by Richard Subber | Jul 15, 2023 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
joie de vivre, the real McCoy…
Movie review:
The African Queen
The African Queen (1951, rated PG, 105 minutes) was an adventure film when adventure had more to do with intrepid characters and the right thing and joie de vivre than with car chases and bullets flying every which way.
Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart won an Oscar for Best Actor) kindly offers to take Rose Sayer (Katharine Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress) on a boat ride—in his broken down scow (The African Queen) on an unforgiving river in German East Africa in 1914.
Rose, the unworldly widow of a missionary, learns to manhandle the tiller, pours all the gin overboard, and generally civilizes Charlie quite enough. That scrufty bon vivant teaches her about pluck, honor, and kicking the old boiler to keep the boat going.
They risk their lives for the war effort by sinking the German warship, and they decide to get married. Ain’t love grand?
Even if you saw the movie long ago, try it again.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Play review: A Doll’s House
Henrik Ibsen’s classic on abuse…
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jul 13, 2023 | My poetry, Poetry, Tidbits
working it out…
Fleet Beach
Flaunting, I walk upright in the wind,
the windward shoulder braced against…
it looks like nothing,
but it feels…
I will not stop, but damn!
these lurching strides in softer sand,
I lean toward the firmer band
halfway up this draining slope,
I am not a shuffler!
I say it.
This pace is good…
It’s good enough for now.
Fleet Beach
Chatham, Cape Cod, MA
June 5, 2000
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
We Were Soldiers Once…and Young
…too much death (book review)
Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (ret.)
and Joseph L. Galloway
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Jul 11, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Reflections
“…but not less”
Book review:
Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
by Temple Grandin (b1947)
Foreword by Oliver Sacks
New York: Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., 1995, 2nd ed. 2006
270 pages
Thinking in Pictures is a calmly important book.
Probably you don’t know much about autism. Temple Grandin knows a lot, and she can teach you about the people who live lives that are different from yours. Really.
“Different, but not less.” That’s what her science teacher said about her.
She writes in a reserved tone, offering a grand sweep of what was known about autism in the mid 1990s and again in the mid 2000s. She talks about the high points and the low points of the rocky road of her life.
Temple Grandin talks with precocious understanding about animals. You’ll learn from this element as well.
I re-learned this very sobering truth: nearly everyone doesn’t experience the world the same way I do.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
The Reader (Der Vorleser)
Not just a rehash of WWII…
by Bernhard Schlink
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jul 6, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading
find your groove…
Book review:
The Element:
How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
by Ken Robinson, with Lou Aronica
New York: Viking, Penguin Group, 2009
274 pages
The theme of The Element is an exciting concept to think about.
I love his telling of this story: the six-year-old girl is hunched over her drawing, and she tells her teacher that she’s “drawing a picture of God,” and the teacher says “nobody knows what God looks like,” and the girl replies: “They will in a minute.”
Robinson tackles his inspirational advice: find your own distinctive talents and passions, and, when you recognize them, you’ll know you’re in the Zone, and you’ll love it.
Here’s what hinders us from finding our own Elements: we don’t fully understand the range of our capacities, how these salient capacities relate to each other, and how much potential we have to get better at stuff that makes us feel really good. (p. 9)
“The Element is the meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion.” (p. 21)
“The highest form of intelligence is thinking creatively.” (p. 56)
“You can think of creativity as applied imagination.” (p. 67)
I think the first few chapters of The Element are enough to open your eyes and your mind to the wonderful challenge of tracking down and embracing your personal Element, if you haven’t done it already.
The rest of the book suggests that Robinson’s Element does not cover the talent for ending a book after you’ve said all that needs to be said. He wanders, and you might get bored.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
The “dime novels” in the Civil War
Think “blood-and-thunder”…
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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