http://www.goodreads.com/review/list_rss/354189 en-US Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:08:39 -0700 60 http://www.goodreads.com/ 200 41 http://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/gr_logo.gif 12837248 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:08:39 -0700
author: Ernest Becker
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1973
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 07/25/08
shelves: psalms
review:
It is one of those rare masterpieces that will stimulate your thoughts, your intellectual curiosity, and last but not least, your soul.
]]> 28322493 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:49:03 -0700
Ronald Numbers has given us what must surely be the definitive study of the rise and growth of a cluster of well-meaning, but irrational, theories over a period of some 160 years. The Creationists is an expanded version of an earlier edition published in 1991. During the interval, the proportion of Americans who favour some form of Creationism has risen from 47 per cent to 65.5 per cent and the phenomenon has spread worldwide. It seems churlish to ask for more but, given that the basis of many people’s distrust of orthodox science is a rather simplistic biblical literalism, it would have been helpful to have had some reference to the kind of exchanges taking place between European biblical scholars and scientists in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was a period when many fruitful adjustments in traditional thinking were occurring, without giving rise to the extremism that later characterized some shades of American Protestantism. The fact that such extremism has now become global should worry theologians as well as scientists.]]>
author: Ronald L. Numbers
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 07/25/08
shelves: religion, science
review:
An important study of Creationist attempts to reconcile geology and Genesis. It is a remarkable story of passionate believers with, at the start, few scientific qualifications, barnstorming their way into popular consciousness, on the basis of ideas which were at best perversely ingenious, and frequently based on very dubious evidence.

Ronald Numbers has given us what must surely be the definitive study of the rise and growth of a cluster of well-meaning, but irrational, theories over a period of some 160 years. The Creationists is an expanded version of an earlier edition published in 1991. During the interval, the proportion of Americans who favour some form of Creationism has risen from 47 per cent to 65.5 per cent and the phenomenon has spread worldwide. It seems churlish to ask for more but, given that the basis of many people’s distrust of orthodox science is a rather simplistic biblical literalism, it would have been helpful to have had some reference to the kind of exchanges taking place between European biblical scholars and scientists in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was a period when many fruitful adjustments in traditional thinking were occurring, without giving rise to the extremism that later characterized some shades of American Protestantism. The fact that such extremism has now become global should worry theologians as well as scientists.
]]> 26881494 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:12:49 -0700 The Custom of the Country was just sitting on the shelf all the time. My loss -- which might have continued had several GR friends not pointed me to Wharton's masterpiece. The heroine of Edith Wharton's 1913 novel, Undine Spragg, is a monster of selfishness and ambition, and yet she is hard to despise. Elevated first by the money made by her cowed Midwestern parents and by her startling and all-conquering physical beauty, she comes to New York City determined to have everything she wants. I won't rehash the plot again but I was profoundly moved by a scene almost two hundred pages into the book. Undine has heedlessly forgotten her promise to deliver her four year old son to a birthday party given by the little boy's aunt Laura Fairford to which Ralph Marvell, his father and Laura's brother, has been looking forward so earnestly. As the birthday cake candles sit unlit, Laura and her friend Bowen, who acts as the neutral observer to the story, talk about Undine and Linda mourns at how the pending divorce has devastated both father and son. But then Bowen takes up a different thread:.

"He paused. "The fact is that the average American looks down on his wife...How much does he let her share in the real business of life? How much does he rely on her judgement and help in the conduct of serious affairs? Take Ralph, for instance -- you say his wife's extravagance forces him to work too hard; but that's not what's wrong. It's normal for a man to work hard for a woman -- what's abnormal is his not caring to tell her anything about it."

"To tell Undine? She'd be bored to death if he did!"

"Just so; she'd even feel aggrieved. But why? Because it's against the custom of the country. And who's fault is that? The man's again -- I don't mean Ralph, I mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, Americanus. Why haven't we taught out women to take an interest in our work? Simply because we don't take enough interest in them"

Mrs. Fairford, sinking back into her chair, sat gazing at the vertiginous depths above which his thought seemed to dangle her.

"You don't? The American man doesn't -- the most slaving, self-effacing, self-sacrificing---?"

"Yes, and the mist indifferent: there's the point. The 'slaving's' no argument against the indifference. To slave for women is part of the old American tradition; lots of people give their lives for dogmas they've ceased to believe in. Then again, in this country the passion for making money has preceded the knowing how to spend it, and the American man lavishes his fortune on his wife because he doesn't know what else to do with it... I'm not implying that Ralph isn't interested in his wife -- he's a passionate, a pathetic exception. But even he has to conform to an environment where all the romantic values are reversed. Where does the real life of most American men lie? In some woman's drawing room or in their office? The answer's obvious, isn't it? The emotional centre of gravity's not the same in the two hemispheres. In effete societies it's love, in our new one it's business. In America the real crime passionel is a 'big steal' -- there's more excitement in wrecking railways than homes...And what's the result -- how do the women avenge themselves? All my sympathy's with them, poor deluded dears, when I see their fallacious little attempts to trick out the leavings tossed them by the preoccupied male -- the money and the motors and the clothes -- and pretend to themselves and each other that that's what really constitutes life! ..."

Mrs. Fairford presented an amazed silence to the rush of this tirade; but when she rallied it was to murmur: "And is Undine one of the exceptions?"

