Resolution52 – Brian Utley & Jenny Dalton

Take my word for it, Einstein’s Dreams is one of the coolest books on the planet. If you don’t believe me, read it. If you read and don’t like it, well I guess that’s ok.

I don’t always keep up with the latest books from my favorite authors. There are many favorite authors. Alan Lightman sneaked one past me called Ghost. And it’s already in paperback so I’ve been clueless for quite some time.

So it’s fitting that BIG #50 is a book by one of my favorite authors. Fifty is important, especially with several weeks left in the year. And as always I’m pondering what’s next. I haven’t come to any sort of conclusion for ’10 but I’ll think of something. Or not.

Book Thoughts Alan Lightman, Einsteins Dreams, Ghost

It’s not often that I post something that has nothing to do with my resolution but lately I’ve been listening to lots of podcasts and one in particular I look forward to everyday. This was a poem that was read by Garrison Keiller that I really liked. I’m not a poetry guy, I don’t read poetry at all actually. But that may change.

I knew a woman who washed her hair and bathed
her body and put on the nightgown she’d worn
as a bride and lay down with a .38 in her right hand.
Before she did the thing, she went over her life.
She started at the beginning and recalled everything—
all the shame, sorrow, regret and loss.
This took her a long time into the night
and a long time crying out in rage and grief and disbelief—
until sleep captured her and bore her down.

She dreamed of a green pasture and a green oak tree.
She dreamed of cows. She dreamed she stood
under the tree and the brown and white cows
came slowly up from the pond and stood near her.
Some butted her gently and they licked her bare arms
with their great coarse drooling tongues. Their eyes, wet as
shining water, regarded her. They came closer and began to
press their warm flanks against her, and as they pressed
an almost unendurable joy came over her and
lifted her like a warm wind and she could fly.
She flew over the tree and she flew over the field and
she flew with the cows.

When the woman woke, she rose and went to the mirror.
She looked a long time at her living self.
Then she went down to the kitchen which the sun had made all
yellow, and she made tea. She drank it at the table, slowly,
all the while touching her arms where the cows had licked.

Heard on The Writers Almanac, Garrison Keiller. A fantastic 5-minute podcast.

Book Thoughts Garrison Keiller, Norah Pollard, She Dreamed Of Cows, The Writers Almanac

Howdy folks. I haven’t checked in for awhile so here is a quick update.

Finished Bounce, then Strengths Finder. Both were ok.

I was in San Francisco last week and during my trip I went to visit MOMA to see the Richard Avedon exhibit. He is one of my favorite portrait photographers. It was awesome. I first went on a Wednesday but learned that the museum is closed on Wednesdays. But the museum store was open so I went in to take a look at a few books. I found and purchased an interesting book called Accidental Masterpiece: On The Art of Life and Vice Versa. I then finished that book in a few days. The author is the chief art critic for the NY Times. There is a great video with him talking about art here. I saw the Avedon exhibit the next day.

So I finished that and now I’m continuing on with Choice Theory which is moving slowly but I’m picking up the pace now and am finding the whole theory really interesting. Once I finish it, which should be by the end of the weekend, I’ll just have books #50, #51, and #52 left with 7 weeks to go in the year. This resolution is looking solid.

Book Thoughts Choice Theory, Michael Kimmelman, Richard Avedon, SF MOMA

I’m good at reading.

On to #48.

Book Thoughts

Early early this morning I completed Indignation. It was so-so. Today I start Bounce, by Keith McFarland. I expect it to be so-so as well, but I’m going to start reading it anyway.

Book Thoughts

So I had a plan. And the best laid plans… well you know. This was the entry I prepared en route to Paris last week.

I finished Gilead in good time. During this time while not reading, I thought of Hemingway. A biography of him and the complete collection of his short stories are next on the list and tonight, high above the Atlantic, I begin the first of the two.

Both books are 500+ pgs so in the space of the next 14 days I have over a thousand pages to read, which is something that I have yet to do in so little time. Of course, I’m not bound to the 14 days, but with it being so late in the year I feel like I don’t have much breathing room as I did earlier in the year.

I’m excited for Paris and wasn’t planning on going until the last moment. I went from a job interview straight to the airport and when I return I’ll only have 24 hours before I get back on a plane bound for San Francisco where I will again attend meetings and answer questions. And then I’ll have some decisions to make and I’m grateful for them.

A highlight of the trip will undoubtedly be the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore where I hope to pick up a used copy of Death In The Afternoon or Ulysses, the latter I’ll probably never read but even for the non-religious an unread Old Testament bought In Jerusalem is better to have than an unread Bible from America. And Ulysses, an American novel of Parisian origin, was published by the then-owner of Shakespeare & Co.

There will be a view of the Eiffel Tower from our hotel so I imagine I will enjoy that for several seconds before I set off and look at books both new and used from the oldest bookstore I will have ever entered and in which Hemingway perused regularly. A Movable Feast is very geographically detailed so walking the steps of Hemingway, if I’m inclined to, will be an easy task.

I never made it to the bookstore. The problem was that the more I read about Hemingway, the less I liked him. I read almost 200 pages of his biography and decided I had had enough. The curtain had been pulled back and there was no mysticism anymore. And I no longer had an interest in continuing on.
So I left that book unread, as well as the book of short stories that I will also skip for now and jumped from Gilead straight to Accidental Billionaires. This was a surprisingly enjoyable book and I recommend it to any geek or enthusiast of “TheFacebook”. I finished that in a couple days then picked up my first Philip Roth book, Indignation. I’ll finish that book by Wednesday and then I’ll be a full 3 weeks ahead again with 7 books to go.

So, no. We didn’t see the bookstore but we saw a lot of the Eiffel Tower, The Seine, Notre Dame, Louvre, and all kinds of other fun stuff.

I had low expectation of France and I shouldn’t have. The people there are nice the food is great, and getting around is easy. It was an amazing 3 day trip with Sen, and 2 of our 4 kids.

Book Thoughts Gilead, Hemingway, indignation, philip roth