The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer
Selected Poems, James Wright
Notes From a Big Country, Bill Bryson
Futures & Options for Dummies, Joe Duarte, MD
The quote on the back cover of the Penguin Classics edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn sets a high bar:
Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven weaves two narrative threads into a compelling social history of fundamentalist Mormonism in the American West. While the more recent true crime story of the murderous Lafferty brothers is both chilling and a good read, the real gems in Krakauer's accounts are the stories of Joseph Smith's founding of Mormonism, and the struggles of the infant religion as it moved West from upstate New York to Illinois and Missouri, until it finally settled in Utah. Bizarre and bloody, the westward migration of the fledgling religion is one of the secret histories of the American 19th century that somehow fail to find prominence in the school books of our youth. Even more strange than the documented histories of a variety of eccentrics that fought for Mormonism's survival are the prophecies and founding myths of the religion, which border on the preposterous, but have managed to survive and maintain almost in whole, even as they were being delivered against the backdrop of a history and government fully capable of documenting the strange facts of the religion's genesis.
They sell this book in airports, where I bought it. I bought it because JWW spoke highly of it. It is worth a read. You should buy it in an airport, too.
I had bought James Wright's selected poems in Providence, RI, a few months ago, before I caught up with my poet friend MP. As MP was recommending poets to me, he basically dis-recommended James Wright. I think he damned him as a poet who has found recent celebration, but who has discarded the formal elements of poetry for a sad-sack approach to narrating the vagaries and miseries of life through the lyrics of the mundane. I can't say that is enough damnation for me.
The introduction to Selected Poems by Robert Bly is generally illuminating, providing a bit of context for Wright's life, as well as his poetry. The poems themselves tend to be fairly lyrical, but at the same time, very accessible. They are not bad, but the are not that good, either. They are untaxing reads, and there are some see-through "deep truths" transparent among Wright's observations. But it is all still very maudlin. For my money, I'd still take Jack Gilbert any day. Wright is worth reading, but not worth running out this minute to read...
Bill Bryson's Notes From A Big Country was purchased at Heathrow airport, because, apparently, the Brits don't actually like to read (by all accounts, it is a culture fully in collapse, what with the drinking, and the chavs, and the easy women), and I couldn't find anything more challenging than Alexander McCall Smith in the airport Border's. I guess I should have just spent my money on whiskey. All that aside, I don't have much to say about Bill Bryson. His essays (or I guess more rightly, his columns) or short, formulaic, and sort of charming. If you're an old person. I suspect I had some interest in reading him as a counterpoint to my occasional travel writing - as context for observations from a stranger in a strange land. Well, I guess when I'm old, I won't mind writing like Bryson. In the meantime, god, I hope I've got a little more bite to me.
I'm working on a project for a big financial firm this summer. As such, I had to get smart on futures and options trading. So I bought Futures & Options for Dummies. I actually bought two copies, one for me and one for my colleagues. I hoped to get a dirtier look from the checkout girl at Barnes & Noble. Something that said, "You must be dumb, buying two books. Can't make you any smarter than one." I got no such look. I have nothing to say about the book. It's fine, if I had twenty five thousand dollars to spare, this book might convince me to lose it. If I cared, I might pick up the secret language of traders, of puts and calls and butterfly spreads. In the meantime, I'm more likely to rent Boiler Room.
So what was June about? America, I guess.
Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer
Selected Poems, James Wright
Notes From a Big Country, Bill Bryson
Futures & Options for Dummies, Joe Duarte, MD
The quote on the back cover of the Penguin Classics edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn sets a high bar:
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." - Ernest HemingwayHaughty praise, and I'm not sure that I know enough to agree or disagree. That aside, Huck Finn proves to be a marvelously enjoyable read. I'm sure that Mark Twain has been ruined for me, in some respects, by the various characterizations of him, grey-haired and twinkle-eyed, that have crept up in all manner of popular movies and TV (truthfully, I'm thinking of a particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation). By ruined, I mean that throughout Huck Finn, I can only hear that mischievous Southern drawl as Huck fibs his way through one tight squeeze or another, or as Huck abides through a certain confoundment as Tom Sawyer schemes the most impossible ways of rescuing Jim, or as the thieving duo of thespians, the King and the Duke, drunkenly rip off the townspeople of various small towns on the Mississippi deltas. Written as an adventure book for boys, but evolving into something grander, Huck Finn maintains both the lively spirit and humor of a paperback adventure while allowing more deeply resonating themes of the human spirit and America's mid-19th century history to color the margins of the adventure.
Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven weaves two narrative threads into a compelling social history of fundamentalist Mormonism in the American West. While the more recent true crime story of the murderous Lafferty brothers is both chilling and a good read, the real gems in Krakauer's accounts are the stories of Joseph Smith's founding of Mormonism, and the struggles of the infant religion as it moved West from upstate New York to Illinois and Missouri, until it finally settled in Utah. Bizarre and bloody, the westward migration of the fledgling religion is one of the secret histories of the American 19th century that somehow fail to find prominence in the school books of our youth. Even more strange than the documented histories of a variety of eccentrics that fought for Mormonism's survival are the prophecies and founding myths of the religion, which border on the preposterous, but have managed to survive and maintain almost in whole, even as they were being delivered against the backdrop of a history and government fully capable of documenting the strange facts of the religion's genesis.
They sell this book in airports, where I bought it. I bought it because JWW spoke highly of it. It is worth a read. You should buy it in an airport, too.
I had bought James Wright's selected poems in Providence, RI, a few months ago, before I caught up with my poet friend MP. As MP was recommending poets to me, he basically dis-recommended James Wright. I think he damned him as a poet who has found recent celebration, but who has discarded the formal elements of poetry for a sad-sack approach to narrating the vagaries and miseries of life through the lyrics of the mundane. I can't say that is enough damnation for me.
The introduction to Selected Poems by Robert Bly is generally illuminating, providing a bit of context for Wright's life, as well as his poetry. The poems themselves tend to be fairly lyrical, but at the same time, very accessible. They are not bad, but the are not that good, either. They are untaxing reads, and there are some see-through "deep truths" transparent among Wright's observations. But it is all still very maudlin. For my money, I'd still take Jack Gilbert any day. Wright is worth reading, but not worth running out this minute to read...
Bill Bryson's Notes From A Big Country was purchased at Heathrow airport, because, apparently, the Brits don't actually like to read (by all accounts, it is a culture fully in collapse, what with the drinking, and the chavs, and the easy women), and I couldn't find anything more challenging than Alexander McCall Smith in the airport Border's. I guess I should have just spent my money on whiskey. All that aside, I don't have much to say about Bill Bryson. His essays (or I guess more rightly, his columns) or short, formulaic, and sort of charming. If you're an old person. I suspect I had some interest in reading him as a counterpoint to my occasional travel writing - as context for observations from a stranger in a strange land. Well, I guess when I'm old, I won't mind writing like Bryson. In the meantime, god, I hope I've got a little more bite to me.
I'm working on a project for a big financial firm this summer. As such, I had to get smart on futures and options trading. So I bought Futures & Options for Dummies. I actually bought two copies, one for me and one for my colleagues. I hoped to get a dirtier look from the checkout girl at Barnes & Noble. Something that said, "You must be dumb, buying two books. Can't make you any smarter than one." I got no such look. I have nothing to say about the book. It's fine, if I had twenty five thousand dollars to spare, this book might convince me to lose it. If I cared, I might pick up the secret language of traders, of puts and calls and butterfly spreads. In the meantime, I'm more likely to rent Boiler Room.
So what was June about? America, I guess.
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