Books & Reviews – Page 7

Back to Montaigne

When I find myself in times of trouble, I go back to read Montaigne. Seeking words of wisdom, Read some more… (to the tune of Let It Be, with apologies to the Beatles) I was up late these last few nights reading Michel de Montaigne into the wee, dark hours. Although I used to read him rather frequently and found him an inspiration for several posts, some years back, I hadn’t picked him up in ages. But a passing mention in Sterne’s Tristam Shandy made me pick him up again starting with his long essay (69 pages in the Screech ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 11

2020-10-17 2020-10-18 Cancer / Daily life / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Anaesthetic must be one of the most remarkable inventions of the 20th century. While various forms of anaesthesia have been used since the ancient Egyptians (with varying degrees of effectiveness), it really wasn’t perfected until the last century. It’s difficult to imagine the horrors of surgery before it became commonly used and as effective as it is today. Here I was, lying on a table in the operating room, Thursday morning, being covered with a warm blanket by one nurse, while another nurse held a mask over my face to breathe from, and a third prepared to administer my anesthetic ……… click below for more ↓

The Imperialist Economics of Blueberries

2020-10-10 2020-10-10 Food & Drink / International politics / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

There was a cooler right at the front of the fruit and vegetable section of the local Walmart store packed with clear plastic containers of blueberries. Plump, dark, fresh-looking berries. And value-priced at $2.87 a container. I love blueberries on my morning cereal; these looked inviting, and so inexpensive! Who can resist such a bargain? I put a container in my shopping cart. Only when I got home did I read the label: product of Peru. Peru lies more than 6,000 km away from me by air; more than eight hours’ flying time from Toronto, plus a two-hour drive north ……… click below for more ↓

Manners? Civility? What happened to them?

2020-09-25 2020-09-25 Culture / Manners & Civility / Philosophy / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I was sitting in my car on main street, recently, waiting for a break in the traffic so I could back out and drive on. My backup lights were lit, my turn signal flashing, so drivers knew I was trying to exit. The parking downtown is nose-first, angled to the sidewalk, so you need to back into the oncoming traffic lane to leave. All I needed was a single driver to stop and allow me out. A few seconds of someone’s time. But even though the traffic light stopped the cars, drivers still came up right behind me to block ……… click below for more ↓

Socialism, Communism, and Liberalism

2020-09-16 2020-09-16 International politics / Meaning of words / Politics / US Politics / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Watching American political dramas like their presidential elections is both entertaining and frightening. Yet it is also strangely educational. it has taught me a basic tenet: Americans as a people know little to nothing about politics. Not just about international politics, but their own. It is a commonly held belief outside American borders that Americans are remarkably unaware of the history, politics, leaders, or even existence of other nations, but are often equally ignorant of their own. There are far too many YouTube videos interviewing Americans about both the USA and the world for me to list them, but look ……… click below for more ↓

Donald “Asshole” Trump

2020-09-10 2020-09-10 Books & Reviews / Talibangelists and pseudo-Christians / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Back in 2012 — several years before the 2016 US election that saw what many believe was an inept, incompetent, lying, Russian agent and con artist get elected to the US presidency — associate professor of philosophy Aaron James wrote a book called, “Assholes. A Theory.” It wasn’t about anyone in particular, although it was easy to see others — including many contemporary politicians and celebrities — in his definitions and classifications. It was somewhat satirical, but also a serious attempt to define a psychological personality while using the vernacular. The original “theory” was also produced as a film in ……… click below for more ↓

Shakespeare’s Mirror

2020-09-02 2020-09-02 Politics / Shakespeare / Shakespeare / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Grant that, and then is death a benefit. So are we Caesar’s friends, that have abridged His time of fearing death. Stoop, Romans, stoop, And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood Up to the elbows and besmear our swords. Then walk we forth, even to the marketplace, And, waving our red weapons o’er our heads, Let’s all cry “Peace, freedom, and liberty!” Shakespeare: Julius Caesar Act 3 Sc 1. I was thinking about this play and how well it related to the events of this era, a time when Trump’s domestic terrorists are killing their fellow citizens. A ……… click below for more ↓

I Struggle With Milton

2020-08-23 2020-08-23 Books & Reviews / Classics / Poetry / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Confession time: I find a lot of epic or narrative poetry a slog. Milton, Homer, Dante… I have read my way into them all, but unlike my other books, I never get very far in any of them at each reading, although I make the effort and do so often. I don’t even enjoy reading Shakespeare’s two long poems, Venus and Adonis, and The Rape of Lucrece, and I read everything else by the bard with great relish. It’s odd because I love reading Chaucer’s poetry, even his longer pieces. I delight in Shakespeare’s sonnets. I have dozens of collections ……… click below for more ↓

