After four days of taking it pretty easy, today I'm ready to live my ideal life--working on the book I'm writing in the morning, and leaving the afternoon open, possibly for more writing, possibly for reading, or napping and watching baseball playoffs. Started the day off with a latte to celebrate the firing of Bobby Valentine. Hopefully Steve Phillips will be next and then a new era can begin for the Mets.
Next was meditation, then blueberry pancakes. Ah, the relaxed life...
I did finish Family Matters--it was so good! And I was very pleased that Updike gave it such a positive treatment. I'd like to find more critiques of it, though, to bounce off my own impressions. For example, was Coomy a sympathetic character? I had trouble feeling anything positive about her. I think she was the only one in the book for whom this was true. Also, the ending with an epilogue that took place 5 years later seemed like a cop-out. I know Mistry could have written those 5 years and kept the reader's interest. It was almost as though he had suddenly heard from his publisher that he had to submit his ms for a deadline.
I am very intrigued by the mentions I read in so many places about the book The Pilgrim Hawk by Glenway Westcott. It was written about in the New Yorker by Susan Sontag, mentioned in the book Lost Classics, and now Dirda talks about his love for it in Readings. Guess I'll have to seek out a copy.
Tuesday, October 01, 2002
I'm taking a week off to focus on reading, writing, and resting. A colleague got me interested in the Enneagram, and I am completely fascinated by it. I just spent $10 taking the complete test online to make sure I am what I thought I am--a type 1. I'm writing this entry in part because I want to experiment with putting the type 1 graphic on.
Of course, knowing your type is one thing--the key is how you use that knowledge for personal growth. That's what I have to work on next. It seems promising because the descriptions are so on target. Yet, the tendencies are so deep.
I'm about to finish Rohinton Mistry's third novel: Family Matters. I like it a great deal and am not what I'd call disappointed, but I don't think it's quite as wonderful as at least one of his other two. Do I remember them well enough to even name which one, though? I think it's Such A Long Journey, if that's the one about the four very different people who wind up together. As soon as I read Family Matters, I have to go to this week's New Yorker and see what Updike said about it. how uncanny for there to be a lengthy critique of the very book I'm reading! By the way, this issue of the New Yorker is phenomenal--every article is compelling. In particular, I love Jonathan Franzen's discourse on Contract fiction versus whatever he calls the other one--the one where the author is just writing to please himself and demonstrate that he's great, the more difficult, abstruse, and impossible to understand the better (use of "he" here intentional). Naturally, I'm for Contract.
Been thinking about getting back to writing here to fulfill my original intention of keeping track of everything I read and want to read. I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed by the latter category (well, I always am, to one degree or another). Saw Michael Dirda speak at Oberlin on Saturday night. He was so wonderful, as are all of his writings about books. I checked his only book, Readings (2000, Indiana University Press), out of the library, and found that a great many of his columns are available online through Proquest National Newspapers. More than 100! I want to read them all!!! Today I read a few of them. One was a review of Thinks, by David Lodge, and I was pleased to see that Dirda agreed with me that it was really good. Also, he did a movie review of The Mystic Masseur, which reminded me that I'm eager to read that Naipaul book. Also, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie has always intrigued me, and he was positive about it, plus there is apparently a part where the heroes uncover a trove of Western lit and comment on it, so that sounds like a lot of fun. I also checked out A Test of Wills, the first mystery in a series by Charles Todd, because a friend recommended it to me, and it sounds really great. Might help me with those type 1 issues, since the detective has a harsh critical voice in his head at all times. Back to types--I learned online today that the Myers of Myers-Briggs, Isabel Myers, actually wrote a mystery before she got into her type work. That'd be interesting.
Also on my pile is Hamlet's Dresser by Bob Smith. I really want to read that one, too. And here I am on vacation. Problem: every time I start to read, especially in the afternoon, I get sleepy and need to nap. When I get up, I get sucked into household responsibilities. But I will keep trying. Reading is too important to neglect!
Of course, knowing your type is one thing--the key is how you use that knowledge for personal growth. That's what I have to work on next. It seems promising because the descriptions are so on target. Yet, the tendencies are so deep.
