by Richard Subber | Jul 22, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Reflections
a lifelong quest…
Book review:
Atonement
by Ian McEwan (b1948)
New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2001
351 pages
Atonement is a story of the profound sadness of a child. The sadness is a burden on several lives. McEwan invites the reader to learn to understand the life of a child who learns to understand that atonement can be a lifelong quest.
The child Briony knows she is a writer. She spends most of her life trying to understand how writing can be more than a fancy, and learning how to make it a substitute for real lives.
Briony, mature and nearing her own death, writes the final draft of her regrets for the childish impulse that unmade the lives of her beloved Cecilia and her beloved Robbie.
Briony learns that atonement can fill every space in a life, and she learns that atonement can be impotent.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 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 | Jul 17, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Language, Politics, Power and inequality, Reflections
“…to make lies sound truthful…”
Book review:
What Orwell Didn’t Know:
Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics
Andras Szanto, ed.
New York: Public Affairs, 2007.
236 pages.
This collection by Andras Szanto was published before the Obama presidency and what followed.
Essays by Martin Kaplan, Victor Navasky, and Geoffrey Cowan, in particular, illuminate these insightful, topical revelations about media failure to communicate truths.
George Orwell’s well-known essay, “Politics and the English Language,” is still useful and challenging, almost 75 years after he wrote it.
An excerpt from What Orwell Didn’t Know:
“…the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language…Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind…”
It is a terrifying reality that this statement sounds like it was written yesterday.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bartender’s Tale
Ivan Doig’s story, I mostly loved it…
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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 | Jul 15, 2025 | Human Nature, Reflections
many ways to cherish butterflies…
“…but on paper, things can live forever.
On paper, a butterfly never dies.”
Jacqueline Woodson (b1963)
Writes books for youth
…kids draw pictures
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 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 12, 2025 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
another next year…
Time traveler
Tomorrow didn’t used to be a goal.
Next week wasn’t the future
for a long time.
A year from now
didn’t always seem so far away.
For years I was
only barely interested
in my birthday,
now I see that it means
another next year
is nothing but past.
Future entices, future mystifies,
future engages
but it is not potent.
Today is the thing,
now rings the bell,
later is lonely,
it waits for a friend.
I don’t check my watch,
the chime is enough
to remind me
that minutes can be magic,
I welcome another minute,
I live my time.
April 5, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Snow Goose
…sensual drama, eminently poetic…
by Paul Gallico
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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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Jun 26, 2025 | Language, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
say it again
Poetry is…
Poetry is what I see and hear and feel,
it is the life force of my sensations,
it is my potent thinking,
it is my surrender to the beauty of words
that leap together in my mind,
and spill onto my page,
and wait to pass your lips.
September 17, 2024
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
–
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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Jun 12, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Reflections
let’s talk about relevance…
Book review:
The Fabric of Reality:
The Science of Parallel Universes—
and its Implications
by David Deutsch
New York: Penguin Books, 1997
The Fabric of Reality is intriguing, but it’s also hard work.
I think I “understand,” to use Deutsch’s word, that he likes to talk about the Big Bang and the so-called Theory of Everything.
Personally, I find it interesting to know something about his “four main strands,” namely, quantum physics, epistemology, the theory of computation, and evolution.
Nevertheless, I embrace a willingness to suspect that the esoterica of physics and a philosophy of physics are essentially irrelevant to the lives that nearly all of us lead.
You can read the whole book if you want to.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review:
Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene
sincere, but off the mark…
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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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