Posts tagged "books":

"Once I let go of what was expected of me..."

"… I began to paint like this."*

The Book of Arkovia

It may well be just a combination of poor editing and poor translation that makes me feel that this book I bought on the beachfront is unreadable. Although I'm in favour of everything indie, traditional publishers try to make sure that what reaches our eyes has some integrity, either by refusing to publish something, or by making sure that if they do decide to take a risk with it, it is properly edited.

Misguided by the stars

I recently read the novel, "Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead" (and then saw the 2017 film adaptation, "Spoor"). This is the first I've read by the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk. The novel kept my attention, though I did not feel any great endearment towards the story or its themes. The novel could be said to revolve around a couple of main motifs: the question of freewill vs. determinism, and the question of how much importance to give to non-human lives. Because I had already made up my mind with regard to these themes, it was not so meaningful for me to revisit them.

Kfar Hittim

Went up to the Sea of Galilee with the family, staying in Kfar Hittim, in the large house of an Israeli-Indian couple who seem to spend most of their time in India. We were 12; 8 adults and four kids. Kfar Hittim is near the place where Salah ad-Din's forces won a decisive battle against the crusadors towards the end of the 12th century. It's said that they won by cutting the crusadors off from the lake and then starting a wildfire where they were encamped. The battle decimated the crusador forces. Afterwards, more than 200 knights were beheaded, and the ordinary soldiers were enslaved. The king and some of the barons were shown mercy.

Diary

I am gradually picking up many of the connections I previously had, just because someone ends up boosting posts by one of them, here and there. As a result, my timeline is growing more interesting by the day.

The Ministry for the Future

Enjoying this book by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's less a novel than New York 2140, or Aurora, the only other books of his that I've read.

2022-05-24

I have successfully passed all of the home-spun html entries from recent months into org-static-blog, meaning that I now have a continuous archive for the last three years. The ones from before that time can be found on WordPress. I don't plan to move more of them.

2022-04-13 Ibn Arabi

" That is to say, if he has not… drunk the glass of love, and has not found annihilation in the ipseity of God, when he says "He", he will be speaking according to his own conjecture, imagination, understanding and relativity. He brings the Being of God into imagination, and gives it a form. Because he has not divested himself of being and reached Absoluteness. Consequently, he puts God under a condition, according to his conjecture and imagination and draws around him a limit; thereby he will have immanenced Him and invented Him. And thereby he has worshipped a creator which he himself has originated."

2021-11-23-reading-links

"Son Visage et le Tien", a long essay by Jenni Alexis. Interesting, so far. The English Wikipedia article about him references an article in the Atlantic, “When does a writer become a writer“[1]. Alexis, like T.S. Eliot, Franz Kafka, John Steinbeck, Margaret Duras and so many others that the article doesn’t mention, has a daytime job. Winning the Goncourt prize came as a big surprise for him. It’s the kind of attainment that so many aspiring writers dream about.

2021-11-22-news-feeds-paywalls-books

I put some of my RSS Newsfeeds in order in Vivaldi. My idea is to use it for blogs, rather than busy news sources. For that reason I first added RMS’s political notes, and then removed it. Because if I want to use it as what Dave Winer calls “a river of news”, RMS dominates too much. But the links are good. It would be better if Vivaldi made it possible to use sub-folders for different areas (and hence sub-rivers – by being able to click on the top folder that includes each set of feeds).

The Sheltering Sky

Reading The Sheltering Sky of Paul Bowles. It’s interesting and well-written. The characters are racist and sexist, of course; I haven’t a clue whether that reflects the views of the author, because we aren’t intended to admire them.

Gene Wolfe on literature's mainstream

“Incidentally, I’d argue that SF represents literature’s real mainstream. What we now normally consider the mainstream—so called realistic fiction—is a small literary genre, fairly recent in origin, which is likely to be relatively short lived. When I look back at the foundations of literature, I see literary figures who, if they were alive today, would probably be members of the Science Fiction Writers of America. Homer? He would certain belong to the SFWA. So would Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare. That tradition is literature’s mainstream, and it has been what has grown out of that tradition which has been labeled SF or whatever label you want to use.”

Gun Island

The novel is true to Ghosh’s more recent swashbuckling style, as well as to his concerns, while at the same time preserving his scholarly core. He has found a way to offer serious ideas in a popular style, and he has always been a magician at storytelling. The product probably wouldn’t work if he took himself too seriously.

Sebald's "The Emigrants"

Sebald’s The Emigrants is the only book, fiction or nonfiction, that I’ve managed to read from beginning to end in recent months. His books always grip me like thrillers, though ostensibly they meander in the most leisurely way, and it’s hard to classify them as either fiction or nonfiction. I suppose they are a kind of artful rendering of the real world.. i know nothing of literary genres, but surely his style is unique.