The Penguin Classics Book

2020-08-22 2020-08-22 Books & Reviews / Books about books / Literature / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Did you know there is a card game played in Japan at the New Year, called uta-garuta, where 100 cards have a full poem on each — traditionally taken from their classical poets — and another 100 have just the final line. Players take turn reading the poem from the deck, while the others race to find its concluding line from the cards with the final lines. I didn’t until I read about it on page 111 of The Penguin Classics Book, by Henry Eliot. (I think that’s a wonderful game idea and wish someone would do a similar game ……… click below for more ↓

The Hermeneutics of Suspicion

2020-08-22 2020-08-22 Local media / Media / Politics / Style & usage / What I'm Reading Now / Words & etymologyLeave a comment

The title is a phrase I encountered while reading Mark Thompson’s excellent book on political rhetoric, Enough Said: What’s Wrong With the Language of Politics? Thompson’s book is both about the current and historic use of political rhetoric (from Aristotle forward), but also about the role of journalists in covering it. Thompson — a former new editor and executive in the BBC and now with the New York Times — maintains we are in “a crisis of political language” that comes from a combination of modern media, social media use, and also in the changing way politicians speak (“characterised by ……… click below for more ↓

The Talibangelist Conspiracy to Rule America and the West

2020-08-09 2020-08-09 Books & Reviews / Christianity / Creationism / Critical Thinking / Cults / Evangelicals / International politics / Politics / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Religious intolerance / Theocracy / US Politics3 Comments

Talibangelists (aka (aka the pseudo-Christian, far right) would love to force everyone believe in and obey their highly-adulterated pseudo-religion, and to punish those who don’t. Or won’t. Punishment is big on their agenda: unbelievers, those who stray, followers of a real faith, scientists, intellectuals, people of colour, gays, people with an “R” in their name — they love to punish anyone not among their small circle of authoritarian theocrats (aka theocons, because their pseudo-religious ideology is conservative-far right) and enablers (cue the theme music from The Handmaid’s Tale). In order to bring their authoritarian ideology into public policy and ramp ……… click below for more ↓

Why Science Fiction Matters

2020-08-02 2020-08-02 Books & Reviews / Daily life / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Pop Culture / Reading & Literacy / Scifi and fantasyLeave a comment

In the past two years, we’ve watched all the Star Trek series (on Netflix) from start to finish, and all the ST movies (on DVD). We just started watching the Battlestar Galactica series on Blu-Ray this past week (which we had seen some years back, but with long gaps between seasons). Both of us love scifi. Although the first ST series was often more space opera than scifi (as the Star Wars series has been), it matured quickly into some complex, adult-oriented storytelling in the subsequent series (a sad failing of the first several Star Wars films was their failure ……… click below for more ↓

Juet’s Journal in Word format

2020-07-28 2020-07-29 Blog & Blogging / Books & Reviews / England and Britain / History & Biography / My Writing / Personal Reminiscences / Typography / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

For those readers interested in the voyages of the late-16th-early-17th century adventurer, Henry Hudson, or in the European explorations of North America, I have recently scanned and edited a copy of Juet’s Journal into Word format and placed it online here. Here is my website on Henry Hudson, too. I haven’t done much with it of late, but that may be slowly changing as I find I have more time these days, during my recovery. The journal documents how Hudson and his crew ‘discovered’ parts of North America and sailed up the river that now bears his name. For Americans, ……… click below for more ↓

Can an atheist be a good citizen?

2020-07-20 2020-07-21 Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Ethics & morality / Faith / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

The answer to the headline’s question is no, at least according to the late Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus in a podcast in the Socrates in the City series (Sept. 22, 2004; I came across it as one of the chapters in the 2012 book from the podcast, Life, God, and Other Small Topics. Neuhaus’ talk was actually based on a 1991 piece he wrote.) To which response I must respond: codswallop. Not that I expect religious employees like Neuhaus to defend atheism, but to suggest people can only be good under the influence of the supernatural — and even ……… click below for more ↓

Reading Catullus

2020-07-18 2020-07-18 Books & Reviews / Classics / Language & Grammar / Style & usage / Translations & translating / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

With the extra time to read on my hands these days, I’ve been dipping again into the poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus, Roman poet around the time of Julius Caesar. I’ve written in the past about reading Horace, a somewhat later Roman poet whom I greatly admire. I like to pick up a translation of Horace’s Odes or Epodes and read a few lines, maybe a whole poem, every now and then. Horace can be quite insightful and inspirational. Not so much Catullus for me. He’s entertaining in so many different ways. If Horace is a letter to the editor ……… click below for more ↓