I maintain a little list of blogs on the sidebar of this site, and I probably need to check on them more often. I looked at Anthony Bourdain's blog on the Travel Channel site, for example, and found that the last post was in November 2012. It appears that No Reservations has been cancelled, and Mr. Bourdain will no longer be blogging on that subject.
There was another blog called Apocaloopsis, and I found that the last post on the site was in May of 2012, with the last previous one in November 2011. Doesn't seem very active, does it?
Finally, I went out to Cafe Third Edition, another home for old Great Books Cafe habitues, and found that no one had posted there in almost three years. And the last post was mine!
So, in the interest of diminishing clutter, I've removed those three blogs from the list.
Suggestions for new blog to which I might link are always welcome.
Glenn A Knight
In my study
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Reading List: December 2012
During the month of December 2012 I finished two books that I had previously
started, continued reading in one books that was underway, started and
finished two books, and started five books that I did not complete by the end of the month.
H. V. Morton, A Traveller in Italy (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002). H. V. Morton was a fine travel writer, and his book on Italy, originally published in 1964, is very good on the northern part of the country. (He has another book which deals with Rome.) I started this book on the fourth of November and finished it on December twenty-third.
Antonella Ansani, Complete Italian: The Basics Edited by Suzanne McQuade. (New York: Living Language, 2008). If I keep at it long enough, I'll actually learn some Italian. Magari! I started this book on November thirtieth, and I'm still working on it.
Christopher Duggan, The Force of Destiny: A history of Italy since 1796. (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Compnay, 2008). The title, taken from a Verdi opera, indicates Duggan's thesis that the risorgimento, the unification of Italy, was really a conquest of the regions of Italy by Piedmont, under the leadership of Camille Cavour. Most of Italy was never enthusiastic about being taken over by the Piedmontese, and resentment still rankles. Together with Gilmour's book, The Force of Destiny paints a rather pessimistic picture of the prospects for a united and prosperous Italy. I started The Force of Destiny on September fifteenth and completed it on December ninth.
Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2012.) The first book of Hilary Mantel's trilogy on Thomas Cromwell, Chancellor to Henry VIII, won the Man Booker prize. So did Bring Up the Bodies. This is a rare double triumph, and a very, very good historical novel.
David Drake, The Road of Danger. (Riverdale, NY: Baen Books, 2012.) By my count, this is the ninth in Drake's Royal Cinnabar Navy series starring Daniel Leary and Adele Mundy (Mundy of Chatsworth). Space opera, nicely done.
Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace. (New York: Random House, 2012.) I found this one-volume biography of General Eisenhower both readable and informative. Smith takes Stephen Ambrose to task for his literary sins in various biographies of Eisenhower and Nixon, and he may make too much of the Kay Summersby affair (take that however you like). But he is thorough and even-handed, and I've seldom found 950 pages so easy to read.
David Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power. (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012.) This is a very interesting book, and one which gave the Republicans in Congress and opportunity to criticize the administration for letting Sanger know too much. One supposes that President Obama's Machiavellian ways are partly natural and partly due to the financial and political constraints he faces.
Greg Harvey, Excel 2010 for Dummies. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing Company, 2010.) I found this very helpful in my work, as proficiency in Excel is one of the mainstays of keeping my customers happy.
Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader, compiled with an introduction by Hank Davis. (Riverdale, NY: Baen Books, 2008.) This is a collection of stories, including one short novel, by the late Poul Anderson. Baen Books have now put out an extensive array of Anderson's work in about seven volumes. Many of the stories in this set were first published in magazines, largely Astounding/Analog, but including Boy's Life, and then previously collected in The Earth Book of Stormgate.
Robert Crais, The Monkey's Raincoat. (New York: Bantam Books, 1987.) I first heard of Robert Crais on National Public Radio. NPR aired a series of interviews with authors talking about how their work related to the cities they lived in. Crais, like Michael Connelly, is a Los Angeles writer. I was sufficiently impressed with Crais that I looked him up at Barnes & Noble. The Monkey's Raincoat may be his first novel; it was the earliest I could find. I believe we'll be reading more of Robert Crais.