Her companion took the shot with a smile. "No -- she's a monstrously perfect result of the system: the complete proof of its triumph." This in 1913

Could there be a worse mother, wife, or daughter than Undine? And yet, she is too pathetic to hate; she is so needy and dependent upon material things. She's perhaps the most unliberated woman in literature!]]>
author: Edith Wharton
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 07/25/08
shelves: culture, fiction, literature, treasure, women
review:
I cannot understand why I have been wasting my time reading trendy metafiction when The Custom of the Country was just sitting on the shelf all the time. My loss -- which might have continued had several GR friends not pointed me to Wharton's masterpiece. The heroine of Edith Wharton's 1913 novel, Undine Spragg, is a monster of selfishness and ambition, and yet she is hard to despise. Elevated first by the money made by her cowed Midwestern parents and by her startling and all-conquering physical beauty, she comes to New York City determined to have everything she wants. I won't rehash the plot again but I was profoundly moved by a scene almost two hundred pages into the book. Undine has heedlessly forgotten her promise to deliver her four year old son to a birthday party given by the little boy's aunt Laura Fairford to which Ralph Marvell, his father and Laura's brother, has been looking forward so earnestly. As the birthday cake candles sit unlit, Laura and her friend Bowen, who acts as the neutral observer to the story, talk about Undine and Linda mourns at how the pending divorce has devastated both father and son. But then Bowen takes up a different thread:.

"He paused. "The fact is that the average American looks down on his wife...How much does he let her share in the real business of life? How much does he rely on her judgement and help in the conduct of serious affairs? Take Ralph, for instance -- you say his wife's extravagance forces him to work too hard; but that's not what's wrong. It's normal for a man to work hard for a woman -- what's abnormal is his not caring to tell her anything about it."

"To tell Undine? She'd be bored to death if he did!"

"Just so; she'd even feel aggrieved. But why? Because it's against the custom of the country. And who's fault is that? The man's again -- I don't mean Ralph, I mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, Americanus. Why haven't we taught out women to take an interest in our work? Simply because we don't take enough interest in them"

Mrs. Fairford, sinking back into her chair, sat gazing at the vertiginous depths above which his thought seemed to dangle her.

"You don't? The American man doesn't -- the most slaving, self-effacing, self-sacrificing---?"

"Yes, and the mist indifferent: there's the point. The 'slaving's' no argument against the indifference. To slave for women is part of the old American tradition; lots of people give their lives for dogmas they've ceased to believe in. Then again, in this country the passion for making money has preceded the knowing how to spend it, and the American man lavishes his fortune on his wife because he doesn't know what else to do with it... I'm not implying that Ralph isn't interested in his wife -- he's a passionate, a pathetic exception. But even he has to conform to an environment where all the romantic values are reversed. Where does the real life of most American men lie? In some woman's drawing room or in their office? The answer's obvious, isn't it? The emotional centre of gravity's not the same in the two hemispheres. In effete societies it's love, in our new one it's business. In America the real crime passionel is a 'big steal' -- there's more excitement in wrecking railways than homes...And what's the result -- how do the women avenge themselves? All my sympathy's with them, poor deluded dears, when I see their fallacious little attempts to trick out the leavings tossed them by the preoccupied male -- the money and the motors and the clothes -- and pretend to themselves and each other that that's what really constitutes life! ..."

Mrs. Fairford presented an amazed silence to the rush of this tirade; but when she rallied it was to murmur: "And is Undine one of the exceptions?"

Her companion took the shot with a smile. "No -- she's a monstrously perfect result of the system: the complete proof of its triumph." This in 1913

Could there be a worse mother, wife, or daughter than Undine? And yet, she is too pathetic to hate; she is so needy and dependent upon material things. She's perhaps the most unliberated woman in literature!
]]> 28244802 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 05:39:19 -0700 What Maisie Knew Henry James tenderly cedes the telling of the tale to the young, only partly comprehending Maisie, a generosity that gives this bitter story of youth destroyed by adult selfishness a sweetness that saves it from being unbearable.

This free indirect style also opens up an ironic distance between author and character in which author and reader understand the parents' wickedness a great deal better than Maisie does, is the classic example of this sort of irony—and that tension, too, can jolt a story to life.

Reading Edith Wharton's Custom of the Country just now reminded me that I hadn't posted this great book here at Goodreads. If you don't know it, take the time to discover Maisie for yourself.]]>
author: Henry James
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1986
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 07/25/08
shelves: family, fiction, treasure
review:
One of my all time treasures. In What Maisie Knew Henry James tenderly cedes the telling of the tale to the young, only partly comprehending Maisie, a generosity that gives this bitter story of youth destroyed by adult selfishness a sweetness that saves it from being unbearable.

This free indirect style also opens up an ironic distance between author and character in which author and reader understand the parents' wickedness a great deal better than Maisie does, is the classic example of this sort of irony—and that tension, too, can jolt a story to life.

Reading Edith Wharton's Custom of the Country just now reminded me that I hadn't posted this great book here at Goodreads. If you don't know it, take the time to discover Maisie for yourself.
]]> 28168671 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:52:36 -0700 New Scientist
Brains apart: The real difference between the sexesby Hannah Hoag

"Anyone in a long-term relationship will tell you that, at times, men are indeed from Mars, and women are almost certainly from Venus. It's common knowledge that the sexes often think very differently, but until recently these differences were explained by the action of adult sex hormones or by social pressures which encouraged males and females to behave in a certain way. For the most part, the basic architecture of the brain, and its fundamental workings, were thought to be the same for both sexes.

Increasingly, though, those assumptions are being challenged. Research is revealing that male and female brains are built from markedly different genetic blueprints, which create numerous anatomical differences. There are also differences in the circuitry that wires them up and the chemicals that transmit messages between neurons. All this is pointing towards the conclusion that there is not just one kind of human brain, but two."

