Saturday, July 1, 2017

Evanston: heartwarming and charming; books read



        From the heading of this entry you probably think I am writing about myself, but I’m not.
        This is a long Fourth of July weekend in the United States.  Most of the readers of this journal are Americans.  This was a great country.  The tense of the verb is deliberate.  I am not by nature a member of any group.  Not a Democrat or a Republican.  I only believe in individuals.  But you might consider this quietly:  What do you think George Washington,  John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodor Rosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, would have thought of Donald Trump?
        If you have four free minutes this weekend, you could probably not spend them better than watching this video sent to me by Chris, who accurately headed it, ‘Not gannets, but heartwarming.’  He wrote that after a Wednesday night race a boat he used to compete against “spotted what they thought was a turtle but turned out to be an osprey with its head in a polyethylene bag.  They rescued it and as you can see it lived to rob more fishermen of their sport.”  What a fine thing to have done.  Go osprey.
        If you have eleven more minutes, watch the charming short film shot on iPhone called Detour.  I see on YouTube that twenty-seven people give this a thumbs down.  They are demented.  Five hundred and eighty-nine, including me, give it a thumbs up.
        If you have a couple of hours, rent LION from iTunes.  It is presently the film of the week and costs only ninety-nine cents.  Most films these days are made for children, teen-agers and young adults.  After all, they are the ones who go to theaters.  I very seldom do.  LION is about a child in India who is accidentally separated from his family, survives life on the streets of Calcutta, is adopted by an Australian family, and eventually finds his birth mother.  I respect Nicolle Kidman for accepting a role in which she is far from glamorous.  
         LION is a movie about being kind to one another and a rare movie for adults. 

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       Books read January to June, 2017

  THE LAST KINGDOM   Bernard Cornwall
THE BOYS IN THE BOAT   Daniel James Brown
THE PALE HORSEMAN   Bernard Cornwall
ATLAS OBSCURA   Fder, Thuras, Morton
INTO THE SILENCE   Wade Evans
THE HORSEMEN   Gary McCarthy
THE PLAGUE   Albert Camus
THE BIRTH OF VENUS   Sarah Dunant
SUBMERGENCE   J. M. Ledgard
NIGHT SOLDIERS  Alan First
CAT’S CRADLE   Kurt Vonnegut
CONFEDERATES   Thomas Keneally
JUDE THE OBSCURE   Thomas Hardy
SHAMAN   Kim Stanley Robinson
A FINE IMITATION   Amber Brock
THE SISTERS BROTHERS   Patrick DeWitt
NOONDAY   Pat Barker
POEMS   Elizabeth Bishop
THE INDIFFERENT STARS ABOVE   Daniel James Brown
WAR   Sebastian Junger
THE POST OFFICE GIRL  Stefan Zweig
LORDS OF THE NORTH   Bernard Cornwall
THE ORCHARDIST   Amanda Coplin
SWORD SONG   Bernard Cornwall
H  IS FOR HAWK   Helen Macdonald
LIFE AND FATE   Vasily Grossman
THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE   Philip Kerr 
RAGTIME   E. L. Doctorow
SIN IN THE SECOND CITY   Karen Abbot
WORLD GONE BY   Dennis Lehane
WAR POEMS    Sigfried Sassoon
CITY OF WOMEN   David R. Gillham
THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE   Hammond Innes
WESSEX POEMS   Thomas Hardy
DEATH BY FIRE   Anderson Reynolds
A HISTORY OF ST. LUCIA   Harmsen. Ellis. DeVaux
THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL   Anderson Reynolds
OMEROS   Derek Walcott
SHORT STORIES   Irvin Shaw
THE BURNING LAND   Bernard Cornwall
FINN   Jon Clinch
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN   Mark Twain 

       All of these were read before I reached Marathon.  Atypically I have not finished a book since, though I am about to, QUEEN OF THE SOUTH by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, one of whose lines I used in the front of one of my books.  I have  been watching sports on television, The Last Kingdom and Breaking Bad.
        Many of these books I have read before.  Some several times.  I would particularly recommend THE BOYS ON THE BOAT, THE PLAGUE, JUDE THE OBSCURE—the ultimate anti-Disney novel, WAR, H IS FOR HAWK, LIFE AND FATE, and as a sea story though parts are not believable, THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE, and all the ‘Last Kingdom’ novels by Bernard Cornwall.
       FINN is a novel about Huckleberry’s father which was offered by BookBub.  It is a good book and caused me to reread Mark Twain’s original for the third time.  This is heresy, but I was disappointed in a novel I have long admired.  The first two-thirds about Huck and Jim on the river is wonderful, but the last third when Tom Sawyer dominates the action is childish and stupid.
       Good-bye, Huck.  I won’t read you again.

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       A beautiful summer’s day here.  Carol and I walked down to the lake where the above photo was taken.