Marcel Proust. A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (Paris: Gallimard, 1988 [1919]). The second volume of Remembrance of Things Past. A long-term project. I didn't get any reading done in this book during December 2012.
H. V. Morton, A Traveller in Italy (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002). H. V. Morton was a fine travel writer, and his book on Italy, originally published in 1964, is very good on the northern part of the country. (He has another book which deals with Rome.) I started this book on the fourth of November and finished it on December twenty-third.
Antonella Ansani, Complete Italian: The Basics Edited by Suzanne McQuade. (New York: Living Language, 2008). If I keep at it long enough, I'll actually learn some Italian. Magari! I started this book on November thirtieth, and I'm still working on it.
Christopher Duggan, The Force of Destiny: A history of Italy since 1796. (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Compnay, 2008). The title, taken from a Verdi opera, indicates Duggan's thesis that the risorgimento, the unification of Italy, was really a conquest of the regions of Italy by Piedmont, under the leadership of Camille Cavour. Most of Italy was never enthusiastic about being taken over by the Piedmontese, and resentment still rankles. Together with Gilmour's book, The Force of Destiny paints a rather pessimistic picture of the prospects for a united and prosperous Italy. I started The Force of Destiny on September fifteenth and completed it on December ninth.
Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2012.) The first book of Hilary Mantel's trilogy on Thomas Cromwell, Chancellor to Henry VIII, won the Man Booker prize. So did Bring Up the Bodies. This is a rare double triumph, and a very, very good historical novel.
David Drake, The Road of Danger. (Riverdale, NY: Baen Books, 2012.) By my count, this is the ninth in Drake's Royal Cinnabar Navy series starring Daniel Leary and Adele Mundy (Mundy of Chatsworth). Space opera, nicely done.
Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace. (New York: Random House, 2012.) I found this one-volume biography of General Eisenhower both readable and informative. Smith takes Stephen Ambrose to task for his literary sins in various biographies of Eisenhower and Nixon, and he may make too much of the Kay Summersby affair (take that however you like). But he is thorough and even-handed, and I've seldom found 950 pages so easy to read.
David Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power. (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012.) This is a very interesting book, and one which gave the Republicans in Congress and opportunity to criticize the administration for letting Sanger know too much. One supposes that President Obama's Machiavellian ways are partly natural and partly due to the financial and political constraints he faces.
Greg Harvey, Excel 2010 for Dummies. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing Company, 2010.) I found this very helpful in my work, as proficiency in Excel is one of the mainstays of keeping my customers happy.
Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader, compiled with an introduction by Hank Davis. (Riverdale, NY: Baen Books, 2008.) This is a collection of stories, including one short novel, by the late Poul Anderson. Baen Books have now put out an extensive array of Anderson's work in about seven volumes. Many of the stories in this set were first published in magazines, largely Astounding/Analog, but including Boy's Life, and then previously collected in The Earth Book of Stormgate.
Robert Crais, The Monkey's Raincoat. (New York: Bantam Books, 1987.) I first heard of Robert Crais on National Public Radio. NPR aired a series of interviews with authors talking about how their work related to the cities they lived in. Crais, like Michael Connelly, is a Los Angeles writer. I was sufficiently impressed with Crais that I looked him up at Barnes & Noble. The Monkey's Raincoat may be his first novel; it was the earliest I could find. I believe we'll be reading more of Robert Crais.
Marcel Proust. A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (Paris: Gallimard, 1988 [1919]). The second volume of Remembrance of Things Past. A long-term project. I didn't get any reading done in this book during December 2012.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Reading List: November 2012
During the month of November I finished three books that I had previously started, continued reading in three books that were underway, and started and finished two books, and started a second run through an instructional book. I've been thinking about doing some categorical breakdowns of my reading, but, for the moment, I'll continue to present the books according to the date during the month when I took them up.