Even the scientists at McGill University are weighing in on the subject.
http://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/...
]]>
author: Louann Brizendine
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 07/24/08
shelves: brain, science, women
review:
I was suddenly reminded of this book by an article in this month's New Scientist
Brains apart: The real difference between the sexesby Hannah Hoag

"Anyone in a long-term relationship will tell you that, at times, men are indeed from Mars, and women are almost certainly from Venus. It's common knowledge that the sexes often think very differently, but until recently these differences were explained by the action of adult sex hormones or by social pressures which encouraged males and females to behave in a certain way. For the most part, the basic architecture of the brain, and its fundamental workings, were thought to be the same for both sexes.

Increasingly, though, those assumptions are being challenged. Research is revealing that male and female brains are built from markedly different genetic blueprints, which create numerous anatomical differences. There are also differences in the circuitry that wires them up and the chemicals that transmit messages between neurons. All this is pointing towards the conclusion that there is not just one kind of human brain, but two."

Even the scientists at McGill University are weighing in on the subject.
http://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/...

]]> 9892776 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:44:53 -0700 The Sparrow (also Hispanic and also a member of the Society of Jesus on an interplanetary expedition) I was beside myself trying to recall the title. I am experiencing great feelings of relief to have done so.. There is a new review of this book at the Guardian that is worth reading.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/bo...

Blish's A Case of Conscience belongs to a tradition of deeply introspectivem and religiously complex science fiction. The story consists of a the discovery of a "perfect" planet and species, that the main character (a Catholic priest) begins to think must be inherently Satanic--the novel is a rich mix of this strange Manichean theory and slighty involuted theological arguments. Certainly, this is not science fiction for everyone--if you are expecting action, breathtaking plots, etc., this isn't the novel for you. If you haven't read many of the classic science fiction texts which reflect on religion and science (Childhood's End, Solaris, Perelandra, A Voyage to Arcturus, Star Maker, Rogue Moon, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch) or you dislike that side of the SF tradition, this book proably isn't for you. But if you are interested in more abstract discussions of the relationship between the humnan mind and the universe, this is an excellent place to begin.
]]>
author: James Blish
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1958
rating: 4
read at: 01/58
date added: 07/24/08
shelves: sci-fi
review:
A classical Hugo winning allegory of faith and science. This is one of the stories that has stayed in my memory since I first read it in 1958. When I met another Jesuit protagonist in The Sparrow (also Hispanic and also a member of the Society of Jesus on an interplanetary expedition) I was beside myself trying to recall the title. I am experiencing great feelings of relief to have done so.. There is a new review of this book at the Guardian that is worth reading.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/bo...

Blish's A Case of Conscience belongs to a tradition of deeply introspectivem and religiously complex science fiction. The story consists of a the discovery of a "perfect" planet and species, that the main character (a Catholic priest) begins to think must be inherently Satanic--the novel is a rich mix of this strange Manichean theory and slighty involuted theological arguments. Certainly, this is not science fiction for everyone--if you are expecting action, breathtaking plots, etc., this isn't the novel for you. If you haven't read many of the classic science fiction texts which reflect on religion and science (Childhood's End, Solaris, Perelandra, A Voyage to Arcturus, Star Maker, Rogue Moon, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch) or you dislike that side of the SF tradition, this book proably isn't for you. But if you are interested in more abstract discussions of the relationship between the humnan mind and the universe, this is an excellent place to begin.

]]> 27713402 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:34:18 -0700 http://adrianmonck.com.

Monck's new book, Can You Trust the Media?, written with Mike Hanley, rips what they call the culture's "trust obsession." Beware the newspapers, magazines, TV news operations, and other media institutions that crave the audience's trust, they counsel. It's just a con they're running so they can sell your eyeballs to advertisers. Likewise, spurn those who pine for more "trustworthy" media institutions. Individual reporters and columnists may be trustworthy, but the only dependable way to tame the public's doubts is to give them access to the raw data from which journalism is produced.

The book rattles through its titular question in the first couple of chapters, reaches as a conclusion a pretty unambiguous "no", and - having demonstrated through a range of examples that we cannot and should not trust the media - goes on to discuss the implications of this state of affairs and what we might be able to do about it.

But the central message is an important one, and rather subtler than a simple "yes/no" answer to the question of media trust ostensibly posed. Because everyone involved in the media is just people, that allegedly omniscient, omnipotent monolith that looms over the public consciousness as "the media" is really only as good, as fallible and as trustworthy as the people involved. Journalists trying to do their jobs for better or worse, sub-editors checking facts either rigorously or lackadaisically, newspaper proprietors trying to capture public attention for their commercial products, columnists quoting sources or fabricating them out of idleness, wikipedians contributing to the user-edited encyclopaedia..."the media", that lofty edifice, is just people with all the frailties and limitations thereof.

The book makes this point about media eloquently and with numerous examples. Can we trust Wikipedia? It's just people. Can we trust the BBC? The Times? People again.

Even though the emphasis is mainly British and it may be hard to get hold of in this country I recommend it to anyone interested in the current state of journalism in the digital age, both in theory and in practice, as well as anyone looking for a potted history of the "crisis of trust" that has overtaken British media in recent years. Can You Trust the Media is a uniquely humane take on the question of what sort of trust we should really vest in institutions, and if it concludes that the portents for journalism are not especially rosy, it ends by suggesting some positive solutions.

]]>
author: Adrian Monck
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 07/24/08
shelves: press-journalism
review:
A son who bought this from a U.K. source before reading it himself and lending it on to me wrote, "Adrian Monck is the best British critic writing about the media that I have run across." He blogs at http://adrianmonck.com.

Monck's new book, Can You Trust the Media?, written with Mike Hanley, rips what they call the culture's "trust obsession." Beware the newspapers, magazines, TV news operations, and other media institutions that crave the audience's trust, they counsel. It's just a con they're running so they can sell your eyeballs to advertisers. Likewise, spurn those who pine for more "trustworthy" media institutions. Individual reporters and columnists may be trustworthy, but the only dependable way to tame the public's doubts is to give them access to the raw data from which journalism is produced.

