Category: Books & Reviews

Literature, culture, fiction, non-fiction, writers, authors and the craft of writing.

The slow death of reading

Behaviour & Psychology / Books & Reviews / Learning & Education / Science & Technology / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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To me, one of the most depressing stories to come out of 2018 was posted in The Guardian, last August. Its headline read, “Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound.” Its subhead reads, “When the reading brain skims texts, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings or to perceive beauty. We need a new literacy for the digital age.” As an avid reader who has a dozen books or so on the go at any time, this is a troubling trend that bodes ill for our collective future and our collective ……… click below for more ↓

Natural selection simplified

Books & Reviews / Creationism / Critical Thinking / Evangelicals / Evolution & Paleontology / TheocracyLeave a comment

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I was startled by the simplicity of the forumla. Stephen Jay Gould, the late eminent paleontologist, biologist and historian of science, summed up Darwin’s basic theory of natural selection so eloquently and so succinctly that it rocked me back on my heels. It was something even a diehard creationist could understand (assuming he or she wanted to try…) First there are three basic facts Gould states about life and living creatures: All organisms produce more offspring than can possibly survive; All organisms within a species vary from one another; At least some of these variations will be inherited by offspring. ……… click below for more ↓

Misquoting Shakespeare. Again.

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Memes; Internet & Social / Quotes & Mis-quotesLeave a comment

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Let me begin with a digression on memes. Like a virus, a meme can spread uncontrollably in the right environment and infect millions with an idea or goal. This, of course, is good for such advocates of social ideals as Greenpeace or PETA, but like viruses, there can be bad memes that do more damage than good. More, it seems, than good or socially constructive memes. A meme is the self-propagating cultural equivalent of a virus*, but rather than spreading its DNA, a meme spreads ideas, cultural practices, thoughts, symbols, ideals, aesthetics and icons of popular imagination. Like a virus, ……… click below for more ↓

Dictionary vs Dictionary.com

Books & Reviews / Daily life / Internet & Social Media / Literature / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Reading & Literacy / Style & usage / TV / What I'm Reading Now / Words & etymologyLeave a comment

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Did you know that doxastic is a philosophical adjective relating to an individual’s beliefs? Or that doxorubicin was an antibiotic used in treating leukemia? Or that doxy is a 16th century word for mistress and prostitute? That drack is Australian slang for unattractive or dreary? Drabble means to make wet and dirty in muddy water? A downwarp is a broad depression in the earth’s surface? Drail is a weighted fish hook? Dragonnade means quartering troops on a population while dragonet is a small fish but a dragoman is an interpreter? That a dramaturge is a literary editor on a theatre ……… click below for more ↓

Storytelling cubes

Language & Grammar / Learning & Education / Literary pretensions / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading Now / Words & etymology / Writing & FictionOne Comment

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You don’t expect Wal Mart to be the source for literary tools, but if you amble into the section crammed with toys, you can pick up a set of Rory’s Story Cubes for just $10 (the base set). Now, I realize these are meant as a creative game for children and/or families (marked ages 8+), but they are actually an ingenious little tool for plot development and ideas in storytelling. And for some exercises in creative thinking. Wait, you say: they’re just dice with pictures. Can pictures alone make a story? Well, yes: just look at Xu Bing’s Book from ……… click below for more ↓

Channelling John Stuart Mill

Books & Reviews / Ethics & morality / Logic and reason / Philosophy / Political philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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In the opening few pages of his essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill warned about the “tyranny of the prevailing opinion.” Anyone familiar with the mob mentality than can erupt on social media, its potential for divisiveness and the platform’s inherent weakness to be manipulated by outside forces (such as Russia) would consider Mill’s words as topical today.  Mill was writing in this essay about, “…the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual” and how to contain the “tyranny of the majority.”* He was passionate about individuality and the freedom of ……… click below for more ↓

Relevant poetry

Books & Reviews / Culture / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Poetry & LyricsOne Comment

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I was standing in a bookstore in downtown Toronto a couple of weeks back, and opened The Essential Ginsberg, a collection of poems, songs and other writing by the late Allen Ginsberg, he of Howl fame*. I open the book at random and read the opening Ginsberg’s poem, Capital Air, which starts: I don’t like the government where I live I don’t like dictatorship of the Rich I don’t like bureaucrats telling me what to eat I don’t like Police dogs sniffing around my feet Even though Ginsberg wrote it in 1980, it felt like something he would be writing ……… click below for more ↓