David Gilmour, The Pursuit of Italy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). Contemplating a trip to Italy in the spring of 2013, I thought I'd read up on the country. I started Sir David Gilmour's The Pursuit of Italy on October 2, and I finished it on November 6. The title tells the story: Gilmour's thesis is that Italy, divided by geography, history, economics, and culture, is not, and never has been a unified country. Declarations of Italian unity have been aspirational, rather than descriptive, and the attempt to impose an artificial uniformity on a diverse country led to the monstrosity of fascism.
Bruce Feiler, Walking the Bible (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001). This is a very well-known travel book, describing Mr. Feiler's efforts to visit locations mentioned in the Pentateuch. One of the major problems facing Feiler is that the present location of many of the place names in the Bible is unknown or disputed. (My personal crochet is that I think the Garden of Eden, if it existed, would have been located much farther north than is generally accepted.) Since no one knows if there was an exodus from Egypt, it's hard to follow the putative route of the alleged migration. Also, Feiler is very inconsistent, which may just reveal his humanity, about whether he's a doubter looking for faith, or a believer looking for confirmation.
David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A human history of the Mediterranean (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). This is a book of immense scope. It's beautifully written, and the maps are very helpful. The Mediterranean has sometimes unified the countries and peoples of its islands and littoral, and sometimes divided them. This is a book well worth reading.
Christopher Duggan, The Force of Destiny: A history of Italy since 1796. (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Compnay, 2008). The title, taken from a Verdi opera, indicates Duggan's thesis that the risorgimento, the unification of Italy, was really a conquest of the regions of Italy by Piedmont, under the leadership of Camille Cavour. Most of Italy was never enthusiastic about being taken over by the Piedmontese, and resentment still rankles. Together with Gilmour's book, The Force of Destiny paints a rather pessimistic picture of the prospects for a united and prosperous Italy.
H. V. Morton, A Traveller in Italy (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002). H. V. Morton was a fine travel writer, and his book on Italy, originally published in 1964, is very good on the northern part of the country. (He has another book which deals with Rome.)
Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Murder at the Savoy (New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2009 [1971]). This is the sixth in the famous Scandinavian series of mysteries, or romans policiers, The Story of Crime, by Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Good writing and a fine eye meet social criticism.
Alan Furst, Mission to Paris (New York: Random House, 2012). Another of Furst's fine novels of pre-World War II Europe. In this case, a Hollywood actor of East European origins get caught up in a web of Nazi intrigue in the film industry.
Marcel Proust. A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (Paris: Gallimard, 1988 [1919]). The second volume of Remembrance of Things Past. A long-term project.
Antonella Ansani, Complete Italian: The Basics Edited by Suzanne McQuade. (New York: Living Language, 2008). If I keep at it long enough, I'll actually learn some Italian. Magari!
David Gilmour, The Pursuit of Italy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). Contemplating a trip to Italy in the spring of 2013, I thought I'd read up on the country. I started Sir David Gilmour's The Pursuit of Italy on October 2, and I finished it on November 6. The title tells the story: Gilmour's thesis is that Italy, divided by geography, history, economics, and culture, is not, and never has been a unified country. Declarations of Italian unity have been aspirational, rather than descriptive, and the attempt to impose an artificial uniformity on a diverse country led to the monstrosity of fascism.
Bruce Feiler, Walking the Bible (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001). This is a very well-known travel book, describing Mr. Feiler's efforts to visit locations mentioned in the Pentateuch. One of the major problems facing Feiler is that the present location of many of the place names in the Bible is unknown or disputed. (My personal crochet is that I think the Garden of Eden, if it existed, would have been located much farther north than is generally accepted.) Since no one knows if there was an exodus from Egypt, it's hard to follow the putative route of the alleged migration. Also, Feiler is very inconsistent, which may just reveal his humanity, about whether he's a doubter looking for faith, or a believer looking for confirmation.