The book rattles through its titular question in the first couple of chapters, reaches as a conclusion a pretty unambiguous "no", and - having demonstrated through a range of examples that we cannot and should not trust the media - goes on to discuss the implications of this state of affairs and what we might be able to do about it.

But the central message is an important one, and rather subtler than a simple "yes/no" answer to the question of media trust ostensibly posed. Because everyone involved in the media is just people, that allegedly omniscient, omnipotent monolith that looms over the public consciousness as "the media" is really only as good, as fallible and as trustworthy as the people involved. Journalists trying to do their jobs for better or worse, sub-editors checking facts either rigorously or lackadaisically, newspaper proprietors trying to capture public attention for their commercial products, columnists quoting sources or fabricating them out of idleness, wikipedians contributing to the user-edited encyclopaedia..."the media", that lofty edifice, is just people with all the frailties and limitations thereof.

The book makes this point about media eloquently and with numerous examples. Can we trust Wikipedia? It's just people. Can we trust the BBC? The Times? People again.

Even though the emphasis is mainly British and it may be hard to get hold of in this country I recommend it to anyone interested in the current state of journalism in the digital age, both in theory and in practice, as well as anyone looking for a potted history of the "crisis of trust" that has overtaken British media in recent years. Can You Trust the Media is a uniquely humane take on the question of what sort of trust we should really vest in institutions, and if it concludes that the portents for journalism are not especially rosy, it ends by suggesting some positive solutions.


]]> 27659899 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:32:53 -0700
author: Christoph Ransmayr
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 07/24/08
shelves: fiction
review:
A glaciologist friend of mine gave this to me. This first novel, whose author has since been celebrated as one of the German language's most gifted young novelists, appeared in 1984. An impressive debut, it tells the gripping tale of the Austro-Hungarian polar expedition of 1872-74, describes a young Italian's ultimately fatal obsession with reconstructing this expedition in 1981, and traces the narrator's growing fascination with this man's fate. The text transcends the novelistic genre by quoting liberally from documentary records, thus becoming history and travelog as well as fiction.
]]> 6239886 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:21:28 -0700 Starship Troopers will be followed by the word 'fascist'. Certainly, I've been unable to resist the compulsion - even if I'm not as sure as some that the 1960 Hugo winner is an apologia for military dictatorship and institutional racism."
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/bo...

I am putting together my list of science fiction for adolescents and YA]]>
author: Robert A. Heinlein
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1959
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 07/24/08
shelves: sci-fi, sci-fi-ya
review:
"There's a law on science fiction blogs stating that there is probability of one that the words Robert Heinlein and Starship Troopers will be followed by the word 'fascist'. Certainly, I've been unable to resist the compulsion - even if I'm not as sure as some that the 1960 Hugo winner is an apologia for military dictatorship and institutional racism."
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/bo...

I am putting together my list of science fiction for adolescents and YA
]]> 9077199 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:54:48 -0700
Contents Early Work, 1962-6 : The man who loved a double bass -- A very, very great lady and her son at home -- A Victorian fable (with glossary) -- Fireworks : Nine Profane Pieces, 1974 : A souvenir of Japan -- The executioner's beautiful daughter -- The loves of Lady Purple -- The smile of winter -- Penetrating to the heart of the forest -- Flesh and the mirror -- Master -- Reflections -- Elegy for a freelance -- The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, 1979 : The bloody chamber -- The courtship of Mr. Lyon -- The tiger's bride -- Puss-in-boots -- The Erl-King -- The snow child -- The lady of the house of love -- The werewolf -- The company of wolves -- Wolf-Alice -- Black Venus, 1985 : Black Venus -- The kiss -- Our lady of the massacre -- The cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe -- Overture and incidental music for A midsummer night's dream -- Peter and the wolf -- The kitchen child -- The Fall River axe murders -- American Ghosts and Old World Wonders, 1993 : Lizzie's tiger -- John Ford's 'Tis pity she's a whore -- Gun for the devil -- The merchant of shadows -- The ghost ships -- In Pantoland -- Ashputtle or The mother's ghost -- Alice in Prague or The curious room -- Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene.:]]>
author: Angela Carter
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 01/00
date added: 07/23/08
shelves: literature, short-stories
review:
If you were writing her literary birth in the manner of Angela Carter, you'd have to provide a troupe of ghostly godpersons gathered round her typewriter. Oscar Wilde would be there, whispering 'Nothing succeeds like excess' and bestowing the gift of the inverstion of truisms; Sylvia Townsend Warner, with her clutch of ruthless fairies; Edgar Allan Poe, the subject of one of her more spectacular stories, although Carter wears her Rue Morgue with a difference. And Bram Stoker, and Perrault, and Sheridan LeFanu, and George MacDonald, and Mary Shelley, and perhaps even Carson McCullers and a whole gaggle of disreputable tale-telling old grannies.

