So, What Are You Freakin' Well Reading Now?

CBC Radio listeners heard Barbara Kingsolver interviewd last night on her new novel, The Lacuna, in which she sets out partly to explain how the United States weapped itself in its flag and has since "refused new ideas." As one reviewer puts it:"The Lacuna is a gripping story of identity, connection with our past, and the power of words to create or devastate. Crossing two decades, from the vibrant revolutionary murals of Mexico City to the halls of a Congress bent on eradicating the colour red, The Lacuna is as deep and rich as the New World itself."

Kingsolver is the author of The Poisonwood Bible. I'm calling the library this morning.

I have just picked up Simone de Beauvoir's The Mandarins at the library book swap.  (In English.  It would take me too long to read in French.)  I hope to be the better for it. 

I read about Jack Fisher, namesake of Fisherville and Mt Fisher, who discovered gold on Wild Horse Creek near Fort Steele.

Then I read "Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot smaller" by Jeff Rubin [Chief Economist for some big bank for 16 years]. It almost completely SUCKED... but I read it all anyway. The premise is that when this recession is over, oil will return to "triple digit prices", and that oil has peaked and will therefore stay at high prices. From that comes the end of globalisation, esp. in that international trade will halt due to transport costs. So will air travel, and even a lot of car travel.

He barely mentions the alternative energy gig, or that electric cars could stabilise the electric grid, or using sails on big ship to cut fuel use, or any of the other fixes that are possible when we start to end the age of oil. When those alternatives takes the pressure off of oil as our only source of energy, the demand will be reduced and prices will fall accordingly... but he doesn't mention any of this.

Okay, so on to the really good stuff: I just picked up, from my local library, Mel Hurtig's "The TRUTH About Canada". We SUCK!! Canada is no longer what we think it is. We rank so low on education, health care, and other social indicators - mostly to the benefit of Big Business, which is making out like bandits. Financial equality is bad and getting worse every day as the elite wealthy control government and the economy [to their benefit only].

Happy Reading!!

Its a book title of a best selling book and now a movie with Julia Roberts *sigh* which Im sure makes the author sigh as well, tho not a happy sigh

The Mists of Avalon because it is such a wonderfully lush summer book.  I can't recall how many times I have read it, perhaps three or four,  but each time I am impressed by how she illustrates the mysteries that have been lost to us in the name of Christianity and in doing so reminds us that there are deeper mysteries than we know. 

I'm reading Nineteen Eighty-Four these days and pondering whether to inflict it on students next year.

Heck would have to  freeze over before I would consider Atwood.

I'm aiming at studying language use and recognising propaganda in everyday life.  Orwell would be replacing Dickens' Hard Times, which I use to reinforce the idea of class struggle.

Well, I'm technically not teaching class struggle, but I like to be able slide a few concepts in whenever I can.  Matewan contrasted with a film version of Germinal (the one I know has Miou-Miou, Renaud and the ever-present Gerry Depardieu) would be an intriguing idea.  Then again, it's not a film class.

I've shown bits of Oedipus Rex as background to Antigone, and Apocalypse Now to provide some context to Heart of Darkness...and I've even tried using the Calista Flockhart version of Midsummer Night's Dream to help the students imagine Shakespeare. 

Fences and Windows by Naomi Klein. Her description of the Left in 2002 sounds much like the Left in 2010, so far.

Welp, over the past week I got the hankering to read. So I finished up Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Then I read Childhood's Dream - a suggestion from Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Tom Wolfe's book is great and all, but Childhood's End was a far better read. 'The stars are not for man'.

I just one shot Farenheit 451 - just like I did with Childhood's Dream. I don't know how I had never read that one til' now.

Now what does the future hold?!

I HAVE been meaning to read On The Road...Pity the local library that has it is under renovations and acquiring said tome will be problematic for at least another month.

Mods alerted.

Why yes.

This Yibpl scoundrel is obviously trolling the book thread.

I'm highly offended and...I think...I'm going to...cry.

Oh, lately I've been going through some Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition source books. Been reading the Dungeon Masters Guide and Player's Handbook. And the ever fun Monster Manual.

Papal Bull wrote:

I HAVE been meaning to read On The Road...Pity the local library that has it is under renovations and acquiring said tome will be problematic for at least another month.

Before you start reading that there tome, you must get hold of  Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray's "The Hunt" as well as as many Slim Gaillard recordings as you are able.  Then it's imperative that you injest some tea, spin said records and generally get your kicks while reading sad old Jack's novel.

I've just finished Tony Judt's Ill Fares the Land. A moving and inspiring short book, created under the ribs of death. Judt calls for a return to politics and civic engagement, to communal effort as the key to improvement. He decries our obsession with wealth, celebrity and the unregulated market. He is quite open in his advocacy of social democracy. He sees it not as some half-hearted compromise between capitalism and socialism, but as the power behind the years the French call ‘les trente glorieuses', that between 1945 and 1975 produced an unparalleled flowering of equality and opportunity. Judt criticizes the right, as might be expected, but also doesn't spare the left. Too often, he says, the left has been in such a hurry to embrace new utopias that it has failed to properly appreciate the considerable achievements of those who went before. As an historian, he reveres men like Beveridge and Keynes, who were able to tame the wilder excesses of capitalism and create a more equal society than had been possible a few years earlier.

