via amazon.com

This book is probably the most hyped and talked about book of 2010, and that's not Franzen's fault. He's a good writer, and takes several years to finish a novel. So, expectations are high whenever he publishes a book. Unfortunately, "Freedom" fails to deliver at any level of enjoyable reading experience, at least for me.

This book is primarily about a woman, who marries a man she cares about, but is not in love with, and she also happens to be secretly in love with her husband's best friend, an indifferent musician, who struggles to be successful. She has a son, who turns out to be kind of a jerk, and the family just wallows in their lives, and their bad choices, depressed and confused about how things have turned out.

The title of this book should have been "Freedom for people to make bad choices and be miserable". It's a depressing book. I really wanted to like it, but even after reading the first 150 pages I had a sense the book wasn't going anywhere, but I trudged on anyway, page after page, until the end, waiting for a good experience, anything interesting, especially since I had enjoyed Franzen's last book The Corrections. And I'm not looking for novels to deliver a "feel good" experience either, nor do I need to "love" every character. But these characters are all miserable, depressed, and regretful. And there is nothing interesting about the plot, or setting, to balance out the miserable characters. Don't get me wrong, Franzen is a good writer, and he may deliver better books in the future, but I expected more from a writer of Franzen's caliber.

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via amazon.com

Reading Moby Dick, or any great classic, requires patience. I'm up to chapter 25 and the crew hasn't even departed Nantucket to start looking for a whale. But it's obvious that Herman Melville had a lot to say in this novel, though it did not sell well during his lifetime and he was largely forgotten by the literary community when he died.

Like most people, I first watched the movie by Gregory Peck well before reading the novel. Though the movie was good, the book goes deeper into themes and character that the movie cannot due to limited time and format. If you take your time and have patience you'll understand why this novel is a classic.

What could be more full of meaning?- for the pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.

You can read this book online at several sites for free, but paperbacks are cheap and well worth the price.

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All their lives they had been cargo; never supercargo. And they were not only inured to that; they anticipated it. --- The Thin Red Line

I've been watching HBO's new series "The Pacific", which explores the war against Japan during WWII. It's a well done movie, though not quite on the level of Band of Brothers, but still well worth watching.

Movies about the war in the Pacific always remind me of Terrence Malick's movie The Thin Red Line, released in 1998 after his twenty year layoff. And It's a shame that James Jones, the author of the book, isn't as well known as other WWII writers, because he's a great writer. He was stationed in Hawaii during the Pearl Harbor attack, and also served in the Guadalcanal campaign. He wrote the book, From Here to Eternity, which was made into the classic movie with Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra. 

 The Thin Red Line is fictional, and doesn't attempt to describe the actual battles on Guadalcanal. But James Jones delivers the truth about war and the Americans that fought in it. I bought my copy of the book for fifty cents at a used book sale, but even if you spend more, you'll like this book if you want to get inside the minds of those who sacrificed their lives in a time of war.

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via amazon.com

A lot of poetry in recent years is what I like to call "navel gazing" poetry: pontificating on the beauty of a blade of grass, or the rhapsody of a sunset. Don't get me wrong, those kind of subjects in the hands of a good poet can be great.(see Pablo Neruda's book "Odes to Common Things"). But too often these kind of poems are detached from the experience of common life, leaving people to feel disconnected from poetry and their lives.

But this is not the case with Charles Bukowski. He writes with what I characterize as "poems from the streets". The everyday sights and sounds of a city. His home turf was the city of Los Angeles, but there's a lot of common ground with all cities. Some of his poems will make you laugh, and others will make you cringe. But Bukowski manages to walk a fine line with a direct, plain-spoken technique mixed with a gritty lyricism. Pick up a copy of his collection "What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire", and you might look at poetry in a different way; less academic and more connected to everyday life, especially if you live in the city.

