Larry’s Comments (group member since Nov 23, 2020)

Larry’s comments from the Nonfiction Reading - Only the Best group.

Ron wrote: "The New York Times It's where I get a lot of my book content, both in terms of articles and in terms of what may be on their nonfiction bestsellers list.

Though those are pretty weak. They've had the same nonfiction paperback books on their lists for months. It's like they don't know there are others out there or they forget to even update the list. Their hardback nonfiction bestsellers tend to be more varied so I don't mind those...."

The NYT book lists drive publishers and authors crazy ... I don't think that the data is easily accessible so that the best seller lists can be made authoritative. I really think that they should just give up on the lists.

Ron, try looking here regularly:

https://lithub.com/

And this is from the Lithub site:

https://bookmarks.reviews/

John wrote: "As an update on my Vanity Fair Digital Subscription, it was purchased last evening and I still do not have access. My first call to Vanity Fair said it would take three to four hours. My second cal..."

That would be so frustrating.

Cynda Reads Again wrote: "I am currently reading

The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act by Clay Risen.

The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse by [auth..."

Cynda,

I am more than impressed wth those three books!

Diane wrote: "There are two books that I would recommend about Mental Health :

- The Body Never Lies by Alice Miller
- Alla ricerca delle coccole perdute by Giulio Cesare Giacobbe

For the second one, I do not ..."

Diane, I won't quote or comment on all your suggestions but just note that I think that your own comments are valuable. I will also mention Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website by Daniel Domscheit-Berg. I do think that the author, who was one of the founders of Wikileaks, successfully recounts some of the good that Wikileaks did in its early days ... and then argues that the sociopathy and paranoia of Assange really took over and put those good things to an end.

John ... and this: "“Wen mi jus come to Landan toun / mi use to work pan di andah­groun / but wor­kin pan di andah­groun / yu dont get fi know your way aroun,” says the deep­voiced man. “Inglan is a bitch / dere’s no escapin it.”

Thus was the dis­sent­ing verse of Lin­ton Kwesi John­son broad­cast from the heart of the Brit­ish estab­lish­ment. His poetry’s fusion of the rhythms of reg­gae and the sounds of patois, its cri­tique of police bru­tal­ity and advocacy of mul­ti­cul­tural polit­ics res­on­ated with dis­af­fected black and white youth in the 1970s and 1980s, win­ning the Jamaica-born LKJ a large fol­low­ing and that pithy moniker."

The quote is from an article in last weekend's Financial Times [6 May 2023], which reviews Time Come: Selected Prose by Linton Kwesi Johnson, only the second liv­ing author to be pub­lished in the Pen­guin Mod­ern Clas­sics series.

I also like his quote in the FT article here: " “Poetry began as a need to artic­u­late the exper­i­ences of my gen­er­a­tion, and for me it is more to do with self-expres­sion, whereas writ­ing prose is mostly about learn­ing,” he says.

“By writ­ing, I’m edu­cat­ing myself. I’m leap­ing from gath­er­ing inform­a­tion to mak­ing sense of it . . . Something that stirs my curi­os­ity will spur me on. I’ll try to arrive at a bet­ter under­stand­ing of it by writ­ing about it.”

John wrote: "Lately, I have been looking to read something that would be considered Caribbean Literature.

I do think of Derek Walcott. And also Jamaica Kincaid when I consider a Caribbean Literature. Perhaps ..."

John, have you read Beyond A Boundary by C.L.R. James? Not just about cricket as played in the Caribbean. The GoodReads review catches some of it: "C L R James, one of the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century, was devoted to the game of cricket. In this classic summation of half a lifetime spent playing, watching and writing about the sport, he recounts the story of his overriding passion and tells us of the players whom he knew and loved, exploring the game's psychology and aesthetics, and the issues of class, race and politics that surround it."

John,

I like the reference to Camille Paglia. I find a lot of value in about 80 percent of her writings. I get annoyed with those who have tried to "cancel" her, because they find some of her writings offensive. Some of those writings even offend me, but it doesn't really detract from her deep insights.

From Mark Edmundson (who coincidentally I interacted with this morning through a new book on Beethoven):

"Reading through a volume of modern poetry not long ago, I came upon some lines that seemed to me to concentrate a strong and true sense of what there is to gain from great writing. The lines were by William Carlos Williams and they ran this way: “Look at / what passes for the new,” Williams wrote. “You will not find it there but in / despised poems. / It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.” Williams asserts that though all of us are surrounded all the time with claims on our attention—film, TV, journalism, popular music, advertising, and the many other forms that pass for the new—there may be no medium that can help us learn to live our lives as well as poetry, and literature overall, can.

