I finished this novel by the poet, Ocean Vuong, yesterday evening. It’s styled as a communication addressed to the narrator’s mother, and the reader can rely on the pronoun “you” as referring to her, a woman born in Vietnam during the war. This is not solely a mother/son story, however. Other personal relationships of the
Barbara gave me this and a handful of other books during our recent visit in State College. This was a perfect fit for my day full of airplanes and airports yesterday. I finished it as we touched down in Sacramento. Delicious. Hope in the Dark was first published shortly after the United States invaded Iraq
Adam Frank is an astrophysicist who focuses on the cosmos. His book is a fascinating story of how humankind has experienced time looking back over 40,000 years of history. It is an ambitious project that sent my mind traveling in countless directions. He relates our everyday experience of time over the ages to our continuous
RED MOON and NEW YORK 2140 Here is what I love about Kim Stanley Robinson – his books are smart, really smart. In both of these books he weaves science, politics, economics, culture, relationships, history, deeply into the stories. Some science fiction is based on imagination, some on research. The knowledge base he shares in
I have been listening to this book in my car. Yesterday’s trip to Fort Worth (to see the Kimbell Museum’s exhibition of Monet’s late work) brought me to the end of Circe. As a student of Latin in junior and senior high school, and someone who took “Greek and Roman Mythology” as an elective in
At the library we receive all sorts of interesting donations and in the process of summer cleaning, I picked up a set of TIME-LIFE books with the overarching title, Mysteries of the Unknown. I have one on my desk called “Spirit Summonings” and have perused others such as “Witchcraft” and “Phantom Encounters”. These books are a
I have just, really just, begun this book and am so knocked out that I am having a difficult time getting through the first chapter, which acts as a sort of introduction. This book is about landscape and language, how each shapes the other. And how this lexical specificity can in turn shape our understanding
The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure is a novel I picked up from a free little library near my house in Woodland, Calif. Paris is a place that I love, so I thought this might bring me there for a little while– it definitely worked! The story is about an architect, Lucien, who works for
A good story can be told many ways and this book came to me first as a movie preview in the local independent movie theater. I love independent movie theaters with their combination of cult kitsch and intellectual superiority. I love being in old architecture, just being there soaking up the gilded plaster, heavy drapery
What an engrossing book! Part philosophy, part cultural history, an intriguing walk through the mind of a man who was one of the preeminent designers and furniture makers of the 20th century. Filled with photographs and beautiful sketches of trees/wood/tools, Nakashima shares his personal history and beliefs alongside his approach to, and reverence for,
Seasonal Reading 