books books books
I'm a reader: magazines, newspapers, cereal boxes, flyers. But I love books. Love the heft
of them, the smell of them. Old hardcovers with the ragged paper edges; silky trade
paperbacks, where the silkiness seems to rub off on my fingers; cheap mass markets
I buy at the airport to divert me from the un-reality of jetting across the globe.
Love those books. Here's what I've been reading lately.
File under books/
Tue Dec 21 14:50:00 CT 2004
Ziggurat
Not a book but a
short
story in the latest issue of the New Yorker.
I usually like the fiction pieces in the NY but this particular story, in its surrealism, seemed to tell me a truth I already knew but had forgotten. I immediately sat down to google Stephen O'Connor (the author) to find out more. He sounds like a compelling person.
The religious nature of the story continues a recent trend in NY fiction.
Last week's story was also very compelling, a kind of Flannery O'Connor-esque morality tale. O'Connor. There's another trend. I expect next week's fiction piece to have an O'Connor connection as well.
Speaking of New Yorker threads, has anyone else noticed the subtle vocabulary threads in each issue, where a single uncommon word might appear in multiple pieces in the issue? The editors must enjoy finding those connections in their submissions.
File under books/
Fri Jun 26 19:24:10 CT 2009
Sensual Orthodoxy
I just looked over the history of the
books section of this blog and find
it fairly representative that most of the entries date from 2005, around the time
I was in library school and my first child was a baby. Since that time I've become busy as a
parent and breadwinner and have found my time for book-reading greatly diminished. Or perhaps
my appetite for reading and writing here is diminished.
Instead, I've become an
avid New Yorker reader, thanks
to the gift from my wife of a multi-year subscription. As my friend Russell said to me
yesterday, it's amazing that they can publish an issue every week, with such depth and breadth
of quality writing. I laugh, cry, ponder and hmmmm my way through each issue and am grateful
for its regularity.
But I am returning to books, and I'll be ruminating and reviewing here a bit as I stretch
out into a summer of reading.
My friend Debbie is a writer and pastor. She published her first book of sermons about five years ago,
and though I've had my signed copy on the shelf in my office since then, I've been slow to pick it up.
That's no reflection on the quality of the writing or thinking in the book; it's more a reflection
of the fact that I had already heard many of the sermons delivered from the pulpit and around the time
the book came out, I was ready to take a break from church and theology and religion. (Why I was ready to
take a break would fill many pages, but I'm not inclined to write it down.)
But the last six months or so I have felt more hopeful, despite the woe in the world,
and revisiting Debbie's excellent sermons seemed timely. I am glad I did. I'm
about four pieces in so far, and already have heard things I don't remember
hearing the first time. Good writing is like that.
Of course, I approached the book with obvious biases. I knew I was going to
like the sermons, since I like Debbie. I can hear her voice very clearly in my
head as I read. The cadence, the tempo, the flurry of images. Very Debbie.
Sort of a jazz aesthetic in her prose, the furious little runs of notes that culminate
in an opening unto something new. Like poetry, sermons are written to be
spoken aloud. I'm glad I have Debbie's voice in my head so I can hear them as
they were meant to be heard.
One of the things I've been enjoying is looking at the dates of each sermon
and trying to remember who and where I was at the time. Take the one I just
read, "A Potentially Gruesome Metaphor," from February, 2001. I was out of
town that winter, so I hadn't heard this one before. I know the story well
(Luke 5:1-11) where Jesus gets on Simon's boat to preach, then tells him to
throw over his nets into the deep and the size of the catch nearly capsizes
the boat. The passage ends with Jesus saying that he will make the fishermen
fishers of men. Like I said, I know the story well, but I found I didn't know
the text well. A good sermon opens up the cracks in the text. Debbie riffs for
awhile on the fishing theme, on the monotone evangelical hijacking of the
fishers of men image, and then she goes somewhere I didn't expect. Which I
like. "Put out into the deep and put down your nets for a catch," says Jesus.
And then when the fish come in in overwhelming abundance, Simon's reaction
seems, even for Simon, way overboard. "Go away from me, for I am a sinful
man." Like Dostoyevsky's opening in
Notes
from Underground: "I am a sick man...I am an angry man. I am an
unattractive man." I am a sinful man.
