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

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

And Eileen, I am especially glad to see you here!

Sher wrote: "Edna St. Vincent Millay 1931 (title means Memory)

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a st..."

I posted this one as my Poetry for the Day on my Facebook page two days ago!

Chrissie wrote: "Larry should we only mention non-fiction books? I read a lot of classics and so wondered if they should be mentioned here."

Chrissie, generally no. But I'll let you to use your judgment if a work of fiction is really special. Sometimes those works of fiction lead us to other works of nonfiction. I'll just give you one example. The novel, The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara is a Pulitzer-winning account of the Battle of Gettysburg. It has been assigned at Officer Candidate School by both the U.S. Army and the United States Marine Corps because of what it reveals about leadership. So a book like that may be useful to be mentioned here.

Sher wrote: "Larry wrote: "Sher wrote: "Hello, as many of you know from other groups, I am a super duper Library of America fan. Their Live Online programs this year have been fantastic. The year will complete ..."

I started subscribing to the Library of America when they started and have about 280 of their books in their regular sequence. At some point they started adding special poetry editions and other special books, ones that were tied to a city like Chicago or LA or tied to a subject like baseball. That has resulted in some books that maybe are below par, but it has made the Library of America a very dynamic publishing effort.

Carol wrote: "I know this group is meant to be only the best, but am still stunned by seeing the film, ' Marie Antoinette 'starring Kirsten Dunst, Tom Schwartzman and Steve Coogan last night. It is quite frankly...Kirsten Dunst flouncing around seemed a very unlikely Marie Antoinette who was said to have a special walk, a sort of glide (if it is possible to imagine that!)"

It might have been improved by digging up Michael Jackson and having his corpse do the moonwalk he was so famous for.

Carol wrote: "I know this group is meant to be only the best, but am still stunned by seeing the film, ' Marie Antoinette 'starring Kirsten Dunst, Tom Schwartzman and Steve Coogan last night. It is quite frankly, one of the worst films I have ever seen. .."

Carol,

I think it is valuable indeed to know what the worst works are also.

Larry

Carol wrote: "Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War This copy does not have the same cover as my book, which is rather battered and second-hand.
Richard Ketchum's narrative accou..."

A great introduction to this book, Carol.

Sher wrote: "Hello, as many of you know from other groups, I am a super duper Library of America fan. Their Live Online programs this year have been fantastic. The year will complete with this program on Dec 16..."

Sher, it's odd that the Library of America is doing this event this year and not last year ... maybe they weren't doing them last year. The one thing that I asked my son and family to give me for Christmas last year was this LoA book, The Peanuts Papers: Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life. It's great.

John wrote: "Harold Bloom always considered Robert Browning to be the strongest poet of the Victorians, but I did not take too much to him....."

Again, John, our tastes so coincide.

I spoke at a good friend's funeral yesterday evening. All on Zoom and it was a good service.

At the end of my commemoration, I used the following from Tennyson's ULYSSES:

“Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’/

We are not now that strength which in old days/

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;/
One equal temper of heroic hearts,/

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will/

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”


We don't live in an age of heroes, and consequently heroic poetry is devalued. That is a loss.

John wrote: "I watch two channels of Pakistanis doing so, so decided to tackle a book that's been on my TBR pile to help me understand their lives a bit better, Pakistan: A Hard Country..."

John, I reserved a copy at my library. Let me know how you like it.

John wrote: "Always liked the short section of a tribute Lord Byron wrote about his dog. The poem is longer, but the best and strongest part is just these words.

Near this Spot
are deposited the Remains of one..."


Byron was much kinder toward animals than he was toward people.

Carol,

I don't think that there is any sign of abating when it comes to works on Jane Austen. And that's good.

Larry

Sher wrote: "John:
Thank you; I really enjoyed that tidbit about Fred Rogers. I believe he became a Presbyterian minister- though I am not that far in the book yet.

Your books sound quite different and entert..."

Sher,

First, A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD - "Tom Hanks portrays Mister Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a timely story of kindness triumphing over cynicism, based on the true story of a real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and journalist Tom Junod. After a jaded magazine writer (Matthew Rhys) is assigned a profile of Fred Rogers, he overcomes his skepticism, learning about empathy, kindness, and decency from America's most beloved neighbor" Source: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/a-be...

