Category: Books
-
Fragments read
As spurious has started blogging again (he’s been busy – and he’ll get busier now for a few weeks, he’s marrying a lovely woman, a faintly more conservative philosopher than he but a charming colleen, in September), at a time when I’m getting back to it myself, I’m impelled to echo some of the author’s…
-
Bathing at Delphi
I continue to like Jarman more and more, overturning my earlier irritable disdain. I have been reading his Chroma, a sort of journal/book of quotes/poetry cycle/death diary, the last book he wrote before he died: it’s full of memories and the frightening and painful bits of dying of AIDS, but also full of the joy…
-
Door into summer
One of Heinlein’s early novels – back when they were relatively short, amusing adventures, and before his testosterone-driven narcissism and paranoia drove him to write the sprawling, ranting novels of his late demented phase – was The Door into Summer (1956 – the year I was born). The pleasant conceit of the title was that…
-
Ostern in Stuttgart (I)
[March 19-23, 2008] Winterschnee (Wednesday) Snow is forecast, although it is Easter weekend (admittedly a very early Easter, tribute to the peculiarly arcane calculations the Church goes through to establish the date – look it up some time, the formula is nothing short of bizarre); and here it is – rich, heavy snow, very wet,…
-
Making oneself crazy
… or should that be: making one’s self crazy?… In the interstices of watching these films, and scanning Joyce’s thesis so I can report on it (the airplane and hotel for her defense in Paris are already organized – which reminds me: I also need to buy a flight to Washington to attend my eldest…
-
Framing the past
Having finished watching Parting Glances, I can see – yes, it is a good movie; but I don’t think I missed so much, walking out on it twenty-odd years ago. An interesting and touching slice of a certain kind of life, and the party scene is indeed great fun; of course from my current point…
-
Boxes
I have continued, unfortunately, to be of no use to anyone; last Thursday, now six days ago, I had done many things for many people, and for myself, for about two weeks; then at that point I stopped utterly. I’m helped in this by being finally on research leave: a state both wonderful and, for…
-
Oltrano
Having noticed that James McCourt has written seven books, years after I (and possibly most others?) had assumed he would never be a prolific author; and realizing that, after an Amazon order of three of the newer ones, I now have them all; and starting to think of his career as almost backwards from the…
-
In Train
Headed home on the late morning train – pretty crowded but I can still manage a pair of seats to myself. (Hmm, that may be a fairly selfish choice; but I’m feeling tired/wonky enough (gastro again) that I think I deserve some space to myself (especially after the shared bathroom at the hotel – which…
-
Helpful books
There is a television show on, with Joan Didion (whose work I love so much) talking about her book The Year of Magical Thinking, about the year after her husband and daughter died. I was a bit surprised, however, when she said that part of why she wrote the book was because she couldn’t find…
Paul Attinello 