), movie theater, limited release
78. November 13, Interstellar, IMAX, mainstream
79. November 15, Whiplash, movie theater, limited release
80. November 22, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Metropollitan Opera Live in HD, opera
81. November 29, Awake: The Life of Yogananda, movie theater, documentary

82. December 6, Pelican Dreams, movie theater, documentary
83. December 13, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, opera
84. December 17, The Theory of Everything, movie theater, limited release
85. December 20, Wild, movie theater, limited release
86. December 27, The Imitation Game, movie theater, limited release
87. December 30, Into the Woods, movie theater, mainstream musical
88. December 31, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, IMAX 3D, mainstream

Notes for the Fall
Books coming out soon as movies

Books and maybe some other things I've acquired this year.

1. January 23, Hyperobjects by Timothy Morton
2. January 24, The Dhammapada translated by Eknath Easwaran
3. January 27, Three Spanish Philosophers by jose Ferrater Mora
4. January 27, Essence of the Dhammapada by Eknath Easwaran
5. January 27, Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell
6. January 27, The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell
7. January 27, The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton

8. February 8, Emotional Vampires by Albert J. Bernstein
9. February 8, Last Friends by Jane Gardam
10. February 10, The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
11. February 10, Old Filth by Jane Gardam
12. February 10, The Object of My Affection is in My Reflection by Rokelle Lerner
13. February 21, The Wisdom of Psychopaths by Kevin Dutton
14. February 21, Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
15. February 21, 1861 by Adam Goodheart
16. February 25, The Anatomy of Influence by Harold Bloom
17. February 25, The Mountain Men by Bill Harris
18. February 25, Journal of a Trapper by Osborne Russell
19. February 25, The Adventures of the Mountain Men edited by Stephen Brennan
20. February 25, The Proud Tower by Barbara W. Tuchman
21. February 25, The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman
22. February 25, Difficult Personalities by Helen McGrath and Hazel Edwards
23. February 25, The Science of Evil by Simon Baron-Cohen
24. February 25, Classic American Locomotives by Charles McShane
25. February 25, The Conquest of a Continent by W. Bruce Lincoln

26. March 13, Cool Tools by Kevin Kelly
27. March 27, Russia by Martin Sixsmith
28. March 27, 100 Simple Things You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer's by Jean Carper
29. March 28, The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
30. March 28, The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

31. April 7, Prosperity Without Growth by Tim Jackson
32. April 7, The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
33. April 16, The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
34. April 16, Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
35. April 17, The Portable Margaret Fuller edited by Mary Kelly
36. April 17, Margaret Fuller, An American Romantic Life, The Private Years by Charles Capper
37. April 17, Margaret Fuller, An American Romantic Life, The Public Years by Charles Capper
38. April 24, Seven Weeks to Sobriety by Joan Mathews Larson
39. April 24, Coleridge's Poetry and Prose edited by Nicholas Halmi, Paul Magnuson, and Raimonda Modiano

40. May 5, Under the Skin by Michel Faber
41. May 7, France and England in North America, volume I, by Francis Parkman
42. May 7, France and England in North America, volume II, by Francis Parkman
43. May 8, A Course in Miracles
44. May 8, No Man Is an Island by Thomas Merton
45. May 8, American Journal of Numismatics 25
46. May 9, The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick
47. May 9, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
48. May 9, The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin
49. May 9, Sacred Economics by Charles Eisentstein
50. May 9, Windows 8.1, the missing manual, by David Pogue
51. May 22, Transatlantic by Colum McCann
52. May 30, Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley
53. May 30, The Matter Myth by Paul Davies and John Gribbin

54. June 13, Walking Home by Simon Armitage
55. June 13, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember by Annalee Newitz
56. June 13, A Book Forged in Hell by Steven Nadler
57. June 18, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
58. June 18, Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
59. June 22, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, 2010 edited by Dave Eggers

60. July 10, Religion from Tolstoy to Camus edited by Walter Kaufmann
61. July 15, The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata
62. July 23, Margaret Fuller: A New Romantic Life by Megan Marshall
63. July 23, Karl Marx, A Nineteenth Century Life, by Jonathan Sperber
64. July 23, The Unwinding, An Inner History of the New America, by George Packer

65. August 4, Secrets of Infinity edited by Antonio Lamúa
66. August 4, Time Reborn by Lee Smolin
67. August 4, Infinitesimal by Amir Alexander
68. August 4, A Tale of 7 Elements by Eric Scerri
69. August 7, Countdown by Alan Weisman
70. August 7, Conquering Shame and Codependency by Darlene Lancer
71. August 7, Tracks by Robyn Davidson
72. August 18, Baldwin: Collected Essays by James Baldwin
73. August 20, The Myths of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsksy
74. August 21, American Scriptures, an Anthology of Sacred Writings, edited by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp
75. August 25, Of Man by Thomas Hobbes
76. August 26, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
77. August 26, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

78. September 5, Enlightenment Contested by Jonathan Israel
79. September 5, Democratic Enlightenment by Jonathan Israel
80. September 25, John Coltrane, His Life and Music, by Lewis Porter
81. September 25, Beyond A Love Supreme by Tony Whyton
82. September 30, A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
83. September 30, The Arabian Nights, Tales of 1001 Nights, Volume I, translated by Malcolm C. Lyons
84. September 30, The Arabian Nights, Tales of 1001 Nights, Volume II, translated by Malcolm C. Lyons
85. September 30, Mark Twain: The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It annotated by Guy Cardwell

86. October 7, Tango by Robert Farris Thompson
87. October 10, Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
88. October 10, Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood
89. October 14, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
90. October 17, The Stammering Century by Gilbert Seldes
91. October 17, Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
92. October 29, I Ching translated by John Minford
93. October 31, The Cure for Everything by Timothy Caulfield
94. October 31, The Mantram Handbook by Eknath Easwaran
95. October 31, The Silence of Animals by John Gray

96. November 5, Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1701 to 1800, 6th edition, by George S. Kuhaj and Thomas Michael
97. November 5, Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1801 to 1900, 7th edition, by George S. Kuhaj and Thomas Michael
98. November 5, Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1901 to 2000, 42nd edition, by George S. Kuhaj and Thomas Michael
99. November 5, Standard Catalog of World Coins, 2001 to Date, 9th edition, by George S. Kuhaj and Thomas Michael
100. November 10, The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
101. November 10, America Again by Stephen Colbert

102. December 5, Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion by René Guénon
103. December 5, The Two Faces of American Freedom by Aziz Rana
104. December 5, The Making of a Poem edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland
105. December 5, American Veda by Philip Goldberg
106. December 5, Assholes by Aaron James
107. December 5, The Martian by Andy Weir
108. December 5, Going Clear by Lawrence Wright
109. December 12, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
110. December 12, Billionaires' Ball by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks

DVD's

1. March 3, Lord of the Dance
2. March 3, Disinformation: The Complete Series
3. March 3, Mahabharata
4. March 3, Sam Kinison: Wild Child
5. March 3, Story of O

6. April 16, Gravity

The movie Ilo Ilo* is a horror movie set in Singapore with two monsters, a boy and his mother. An innocent shows up on their doorstep. The boy learns that he can charm the innocent and so behaves generally, but not entirely, less monstrously; the mother never gets beyond token baiting of the innocent. Everybody loses.

There is some excellent accuracy in the exposure of relationships in this film, in its details. If I were not part of the squalid world it depicts I would find it revelatory.

Robert

The trailer and the descriptions of the film in the press didn't make Snowpiercer* seem to be something I would like to see, but discussion of it made it sound important. With a need to be in town yesterday, I decided to go to it.

If you can accept its givens and its plot holes, which may be difficult, then you can take it in as a fantasy vision. The vision depends on the politics of the train in which it is set and on the notion of homeostasis or balance. In the end, I don't think it tells us much about the human condition, or not much new that hasn't been gone over repeatedly without resolution. So it is the vision itself that is the reason to see this movie; I think that that is enough in this case.

Robert

Begin Again* is a movie about a slender young woman with high cheekbones. It is set in the music world of New York City. Everything goes wrong for the principals, and I got uneasy waiting for a crash. But there's a lot of affection among the characters (one scene of a friend taking care of the slender young woman is just fabulous), and after awhile I got the feeling that everything was going to be okay. The charm of the movie was watching to see how that happened. The movie got pretty okay reviews, and the movie is pretty okay but not championship material.

Robert

Melissa McCarthy is the reason to see the movie Tammy*, and she doesn't fully overcome the weakness of the film. The theater was crowded for dinnertime Tuesday, and there was laughter often enough throughout the film, but it didn't add up to a moving or funny film despite the appeal of some scenes and some of the characters — I can watch Sandra Oh just standing there forever, and I think that Kathy Bates is getting better, even in a weak role, as she gets older.

Robert

The movie of Wild won't be out until December 5, but the trailer is not discouraging.

Robert

My church book group decided to discuss The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata in September, so I ordered it from Barny Noble along with another book from my wishlist to score free shipping. Barny cancelled the order for The Lake, and I received the other book today.

Religion from Tolstoy to Camus edited by Walter Kaufmann. I know the editor mostly from his editions of and commentary on Nietzsche, but I have read some of his other material on religion and found him between interesting and compelling. This book is an anthology of writings that he thought were germane to a deliberate faith.

Meanwhile The Book Depository tells me that The Lake is on its way.

Robert

>11 Mr.Durick: I like Kawabata, but I've not yet read The Lake: marking this thread to read your thoughts. What drew your church's reading group to the book?

I haven't read anything by Kaufmann that wasn't an introduction to a Nietzsche book. This sounds like an interesting read.

ETA: Did BN honor the free shipping?

Diana,

Our reading group tries to reach consensus on a book suggested by one of the members. There were a lot of suggestions. I wanted the book to be I and Thou, but I suggested something like six others too. We were not reaching any kind of agreement, so we went around the room polling each person. A woman had suggested and brought a copy of The Lake; two others of us very much like Kawabata, especially through The Master of Go and Snow Country so when our own choices failed of selection we threw our support behind her suggestion, and it rose to the top. I will probably read it close to the discussion on the first Wednesday of September.

I am slowly, like two or three pages at a time, working my way through Kaufmann's introduction. I don't remember many of the details of his writings on religion from my earlier pursuit of his ideas, but I remember that he was interesting and suspect that I've taken some of it as my own.

When I first noticed that part of my order had been cancelled I suspected that it was the textbook, not the novel, and had the same question. But it turns out I got the textbook, and its price was in the thirties so qualified for free shipping on its own.

Robert

Henry IV part 2 seems to be about the character of Falstaff, his charm for certain people, and the growth and change of one of those people whom he had charmed but who had to move on. I have now seen screenings of both The Globe Theater production and The Royal Shakespeare Company production of the play. Saturday afternoon, most of the afternoon, it played at my usual Saturday afternoon multiplex. I drifted off once in the first half and once in the second half but think I paid adequate attention to it. Still I don't really understand the continuity of the narrative. The language is beautiful; Falstaff is marvelously characterized; the moral is clear; but I don't really see the story as a story to be followed. Given the opportunity, I will watch it again someday, and I could take the radical step of reading it I suppose.

It looks like it's playing through September in Stratford-on-Avon.

Robert

See above for how I came to order The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata. It was in today's mail and was small enough to fit in my letter box.

I couldn't get it from my usual American source, but it came to me from England with an apparently American dust jacket (on a paperback); the price on it in two places was in U.S. dollars. The third number of the ISBN is a 4 which I don't think that I have seen before. I shouldn't read this for a month and a half or so, but I won't be too strict with myself in that regard.

Robert

We saw H IV one and two at the Shakespeare Theatre Co in DC last month. I think Falstaff is a foil and negative touchstone for Hal, and in part two, his "fatherly" role is in high contrast to that of the king.

