• Tag Archives books

  • At It

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                             Bloodroot Moon

    Still reading through Missing, making notes, trying to integrate beta reader observations and questions.  It’s slower right now because I’m also trying to integrate lessons about description and pacing from Robert Jordan’s amazing The Eye of the World.

    The general plan for revision III has begun to take shape.  Some shifting of certain narrative threads to book II or to a book of their own, expanding the ending, putting the climax in earlier, making descriptions beefier, more lush and adding narrative in sections where what I wrote was, as Judy observed, outline like.

    How long will it take?  I have no idea.  As soon as I can finish it, but just how long that is, I don’t know.  Why?  Partly the removal of certain narrative lines will create disruption as well as clarification.  Partly because the climax I have doesn’t satisfy me and I’m not clear what it should be.  Partly because adding descriptive material is a whole manuscript task and a personal style changer, too, since I tend to be spare.  There will be a learning curve.

    Closing in on the last few verses of the Jason and Medea early story.  When I’m done with it, before Friday, and have checked and revised my work, also before Friday, I’m ready to go to Book I and begin the work I first decided I wanted to do back in 2008 or 2009.  That’s exciting.

    It’s exciting for more than the obvious reason; that is, that I can now do it.  It’s exciting in addition because it will feed a new work, one I will not start until all three of the Tailte novels are finished; but, a work I hope will utilize all I’m learning about writing and about mythology and Latin and Ovid and Rome.  Working title:  Changes.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities Latin Letters Literature Translating Metamorphoses Writing 📎and tagged

  • A Big Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                                              Valentine Moon

    Barring setbacks and further challenges today should be the day when each book has, at least for this moment in time, either a place on a bookshelf, a bin for storage or a box in which it will leave the house for good.  This will be a big day for a number of reasons.

    1.  The daily drain of things out of place will change into the brisk, ordered feeling of a working library.

    2.  Skimmed off and discarded will be the material no longer germane to my current work.

    3.  This task will get ticked off the list of things to do.

    4.  It will mark my return to serious labor.  Also fun, enriching and potentially gainful.


    📂This entry was posted in Our Land and Home 📎and tagged

  • Influence Peddlers

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                                Waning Autumn Moon

    What literature has influenced you the most?

    The Bible, various authors

    The Stranger, Albert Camus

    Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard

    Novels of Herman Hesse

    The Trial, Franz Kafka

    The Trilogy of Desire and Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser

    Metamorphoses, Ovid

    (temple of literature, Hanoi)

    Novels of Isaac Bashevis Singer

    Novels of Willa Cather

    Divine Comedy, Dante

    Dramas of Eugene O’Neill

    Poetry of Robert Frost

    Poetry of Rainer Marie Rilke

    Poetry of Wallace Stevens

    Chinese classical poetry

    Romance of the Three Kingdoms

    War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

    The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

    Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

    The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley

    A Glastonbury Romance, Copper Powys

    Short stories of Jorge Borges

    100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Marcia Marquez

    Divine Comedy, John Milton

    Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

    Beowulf

    These are the ones I’ll admit to right now.


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities Letters Literature 📎and tagged

  • Reading Matters

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                                             Waning Autumn Moon

    Found these questions on one of my frequent reads, The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Thought they’d be interesting to answer.

    Q: What’s the first thing you read in the morning?

    The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

    Q: What newspapers and magazines do you subscribe to or read regularly?

    Wired, Scientific American, Scientific American Mind, The Economist, Funny Times, The Sporting News  (dropped this year long term subscriptions to Orion, Parabola)

    What do you read in print vs. online vs. mobile?

    All of the above I read in print with modest exceptions.  Online I read Dissent, Arts and Letters Daily, New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post and, as the election season heats up I read several political blogs (see below).   Big Think, TED and Connections give me a quick injection of creative, new ideas when I need them.

    Q: What books have you recently read? Do they stand out?

    Game of Thrones (4 volumes).  This is one of the best written fantasy novels I’ve ever read.  No competition for Tolkien, but very good.  Monkeys Journey to the West.  Another Chinese classic, a picaresque novel about Monkey as he guards a monk journeying to India to retrieve copies of Buddhist sutras.  The Sibling Effect.  Understudied in the past, this book recounts recent work on siblings.  All Things Shining.  How to find resources for living in the Western classical tradition.  Stumbled on their appreciation of the sacred and the holy.  Reading the Classics.  A very good book by Italo Calvino.  In the tradition of the Renaissance humanists.  Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  As any frequent reader of this blog knows, I’m reading this one line by line in Latin and translating as I go.  And learning Latin as I go.

    I listened to Wolf.  A Booker Prize winner novel about Thomas Cromwell.  I also listened to a lecture series on existentialism.  Wonderful.

    Q: Do you read blogs? If so, what blogs do you like best?

    The Perseus Project

    Not a blog, but if you love the classics, especially Greek and Latin classics, this website is a goldmine of resources.

    What Should I Be Doing With My Bees This Month?

    A Stillwater bee-keeper with common sense advice of northern bee keeping

     

    All of these website offer analysis and strategic thinking about national and state level political matters.

