by Richard Subber | Aug 15, 2026 | Books, History, Reflections, World history
The faux convenience of historical eras…
It was the Renaissance, everybody knows that, right?
You know about the Middle Ages, right? Roughly a thousand years in European history, from the fall of Rome in 476 to the beginning of the Renaissance in the 14th century or so. The Renaissance itself lasted several hundred years, into the 17th century.
The thing is, the folks who lived through those extended dynamic eras didn’t know what they were doing. I mean, they didn’t know it was “the Middle Ages” or “the Renaissance.”
Those words weren’t used in the English language until the early 18th century.
During the Middle Ages, for example, medieval writers referred to historical events as “ancient” and described their own times as “modern.” Beauty is in the eye…
Pundits or philosophers of the future may call our current era the Age of Tomfoolery, or maybe something else…
We’ll never know.
Source:
Owen Barfield, History in English Words (Hudson, NY: The Lindisfarne Press, 1953), 167.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
“The beginning is always today.”
(quote, Mary Shelley)
so get started…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 52 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 13, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
good story-telling…
Kaa’s Hunting (1893)
in The Jungle Book (1894)
by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Kaa’s Hunting (1893) fills you with thoughts of comradeship, adventure, bravery, loyalty, and jungle stuff. It’s a good introduction to Kipling’s style and to his deep dives into real and fictionalized life events.
Mowgli the man-cub learns much after he is abducted by the monkey people.
The reader learns much about tolerating the way things are, and about doing the right thing to make things better.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bartender’s Tale
Ivan Doig’s story, I mostly loved it…
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Empyrean: new poems with 57 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 6, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry
we could’ve sent a poet into space…
Book review:
The Universe in Verse:
15 Portals to Wonder Through Science & Poetry
by Maria Popova, North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2024
95 pages
Poetry can be everywhere.
Poets can talk about anything.
Poets can experience everything,
and imagine everything.
For science, the same is true.
For scientists, the same is true.
Maria Popova offers one way of manifesting and combining these truths in The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder Through Science & Poetry.
Wanna know what a poet thinks about pi?
Wanna know what Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote about Euclid?
Wanna know why Carl Sagan successfully sought a Voyager picture of Earth, the “pale blue dot” in our solar system?
Wanna know why an astronomer wrote a poem about “dark matter”?
Read The Universe in Verse. Then read it again.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Movie review: A Doll’s House
Henrik Ibsen’s classic on abuse…
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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 | Aug 4, 2026 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics, Power and inequality
too many Americans died…
Book review:
The Premonition: A Pandemic Story
by Michael Lewis
New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2021
The Premonition is the compelling work by Michael Lewis (of The Big Short fame).
You’ll recognize the narrative nonfiction style—this is the Michael Lewis stuff you love to read.
The Premonition is a fully frightening account of the deadly inability of the Trump government (including the CDC) and corporate America to deal effectively with the COVID-19 pandemic that killed more than 1.2 million Americans. Too many Americans died because Trump and his lackies and the private sector wouldn’t try to do what they were responsible to do.
Lewis won’t make you feel good about the institutions of American national government and the so-called capitalist system.
He is eminently clear, and relentlessly anecdotal.
Michael Lewis never met an anecdote that wasn’t worth repeating.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shawshank Redemption
A world I do not want to know…
by Stephen King
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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 | Jul 16, 2026 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Reflections
it’s not the last obscenity…
Book review:
Aging: An Apprenticeship
Nan Narboe, ed.
Portland, OR: Red Notebook Press, 2018
286 pages
Narboe created a handy and wide-ranging collection of reflections on the art, science, and humanity of the aging process. More than 50 authors tell it like they think it is, for folks nearing the increasingly ordinary age of 50, and for folks in their 50s, 60s, 70s , 80s, and 90s and beyond. If you’re not in one of those groups, you will be sooner than you think.
Of course, the explicit premise of most of the authors in Aging: An Apprenticeship is that life can be good (or not), aging happens to everyone, and dying is the end game.
Gloria Steinem’s contribution is on point, completely tolerable, and instructive. She says:
“After all, we are communal creatures
who must mirror each other to know who we are.
Every living thing ages and dies,
yet humans seem to be the only species
that thinks about aging and thinks about dying.
Surely, we are meant to use this ability,
especially in a country
that suffers so much from concealing aging and dying
as if they were the last obscenities.”
For Aging: An Apprenticeship, Narboe has collected essays that range from whimsical to doggone serious. Each author offers a very personal argument that aging and dying are 100% natural.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
A quote from General Custer
Hint: something to do with Indians…
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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 | Jul 9, 2026 | Books, Politics, Power and inequality
the right way to get down to business…
Book review:
Managing in the Next Society
by Peter F. Drucker (1909-2005), management guru
New York: Truman Talley Books, St. Martin’s Press, 2002
I love reading Drucker.
He is a deliberately perceptive and honest observer of management and the corporate world.
It’s too bad he’s not alive today to take a good look at men and women of business, and their businesses.
Drucker had many compelling insights about how to manage people and operations in a world that he assumed, de facto, was mostly populated by people who mostly want to do the right thing.
Too bad that’s not the world we live in.
Reading Drucker is an afternoon delight—that’s about how long it lasts.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2026 All rights reserved.
84, Charing Cross Road (book review)
Helene Hanff, on reading good books…
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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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