by Richard Subber | Dec 15, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, History, Power and inequality
“. . . lions led by donkeys . . .”
Book review:
The Donkeys
by Alan Clark
London: Pimlico, 1961, 1994
216 pages
Clark tells the terrible story of high-level British incompetence in leading massed armies in combat with everybody using terrifying weapons.
At the outbreak of World War I, Britain had a relatively small professional army (247,000 men). Nearly half of them were stationed overseas throughout the British Empire.
Thus, on the home island in August 1914, Britain’s generals mustered about 150,000 men to be the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) that crossed the English Channel, to join the French in fighting the German attackers.
Within three months, that half of Britain’s professional army was gone. Most of the men in the BEF were dead. Their generals must take much of the blame.
As the horrific trench warfare became the hallmark of World War I, a German general, Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937), had a disdainful conversation with a fellow officer, Carl Hoffmann (1869-1927):
Ludendorff: “The English soldiers fight like lions.”
Hoffman: “True. But don’t we know that they are lions led by donkeys.”
p.s. Britain’s total WWI casualties: 673,375 dead and missing, 1,643,469 wounded
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shawshank Redemption
A world I do not want to know…
by Stephen King
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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 | Dec 10, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Language, Reflections
give “…Pointed Firs” a try
Book review:
Sarah Orne Jewett: Novels and Stories
by Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1994
937 pages
Never heard of Sarah Orne Jewett? Give her prose a try.
Jewett’s characters are persuasively human—they are credible if not always completely likable. Her prose offers recurring truths about the human condition. It’s easy to feel good about her storytelling.
This Novels and Stories collection of course includes “The Country of the Pointed Firs,” Jewett’s first-rate short novel. You’ll also find “Deephaven,” the Dunnet Landing stories, and others.
“…Pointed Firs” is an 1896 novel that describes some of the people and places of coastal Maine, and tells their stories with comfortable familiarity, reflective insight, and respectful love.
Can an old fisherman’s consuming memories of his departed wife bring tears to your eyes?
Read the story and find out.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shakespeare’s Wife
Germaine Greer went overboard a bit…
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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 | Dec 3, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections, Theater and play reviews
unforgettable…
Movie review and book review:
Atonement
Atonement is a story of lives of irredeemable sadness. Ian McEwan wrote the book that is faithfully portrayed in this 2007 film (rated R, 123 minutes)—it got seven Oscar nominations—starring Keira Knightly (Cecilia), James McAvoy (Robbie), Romola Garai (child Briony), Saoirse Ronan (18-year-old Briony), and Vanessa Redgrave (mature Briony).
In brief: Briony, a child, tells a dreadful lie about her sister’s lover, forcing Cecilia and Robbie to live separate, desperately tormented lives during World War II.
This poem is my “Thumbs Up” review of the movie and the book.
Unforgettable
This memory is lava hot,
it mingles, lava slow,
in all my thoughts,
in all my mind.
It is a crumble, peat, dark,
peat rich, no single whole,
but bits of all.
I cannot grasp it entire.
It fills me,
it is full of me,
full with my dread imaginings,
full with my discarded dreams,
so full…
It burns, it sears,
a red haze in my every gaze,
a scarlet shackle on each heartbeat.
I accept the impotence of atonement.
My long-ago childish deed cannot be undone,
that indulgence in excitement
and attention and novelty
and vengeance and purest love.
Unbidden, I saw an act I didn’t understand,
two lovers, I cherished them,
their coupling had no inner meaning for me,
yet showed they had more love for each other
than each for me…
Later, a twisted crime he did not—could not—commit,
yet I accused—“I saw him”—I lied,
to hurt him and to keep her, apart, for me.
That lie broke them.
At that moment, the words tasted brave
and older than my years.
The taste became gall.
Later, I was to know that I killed them.
My life has been my penance.
Now I understand what I could not see
and could not then feel.
Now I feel their horror that I invented
in place of their happiness.
Now I endure the unhappiness
they could not escape,
the terror born of a child’s simple plan
in a child’s heart.
…I keep those false words—“I saw him”—
spoken in righteous innocence,
in unknowable ignorance,
in unremembered pleasure…
I did not know I was trading my portion of happiness
for a memory that I keep
in a hole in my heart.
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Movie review. Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Good Will Hunting, a movie about love (review)
Robin Williams nails it…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 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 | Nov 23, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets
Teasdale teases…
Book review:
The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale
by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
New York: The Macmillan Co., 1937.
311 pages
Sara Teasdale wrote about 350 poems, and some of them are quite long.
She is literate—no doubt about that, there are plenty of classical allusions to the gods.
For my taste, there is no personality in her Collected Poems—she writes “about” stuff instead of illuminating stuff.
In 1918 she won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry—it must have been a lean year.
There are bright notes here and there:
“Ah, Love, there is no fleeing from thy might,
No lonely place where thou hast never trod,
No desert thou hast left uncarpeted.”
from “Sappho,” p. 109
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: To Serve Them All My Days
by R. F. Delderfield
A beloved teacher,
you know this story…
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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 | Nov 23, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language, Power and inequality
men are not women…
Book review:
A Room of One’s Own
by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
San Diego, CA: A Harvest/HBJ Book, 1929, published 1957
118 pages
Virginia Woolf was no stranger to controversy, in her writing and in her life. In A Room of One’s Own, she wrote: “…when a subject is highly controversial…one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.” (p. 4)
Woolf refers to “men who have no apparent qualification save that they are not women” (p. 27) and she quotes fellow writer Samuel Butler (1835-1902): “Wise men never say what they think of women.” (p. 29)
A so-called Modernist, she wrote: “Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size.” (p. 35)
Even this short work is longer than it needs to be. Woolf’s prose just gushes with energy and insight and realistic gloom. One wonders whether a man has ever written such words.
Woolf claims that a writer needs “a room of one’s own.”
I think a writer can do very well indeed by making a space in which to write,
a space in the mind or somewhere in the house.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
The “dime novels” in the Civil War
Think “blood-and-thunder”…
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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 | Nov 17, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading
…good storytelling…
Book review:
The Sea-Hawk
by Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1924
366 pages
Sabatini always invites the reader to get comfortable, to enjoy reading for literate pleasure, to relish good storytelling.
The Sea-Hawk has enough swash and buckle for any Sabatini fan.
Sir Oliver is a Cornish lord, a superman, and a wannabe corsair who can more or less bend steel with his bare hounds. Rosamund is the gentle lady of his heart’s desire. They get together at the end, but they have some swamps and fire and soul-searching to go through before they get to that entirely predictable end.
No reader—with or without delectable experience of Sabatini’s literary style—could fail to imagine the final outcome after reading just a few pages.
This inevitable foreknowledge is part of the appeal. You know how it’s going to turn out. You know that Sir Oliver and Rosamund will be smitten with self-doubt, and enlarged by courageous idealism, and sustained by everlasting love.
Sabatini makes it entirely comfortable to enjoy every minute of it, and he has the civilized decency to avoid any mention of heaving bosoms. The reader’s imagination has its own work to do.
p.s. The Sea-Hawk is a lot like Sabatini’s Scaramouche, except there’s water.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Snow Goose
…sensual drama, eminently poetic…
by Paul Gallico
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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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