TPC-CultureVultures

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Book Lists - Part II

So I read a ton of books from that list and felt all happy and satisfied. For a while. A very small while. Here's what the list looked like after I totted up what I'd read:

Book List 2008

Not too shabby, wouldn't you say? In some eight months or so of dedicated reading, interspersed with film, writing, and beratement of beasties? Cooking? Gardening? Cleaning house? Visiting parental units, even. Not too shabby. We start out with 165 books (an idiot's hopeless dream by any standards), read 83 of them and end with 82:

Book List 2008, Revised

But are your hosts at this fine blog happy and satisfied with that? Hell, no. What, you ask, did the stupid buggers do?

What else but add another fucking mountain of books to the list. By way of excuse, I offer the following: there really is a gigantoshitload of books in this fucking house and it's getting really tiresome having to wend one's way between them. And furthermore: I really do get rid of some of them, sell, donate, give away, and like that, so there actually is a possibility that I will, someday see my floor.

But, on to the next piece of self-excoriation.

Critic

Friday, January 9, 2009

Happy Birthday, Joan Baez!

From today's Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of the folk singer and activist Joan Baez, born on Staten Island in 1941. Her mother was from Scotland, and her father was a physicist from Mexico. She grew up in California, playing rock and roll on the guitar. When Joan was a teenager, the Baez family moved to Boston, and she started hanging out with folk singers and learning their ballads. She was 18 years old when she performed at the Newport Folk Festival for an audience of 13,000.

The first song I ever heard Joan Baez sing is this one ... and I loved it ...

Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word
by Bob Dylan

Seems like only yesterday
I left my mind behind
Down in the Gypsy Cafe
With a friend of a friend of mine
She sat with a baby heavy on her knee
Yet spoke of life most free from slavery
With eyes that showed no trace of misery
A phrase in connection first with she I heard
That love is just a four-letter word

Outside a rambling store-front window
Cats meowed to the break of day
Me, I kept my mouth shut, too
To you I had no words to say
My experience was limited and underfed
You were talking while I hid
To the one who was the father of your kid
You probably didn't think I did, but I heard
You say that love is just a four-letter word

I said goodbye unnoticed
Pushed towards things in my own games
Drifting in and out of lifetimes
Unmentionable by name
Searching for my double, looking for
Complete evaporation to the core
Though I tried and failed at finding any door
I must have thought that there was nothing more
Absurd than that love is just a four-letter word

Though I never knew just what you meant
When you were speaking to your man
I can only think in terms of me
And now I understand
After waking enough times to think I see
The Holy Kiss that's supposed to last eternity
Blow up in smoke, its destiny
Falls on strangers, travels free
Yes, I know now, traps are only set by me
And I do not really need to be
Assured that love is just a four-letter word

Copyright ©1967; renewed 1995 Special Rider Music

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Ms. Manitoba: Books Read in 2008

Keeping a list like this started a couple of years ago. My dear dear friend, PolCat, suggested that, at the beginning of the year, I make a list of all the books I’d like to read in that year. The list I make at the beginning is a guide and I shouldn’t be rigid about it. Read with freedom -- read anything I like ... but there’s the list to guide me when I want that. Then, at the end of the year, make a list of the books I actually have read. So this is the list of books I read in 2008. In this list I give a short critique but I rarely tell what the book is about. I figure you can look it up on amazon.com. But sometimes I do because I want to say something about the story or plot.

I am NOT including my list BOOKS TO READ IN 2008 that I sent out in January 2008. It’s just too humiliating. Yes, I know, that list is just a guide. But ... I only read four ... count them ... four measly books from the list!!!! My goal is to make my January 2009 list much more reasonable. [If you really do want to check my list from last January, go here.]

One thing that I’m happy with is that I read more satisfying books this year ... especially in the last six months.

My biggest failure: The Fate of Elephants by Doug Chadwick. Why? I’ve been trying to finish this book for four years now. Folks, it is just too sad. I just can’t take it. And my biggest fear is that this book is at least 15 years old ... and I fear that the fate of elephants has gone from bad to worse. I think of it as a failure because it’s an interesting book on the behavior of elephants. But the sad stuff outweighs the interesting stuff in my mind.

Note: Do not judge me harshly ... I am a slow reader. It's like I'm making a movie of the book in my head ... it's *that* slow!

Prep: A Novel - Curtis Sittenfeld
Didn’t finish
Not sure what to say. The writing was good. I think the main character just got on my nerves too much. Her insecurities really bugged me. Funny thing is that the way she dealt with her insecurities was the way I dealt with mine when I was an older teenager and in my early 20’s. I guess the main character just hit too many nerves attached to things in myself that I despised.

