I am not sure that I have much more to write about this occasion, except that it remains one of my favorite events of the year. And for the second time, I was able to bring my very enthusiastic little one with him, still wearing her Thai outfit after visiting the wat Thai (Thai Buddhist temple) for their new year celebrations.
I am inclined to want to like novels and about Thailand. And it is a good novel. It is a multi-generational novel that skips back and forth in time and is a perfect example of contemporary ‘world fiction.’ Read more
This was book and Vuong were very heavily hyped (if, like me, you exist in the world of regular poetry readers and consumers of poetry news) and my first reaction was, ‘wow.’
I still loved it upon a second reaction, but you can guess that it was not as much.
Perhaps the best poems set too high of a bar and going from great to merely very good was a disappointment (and not fair to Vuong’s work, but there it is).
I no longer remember where I heard about this book, but it stuck in my mind as something I should read if I got the chance.
I spoke to a fellow aficionado with very specific tastes. Among other features of his personality, he really only considers so-called hard science fiction to be genuine science fiction; the rest is just fantasy with space ships.
By those standards, The Engines of God is not science fiction, but it is closer and I recommended it to him.
It is a science fiction (by my lights) novel, but centered around discovery and investigation and despite having one action sequence with ‘blasters’ (here called pulsers), a sequence that is gritty, unnerving, and realistic in feel, it resolutely not an action book. There are alien ruins but the aliens are long gone.
The highest praise I can give is that it makes a semi-sentient, apocalyptic space cloud seem realistic and explainable.
Thank you, Uncle Phil for giving these to our little one!
We visited Colonial Williamsburg and made a brief stop in Yorktown to visit the Yorktown Battlefield and to, ahem, check out a bookstore. I have continued to read (and feel conflicted) about Thomas Jefferson and was disappointed that the Raleigh Tavern wasn’t open, because it featured prominently in Jefferson’s life while studying in Williamsburg, including being where the Virginia House of Burgesses met after being officially dissolved by the Royal Governor.
I can’t exactly say what inspired me to read this book, except that I live with two of Asians (one of whom is an eight year old ball of cute crazy, though not particularly rich). I also saw the movie, yes, and liked it.
The book is better in some ways, less funny in other ways (I got a better feel for who Nick was in the book, but not much feel for Rachel and Peik in the book, the latter of whom was the movie’s highlight and I apologize if you have neither seen the movie nor read the book and don’t know who those people are, but I’m not about the go over the whole plot for reasons that will become apparent), and a lot more ‘plot-y.’
But I guess that’s because it’s a beach book or a romance novel (chick lit? I don’t feel like i should be using that term) and it’s not something I have ever read before. It was fun and I’m glad that I read it (I liked the more ambiguous ending better than the put a bow on it, happy ending of the breezy film, but maybe I liked the film better (because Michelle Yeoh makes every thing better).
So… um, read if it’s your thing. And don’t avoid reading it if it’s not absolutely antithetical to you thing.
This is a somewhat half hearted effort to convince the reader that Barfield and Williams are at least half as important as Lewis and Tolkien, undermined by the authors’ own apparent lack of belief in that aspect of the project and by a consensus of opinion which they seem disinclined to challenge.
Towards the end, they set up poor Barfield, by describing his intent to meet the challenge laid down by his peers’ successes and to write his magnum opus. It’s a big set up, narratively, but ends with the admission that few liked it and barely more than that even noticed it was written.
Structurally, they probably could have just focused on Lewis and Tolkien and then included a wider variety of other Inklings.
But, I learned a lot about them and it was interesting, because I like Tolkien and Lewis. I like ’em a lot.
The Zaleskis, without becoming prurient or even mentioning it again, makes a good argument that Lewis and Mrs. Moore were having a sexual affair, which convinced me. It doesn’t change my opinion of him, it’s merely nice to have some resolution, in my mind, on the matter.
Likewise, I had not realized just how devoutly Catholic Tolkien was nor how important it was to his Middle Earth novels (he went to mass daily for most of his life).
But… I can’t help but be a little disappointed. I had been hoping to learn about another Bloomsbury group or another Transcendentalist circle or another Paris in the twenties, instead, learned about a group of intelligent and interesting academics, two of whom happened to become very, very famous and were very important writers. And I put the book feeling that the authors didn’t really like the works of Lewis and Tolkien all that much, which feels almost like a personal insult to one such as I, raised on Narnia and Middle Earth (though they seemed to like two lesser read Tolkienalia, Farmer Giles of Ham and The Smith of Wooton Major, both of which I loved and read over and over again as a child).
While dipping into the first few pages of some fifteen hundred odd pages of Gore Vidal essays, I was pleased to see that the inveterate name dropper seemed to admire and appreciate Paul Bowles.
It made me feel guilty because I used to devour Bowles’ estranged works. My Bowles period lasted a good number of years (I even stood outside his house in North Africa, but lacked the courage to knock, despite his well known generosity to random admirers), but it’s been some time since I’ve read him.
We’ll add him to the list.
the coffee philosopher 