by Richard Subber | Oct 19, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Tidbits
give your arm to a loved one…
Book review:
The Gifts of Imperfection:
Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be
and Embrace Who You Are
by Dr. C. Brené Brown (b1965)
Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2010
135 pages
Dr. Brown offers this “tough lesson” from her life:
“How much we know and understand ourselves is critically important,
but there is something that is even more essential to living a Wholehearted life:
loving ourselves.”
This book moved me to think about changing the way I think about life, and my life.
Give yourself a gift: take time to read The Gifts of Imperfection and then D.I.G. into your life.
That is, start consciously thinking about wholehearted living and tell yourself a lot of truth, and then:
Get Deliberate about doing the right things for you, in all your glorious imperfections,
Get Inspired to acknowledge what you’re doing in all your loving relationships, and
Get Going, take the next steps in actually living a love affair with yourself and all you can be…
…and don’t mind if you stumble now and then, and give your arm to a loved one now and then…
…and have good intentions, and take the agony and the ecstasy as they come.
Quote is from The Gifts of Imperfection, p. xi.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review:
American Scripture:
Making the Declaration of Independence
…basically, it’s trash talk to King George
by Pauline Maier
–
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 | Sep 17, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Books Commentary, Joys of reading, Language, Reflections
“…and even make us laugh…”
“When writers make us shake our heads
with the exactness of their prose and their truths,
and even make us laugh about ourselves or life…”
Anne Lamott (b1954)
in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
p. 237
The “exactness” part is the hard part.
I try to make the meaning of my poems so clear that they wake up your mind.
Then you can laugh about it, shout about it…
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Poems of Robert Frost
he hears bluebirds talking…
–
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 | Aug 24, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Books Commentary, Joys of reading, Language
…a “man of letters”…
Book review:
Literary Life: A Second Memoir
by Larry McMurtry (1936-2021)
Simon & Schuster, 2009
McMurtry moves me to want more, read more…
It’s incredibly easy to read McMurtry—I’ve read Books: A Memoir, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, and now Literary Life. Time after time, it seems that he writes in an off-hand way; thoughts and scenes and chapters can end very abruptly. Yet, the work seems polished. The prose is spare, as Larry acknowledges.
I am titillated by his familiar references to so many authors and works. I would love to be a “man of letters,” as McMurtry claims to be. The draw for me is McMurtry’s immersion in books. I would be thrilled to own 200,000 books. Desperately thrilled.
I’m pretty sure that McMurtry’s passionate engagement with books and authors is a believable lifestyle. His many references to re-reading books is a believable commitment.
Since I retired nearly 20 years ago, I have, from time to time, envisioned taking the pledge to read the entire oeuvre of an author I like. Now I am moved to read McMurtry’s books. I plan to re-read Books and Literary Life to get clues about how to read them. I’ll consider reading his works in order by pub date, except for the Lonesome Dove and Berrybender tetralogies, of course.
I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Will the last monkey cry?
the new reality…
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 | Aug 20, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Books Commentary, Joys of reading
It all got started in 1665…
A book review is something of value.
At least, it tells you something about a book you haven’t read.
Let’s be candid: if you don’t know anything about the book reviewer, the value—not necessarily the quality—of the review is diminished. (I’d love to have an encyclopedia of the multiple reviews of reviewers who do it for a living.)
Book reviews aren’t as old as the hills.
In 1665 the Journal des Sçavans in Paris was a precursor of published book reviews, with non-opinionated summaries focused principally on publications dealing with biology and technology.
What we think of as book reviews can be dated to the 18th century, when magazines (also a new publishing concept at that time) began offering essays about books. An increasing number of books were being published in that era, and this created an audience for the reviews.
The words “book review” made it into print as early as 1861. Harvard professor Jill Lepore notes that “In the 19th century, an age of factories and suffrage, literacy rates increased, the price of books fell, and magazines were cheaper still. A democracy of readers rose up against an aristocracy of critics.” Book reviewing found its niche.
Fun fact: Edgar Allan Poe was a notoriously caustic reviewer in the middle of the 19th century.
In 1900 an anonymous “Veteran Book Reviewer” wrote a piece for The Independent that was titled “Up-to-Date Book Reviewing.” Book reviewing had become a craft.
Today, with universal access to the internet, anybody can be a book reviewer. Fer gosh sakes, some folks think that worthwhile book reviewing is in decline because there are too many books to review.
I’d like to say there oughta be a law.
Ain’t gonna stop me from reading.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Tales from Shakespeare
summaries by Charles and Mary Lamb…
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 | Aug 4, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
“Each work is new.”
Book review:
The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews
by Eudora Alice Welty (1909-2001)
American short story writer and novelist, Pulitzer Prize winner
New York: Random House, 1977
355 pages
The Eye of the Story is lush, literate, filled with almost languid richness.
I can only imagine being so well read that I could recognize all of her references to other writers and the vast literature of novels and short stories. I envy the breadth of her engagement with the world of fiction.
I’m more interested in what she has to say about writing.
“We who encounter words used in certain ways are persuaded by them to be brought mind and heart within the presence, the power, of the imagination” (p. 134).
“Each work is new” (p. 135). Welty is talking about novels, but this also is true, so true, of poetry. She observes that, in the fiction of her contemplation, “words have been found for which there may be no other words” (p. 137).
“The imagination has to be involved, and more—ignited. How much brighter than the symbol can be the explicit observation that springs firsthand from deep and present feeling…” (p. 139).
“It is through the shaping of the work in the hands of the artist that you most nearly come to know what can be known, on the page, of his mind and heart, and his as apart from the others. No other saw life in an ordering exactly like this” (p. 144).
I find affirmation in The Eye of the Story. Welty declares that writing is an art that uses the literally infinite array of words in sequence to create a spectacular, unique exhibition of what’s in the writer’s mind and in her heart.
“Each work is new.” I believe that each poem is unique. Each engaged reader takes a new step on new ground each time he reads the poem.
The poet opens a new window in her mind each time she takes the quill in hand.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
A poem about the right thing
…and the lesser incarnation…
“Vanity”
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 | Jul 7, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Language
Who doesn’t love Bertie Wooster?
I happened on a 1982 review of a biography of P. G. Wodehouse, and I can’t resist believing that the reviewer is a hatefully well-bred person.
Prof. Samuel Hynes very incautiously permits himself to label old P. G. as
” . . . the greatest trivial novelist in literary history . . .”
Egad.
Is he talking about Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975), the remarkably gabby genius who created Bertie Wooster and Jeeves?
Is he talking about the guy who makes us love the incurably erratic Wooster? who makes us worshipfully respect the very properly domineering Jeeves who can’t hurt a fly, knows nearly everything and saves Bertie’s bacon every time? who makes us stiffen, suppressing cries of delight, as we absorb the adjectival artistry of the whole bloody Wooster/Jeeves madhouse?
Hynes goes so far as to declare that Wodehouse “created a world without real problems and without human depths.” If you’ve read any of Wodehouse’s work, you know that ain’t true. There’s a bit of Bertie’s passion and despair in all of us, and Jeeves divinely makes it possible for everyone around him to be human.
There’s just one word too many in Hynes’ summary of Sir P. G. Wodehouse: “the greatest trivial novelist.”
Now you know which one it is.
If you want to, click here to read all of Hynes’ comments about Frances Donaldson’s 1982 biography, P. G. Wodehouse.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Home Team: Poems About Baseball (book review)
Edwin Romond hits another homer…
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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