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via amazon.com

Today I finished reading Steven Johnson's book "The Ghost Map" on my Kindle. It's a well-told story about a cholera epidemic in London in the mid-nineteenth century(Charles Dickens' time), and the two men who went against conventional wisdom in solving the mystery, and in the process, saving thousands of lives, and paving the way for densely packed cities to be successful.

Today in "industrialized" countries we take for granted the fact that clean water is readily available and that our sewer system is functioning well enough to keep us from getting sick. But it wasn't always like this as big cities became packed with people. With superstition, class bias, and quirky science, disease was still a mystery. Steven Johnson does a great job of telling the story of a cholera outbreak in London that killed hundreds without a clear reason why:

"As their neighbors begin dying, two men are spurred to action: the Reverend Henry Whitehead, whose faith in a benevolent God is shaken by the seemingly random nature of the victims, and Dr. John Snow, whose ideas about contagion have been dismissed by the scientific community"

It's not a long academic book, and that's a plus. It's told in the style of a mystery, and it will keep you turning pages to figure out how things will get resolved in spite of overwhelming odds.

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via en.wikipedia.org

I'm almost finished with the first volume of Shelby Foote's "The Civil War: A Narrative" trilogy. It's a great book written in a novel-like style that manages to capture the huge panorama of death that defined America as we know it today. But what strikes me most is the tragic waste of human lives due to a war caused by a few politicians and leaders of the southern states, and the disappointing fact that we continue to mythologize the conflict today and even continue some of the same arguments, refashioned for the 21st century. But if you're looking to make sense out of this history Shelby Foote's book is great reading and a monumental achievement.

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via en.wikipedia.org

Frank McCourt's first memoir "Angela's Ashes" won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 in literature. The story is accessible to casual readers and literati alike, and reading the story is almost like sitting next to him at a bar taking pulls from a Guinness Stout and listening to a steady Irish accent tell you about a journey of poverty, challenges, and dreams. Here is a man that loves literature and it shows. The prose is smooth and never gets in the way, but still has a lyrical quality that goes beyond mere recollection. Frank McCourt's success is a triumph of the human spirit, and a light at the end of the tunnel for anyone dreaming far away dreams. Read the first of his three memoirs and you'll know the man deserved his hard won success.

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California has always been a land of dreams. A place on the edge of America where bigger and better things might materialize if only you could get there. But as Woody Guthrie once said, "California is a Garden of Eden...but believe it or not, you won't find it so hot if you ain't got the do...(i.e. money)"  The New York Times has an article today about California's budget crisis and the impact it's having across the state. This reminds me of Woody Guthrie's memoir "Bound For Glory", a great book that tells the story of his travels across America and witnessing what life is like for the poor and less fortunate, including wandering in California. As John Steinbeck says in the Grapes of Wrath: "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."

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Frank McCourt, a great writer and storyteller, died last night in New York(Manhattan). A few years ago I read Frank McCourt's book "'Tis: A Memoir" and was really impressed. I skipped his Pulitzer-Prize winning book "Angela's Ashes" for some reason and started reading "'Tis". I think at the time I was more interested in his life after he moved to New York. Suffice it to say that he did not have an easy time when he first arrived in Manhattan, but he eventually got a job as a school teacher, but never stopped dreamed about becoming a writer. If you ever get a chance to listen to any of his recorded interviews then don't pass up the chance. There is nothing like hearing a great Irish storyteller talking about his life. What a great life he managed to live, rising from a very impoverished beginning in Ireland to late success in New York. Definitely put him on your reading list.

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I'm a lightweight when it comes to physics, but I'm continuously amazed at Albert Einstein's theories of time, which are not just theories since they have been proven by experiments.  I just re-read Professor Alan Lightman's book "Einstein's Dreams", a collection of stories about the nature of viewing time outside of our normal conventions. It's amazing to think that time slows or speeds up in relation to speed. It's not an academic book, but manages to make you think outside the box. Since I believe in a spiritual world I wonder if concepts like heaven, ghosts, etc. are related to the relativity of time. Hmmm?

