Friday Reads

Cleaning to Avenue Q

December 18, 2015 by rurugby Leave a Comment

I was going to do my first Friday Reads post in a while, but gave up 330 words in. It’s coming soon!

Tomorrow is likely to be a review of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”. My wife saw all the Star Wars movies starting at 3am yesterday and wants to see the movie with me tomorrow and with her brother Bill next week so that’s a very good omen.

So that would be bringing back the Saturday Night Review again.

Maybe, I will try to do a poem for Tuesday and bring back the Port Veritas Poetry Tuesday. I really miss Port Veritas in Maine. Great touring poets, good vibe, and felt like home. Unfortunately, the Bridgeport reading does not. Although I may try it again. And Wednesdays are a bad night for me, was doing a Thursday class for Community Health Worker all fall.

So, after working tonight, I played some Johnny Cash chords while listening to iTunes. It was pretty great. I love the Ultimate Guitar Tab App although it crashes a lot and likes to put in ads sometimes. My favorite of the night was “Give My Love to Rose”, I find the E/A/D combo easier than the more awkward G/D/C. Especially if you play A with one finger like my instructor suggests. I am looking forward to taking guitar lessons again. It’s kind of awesome to pull up a song on iTunes and then find the tab and play with it. I see why chords can work better than tab. Tab may work well for some songs but can be more precise.

And then after an hour of guitar playing, I put on the Avenue Q soundtrack and starting cleaning. Got the shower scrubbed down with some Comet, did a dishwasher load, did the litterbox, starting the washing machine (going to run to the dryer) and some other minor cleaning. You can get quite a bit done in an hour. I think I may do that again. Makes a nice timer.

Looking forward to a guest coming soon, but I need to be in bed in 30 minutes in order to get 8 hours of sleep and get up at 5:15am tomorrow so I am available for 6am. I swapped with someone this week so she took my Sunday shift. Makes for a long weekend, but having a full weekend off is fantastic.

I can’t believe it’s Christmas in a week and we have family coming in 5 days. But 2 loads done in the dishwasher (Lanna did one too), the table is clean, going to do ornaments and Star Wars tomorrow.

Nice to have my friend Brenna coming tonight on her way to NYC tomorrow. Although I basically won’t see her. And it’s a stress relief to get a lot of cleaning done tonight.

Hooray for blogging!

The Truths of Fiction

April 6, 2012 by rurugby 1 Comment

I used to be someone that read a lot more non-fiction then fiction. Like someone I know at work, I tried to read more literature and what was good for me. I think I did this in my 20s to some extent.

It’s funny though, I really grew up just reading what was around, which was a ton of books in my house, many of which were excellent. Grew up with parents who LOVED books, which is a gift to any child.

But, I have been realizing more and more that there are truths in fiction. You are able to reach depths, try ideas of the future, talk about loss, love, etc. far easier in fiction then truth.

In non-fiction you can be bound to footnotes, research, style of your field (ie History, Philosophy, Literary Criticism, Biography, Sociology, etc.) And sometimes ideas that are best in a 10-20 page article become rather boring 500 page books. Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History” is a brilliant “Foreign Affairs” article but a boring book, for example.

In fiction, your characters can go as far as your imagination. Limitless places, new worlds, new futures. If David Simpson wants to create a Post-Humanity that has robots that make humans, super human, why not? If Colleen Hoover wants to create an amazing if problematic romance in “Slammed” she can. If Hugh Howey’s wants to have dystopian world in a silo in the “Wool Omnibus” he can. If Mark Twain wants to explore racism on the Mississippi River he can in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Fiction is limitless, which gives it a truth fiction can’t match.

From the muckracking of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, to tales of class in “The Great Gatsby”, seeing the world from a teenager that everyone is phony in “Catcher in the Rye”, and the racism of the South in “To Kill a Mockingbird; fiction can take you anywhere. So I challenge those who don’t think the need to read fiction to look again and see the wonder.

Books this week:

Finished: The Sons of Liberty (Vol. 1) ***1/2 (yesterday’s post.)

