the coffee philosopher

Posted on January 3, 2014January 2, 2014 by the coffee philosopher

Reflecting On My Previous Resolution

On the plus side, I read a lot more than I have in several years and that’s a good thing. I might have missed my goal, but I cranked through forty-five books last year.

Forcing myself to really sit down and focus on reading was a good thing, but it had some downsides. Not enough ‘slow reading.’ Reading Alexander Pope was real lesson for me; I was trying, essentially, to meet a deadline, but reading someone like Pope requires time and patience that I didn’t feel able to give.

This year, I want to go back and re-read his Essay on Man and take it slow. I’m sure I didn’t appreciate it properly. And maybe I can get back to reading Pound’s Cantos again. And I never did finish the last book in the Wheel of Time ‘fourteenology.’ Gotta finish that, you know, just because. It’s time.

Things like Emerson’s essays or the letters of Charles Lamb – I don’t necessarily want to sit down and read the whole collection, but just one or two particular essays and some of the letters to Coleridge. Likewise, to feel free to pick up a favorite collection of poetry and just read a few.

But don’t want to give up what I gained, which is a renewed impetus to sit down and finish a damn book.

I don’t really have a resolution this year, except that I don’t want this year to suck quite so badly as the last three or four months of 2013. Good lord, those were awful. Just awful. My car was hit by a drunk driver. Ugh. I loved that car. It should have lasted for another 100,000 miles, damn it. Ugh, again.

I do need to visit more museums this year. I used to talk down to the Mall all the time and just pop into a museum or two, especially the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn, or the Sackler/Freer Galleries.

Ok. I’m just rambling now. Need more sleep. That should be a resolution, too.

Posted on January 3, 2014December 29, 2013 by the coffee philosopher

The New(ish) ‘Judge Dredd’ Was Pretty Awesome

I kinda wish I’d seen it in the theaters. You can see where the 3D was supposed to be used and I bet it would have been awesome.

Anyway, it’s a nice bit of the old ultraviolence, for my fellow droogs.

Karl Urban, who, of course, co-stars in Almost Human, which I now watch religiously, stars as the titular Judge Dredd. The violence and action is pretty non-stop and more than a little bloody and brutal. A well done actioner, all in all. And no massive, world spanning plot to justify. In fact, it’s more of just a day in the life in a pretty nastily crime ridden dystopian future.

The comic is British and I wonder if there isn’t something particularly British about a certain kind of authoritarian dystopia with an iffy justice system that’s notably lacking in traditional due process. You think of Judge Dredd, V for Vendetta, and, of course, the granddaddy, 1984.

So anyway. It’s on Netflix streaming.

Posted on January 2, 2014December 25, 2013 by the coffee philosopher

Posted on January 1, 2014December 23, 2013 by the coffee philosopher

My New Year’s Resolution

Posted on December 31, 2013December 30, 2013 by the coffee philosopher

Posted on December 30, 2013December 30, 2013 by the coffee philosopher · 2 Comments

‘The Lies Of Locke Lamora’ By Scott Lynch (New Year’s Resolution Book Forty-Five)

Well , what do you know? I finished one more book. This only happened because of a combination of getting sick and reading in bed and also of insisting that it is not rude to read in front of everyone if no one is speaking a language I can understand.

But onto the book!

This was a book I had read about somewhere as a good piece of fantasy and which I had filed away in my head, so I snatched it up when Barnes & Noble offered it cheap for my Nook.

The novel takes place in the well and interestingly sketched city-state of Camorr. Lynch makes the decision to do his world building by dropping names (Elderglass towers) and descriptions naturally in the text, as if the reader already knew about these things. The great William Gibson, at his best, does this well. Lynch isn’t bad and he’s helped by the fact that he cribs heavily from Fritz Leiber’s immortal city of Lankhmar and the undying (literarily speaking) duo of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. This isn’t a criticism, necessarily. After all, you can’t write wry, picaresque, roguish fantasy after Leiber and not reference the great man. And because any decent reader of fantasy worth her/his salt will have read those stories, it makes a useful short hand for the reader.

The meat of the plot takes a while to get going but the getting there is fun.

I was a little vexed that the titular Lamora decided to settle the final issue with the major villain via a sword fight, despite being notably mediocre in a fight. It seemed out of character for him not to have had a better plan and also took me out of the story when he acquitted himself decently well (though he won by a trick, of course).

It’s the first in a series but it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, which I appreciate, though not for reasons that will make the author happy. You see, I loved powering through this book and enjoyed it immensely… but I’m not overwhelmed by a desire to return to his world.

Posted on December 30, 2013December 26, 2013 by the coffee philosopher

Poetry From An Old Year

The end of the year is almost here. See. That rhymed. I’m a poet. And I didn’t know it.

I’ve always hated that joke. People who tell that joke are often the same people who pretend they’re about to say ‘I feel smarter’ but then actually say ‘I smell farter.’ Yeah. I’ve met people who say that. And that ‘poet’ ‘didn’t know it’ thing and they’re both reprehensible. Don’t every say either of those things. My genitals will burn for thousand years in a pit of unquenchable hellfire just for having written them above.

On to the good stuff now.

This is a ‘best of’ list from Michael Robbins, covering poetry from 2013. Sort of. He actually just lists stuff he read in 2013 that he really, really liked. And that works for me. Especially because he’s got some interesting suggestions and insightful comments.

This list is less interesting. It’s a little too kumbaiyah (did I spell that right?) for me (paging Seth Abramson; we’ve found your slightly hippier soul mate). But what the heck? It’s got some good ideas for future reading anyway.

Slate.com keeps up their tradition of irregularly indulging in strong defenses of poetry with their best of the year list.

Surely a poetry ‘best of 2013’ list by Rae Armantrout has to be worth something, right?

The Guardian‘s critics have their anglo-centric favorites, too.

Evie Shockley has some strong feelings on the year’s best, as well.

Here are some more.

Some more, and with the obvious exception of Levertov, I haven’t heard of any of them. I feel kind of bad about that.

And I don’t know any of these!

Salon.com’s list of five underrated books from 2013 is sixty percent poetry. If you studies that humanities, that means three of the five are poetry. Well, sort of. One is by a poet and has her poetry, but also a lot of prose. Maybe we should say 50% poetry? Anne Carson, who used to love, but fell out of love with and did not read this one, but it also includes a new selection of Pierre Reverdy which I read and enjoyed very much.

So, you’ve got something like thirty-six hours to read the books from their lists. Depending on your time zone. Ready, set, go!