I'm about to finish Rohinton Mistry's third novel: Family Matters. I like it a great deal and am not what I'd call disappointed, but I don't think it's quite as wonderful as at least one of his other two. Do I remember them well enough to even name which one, though? I think it's Such A Long Journey, if that's the one about the four very different people who wind up together. As soon as I read Family Matters, I have to go to this week's New Yorker and see what Updike said about it. how uncanny for there to be a lengthy critique of the very book I'm reading! By the way, this issue of the New Yorker is phenomenal--every article is compelling. In particular, I love Jonathan Franzen's discourse on Contract fiction versus whatever he calls the other one--the one where the author is just writing to please himself and demonstrate that he's great, the more difficult, abstruse, and impossible to understand the better (use of "he" here intentional). Naturally, I'm for Contract.
Been thinking about getting back to writing here to fulfill my original intention of keeping track of everything I read and want to read. I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed by the latter category (well, I always am, to one degree or another). Saw Michael Dirda speak at Oberlin on Saturday night. He was so wonderful, as are all of his writings about books. I checked his only book, Readings (2000, Indiana University Press), out of the library, and found that a great many of his columns are available online through Proquest National Newspapers. More than 100! I want to read them all!!! Today I read a few of them. One was a review of Thinks, by David Lodge, and I was pleased to see that Dirda agreed with me that it was really good. Also, he did a movie review of The Mystic Masseur, which reminded me that I'm eager to read that Naipaul book. Also, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie has always intrigued me, and he was positive about it, plus there is apparently a part where the heroes uncover a trove of Western lit and comment on it, so that sounds like a lot of fun. I also checked out A Test of Wills, the first mystery in a series by Charles Todd, because a friend recommended it to me, and it sounds really great. Might help me with those type 1 issues, since the detective has a harsh critical voice in his head at all times. Back to types--I learned online today that the Myers of Myers-Briggs, Isabel Myers, actually wrote a mystery before she got into her type work. That'd be interesting.
Also on my pile is Hamlet's Dresser by Bob Smith. I really want to read that one, too. And here I am on vacation. Problem: every time I start to read, especially in the afternoon, I get sleepy and need to nap. When I get up, I get sucked into household responsibilities. But I will keep trying. Reading is too important to neglect!
Wednesday, March 13, 2002
I am mystified. I can't figure out how to see my blog on the web anymore. I'm hoping that writing a new entry will either jog my memory or make it reappear mysteriously.
I just did a weekend retreat based on the teachings of Eknath Easwaran's book Meditation. It was awesome! I'm on a business trip now and my hotel room is full of Easwaran's books. He is so funny while he is imparting wisdom about how to live that he makes it fun to be working on yourself. By funny I mean that he really understands the distractions that meditators face and the trying situations we confront when we are attempting to live a more compassionate life. In addition to his book Conquest of Mind, I'm reading a biography he wrote of the "Frontier Gandhi," Badshah Khan, who was what Easwaran calls "a nonviolent soldier of Islam." This 1984 book couldn't be more relevant to today! I'm learning a lot of Afghanistan and Indian history from it.
I'm also reading Adam Sisman's Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of a Life of Dr. Johnson. I was really happy to see that it won the National Book Critic's Circle Award for biography this week.
I just did a weekend retreat based on the teachings of Eknath Easwaran's book Meditation. It was awesome! I'm on a business trip now and my hotel room is full of Easwaran's books. He is so funny while he is imparting wisdom about how to live that he makes it fun to be working on yourself. By funny I mean that he really understands the distractions that meditators face and the trying situations we confront when we are attempting to live a more compassionate life. In addition to his book Conquest of Mind, I'm reading a biography he wrote of the "Frontier Gandhi," Badshah Khan, who was what Easwaran calls "a nonviolent soldier of Islam." This 1984 book couldn't be more relevant to today! I'm learning a lot of Afghanistan and Indian history from it.
I'm also reading Adam Sisman's Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of a Life of Dr. Johnson. I was really happy to see that it won the National Book Critic's Circle Award for biography this week.
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