When I saw the Globe Theater versions I think that it was the three Falstaff plays — in any case I saw both parts of Henry IV. It seemed then that it was more about Hal than my recent take on part II. Now my dozing was brief, but I suppose I could have missed something important in the outcomes of the various battles or somesuch. But the end, the meeting in the bedroom between Hal and his father, didn't seem necessarily to follow from the rest even if it was not contrary to expectation.

Robert

I at first supposed that I could do a just review of the hollow movie America: Imagine the World Without Her* by citing some of the previews as meriting attention — I think that The Expendables, III might be fun. But people applauded at the end.

One example of the kind of manipulative falsehood should do. D'Souza found a Vietnam war pilot to interview. That pilot had been shot down and tortured by the North Vietnamese. That torture was dramatized; in the minds of some people that makes a hero of the character, and he will speak no wrong. So he is asked, "Why did you go to Vietnam?" He replied that he went to Vietnam because he believed that he could help the Vietnamese maintain a free, democratic nation. NO. He went to Vietnam because his love of flying, and perhaps the threat of the draft, led him to become an Air Force pilot, and he or his unit received orders to go to Vietnam.

Now it happens that I think that anybody who endured that sort of mistreatment on behalf of our country should be cared for for the rest of their life. But I do not, from first evidence and from the foolishness perpetrated by a number of former prisoners of war, think that they have any special authority in any matter.

I also think that our government with Barack Obama at the helm is not behaving as the City on the Hill should behave. Yet the government and the President are not taken to task for that; their faults are invented and often enough have actually been touted as virtues when a different regime reigned.

I think that everybody should see this film, dissect it, and see what horrors can be delivered into the minds of fellow voters.

Robert

Margaret Fuller was an important person on the American literary scene in the first half of the nineteenth century, and an early advocate, partly from the force of her circumstances, of equality, even to the extent of androgyny apparently, of women and men. She stirred the Unitarian and Transcendentalist pot. Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life, Vol. 2: The Public Years by Charles Capper unfolds in exquisite detail the later years of her short life as she published and became broadly known both in the United States and in Europe.

The book is dense. The subject has her own life; her life is set in a rich historical period; her thinking on matters is detailed and careful. Capper captures all of that and how they relate one to the other. She was a democratic socialist and supported European, especially Italian, revolution. At the same time she called for a mature literary culture in the United States. She was so well informed that I am sorry she died before her intellect was used up, but there were people who thought her early death was to her advantage. Interested though I was I was not happy reading the last chapter of this work.

The two volume work by Capper seems to be the standard. Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall has won the Pulitzer Prize and was in today's mail. I have read Marshall's book on The Peabody Sisters and have some hope for the newer book.

Robert

There was another coupon and as always a minimum for free shipping, so in today's mail from Barny Noble:

The Unwinding, An Inner History of the New America by George Packer. This book is supposed to capture the sense of crisis in today's America. It ended up on my wishlist and looked interesting when I was putting together the order.

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall. Margaret Fuller whom I might not have liked fascinates me, and I have liked the author's book on some other movers in transcendentalist circles. The Pulitzer Prize for this work was announced between the time that I ordered Capper's two volumes on the subject and the time that I received them in the mail.

Karl Marx, a Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber. What interests me about the works of Marx is that he seems genuinely to have identified some difficulties of capitalism but to have failed in proposing a response. I want to know more about him.

Robert

I take your point about seeing the D'Souza movie, but I'm not sure I want to help anyone involved benefit financially. Maybe I'll have to find a way to watch it without doing so.

Lucy is the big movie of the weekend, but Saturday I was scheduled to pass the multiplex that has exclusive showings, so I picked A Most Wanted Man*, Philip Seymour Hoffman's last movie.

I have liked the few John Le Carre novels that I have read and similarly liked the film adaptations of his novels that I have seen. This movie is slow and deliberate, and it is the better for it. It is about the failure of government and how that failure is among the human beings that it comprises and that it ostensibly serves. 'To make the world a safe placer' can mean very different things coming from different mouths. I can make up a reason, but I don't really understand why the main character had a German accent; I got used to it, though, and it was not troublesome.

The movie is in limited release. There were a few empty seats, but essentially the theater was packed on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Robert

The official LibraryThing take on the movie Lucy* smacks a little of "I'm so superior to the movie industry," but it is pretty much right. The movie is, however, tedious before it is wrong. I got a kick out of some, but not most, of the development of intellect into clairvoyance and psychokinesis; I wonder why, if she was so good, she had to crash so many cars racing across Paris. There are some gratuitous artful film images, but I thought they might better be watched in the originals; Baraka and Samsara were a better way to see some of the things I recognized (they were credited).

Product placement was by Samsung although I didn't see them mentioned in the credits.

Robert

>24 Mr.Durick: Thanks for the review of A Most Wanted Man. I was so impressed with Hoffman in The Master and Capote.

>25 Mr.Durick: The whole "I use all of my brain now and am now have psychokinetic" powers strikes me as just too ridiculous. And also, wasn't this plot already done in Limitless?

I liked that one.

>25 Mr.Durick: The official LT take still isn't as hot as this fine piece of mansplainin'.

A Most Wanted Man sounds very good, although I've not read any of Le Carré's books or seen other film adaptations. Hoffman was such a versatile actor, capable of playing a nice everyman or one with evil undertones or making a villain sympathetic. He was excellent in Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love.

Love and duty trump greed and power; that's an old story. So here's a movie to go see, Guardians of the Galaxy*. It is about love and duty trumping greed and power. What makes it special? Two things I think:

The movie is full of warm humor that is never over the top. "Don't ever call me a thesaurus!" It goes on and on and is always in service of the narrative.

The movie is exquisitely designed. The special effects are excellent which I might see more esthetically than technically. They too are always in service of the narrative. The characters are either good looking or interesting looking.

I had a deficient morning, and this movie took me out of it, starting very early on with a fifth of the heroes arriving on a spent planet, for two hours and one minute. There is a scene at the end of the credits that one should wait for. IMAX contributes, but I don't know that 3D is necessary.

Robert

The Scientific American Book Club made an offer which caught my attention. The package arrived today.

A Tale of 7 Elements by Eric Scerri. So what elements should there be, and why were some of them missing? This is a book about finding them. Chemistry is my least favorite science, and I know very little about it although I have studied it almost as much as I have zoology.

Infinitesimal by Amir Alexander. This book is subtitled "How a dangerous mathematical theory shaped the modern world." Thirty of forty years ago when I read The World of Mathematics I read that one mathematician was working on the reality of the infinitesimal. I'm hoping to be informed on the matter if I can get to read this.

Time Reborn by Lee Smolin. There are many cosmologists who think that time is not fundamental. As I understand it the author, a string theory non-believer, asserts here that it is. I'm wondering whether he will do anything with 'before the big bang.'

Secrets of Infinity edited by Antonio Lamúa. I like infinity even if I am not entirely convinced that there is any. I don't know whether anyone has thought it all the way through, but the thinking that has been done can be as powerful as any thinking I have read. This book may be just a little too much a picture book; still an illustration may just make something click.

Robert

Today's mail brought another coupon and free shipping order from Barny Noble, all from my wishlist:

Tracks by Robyn Davidson. I wonder if everybody who sets out on long treks to find themselves is an admirable person. Anyway this is another person whom I hope to admire even as I can't ever imitate her.

Conquering Shame and Codependency by Darlene Lancer. Like addiction and obesity, codependence is one of those intractable or nearly intractable circumstances of the individual condition. More is known now than was known 25 years ago about the sources of the debility although there may not be more that can be done about it. And I don't know that this author knows the latest, but I heard her on the radio, and she sounded informative.

Countdown by Alan Weisman. The author wrote the fascinating work The World Without Us. Here he presents us with factors to keep us here and in good enough shape.

Robert

I visited Ithaca last month -- for a funeral in Syracuse that was scheduled far enough into the future that we spent a couple days ahead around the Finger Lakes. I would have loved to explore the campus in full swing.

>29 Mr.Durick: Very interested to hear when you read A Tale of Seven Elements. I want his chapters on the history of the periodic table and then the tales, which I suspect will be along the lines of Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon though scholarly?

I think that I was last in Ithaca in 1978 1968. Except that I hate to travel and am afraid to fly I would like to spend some time there again.

I have The Disappearing Spoon and wonder where it might be. I don't know when or really even if I will get around to A Tale of Seven Elements, but I have a good start on Infinitesimal, which I am reading alongside a few other books and the reading of which has been interrupted by a special issue of Scientific American on the universe.

Robert

PS https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=315265691983609 An example of what I fear in flying.

R

Best movie of 2014.

This is the movie to go out of your way for.

Boyhood* starts strong with a discussion between mom and son in the car after school. Knowing that it is the start of a three hour film, one can begin to feel that the length is in some of the scenes establishing the film; by the end it is all right.

I don't believe there has been a movie done this way before now. It was shot over twelve years; the actors age as the characters age — and yet they remain in role. It might be that there should be an Ensemble Oscar. I thought I remembered Ethan Hawke first from a movie I can't now find a trace of in which he was marvelously despicable; anyway I am coming to have more and more respect for him. As he carries the dynamics of his character growing, as an adult, over twelve years he makes himself absolutely believable, very likable, and naturally fallible. I guess I didn't know that Patricia Arquette was any more than a babe; in this movie she is a mom who makes her life and the life of her children. The details of this film, huge in scope though the whole thing is, are tiny and telling; none of them claim perfection in their characters and so the movie moves towards perfection.

Go to the bathroom, and go see this movie.

Robert

This is the movie to go out of your way for.

I think I will!

From the New York Times:

Robin Williams, Oscar-Winning Comedian, Dies at 63
The actor Robin Williams died on Monday morning, his publicist, Mara Buxbaum, said in a statement.
Mr. Williams, 63, had been battling severe depression recently, the statement said.
Mr. Williams was found unconscious at his home in Tiburon, Calif., around noon on Monday, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. His death appeared to be a suicide due to asphyxia, the statement said.
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/movies/robin-williams-oscar-winning-comedian-d...

So terribly sad. I'm saddened and shocked and so are my kids, which I think says a lot about his career and impact on the world.

I thought BOYHOOD was generally lovely -- but I do think the writing of the role of the mother left out any sort of life-learning curve for her. The movie certainly gave her third husband short-shrift (actually all her husbands, including Ethan Hawke as her husband, were pretty much stereotypes) -- and I found it ironic that her second husband was her professor, and she was professor to her third husband. Those kind of relationships these days are definitely taboo under sexual harassment rules, though I certainly remember them from my undergraduate days.

The segmentation of the movie did sometimes keep things terse.

There are women who return to alcoholics, or other misfits, over and over, and I thought that the two husbands were realistic as alcoholics. I was surprised that the professor came onto her right away; in the seventies my chemistry lab T.A. waited until the semester ended to invite me to a party at her place. Mom works and works and is a good person; she grows thicker and thicker; and she isn't sure after all how to cope with it all (yet she was doing it) — I thought that was good and that she was strong (and very human).

I was pretty pleased with the growth in Ethan Hawkes's character. I didn't like him at first, wanted him to go back to Alaska, saw him as a danger to the kids and to Mom. In a segment or two I began to like him and see how he was working at things.

This is the movie Boyhood so we would expect the emphasis to be on him. In a novel if we get too many fully developed characters we tend to fault the author. The subsidiary characters should be round enough to be real and no rounder. I thought so many just right little details worked that out quite well and very much made Mason into the adolescent in college that he became.

Robert

The Hundred-Foot Journey* got so so reviews, but I thought I might like to see it. It turned out to be the failure it was seen as. It is pleasant enough, but inept. Plot points have to be made so they are pasted in; the girl chef who brings back mushrooms from the forest brings back some poisonous ones. The character development is not much motivated; it is just what we expect from a romantic little movie like this. The food is pretty in the market place, but there is little to show us the culinary successes.