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I did a quick search on the internet to get reactions to Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem, "Praise song for the day." Apparently some people were not impressed. Some say her delivery was halting and academic. I don't know, maybe the reactions are just part of the current trend to "vote up or down" ala American Idol or Survivor. Can a poem be summed up as "good" or "bad"? What do you think? Watch a video of the poem or read the text below. (Note: I could not find an official version on Elizabeth Alexander's website. So, I'm not sure about the line breaks on the written transcript).

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

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I started reading screenplays back in 1993, when I stumbled across a book on how to write screenplays while looking for literature on novel and short story writing. At that time I didn't realize that there was even a craft of screenplay writing. I just assumed that the producer, director, actors, etc. got together and formed the movie from a set of discussed ideas. Later, I found out that the screenplay is the foundation of every movie, although the movie industry views the screenwriter as a rough guide for something they can shape to their own needs. For people who just enjoy watching movies, reading screenplays can give you a better appreciation of the movie making process, giving you insight into what actors, directors, etc. add to the screenplay. I also enjoy reading the introductions to screenplays, like Ed Burns screenplay, for example. He gives you a short background on his career and the difficulties in getting his first movie made. So, next time you go see a movie, read the screenplay first and you'll have a whole different perspective on the movie making process.

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Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms.

There's no question in my mind that Charles Dickens is the greatest writer in the Western World. Since I can only read English I can't vouch for novels in other languages, but I would wager he's number one in the world. Unfortunately, we have the tendency to view Dickens through the lens of his sentimentality, and we all occasionally get weary of the whole Tiny Tim pathos. But Dickens was one of the first writers to include stories about the lower classes, and he had the guts to take on the big social issues of his time. Pick up a Dickens novel sometime and be patient. He sometimes doesn't hit his stride until the second chapter. But stick with it and you'll be rewarded.

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If you haven't listened to Bob Dylan's Sirius XM radio show then you're missing out on a great one-hour American music history lesson. Bob Dylan changed American music when he burst on the scene in New York with his unique style of folk music, and those early days are remembered well in Dylan's book "Chronicles, Volume One". Even though most memoirs are subjective due to the perspective of time that  tends to reshape the events in the fuzzy lens of memory, but Dylan's book manages to capture very well that time in the Sixties when folk music was the magnet for musicians in New York. He writes in a style that takes you into the streets of New York, where a young kid began a music career that would span decades and be heard around the world.

America was changing. I had a feeling of destiny and I was riding the changes. New York was as good a place to be as any. My consciousness was beginning to change, too, change and stretch. One thing for sure, if I wanted to compose folk songs I would need some kind of new template, some philosophical identity that wouldn't burn out. It would have to come on its own from the outside. Without knowing it in so many words, it was beginning to happen.  --Bob Dylan

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Often you'll hear that a book is better than the movie it's based on, or sometimes the movie is better than the book. But what's often left out of the discussion is the fact that the book is soon forgotten once the movie reaches a certain level of success. How many people in the next twenty years will actually sit down and read "The Lord of The Rings" book trilogy? I thought about this while reading the great Russian novel "Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak. David Lean's excellent 1965 movie is iconic and serve the novel well, and the movie's images are usually what springs to mind when someone mentions Zhivago. But it's easy to forget the power and poetry of Pasternak's novel that works on so many levels. Pasternak even won the Nobel Prize but denounced it due to pressure from the political machine in Russia. It only takes a reading from the first two paragraphs of the novel to see the skill of a writer and poet at work:

On they went, singing 'Eternal Memory', and whenever they stopped, the sound of their feet, the horses and the gusts of wind seemed to carry on their singing.

Passers-by made way for the procession, counted the wreaths and crossed themselves. Some joined in out of curiosity and asked: 'Who is being buried?' -- 'Zhivago,' they were told. --Oh, I see. That explains it. --'It isn't him. It's his wife.' --'Well, it comes to the same thing. May she rest in peace. It's a fine funeral.'

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