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

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

Not the Howl I was expecting! 🙂

"Howl
Eileen Myles

a refrigerator
makes a lot
of sound
so does a bird
people are
always talking
full of love
& pain
we started
a fund
and the dogs
are needing
some money &
I don’t know
how to do
it & I’ll
learn from
one of them
Tom’s blue
shirt & glasses
are perfect.
My teeshirt
is good
my pen
works
I breathe."

SOURCE:poets.org

I don't have time to listen most days, but Billy Collins does a reading almost every day on Facebook. I subscribe (it's free) to it. Here's a link that might help: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q...

John wrote: "The Roads to Sata: A 2000-Mile Walk Through Japan

There are other worthwhile stories of travel in Japan, but as per the GR description it's a classic."

John,

I like that one a lot. My favorite is Cathy Davison's 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan. In some ways, her book is strengthened by the fact that she doesn't know that much about Japan (at least, when she is first writing this book), but boy, is she a great observer and writer.

John,

My love of sports has waned. When I was in elementary school, I could tell you every NFL player, the college that they had attended, their height and weight. And I kept the interest in all the major sports for years. The only sport that I watch or listen to these days is baseball ... and that's only if the Nationals are playing. I think that sports are a very important part of human activity, but I don't like what money has done to sports. This is a long standing problem, and it was one of the reasons that Babe Ruth was traded. And in 1976, James Michener explored many of the problems Sports in America which have only gone on to get worse.

But ... and this is a big but, the value of sports remains. Over the years, Mark Edmundson has become a pretty good friend.I recommend his Why Read?, Why Write?: A Master Class on the Art of Writing and Why it Matters, and Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education. All deal with the university experience in a very informed way. But then, I also recommend Mark's book,Why Football Matters: My Education in the Game. It explains how football helped lead him into serious learning ...t he book is fun .... but it is also serious itself. As I have largely divorced myself from sports, I have been careful not to criticize friends and family who remain deeply involved in following sports. That thrill you speak of is real and it is an important part of life ... as is the "agony of defeat."

Carol, "J.E. Ferling says that no other biographer of Washington compares, and I am in complete agreement with that." This is very powerful. Ferling is a great historian himself of that period. I have wondered why he stayed at the University of West Georgia throughout his career. I'm sure he had his reasons, but I imagine that he was greatly valued and allowed time to work on his excellent books.

For a shorter but really good biography, I like James Flexner's Washington: The Indispensable Man, which is a one volume condensation of Flexner's award-winning four volume history of Washington's life.

Once you get deeper into jazz, you may want to know more about the songs that jazz musicians usually know by heart. Most of the great songs are here, along with the best versions of them. It's one of those few books that I have both as a paper book and also as a Kindle book. Ted Gioia's The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire. Here's the Amazon blurb:

"The Jazz Standards, a comprehensive guide to the most important jazz compositions, is a unique resource, a browser's companion, and an invaluable introduction to the art form. This essential book for music lovers tells the story of more than 250 key jazz songs, and includes a listening guide to more than 2,000 recordings.

Many books recommend jazz CDs or discuss musicians and styles, but this is the first to tell the story of the songs themselves. The fan who wants to know more about a jazz song heard at the club or on the radio will find this book indispensable. Musicians who play these songs night after night now have a handy guide, outlining their history and significance and telling how they have been performed by different generations of jazz artists. Students learning about jazz standards now have a complete reference work for all of these cornerstones of the repertoire."

And there is a Spotify playlist that has 1,623 renditions of these songs.

No one has more diverse "Best of the Year" lists than Ted Gioia. He has led me to more new genres of music than I can remember! Here is his list of the 100 best albums for 2020.

http://tedgioia.com/bestalbumsof2020....

Sher wrote: "As for driving America's roads, I recommend Route 66 Still Kicks: Driving America's Main Street by Rick Antonson. Rick Antonson and his long-time friend Peter look for all the roads of Route 66. As..."

There is a great book by Jamie Jensen, ROAD TRIP USA: CROSS-COUNTRY ADVENTURES ON AMERICA'S TWO-LANE HIGHWAYS. It is published as a massive 923 page book and laso broken down into 12 smaller paperbacks that deal with separate regions/highways. There are 60 pages on "Rt.66: The Mother Road" and 90 pages on "Rt.50: The Loneliest Road." I have the 1999 edition, a 2009 edition and an earlier one ... it's fascinating to compare a route using the different editions. I have ordered the 25 annual edition, which won;t be published until April 2021. These roads are part of a still existent but disappearing Americana and Jamie Jensen does a great job of capturing parts of that Americana.

John wrote: "I'm going to add this book Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads on Paul Theroux's journeys through the region. Skeptical at first ("Northern liberal confirms preconc..."

John, I really liked the return to places he had visited before. He paints a vivid picture of the poverty in the Mississippi Delta. He makes it seem much more like a developing country than a part of America.

John wrote: "There are many Jane Austen biographies out there, but I found Jane Austen at Home worthy of a shout-out. Her life is such a well-trodden ground, that obviously there isn't room for ..."

John, it's not quite obvious where this one should go ... but here is probably as good as any other place. And it is a great book indeed: What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist—the Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England. If you read novels by Austen or Dickens, you really need this book to understand what is going on and what many references mean. Early on in the book, it explains British coinage and currency.