There are some charming moments. And the actors can be interesting even as they fail to make a movie. Papa rumbles; when he rumbles inarticulately he exudes power. Helen Mirren is fun to watch. Marguerite has as disordered a set of teeth as one can have and still be beautiful.

Robert

Religion from Tolstoy to Camus edited by Walter Kaufmann. This is a collection of writings that the editor thought were important to a meaningful understanding of religion ranging from the depth of commitment to outright denial that anything transcendental could be possible. This quality is the measure against which I find the neo-atheists insultingly incompetent. Everything in the book is readable to the non-technical reader but at a level that can be expected of the Russian novelist (Dostoevsky inquisitor is among those represented here). Can one legitimately deny the transcendental? According to one essay here, that is richer in a few pages than all of Dawkins, one can; the basis of the denial is that one doesn't believe in it.

Robert

Infinitesimal by Amir Alexander was a little disappointing. It was much more about Jesuit intransigence and English dismissal of Hobbes than it was about what an infinitesimal is. Leibniz and Newton are given very short shrift. Whether the paradoxes abide and how the infinitesimal calculus might carry on with them is not covered. Whether an infinitesimal might have some, say, engineering reality is not mentioned.

Much of the history was new to me, so I profited from the book, but not in the way I had hoped.

Robert

What If* got okay reviews, and the trailers looked like fun. The movie turned out to be fun — warm, sweet, funny, complex enough without being obscure. It was better than I expected and good enough to recommend, but I did hear afterward about a fellow, a fan of blockbusters, who actually left the screening early because it was a "chick flick."

Robert

I was on my way to supper at California Pizza Kitchen and got to that mall fifteen minutes before it closed. I decided that it was an ideal time to shop for books and went into the little used books store near the entrance. There was a pristine copy of the Library of America volume of Baldwin: Collected Essays on the five dollar shelf, and I thought I should own it — so I do. I don't know whether I will read it.

Robert

>43 Mr.Durick: That deal was way too good to pass up. Absolutely love those Library of America books (I check them out of the library for free, but then I've got to take 'em back. Libraries are fussy that way.)

Baldwin is on my list of authors I need to read.

Apparently the academic standard on the life of Margaret Fuller is Charles Capper's two volume work. This year Megan Marshall won the Pulitzer Prize with her Margaret Fuller: A New American Life. I have read both. Capper does the more thorough job of integrating the facts of Fuller's life, the social and political environment, and the effects on her education and work, and his life is superbly written. Marshall captures the emotions of this twentieth century* woman from a distance of a century and a half, and makes her alive for us in a book that is far more accessible than Capper's; he writes beautifully but is dense with all he includes.

I was unhappy at the end of both. I did not want her or her family to die. I did not want us to lose the writing that she had locked away somewhere. I did not want her family to lose her possessions to pirates, cheap pirates at that. I also did not like the conjecture from among her cohort that her death was happier than her coming back home. On the other hand I celebrate her existence and think that the United States is the richer for having reared her. I hope that more people come to know her from this prize winner.

Robert

*This is a now informed guess and would actually call on various parts of the twentieth century. She would have had women among the sea captains; perhaps she could have seen that notion come to fruition. But there was a time in the twentieth century when it was still a horrible secret to have conceived a child out of wedlock. She was ahead of her century, and she would have had to find new challenges in this one.

PS The LibraryThing reviews of Marshall's book look to be especially strong.

R

So, regular drill: coupon, three book order to qualify for free shipping, one book motivated the order, Barny cancelled that one book. I ordered that and two paperbacks not yet available in the U.S. from The Book Depository. One of the two books not cancelled was in today's mail. I received free shipping even though the total was now under $25.

The Myths of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky. I once wanted to be happy more than anything else in the world. I gave up on it. I could live now with contentment or engagement both of which I reckon as being different. So maybe I should be looking for a book named The Myth of Happiness. I am still occasionally interested, though, in happiness, and this book ended up on my wishlist.

No telling where the other book is although Barny has sent it. No telling where the Book Depository books are. Every trip to the mailbox can be an adventure.

Robert

American Scriptures: An Anthology of Sacred Writings edited by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp the second and last book from my three book Barny Noble order was in today's mail. It had been on my wishlist to inform me about some of the divergences from mainstream American Christianity.

The Book Depository has told me it has shipped two of three books I ordered from them in two packages including the one Barny couldn't provide.

Robert

The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata is a narrative description of a stalker who sometimes meets up with the women he stalks. I don't know that it is a novel, although it is about character. To be a novel, I have read and heard, a book should show how a character changes in certain circumstances or less often how a character remains steadfast in changing circumstances. Furthermore a novel tells a story. I don't see any dynamics in any of the characters, and although there is a little bit of a twist at the end, I don't really see any development in the plot.

This is a masterful description. I really got a sense of the sleaziness of the protagonist, and in that way is up to Kawabata's standards. I admire that craft but I don't enjoy it.

Robert

It turned out to be okay that this community had only one really attractive movie open this weekend. That movie is Calvary* brought to us by the same folks who gave us the meritorious The Guard* a few years ago.

I am a religious person who believes that religion is how we relate to what is ultimate and important. I don't know that religion has answered any of the big questions; what it does of value is address some of them. This is, after all and with a kind of humor that anyone can laugh at, a religious movie, and it address the strength of faith, which I take to be a matter of trust or commitment rather than a matter of belief.

It is a small but very telling movie that does its telling in the details and addresses the nature of humanity in a number of individual human beings. Here's my second Oscar nomination for this year: Brendon Gleeson as Father James.

Robert

To my happy surprise the book I couldn't get from Barny Noble was in today's mail from The Book Depository at a much more advantageous price.

Of Man by Thomas Hobbes. I was tipped off to this book by Infinitesimal. I hope that it will justify my cynicism.

Robert

The other two packages in the order from The Book Depository were in my mailbox when I returned from my quasi-daily walk today. These are both books that I want in paperback but which, I think, aren't in paperback in America yet.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I have liked the author's two previous novels without thinking them great, and I've been looking forward to this despite that I don't expect it to live up to the promotional attention it has received.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. Everybody thinks that this book is fat and great, so I put it on my wishlist, and now here it is.

Robert

I liked the movie The Admiral: Roaring Currents*. I liked it for the depiction of the naval battle, and don't think there is enough weight in any other aspect to draw one into the theater. It is dramatization of a battle between Japan and Korea set at the end of the sixteenth century, but the politics and the environment, natural and social, are given only a little recognition here. The drama is so simple as sometimes to be simplistic. On the other hand the admiral's command of his métier, a few surviving military ships, is depicted with an attention to detail and an eye for what's important that I haven't seen before in a movie. And fortunately the movie with its shortcomings is mostly that battle.

I can recommend this one.

Robert

>32 Mr.Durick: gulp I did not want to see the plane do that :) Reminds me of the childhood thrill/fear of going over the top of the swing set.

Looking forward to seeing “Boyhood,” glad to see your comments. Regarding it being filmed over so many years -- have you seen Michael Apted’s documentary film series, “Up”? It has followed 14 Brits for 56 years now, with a filmed update every seven years. I’ve watched on DVD through “42 Up” then have been saving the most recent two...

I saw 56 Up* when it was in the local theater and was impressed by it. It came to mind, of course, in comparison to Boyhood, but I haven't actually tried to think about them side by side.

Robert

A few nights ago I picked up, a little randomly, The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick. She's been on my list of essayists to read for a long time, and I was impressed not too long ago by her Heir to the Glimmering World, which is, at least for the moment, the fiction I prefer.

But I don't mean to denigrate these readings from the life of Ruth Puttermesser. The characters in this book are real despite, get this, that she seems to have invented all of her companions, the golem being the most obvious invention. She is a solitary person. Moments of success unfold into the normal stratum of having to get by, but moments of loss seem to do the same thing although only at the end is there an unfolding (rather than segue-less transition) of that sort. As the companions are invented, so it seems their relations are also invented; her husband is to be George Eliot's lover or husband to her. The inventions wear out, but when real life comes through the window it also provides for a transition.

There...I don't know what I'm talking about, but I am happy enough to have read this book.

Robert

There...I don't know what I'm talking about, but I am happy enough to have read this book.

:)

I picked up that Margaret Fuller biography by Marshall, carried it around a bookstore a bit (the bookstore was Parnassus in Nashville, made famous by owner Ann Patched) and then put it back and picked up something else instead. I don't think it had won any awards at that time. Maybe someday.

The museum titles it 2014 Sundance Film Festival Shorts Tour; I can't find it on IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes, but Sundance has a page on it:

http://www.sundance.org/press-center/release/sundance-institute-tours-package-of...

I would say that bleakness and tedium prevailed over the bright spots. MeTube: August Sings Carmen "Habanera" was engaging, and Verbatim was a telling delight. Banal though Dawn was thematically, it is stuck in my memory and was very well executed. I used this screening as an excuse to go to town for a big bowl of rigatoni; so I suppose it was worth the trip, but I wouldn't recommend these films to other people unless they had their own special lure.

Robert

We don't get to see all that many films shot straight through with IMAX and in 3D. The newspaper said that Island of Lemurs: Madagascar*, which I read inverted as Madagascar: Island of Lemurs or which these two review sites have wrong, was gorgeous and told an important environmental story, but it was kind of out of the way for a forty minute film. Saturday shaped itself, however, in such a way that I could get to it. And it proved to be a demonstration of why 3D can be important to a film, especially the kind that is shot in 3D; it could have been better only if the screen wrapped itself around our heads and eliminated the frame. The vivid and vital animals had fleshly heft. Their flying leaps really, it seemed, carried them through the forest canopy. Human beings are both the despoilers and the heroes in the movie, and the lemurs are the cute little objects of attention — they play their role brilliantly, and I for one couldn't help siding with them.

So I still had time to get to the other multiplex, just in time to miss Frank. Fortunately I was in time to see Ida†. This is in a small frame, in black and white, and in a foreign language with subtitles; the theater was full enough, but most of the troublemakers were kept away. From The Seven Storey Mountain on, and maybe from earlier, I think we can see that the idea of religious vocation can fascinate a wide range of people, religious themselves or not. I was just recently delighted by Calvary, and now I have a woman's tale to illuminate my thinking. Here is a novitiate who takes an opportunity to experience humanity pushed up against her vocation, and does not just automatically go to her vows as she had intended. The movie might have been called Wanda and Ida; Wanda is Ida's aunt whom she had never known. While Ida was sequestered, Wanda was an ostensibly successful woman of the world. Ida inspires Wanda to pursue what is important, and Wanda drags Ida into what is important.

It was a good movie day.

Robert

There are, at the moment, 256 reviews of State of Wonder by Ann Patchett on LibraryThing. I just glanced at a few of them to see whether I liked it. I did read it through after all, and it would be good to know. Could the women of a village actually walk up to a copse and gnaw the bark from its trees? I know that the writing succeeded in making the images vivid, and I always knew what was going on, but I don't know about the story. Did it justify the ending? Did the ending fit the main body of the novel? Were there women's tales and men's tales in the book?

I would like my church book group to read it and discuss it (the group comprises several more women than men, and the female take on it could be informative), but we're actually going to discuss her book of essays This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage in November.

Robert

I believe that there is enough substance to Frank* to get a movie out of it. I think, however, that they came up short, and I kept waiting for them to get on with it.

Robert

I read Jonathan Israel's Radical Enlightenment a few years back and appreciated its use of Spinoza as an introduction to the movement that became the European enlightenment. I did not know then that it was the first of three volumes. When I found out I put the other two on my wishlist. There was a Barny Noble coupon and the need to meet a $25 minimum, and they filled the bill.

