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

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

Andrew truly isn't worthy of even being mentioned. Charles will be immediately challenged upon being crowned king on how to deal with the continuing problem of Andrew.

John, I finally got the book and started it. I was really surprised at how interesting he made the discussion of checkers ... but that was mainly because of of the interplay between the human champion and the man pushing the computer-based competitor.

A great history lesson after that poem, Carol. I enjoyed both.

John wrote: "I always knew Kiev as Kiev, and never was aware until this year that the spelling and pronunciation are different than I knew.

Apparently, as my memory tells me, the pronunciation for the poem Don Juan has Juan as “joo-on.” .."

Same thing for me about the pronunciation of Kiev.

And yep, that's how Byron wanted it pronounced for the poem to scan correctly.

Great poem by Stallings ... I think that I'll look at that word "Ajar" very carefully for a long time. At least, I know how to pronounce it.

John wrote: "When the class ended, he said to read on our own Don Juan. Which, forty years later, I have not completed. , ..."

We read part of Don Juan in my English Lit II class in college ... still a shock to think back to how "Juan" was pronounced.

John wrote: "This should link to my review. I found the book rather dense with facts, but overall not bad.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4..."

John,

Thanks for explaining what made the book good. That's enough to make me want to read it.

Larry

John wrote: "I have been reading Seven Games: A Human History. It is pretty good — almost a book of history and cultural comment as seen through seven games, including chess, bridge, and checkers."

John, I have that one on reserve from the library. I'm looking forward to it.

John wrote: "I was impressed by the University of Georgia having a first-rate Classics line of study. I am not up on the doings at UNC in Chapel Hill, but I try to keep pace with the doings at UNC-Wilmington. L..."

For the four years I was in graduate school at N.C. State, my wife worked for the Consolidated University of North Carolina in a very small office in Raleigh. That's the whole public university system there (above the community college level). So it's UNC- Chapel Hill, N.C. State, UNC- Wilmington, UNC- Asheville, etc. ... 16 universities all together.

The year I finished my Ph.D. and we moved to the DC area, the UNC system moved that office wher my wife worked to Chapel Hill. I have been truly amazed at how some of the universities like UNC-W have grown. Some of the departments of these universities have become truly excellent ... and some haven't.

"I have to check out NC Bookwatch." The interviewer is a real character who has a amazing background ... unfortunately, last season (the 23rd season) was the last. But most of those seasons are available in the Passport archive.

The show was sponsored by a Chapel Hill bookstore, Flyleaf Books, that I have never been to, but which looks pretty good when I look at their web site. I used to regularly come over from Raleigh to visit the bookstores of Chapel Hill and Durham in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I have decided to regularly visit a new bookstore in Vienna (in Norther Virginia) and buy books there (mainly as gifts because I really have come to prefer ebooks for myself). I think it's really important to support local bookstores.

John,

Do you have PBS Passport (forgive me if I have asked you before). It's the video archive to a lot of the PBS video archives ...a nd you get it if you donate at least $5/month to one of the PBS member stations.

We just watched Ken Burns' Benjamin Franklin series ... and now we're using PBS Passport to rewatch his Baseball series.

But we're also watching NC Bookwatch ... working our way backwards through the years (I think that it's on the 23rd season). Great interviews with mainly NC authors.

John,

That's such good advice ... to read through a poet all the way from the beginning to the end ... "with a poet you like.:

Larry

John wrote: "A.E. Stallings studied Classics at the University of Georgia. I did not know a lot about the University of Georgia, but when I read the profile of it on Wikipedia, I was greatly impressed. The Univ..."

It is one of the better Southern universities and has seemed to have avoided the culture wars that have caught up UNC Chapel Hill. Maybe that's because the more conservative legislature members have focused on the success of the Georgia football team.

Water
by Philip Larkin

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My litany would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

John wrote: "I mentioned Ozark, but as Larry pointed out, it got dark and I don’t even know if I could recommend it. In that type of show, Breaking Bad was better. ..."

I totally agree. I will say that Ozark has some great acting ... and that includes not just Laura Linney, but that's not enough.

As for Ozark, I have watched it all ... but after this last half season, if I had known at the beginning how dark it would get, I'm not sure that I would have started watching it. (That was one of the reasons I stopped watch Billion$ ... I just couldn't take watching the corruption any longer after a Headmaster at a private school was blackmailed in one of the episodes.)

Sher wrote: "Oh, okay- well I really, really pace myself then.

Any other shows you have enjoyed? We watched CODA and Ted Lasso. Have you seen Hamlet?"

I first watched Ted Lasso after the first season had ended ... and my daughter-in-law had watched it all three times. Cina and I really enjoyed it. But I told my oldest granddaughter this weekend that because of the language her parents may not let her watch it until she is 35 years old.

Coda was great. It really felt like a deaf family worked.

From today's Writer's Almanac:

I Have Thoughts that Are Fed by the Sun
by William Wordsworth

I have thoughts that are fed by the sun:
The things which I see
Are welcome to me,
Welcome every one –
I do not wish to lie
Dead, dead,
Dead, without any company.
Here alone on my bed
With thoughts that are fed by the sun,
And hopes that are welcome every one,
Happy am I.
Oh life there is about thee
A deep delicious peace;
I would not be without thee,
Stay, oh stay!
Yet be thou ever as now –
Sweetness and breath, with the quiet of death –
Be but thou ever as now,
Peace, peace, peace.

I'll keep this one handy, John. So good.

Posted today on Facebook by Mark Edmundson (UVA Professor of English Literature):

A favorite poem among my students (maybe the favorite poem) in this term's class on Modern Poetry.

Those Winter Sundays
BY ROBERT HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

From a Facebook friend:

A short, subtle one from Frost:

Fireflies in the Garden
Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies
That, though they never equal stars in size
(And they were really never stars at heart),
Achieve at times a very starlike start.
Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.