Contents Early Work, 1962-6 : The man who loved a double bass -- A very, very great lady and her son at home -- A Victorian fable (with glossary) -- Fireworks : Nine Profane Pieces, 1974 : A souvenir of Japan -- The executioner's beautiful daughter -- The loves of Lady Purple -- The smile of winter -- Penetrating to the heart of the forest -- Flesh and the mirror -- Master -- Reflections -- Elegy for a freelance -- The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, 1979 : The bloody chamber -- The courtship of Mr. Lyon -- The tiger's bride -- Puss-in-boots -- The Erl-King -- The snow child -- The lady of the house of love -- The werewolf -- The company of wolves -- Wolf-Alice -- Black Venus, 1985 : Black Venus -- The kiss -- Our lady of the massacre -- The cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe -- Overture and incidental music for A midsummer night's dream -- Peter and the wolf -- The kitchen child -- The Fall River axe murders -- American Ghosts and Old World Wonders, 1993 : Lizzie's tiger -- John Ford's 'Tis pity she's a whore -- Gun for the devil -- The merchant of shadows -- The ghost ships -- In Pantoland -- Ashputtle or The mother's ghost -- Alice in Prague or The curious room -- Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene.:
]]> 28040097 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:28:37 -0700
author: Michael Chabon
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 07/23/08
shelves: fiction, mystery-detective
review:
A rollicking piece of spoof noir detective fiction set among the "frozen chosen" of a Jewish homeland in Alaska. Chabon has so much fun with his premise it's almost indecent - and he shares the fun with the reader. Yelp-makingly funny, sublimely well written, and as comforting as chicken-soup.
]]> 28039483 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:22:56 -0700 narrative history at its epic best, with a thousand years of Byzantine tyrants, eunuchs and courtesans, from the emperor with the golden nose to the unfortunate ruler whose head ended up as a drinking goblet. Best read while sipping raki beside the Golden Horn – or shivering in a campsite, dreaming of Byzantium.]]>
author: John Julius Norwich
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 07/23/08
shelves: history
review:
For those of us who never got around to reading the three volume version. This is still
narrative history at its epic best, with a thousand years of Byzantine tyrants, eunuchs and courtesans, from the emperor with the golden nose to the unfortunate ruler whose head ended up as a drinking goblet. Best read while sipping raki beside the Golden Horn – or shivering in a campsite, dreaming of Byzantium.
]]> 28038110 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:11:24 -0700
What most delights his readers, though, is Gibbon's prose style: light but strong, complex but clear, and always elegant. His witty footnotes are also worth a look. One cross-dressing emperor appointed his lovers to important positions: "A dancer was made praefect of the city, a charioteer praefect of the watch, a barber praefect of the provinces. The three ministers, with many inferior officers, were all recommended, enormitate memborum."

Additional factoid: Gibbon was a model for Isaac Asimov in his writing of The Foundation Trilogy.
]]>
author: Edward Gibbon
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 07/23/08
shelves: history, treasure
review:
OK, I'll admit right up front that I am a shallow person and only own the abridged edition. BUT even in the pared down version this is a treasure. Edward Gibbon saw it as his task both to instruct and entertain his audience. He succeeds magnificently in this epic history of the Roman Empire. It's all here: the brutal conquests, the internecine rivalry, the mad emperors and, most controversially, an account of the spread of Christianity which led Samuel Johnson to label him an "infidel".

What most delights his readers, though, is Gibbon's prose style: light but strong, complex but clear, and always elegant. His witty footnotes are also worth a look. One cross-dressing emperor appointed his lovers to important positions: "A dancer was made praefect of the city, a charioteer praefect of the watch, a barber praefect of the provinces. The three ministers, with many inferior officers, were all recommended, enormitate memborum."

Additional factoid: Gibbon was a model for Isaac Asimov in his writing of The Foundation Trilogy.

]]> 26269874 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:45:01 -0700
author: Julie Klam
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 07/23/08
shelves: memoirs, women
review:
In a reverse twist on the fairy tale, this sweet story is about a princess who grew up and changed into a woman. I received two messages as a child - my paternal grandmother told me, "Jones women don't work" i,e, your husband will take care of you.) ; my maternal grandmother, the first woman dentist to graduate from Northwestern, told me, "You are intelligent and getting a good education in order to make your own choices is important." The notion of cutting me any slack at school as in Please Excuse My Daughter for this or that light weight reason would never have occurred to my mother. Until I read this book I hadn't fully realized what a bountiful gift I had been given. Thank you Julie, you made me see lots of things in a new light.
]]> 25832498 Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:11:52 -0700
The thing that bothered me a bit, was that the decline of the society was based on the above described premises -- the lack of original ideas, and intelligence after several cloned generations. This is not 'logically' or 'necessarily' anchored in the story. There seems to be no real reason for it, except that it happens, which does not qualify as a reason. just a plot device.

But, on the upside Wilhelm does a good job in depicting the horrors of being a number, and the value of being an individual. The cloned society is believable, and engrossing. It's important to remember that Wilhelm wrote this BEFORE Dolly the cloned sheep was a reality.]]>
author: Kate Wilhelm
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1976
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 07/22/08
shelves: eschatology, sci-fi
review:
Kate Wilhelm sketches a very believable sort of post apocalypic survival group that starts cloning itself, because the family members are no longer fertile. And how these cloned descendends start their own type of society, in which individualism only exists in a few persecuted deviates. People increasingly are bred for special purposes and become more and more dispensable (there are always other copies left). The community cannot survive in the long run, because valuable human assets, such as the ability to have new ideas, and to reach out beyond what is taught, become extinct.

The thing that bothered me a bit, was that the decline of the society was based on the above described premises -- the lack of original ideas, and intelligence after several cloned generations. This is not 'logically' or 'necessarily' anchored in the story. There seems to be no real reason for it, except that it happens, which does not qualify as a reason. just a plot device.