Enlightenment Contested
Democratic Enlightenment

I meant to start reading the former as soon as it came, but I couldn't wait, so I started The Burgess Boys last night on top of the several other books I am ostensibly reading. I do hope that I get to these soon, but Tracks surfaced today, and the movie is coming soon.

Robert

Oh the wonderful Spinoza. Perhaps I could work through this in January. I didn't know of this title, but it looks superb. Thanks for mentioning it.

These are chronologically sequential. It is the first one that develops Spinoza's influence on European thinking. I am quite sure of that, but I am also likely to be mixing in other reading I have done on Spinoza (I've actually tried to read from his writings and found myself inattentive or baffled; what I will know about him is what others say about him).

Robert

Maybe I agree with this comment from Rotten Tomatoes:

It sticks halos (probably well-deserved) atop the heads of its doctors, it goes for poignant moments without being all that poignant and ends up bemoaning without seriously suggesting any concrete paths to improvement.

regarding Code Black*, but I still left the theater enthused about the documentary. There is something beautiful about what these medical people are doing, and I think the movie captures some of that beauty. Now I have to caution that some of this beauty involves cutting deep into living human flesh, but it is to save lives, and there is amid the noisy apparent chaos some observable intent to do good. It is not the empty intent of some fundamentalists, although I should think medicine could be one of the most fundamental endeavors.

The movie does not offer solutions to the two big problems it brings up. It does, however, bring them up, in context, and it shows that the people with other mortal cares care about these problems. The two big problems are the huge number of patients (when gathered in the waiting room in their greatest density, the situation is code black) and the amount of paper administration required by law, and I suppose by other bureaucratic imperative.

Perhaps the feeling of lack of poignance is in the understatement of quotidian massive damage. As a physician sat to ask a patient a question, I thought that there was an engagement depicted in this film that might hold the hint of an existential answer.

Robert

Without anything amounting to scholarly focus I have wondered whether authors can successfully depict the interior lives of characters of the opposite sex. It has seemed to me that authors are successful depicting characters of the opposite sex when they derive their depictions from what they have observed, and they fail at it when they try to infer intent and the workings of the mind. In The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout, a book very strong in unveiling character, the author gives us one brother almost entirely from the outside and another brother fairly often from the inside. Both are pretty much believable, but the one captured from the outside cannot be denied whereas the one whose intent seems to be limned sometimes seems slightly effeminate. Now he is a beautiful person, he fits the drama of the story well, and he is drawn in full detail, but the feeling remains that he was written by a woman.

I believe that male authors, mutatis mutandis, have the same problem, and I don't trust them when they try to get inside a woman's head.

I've read three important contemporary novels in the past couple of weeks, and this is the one that has got my attention. I will be looking at these people, as reflections on my own character, for some time to come. What are the doubts we have about how we have lived our lives? Where have our lives come from? How much are we involved with our families? Do our lives come from them? Do we have a duty to them regardless of our relations with them?... The novel by capturing mostly pretty much real and fascinating people brings these questions to life.

Robert

Somewhere along the way I picked up a translated adage from a country the language of which was not English. Its import was that to understand all was to forgive all. Reading The Burgess Boys I did not think of forgiving any of the characters, but I did find myself pretty much liking most of them. When I thought about that, as I read, I wondered at it because I don't think I would have wanted to spend much time around any of them, except maybe Bob, the lesser brother. I wondered whether that might reflect the richness of the characterization in this novel. The author brought us to understand her people, and of course that understanding reflects her needs.

Robert

Somebody, probably on LibraryThing, gave favorable mention to Tracks by Robyn Davidson, and it fit the remnants of some youthful fantasizing. Its prospective appearance in film led me to pick it up.

The author is happily pretty plain spoken and the ordeal as a kind of passage is made comprehensible. Despair is not necessarily the end, or maybe not all despair really is despair. One can walk out one's troubles. Anyway this book is rich in prospect and can lead one to find riches in it. I'm looking forward to the movie, which may be too cute. I am also looking forward to the movie Wild, which I also suppose could be too cute.

Robert

On the What Are You Reading? thread after I had read a quarter of the book I offered a guess about what would happen in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I have finished the book now. Half of my conjecture was totally wrong; the other half was wrong in spirit.

I did not especially like this book; that first quarter was kind of tedious. I finished it because I wanted to know what happened. And I have to allow that the plot is very inventive and does not spare a whole lot of people.

I believe that the author received counsel on the interior workings of Nick. She offers acknowledgement of that kind of guidance, and her depiction of a man's interior is credible — all of her characters are credible in depiction.

But, Amy is identified as a sociopath. Certainly her self absorption and her belief in her own abilities are typical of sociopaths. Most sociopaths, however, are nowhere near as industrious or as focused as she is. Most expect to get by on lies and evasions rather than on constructions (I say that based on my reading and on my encounters with sociopaths). So her monomania can appear real, if uncommon, but it does not appear to be sociopathic.

Robert

There were two book related previews at the movie theater yesterday that caught my attention. One was the theatrical trailer (see above for an on line one) for Wild*. I believe that the dialogue could be overwritten and the movie could blow up in melodrama, but if it is not it looks like it could be beautiful. It remains to be seen whether the landscape will call for the biggest screen available. The other was the trailer, which I have seen several times now, for Gone Girl†. From watching it earlier I expected that I'd watch the movie when it came. Now that I've read the book, the trailer makes me think that if there are other well rated movies released the same week I'll see them first.

I was at the theater for the one film of three limited release movies that got a favorable review in the local newspaper this weekend, The Drop‡, another last movie with James Gandolfini. The movie, based on Dennis Lehane's short story Animal Rescue, is about the difficulties of caring for a rescue animal in the criminal districts of Brooklyn. The restraint and detail of this story make it telling, but the morally difficult but extremely satisfying ending made it linger in my mind well after I turned out the light last night. James Gandolfini is good; I never saw his television program, but I saw him in his other last movie in which I think he was better. Noomi Rapace is good; on reflection I wonder how somebody whose native language and experience is so different from Brooklynese and Brooklyn could nail it as she did. Tom Hardy is as understatedly overwhelming as Brendon Gleeson in Calvary. I think I want to see this movie again for the detail.

Robert

Kundo: Age of the Rampant* did good box office in Korea and got a favorable review in my local paper. I made a mistake and went out yesterday evening in part to see this movie.

It is a Robin Hood tale set in a spaghetti western with rice as the stand in starch. The characterizations and plot are predictable although exactly who dies when, except for the main characters, is arbitrary. The actual end is a spaghetti western ride over the horizon ignoring the mountains of South Korea which play a role otherwise in the movie.

You can sit through this, but it is cheap.

Robert

The last of the Atlas Shrugged movies, Atlas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt?*, is in a theater in town, and I saw it yesterday.

As I watched it I came up progressively with broad adjectives to describe it. They do not necessarily overlap in intent or application. Fairly early on I thought of the movie as 'bad.' A little later on I thought of it as 'stupid.' And finally after plenty more speeches and revelations I took it to be 'false.' I have not read the book. I wonder whether the movie did it justice.

I, as a geriatric crank who believes in regulated capitalism, to have been drowned out by the drivel of movies like this and the Dinesh D'Souza crap am offended. And there are people who think that we should engage them as in dialectic, that we are false if we do not engage their polemic. "Bah, humbug," I say; those proponents of two plus two equals five or thereabouts do not get engagement; they get dismissal.

Robert

I like Love Is Strange* more in retrospect than I did when I was watching it, and I don't know exactly what it deserves. Some people don't like Marisa Tomei because of her alleged bitchiness off screen, but think she is a pleasure to watch. Some people think that John Lithgow is a gift to the acting profession; I think that way too much you can see him acting — early in this movie "here is John Lithgow acting a scene in which he takes a morning shower." As a person about to be seventy I am curious about old people experiencing romance, but I don't think that I was very much informed by this movie. I wondered, among other things, what this movie would be like if, mutatis mutandis, this movie had been about thirty or forty something heterosexuals, and I thought it might be dull indeed.

Reviewers have liked this movie, and I don't want to discourage anybody who believes in one of them or who likes John Lithgow from seeing it.

Robert

I put the trilogy by Jonathan Israel more than 10 years ago on my "mental wish list", but it had fallen out of memory. Remarkable how few people own these books on LT.

Your post prompted me to put them on the LT wish list.

I remember the first volume fondly. I am finding in the second volume that he writes sentences at the 18th grade level or so; they cannot be faulted, but they are slow going.

Robert

832 pages to so what? Maybe I just don't get The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, but I think that there is little there but frontier and mud. There are too many characters, none of them round, and there is a lot of, too much, plot told in convolutions. If you ask me questions about it now I either didn't puzzle it out in the first place or I have forgotten. An astrologer may be able to find depth in the celestial charts in which case the book can be reserved for the astrologer's fellows.

There were scenes in the movie The Piano brought to mind by this book, but they were the setting not the substance of the movie.

Robert

PS A couple of people saw the light earlier than I did:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/180392#4851809
http://www.librarything.com/topic/180392#4852220

R

The first jazz record album that I paid serious attention to was A Love Supreme. I had listened to jazz off and on from my freshman year of college on; there was a serious aficionado on my freshman dormitory floor. In my senior year one of my roommates brought a record player to our apartment, and I asked that freshman friend to give me a list of ten jazz albums to give me a serious sort of introduction to jazz. A Love Supreme was on his list, and I liked it a whole lot. Sometime along the line I got a copy of the book A Love Supreme: The Making of John Coltrane's Masterpiece which I still have to read. And two other books relevant to the subject got on my wishlist.

Presented with the most recent coupon from Barny Noble and the need to qualify for free shipping, I finally ordered them, and they were in today's mail.

Beyond A Love Supreme by Tony Whyton. This book explains the album and tells us how to interpret it. It might be good that I have listened to the album, as I am doing from You Tube right now, a few hundred times and so can stand up in the face of authority. That's a little snide, I suppose; I actually expect to learn something from the book, and that's why I got it.

John Coltrane, His Life and Music by Lewis Porter. In the summer of 1967 when John Coltrane died I was here and there across the south going from basic to advanced flight training in the United States Navy. I was surprised that I caught an article in one of the flimsy newspapers I had access to that reported his death. I was also saddened. Over the years I have thought I should also know more about him and more broadly about his music. I liked the new thing, but with Coltrane I preferred his music up through A Love Supreme. Favorite Things changed my mind about show tunes. So this book is to fill a gap.

I hope actually to turn to these books soon rather than set them up for reading some day.

Robert

A Love Supreme is probably the album I have played the most. I thought the Lewis Porter book was very good. Happy reading and listening,

I read a hundred pages or so of Kahn's book last night. I think for a few days I will listen to the music several times.

Robert

And now I've finished my reading through it: A Love Supreme: The Making of John Coltrane's Masterpiece. It does at least a good job of putting the music in the context of both Coltrane's life and the temper of the times. I think I want still to read the other two books, and I have put this book near my computer so I can read the short portions of analysis of the work as I listen to it.

I think also that I ought to look for the special CD of the work sometime soon.

Robert

Two opening movies got high (enough) favorable reviews in the local newspaper, and I didn't want to see The Boxtrolls. I wasn't sure what I was getting into with The Skeleton Twins* and was even afraid that I might be stuck with something wrong. Fortunately I saw a movie that I really liked, although I may have liked it differently than the critics.

I saw a movie that really dug into the human emotional landscape, and I saw a movie that ended but may not have, as life, have really resolved itself. It was warm, and quirky, and sad, and funny. There were contrivances. Her husband to me was a caricature, overwritten, not the tour de force claimed by one reviewer. A very important scene towards the end was set up step by step; it, however, rang absolutely true and marvelous. There were a number of details, on the other hand, that were just perfect including some of the scenes with the goldfish.

