I'm way behind on photographing the piles of books I've been reading. I'm a wandery reader, often reading several things at once, and not necessarily finishing any them.
A few little notes...
This first book made me want to make a playlist of happy-making songs! This Saturday morning, it's "Saturday in the Park" by Chicago.
"Can you dig it? Yes I can!"
Here's the author's playlist on Spotify.
Kenneth Patchen's words & image pieces remind me of Marz (though I don't like the piece on the cover (it's not true)). Sure enough, when I showed his stuff to her, she said she it made her mad because she thought of it first!
Not biologically possible, but I know what she means:
Hey! I SAID THAT THIS MORNING!
Speaking of Marz, she's still researching the 1970s, so I picked up the seminal anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful (1970) for her.
Catholic Devotions: I love these little, old prayer books that get donated in heaps to the store. Often leather bound and prettily illustrated. Outdated, they hardly sell at the store--not sure what to do with them... Another thing to try on ebay, I guess.
I'm looking forward to the Urzidil book--Michael has been posting excerpts, and when I said I liked them, he sent me a copy!
BELOW
I finished Mountains Beyond Mountains last night, about public-health crusader Dr. Paul Farmer. Definitely worth reading. I like Tracy Kidder's way with nonfiction--I'd started with his memoir of being a soldier behind the lines in Vietnam: My Detachment.
Farmer himself makes me nervous. He's one of those one-man crusaders... a moralizing Rescuer who pushes his way, even if it's a good way.
I like Farmer's approach when he talks about taking "the long road to failure".
But I'm personally more attracted to Myles Horton in his autobiography The Long Haul, which is about community organizing--people doing it for themselves.
Horton is wary of the Way of the Charismatic Leader (like Paul Farmer)--Martin Luther King Jr. being something of an exception, he said.
Perhaps the two ways could be complementary, not contradictory, esp in such benighted places as rural Haiti, where Farmer started.
Another related book:
Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited.
Thurman went to school with MLK Senior, and reading him felt to me like the missing bit of history--the theology that led up to Civil Rights.
It's more than political though––it's thinking about how to survive psychologically intact when you live up against a wall.
(Walls, walls, will we never get away from walls?)
I'd recommend this far and away above all the books here.
You can read the whole 112 pages online .
Along the top is God Bless You Mr Rosewater--brought home because Kurt Vonnegut is one of the authors I've been meaning to reread who influenced me in high school.
I've just started Fitzgerald's Gate of Angels.
All Life Is Holy from the Benedictine Conception Abbey is sort of a Corita Kent-inspired collection of illustrated quotes--again, I brought it home because it's so Seventies.
Huh--looking to link to Corita Kent I see an article from AIGA from only a couple weeks ago: "How Corita Kent Fought Power with Joy".
BELOW
I watched Jonathan Demme's 2007 documentary Jimmy Carter, Man from Plains, about Jimmy Carter's book tour for Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. I brought home the book but honestly, I'm not sure I'll bring myself to read it. Not sure I can stand any more about people and our stupid walls.
The illustrated book below is the beautiful Space: The Architecture of the Universe (1962)––volume 1 in the Visual series from Dell.
I started All the Light and it was pretty good, but portentous, and I drifted away.
Kate Atkinson is a popular modern novelist I always enjoy reading, even though she sometimes misses the mark:
she's not up to time travel (Life After Life), and I think she should stop it at once.
Transcription is a straightforward story about a young woman who transcribes recorded discussions of British Fascists who supported Hitler--based on a real MI5 program.
A bit slack, with not enough story to fill the pages, and nowhere near as good as Penelope Fitzgerald's excellent Human Voices, a related story about a young woman working for the BBC during WWII, (Atkinson lists it in her bibliography--I love that she has a bibliography for this novel)---but Transcription is good enough I read to the end, and didn't regret it.
A few little notes...
This first book made me want to make a playlist of happy-making songs! This Saturday morning, it's "Saturday in the Park" by Chicago.
"Can you dig it? Yes I can!"
Here's the author's playlist on Spotify.
Kenneth Patchen's words & image pieces remind me of Marz (though I don't like the piece on the cover (it's not true)). Sure enough, when I showed his stuff to her, she said she it made her mad because she thought of it first!
Not biologically possible, but I know what she means:
Hey! I SAID THAT THIS MORNING!
