What I’m Reading Now – Page 15

Two new books

2014-08-08 2021-05-15 Books & Reviews / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Yesterday I received two new books from Amazon: The Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne translated by Donald Frame, and How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell. Montaigne lived and wrote in the 16th century, shortly after Machiavelli, and like the latter developed a new way of writing and seeing things. He might be described as the West’s first blogger in that he wrote about himself in a way that presaged today’s online bloggers. I look forward to reading his works and Bakewell’s biography and critique. I know little ……… click below for more ↓

The Lore of Tea

Whoa! Down the rabbit hole I tumbled this week. I started reading about tea in several books I recently purchased. What a story. What a delight! Many hours spent between the pages absorbing culture, history, types, classifications, production, terroirs and marketing.* I’ve read bits and pieces about tea before; mostly history and cultural notes; some tidbits about specific types and specific bits I’ve gleaned from online sources. I never read any significantly detailled work about picking, grading and production previously. Nor was I fully aware of the range and depth of teas, the complex terroir of tea and the variations in ……… click below for more ↓

The Hunting of the Snark

2014-06-11 2014-06-11 Books & Reviews / Culture / Humour & Satire / Personal Reminiscences / Poetry & Lyrics / What I'm Reading Now / Writing & Fiction2 Comments

I’ve always wondered why Lewis Carroll’s wonderful poem, The Hunting of the Snark – an Agony in Eight Fits – has never been redone, rewritten in a modern version, with modern references and people. It seems to lend itself to revision, at least to my eyes. Perhaps it’s because this sort of whimsical, satirical poem is not popular these days (it was written between 1874 and 76, a decade after Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and three decades after Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense). Perhaps it’s because it’s a long poem, and reworking it all would be a considerable effort. After all, it’s ……… click below for more ↓

E-readers: worth the investment?

2014-06-11 2014-07-31 E-books & E-readers / Science & Technology / Technology & Gadgets / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

I have a passionate, somewhat obsessive, relationship with books. Real books: paper, ink and glue. Not digital books. I have a lot of books and I treasure each one like an old friend. I love reading – I read books at least an hour every day, and usually much more. The feel of a book in my hands is a comfort and a delight. I worked in book publishing – a dream job for anyone with a passion for reading. I’ve never been seduced by an e-reader – even though at heart I’m a techie geek who likes hardware and gadgets almost ……… click below for more ↓

Confused Science

2014-05-11 2014-05-12 Behaviour & Psychology / Evolution & Paleontology / Science & Technology / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

In his book, The World in Six Songs, Daniel Levitin posutlates the ability to make or participate in music may have conferred an evolutionary advantage to early humans. It’s a reasonable hypothesis based on both archeological and anthropological evidence. And some paleontological finds, too. We know from remains of bone flutes and other instruments, that humans made music at least 40,000 years ago. What that music was like, what role it played in primitive culture and society, what ceremonial or bonding purposes it had, will always be speculation (although we do know they likely used the pentatonic scale). We can only infer music’s ……… click below for more ↓

Just Six Songs?

2014-04-26 2014-04-26 Culture / Music & Reviews / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Author, musician and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin says all music can be classified into a mere six types of song. That’s part of the premise in his 2009 book, The World in Six Songs. I recently started reading it and it has opened some interesting areas of thought for me.* A mere six fundamental themes in song, Levitin writes: friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge and love. And he provides a chapter for each in what is a literary combination of sciences, music, social commentary, cultural anthropology and personal reminiscence. And he offers a lot of conjecture that, while not necessarily provable, ……… click below for more ↓

Lost Shakespeare play found?

2014-04-18 2014-04-18 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Cardenio. Written by William Shakespeare. Based on an episode in Miguel Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote. The novel was translated from Spanish into English in 1612. The play was known once, but lost. Performed by the King’s Men in 1613, the same year Shakespeare penned Henry VIII, or All is True and The Two Noble Kinsmen. Performed before June 29th, the day the Globe theatre burned down during a performance of Henry VIII. Cardenio was entered in the Stationer’s Register in 1653 as a collaboration by playwrights Fletcher and Shakespeare. The Guardian explains: In 1653 the leading English publisher of plays ……… click below for more ↓

Spoon River: Smith, Goodman and Masters

2014-04-18 2014-04-18 Books & Reviews / Music & Reviews / Poetry & Lyrics / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

