Books & Reviews – Page 21

The Hollow Crown: Henry V

As I started to watch the last film in the Hollow Crown series, I wasn’t sure whether Tom Hiddleston was up to playing the iconic role in Shakespeare’s most patriotic (and jingoistic) play. I thought Hiddleston’s Prince Hal in Henry IV had just a little too much of Loki – and maybe the bully – in it for me to see him as a majestic king. But I was quickly won over. Whether the movie itself was good Shakespeare is another question. First a note on the lighting and sets: in Richard II, it was all light, bright and colour ……… 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 ↓

The Hollow Crown

2014-06-10 2014-06-11 Books & Reviews / Culture / Film & Reviews2 Comments

I’ve watched three of the four productions in the 2012 TV series, The Hollow Crown, this past week, and am greatly impressed by the productions and the acting. Wonderful, rich stuff. The series consists of the second Shakespeare tetralogy, the Henriad: Richard II; Henry IV parts 1 and 2, and Henry V, each roughly two hours long. I expect to see the last remaining one this week. (N.B. A new production of the first tetralogy, The Hollow Crown II, is in the works this year). There’s a bit of an irony in the tetralogy’s name: Henriad, because Henry doesn’t appear at all ……… 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 ↓

The difficult art of reading poetry

2014-04-20 2014-04-20 Books & Reviews / Culture / Poetry & LyricsLeave a comment

Synecdoche. Metonymy. Not exactly words that trip lightly off the tongue. Unless, I suppose, you’re Harold Bloom. Those are two of the four fundamental tropes in literature, Bloom tells us. Identified originally by Kenneth Burke, who, as Bloom calls him, was a “profound student of rhetoric.” Bloom references Burke in his introduction to The Best Poems of the English Language (Harper Collins, 2004), which he both edited and selected. I’ll get back to that book, in a separate post, and discuss whether they are actually the “best” or in fact whether anyone can make such a claim for another reader. ……… 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 ↓