But, on the upside Wilhelm does a good job in depicting the horrors of being a number, and the value of being an individual. The cloned society is believable, and engrossing. It's important to remember that Wilhelm wrote this BEFORE Dolly the cloned sheep was a reality.
]]> 27965489 Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:35:21 -0700
author: H. Rider Haggard
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1885
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 07/22/08
shelves:
review:
English hunter Allan Quartermain goes in search of the Biblical mines in the heart of darkest Africa. This classic adventure is today studied in universities for its dodgier aspects: the cruel King Twala who gets his head lopped off; the daring Englishman who must overcome Sheba's Breasts (a mountain range). But it's undeniably exciting, especially for kids of a certain age -- mine for instance.
]]> 27964992 Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:30:50 -0700
author: Peter Hopkirk
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 07/22/08
shelves: culture, economics, history, war
review:
Even if its relevance today were not so obvious, this history of Anglo-Russian involvement in Afghanistan would still be a ripper. Into its colourful mix of history, geography, exploration and warfare, Peter Hopkirk adds superb insights into the lives of the young men who, for the sakes of their nations' imperial ambitions, trespassed in that bafflingly dangerous country. Its lessons are timeless.
]]> 27964239 Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:21:58 -0700
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 07/22/08
shelves: fiction, history
review:
This perfect historical novel, given numerous bracing modern twists, is a classy character study of Danton, Robespierre and Desmoulins, the men behind the Terror of the French Revolution, and shows how fatal the combination of ego, ambition and misplaced idealism can be. As tumultuous, crowded and exciting as the storming of the Bastille, except it'll maybe take you a bit longer.
]]> 27963828 Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:16:44 -0700
author: Muriel Spark
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 07/22/08
shelves: fiction, treasure, women
review:

]]> 7949975 Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:13:31 -0700
author: James Clavell
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1975
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 07/22/08
shelves:
review:
Perhaps the ultimate airport novel, this wholly involving blend of dense historical research and manly adventure posturing was based on the exploits of William Adams, a British navigator who reached Japan in the 17th century and was the first foreigner to be appointed samurai. A stalwart hero, scheming Jesuits, plenty of "pillowing" and swordfights and a large amount of period detail all clamour for the revival of that paperback cliché: unputdownable.
]]> 27962982 Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:10:09 -0700
author: Mikhail Lermontov
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 07/22/08
shelves: literature, treasure
review:
How can I make someone who hasn't read this understand what she has missed? Mikhail Lermontov's seductive, restless, cynical anti-hero Pechorin is one of the most enduringly vivid archetypes of 19th-century literature. Thrill to his death-defying Caucasian exploits! Gasp in dismay as he seduces and casts aside beautiful women! Wince as he courts destruction out of sheer boredom! He'll be, like, whatever… A pioneering existentialist; an essential novella.
]]> 7952412 Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:05:53 -0700
No doubt things have changed since this was written in the 1970s, but Paul Theroux's train trip is more about people than places. His glimpses of the societies he passes through are revealing and teeming with colour and life.

Brimming with Theroux's signature humor and wry observations, this engrossing chronicle is essential reading for both the ardent adventurer and the armchair traveler.]]>
author: Paul Theroux
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 01/75
date added: 07/22/08
shelves: culture, memoirs
review:
The first book by Paul Theroux I ever read. It was 1975 and he singlehanded reinvented the travel genre. The Great Railway Bazaar enchanted me and I have been reading him ever since. This hugely entertaining railway odyssey has become a modern classic of travel literature. Here Theroux recounts his early adventures on an unusual grand continental tour. Asia's fabled trains -- the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express -- are the stars of a journey that takes him on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian.

No doubt things have changed since this was written in the 1970s, but Paul Theroux's train trip is more about people than places. His glimpses of the societies he passes through are revealing and teeming with colour and life.

Brimming with Theroux's signature humor and wry observations, this engrossing chronicle is essential reading for both the ardent adventurer and the armchair traveler.
]]> 27962036 Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:59:33 -0700
author: Alexandre Dumas
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1844
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 07/22/08
shelves: fiction, literature
review:
Dashing young sailor, unjustly denounced, imprisoned and left for dead, unearths a cache of medieval treasure, disguises himself as the mysterious and implacable count and sweeps to his revenge. One of Dumas's greatest tales, this is adventure in the classic mould, bursting with thrilling heroism, black villainy and a near-indecent number of vendettas and double-crosses. Nearly every payback thriller written since owes it a debt.
]]> 26096867 Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:57:06 -0700
An English professor friend gave me his ARC and I'm nearly finished with the book. In Stop Me If You've Heard This (a book about jokes which has the rare distinction of being at times quite funny—most are deathly serious) Jim Holt takes a wry look at the main theories, and finds them not entirely up to the task. Or rather, most theories fit some jokes rather well, but suit others hardly at all.

Most ancient theorists, from Plato and Aristotle on, saw jokes as an expression of superiority, humor as "mockery and derision," and laughter, therefore, as "a slightly spiritualized snarl." This is fine, argues Holt, for a range of unpleasant jokes at the expense of the other races and religions, of the poor or otherwise unfortunate ("How did Helen Keller burn her fingers? She tried to read a waffle iron"). It also works for the kind of temporary triumph we might feel if we saw "Bill Gates get hit in the face with a custard pie." It does not seem up to the task of explaining why we might laugh at puns, for example. You might conceivably argue that we are there enjoying a sense of superiority over language itself. "But now," as Holt observes, "the superiority theory has become elastic to the point of meaninglessness."

More popular among modern theorists is the "incongruity theory" of joking, which sees humor and laughter stemming from the inappropriate mixing of categories or registers of meaning ("Work is the curse of the drinking classes," as Oscar Wilde quipped). Or, as Kant put it more opaquely in the Critique of Judgment, a joke arises "from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing." Kant's own example of this was a story of an Indian who looked astonished when an Englishman opened a bottle of beer and the contents frothed out. When asked why he was so surprised, the Indian replied, "I'm not surprised at its getting out, but at how you ever managed to get it all in." The problem here is not that jokes trade on incongruity, for almost all of them in some way do. It is why incongruity should give us pleasure, and why some sorts of incongruity prompt laughter and others (such as Oedipus' parenthood) do not. Besides, as Holt goes on to ask, why should the reaction either to incongruity or to a feeling of superiority be "a bout of cackling and chest heaving"?