The writing is masterly: urgent without being rushed, assured without being arrogant. He never yields to the temptation of overstating his case or shrieking condemnation. He maintains a grave, lapidary style fuelled by moral fervour. His spacious, cosmopolitan habits of mind and immense learning shine through. I was moved to find Judt quoting the great Leveller Colonel Rainborough: "The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he." I remember thirty years ago my father was near his own far too early death. Like Mr Judt, he "held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better". He wasn't a scholar but was widely read and had run across the Putney Army Debates somewhere. He quoted that line to me, marvelling at the greatness of ordinary men seized by a cause. Judt's book may be an act of filial piety for the social democrats who built the modern world.

Catching up on my reading, I noticed a very perceptive review of Ill Fares the Land (see post above) in the Times Literary Supplement. I can't give you a link because Murdoch has decided that the Times group will be the guinea-pigs for his paywall experiment. The review is by the American sociologist Richard Sennett, a truly wise man who has upheld the virtues of public life and craftsmanship in previous books. He traces Judt's intellectual odyssey and his commitment to public thinking and speaking.

Here's the part that arrested me: "I have, however, one quarrel with Judt's testament. At its very end he declares 'socialism was about transformative change...socialism--under its many guises and hyphenated incarnations--has failed'. Historically this is certainly correct. Looking forward, his disillusion may ill serve us. There were socialisms before Marx, and alongside its deadly reign, and there will be socialisms in the future--micro-socialisms, if you like, from communal workshops to mutual benefit societies to food co-ops and job exchanges. These micro-socialisms have dwelt on co-operation rather than conversation [?], emphasizing the social in socialism; as micro-societies they have represented one way to deal with the capitalist beast--not to slay it but to resist it; in future they might be constituted online rather than face to face."

I just finished reading a biography of Sir Francis Walsingham, by Derek Wilson.  Walsingham was Principal Secretary and chief spy-master to Elizabeth I, and as such was blessed to live in interesting times.  A relentlessly hard working, brilliant, and quite ruthless man, he really set up the first modern gov't counter-espionage bureaucracy.  Reminded me a bit of James Angleton.  They each would have fit quite well into eachothers times.  Actually, give Walsingham a bit of computer upgrading and he could fit into his old job quite well today.

Last night I started reading the Qur'an, just for the heck of it.  I understand I have a good translation, it's by  Abdullah Yusuf Ali, and is the most commonly accepted English translation.  God, I'd hate to see a bad one.  With all respect, the Prophet, PBUH would have been well served by a better editor.

Hi, George Victor. Judt skates over the political economy--he is more concerned with the habits of mind that made the postwar consensus possible. He is at pains to point out that even right-wingers saw the need for a strong public presence in the market. Contrast that to our own times, when Americans with the IV of public money steadily dripping into their veins and financial death averted only by firm public action gather at Tea Party rallies to proclaim their rugged independence.

Don't know how your finances are, but Judt's book is meant to be an account of modern times without an ounce of spare flesh. It's a bit like a thoroughbred horse, grand for its purpose, but unsuited to hauling heavy cargo. If your library doesn't have it, you could try Inter-Library Loan, though that's sometimes a low priority for the pared-down staff at public libraries. Are you in the central SW? Hamilton Public Library has several copies. If you live in a contiguous area (Brant, Waterloo, Haldimand, Halton) you can borrow a copy using your reciprocal borrowing privileges. Might be your best bet.

Louise Brooks' autobiography: Lulu in Hollywood (1982).  A candid and literate reflection on the life and times of an unabashed hedonist, and the coterie of friends, acquaintances, and hangers-on that the silent screen actress and dancer encountered, in her blithe and obdurate celebration of the decadence that nearly consumed her.  A veritable 'pandora's box' (pun intended) of revelation, and honesty; a woman who I'd love to have met, at my peril.

Susanna Moodie's Roughing it in the Bush

Highly Recommended! It is the account of her life in the wilderness of Canada during the 1830s, after coming over from England with her husband and infant daughter. The sections on Aboriginal people are very interesting especially. She uses the language of the time, but has great respect and friendship for them and is not racist herself. (She actually met her husband at an anti-slavery meeting in England in 1830). 

re. al-Qa'bong; LOL!  

re. siamdave; pobodys nerfect.

Now I am reading Churchill and The Jews by Martin Gilbert.

The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life by Michael Dawson

Quote:

The Consumer Trap blows the lid off the trillion-dollar-a-year big business marketing industry, explaining how it soaks up economic and environmental resources while dominating our personal lives. Flouting conventional mainstream and radical thinking about consumer culture, Michael Dawson provides a step-by-step account of how big business marketing campaigns penetrate and alter the lives of ordinary Americans. Michael Dawson is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Portland State University. A volume in the series The History of Communication, edited by Robert W. McChesney and John C. Nerone

Quote:

"Big Brother is alive and well and working for Madison Avenue. Michael Dawson tells us what the media won't, how Big Business brainwashes citizens into consumers and undermines democracy. Everyone who fears the Thought Police should read this brilliant expos." -- John Stauber, coauthor of Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry

Noam Chomsky wrote:

"Michael Dawson's meticulous and illuminating research into marketing theory and practice lays bare some of the most important developments of the twentieth century: the ways in which the sophisticated and self-conscious 'class coercion' designed by and for business leaders passed beyond meticulous management of the workplace to 'manipulating people's off-the-job perceptions and actions.' The goal is to ensure, as far as possible, that the lives of the 'underlying population' (in Veblen's phrase) will be in the hands of the masters of the highly concentrated private economy. Dawson adds new insights to expose still further the mythology of 'consumer sovereignty' and 'free markets,' and sketches directions for a humane alternative to domination by 'corporate overlords' and the state power to which they are closely linked."

The author has a brilliant blog as well.