by Richard Subber | Sep 25, 2021 | Book reviews, Books, History, World history
tender and mournful…
Book review:
The Zookeeper’s Wife
by Diane Ackerman (b1948)
American naturalist, poet, and author
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007
368 pages
Diane Ackerman writes about terrifying experiences, in Poland during World War II, that are not too terrible to be put into words.
Antonina is the zookeeper’s wife in Warsaw. She and her family and friends are eyewitnesses unable to escape the terror of the German invasion of Poland in 1939.
Many are killed or “transported” to the concentration camps.
Many continue to live ruined lives, in constant fear of misery, pain, and death, and with at least sporadic hope that they have a future they will welcome.
“One puzzle of daily life…was this: How do you retain a spirit of affection and humor in a crazed, homicidal, unpredictable society? Killers passed them daily on zoo grounds, death…stalked people at random in the streets.”
Ackerman writes a tender and mournful account of the instinctive courage of the children to forsake their childhood, and suffer with the adults—it’s so hard to read it without tears.
The Zookeeper’s Wife may be the most emotionally burdensome book I’ve read.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Book review: American Colonies
So many and so much
came before the Pilgrims
by Alan Taylor
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 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 | Sep 4, 2021 | Language, Tidbits
wonders near at hand…
“…I walk in mirabilibus supra me…”
from The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1949
p. 28
…perhaps the wonders above me are in the vault,
perhaps the wonders are in my mind…
You know it’s okay to wonder…
…and walking can be good exercise.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Book review:
The American Revolution: A History
The “Founders” were afraid
of “democracy”…
by Gordon S. Wood
–
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 31, 2021 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
in the world of blue water…
next time, ignore all the noise of the ferry passage…
More or less…
The blue water spreads my view
from here to the far edges.
An exceptional hugeness,
such a great nothing,
a silent marvel of rhythms,
such expanded absence
of nothing to point at…
Such chilling restraint on my imagination,
and yet I scan, from left to right and back—
it takes a long time to look at
so much of nothing much.
At sea near Hyannis, MA
August 24, 2018
My poem “More or less…” was published in my third collection of 64 poems, In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears. You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Blithedale Romance
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, not really his best…
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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Jul 30, 2021 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Reflections
Learn to think about being old…
Book review:
Old Friends
by Tracy Kidder (b1945)
Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993
352 pages
Tracy Kidder is an old friend, and I welcome any opportunity to read something he wrote. There is vigor and bitter reality and calm truth and pulsing delight in his stories.
Whatever your age, try Old Friends. You’re going to be someone’s old friend, sooner or later. You can learn to think about how it’s going to be.
Like Kidder’s other books, Old Friends is in its own category. Nevertheless, it has themes you’ll find in his other books. It contains some kinds of the loneliness expressed in Strength in What Remains (2009), and it echoes some of the humanity that pervades Among Schoolchildren (1989).
You’ll be surprised as you get to know Lou and Joe and the others.
They’re like people you already know, and like real people you’re going to get to know.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Mary Jane Oliver, R. I. P.
She wrote so many of the right words…
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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 | Jun 22, 2021 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics, Power and inequality, World history
profitable, powerful, vicious…
Book review:
For All the Tea in China:
How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink
and Changed History
by Sarah Rose
New York: Viking, Penguin Group, 2010
This is a credible account of how tea from China became a worldwide drink.
With commanding competence, Rose relates the intrepid life of Robert Fortune, and the depressingly familiar tale of a giant corporation running amok.
The East India Company in England was an extremely vicious, extremely powerful, and extremely profitable company for more than two hundred years. It was tea from the East India Company that got dumped into Boston harbor on December 16, 1773. After a bloody 1857 war of its own making in India, the company was abruptly dissolved by the British Parliament. Rose says: “…the company had amassed possessions to rival Charlemagne’s and created an empire on which the sun never set; it was the first global multinational and the largest corporation history has ever known. Yet it failed spectacularly at one significant task: to govern India in peace.” No surprise there.
For my taste, the greater value of For All the Tea in China is the examination of how the commerce and consumption of tea shaped worldwide politics, warfare, and society. Tea reduced famine in Europe. Tea taxes financed Britain’s imperial expansion. Increased tea drinking—and increased sugar consumption—made the British sugar colonies important in British commerce and politics. Centuries of monopoly in tea production and engagement with Europeans altered the political and cultural development of China.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.
Book review: American Colonies
So many and so much
came before the Pilgrims
by Alan Taylor
–
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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