Signal to Noise: Story: Neil Gaiman, Artwork and Design: Dave McKean: Very cool, very surreal graphic novel. Definitely has the noise of an artist seeing the end of life. Trippy and fun. *** (4 GR/Minerva)

The Sons of Liberty by Felix Sutton: Well done juvenile history, got it because had same name as the Lagos Brothers graphic novel. **1/2 (3 GR/Minerva)

What Work Is by Philip Levine: Excellent poetry of working class America. Really enjoyed this and planning to pass it around the Portland poetry community. May have less ownership since was part of a $3 bag of books at the Walker Library sale. ***1/2 (4 GR)

Who You Are by Nancy Henry: Featured in last week’s #FridayReads column, brave book about those thrown out by society. Excellent. **** (5 GR/Minerva)

Wool 3 by Hugh Howey: Slowed down and left this back on my Kindle and then rushed through it again in a few days. Beautiful, heartbreaking end. In Wool 4 now. One of the best science fiction series I have ever read. **** (5 GR) (Kindle)

Checked out this week:

Duncan the Wonder Dog by Adam Hines: Seth Hahne of the “Good Ok Bad” Graphic Novel rating site has this as his all time favorite graphic novel. Fascinating stuff. Just scratched the surface. pg 58 of 390 (Minerva/Lithgow PL)

Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba: Seth Hahne’s #2 Graphic Novel of all time. Went to Minerva site while looking at Hahne’s blog. (Minerva/ Lewiston Library)

Diving Into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972: Got with Adrienne Rich’s death. Solid, but not hitting my soul. *** (3 GR) pg 20 of 62. (Walker/Still reserved through Minerva, since only 1 copy)

The Sons of Liberty #1 (discussed earlier). (Minerva/Gardiner PL)

Jimmy Corrigan or The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware: Keep hearing this is Ware’s fundamental book. Since I did a whole blogpost on him, I guess I should read it. (Minerva/Rice PL) Just started.

Books purchased:

Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich: I really enjoyed Mezrich’s “Sex on the Moon” and curious about this tale of MIT math geeks and blackjack. A book that was on my list.

The Paris Review: Beat Writers at Work (ed. George Plimpton): Interviews, articles with the beats from the Paris Review. The Beats is one of my favorite literary periods. Looking forward to geeking out.

And for a third time: The Sons of Liberty #1 by the Lagos Brothers. This may earn a fifth Goodreads star yet.

Books reading:

Readings for Remembrance: A Collection for Funerals and Memorial Services selected by Eleanor Munro: Got this while Walter was sick. Not bad, would like to like more. Not grabbing me. Too scattered. **1/2 (3 GR)

Words I Wish I Wrote by Garrison Keillor: Been going through this a little at time. Nice little book. Will have to finish it before Wednesday. May read some this weekend. pg 92 of 221. *** (4 GR)

Quiet by Susan Cain: Enjoying this, slower read. Due back Wednesday as well. Unlikely to be renewable since it is new and in demand. pg. 162 of 270. Finding this really interesting. May need to do a lot of reading on Sunday before the Haiku slam. ***1/2 (4 GR)

And Kindle Updates:

Seems like sometimes my Kindle books I read a little at a time at work. Reading some great stuff right now.

Wool 4 by Hugh Howey: Fascinating book, the world keeps getting richer. Really, really curious where this is going. **** (5 GR) (approx 50% — reading with Wool Omnibus, better text size then for Wool 4).

Devil in the Kitchen by Marco Pierre White: Fascinating tales of becoming a chef in London. One of Anthony Bourdain’s heroes. ***1/2 (4 GR) (31%)

The Mind Tree by Tito Mukhopadhyay: Disbelieving these stories could be written by any 8 or 11 year old child, let alone written by a non-speaking autistic child. Reminds me a lot of one of my favorite books “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.” Gives me an idea of how it be to be autistic. Think of how hard some new things can be for you and make that ANY change in your life. This book may make a blog post. Heck this short review is already longer than some of my blog posts. (12%) **** (yes, already) (5 GR)

The City Game: Basketball from the Garden to the Playgrounds by Pete Axthelm: Very cool book that compares the tales of the legendary 1971-72 Knicks team to the playground heroes of NYC. Pretty cool, think will chip at for a while. *** (3 GR)

That’s almost 1100 words for the night, and over 2,000 including tomorrow’s post I have written since I have been home. I love writing these. I hope you like reading them. It’s my favorite post of the week.

