I have started Rereading Books

Much to my surprise in my old age I have started rereading books, something that I vowed never to do with the exception of The Bible.

The book that started it all was Still Life by Sarah Winman. This book is a 5 star standout for me. Based across 50 years it follows the lives of 2 disparate but connected people through their shared love of Florence and art. The book commences in the last days of the second world war in Florence when Temps, a British soldier in his twenties meets Evelyn, a noted British art historian sent to recover and restore art works to their rightful owners. Temps has been the driver for an upper-class English officer, Captain Darnley, a very cultured man, who has introduced his driver to works of art as they have followed the English Allies up Italy as far as Florence.

Temps is a bar man from the Est End of London and Evelyn is an educated academic in her 60's.

There is a very satisfying cast of characters in support. A must read for those who love travel, art, history, wine, Florence and cross cultural experiences.

So far I have read the book 4 time and I'm on my 5th run through now. I have also listened to the audiobook twice. I am captivated and in love with this book. Each read has brought out new things.

You might like to try it for yourself.

DK

DK

Funding my Literary Pursuits

Still Life - A beautiful Book

I have just finished reading Still Life by Sarah Winman. This has become the second best book I have ever read, the best being Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

We read Still Life as part of the Massey University Book Club and I had no great expectations for the read.

Then POW! it hit me from the very first page. I was enthralled, something which doesn't happen a lot in your late sixties.

The book is set in Florence and the East End of London and has an eclectic group of characters, most of them delightful, only one real rotter in the bunch.

The story starts in the last days of World War II. Ulysses Temper, the main character is the driver for an English officer Captain Darnley. As they have driven up Italy from South to North, Darnley, a well educated man, has been introducing Ulysses to Italian culture and art with Ulysses being a keen learner.

The Germans had been pilfering art works so many of the art treasures of Florence had been hidden out of harms way and were now being rescued and sent back to the owning galleries. Evelyn Skinner, an art historian, meets Ulysses by chance and asks him how she can contact the Army folk responsible for recovering the works of art. She is an older women in her early sixties. Ulysses is 23 at the time. An unlikely friendship arises and this is one of the main threads of the story which actually covers Evelyn's life from the early 1900's when she first visited Florence.

Just before Ulysses returns to England he rescues a suicidal Italian man who is about to jump from above a local restaurant. After the rescue they spend several hours together though Ulysses speaks very little Italian and the Italian man does not speak English. Their conversation is accompanied by wine and food.

Ulysses returns to the East End of London where he works at a public house. His estranged wife, Peg,  has had a child fathered by an American soldier while Ulysses was overseas. This daughter, Alys, becomes another major character in the book. Peg asks for a divorce which Ulysses agrees to but he takes responsibility for Alys along with Peg.

The man who Ulysses saved from suicide dies several years after the war ends and leaves Ulysses his pensione, and Ulysses and Alys move to Florence. The pensione has two stories so they start taking in guests and over time many of Ulysses friends visit. An old friend, Cress, also accompanies Ulysses and Alys.

Over the years a number of friendships develop and provide a captivating panorama of life in Florence including the floods in the 1960's which damaged many of the art works and books that had escaped the war.

I was mesmerised by the book and also listened to the audio book which is narrated by Winman herself.

This is a book that will stay with me for life and I have already started my reread!

If you are interested in art, history, Italy, relationships both heteronormative and LGBTQIA+ then this may be the book for you.

Going to Florence is now on my bucket list.

DK

Funding my Literary Pursuits

Virginia Woolf On Reading the Original

I found this interesting quote in Common Reader I,

“The temptation to read Pope on Addison, Macaulay on Addison, Thackeray on Addison, Johnson on Addison rather than Addison himself is to be resisted, for you will find, if you study the Tatler and the Spectator, glance at Cato, and run through the remainder of the six moderate-sized volumes, that Addison is neither Pope’s Addison nor anybody else’s Addison, but a separate, independent individual still capable of casting a clear-cut shape of himself upon the consciousness, turbulent and distracted as it is, of nineteen hundred and nineteen”.

I agree with her. It is always best to read the primary source to get a clear view of what exactly the writer is saying.

DK

Boy Eats Universe

Boy Eats Universe is a unique book. Telling the life story of a young boy, Eli,  in a dysfunctional South Brisbane  suburb it grips your attention from the first page.

Mum is in prison, Dad is gone, stepfather is a drug runner and brother doesn’t talk.

Despite the frequent drug references this book is a gritty and ultimately positive story of life outside of the norm.