Nickel and Dimed - Barbara Ehrenreich
I loved it. It was a page turner. It was a nice balance of serious ... serious stuff about work lives of the full-time, barely-making-it workers ... mixed with Ehrenreich’s biting sense of humor. Oh, and it brought back memories of all those jobs (I’ve had a million of ‘em!) that paid shit and humiliated you at least 8 times a day. Highly recommended.

At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays - Anne Fadiman
I love Fadiman. I loved her Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader -- an excellent book about reading. At Large and At Small was very good too. But Ex Libris was the better book. Still: Recommended without hesitation.

Granny Torrelli Makes Soup - Sharon Creech
Creech is a good writer. This one was so-so. Pleasant. Not that interesting or well-written or funny, though. Do I recommend it? No. Don’t waste your time. Okay, if you’re 10 go ahead ... you probably have plenty of time to waste. But me, no.

Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
Oh, my god. What do I say about this? It’s just a rich, excellently written story with lots of interesting action and characters. Bonus: Rushdie has a wicked wicked WICKED sense of humor. And, did I say that the writing is to die for? Envy the size of an elephant inhabited my body as I was reading this ... however, it didn’t take any pleasure away from the reading of it. Okay, I’m gonna get bossy now: Put it on your to-do list.

A Bird in the House - Margaret Laurence
Interesting inter-related stories. Set in Manitoba. However, this is a tricky one to recommend ... would someone NOT from Manitoba think it was as interesting? Dunno. I would guess not. Although Laurence did get a lot of acclaim by folks in the U.S. for her books. I wish the NY Times reviewers would say that to us when they review books: “Would somone NOT from Manitoba think it was interesting?” They never say that. They always assume that we will be as interested in a book as they are. [Okay, I’m guilty of that too. See my entry for Midnight’s Children.]

Esperanza Rising - Pam Munoz Ryan
Oh, this was good. Very good. Recommended. It was really successful in placing the reader right there in the midst of a labor camp.

Mortal Stakes - Robert B. Parker
Plot thin and, therefore, unmemorable. I’ll probably be able to read it again in 6 months and not remember what happened in the plot. He’s good at dialog though and that’s why I kept reading it.

Bronx Primitive: Portraits in a Childhood - Kate Simon
Part of my New York City research for my story ... that I haven’t written a word of this year, by the way. But, I’m still doing the “research” ... which means reading books about NYCity, Ireland, and Canada (especially about French Canadians) ... things I’d want to read anyway.

Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of ARTMAKING - David Bayles and Ted Orland
Another so-so one. PolCat was reading it so, of course, I wanted to read it too ... because I follow her around like a puppy dog. I heard her praise it and now I wonder if she really liked it all the way through? It’s a thin book and I did get something from it. It’s very encouraging to artists of various stripes and plaids and dots: just do it. So, I did take away this message in my brain to keep working at it -- my photography, videography, writing. But, I guess I wanted more.

The Carniverous Carnival - Lemony Snicket [audio cd]
Wonderful. So good. Highly Recommended. See next one.

The Grim Grotto- Lemony Snicket [audio cd]
Wonderful. So good. Highly Recommended. See next one.

The Penultimate Peril - Lemony Snicket [audio cd]
I think the writer Lemony Snicket is very very good. He makes allusions to other stories or parts of stories in literature that fit so nicely in the story he is creating. So it adds this rich layer. I am a champion of children’s literature. An ex of mine is the person who really showed me how wonderful children’s literature can be. I often enjoy children’s books better than mainstream “adult” novels. On top of the author’s creativity, this audio cd series is read by Tim Curry. Tim Curry is so talented! He is such a good reader for this series. The voices he invents are interesting and often hilarious. PolCat, break through this prejudice you have! Listening to a book on tape/cd can be even richer than moving your eyeballs across a page. Come on, Babe, shake up those 100 billion neurons and come over to the dark side.

Map of Ireland: A Novel - Stephanie Grant
Complex story of a 16 year old Irish American working class girl in South Boston. Very well written. Complex story about race and class ... and being a lesbian. The characters were finely defined. Highly recommended.

Riding in Cars with Boys - Beverly D’Onofrio
This book -- like many books these days -- could have used a few more drafts. I expected more from Beverly D'Onofrio ... and I really wanted to like this book. I grew up near D'Onofrio around the same time. So, I enjoyed reading about that time and place. But Ms. D'Onofrio could have gone deeper. She wrote about all her wildness, drinking, drug abuse. But what got her out of all that? Just going to college? Just growing up? I wanted more. Plus, I didn't think the writing was very good. I think part of the problem with a lot of books these days is that publishing houses don't have the staff they used to. So, writers really do not get edited like they used to. Books are being released when really they could use two or three (or more) drafts.

Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man - Wendelin Van Draanen
It was fun but not more than that.

The Great Gilly Hopkins - Katherine Paterson
My daughter recommended this book. And, we listened to it in the car to and fro. We loved it! The story is fascinating and the characters are wonderful. It’s the story of an 11 or 12 year-old girl who has become hardened and deceitful because of her experiences as a foster child that is moved around to different families. She’s white and has grown up racist ... but this changes ... not in a sudden epiphany (how rare those are!) ... slowly ... organically. I highly recommend this book. Yes, yes, PolCat, we didn’t read it with our eyes ... we listened to it on cd from the library. It’s a great story to listen to on a trip. [Berkeley to Oakland and back again is not what I would really call a “trip” ... but if I were going on a trip, it would be perfect.]

A Freewheelin’ Time - Suze Rotolo
This book is for the most part, but not entirely, about the time that Rotolo was lovers with Bob Dylan. She's an interesting person so I was also interested in the stories about her time in Italy, her life as an artist, her upbringing as a working class red diaper baby, her experiences in Greenwich Village, the people she knew in the folksinging world there in the Village. Then, of course, there's Dylan. Interesting stuff. However, her writing was often flat and the ending was disappointing. She skips chunks of time. I would have liked to know more about her evolution as an artist and the ways she may have struggled to keep being a creative person. I do recommend it to those of you who are interested in that period of time and Greenwich Village.
28 Feb 2011 - Update: The New York Times ArtBeat blog is reporting that Suze Rotolo has died. May she rest in peace. Our sincere condolences to her loved ones. To read more, go here.

Proof a play - David Auburn
A really interesting play. I wish I’d seen it in the theater; nonetheless, it was a pleasure to read. Not great super quote-filled writing, in my humble opinion. But a very interesting plot. And, with the right cast, it could have made good theater.

Lush Life - Richard Price
I thought it was very good at plunking you down in this particular group of settings. He’s good at characterization. Very good at dialog. It’s set in NYCity so I love that. I”m not recommending though ... the ending is a bit of a let down. I’m not sure why I say that because in many ways the end was satisfying. In a novel, dénouement is tricky ... it’s a very tricky part of the book. Maybe my letdown was just a natural letdown due to the dénouement ... after you read a story that absorbed you. Here’s another thing: I didn’t like any of the characters. That bothers me when I read.

Is it a sign of true maturity when you can really like a book even though you don’t like any of the characters? Dunno. I think it’s a sign of maturity when you can recognize that a writer is really good at writing even though you dislike the characters. For example, I thought the plotting and writing in Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter was really good. Really good. But I intensely disliked everyone. And, ultimately, that means I wouldn’t recommend a book I felt that way about. Maybe I’m being unfair ... because what if that was Porter’s intention all along ... to portray these characters so that we wouldn’t like them? Back to Lush Life: I’m not recommending it because the further away from reading the book I am, I’ve been thinking: yeah, so what was so great? There was something large that was missing for me.

All is Well - John McGahern
This was a painful book to read. Extremely painful. But so very well-written. I feel that I’ve really lucked out this year -- I’ve really read a lot of good books. And, I must say, I’ve needed them. What’s so painful in this book? The father is so cruel. Unbearably cruel at times. I had a very hard time getting through those parts. Cruel fathers. They get to me. Too close to me own experience. But this book is so good and there is so much love in it too. And the protagonist is such a strong human being -- flawed, yes, but strong. I have a lot of admiration for McGahern. Highly recommended.

The Burglar on the Prowl - Lawrence Block
Very good as usual. Block is one of my favorite mystery writers. There was one line in it that I didn’t like about date rape -- it was too flip. Other than that, I enjoyed it very much.

In the Midst of Death - Lawrence Block
Another good one by Block. This one is in the Matt Scudder series. Recommended.

Housekeeping vs. The Dirt - Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby is a national treasure. However, he’s not *our* national treasure. He’s from the UK. I haven’t read any of his novels so I don’t know about those. But I’ve read The Polysyllabic Spree last year which has the same form and setup as Housekeeping vs. The Dirt. These are all essays that have been published in Believer ... the magazine published by those strongly opinionated young folk in the City by the Fey -- Hornby calls them “The Polysyllabic Spree”. Each chapter is a month’s essay. The chapter starts with a list of Books Bought on the left side of the page. On the right side of the page is a list called Books Read. And they never match up. Then Hornby goes off and describes books he’s read or heard about and wants to read .... and anything else that is related to those two things that he wants to talk about. He’s funny too. This is like a perfect book for me. Highly recommended. Now I want to read his novels.