People die miserably every day for lack of what is found in despised poems—in literary artwork, in other words, that society at large denigrates."

Edmundson, Mark. The Heart of the Humanities . Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

BTW, the Beethoven book is Why Beethoven: A Phenomenon in One Hundred Pieces and I posted this on Facebook:

Great new book on Beethoven ... with some very strong opinions ... he REALLY likes the 1957 recording by Gilels-Ludwig of the G Major concerto and then adds this:
"On the debit side, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, is too damn thoughtful; this is music, for heaven’s sake, not a doctoral thesis. Van Cliburn bumbles around the lower end of the cerebellum, rubbing elbows with Liberace. Lang Lang’s 2017 concert with Christoph Eschenbach and the Orchestra de Paris is quite the ugliest thing on record, the pianist’s opening touch as thick as dumplings and his dynamic never softer than mezzo-forte. There you are: this 1970s record buff just saved you from three seriously dud buys."

John wrote: "My first encounter with the word grackle was, interestingly enough, in a poem by Richard Wilbur. ...I did just look at pictures of grackles. From a distance, they likely could be seen as crows, perhaps. I am sure I have seen them in North Carolina, but I am not familiar with their habits"

As black as crows .. but with much smaller tails.

I never knew that grackles were the same as jackdaws ... I only knew that they were about my least favorite bird.

Ron wrote: "Still though, it's a newspaper outlet I won't cancel. I use the digital version. I don't have the patience for paper newspapers anymore. ..."

I do prefer reading digital newspapers ... That said, both since I delivered newspapers (The Washington Star) for four years and because I'm 74 years old, I miss the smell of newsprint that often comes form a paper newspaper.

John, try to find a copy of Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter. It's about him, of course, and that's great .. but it's also about the changing journalism over decades ... and how much he enjoyed the deep pockets translated into large expense accounts of Time-Life when Sports Illustrated was part of its stable of magazines.

Actually it was our local library and not my college library where I would read The National!

John, I still read the occasional CSM article through Apple News+. The National lasted such a short time. I read it in my college library. We saw Frank Deford give a talk … he was wonderful … we talked to him afterwards and got him to sign our copy of his book about his daughter Alex, who died at an early age from cystic fibrosis. He has a great story about Alex’s connection to the wonderful filly, Ruffian.

I saw two grackles on the fence next to our our flower less hydrangeas yesterday. The flowers will come … the grackles can go … not my favorite bird.

Cynda,

I subscribe to both also ... as well as to the UK's Financial Times. Good journalism is essential and needs to be supported.

Cynda Reads Again wrote: "John the periodicals are hurting. I never thought I would be able to afford both Washington Post and the New York Times. Because I subscribe to Scribd, I get WP for about $4/month. While I remember..."

Cynda, there has been a rapid turnaround for the top tier newspapers.

"Ever since the rise of the Internet, experts have insisted that nobody will pay for content (ugh!). But, suddenly, the huge success stories in media are charging for subscriptions—relying less on advertising—and readers are paying.

The New York Times is growing in a dying industry—by selling subscriptions. The newspaper added 1 million digital subscribers last year. It now has almost 10 million paying subscribers. That doesn’t even include the additional million subscribers it gained by acquiring The Athletic in February 2022.

Subscriptions now contribute more than $400 million in revenue at the Times, and keep growing each year. Ad revenue, in contrast, is stuck at $179 million and is flatlining.

This is not an isolated case.

During the pandemic, 6 of the 8 largest city newspapers in the US enjoyed a sizable increase in subscribers—and only one shrank. Even after the lockdowns ended, subscription numbers continued to rise."

Source: https://open.substack.com/pub/tedgioi...

P.S. It's well worth reading the whole article, for Gioia's comments abiout Substack ... and then about what AI portends.

Ron, I saw both versions of the JLA movie. The second, the Zac Snyder cut, was so much better. I’m looking forward to the new Flash movie.

Chapter 7 has so much happening in it, with finally the Civil War and Caesar ruling briefly until his assassination. I think that Beard was right to make the point that Pompey was almost the first emperor in effect if not in nomenclature. Her points about Caesar's reforms, witht he Julian calendar being so important, are good also.

There is something that is really not explained in terms of the composition of the Roman army. Earlier as Rome expanded, Mary Beard made the point that Italian cities that were conquered generally were allowed to keep their leaders and were minimally taxed ... except that they had to supply men to the Roman armies.

And now in Chapter 7 we read that until Marius's reforms, only men with property could join the army. (Marius opened it up to all Roman citizens.) One possibility for the earlier armies might be a distinction for service in the legions and opposed to service in auxiliary units. But it's not clear.