To me it was a drama with some realistic humor in it. I think the stars called it a sweet drama in the interview below. There are people who take it to be a comedy; I think that the great amount of comedy in it seemed there to serve the drama.

So this is not a perfect movie, but it is a movie to see.

Robert

A television news interview with the stars about the movie

Tuesday on the way to the movie at the local multiplex I stopped in at the used books store downstairs.

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. I thought that for a dollar I should finally get this fat book. The rest were five dollars each.
The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights, volume 1 translated by Malcolm C. Lyons
The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights, volume 2 translated by Malcolm C. Lyons
Mark Twain: The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It annotated by Guy Cardwell. I'm happier with Twain's non-fiction than with his novels.

I'll need to find the third volume of The Arabian Nights.

Robert

The neighborhood multiplex has $6 Tuesdays, so I took advantage of it to see This Is Where I Leave You*, a not very substantial movie that nevertheless has a lot of charm, some good humor, and a range of competent acting. It was worth the trouble and expense of going to a neighborhood theater; it was not a cross town movie.

Robert

Wednesday night was my church book group's discussion of The Warmth of Other Suns. Further to justify my trip to town I went to the museum to look at my favorite painting and to see the documentary To Be Takei*. George Takei had a prominent role in a favorite television program of my early adulthood. He has kept his name in the news as a participating citizen ever since. It was good to see a coherent picture of that history and to see the story of a gentle man.

Robert

I have finished reading Time Reborn by Lee Smolin. I trust his physics, and I have enjoyed earlier writing by him, but I think that this book is not a model of clarity. In fact in some cases I think he says that things are so because he says so; I believe he is better than that. Anyway, it is not clear that time is fundamental, and he makes out the book to be an argument that there is plenty that cannot be explained except by accepting time as fundamental. He says a lot that I think is important, some of it divergent from his theme — not all scientific truths are expressible as equations. He also diverges into economics in his epilogue.

I think that if there is a payoff to this book in the field, if other cosmologists buy into it, then it will be time to read about it. This book didn't quite do it.

Robert

PS I was in a Barny Noble brick and mortar Wednesday afternoon. I've stopped buying Lapham's Quarterly because fifteen dollars is a lot of money for a periodical I never read. But it was there with the theme of Time, so I picked it up. It looks to be more often about paint takes a long time to dry but roller coaster rides are short than about the cosmos, but I may get to it.

R

>87 Mr.Durick: And how about the fact that time goes faster as you grow older?

I'll try to be alert for the subject if I get around to reading the magazine. The subject is not irrelevant to the movie that I saw yesterday, My Old Lady*. In it there is a 92 year old woman who first claims to be 90, and there are a couple of people in their mid-fifties, all living on, and two of them trying to have a better future than past.

The newspaper review I read of this movie was largely indifferent, and the one person I knew who had seen it seemed to be writing it off as something she had seen because she loves Maggie Smith. I had thought I wouldn't see it, but that was the only realistic movie option at the multiplexes more or less en route to Saturday night (if I see Gone Girl it will be at a discount at my local multiplex on Tuesday), and I decided not to stop by a powwow or the Humane Society's cat house. I had a free ticket from the chain's premium program and was happy that I wouldn't spend more money on the movie than it deserved.

Well, it turned out that I liked the movie a whole lot. I could recognize the failures of the lead character, and the mixtures of light and dark, contrary to the silly criticism of one of the people on Rotten Tomatoes, was part of the way we deal with life. Sometimes the guy is too sure of himself for someone as on edge as he, and I didn't like the resolution, although I can't offer a better dramatic possibility. But overall this is a good reflection on how some of us are made by other people and a few of things we can do to make ourselves.

I reported that I liked the movie to the woman who likes Maggie Smith, and her enthusiasm for the movie as a whole spilled out.

Robert

I had more time than usual before the movie yesterday, so I wandered into some sections of the used book store that I normally missed. I found Tango by Robert Farris Thompson. There was a time when I listened to a lot of tango on CD, when I went to tango movies, and went to stage shows to watch professionals dance it. I haven't rejected it; I just haven't listened to it much recently. I thought maybe I should know more about it.

I'm too old and clumsy to learn to dance, but I think it would be really neat to answer, "Do you dance?" with "No...well, tango of course."

Robert

The movie was Gone Girl*. The book is a spoiler for the movie. I found the plotting of the book interesting enough to finish it, but I didn't really like it. Now I feel the same way about the movie, except that there was nothing to find out. I've seen other movies based on books I have read and been delighted by seeing the book made into a vision; that didn't happen here for me.

Others will feel differently.

Robert

I'm done with The Goldfinch. As I expected of Donna Tartt the book has its charms but comes up short of excellence. Some of the writing is ham handed, but it advances the plot. She had to familiarize herself with a lot of arcana so as not to stumble in all the areas she touched on. I just don't think I want to read this long a book by her again.

It is about the consequences of stealing a painting, namely one called The Goldfinch. That story is poured into another story about a charmed (see the excursus at the end for how that applies to losses) adolescence. It is plotted interestingly enough, and those arcana lend interest just as they may contribute to the length.

Robert

>92 Mr.Durick: I really enjoyed The Goldfinch, but it definitely could have been at least 100 pages shorter.

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage was due out in paperback on Tuesday, so on Monday I ordered it with two other books to score free shipping. The other two books shipped immediately and arrived today; the Patchett book shipped (they say, but it is really a diversion) today.

In today's mail:

Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood. I'm not one of the author's biggest fans, but I have read the first two books in this trilogy and feel I should finish it. The spelling of the title is a mystery. In several places the medial A is capitalized, but on the catalog page it is not.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. Everybody loves it.

I will probably start one of these tonight. I have to have read the Patchett by November 5 for discussion in the church book group.

The Metropolitan Opera Live in HD season opens tomorrow afternoon with Macbeth. I expect to be there.

Robert

>94 Mr.Durick: Oh, Met Opera Macbeth. Sounds incredible. Sigh.

Well, if you can't find a theater near you carrying it tomorrow, you can catch an airplane to see it on the Canadian date or on the encore on Wednesday. I'm afraid I won't much like Anna Netrebko as Lady Macbeth, but I won't decide until I've actually seen the performance.

Robert

>96 Mr.Durick: I'd have to travel for hours just to be near a theatre that would consider showing it (that have shown operas before, but won't be showing Macbeth because they're doing Figaro's Wedding from somewhere or other). And I wish my budget would allow me spur-of-the-moment trips across the Atlantic, but alas! I'll just have to live vicariously through others for now.

I did get to Macbeth yesterday (according to a posting on the screen, available in 69 countries, and according to Peter Gelb in an on screen interview, available in 68 countries).

I think that despite a good production and some competent performances, I don't like the opera Macbeth. I also am not charmed by Anna Netrebko's pushing her sexuality in every performance although her singing is admirable enough. There is enough Verdi to like that I don't feel guilty about not liking this work even if the composer treated it as a favorite.

There was a woman sitting next to me who squirmed violently. Perhaps she was new money and didn't realize that she had to behave in public. Perhaps she needed to have her medications adjusted.

Robert

There was a woman sitting next to me who squirmed violently. Perhaps she was new money and didn't realize that she had to behave in public. Perhaps she needed to have her medications adjusted.

LOL!!!

Or maybe she just needed to be directed to the nearest lady's room. ;)

Today's mail finally had This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. It was suggested for November discussion by someone else in the book group; I endorsed the suggestion based on the reactions to the book I had seen on LibraryThing and on my own reactions to a couple of her novels. I have three weeks to read it, so I may not start it right away.

Robert

The deceased mother and wife in The Judge* was about four years older than me and about two years older than her husband. The indifferent review in my local paper was pretty much right — it is manipulative, busy, and a little trite, but it is watchable.

The performances are strong, although I think Robert Duvall has done better work. There are strong performances from some of the lesser role players; Billy Bob Thornton looks perfect at the prosecutor's table, among others.

But the development of the plot is contrived and feels it despite the little twists and the bits of humor.

Robert

Thanks for your thoughts on "The Judge." I love Robert Duvall (I think one of his best roles was Sonny in "The Apostle") and Robert Downey Jr. so was almost ready to plunk out the dough to see this ..... but maybe I'll wait.

If you want to see it, you probably want to see it. It doesn't demand a big screen, so if you have a cheaper, small screen alternative you could wait (I like to sit in the dark with an expansive screen filling my field of vision, but I understand that that is not important to all folk).

Robert

I've read Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. I became interested in it after about 100 pages. If it is important, I don't see it. I was entertained by it and got some feel for the blitz from it that I didn't have before now.

Robert

A twenty per cent coupon was not to be denied, and I have a long wishlist, so I was able to find a couple of books to order. They were in the mail from Barny Noble today.

The Stammering Century by Gilbert Seldes. I don't now how this got on my list, but it fits my interests. It is some of the religious figuration that was up against 19th century American Unitarianism.

Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov. From what I have descried, I would be Oblomov. I can read this to find out; I don't think I can afford it though.

Robert

>90 Mr.Durick: If you get a chance do try the tango (Argentinian of course). While some of the flashier moves might be beyond creaky joints one can stalk about looking haughty at any age, and it's good for the posture. In fact I've just talked myself into it. Must go find a class...

I asked for a ticket for The Marriage of Figaro and was sold one for the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD screening of Le Nozze di Figaro. The story is about a fellow whose engagement is complicated by his boss's lust for his fiancée and about the complications immediately after the marriage. His fiancée seems to me actually to get most of the attention, and she deserves it. It takes a little over 3½ hours to tell the story.

This production has a very competent stage contraption and is sung by some very competent singers, including three very attractive female leads, one playing a young man, known here as a boy. Altogether it is admirable.

I think it is still playing at the opera house, and it is scheduled to screen again on Wednesday.

Robert

Two nights ago, I was a younger man then, I finished This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. I have read three of her novels, preferring her first, and think of her as a reputable novelist even if not always of the first rank.

There is more to these essays than I am about to convey, but three things worth reporting struck me in them. One was the professionalism of her vocation. It is why I am not a writer (despite what it says on Linked In about me). That is reflected also in the third thing. Another is the constancy of her faith. She lives a faith from which she has lived, not one that she merely expounds. There are quirks in that faith that I suppose some people would find transcendent flaws, but her constancy and charity are real. Finally she can write about whatever is important deftly; that sometimes led me to find her superficial even in important matters, when it may be that she was simply competent — she does split infinitives though.

I think I had heard it, but was not aware of it when I read his name in these essays, that the David of her life was David Foster Wallace. I think I might have read those things differently if I had been aware of it while I was reading.

Henry James came to mind as I read her essays, which are magazine stories, and as I reflected on the novels of hers that I have read:

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it — this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, "Write from experience, and experience only," I should feel that this was a rather tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!"

Especially the sentence in quotation marks, although her claims of mathematical understanding, if I remember correctly, are that she doesn't get it.

Robert

I hadn't known from the favorable review in the local paper that I was going to see such a good film when I went to Fury*.

The movie's shortcomings are a certain obviousness, some drama that just doesn't ring true, and the occasional lapse for artfulness into artiness. The shortcomings do not short circuit the movie which is a tank movie and a war is hell movie. The tank is sealed but has connections with the world; we saw that too in Lebanon† another tank movie that I rated high. There is also all of the gratuitous, but necessary to war, destruction of bodies, some of whom the movie has made human.

There are people who disagree with me about the quality of the film.

Robert

I am not one of Margaret Atwood's biggest fans, but I see her as a practiced writer. I had read the first two novels, with scant memory of them now, in the MaddAddam series, so when MaddAddam came out in paper I bought it, and I have read it. I think she is coasting although the novel is readable and not so excruciating as the science fiction I remember from my childhood.