"For anyone who has ever wondered whether a duke outranked an earl, when to yell "Tally Ho!" at a fox hunt, or how one landed in "debtor's prison"; this book serves as an indispensable historical and literary resource. Author Daniel Pool provides countless intriguing details (did you know that the "plums" in Christmas plum pudding were actually raisins?) on the Church of England, sex, Parliament, dinner parties, country house visiting, and a host of other aspects of nineteenth-century English life—both "upstairs" and "downstairs.""

Here is a good place to start ... and it is a truly great book. A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor. I can't do better than the GR description of this book:

"In 1933, at the age of 18, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on an extraordinary journey by foot - from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the first volume in a trilogy recounting the trip, and takes the reader with him as far as Hungary. It is a book of compelling glimpses - not only of the events which were curdling Europe at that time, but also of its resplendent domes and monasteries, its great rivers, the sun on the Bavarian snow, the storks and frogs, the hospitable burgomasters who welcomed him, and that world's grandeurs and courtesies. His powers of recollection have astonishing sweep and verve, and the scope is majestic. First published to enormous acclaim, it confirmed Fermor's reputation as the greatest living travel writer, and has, together with its sequel Between the Woods and the Water (the third volume is famously yet to be published), been a perennial seller for 25 years."

Good article about Joni Mitchell ... and I have been listening to her new box set. It reveals a lot how she grew as an artist. I saw her for about two songs at the Atlantic City Pop Festival back in 1969 ... until she fled the stage in tears ... due to a crowd that just was ignoring her. I was hugely disappointed. I was a fan even then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanti...

I love your words before the poem starts. And I do share your feelings about incomprehensibility, especially when it is hiding behind uncommonly used words ... for no good reason.

Spitz sure had a wide range, with his highly acclaimed biography of the Beatles and one also of Julia Child.

Carol wrote: "Travels of William Bartram, ed. by Mark Van Doren, is one of the most celebrated travel books of the 18th century. (I tried to put either the title or cover here, but neither would come up).
My copy is an old Dover edition, pub. in 1955 which I bought second hand, and I was rather intrigued to read its claims that they have made every effort to make it the best book possible- the paper is opaque and will not discolour or become brittle with age; pages are sewn in signatures- in the method traditionally used for the best books. It opens flat for easy reference; the binding will not crack or split. 'This is a permanent book.' Well, they are correct. It has withstood the test of time. ..."

Carol, our copy is from the Library of America. With acid-free paper, it is meant to last a long time. But I bet your copy is equally good.

But I do like our copy for this ... since I am part Cherokee and part Creek Indian ... : "Also included in the volume is the sparer and more factual original report of Bartram’s southern travels that he sent to his English patron, John Fothergill, as well as a comprehensive collection of his scientific and ethnographic papers. Especially fascinating is his sympathetic and vividly detailed Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians, long unavailable."

https://www.loa.org/books/21-travels-...

"Has anyone seen the recent statue of Mary Wollstonecraft? I am very disappointed and rather shocked by it. She is portrayed naked." Nudity doesn't upset me, but this just seems totally senseless and like you say, degrading.

John, feel free to start threads but not folders. We may edit threads if we think that changes are needed.

This is from that Atlantic Monthly article about Bloom: "He had read everything worth reading, or claimed to have. When he could still walk, he would allow bystanders on Yale quads to quote random lines of Milton to him, and he would pick up the line and keep reciting until he reached the other end of the quad." So it was the amount and the depth and the recall of it also. Truly amazing.

Carol wrote: "I love colours and beautiful covers. So few books seem to have a good cover; I don't really understand why...."

Carol, I have read a lot of comments over the past few years about how British produced books have deteriorated greatly in their physical characteristics, binding, etc.? Do you find that to to be case?

I had the pleasure about a year ago with sharing the following with John Crowley: "When I first met Bloom in person, I spotted Little, Big, a 1981 novel by John Crowley, on his dining-room table. He said he had read it again that morning “for the 46th or 47th time.” I was skeptical: The copy on that table looked like it had never been read at all. By chance I had read it recently, too, and I proposed that one of the characters was modeled on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman. He immediately quoted both books, confirming my hypothesis. I guess that’s the secret to keeping books in mint condition: If you memorize them on a first, gentle reading, you need never open them again."

SOURCE: The Atlantic: Why Readers Resented Harold Bloom by Graeme Wood

Crowley already knew that Bloom had been a huge proponent of Little, Big and several of his other fantasies, but he wasn't aware of Bloom's latest comments. In 2006, Bloom had written the following: "But I have written extensively about everything so far mentioned, and desire to recommend strongly a fantasy novel much too little known, though it was first published a quarter century ago, John Crowley's Little, Big (1981). I have read and reread Little, Big at least a dozen times, and always am startled and refreshed. It seems to me the best book of its kind since Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Like the Alice books, Little, Big is an imaginative masterpiece, in which the sense of wonder never subsides. Little, Big is a family saga in which several generations live on surprisingly close terms with the faery folk, hence the title. So perpetually fresh is this book, changing each time I reread it, that I find it virtually impossible to describe, and scarcely can summarize it. I pick it up again at odd moments, sometimes when I wake up at night and can't fall asleep again. Though it is a good-sized volume, I think I remember every page. Little, Big is for readers from nine to ninety, because it naturalizes and renders domestic the marvelous."

SOURCE: https://www.powells.com/post/guests/h...