    Beyond the Polls,

    Cook Report

    Real Clear Politics

    Politics: Analysis, Polls

     

    Julia Bennet

    Blog of a philosophical Australian model.  No kidding.

    The Bottom of Heaven

    An African-American woman writes this young black experience blog.

    The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension

    This one exists in its own dimension.

     

    Q: Do you use Twitter? If so, whom do you follow?

    Twitter proved too much of a pain for me.  Dropped it long ago.  Facebook.  I’m sorta there.  Check in once in a while.  Post less frequently than that.  Use none of the digital sharing technologies.


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities Literature 📎and tagged

  • A Carnegie Library

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                                   Waxing Autumn Moon

    Reading.  Alexandria, Indiana had a Carnegie library, one of those brick and limestone buildings sprinkled throughout American small towns, so ubiquitous we give them little thought.  Like the water tower they’ve always been there.

    Ours had a long flight of steps that went up to the solemn, curved stacks of the adult library, a place visited by kids only when they needed something up there, a rare occurrence.  The library also had a concrete ramp with a slight curve that led down, below ground where the children’s books were.

    In the spring and early summer the concrete had a musty scent, cement and soil, a comforting, familiar smell that greeted me often as I made regular trips down the ramp.  The library had summer reading programs complete with prizes and stickers and I loved them.  Prizes for reading!  A thing of wonder to this boy bookworm.

    The hours I spent down there, reading or finding books, fed a now lifelong habit and a love of books, not rare editions or signed first editions, but of books themselves, purveyors of wonder and mystery.

    My favorite book was the Silver Llama, a story of a young boy and his llama, somewhere in the Andes.  I remember its silver cover, the rounded spine that always felt smooth against my thumb.  Even after I quit reading it, I would visit it from time to time, just to fell the spine and see the dull shine of its silver.

    Libraries are still among my favorite places on earth, temples to generosity, human creativity and self education.


    📂This entry was posted in Memories 📎and tagged

  • The Weekend

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                                 Full Harvest Moon

    Kate’s out in Denver visiting the grandkids while Mark and I hold a visa watch, waiting for some word from the mysterious world of Saudi bureaucracy.

    Yesterday I took a trip to Duluth to deliver 3 pounds of honey in payment for use of the image on this year’s Artemis Honey labels.  Kenspeckle Press provided the image through a friend of Mark Odegard, Rick Allen.

    Mark turned this image into a beautiful 2011 label for Artemis Hives.  Thanks, Mark and Rick.

    Today I moved books off a bookshelf, moved the bookshelf and repositioned a weight rack.  Later I broke ground for garlic planting and split the bulbs into cloves for planting tomorrow.

    I also watched the Vikings.  How about those Vikings?  May be a short season for me.  I’m a fair weather fan.

    Latin, groceries, planting garlic.  All await tomorrow.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Family Travel 📎and tagged

  • Check My Logic, Please

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Mid-Summer                                                  Waxing Honey Flow Moon

    “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” – Cicero

    Not sure where this is headed with gadgets like the Kindle, but Cicero and I have something in common.  In fact, this room in which I write has a lot of soul.  Piles of it.  Shelves of it.  Open and closed soul.  Big and little soul.  Profound and silly soul.

    Check me on my logic here.  Banks and hedge funds almost sink our economy, the largest in the world.  Through dogged work of two administrations, one Republican and one Democrat, the looming depression did not come to pass, but in the process the government had to shovel billions and billions of dollars (and as Everett Dirksen famously said, “A million here, a million there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.) into the sink holes that so-called premier banks had become.  The banks took the money, then promptly began foreclosing on all the loans they themselves had sold, blaming the purchasers for making unwise investments.  Scroll forward a bit more than a year and the Republicans in Congress, with a straight face, demand a deal because of the sky-rocketing national debt.  Created by those very same bankers who bankroll the Republican party and, oh by the way, sunk the economy.

    How would we deal with the national debt created by the government bail outs?  Cut programs that help the poor and the elderly.  This whole scenario beggars the imagination.  It is the most corrupt, venal, embarrassing, immoral action possible.  Bail out the rich, then use the bail out created debt as an excuse for trimming Medicare, cutting back on social welfare programs?  The ninth pit of hell.  Dante’s inferno.  Look it up.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Humanities Politics US History 📎and tagged

  • Books

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                              New Garlic Moon

    When I get interested in something, I buy books.  Not just one book, but many books.  Book buying has always been an important of my life and continues to be.

    Latin is a for instance.  When I first got interested, I bought Wheelock, an iconic text for autodidacts wanting to tackle the language.  At another point I bought a dictionary and a book, library2011-05-06_0874501 Latin verbs fully conjugated.  Once I begin to learn Latin and could see more learning ahead, I purchased the OLD, the Oxford Latin Dictionary, which is the gold standard of Latin-English works.  Thanks to Amazon I got one for a very good price.