Robert

I like Atwood but this series is not among my favorites. What do you mean by coasting? (Sorry, I'm not a native speaker.)

I mean that she is not working very hard at it. She gets by on spontaneous cleverness and whatever comes out of her pen. And it is not the art conceals artfulness kind of thing, but a sort of lassitude. Still, as I said, I take her to be a practiced writer so even that is not without some merit.

She does not have to rev her engine to make her car go downhill.

Robert

Oh, I see, thank you! I read the first two books and I suppose I might read this one too, but I wont run to get it, especially after reading your review!

I was supposed to like the movie Dear White People* more than I did. I am hopeful that someone will explain it to me convincingly.

Robert

St. Vincent* was not the movie I expected from the trailers and the reviews. I expected more mania or rapid fire wit. The wit was there, but it was embedded in a sweet and maybe often told story. There is a degenerate with a heart of gold and in turn a hooker with a heart of gold; their hearts are exposed.

The movie is pleasant enough to sit through, but might be just as good on the living room couch as in a theater seat.

Robert

In Costco just in case someone finds me on Halloween (Hershey milk chocolate with almond bars that I can eat if they don't find me), I found a new translation of I Ching, this one translated by John Minford. I haven't been into my other versions, in particular the Wilhelm-Baynes edition, for a long time, but I am drawn to it.

Robert

It is clear that I prefer to watch movies in a movie theater despite the unruliness of today's audiences and sometimes the effort of getting to a theater at a specific time. This research shows that it is not clear what I am getting out of the experience:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141029102616.htm

I had thought that the screen filling my field of view and the big sound were important, and I had noticed that if the theater fails to dim the house lights I am irritated. Apparently there is something else going on.

Robert

I have noticed that there are established chamber ensembles who have partnered respectfully with Elvis Costello and reputed classical musicians who come away from meetings with Björk with admiration for her, and I have not understood it although I have enjoyed some of Elvis Costello's singing. So knowing that I may need education or correction on some of these things and seeing on Facebook that a friend had been to the museum to see Bjork's concert movie Björk: Biophilia Live* I went to see it last night.

Pretension weighs heavily on time. I will no longer be attempting to adjust my appreciation of Björk.

Robert

Three books from Barny Noble were in today's mail.

The Silence of Animals by John Gray. I have seen pro and con reviews of this book, and I remember that the subject looked interesting. I don't remember what that subject was.

The Mantram Handbook by Eknath Easwaran. I have admired the author's take on things for a long time and continue to. The monkey chatters, and on my quasi-daily walks especially I confront it. Sometimes, as one author suggests, I let it chatter and pay attention to it to see what it is getting at, why it is annoying me. Other times I try to quiet it, that is through recitation of a mantra; I have used one of my own and the ubiquitous Om Mani Padme Hum. I hope to understand a little bit more about all of this from looking at this book.

The Cure for Everything by Timothy Caulfield. This is, I hope, more about what I am doing and what is to be done...and what is not to be done.

Almost always I would just as soon start reading books that I receive or books that I bring home pretty much right away, and usually I don't get to. I've noticed in the last couple of hours about these that I want to look at that before the day is out; the reading I can set aside. I don't usually look long at books until I read them.

Robert

Quite some time ago although after I had begun to take an interest in opera I read a synopsis of Carmen and decided that the plot was too outrageously complicated for me ever to want to watch the work. This is an opera from which I knew tunes as a kid without ever knowing that they were from an opera. I finally saw it somehow, and it made a certain amount of sense. I think that I have seen it a few times now.

The current Live in HD production strikes me as well constructed. The two women attracted to Don José have marvelous voices, and Micaëla broke my heart. I do not like the expressions of sexuality that I have seen from the lead females in this and Le Nozze di Figaro; it is gratuitous and kind of ugly. If there's an encore screening or if it's still playing in New York it would be a good production from which to get one's Carmen fix.

Robert

Reading Robert's posts are more entertaining than going to the cinema.

Mr D, I agree with you completely about watching in theatres, "despite the unruliness of today's audiences".

I did have an interesting revelation (to me at least) about two weeks ago. While people talking in a film normally drives me crazy, this time the people behind me, a group of about seven, were speaking Russian. I do not understand Russian, and I found that because of that, their talking was far less distracting, mere background noise, because there was nothing for me to focus on.

I missed the first meeting where it was decided that Keanu Reeves was a joke as an actor, so I don't have to avoid his films and look dismissively at anyone who mention that they've seen one. That served me with John Wick*.

With a very skimpy story line decorated with some clever elements of a kind of life, the movie can be a mandala which the viewer constructs as he or she needs. For 101 minutes there is almost constant shooting, there are many stabbings, and there are brutal beatings. The movie can be about how a weak character can bring conflict between two strong characters and about who should prevail, the good or the bad. The movie might be about whether the good can be bad or vice versa. The movie can be about revenge and all of the complications and odd coincidences that attach themselves to vengefulness. The movie can be about how there are whole worlds within this one that most of us don't even know about. The movie can be about the kind of life available to people who risk their lives or whatever they have to risk for it. The movie can be about attachment and, as the Unitarians would have it, the interdependent web of all existence.

Anyway it was movie that held me rapt. Some of it is silly, like his surgery on himself towards the end and the way nobody outside the world of these people seems to notice the constant gunfire or people walking around with long guns in New York City. Most of it, except the violence, is understated, however, and the movie is stronger for it. That the hero might be a hero is no surprise; he was the man the mob hired not to be the boogeyman but to kill the boogeyman; they knew he was coming. In another recent movie, The Drop we had a different kind of hero (coincidentally another man taken over by a dog) about whom the expert, a policeman, said, "Nobody hears you coming, do they Bob?" He was equally fascinating.

Robert

I like The Tempest* maybe even the most of Shakespeare's plays. I have also enjoyed productions from the Globe Theater shown on the big screen. I believe the others that I have seen (the Falstaff plays come to mind) were presented as experiences or documentaries with the play the biggest, by far, part of them. This presentation was from a different distribution company, I believe, and had none of the additional apparatus. Still it was a complete presentation of the play.

This one was played for its comic effects, some of which I think did not at all appear comical in other productions that I have seen. There is also a lot of physical activity on stage — leaps, tumbles, running, squatting. Nobody in the cast plays his or her role ill, even if Miranda is played by an actress in her mid-twenties (she would, of course, have been played by a man or boy in the original). This one will do as a representative production of the author's last play.

It is no longer in production, it says on their web site, but it is available at least for the British on a DVD.

Robert

As a retiree on a fixed income I cannot collect coins any more in any serious way. Still they charm me. I have often admired one or more of the volumes in Krause's series on world coins in a book store. The volumes are individually pretty expensive, but I thought that some day I would compulsively buy each one even if that day were not soon. In the past few weeks Krause e-mailed me an offer of all four volumes for about the price of one. That was within my budget. When I got home in the dark last night there was a big and hefty box by my front door; it was from Krause. I opened it today, and I now have:

Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1701 to 1800, 6th edition, by George S. Kuhaj and Thomas Michael
Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1801 to 1900, 7th edition, by George S. Kuhaj and Thomas Michael
Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1901 to 2000, 42nd edition, by George S. Kuhaj and Thomas Michael
Standard Catalog of World Coins, 2001 to Date, 9th edition, by George S. Kuhaj and Thomas Michael

I think that the Thomas Michael touchstone may have some confusion built into it, although I haven't pursued it.

These are not, despite their heft, the be all and end all of coin collecting. They don't cover very old or ancient coins. They are not in color. They do not necessarily focus deeply in every area that might interest me, say gold coins. It takes a small library, bigger than this, to inform a decent collection. But these are a useful addition to that small library.

I hope to get some happy wishful thinking out of these big books.

Robert

PS There apparently is one more volume in the series listing the coins of the previous century. I wish that they had included it in the package. Oh, well.

R

>124 Mr.Durick: The Tempest is also my favorite of Shakespeare's plays (not that I have seen them all, and I never tried to read them). There were also a couple of beautiful movies based on it, though I don't remember the details very well. Wasn't there one by Peter Greenaway?

>125 Mr.Durick: Congrats on your purchase!

Hey, the movie Forbidden Planet was based on the Tempest. I'd forgotten that. And the one by Peter Greenaway was called Prospero's books. But I think there was another one I saw a long time ago, I just can't put my finger on it.

I liked Forbidden Planet when it was released in theaters when I was a child. I remember the monster of the id and liked it as science fiction. I came away from it, at eleven or twelve, with considerable appreciation for Walter Pidgeon. I should watch it again for its relation to the play.

I saw and very much appreciated Prospero's Books. I also saw his movie taken from the Pillowbook of Sei Shonagon; I was wondering the other day whether he has done any other movies — I suppose I could look it up.

Another take on it, and this may be the one you're thinking of, was Tempest which I think I saw before I ever saw the Shakespeare play. I don't know whether I had read it before then. I liked it more than the rating here on IMDb shows.

Helen Mirren as Prospera was pretty compelling despite some faults in the production.

I have now seen at least two other fairly straightforward productions of the play and am open to more.

Robert

I think that Timothy Caulfield is a little too charmed by his conclusions to make his book The Cure for Everything really useful. He does not, as the subtitle claims, untangle the twisted message about health, etc.

The book has five long(ish) chapters: Fitness, Diet, Genetics, Remedies, and Magic. I have read, here and there but often enough on peer reviewed web sites, in the first two matters to come to suspect him of incompleteness in the remaining chapters.

On fitness he claims that it is essential to work very hard at fitness; he emphasizes interval training. Nothing else is good enough. He mentions and sets aside the recent notion that one should get up from sitting once in a while to avoid deterioration. That is he can't see something better than nothing is better than nothing.

He has locked into calories in versus calories out for weight control, and he thinks that we need a pitifully small number at that. Those of us who actually have worked at maintaining our weight for decades have found effectiveness in such things as avoiding simple presentations of carbohydrates, and we find studies that show that there is likely something to that. All he'll say is that protein may make you eat less; I had a forty eight ounce steak to celebrate my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and it was not a challenge. He does not speak much of other values of diet although he comes up with a useful rule of thumb for eating; half your plate should be real fruits and vegetables, and there should be no junk.

He dismisses with a wave of his hand any and all alternative medicine, but in one place he says that alternative medicine that works is medicine. Sure it is, but until it is proved it is alternative.

He does not like what Big Pharma does regarding approval of drugs, and that chapter reads, although a little breathlessly, well.

There's more, but that's enough.

Robert

It can be work to watch Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)* so there are people who leave the theater thinking the movie a waste of time. If one does the work, as critics, despite what the movie says about them (to a point), are required to, one finds one of the best movies of the year (but see Boyhood). The movie holds onto its difficult magic without ever condescending to its audience, so its ending is triumphal.

There is a lot like magical realism in this movie, but it is clear from a few signs that the alternative reality is Riggan Thomas's internal workings and so it becomes comprehensible; it is hard at first. The relationships are hard. Emma Stone as his daughter brings huge eyes out of her head, and that plays in the ending.

The gun got my attention as soon as it appeared. It did get its moment in the spotlight, somewhat differently than I expected. The ending is an ending, a beautiful one, but not everything is resolved. I wasn't lacking anything when I walked out of the theater though.

Robert

There is a lot that is personal in the writings of Eknath Easwaran, but if there is any self-aggrandizement it is hard enough to find that I don't even look for it. In his book The Mantram Handbook he tells us what a mantram should be in principle and in specific words. He also tells us what we should expect from using one. He sometimes overreaches his expertise — I think he claims more for the mantram, despite its high value, in the treatment of addiction or depression than it can be expected to deliver.

