by Richard Subber | Jul 1, 2019 | Book reviews, Books, Books Commentary, History, World history
much was not lost…
Book review:
The Map of Knowledge:
A Thousand-Year History
of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found
Violet Moller
New York: Doubleday, 2019
312 pages
It’s quite possible that Moller offers much more than you already know about Euclid’s The Elements (c300 BCE). and Ptolemy’s The Almagest, (c150 CE), and the many published works on anatomy and medicine by Galen (130-210 CE).
The Map of Knowledge is a scholarly account of the preservation of knowledge from ancient times to the present day. I bet you can guess that it’s not a beach book.
Moller forgot to mention that throughout the centuries, most human beings on the planet couldn’t read or write, and so it was the lucky, the gifted, and the self-selected few who preserved important knowledge for the benefit of succeeding generations. Think about a version of Fahrenheit 451, stretched over the centuries.
Go ahead, read Fahrenheit 451 again.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2019 All rights reserved.
Book review: Tales from Shakespeare
good summaries by Charles and Mary Lamb…
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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”
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by Richard Subber | Jun 25, 2019 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Revolutionary War
a new look…
Book review:
The British Are Coming:
The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777
by Rick Atkinson
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019.
776 pages
Atkinson offers an appealing mix of academic rigor and entertaining prose. This is both a history and an expertly rendered story about the early stages of the American Revolutionary War.
If you think you know a lot about this critical time during our history, read The British Are Coming to broaden your knowledge and your understanding. If you’re working at being a student of the Revolution, dig in.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2019 All rights reserved.
A glimpse of the millennial dawn…
witness to the song of the sea…
a nature poem
“Chanson de mer”
click here
Boz indeed!
Charles Dickens delivers,
in a fastidiously literary kind of way…
click here
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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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by Richard Subber | Jun 13, 2019 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading
a discursive ramble…
Book review:
Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays
by George Orwell (1903-1950)
Jeremy Paxman, intro.
New York: Penguin Books, 2009
375 pages
Of course, Shooting an Elephant has Orwell’s must read piece: “Politics and the English Language” (1946).
“Why I Write” is a peacefully discursive ramble in the mind of a consummate writer. Orwell candidly says “…I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose.”
These are:
- Sheer egoism—“It is sheer humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, and a strong one.”
- Aesthetic enthusiasm—“Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement.”
- Historical impulse—“Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”
- Political purpose—“using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.”
“Bookshop Memories” is half a martini’s worth of good reading for any book lover who has spent a little time (or a lot of time) in an old used book store that has that old book smell, and shelves stuffed with books from floor to ceiling so you have to kneel down to inspect the ones on the bottom shelf, and an old guy with a careless beard at the ancient cash register, and a cat that can’t be bothered to pay any attention to the loitering bibliophiles…
Orwell is one of the writers that Coleridge had in mind when he mentioned that good prose is “words in their best order.”
Paxman’s introduction is a decent substitute for a reflective conversation with Orwell about writing.
Shooting an Elephant has almost two dozen examples of what Orwell could do with pen and paper. He died too young.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2019 All rights reserved.
Mary Jane Oliver, R. I. P.
She wrote so many of the right words…
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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 | Jun 5, 2019 | My poetry, Poetry
I knew it was you…
“Sara from South Dakota”
You’re the kid who yelled “I love the ocean!” the first time you saw it.
You’re the little kid who didn’t want to go back to the house for supper.
You’re the kind of kid who won’t stand still while Mom puts the lotion on.
You’re the kind of kid who won’t cry when the sunburn hurts.
You’re the little girl who wanted to help that baby fill up her little blue bucket.
You would NOT let your brother help you build your castles.
You’re the kid who doesn’t want to go home to South Dakota “ ‘cause it’s too far from the ocean, which is really fun.”
You’re the little kid who wasn’t afraid to ask me “What’s on the other side of the ocean?”…
and you listened to my explanation, even though it was too long,
about other countries and other people,
because you suddenly realized there are lots of places you haven’t been to,
and you’re pretty sure you want to go there, but it does seem a little scary…
You said “Thank you,” and I guessed that I had taught you something.
You’re young enough to be my granddaughter…
maybe I’ll have a granddaughter like you some day.
Later, at sundown, I saw that a child had written her name in the wet sand just below the high tide mark:
“Sara from South Dakota”
∼∼∼∼∼∼∼
with a squiggly line underneath.
I knew it was you.
You’re the kind of kid who would do it.
You’re the kind of kid who would say goodbye to the ocean.
That’s a pretty big thing for a kid to do.
September 11, 2010
I was on the Outer Banks, Avon, NC.
You can’t not see and hear kids on the beach. Some just dig in the sand, endlessly, without looking up. Some of them won’t let go of the boogie board. A few of the kids make a statement, you see, they live a little lifetime at the line that the surf just manages to reach, they face the ocean and they don’t look away…Sara was one of those kids.
My poem “Sara from South Dakota” was published in my first chapbook, Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups. You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, search for “Richard Carl Subber”
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2019 All rights reserved.
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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”
“A man’s job”
a boy with his dad’s axe…
(my poem)
click here
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by Richard Subber | Apr 24, 2019 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading
don’t start singing right away…
Book review:
A Pirate Looks at Fifty
Jimmy Buffett (b1946)
New York: Ballantine Books, 1998
Full disclosure: I’m not a Parrothead, but I’m related by blood to a gen-you-wine Buffett fan, so I take the liberty of using familiar language, even though “the king of somewhere hot” has never seen me and isn’t likely to in this earthly paradise…
A Pirate Looks at Fifty is a memoir-ish book by Himself, written more than 20 years ago, I spotted it in the local library’s discarded book sale bin and I did the right thing.
Seems to me, for starters, no one should ever discard a book full of Jimmy Buffett stuff, he’s just so much in love with life and he is a magnet for vicarious attention, I dare you to read Pirate without getting at least a fleeting urge to head for the islands and see the world through Jimmy’s eyes.
You don’t even have to read the whole book (actually, I confess, I didn’t), just read as much as gets the juices flowing and then get on with your regular life, and you can dip into it again any time you want. Buffett’s music and Buffett’s style are a buffet—grab what you want, anytime, sing along as the spirit moves, and go back for more whenever…
You don’t even have to like margaritas to get the full, slobbering, belly laugh, hijinksed, hot damn but mucho mellow effect when you sing along with Jimmy about the Mexican cutie and the lost shaker of salt.
I double dare you to not sing a couple verses and the refrain right now, you have to, really…
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2019 All rights reserved.
A poem about the right thing
…and the lesser incarnation…
“Vanity”
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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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