That is what Freud's famous "relief theory" of jokes accounts for much better. For here we find a direct connection between the bodily release of laughter and the release, by the joke, of inhibited thoughts and feelings. Holt gives a simple, lighthearted, but sympathetic account of the Freudian theory that jokes allow the expression of otherwise forbidden impulses—including not only sex and aggression but, in the case of nonsense jokes, the impulse to "play" which adults, unlike children, tend to repress. So far, so good. But Holt finds himself unconvinced here too. Never mind whether all jokes release what is repressed (which is, after all, as unfalsifiable a claim as you could make); the logic of Freud's position ought to mean that those "who laugh the hardest at lewd jokes should be the ones who are the most sexually repressed." That is the reverse of what we observe. Other studies have shown—what most amateurs have observed anyway—that it is the least inhibited who enjoy dirty jokes the most.

]]>
author: Jim Holt
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 07/20/08
shelves: popular-culture
review:
Holt seems less interested in getting to the bottom of his subject than he is in getting to the end of his assignment. “Slight” would be too weighty a word for this soap bubble of a book. Even after being plumped out with illustrations, it barely qualifies as a stocking stuffer. My copy and the Library of Congress come up with a tally of only 141 pages, not 160.

An English professor friend gave me his ARC and I'm nearly finished with the book. In Stop Me If You've Heard This (a book about jokes which has the rare distinction of being at times quite funny—most are deathly serious) Jim Holt takes a wry look at the main theories, and finds them not entirely up to the task. Or rather, most theories fit some jokes rather well, but suit others hardly at all.

Most ancient theorists, from Plato and Aristotle on, saw jokes as an expression of superiority, humor as "mockery and derision," and laughter, therefore, as "a slightly spiritualized snarl." This is fine, argues Holt, for a range of unpleasant jokes at the expense of the other races and religions, of the poor or otherwise unfortunate ("How did Helen Keller burn her fingers? She tried to read a waffle iron"). It also works for the kind of temporary triumph we might feel if we saw "Bill Gates get hit in the face with a custard pie." It does not seem up to the task of explaining why we might laugh at puns, for example. You might conceivably argue that we are there enjoying a sense of superiority over language itself. "But now," as Holt observes, "the superiority theory has become elastic to the point of meaninglessness."

More popular among modern theorists is the "incongruity theory" of joking, which sees humor and laughter stemming from the inappropriate mixing of categories or registers of meaning ("Work is the curse of the drinking classes," as Oscar Wilde quipped). Or, as Kant put it more opaquely in the Critique of Judgment, a joke arises "from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing." Kant's own example of this was a story of an Indian who looked astonished when an Englishman opened a bottle of beer and the contents frothed out. When asked why he was so surprised, the Indian replied, "I'm not surprised at its getting out, but at how you ever managed to get it all in." The problem here is not that jokes trade on incongruity, for almost all of them in some way do. It is why incongruity should give us pleasure, and why some sorts of incongruity prompt laughter and others (such as Oedipus' parenthood) do not. Besides, as Holt goes on to ask, why should the reaction either to incongruity or to a feeling of superiority be "a bout of cackling and chest heaving"?

That is what Freud's famous "relief theory" of jokes accounts for much better. For here we find a direct connection between the bodily release of laughter and the release, by the joke, of inhibited thoughts and feelings. Holt gives a simple, lighthearted, but sympathetic account of the Freudian theory that jokes allow the expression of otherwise forbidden impulses—including not only sex and aggression but, in the case of nonsense jokes, the impulse to "play" which adults, unlike children, tend to repress. So far, so good. But Holt finds himself unconvinced here too. Never mind whether all jokes release what is repressed (which is, after all, as unfalsifiable a claim as you could make); the logic of Freud's position ought to mean that those "who laugh the hardest at lewd jokes should be the ones who are the most sexually repressed." That is the reverse of what we observe. Other studies have shown—what most amateurs have observed anyway—that it is the least inhibited who enjoy dirty jokes the most.


]]> 27735618 Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:00:13 -0700
The Kiss
 
by Stephen Dunn

She pressed her lips to mind.
—a typo

How many years I must have yearned
for someone’s lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she’s missed.
How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear,
speaking sense. It’s the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.
]]>
author: Stephen Dunn
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 07/19/08
shelves: poetry
review:
The first time I read Dunn I was astonished into the stratosphere and I haven't come down to this day.

The Kiss
 
by Stephen Dunn

She pressed her lips to mind.
—a typo

How many years I must have yearned
for someone’s lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she’s missed.
How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear,
speaking sense. It’s the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.

]]> 12944218 Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:30:01 -0700 New Yorker and I was delighted to find this collection of some of the best brought together at last.

"As a writer, Remnick practices a classic journalistic style: concrete nouns, active verbs, graceful sentences, solid paragraphs, subtle transitions. A sly wit often punches up the prose, and he is hip in the original sense of the word, which was "knowing," not "fashionable." One measure of his accomplishment is what he avoids: jargon, prophecy, slang that instantly grows moldy, those ugly words that come out of sociology or the Beltway ("proactive," "impact" as a verb, too many others). I've been edited by Remnick and interviewed by him, and came away from each experience respecting his intelligence and professionalism. As an editor, he wants to make the writer's work better; as a writer, he treats the reader as an informed, intelligent equal."
---Peter Hammill, NYT

CONTENTS -
The wilderness campaign : Al Gore
Mrs. Graham
The masochism campaign : Tony Blair
High water
Into the clear : Philip Roth
No longer, not yet : Don DeLillo
Exit the castle : Vaclav Havel
The exile : Solzhenitsyn in Vermont
Deep in the woods : Solzhenitsyn in Moscow
The last tsar
The translation wars
Post-imperial blues : Vladimir Putin
The afterlife : Natan Sharansky
The outsider : Benjamin Netanyahu
Rage and reason : Sari Nusseibeh and the PLO
The spirit level : Amos Oz
After Arafat
The democracy game : Hamas comes to power in Palestine
Kid dynamite blows up : Mike Tyson
Cornerman : Teddy Atlas
Comeback : Larry Holmes
The moralist : Lennox Lewis
Tyson's corner
]]>
author: David Remnick
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 07/19/08
shelves: biography, press-journalism
review:
I started reading Remnick's articles and stories many years ago in the New Yorker and I was delighted to find this collection of some of the best brought together at last.