Pollan’s Food fallacies

Books & Reviews / Cooking / Culture / Eating / Food & Drink / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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“Don’t overlook the oily little fishes,” is rule 32 in Michael Pollan’s small book, “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual” (Penguin Books, 2009). I recently acquired a copy. I’ve read Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and have his In Defence of Food on my shelves for summer reading and have two other titles by him on my wish list. I’ve enjoyed his work so far. Maybe not so much this time around. I am skeptical about any attempt to reduce any subject to a set of basic rules because life is way too complicated for that sort of ideology. I have ……… click below for more ↓

Of mice and men, and trackballs, too

Computers & Programming / E-books & E-readers / Games & Gaming / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Late last year, I purchased another laptop to separate my work and recreational uses. After a long search in stores, and a lot of online reading and comparing models, I decided to get an MSI gaming rig (an entry level in their pantheon, admittedly). That process got me thinking again about how we buy and sell computers.* Computers are, for the most part, sold like muscle cars: what’s under the hood gets the attention. The processor, ram, speed, drive capacity all get writ large in ads and promoted in stores. But it’s all a bit misleading. For most uses – ……… click below for more ↓

Found in translation

Books & Reviews / Literature / Poetry & Lyrics / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

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Language translation fascinates me. It’s a mix of language skill, art, interpretation, science and, apparently, divination. Maybe even magic. Going from one language into another is far from a simple step of swapping words in dictionary manner – Flaubert’s le mot juste. Any fool can do that. Hell, even Google can. A single word can be a fulcrum, and the decision to use one word instead of another can utterly change the meaning. I wrote about this in The Municipal Machiavelli. The translator’s choice of even a single word – in that case the choice between the English words ruin ……… click below for more ↓

Malory then and now

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Literature / Translations & translating / Typography / What I'm Reading Now / Words & etymologyLeave a comment

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I recently started reading Malory in the original – that is, the language that Caxton printed in. Not the typeface Caxton used, since that would be harder to read, but rendered in a modern serif face. Caxton initially used black letter type (aka gothic) – pretty much all the early printers used it, although each printer had his own dies and styles. However, he did move to a more easily-read, more-rounded typeface by around 1490, a few years after he printed Malory’s book. Still, the early typefaces used in all incunabula take a bit more mental effort to decipher because ……… click below for more ↓

Reading as a forgotten art

Books & Reviews / Culture / Literature / Media / Reading & Literacy / TV / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Earlier this month (February, 2018), the Globe & Mail published an essay by author Michael Harris titled, “I have forgotten how to read.” In it, he recounted how he recently tried to read a single chapter of a book, but failed. Frustrated, instead turned to TV: Paragraphs swirled; sentences snapped like twigs; and sentiments bled out. The usual, these days. I drag my vision across the page and process little. Half an hour later, I throw down the book and watch some Netflix. Which, I think, is the poor choice of alternatives. Giving up doesn’t improve the skill set or ……… click below for more ↓

Fire and Fury reviewed

Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Politics / Pop Culture / Reading & Literacy / US Politics / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Dysfunctional. Childish. Self-centred. Narcissistic. Ideologically myopic. Illiterate. Cranky. Capricious. Arrogant. Scheming. Petty. Ill-educated. No, I’m not writing about our local council (although, yes, all those words apply equally to The Block). These are some of the words that came to mind as I read Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Dysfunctional popped into my mind most often as Wolff described the lurching, staggering, fumbling and bumbling of Trump’s staff and family advisers after their unexpected – and for some unwanted – victory. (I know: curiously coincidental how that description also echoes our own council’s meandering, ……… click below for more ↓

Thoughts on reading Ulysses

Books & Reviews / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Onomatopoeia. Odd, sometimes, entertaining too. Like speed bumps that make you slow down and silently mouth the letters. A slow smile at the sound it makes in your head. Alliteration. Anastrophe. Joycean wordplay. What is that word? A neologism? Or some Irish colloquialism? An anachronism? Another language? Or more playful spelling? So many to stumble over. Notes. Can’t read Ulysses without the notes. Too many Latin, too many French, too many Gaelic phrases for my monolinguistic brain. Too many Catholic references for my secular upbringing. Too many dips into the classics for my modern education. Irish politics. British politics. Contemporary ……… click below for more ↓

The House on the Borderland

Books & Reviews / Daily life / Family history / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Scifi and fantasyLeave a comment

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“But for a few touches of commonplace sentimentality [it] would be a classic of the first water.” So said H. P. Lovecraft of the 1908 novel, The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson. But, Lovecraft admitted, the book was also a major influence on his own, later work. And for good reason: it created the ‘unknown horror’ effect that Lovecraft (and later writers) exploited so well. House on the Borderland is a seminal work in its genre and, despite its age, deserves not to be forgotten by modern readers. Here’s a passage from the book: And then, as ……… click below for more ↓

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