Debbie then connects the
deep with the unconscious in a nod to
postmodern psychoanalysis and sheds some light on Simon's reaction, then
offers her listener the chance to empathize:
Jesus in the same boat as you, next to you, sitting on your fish: what's been
hauled up from the absolute darkest scariest place anyone ever imagined, knee
deep in sardines, catfish on his lap, traces of the depths (your depths), the
smell of fish on his hands. You're both on the verge of being buried by this
unbelievably large catch....But Jesus says, "Don't be afraid."
Debbie prayed at my wedding. The other officiant at my wedding was Doug Frank.
Doug said to me once, there are only two things in life: fear and trust.
Everything comes back to which of those two things you are living out of.
I think about what Doug told me just about every day. Now I have Debbie's
wonderful image of fish-laden Jesus as well. Trust. Do not be afraid. Sure,
the present circumstances stink, but do not be afraid.
File under books/
Sun May 24 22:22:45 CT 2009
So Into You
My friend Brett
is writing a novel.
I read the first version some years ago, and the second version after that.
This third take is a good read so far.
File under books/
Wed Mar 11 21:01:17 CT 2009
Target Market
More fun spam from Amazon's usually accurate marketing machine. Quoted here verbatim:
We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated
"MySQL and Perl for the Web (Landmark)" by Paul DuBois
have also purchased "Designer Dogs: Portraits and Profiles of Popular New Crossbreeds"
by Caroline Coile.
If accurate, I don't know what that says about the kind of people who buy MySQL/Perl books.
Or dog books. I don't own a dog. Perhaps relatedly, I no longer use MySQL either.
File under books/
Tue Oct 23 21:47:34 CT 2007
Amazon
So if you have ever purchased anything via amazon.com you've likely gotten a targeted
marketing email sometime later, based on the supposed demographic your purchase represents.
Fair enough.
Interesting how their algorithm must work: I got an advert for home schooling based
on the fact that I bought a book about parenting. The logic must be: anyone who cares enough
to read up about good parenting practice will also be interested in home schooling their
kid(s). Given the social trends, I guess that makes sense. Parents who abandon the public
school system do so (at the very least) because they are actively trying to provide
a decent education for their offspring.
But in this case, the target demographic missed me wide.
File under books/
Thu Jun 7 21:23:59 CT 2007
Ambient Findability
There has been a significant media blitz lately for Peter Morville's
latest book,
Ambient
Findability. There's
an interview here.
Slashdot did a review. I think I saw one more lately but can't find it now.
I haven't read it yet. But it's definitely on my list.
File under books/
Fri Jan 13 10:29:04 CT 2006
Post-Rapture Radio
Russell Rathbun's book is funny, thoughtful and crazy ... in a good way. I was reminded
of the off-balance depths of Douglas Coupland's best writing.
Full disclosure: Russell is a friend, and I was a member of his congregation for over seven years.
Yes, most of the sermons in the book I've heard before. They actually come across better in print,
or at least, in the context of the whole book. He's done a good job weaving these parts together.
I especially liked how dis-integrated/confused the identities of the character(s)
got in the second half of the book. The levels
of identity kept shifting on me: was it a typo? did he really mean Rathbun, not Lamblove?
That sense
of keeping the reader (listener) off-balance is what I've always enjoyed about Russell's sermons: in the
space that opens when I'm off-balance or caught thinking in a different direction, the shock of the twist,
the unexpected feint, in his stories, is where I feel the wind move. Flannery O'Connor did that well (there's a
nice allusion to her in the closing line of one story); so did Kierkegaard, Walker Percy -- other great writers
to whom Russell is indebted and to whom he will be compared. He deserves the comparison.
File under books/
Sun Sep 11 20:14:25 CT 2005
Recommended to me
I've had the following books recommended to me by people I respect:
- Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner
- The Death of Adam by Marilynne Robinson
- anything by Dan Chaon
- 'The Circus in Winter' by Cathy Day (short story)
File under books/
Fri Jul 15 09:14:47 CT 2005
The Water-Method Man
Not as good as
Owen Meany or
A Widow for One Year but there
are some very funny parts. I'd never really noticed before Irving's talent
for slapstick. Some scenes are so visual, I feel like I'm in a Marx Brothers
movie.