    At the same time I began to focus on Ovid.  I needed a Latin text without English, but with a commentary.  I found William Anderson’s.  It’s not bad, but it’s not as helpful to a real tyro like me as it could be.  I just bought a translation with commentary by D.E. Hill.  Again, the commentary leaves a lot to be desired from my amateur perspective.  I also bought a wholly Latin text by Richard Tarrant, a contemporary Ovidian scholar who has done careful research into the oldest texts available, all from the middle ages, 1100-1200.  I bought this last one because while learning Biblical interpretation I got stamped with the important of textual criticism.  Words matter and having the best text matters.

    At this point, if I can’t find something on Perseus, the go to place for classics scholars, I have, so far, always found it in one of my books. I also have several books on Ovid and Roman poetry.  Each has helped me at some point.

    I have similar collections of books for other areas:  Lake Superior, Biblical interpretation, theology, liberal thought, liberal religion, the enlightenment, the Renaissance, depth psychology, travel, China, Japan, Angkor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, neuroscience, Hawai’i, Minnesota and various other states, the Celts, Meso and Latin America, art, a nature/space/geography/history collection, poetry, philosophy, fairy tales, mythology, literature and graphic novels.  I rarely use certain collections until I find I need them, then I go deep.  That’s why I need to have them.  When I decide to get active on a topic, I don’t have time to go scouring for resources.  I like to have them at hand.


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities Letters 📎and tagged

  • A Visit From the Goon Squad

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                                               Waning Moon of the Winter Solstice

    More time with Ovid.  It went slower today, but I’m down to verse 60, at least with my rough draft translation.  Tomorrow Greg and I will go over it, give me a lesson in Latin vocabulary and grammar, polish my work.  We’ll also further refine my knowledge of ablative absolutes and the passive periphrastic.  Which needs, I must say, refining.

    Kate’s down to 8 days, 7 days after tonight.  She’s almost giddy.  We’re still putting the finishing touches on her party.  It will be a lot of fun.

    Started the HBO series, The Pacific, tonight.  I know something about the European theatre of WWII, but almost nothing about the Pacific.  This should be a good start, give me a way to guide some future reading.

    I’m reading a holiday gift, A Visit From The Goon Squad.  The goon squad is time.  Jennifer Egan has taken material not very interesting to me, the music business, lives of socal punk era kids and made them into a combination medieval morality play and cinema verite.  A good read.  I recommend it.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Cinema and Television Family Holidays Literature Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Wading in Your Media Stream

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    61  bar steep rise 29.96 2mph NNW dew-point 45   Summer night, nice

                                  New Moon (Thunder Moon)

    I’d forgotten the all consuming nature of writing a novel.  It goes to bed with you, advances into your dreams and wakes up with in the morning.  Plot ideas, twists, character developments, inconsistencies, new characters.  All aswirl.  The novel bumps up against daily life, takes something from it, gives something back, a loop, a mobius strip.  Feedback.  A neuro-net firing and firing and firing.  It’s fun, a wild ride while its cookin’. 

    There are plateaus.  Superior Wolf landed on a plateau about 6 years ago, struggled to get off it a couple of times, then settled back down to rest.  Jennie’s Dead has been on a bit more of an up and down ride. She’s in storage now, but I can sense her wanting to break out now that her brother has begun to get legs, take strides.

    Somehow, as happens in my life, momentum has increased.  Both the velocity and the mass have kicked up at the same time, calling back into action skills set aside long ago.  The Sierra Club work will require a good deal of time.  The novel needs constant nourishment.  So does the garden.  These three alone would be a good deal, but I also have a sermon to write for September that will take at least a week of research, if not more.  I’ve also agreed to take on managing the Docent Book Club and my term for that starts this month.  Then there’s that pesky Africa check out tour.

    Right now this all feels good.  Blood flowing, mind working.  And I’m sure it will feel that way for a good while, probably on into December, then I’ll feel a need for a let down again.  Right now, though, I’m jazzed.

    My Woolly meeting is in August this  year.   I sent out the following e-mail so guys could prep for it.

    Hi! Your Media Stream:  This is the water from which you take much of your intellectual nourishment.  What is it?  The radio stations to which you listen, TV programs you watch, movies you see, books you read, magazines and newspapers you take or consult.  I-Pod fare, music at home.  Any media, in short, that you use for either entertainment or education. How will we organize the meeting?  Like this—please bring a book you are reading right now.  Please bring a book you consider important and formative for you, perhaps one read long ago.  Bring a copy of your favorite magazine.  Be prepared to let us know your favorite radio program, TV program (if any), movie (again:  current and from the past) and newspapers.  We’ll set music aside for this evening, but it might be fun to pick up again at some point as both Scott and Frank have led us to do at retreats. The physical objects themselves are important, so please bring whatever you can.  2 books and 1 magazine at least.  If you can jot down your favorite radio program, TV program and movies (past and present) and newspapers, I will collect your lists and send them to Bill to publish on our website. What’s the point?  To dip into each other’s media stream for a bit, to hear why we like the books, movies, programs, newspapers and magazines that we choose.  I imagine five-ten minutes each of sharing, then a round of conversation about what we’ve heard.  This is for fun and to expand our grasp of who we are.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Literature Woolly Mammoths Writing 📎and tagged