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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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 | 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 Knightley (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.
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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)
She 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
Just 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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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 | 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 her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
p. 237
The “exactness” part truly 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
Bob hears bluebirds talking…
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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 | 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…
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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