David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A human history of the Mediterranean (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). This is a book of immense scope. It's beautifully written, and the maps are very helpful. The Mediterranean has sometimes unified the countries and peoples of its islands and littoral, and sometimes divided them. This is a book well worth reading.
Christopher Duggan, The Force of Destiny: A history of Italy since 1796. (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Compnay, 2008). The title, taken from a Verdi opera, indicates Duggan's thesis that the risorgimento, the unification of Italy, was really a conquest of the regions of Italy by Piedmont, under the leadership of Camille Cavour. Most of Italy was never enthusiastic about being taken over by the Piedmontese, and resentment still rankles. Together with Gilmour's book, The Force of Destiny paints a rather pessimistic picture of the prospects for a united and prosperous Italy.
H. V. Morton, A Traveller in Italy (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002). H. V. Morton was a fine travel writer, and his book on Italy, originally published in 1964, is very good on the northern part of the country. (He has another book which deals with Rome.)
Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Murder at the Savoy (New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2009 [1971]). This is the sixth in the famous Scandinavian series of mysteries, or romans policiers, The Story of Crime, by Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Good writing and a fine eye meet social criticism.
Alan Furst, Mission to Paris (New York: Random House, 2012). Another of Furst's fine novels of pre-World War II Europe. In this case, a Hollywood actor of East European origins get caught up in a web of Nazi intrigue in the film industry.
Marcel Proust. A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (Paris: Gallimard, 1988 [1919]). The second volume of Remembrance of Things Past. A long-term project.
Antonella Ansani, Complete Italian: The Basics Edited by Suzanne McQuade. (New York: Living Language, 2008). If I keep at it long enough, I'll actually learn some Italian. Magari!
Friday, January 18, 2013
The Difference between Anarchy and Anarchism
I'm going to turn to my old friend The American Heritage Dictionary, third edition. This is the paperback edition of 1994 from Laurel Books. On page 30 there are two definitions of interest.
anarchism n. 1. The theory that all forms of government are oppressive and should be abolished. 2. Terrorism against the state.
anarchy n. pl. -chies. 1. Absence of governmental authority or law. 2. Disorder and confusion.
I think that reproducing the full article from the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy might overstep the bounds of fair use. The first sentence gives the flavor:
anarchism n. a theory or a political movement which interprets the ideals of human freedom and equality very strictly, so as to exclude all relations of domination; particularly important is the refusal to accept the legitimacy of state power.
anarchism n. 1. The theory that all forms of government are oppressive and should be abolished. 2. Terrorism against the state.
anarchy n. pl. -chies. 1. Absence of governmental authority or law. 2. Disorder and confusion.
I think that reproducing the full article from the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy might overstep the bounds of fair use. The first sentence gives the flavor:
anarchism n. a theory or a political movement which interprets the ideals of human freedom and equality very strictly, so as to exclude all relations of domination; particularly important is the refusal to accept the legitimacy of state power.
Beginning the New Year, a Little Late
My first post since November. It's good to be back!
I spent some time finishing up what I started in November. I had posted my October reading list, but I had not updated the sidebar with the current books. This evening I made those updates. In some cases, that means you now know which books I've finished since October 31, of those which were in progress at that point.
The only book on that list that I'm still reading is the Proust. Okay, I can read French, but Proust is slow going. I need to concentrate my efforts on A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs.
As noted, I finished Complete Italian: The Basics in October. I am, however, working on it again. We're planning our trip to Italy for late April, and I want to be able to order una bella cena without sounding like too much of an idiot.
I spent some time finishing up what I started in November. I had posted my October reading list, but I had not updated the sidebar with the current books. This evening I made those updates. In some cases, that means you now know which books I've finished since October 31, of those which were in progress at that point.
The only book on that list that I'm still reading is the Proust. Okay, I can read French, but Proust is slow going. I need to concentrate my efforts on A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs.
As noted, I finished Complete Italian: The Basics in October. I am, however, working on it again. We're planning our trip to Italy for late April, and I want to be able to order una bella cena without sounding like too much of an idiot.
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