Wounded - Percival Everett
I recommend it. First, the writing is so very very good. The writing is so good you are there in the action, living and breathing and walking with the characters. Plus, the characters are so interesting and well-formed -- so much so, that you don't even feel that they are characters -- they're real people. At least I wished they were and I wished I could go visit them. Right now. Mr. Everett is also tackling some tough subjects: an anti-gay hate crime and a prickly gay man; racism in Wyoming and the rest of America; disappointment and betrayal in marriage; cruelty towards animals. Big topics. And he treats them with sensitivity, respect, and intelligence.

Garbo Laughs - Elizabeth Hay
Elizabeth Hay is my new discovery. I recommend her highly. I fear saying that because people then have such high expectations. (Oh, look at me, thinkin’ that my opinion matters!!) What Hay does so well is take ordinary people and make them so interesting. She finds their quirks and writes about them really well. And, as a bonus, she’s Canadian -- woohoo!

Late Nights on Air - Elizabeth Hay
This one is set in the small town of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories -- a province in Canada. Most of the characters work late at night for a government-sponsored radio station where they can play about anything they like. It’s set in the 70’s. Well written. Characters are very interesting -- real people with interesting problems. I really liked this book. Hay is very good at characterization.

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
This is as close to a perfect book as can be. Do I need to say more?

Pegasus Descending - James Lee Burke
James Lee Burke is so good. I love how he makes me feel like I’m right there in New Iberia, Louisiana. Recommended. He’s a very good writer.

A Thanksgiving Memory - Truman Capote
I love to read this around Thanksgiving. What really turned me on to this was an unabridged recording that I had years ago narrated by Celeste Holm. Her narration transformed you into the world. It’s one of the best narrations I’ve ever listened to. I’ve searched for it on the web and it’s out of print. Dang!! I’d love to have it again. I remember there was a Thanksgiving or two in my life years ago when I felt so alone in the world and listening to this story just eased that pain. It connected me to something greater. Don’t ask what that was. This story reminds me of what a great writer Capote could be. Too bad his addictions got to him.

Ghosting: A Double Life - Jennie Erdal
This is a nonfiction story about Erdal’s experiences being a ghostwriter for an extremely demanding and flamboyant London-based Palestinian-born publisher (Naim Attallah) whom she calls “Tiger.” Her description of Tiger’s attire: "The plumage is a wonder to behold, a large sapphire in the lapel of a bold striped suit, a vivid silk tie so bright that it dazzles, and when he flaps his wings the lining of his jacket glints and glistens like a prism." She wrote blurbs, articles, press releases, love letters, newspaper columns, and two highly acclaimed literary novels -- for him, under his name. Love letters!!!! I found the first half very entertaining, funny, and interesting. However, after a while I just felt tense while reading it. Her complaints and descriptions about his demands grew tiresome. I just kept muttering to myself: Quit, for god’s sake, quit!!!! Here’s an example of how he ruled her life: He had a “hotline” installed in her home. It was a phone that she used only in communicating with him. When it rang, everything stopped in her household -- no matter the time -- so that she could talk to Tiger and satisfy his needs. Luckily, none of these needs were sexual. Amazingly, she worked for him for 20 years. To defend him just a little: He was very very generous to her and helped her save her home when her first husband deserted her early on in her career. If you’re like me though, you’ll just get exhausted with the story in the last half. So, here’s what I’ll do: I’ll recommend it for the first half of the book. But no further. Her writing is very good. I hope she goes on to be a successful writer on her own projects.

Seen It All and Done the Rest - Pearl Cleage
I got this one out of the library and, at first, was put off by the cover art -- it made the book look fluffy to me. But this story is a damn good read. I love the characters. And the characters are actually doing interesting things in their lives and connecting. Connecting is a big thing with me. If you don’t connect with other people, what good is life? The writing is smooth and engaging. I want to read more from Pearl Cleage. This was the first book of hers that I’ve read even though I’ve read about her for years.

The Cater Street Hangman - Anne Perry
Friends of mine have recommended Anne Perry for years. She has a couple of series. This is the first in Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series. I am so very lucky that my friend, P., sent me a stack of them to read as I recover from my knee surgery. I thought this novel was soooooooooo good! Definitely recommended. Perry builds up tension very artfully. The rapport between Charlotte and Thomas is great -- they first meet in this story. It’s a great look at what happens to a community when they realize that there’s a serial killer in their midst. Plus, lots of good stuff about class: Charlotte comes from an upper middle class family while Thomas is “common.”

