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

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

John, this is very good to know. Thanks so much. I think that I caused this problem when I changed the settings so that the book group would be only for people over the age of 18 AFTER you had joined. I think that people who joined after the settings won't be affected. I hope.

When Ebooks first began, I can remember making statements that I never thought that they would be good for art. How wrong I was. There is a series, the Delphi Collected Works of a particular artist, and they are pretty wonderful. Many of them have all of the works of a particular artist, like Rembrandt or Van Gogh. And each one is about $2.99. Just as an example, this one is the Delphi Collected Works of J. M. W. Turner (Illustrated).

I'll copy some of the GoodReads review here:

"This volume presents hundreds of oil and watercolour paintings of Britain's most celebrated artist J. M. W. Turner. For all art lovers, this stunning collection presents a beautiful feast of images by the great Romantic Master.

Features:
* over 360 oil paintings, indexed and arranged in chronological order
* a selection of over 190 watercolours, indexed and arranged in chronological order
* special ‘Highlights’ section, with concise introductions to the masterpieces, giving valuable contextual information"

The earlier ebooks in the series are not as good as the more recent ones, but each is worth the small amount that it costs to purchase it. You can buy them directly from Delphi ( www.delphiclassics.com ) or from Amazon if you want the Kindle version. Several of them alsocontain biographies of the particular artist.

John, I had a few Audible credits, so I used one to get the Vesuvius book.

I find Mary Beard amazing. Her book SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome is the best book that combines history with historiography that I know of. And she's about the only historian I know of who can make historiography fun. In that book, she does such a great job of explaining what we know to be true about Rome and the Roman Empire, and as opposed to what we think we know, as opposed to what may be true, and then she explains all of that ... delightfully.

I have never found anything on contemplation and contemplative writings that I wanted to read or to finish if I started reading it until my sister-in-law told me about Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation. I'll read a paragraph and stop and think about it for a long, long time. It deeply moves me. Merton, of course, is the famous Trappist monk who wrote the autobiographical The Seven Storey Mountain. But for me, this one book on contemplation is perhaps his best book.

Cynda,

I'll mention the Lawrence Wright's God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State again. I enjoyed it and particularly for a person that doesn't understand a lot of things about Texas, I think it helped me a lot. And it was fun.

What books are you reading now--or have recently finished--that you want to share with the group? These don't even have to be books that you think are the best ... just ones that you think may interest others.

Cynda wrote: "Hello Mods Larry and Sher. I have access to and can list some of the best about Texas which are often published by Texas A-M and University of Texas-Austin. . . . I am looking for a place to catalog my challenges and reads for each year. Would both those things work here?..."

Cynda, as for the cataloging and reader challenges, I'm not sure how that would work in the context of what we're trying to do here. I'm not saying no, but Sher and I need to think about that.

And Cynda, it is good indeed to see you here.

Cynda,

I really look forward to those Texas books. Just start a thread in the Country/regional Writing folder. Have you read Lawrence Wright's God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State? I did and really enjoyed it.

Larry

Can a puzzle master, a great logician, explain the Tao to us? I don't know. Can he? Read this great book and find out ... or not.

The Tao Is Silent by Raymond Smullyan

From the GoodReads review:

"This is more than a book on Chinese philosophy. It is a series of ideas inspired by Taoism that treats a wide variety of subjects about life in general. Smullyan sees the Taoist as "one who is not so much in search of something he hasn't, but who is enjoying what he has."

Readers will be charmed and inspired by this witty, sophisticated, yet deeply religious author, whether he is discussing gardening, dogs, the art of napping, or computers who dream that they're human."

A thread for Carol or others to use to post a poem of the day ... and yes, there can be even more than one poem of the day!

So is poetry fiction or nonfiction? I'm not sure that I know ... I just know what Archibald MacLeish asserted in his Ars Poetica, "A poem should not mean but be."

Here's the whole poem ... the first poem of the day:

Ars Poetica
Archibald MacLeish - 1892-1981

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*
A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.

SOURCE: https://poets.org/poem/ars-poetica

I've had this book for forty years: Poet's Choice edited by Paul Engle and Jospeh Langland. It contains one poem chosen by great poets, starting with Robert Frost and ending with Leonard Cohen. Engle says, and I think that he is right, that sometimes the poet doesn't choose his best poem. But the choices are very revealing and often great poetry.

Carol,

I have no problem with that at all ... To let you know how I feel about poetry, I post a POEM FOR THE DAY every day on Facebook. I'll create a folder with two threads: Best Poems and Poem for the Day.

I managed to do a little editing of the folders a few minutes ago before GR started hitting me with error message after error message. So it may not appear until later in the day. Sher and I will work it out!

And we are so happy to have you here.

Larry

I'm not sure that there is a better essayist right now than George Scialabba. I recommend all of his collections, but especially Low Dishonest Decades: Essays & Reviews, 1980-2015 and For the Republic: Political Essays. What makes them so special is the insights, like one particularly timely ... namely what is wrong with the American Constitution.

If you want to get a taste of these essays without buying his books, he offers access to many of them through his website. http://georgescialabba.net/mtgs/archi...

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Carol wrote: "Have I put the above in the wrong place? Should I have started a different thread? I was putting it under Biography and Memoirs, rather than Beethoven."

Carol, don't worry. Sher and I are still working out the best structure here. We're just glad to have that recommendation!

John, no problem at all on that work of fiction. I just added what I thought was the best work of Civil War history, but if there is one work overall on the Civil War that I recommend, it is always the historical novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, There is more truth in that novel than in most histories.

Thousands of books on the American Civil War ... so which one book to begin with? More than thirty years after it was published, one still is often cited as the best one. It's Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson. I read it when it was first published and haven't changed my opinion that it deserves top marks.

Thanks so much, John!

Jeffrey wrote: "Thanks for the LargeHeartedBoy link and for starting this group. I am not the most active of group members, but I enjoy seeing what like-minded readers are reading and to comment occasionally.

Last night I was perusing Nonfiction/history book awards. Here are some I found. Links to wikipedia page.

Baillie Gifford Prize
Cundill Prize
Wolfson History Prize
National Book Award for Nonfiction
Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
Pulitzer Prize for History
National Book Critics Circle Award"

Jeffrey, many thanks ... one of the kinds of responses that I really hoped to see!

Larry