Edmund

Kindle Singles and Shorts

February 24, 2012 by rurugby 1 Comment

I enjoy the Kindle.

This is no secret.

One of the surprises for me has been the Kindle Singles program.

This is a program that Amazon offers of shorter fiction and non-fiction that has provided some great surprises.

Some of the examples of short books I have really like have included Ann Patchett’s wonderful book about writing “The Getaway Car” which has been one of the better books about writing I have read, simple, short and excellent. Basically that writing is a craft and you have to keep getting better at it over time. The book also has a wonderful honesty. **** (5 GR)

Another fun read which fit the single model well was “Comic-Con Strikes Again” by Douglas Wolk. This was one of the first shorts I bought, and gives a wonderful idea of the insanity that is Comic-Con. And it didn’t try to be a full length book. Some books aren’t meant to be. *** (3 GR)

Of course good short pieces on Kindle aren’t just in the Kindle Shorts program. An example of this is Hugh Howey’s excellent book “Wool” that I reviewed on January 25th. This was an excellent short 60 page-ish serial that had a full story. I have also enjoyed Wool 2, and am in the process of reading Wool 3. ****

Another example of a fun short story I read was Andy Borowitz’s (of the @borowitzreport) “An Unexpected Twist”. A wonderful, short story about some very bad days. I now know which procedure I want to do least. ***1/2

“Beethoven’s Shadow” by Jonathan Bliss .. Excellent piece about the perils of approaching performing all of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas. Gives you an idea of the challenges of being a classical pianist, and the training involved to be an excellent musician. Fascinating ***1/2 (4 GR)

So I encourage anyone to try some of the Kindle shorts, it’s much easier to spend $1-$3 on short books, then $10+ at the bookstore.

—————-

Some of what I have read this week.

“An Unexpected Twist” by Andy Borowitz ***1/2 (GR 4)

“The Case of the Missing Moon Rocks” by Joe Kloc *** (GR 3) .. Fun little book I read today about a former NASA investigator who becomes obsessed with moon rocks. Another Kindle sample, second time I added a book on Goodreads.

ACME Novelty Library 20 by Chris Ware amazing little graphic novel that goes through the entire life of a very flawed man a Jordan Wellington Lint. ***1/2 (4 GR) I decided to get a lot more Chris Ware from the library after reading this. Right now reading the extremely oddly formatted (and hugely wide) book “Quimby Mouse” by Chris Ware as well. (Library/Minerva)

“The Contract with God Trilogy” by Will Eisner … One of the first graphic novels. Interesting stuff, very dark. *** (3 GR) pg 219 of 497 (Library/Minerva)

“Habibi” by Craig Thompson … Very dark, rich and fascinating on pg. 303 of 660ish … Amazing story of race, slavery, islam and the spiritual power of Arabic. Fascinating stuff. Good candidate for book of the week next week. ***1/2 (4 GR) (Minerva)

“Trans Human” by David Simpson .. the sequel to “Post Human” .. fascinating, so far not quite sure where it’s going. A whole another tale of the perils of AI. Fun, sci fi. 39% of the way through. (Kindle) Hard to rate at this point. Right now ***/***1/2 (4 GR)

“Washington’s Crossing” by David Hackett Fischer .. read the sample of one of Amazon’s books of the day. Excellent writing, just basically started. I actually went to church at the Washington Crossing UU church, and have spent a lot of time at the Princeton battlefield especially. Looking forward to reading this. 1% (Kindle)

“One Way Forward: The Outsider’s Guide to Fixing the Republic” by Lawrence Lessig” Another Kindle Single I got today (with the moon book), fascinating non-fiction about what the Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street means for American Politics. 29% through so far (Kindle).

“Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia” by Marshall Goldman … I didn’t realize before reading this how much of Russia’s economy and money comes from oil and gas. Fascinating stuff. Another book I have just started. Being non-fiction may be reading for a while in bits and pieces. 8%

“Highway to Hell” by Alex Laybourne .. Another book I just started, it’s just getting going. Seems like fun so far. 11%

“Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation” edited by Roger Housden … I guess I can be harsher on poetry, but a few of the poems I liked in this most left me cold. Do want to read more Robert Bly and Rumi now. **1/2 (GR 3)

I guess that enough this week at around 750 words (may be longer because of all the links.) And thank you to my wife Lanna for showing me how to properly use the link button on WordPress, I may have to fix my other links, but maybe not.

Extended Families and Kurt Vonnegut

December 2, 2011 by rurugby Leave a Comment

Before this year, I had only read 2 Kurt Vonnegut books. “Player Piano” *** and “A Man Without a Country” ****1/2 .. I loved Man Without a Country but hadn’t read anything else. Then I saw I had a copy of “Cat’s Cradle” in the house and adored it. ***** I just plowed through it, finished it and thought more please. Since then I have read some of his pieces in books, as well as Breakfast of Champions **1/2, Galapagos *1/2, The Sirens of Titan ***1/2, Thank You, Mr. Rosewater ***, and my other co-favorite Vonnegut book Slaughterhouse Five *****. One of this main themes is about extended families and how much we could use them.

Of course Vonnegut’s big fiction book about the extended family is “Slapstick: Or Lonesome No More!” which is an excellent read and underrated. **** In it Vonnegut has a main character who feels like he and his sister were literally superior when they put their head together, and a more complete person. But more germaine to this post, he becomes President on a platform of “Lonesome No More!” and assigns everyone in America a family. For the main character it was, Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain. If you are interested in the book further, here is the Wikipedia (of course, spoilers): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slapstick_(novel).

This comes from Chapter 5 of easily my most read book since I have lived in Maine for the last 7 years Kurt Vonnegut’s “A Man Without a Country.” “Country” is the closest Kurt Vonnegut has to a memoir, and a fabulous book which has also done much to influence my politics. I may go into some of it’s other themes in later weeks. But he has a great quote on what the extended family means on pages 47-49:

Okay, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said eh didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want: a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.

What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.

Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.

A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.

But for most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.

When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it’s about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, thought without realizing it, is this: “You are not enough people!”

A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It’s a terribly vulnerable survival unit.

I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.

They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty or how handsome it was.

Wouldn’t you have loved to be that baby?

I sure wish I could wave a wand, and give every one of you an extended family, make you an Ibo or a Navaho — or a Kennedy.

I totally agree with this piece.

I grew up with a small nuclear family, my parents and my sister in New Jersey .. Had Uncles and Cousins in California and in Texas but all of my grandparents are only children.

I didn’t have an extended family.

I didn’t have big gatherings.

My wife Lanna did.

She has a big family all around Piscataquis County, Maine. Uncles, cousins, aunts to see around the area. To visit on the weekend, to play with in town, to have support when you need it.

The nuclear family is a nice thing. Having a nice house, and a yard and …

But, you often don’t know your neighbors. You go to work in a car by yourself, to a cubicle, to home where you zone out on TV in your chair and go to bed.

I think many of us have chosen families that are much, much larger then our actual families. For me part of that is through the Twitter Portland meetups. It’s also nice to keep in touch with things like Facebook, and see who has kids, how people are doing and who is struggling.

But having people that love you and you can count on is so, so valueable. I completely agree with Vonnegut on this point. He said the more people you can have in your chosen family the better. Whether that is through church, organizations, fraternal orders ….

Lanna isn’t as affected by the quote: “You are not enough people,” as I am. I think is because of her extended family, and that she grew up with so many people. For me growing up my parents and my sister mainly I would have loved to have lots of family connections in New Jersey, and cousins to grow up with.

What do you think?

— Edmund