"As a writer, Remnick practices a classic journalistic style: concrete nouns, active verbs, graceful sentences, solid paragraphs, subtle transitions. A sly wit often punches up the prose, and he is hip in the original sense of the word, which was "knowing," not "fashionable." One measure of his accomplishment is what he avoids: jargon, prophecy, slang that instantly grows moldy, those ugly words that come out of sociology or the Beltway ("proactive," "impact" as a verb, too many others). I've been edited by Remnick and interviewed by him, and came away from each experience respecting his intelligence and professionalism. As an editor, he wants to make the writer's work better; as a writer, he treats the reader as an informed, intelligent equal."
---Peter Hammill, NYT

CONTENTS -
The wilderness campaign : Al Gore
Mrs. Graham
The masochism campaign : Tony Blair
High water
Into the clear : Philip Roth
No longer, not yet : Don DeLillo
Exit the castle : Vaclav Havel
The exile : Solzhenitsyn in Vermont
Deep in the woods : Solzhenitsyn in Moscow
The last tsar
The translation wars
Post-imperial blues : Vladimir Putin
The afterlife : Natan Sharansky
The outsider : Benjamin Netanyahu
Rage and reason : Sari Nusseibeh and the PLO
The spirit level : Amos Oz
After Arafat
The democracy game : Hamas comes to power in Palestine
Kid dynamite blows up : Mike Tyson
Cornerman : Teddy Atlas
Comeback : Larry Holmes
The moralist : Lennox Lewis
Tyson's corner

]]> 27720696 Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:23:51 -0700 New Yorker profile you will know what to expect and I need only list the individuals covered here: Dame Edna, Steve Buscemi, August Wilson, Cole Porter, Dame Judi Dench, Ang Lee, Billy Connolly, Kenneth Tynan, Yip Harburg, Mira Nair, Baz Luhrmann, Laurence Fishburne, Bill Hicks, Richard Rodgers, and Tony Kushner.

]]>
author: John Lahr
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 07/19/08
shelves: biography, essays, popular-culture, press-journalism
review:
If you have ever read a New Yorker profile you will know what to expect and I need only list the individuals covered here: Dame Edna, Steve Buscemi, August Wilson, Cole Porter, Dame Judi Dench, Ang Lee, Billy Connolly, Kenneth Tynan, Yip Harburg, Mira Nair, Baz Luhrmann, Laurence Fishburne, Bill Hicks, Richard Rodgers, and Tony Kushner.


]]> 27720348 Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:18:21 -0700 New Yorker bookshelf in my laptop library. It was a bit too worshipful of Shawn for my taste but an probably an essential for understanding the strangely gifted editor of a great institution.]]>
author: Ved Mehta
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 07/19/08
shelves: popular-culture, press-journalism
review:
Part of my New Yorker bookshelf in my laptop library. It was a bit too worshipful of Shawn for my taste but an probably an essential for understanding the strangely gifted editor of a great institution.
]]> 10306247 Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:11:30 -0700
author: Lillian Ross
name: Ginnie
average rating: 2.67
book published: 1998
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 07/19/08
shelves: memoirs, press-journalism
review:
I cannot believe this dull kiss-and-tell thing was written by the same Lillian Ross who blazed away with "Picture." Obviously she needed a good editor. The paperback has a better subtitle - "My Life with William Shawn and The New Yorker" is more honorable than "A Love Story."
]]> 27719722 Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:08:19 -0700
author: David Remnick
name: Ginnie
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 07/19/08
shelves: popular-culture, press-journalism
review:
Best $50.00 I have spent in a long time. The list price was $100.00 but Daedalus Books and I did a deal.
]]> 27719587 Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:04:21 -0700 The Complete New Yorker: eighty years of the nation's greatest magazine with its 8 DVD-ROMS, I discovered that I also needed this book as an Open, Sesame to its treasures. Naturally About Town is more than a guide book, it's a revisiting of many things that made the magazine a cultural icon. ]]>
author: Ben Yagoda
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 07/19/08
shelves: essays, popular-culture, press-journalism
review:
When I splurged ($50.00 at Daedalus Books) and bought The Complete New Yorker: eighty years of the nation's greatest magazine with its 8 DVD-ROMS, I discovered that I also needed this book as an Open, Sesame to its treasures. Naturally About Town is more than a guide book, it's a revisiting of many things that made the magazine a cultural icon.
]]> 27718264 Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:55:44 -0700 Genius in Disguise i started looking at the other books about The New Yorker on my computer library. These letters from the founder of the magazine to his writers are a pure delight. Edited by Ross biographer Thomas Kunkel, this book deserves a reading by anyone who has ever read a story, an article or laughed at a cartoon from <o>The New Yorker</i>.]]>
author: Harold Wallace Ross
name: Ginnie
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 07/19/08
shelves: popular-culture, press-journalism
review:
After I posted Genius in Disguise i started looking at the other books about The New Yorker on my computer library. These letters from the founder of the magazine to his writers are a pure delight. Edited by Ross biographer Thomas Kunkel, this book deserves a reading by anyone who has ever read a story, an article or laughed at a cartoon from <o>The New Yorker</i>.
]]> 27717083 Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:40:21 -0700