This is a first novel by author, Trent Dalton, and it is loosely based on his own life.

Opening your Mind to New Perspectives

Every now and again a book comes across your path which changes your worldview forever. Someone recommended the following book to me called, Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola. This book has revolutionised my thinking on the plant world. Human and animal life makes up less than 0.3% of the biomass on earth so as the authors say we are no more than a trace element on earth. 

While humans have 5 main senses plants have those 5 and 15 more.

This is a must read book if you want an insight into the world of plants and the way they have evolved to fit in with the environment.

Reading the First and Ultimate Pleasure

We persevere, because reading still brings information, stimulation, and solace. It is the first and the ultimate pleasure. Willard Spiegelman.

What can I say, but Yes.

I have spent close on 60 years as a reader and I will read until I die. Reading is truly the first and ultimate pleasure of my life.

Virginia Woolf on Letter Writing

The art of letter-writing is often the art of essay-writing in disguise.

Woolf while talking about women in literature made the germane quote above about women writers. Until the 1800's it was considered unseemly for women to be writers, but letter writing was considered to be acceptable. We begin to get a glimpse of the lives of women through women's eyes emerging in their letters. While many of the letters may have been somewhat bland, they did give some insight into the lives and concerns of women in the 1700's.

In fact some of these letters were lengthy and polemic and would nowadays be considered as essays..
Woolf's own letters also reveal much of life in late Victorian and early Georgian times.

DK

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Samuel Johnson on the Common Reader

“… I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be generally decided all claim to poetical honours.”—Dr. Johnson , Life of Gray .

Long live the common reader. This is the quote from which Virginia Woolf took the title of her books, The Common Reader1 and The Common Reader2.

I am reading these books again and I'm refreshed with Woolf's style. No academic jargon or philosophical high flying. Just readable essays that we "commoners" can appreciate.

Ciao

DK

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African Writers Bypass World Literature Centres

The flow of global capital is not to be ignored, but equally interesting are the grass-roots networks linking African writers to other regional writers—in South Asia, say, or Latin America—without necessarily going through metropolitan centers such as London, Paris, or New York. This is not the centralized and hierarchical “world republic of letters” that Pascale Casanova equates with world literature. It is a very different paradigm. And those who are spearheading this kind of research are not tenured professors but unemployed graduate students, the hundreds of people who applied for the job we advertised. - Wai Chee Dimock

This quote is from a Chronicle of Higher Education article titled A Literary Scramble for Africa.

This is great news. A grass root movement that is not driven by the West. African, Caribbean, South American and Asian countries have their own vibrant literary networks that are effective for them. In the wired world London, Paris and New York have less sway - and that is an excellent thing. The West has a tendency to see other non Western cultures as back waters populated by non persons(to paraphrase Chomsky). But the "non Persons" don't care any longer what the West thinks and this is excellent for literature.

Bring on the Revolution.

DK

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The Core Curiculum - CrossFit for the Brain

It's a hoary old argument in academia about the value of a core curriculum that all students must take. This causes some friction between teachers and students.

I loved the analogy below which was part of an article called Cross-Training for the Brain by Rob Jenkins.

The core curriculum is really a lot more like cross-training than like weight-lifting. Yes, to be mentally fit, we have to push against resistance. But we also must encounter different types of resistance and respond to them with different parts of our brain. That’s why math majors need to study literature and English majors have to sit through math classes and all of them need to take history and science and fine arts and so on.

What we have traditionally referred to as the “core curriculum” in reality is nothing less than cross-training for the brain.

In my academic training I have studied medical science, business and the humanities at postgraduate level. I can say from experience that the 3 different approaches taken in science, business and humanities cause different resistance in differing parts of the brain. This has been beneficial for my intellectual flexibility and problem solving.

DK

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Virginia Woolf on Fiction

“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

I love this quote by Virginia Woolf. Fiction is indeed like a spiders web and the anchoring to reality has degrees of attachment. Woolf has a range of attachment in her fictional works. The most loosely connected would have to be Orlando where the main character changes sex in the course of the story. It is in fact impossible to write fiction that is totally unattached to life, as we would have no way of appreciating it. The analogy to me is like a sail that has a great degree of movement but always has strong attachment points to stop it blowing away.

DK

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Essays after Eighty - Donald Hall

I purchased this engrossing set of essays yesterday and I can't stop reading.

Hall is now in his eighties and is no longer writing poetry. His prose is strong and untainted. In an age which idolises youth it is refreshing to read a book written by one who is well experienced in life.