Then the documentary: WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? :Won’t You Be My Neighbor? takes an intimate look at America’s favorite neighbor: Mister Fred Rogers. A portrait of a man whom we all think we know, this emotional and moving film takes us beyond the zip-up cardigans and the land of make-believe, and into the heart of a creative genius who inspired generations of children with compassion and limitless imagination. "

Source: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/wont...

Both worth seeing!

Sher wrote: "I would love to know what you are currently reading - please share if you will. :)

I have started a book about the life of Fred Rogers. Any Mister Rogers fans here?

[book:The Good Neighbor: The L..."

We are huge Mister Rogers fans. I really liked the films, WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR and A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, that came out over the last two years. We also watch the cartoon spinoff, DANIEL TIGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD, at times to discuss it with Cessy, my youngest granddaughter.

Sher wrote: "Carol:
Do you mean Christmas Cake is fruitcake? My husband loves fruit cake, and my mother uses a 19th C recipe to make it-- with liquor and citrons (which most modern folks do not like the taste o..."

I hadn't even thought of that possibility. I like most fruitcakes ... my wife doesn't like any of them.

Carol wrote: "I was really surprised to hear you don't have Xmas pudding. Do you also not have Xmas cake? I always give son at least one Xmas cake and Xmas pudding to take back when he returns to the US after Xm..."

Carol, no Christmas cake either! But I think that minced meat pies are common as a regional food in the United States. Thanks for the information about the King Cake. I bet you are right.

American cooking is, of course, very regional. Some foods cut across many, if not most, regions. Other foods and dishes are very region specific. That King Cake is common in some Catholic families in some U.S. regions. When my wife makes it, it looks a lot like this: https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/s...

Carol wrote: "The Jane Austen and Charles Dickens book seems like a useful Xmas present for various relations. I have earmarked it to go with a Sister Wendy art book, (there is only one now which is new, the oth...Our Xmas pudding always had a silver coin in it. (probably quite hygienic as it was cooked a very long time). Was this also a tradition in the US? "

Carol, I don't think that Christmas pudding is widely served in the United States. I'm sure that some families do, probably not as a family tradition but just as a novelty kind of dessert ... which they may or may not adopt. We experienced it one time, when we were in Australia for a year and spent Christmas in Adelaide. And there was a silver coin, which I did not get.

John wrote: "I saw an article recently regarding President John Tyler’s grandson, who is 91 years.

Yes, that is not a typo — John Tyler’s grandson. Tyler was born in 1790.

According to the article, the 91 ye..."

John, ABout 25 years ago, my wife and I visited Berkeley Plantation, one of the historis James River Plantations. Berkeley is the historic home of the Harrison family, including Benjamin Harrison. But it was sold to John Jamieson, who came from Scotland as a boy and became a drummer boy in the Union Army. This was the location where Taps was composed.

Anyway, while we were waiting on the front steps to begin our tour, the docent pointed to an older gentleman riding a lawnmower cutting the grass. She explained that that was Malcolm Jamieson, the son of the Union army drummer boy (who married late and had a child, Malcolm, when he was quite old.)

See this Wiki:

"John Jamieson, a lumber "tycoon" who as a youth had been a drummer boy in McClellan's army, purchased the property in 1907, and in 1925, his son Malcolm inherited the property, expending large sums of money to turn the ruined main house into a livable and stately home for himself and his bride Grace Eggleston. The project took over a decade and was finally occupied by the Jamisons in 1938. "

SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkele...

Synchronicity, Sher?

I posted this about an hour ago on a friend's Facebook page: "There are many deep dives into how the evangelicals got to be the way they are. A great historical look at this is Frances Fitzgerald's The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (It won the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award and was a National Book Award Finalist.) This goes all the way back to the Great Awakening and all the way up to Jerry Falwell, Jr. and the other current cast of not so admirable characters. It provides a great look at key figures such as Oral Roberts and Billy Graham through the years ... Graham comes across as sometimes admirable ... and sometimes a bit less than that. All in all, I think that Fitzgerald is fair in her treatment of evangelicals. But what is the theology of these people? ... I doubt that these books are the best, because they are dated. But James Barr's two books, Fundamentalism and Beyond Fundamentalism: Biblical Foundations for Evangelical Christianity have explained their thinking to me a lot. Barr started off as an evangelical and he moved away from it, but it gave him a very good understanding of matters like the difference between the evangelical theology of infallibility and that of inerrancy. Good Wiki on James Barr here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B..."