VERY well, you liberals, And navigators into realms intellectual, You sailors through heights imaginative, Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, And Tennessee Claflin Shopes— You found with all your boasted wisdom How hard at the last it is To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. While we, seekers of earth’s treasures, Getters and hoarders of gold, Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, Even to the end. Edgar Lee Masters: Thomas Rhodes; from Spoon River Anthology, 1915 What is is about poetry or musical lyrics that moves us so differently than just prose? ……… click below for more ↓

Tudor politics: Elizabeth’s struggle

2014-04-17 2014-04-17 Books & Reviews / England and Britain / History & Biography / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

David Starkey’s book, Elizabeth: the Struggle for the Throne, is the best book I’ve read on the period of Elizabeth’s life between the death of Henry VIII and her own coronation. It gives a clear, richly detailled picture of the machinations, the politics and the society that she lived in during the 25 years before she became monarch – 1533 to 1558. And what a life it was. In and out of favour, imprisoned, in fear of her life, threatened, cajoled, living on her wits, political puppet and Machiavellian instigator… Elizabeth emerges as a canny, quick and lively actor in ……… click below for more ↓

Feetish or Fettish?

2014-03-30 2014-03-30 Language & Grammar / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I was surprised to recently read in David Crystal’s book, The Story of English in 100 Words, that fetish – which I pronounce “feh-tesh” – was once pronounced “feetish.” In fact, in the 1920s, Crystal writes, the BBC had that pronunciation in its guide for radio broadcasters.* It makes sense, of course, when you think about it. Usually when there is a single consonant before a vowel, that vowel is pronounced long. It usually takes two consonants to shorten it. For example: Holy and holly; Mater and matter; Scared and scarred; Hater and hatter; Pater and patter; Diner and dinner; ……… click below for more ↓

The ethics of politics via Aristotle

2014-03-26 2014-03-28 Books & Reviews / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Politics, Aristotle wrote in the Nicomachean Ethics, is the “master science of the good.” The good of which he wrote is the greater good, the “highest good” that benefits the state, not the personal. For even if the good is the same for the individual and the state, the good of the state clearly is the greater and more perfect thing to attain and safeguard. the attainment of the good for one man alone is, to be sure, a source of satisfaction; yet to secure it for a nation and for states is nobler and more divine. But good is ……… click below for more ↓

Marcus Aurelius

2014-03-21 2014-03-21 Arts / Books & Reviews / Education & Learning / Philosophy / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

I continue to be profoundly moved by the wisdom of the classical authors. It’s often hard to accept that some of them were writing two or more millennia ago: many seem so contemporary they could have been written this century. Of late – within the past year or so – I’ve been reading Lucretius, Aristotle, Horace, Cicero, Seneca, Pliny the Elder*… and more recently Marcus Aurelius. I’ve had a couple of versions of his Meditations (written ca. 167 CE) kicking around on my bookshelf for decades. I’ve dipped into it many times before today, but never really read it for more ……… click below for more ↓

What’s in a missing word?

2014-03-11 2014-03-15 Books & Reviews / Education & Learning / Language & Grammar / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

There’s a line in one of Horace’s epistles that really caught my eye. In Latin it reads: Utque sacerdotis fugitiuus liba recuso, pane egeo iam mellitis potiore placentis Horace: Epistles, Book I, X No, I can’t translate it.* However, I was reading David Ferry’s 2001 translation and he renders it like this: I’m like that slave who ran away because They fed him honey cakes and he longed for bread. That appealled to me both for my recent passion for making bread, but also for its philosophic – almost Buddhist – intent. Ferry gives us both the Latin and English, ……… click below for more ↓

Reading: A Canadian tragedy… or not?

2014-03-02 2014-03-02 Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Culture / Education & Learning / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

The map above might show the making of a serious tragedy for Western and especially Canadian culture. It indicates in colour which nations read the most. Yellow is the second lowest group. Canada is coloured yellow. In this survey, Canada ranks 10th – from the bottom! Twenty countries above us have populations which, on the average, read more per week than we do. That surprises and shocks me. And it disappoints me no end. I’m not only a voracious reader, I’m passionate about books, language, reading and writing, and have been on the library board for 20 years actively helping ……… click below for more ↓