File under books/
Thu Jun 30 10:34:46 CT 2005
Best American Short Stories of 2004
We've been enjoying this series for quite some years now. Lorrie Moore picked
this collection, and a very nice one it is. Stories I especially liked:
"What You Pawn I Will Redeem" by Sherman Alexie, "Intervention" by Jill McCorkle, and
"All Saints Day" by Angela Pneuman.
File under books/
Thu Jun 30 09:02:40 CT 2005
Setting Free the Bears
John Irving's first novel feels a little green to me, but only in comparison
to the brilliant work he's done since.
File under books/
Thu Jun 30 08:56:47 CT 2005
The Baroque Cycle
Just finished racing through Neal Stephenson's
Baroque Cycle, three novels
set in the 17th century. As early modern European
history was my undergrad major, and technology my current occupation, this series
was a real treat (which can explain how I finished 3000 pages in 3 weeks).
Barbary Corsair pirates, the birth of the commodities markets, the debate
over the origins of the calculus, defenestrations of all kinds. What a riot.
File under books/
Mon Mar 28 10:49:38 CT 2005
In Xanadu: A Quest
I liked William Dalrymple's
From the Holy Mountain so much that I convinced my book
club to try another of his travel books.
The short review: it's not as good as
Mountain but still worth a read.
This is his first book, for which he became (justifiably) famous while still an undergrad.
It feels a little "green" compared to
Mountain -- I'm chalking that up to Dalrymple's
relative youth and it being his first book. I hear traces of what will become excellent writing
10 years later.
File under books/
Mon Mar 28 10:11:08 CT 2005
The Unconquerable World
Jonathan Schell's book was a Christmas gift a couple years ago. Took me some time
to get through it. Not because it was poor writing (though it's not particularly
lyrical) but because it's emotionally difficult to consider war when your country
is mired in one.
I guess I should feel hopeful after reading it; maybe I'm too cynical, but I didn't feel it.
Maybe I just need to listen to less NPR news and take more walks in the woods.
File under books/
Mon Mar 28 10:10:47 CT 2005
The Philosophical Programmer: Reflections on the Moth in the Machine
My friend Lori read this several years ago, when she was a programmer and I was not.
I ran across it at the library and thought I could do with a little rumination on
my current occupation.
Daniel Kohanski offers a nice historical overview of the computer, some thoughts
on writing beautiful code, and best of all, some observations on how the rigid
and unforgiving logic of computers is changing the way we (programmers) think. There's
some good theology in there somewhere.
The most advanced work in computers today is in artificial intelligence,
which is one way of saying,
we're trying to make computers a little more forgiving and a little more fuzzy. Take
your PC out for a few beers; that'll fuzzy it up.
My favorite excerpt:
At one job, I came up with a maxim henceforth to be known as Kohanski's First Law
of Programming: Something that has a one-in-a-million chance of going wrong
will go wrong the first day we go live. To which was added Liff's Corollary: It will
either happen in the first five minutes or just after everyone has left for the day.
Ain't it the truth.
File under books/
Mon Mar 28 10:08:29 CT 2005
Credit Cards = Lotus Flowers
I've been thinking a lot about Frank's
Kansas book. Mostly I've been thinking that he did an excellent
job of describing the situation, but wasn't as conclusive as I would have liked about the
why of his thesis.
Why do so many lower income Americans vote against their
economic interests and vote Republican? Because of
class, Frank argues. Because there
persists in this country a class resentment against the 'educated Eastern elite' --
a kind of reverse snobbery that (to my ears) sounds vaguely anti-Semitic.
Continue reading "Credit Cards = Lotus Flowers" ...
File under books/
Thu Feb 3 10:48:22 CT 2005
The Cross and the Crescent
Richard Fletcher gives us a
nice little summary
of the formative years of Christian/Muslim
interaction. And they weren't pretty. Or simple. I highly recommend this book to anyone
interested in understanding the current conflict between Christians and Muslims.
It's a sibling rivalry, similar in dynamic to the Jewish/Christian relationship.
I particularly like Jon Levenson's
book on the Jewish themes of this complicated rivalry.
The most fascinating similarity is that Christians in the early years of Islam
saw it as just another Christian sect -- in much the same way that Judaism
saw early Christianity as a Jewish sect.
File under books/
Thu Jan 20 12:49:28 CT 2005
Past entries:
2004 .
2005 .
2006 .
2007 .
2008 .
2009 .
2010 .
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