He also tells me that my use of the mantram is wrong. Some of that I am willing to change; some of it I am not willing to change or it is too late to change. The first four chapters are the most useful in working these things out. The remaining chapters may not be so solid and may require a faith of a different sort.

I bought and read this book in paper, a worthwhile endeavor, but here is a PDF of the work.

Robert

On Wednesday, partly from lack of more popular suggestions, the book group picked Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things for discussion in January. By the time I got home there was a coupon from Barny Noble in my e-mail, so I ordered it Thursday, and it is here today.

For free shipping I ordered America Again (the touchstone for which wanted to come up as Moby Dick) by Stephen Colbert. He says on the back cover, "If there's a better book than this, I haven't written it."

Robert

>132 Mr.Durick: I believe I have that Colbert book laying around here in the stacks ....
I am in mourning that the Colbert Show is almost over. :(

I read America Again in two nights. There is little to say about it. It is very recently available in paperback. There are a lot of very funny or very clever lines. They are stacked up with some organization, but I think they might do better as individual jokes.

Robert

The movie Interstellar* has enough wrong with it to make it a not very good movie. It also has some glorious high spots in isolation. It is not careful in its details; why must the robot be called on to do the difficult piloting but only the human being can handle the routine maneuvers? The mix of magic and science is not seamless. Some of the human relations are generally touching; others are corny.

I'm glad I saw it, overall, and I'm glad I saw it in IMAX even though it was not a rich use of the medium. I won't be going back to it though.

To my great disappointment Anne Hathaway is not given much chance to be gorgeous, and her role is not very deep.

Robert

Whiplash* is worth a trip across town. It is a movie about two monsters: one a drumming student who wants to be great and one a band teacher who is vicious in trying to promote his students' ability. There is a narrow focus in this film and that works very well to illuminate some of the human condition — how do people make themselves great, how must they be challenged to learn everything?

I am not a musician, but I like music enough to pay attention to it. My introduction to jazz was through a fellow who did not believe in big band jazz. To him jazz was all about improvisation, and big bands could not improvise. I listened appreciatively to some large ensemble jazz but tended to agree with him. The drummer here gets to improvise in the band. The movie is very musical. The music never seems contrived to carry the theme but is as real as the director and actors can make it.

I don't remember any missteps in the script or the acting.

Robert

I envy Oblomov in Ivan Goncharov's telling of his life. I am something of the same species although I have neither the income nor the friendships that the hero has. Even so this tells me a lot about myself, and finding out about oneself may be one of the important reasons to read.

Unlike some of the reviewers I found the reading slow going. That doesn't mean I didn't like it, but I did have to savor it. Looking forward to it, I would pick it up and read 20 pages appreciatively but then have to set it down until next time. I do not usually read fiction that way, and even with non-fiction it is not common.

Robert

Il Barbiere di Siviglia is the prequel to last month's Le Nozze di Figaro in the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD series. It reruns on Wednesday. I think that it would be fun to watch The Barber... in the afternoon and The Marriage... in the evening with the same cast and same director.

Anyway there are melodies in this opera that everyone knows; "Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro..." Grumbling because the screening started twenty minutes late I got caught up in the overture. They lost me again in the first several minutes when the count and his crowd attempt to serenade Rosina; I found it tedious and overacted and thought it might be better to forego the $22 and go to a movie. Twenty minutes or so further on, though, I was caught up in the music and admiring most of the singing. There is lots of fun in the coloratura (I think that I'm using that word right). The plot is enough fun to hold over three hours of attention. The abstraction of the set annoyed me early on, but I got used to it and did the observational gymnastics to make it work for me in telling the story.

I left after the end happy that I had seen and heard the production.

Robert

In Old Filth by Jane Gardam I was introduced to English characters whom I have never met but who became real for me in the course of my reading. They are not people I would be although I might like them and would certainly like to have their advantages. There apparently is an idea afoot in the novel cloud of a special character, one of special talents who becomes a fast friend and remains true over long separation, who brings riches to the hero. There is one here, and there is one in The Goldfinch who was called to mind immediately by this one.

This trilogy has been on my shelf for awhile now; my taking it up now was prompted by Sassylassy's report on The Man in the Wooden Hat, the second novel of the series. I have tossed the latter onto my bed in hopes of starting it tonight.

Robert

When I read the last sentence last night in The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam I was shocked by the revelation even though it fit. Today I am no longer shocked probably because of that fit; it feels a little contrived, but it is an informative contrivance. It would be a lot less scrutable to someone who had not read Old Filth.

What is truth in relationships? The central narrative is about the trials of wedding and marriage between a competent couple, but there is so much more in this novel. There is a magical, mysterious dwarf whose relations to the male main character, Old Filth, seem to keep everything else hung together; without him there might not have been a narrative. These characters are kept real by the author which bespeaks some serious craft also evident in the smoothness of her writing.

That we are different from our appearances is perhaps a commonplace, but how that might work is not all that often worked out to the depth that it is here. That our own self knowledge can conflict is sometimes dismissed when we are told we don't allow ourselves cognitive dissonance, but we can be driven in two directions at once. Betty is conflicted; the dwarf is not; Teddy tests his conflicts and stays true. The minor characters reflect some of this as part of their support for the narrative.

I feel repelled by her paramour, and the last novel is ostensibly about him. So I am conflicted. I don't want to read about him, but I demand the rest of the story and will probably start it tonight.

Robert

>142 Mr.Durick: fun post. Maybe I should try Gardam.

I don't think it would hurt. If you want to try the trilogy, I suggest you start with Old Filth; it is the richer of the two I have read, and it stands on its own.

Robert

Mr D, I really like your summation in paragraph 3 of 142. The revelation I thought was a wonderful affirmation of fidelity. Regarding the third novel, I too am somewhat repelled by the major character in it, and so I'm saving it for later this winter, when I need to redirect my dissatisfaction with cold and snow. I know I will read it, for there will be more aspects of the two central characters so far that I look forward to. Maybe there will be some redemption for character number three.

>143 dchaikin: Mr D is right. Old Filth definitely stands on its own, which I am not sure would be the case for The Man in the Wooden Hat. If you can, I would suggest reading all three, even if I haven't read the third one yet.

I think that you will be pleasantly surprised by the story of Terry Veneering in Last Friends. The story does not go over much of the same ground as the earlier books, although enough is recapitulated to make sense. And as with the other books other issues and personalities are addressed. I don't know whether there is anything thematically interesting here, but the filling out of the world that Jane Gardam has created feels valuable. There is something good in everyone maybe, even as we are each unique and even unknown to others. (To understand all is to forgive all.)

I stayed on into the evening at the potluck I went to yesterday in order to help clean up. I came home and spent some time arranging the turkey scraps for Kitten that I earned by carving a couple of turkeys. I went to bed early enough but then spent time on my tablet on line. And still I finished the novel just about when I normally turn out the light.

I would like a novel length story about Isobel, but this may be the author's last novel so I don't think I can really hope for it.

Robert

PS I think I like her profuse use of coincidence as a building principle in construction of the narrative.

R

I've just bought Jane Gardam's trilogy. Thanks for the intriguing reviews!

I hope that you enjoy it, and I am happy to help.

Yesterday with three possible films to watch at the multiplex across town I chose Awake: The Life of Yogananda*

Less than fifty years ago, before buying books by mail was conventional, there was a small display ad in the back of many magazines offering The Autobiography of a Yogi for sale. I had late in college taken up lightly with eastern religions, and finally while in the Navy wrote the letter and the check, got it, and read it. I have not become a Hindu, but I appreciated much of his journey. So I was in the prospective audience for this documentary, with dramatizations.

And it turns out be for the people who are already in the prospective audience. I see why it got only two of four possible stars in the local paper. It is not so much bad as it is a celebration for those who would celebrate and information for those who would review. If you want to see it, you'll want to see it. Otherwise you will probably be bored.

I am glad I saw it, but I don't feel all that informed or at all enlightened. I have ordered a book, American Veda, based on some interviews in the movie. I will look up Kriya Yoga on line soon. The movie was not without consequences.

Robert

Jean Carper is not an obsessively careful writer; she speaks of the 'infinitesimal' gap in synapses. And her book 100 Simple Things You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer's is not entirely up to date; she speaks of the utility of red wine explaining that its power comes from resveratrol a notion that has been questioned in research recently; she also suggests whole grains including brown rice without mentioning any risks from arsenic.

She is a lucid and practiced writer on health, especially on nutrition, though, and I think that this book is potentially very useful. Mere quantity can make for complication, and there are some 100 different suggestions in this book on how to quash dementia. I will be making notes even though I recognized several of the suggestions and even do many of them already. Dr. Weil suggests, among other things, taking acetyl l carnitine; she seconds that and adds alpha lipoic acid to the mix; I have started, Saturday, to do that.

Generalizations can be hard to make although she has a chapter of them at the end. Eat healthy: reduced red meat and sugar, plenty of leafy green vegetables and cruciferous vegetables, dark juices and apple juice or apples, berries. Take supplements: here one would have to concoct a list, but she comes down firmly on the side of taking a multivitamin with anti-oxidants and without iron. Get physical exercise, particularly but not exclusively aerobic exercise. Get mental exercise; actually working your mind and presenting it with novelty is important. Be sociable; well maybe some of these are just too much for some of us.

Some of the suggestions are not for all of us. Those of us who do not drink will not be taking up red wine. Those of us who are not women will not be taking estrogen, a complicated matter as it turns out.

I like this book. I like its clarity, and I like its utility.

Robert

On Friday two orders from Barny Noble converged on my mailbox:

The Making of a Poem edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland. I have a degree from a major university where poetry was central to a degree in English, and I cannot read poetry. So I try to read it, and I keep getting books on how to read it and what it is.

Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion by René Guénon. The fringes of religion have interested me, and the name of this author has called to me even though I have not yet read anything by him.

The Two Faces of American Freedom by Aziz Rana. I'm beginning to believe that there are some irresolvable tensions in governance — compromise becomes a necessity not merely a pragmatism. Here is a law professor from my alma mater opining on this tension, I hope.

American Veda by Philip Goldberg. I was tipped off to this book by the film on Yogananda. It says on the cover that it starts with the Beatles' trip to India. I wonder whether it will tip its hat to the World Parliament of Religions or to the beats. Maybe Indian religions despite exposure in America since the Transcendentalists have been fringe; they seem to be coming out now — we even have a Hindu congresswoman.

Assholes by Aaron James. More on a less and less restrained blight on our society.

The Martian by Andy Weir. A science fiction novel that has been well received hereabouts. The story looks like it could be interesting and informative.

Going Clear by Lawrence Wright. More fascinating fringe religion.

Robert

There are moving events in the film Pelican Dreams* and 80 minutes of good photography. It is much more bird watching than scientific exploration — a population biologist is shown, but I don't remember that she talked about her counts or how she achieved them.

So it sometimes became long although not tedious. I was less than charmed by the filmmaker's intrusion into the narrative.

I'm glad I saw it though. I was closer to pelicans watching the movie than I ever have been in person, and they seem to be honorable creatures.

Robert

We know from the example of Margaret Fuller what the life of a nineteenth century American female intellectual was like. More specifically what might the life of a nineteenth century American female scientist have been like? Elizabeth Gilbert has conjectured about that in her novel The Signature of All Things, and it comes across as credible. This one had plenty of money so she didn't suffer as a less well heeled example might have. Still she had to face the fact that the academy was not open to her, and at least at first she had to hide her sex when she published.

She also was a person among people, and that kept the narrative moving. An interesting aspect of her was that she was, isolated in rearing though she had been, tremendously open to all sorts of human expression, even loving those who threatened her. There was also a dog, not very much developed but clearly there, whom I came to like.

My sister was an academic botanist. I don't know whether she got into mosses.

Robert

I'm thinking that The Honorable Pelican would be a good name for a pub.