I suspect as the Boomers rage into their "senior" years we will see more of this kind of writing getting published.

I would highly recommend this book to readers young, old, shy or bold.

DK

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Who Invented Reading?

“Whoever invented reading is a very cool person.”
― Contreras Robert L.

Hear, hear. However the inventor of writing is even more cool. Without writing there can be no reading. Great writers are always great readers and in this sense all writings are derivative of past writings. All writers and readers are extra cool people.
DK

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LIving a Thousand Lives

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

Shared experience across time and space is the essence of reading. In my 59 years I have lived many hundreds of lives vicariously through the books I have read. I have been a man, a woman, rich, poor, old, young, educated, uneducated, wise and foolish.

I have lived in Ancient Greek and Roman times, during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance (both Arabic and European), the 17th-18th-19th-20th-21st centuries and I have travelled the length and breadth of the universe.

This has all been accomplished without getting off the sofa!!

Long live reading!

May you all live a thousand lives.

DK

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Unschooling: Birds don’t go to flight school

“Birds don’t go to flight school.” ~ Linda Dobson

I love Linda's quote. Schooling is not necessary for learning about life and life activities. Children learn to speak before they go to school. Birds learn to fly by doing not by teaching.

Unfortunately we often limit our children from learning naturally by inclination by forcing them into schooling.

It is amazing how the negative effects of schooling stay with you for life. I can still remember vividly the dull, boring, meaningless days of my so called "education".

I should have been pushed out of the nest to fly!!

DK

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James Altucher on Literature, Reading and Writing

"English literature is best learned by reading the books you are passionate about. Writing is best learned by having real experiences, writing every day, and reading the great writers who inspire you" James Altucher.

James Altucher is an inspirational writer and the quotation above is taken from his book, I Was Blind but Now I See. James is an advocate of self education as an alternative to an expensive university education for young people. This makes him a controversial figure but I agree with him that reading and writing with passion help to educate us in life's big lessons. Reading and writing is free and both activities help to form our minds.

C.S. Lewis on Books and Tea

C.S. Lewis is a man after my own heart. I loved the quote below that I recently came across:

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

I fully agree with his sentiments. It is lovely to sit back with a large cup of tea and a lengthy book and just lose yourself in your reading. Currently I am reading The Forest by Ernest Rutherfurd which surely meets the requirement. A great book and it has lasted me through many cuppas so far.

Fond Regards to the memory of C.S. Lewis.

DK

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Glimpsing into the innermost thoughts of Writers

The letters from writers are especially interesting, as they give us a glimpse into their innermost thoughts and feelings in a way their professional work might not. - Jason Diamond

Diamond brings up an important point here. As readers of this blog know I am a great fan of the writings of Virginia Woolf. Her writings, were for the time new, exciting and wide reaching in their subject matter. Her letters shed light on why she wrote as she did and exposes how she was feeling, and what was happening in her life, while the book in question was being written. This insight, which we don't normally see for most books we read, gives us more than a glimpse into the way that Virginia Woolf's mind worked.

For this reason I love to read collections of literary letters. I am currently plowing my way through Volume 1 of the Letters of Robert Frost.

Happy Reading

DK

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Academic Novels

Seeing it is the academic break in the US, I bought a number of academic novels to read and the first two were fantastic. One was through the eyes of a first year student in the UK and the other is about a professor with Aspergers syndrome in Australia.

The titles are as follows:

Starter for 10 by David Nicholls and

The Rosie Effect by Graham Simsion.

Both books are available from Amazon in hard copy and Kindle formats. Just search from the box below:

DK

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Buzbee on Book LUST

For the last several days I've had the sudden and general urge to buy a new book. I've stopped off at a few bookstores around the city, and while I've looked at hundreds and hundreds of books in that time, I have not found the one book that will satisfy my urge. It's not as if I don't have anything to read; there's a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I've been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that's afflicted me most of my life. I know enough about the course of the disease to know I'll discover something soon.”
― Lewis Buzbee, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History

I have to say that I have suffered from book lust from the time I first discovered libraries at the age of seven, and second hand bookshops when I was eleven. Over time I have added book sales, garage sales, charity book fairs, digital archives and of course Amazon for my Kindle requirements.

While it is a lust, I believe it is a harmless and very enjoyable one. And of course it is not all about lust, love comes into the equation as well.

Many of my happiest times have been with a book in my hand. I clearly remember going into a bookshop in Alnwick on a snowy winters day and drinking coffee and reading my purchases in front of a blazing open fire - Bliss.

Book Lust
DK

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