Catholic Devotions: I love these little, old prayer books that get donated in heaps to the store. Often leather bound and prettily illustrated. Outdated, they hardly sell at the store--not sure what to do with them... Another thing to try on ebay, I guess.
I'm looking forward to the Urzidil book--Michael has been posting excerpts, and when I said I liked them, he sent me a copy!
BELOW
I finished Mountains Beyond Mountains last night, about public-health crusader Dr. Paul Farmer. Definitely worth reading. I like Tracy Kidder's way with nonfiction--I'd started with his memoir of being a soldier behind the lines in Vietnam: My Detachment.
Farmer himself makes me nervous. He's one of those one-man crusaders... a moralizing Rescuer who pushes his way, even if it's a good way.
I like Farmer's approach when he talks about taking "the long road to failure".
But I'm personally more attracted to Myles Horton in his autobiography The Long Haul, which is about community organizing--people doing it for themselves.
Horton is wary of the Way of the Charismatic Leader (like Paul Farmer)--Martin Luther King Jr. being something of an exception, he said.
Perhaps the two ways could be complementary, not contradictory, esp in such benighted places as rural Haiti, where Farmer started.
Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited.
Thurman went to school with MLK Senior, and reading him felt to me like the missing bit of history--the theology that led up to Civil Rights.
It's more than political though––it's thinking about how to survive psychologically intact when you live up against a wall.
(Walls, walls, will we never get away from walls?)
I'd recommend this far and away above all the books here.
You can read the whole 112 pages online .
Along the top is God Bless You Mr Rosewater--brought home because Kurt Vonnegut is one of the authors I've been meaning to reread who influenced me in high school.
I've just started Fitzgerald's Gate of Angels.
All Life Is Holy from the Benedictine Conception Abbey is sort of a Corita Kent-inspired collection of illustrated quotes--again, I brought it home because it's so Seventies.
Huh--looking to link to Corita Kent I see an article from AIGA from only a couple weeks ago: "How Corita Kent Fought Power with Joy".
BELOW
I watched Jonathan Demme's 2007 documentary Jimmy Carter, Man from Plains, about Jimmy Carter's book tour for Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. I brought home the book but honestly, I'm not sure I'll bring myself to read it. Not sure I can stand any more about people and our stupid walls.
The illustrated book below is the beautiful Space: The Architecture of the Universe (1962)––volume 1 in the Visual series from Dell.
Kate Atkinson is a popular modern novelist I always enjoy reading, even though she sometimes misses the mark:
she's not up to time travel (Life After Life), and I think she should stop it at once.
Transcription is a straightforward story about a young woman who transcribes recorded discussions of British Fascists who supported Hitler--based on a real MI5 program.
A bit slack, with not enough story to fill the pages, and nowhere near as good as Penelope Fitzgerald's excellent Human Voices, a related story about a young woman working for the BBC during WWII, (Atkinson lists it in her bibliography--I love that she has a bibliography for this novel)---but Transcription is good enough I read to the end, and didn't regret it.
I LOVED "All the Light We Cannot See." Maybe you'll drift back to it. And I'm always happy to see a copy of "Sisterhood Is Powerful," a book that a close friend always had on her bookshelf back in college. I liked Vonnegut, and I think I read pretty much all of his books, but that one doesn't stick in my memory at all beyond the title. It's short stories, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteSTEVE: I'd liked the author Doerr's memoir "Four Seasons in Rome"---but I kept hearing somber violins as I read "All the Light"... It's sitting next to my bed--I'll probably give it another go one sleepless night. It DOES seem like a good story, and comes highly recommended (by you! and others).
ReplyDeleteMy mother had this orig 1970 ed. of "Sisterhood Is Powerful", so I too am happy to see it.
Gosh, I just looked it up, and it sells for $20 and UP!
It was 99¢ at my store...
If Marz doesn't want it, I'll put it on ebay for the store.
I haven't (re)read this Vonnegut book yet, so I looked it up:
"God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine, is the story of Eliot Rosewater, a millionaire who develops a social conscience, abandons New York City, and establishes the Rosewater Foundation in Rosewater, Indiana, "where he attempts to dispense unlimited amounts of love and limited sums of money to anyone who will come to his office." "
I thought I'd read all of Vonnegut, but this doesn't ring a bell. Of course, it would have been 44 years ago!
I never even heard of that Vonnegut!
ReplyDelete