I had two books in today's mail from Barny Noble:

Billionaires' Ball by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks. Who are these people who are accused of destroying society? How much would I like to be like them?

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. I was very much looking forward to receiving this. Either it or a book on Theosophy will be next up on my reading list. It turns out that I already bought a copy in September, 2013.

Robert

The current Metropolitan Opera Live in HD opera is Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg [PDF] repeating, according to my local paper, Wednesday night. It is a very long opera. I believe one of the commentators said between acts that it is the longest opera.

Robert

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright is a troubling book. It is lucid, detailed, and credible. It describes a monster in our society — one so mean that, for example, the IRS which is empowered to destroy any of us at a whim and exercises that power probably too often has bowed before it. It is possible that Scientology is fading; in survival school in the Navy we were taught to bury the heads of snakes we had killed for food lest dead they kill someone.

I have enjoyed several Tom Cruise movies. It may be a struggle, but I think that I will not be going to any more of them.

Robert

The reviews of The Theory of Everything* claim that the movie is about Stephen Hawking, although it is fairly plain that it is based on the memoir by Jane Hawking and runs through the end of their being together. I expected not to like the movie, and I am not an unabashed admirer of the cosmologist.

The movie turned out to be about Jane Hawking's strength, and it was very good at that (I know that she may have been self-serving; if that be the case she did it competently). Stephen Hawking's deterioration and publishing triumph are the framework on which her story of the affair is told. Her story is not entirely fleshed out; her success in becoming a scholar is there but slighted. She is a heroine even if she goes her separate way finally. There is no necessity to see this on a big screen.

I like and respect Stephen Hawking, the student and man of the world, more now that I have seen this film.

Robert

Reading Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion by René Guénon was too much of a chore, especially for the little I got out of it. Even if the hodgepodge that was Theosophy congealed around some important religious ideas, it would be hard, probably impossible, to see that in this book. It was written before Krishnamurti settled in Ojai and shows its age. It is written not so much as investigative journalism as it is ax grinding.

There is information in this book, but without looking I would expect Wikipedia to be more lucid and more balanced.

Robert

The book is better than the movie. The movie Wild* captures immensely, even if not immaculately, well Cheryl Strayed's report of her trek. Reese Witherspoon looks like a struggling human and struggling trekker for the length of the movie (I sometimes felt the length but at the end wanted it to go on). She doesn't wear here heavy backpack, the Monster, as if it were a heavy backpack; that is it is not on her hips but strapped below them. But the trail, coming to terms with oneself, and facing down the terrors is a long story as well as a heavy one that this movie shows us.

There is one of her many angels, if you will, who says about giving up that he always had to, that there were never forks in his road. She goes on and the movie shows us her going on.

I am now hoping that Tracks gets screen time here soon.

Robert

It took me two days to read The Martian by Andy Weir because I started it at night. The substance of the book is in commonplaces, but set in a new and well developed environment, Mars. The inventiveness is in the particular situation. The building of the circumstances in fairly rich detail make it into a story as absorbing as news of it would be. The is marvelous story telling, and that is the reason to read it. Day after day of solving problems leads to an exciting ending.

It has been sold to the movies. I hope it gets made.

Robert

>156 Mr.Durick: Die Meistersinger is going to be on at a cinema near me. I like Wagner, but I haven't heard this one. Six hours is a long time to sit in a cinema. Do you recommend it?

There have been a lot of positive comments on this production. There is something of a duty to see it if you want to say that you've seen Wagner. The people really liked the important guy (I've already forgotten who he is), and I could see why. I've sat through the Ring a couple of times and will do it again contented. Mostly what I felt about Die Meistersinger... was that it was long.

I recommend it but not for enjoyment.

Robert

P.S. If you do see it, let us know how you feel about it. I am happy to have my operatic misunderstandings shown to me.

R

Some of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is terrifying, and some of it is dry, but it is all important. The power that has developed has become the power to abuse (and perhaps to destroy society collaterally). Something must be done, and the author is not strong on what that might be. She does say that we have to end the War on Drugs; I agree with that and would go so far as to say that no possession or personal use of drugs should be illegal except perhaps by minors. But I wondered at the end what I could do, say besides vote where there are, by current construction, no relevant choices.

The book admits that there are injuries to people of races other than African-American, but says that the current state of affairs in America is to disenfranchise, in all regards, the people of the ghetto. I could not fault her analysis even as I know that I might understand but would be indignant if I lost a position to affirmative action. A lesson I could learn here, I suppose, if I hadn't already, is not to act on any residual prejudice I may have, and if I deny that prejudice to try to identify it and overcome it.

"Can we all get along?"

I will suggest this book, among others, to my book group for discussion. I don't know that they will like any of the four suggestions that I will make.

Robert

Yes, terrifying and important. And sad and discouraging. What gets me is that I had no idea this was going on in the drug war and the "war on crime"..and yet it's been going on for 30 years.

164-

Would you mind expanding on what you mean by "disenfranchising the ghetto"?

The author's point is that black people are disproportionately convicted of felonies. A consequence in most, I think, jurisdictions is the loss of the voting privilege. There are a number of other privileges lost too, but she emphasized voting and jury duty. With the felony convictions also comes huge difficulty in leading one's life, getting a job or renting an apartment for example. So people are trapped in a system of seeing to it that they and their neighbors are almost universally and almost perpetually recognized primarily as criminals. This is a political thing, and there is no way they can vote their way out of it.

Robert

>158 Mr.Durick: The Theory Of Everything will be released over here on New Year's Day and I'm planning to see it. I feel slightly odd about going to see a movie about someone who's still alive, particularly as people in the film/television business always change things and then say, 'well of course everyone understands that this is just a drama, and they don't expect it to be true, so of course we can use artistic licence and invent/alter things'. The problem is, of course, that we the audience don't generally know what is true and what isn't, and the films colour the way we see the people and their history, even when we know we shouldn't trust them (the films that is). From the trailers it does look to be an extraordinary performance by Eddie Redmayne.

>164 Mr.Durick: I hadn't heard of this book. Do I take it it is a study of the effects of the institutional ways of punishing people in addition to / instead of sending them to jail? (e.g. depriving them of rights/benefits/opportunities?) It sounds interesting from the brief indications you've given.

Well The Theory of Everything was based on his wife's memoir and runs through their separation. I haven't heard that either party has complained about the film.

The New Jim Crow mostly talks about the charging and conviction of black Americans for drug offenses that are felonies. The imprisonment of them is important; the number of people in prison has exploded. But as important is that one doesn't live down a felony conviction even after release from prison. So Reagan, by instituting the war on drugs, and others, for example Clinton, by being tough on crime have put black people, especially but not exclusively lower class African Americans, into a permanent status of being less than, so much less than that they cannot find jobs or homes. The book has gotten a lot of attention on LibraryThing, but it might not have shouted out to anybody not in the United States.

Robert

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo is a novelistic non-fiction tale of a Bombay slum. There are human beings there who prove that poverty can buy unhappiness, although some of the people of elevated rank seem less happy than powerful. There is a lack of power concomitant with the poverty that devastates neighborliness, friendship, family relations, and just getting by, and it is all so close to prosperity; that prosperity probably could pay to ease the pains of destitution.

There is a meanness among these people that shouldn't be there in a moral universe. The sinking boat does not ennoble the passengers. It is hard to say whether the politics at any level is meant to serve the people or whether it is all cronyism.

This was not as hard to take as the second, or so, chapter of The New Jim Crow, perhaps because of the adaptations that have taken place in the community, but it is an abomination nevertheless.

Robert

Two powerful books to finish the year with Robert. Looking forward to seeing you next year.

>157 Mr.Durick: I finished Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape. In the last few pages, Jenna Miscavige (the niece of David Miscavige, the head of the Church now) personally thanks Lawrence Wright (among other authors and journalist) for getting her and other stories out there. My library has a copy of Going Clear and I'm waiting to get my hands on it; obviously it's a popular title there.

The last two books you read are also on my wishlist.

I wonder whether I want now to read any more about Scientology. Don't I know enough?

Robert

I've enjoyed your comments on both The New Jim Crow and Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

There is a meanness among these people that shouldn't be there in a moral universe. The sinking boat does not ennoble the passengers. It is hard to say whether the politics at any level is meant to serve the people or whether it is all cronyism.

Agreed.

The Imitation Game* is a very good movie. Some clear disclaimers on screen tell us that it is a work of fiction, but it is based on the life of Alan Turing. People on the autism spectrum are usually more a pain in the ass than they are interesting, but this movie, not a comedy because the hero dies at the end, is played a good bit for humor, and that makes of the hero a human being. The child actor representing Turing as a schoolboy does two tour de force turns once when his friend does not return to school as he holds an encrypted note saying, "I love you," and once when he denies the death of his beloved friend and denies his friendship. One of those turns explains the psychology behind the scene in which Turing tells Jane that he does not care for her, that he has only been using her; you can see the lie in it.

Cracking Enigma was pretty important. The movie may make a stronger claim for its winning the war than it deserves though.

Robert

Two gorgeous movies in two days. One has to admit that a gorgeous movie has at least some part in excellence, but the movie may itself come up short of excellent. I think I first made that explicit to myself with respect to Frozen*.

Tuesday's movie was Into the Woods†. At the end of the eighties I suspect I saw Into the Woods staged at a local theater. I wasn't able to follow the story line or divine what it was all about, but it set a good mood and sounded good. So I felt compelled to see the movie. It is gorgeous. The story, the acting, and the singing are all okay but don't really add up to much more than a hill of beans. It is possible to follow the story line in the movie. Some lines don't play out, we don't see whether the baker and Rapunzel ever find out that they are siblings. I can't see why this shouldn't be reckoned as an opera, although the appeal at the theater I went to seemed to be to children, and I have by now seen several operas. I think it can stand among them, but not as one of the greats. I think that there may be more memorable songs in Frozen.

Wednesday's movie was The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies‡. I've never read the novel, but I've seen the predecessors to this, and I've read The Lord of the Rings several times. I've taken the movies of both novels to be illustrations of the novels. I have thought that they came up short as films. So this one was gorgeous and illustrated some virtues, but it was the battle of five armies with a lot of slashing and stabbing and no real explication of who won — the good guys won. We had some revelation of character but not much real roundness of character and the dynamics were pretty unsophisticated.

I think gorgeousness, at least until we have a surfeit of it, may be reason enough to see a movie. But admiring the aspect is not sufficient for admiration of the whole endeavor.

Robert

PS The Hobbit would probably be good looking, certainly interpretable, on a smaller screen, but IMAX 3D was really good for it.

R

I cannot expect to live much beyond mid-century. Nevertheless when Bill Gates opined a while back that there could be a trillionaire by the end of the century I thought it would be cool if I could be the first one.

The book Billionaires' Ball by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks tells me that I would be a problem (except presumably if everyone had close to a trillion dollars). It goes over the ways that rich people have bought our governance. It offers suggestions for a cure revolving around redistribution of wealth largely through an inheritance tax, more steeply progressive income taxes, and rational taxing of capital gains. I am in favor of those things with some doubts about inheritance taxes and with some attention to care in crafting capital gains taxation.

The book does not say how the people can overcome the power of the plutocrats. I happen to think that we are doomed. In that might be our salvation, but salvation might really be way down the road and serve only our descendants. Picking up the pieces after doom could take time.

Robert

We saw Into the Woods earlier this week -- it's fabulous. I'm not much of a musical fan, but we did see this at, of all places, a dinner theatre about 20 years ago (where it was also fabulous). I wouldn't recommend it for kids under 5, but it's a wonderful fairytale reimagining with some memorable songs and great performances.

A considerable part of the audience in the shopping mall multiplex I saw it in applauded at the end.

Robert