Callendar Square - Anne Perry
Continuation in the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series. Very good. Class differences come out even more. Of course, recommended.

Th ... th ... th ... that's all folks!!!

Monday, December 29, 2008

Harold Pinter: Death may be ageing, but he still has clout

Pinter did what Auden said a poet should do. He cleaned the gutters of the English language, so that it ever afterwards flowed more easily and more cleanly. We can also say that over his work and over his person hovers a sort of leonine, predatory spirit which is all the more powerful for being held under in a rigid discipline of form, or in a black suit...The essence of his singular appeal is that you sit down to every play he writes in certain expectation of the unexpected. In sum, this tribute from one writer to another: you never know what the hell's coming next.

-- David Hare in Harold Pinter: A Celebration

My first experience with Harold Pinter’s work was in college when I took a Theatre of the Absurd course. It was one of my favorite classes while I was in college. It actually made me think ... and, it was a small class (some of my classes had 400+ students in them) so you could participate in some interesting discussions. I admired him from the first.

As Carey Perloff says about him:

Pinter had immense respect for the mystery, the privacy, the "unknowingness," of the people in his plays. This is rare in a writer. Pinter knew that his characters were hidden, silent, often lying, always evading. His job was to listen acutely to what they were willing to say, and wait for the moment when their masks would drop.

I loved that about his plays. I often didn't know exactly what was going on ... but I was feeling something intense anyway. His words were tapping into something core without explaining things to death.

Later, I got to know more about his politics and I admired him for that too. He was so outspoken when so many other writers, actors, and artists do nothing. From the article about him in Wikipedia:

In accepting an honorary degree at the University of Turin (27 November 2002), he stated: "I believe that [the United States] will [attack Iraq] not only to take control of Iraqi oil, but also because the American administration is now a bloodthirsty wild animal. Bombs are its only vocabulary." Distinguishing between "the American administration" and American citizens, he added the following qualification: "Many Americans, we know, are horrified by the posture of their government but seem to be helpless."

We mourn the loss of another great soul. May he be at rest.

Death May Be Ageing

Death may be ageing
But he still has clout

But death disarms you
With his limpid light

And he's so crafty
That you don't know at all

Where he awaits you
To seduce your will
And to strip you naked
As you dress to kill

But death permits you
To arrange your hours

While he sucks the honey
From your lovely flowers

Harold Pinter
April 2005

Another poem by Harold Pinter:

Laughter
Laughter dies out but is never dead

Laughter lies out the back of its head

Laughter laughs at what is never said

It trills and squeals and swills in your head

It trills and squeals in the heads of the dead

And so all the lies remain laughingly spread

Sucked in by the laughter of the severed head

Sucked in by the mouths of the laughing dead.

To see an interview of Harold Pinter on Charlie Rose's show, go here. If you'd like to see Harold Pinter's Nobel lecture upon accepting his Nobel award, go here.

And, in today's San Francisco Chronicle, there is a wonderful piece by Carey Perloff, artistic director of San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater (ACT). She quotes him in the article: "When you can't write, you feel as if you've been banished from yourself." If you'd like to read the entire article, please click here.

Eartha Friendly: RIP Eartha Kitt

My, my. There are so many wonderful things about getting older ... but the hardest thing is when people you admire or love ... pass on. The hardest.

Sorry this is late ... meant no disrespect, Ms. Kitt. PolCat and I have been having our troubles with our knees -- that’s why these entries/memorials are a few days late. We co-write this blog and the sister blog The Political Cat. Although I must say, PolCat does most of the writing for The Political Cat. I’m recovering from a total knee joint replacement operation on Dec 1st. Part of that recovery is catching up on my sleep and doing killer therapy exercises for my knee. Killer. But they must be done. I wrote in my journal the other day: “ I feel like the Tinman ... my knee, thirsty for oil.” It gets stiff so quickly. I have to keep bending it then straightening it. And lots of other goody exercises to build up strength. I don’t have quite the oomph some days to do anything productive.

Eartha Kitt. I have always always been attracted to her. Yes, she’s incredibly sexy. She knows [damn it! “knew” ... still in denial] how to use her voice and entire body to get attention. But, not to be a prude -- no one has ever accused Ms. Manitoba of being a prude -- I was always drawn to her intelligence and mischievous wit too. She was always interesting and you never knew what she was going to say. Tangent alert!! I was just reading a biography about Jane Austen by the Manitoban writer and Pulitzer Prize winner, Carol Shields. It’s part of the Penguin Lives series. Shields was talking about how in Austen’s day and milieu intelligence was considered a negative factor when men were courting a woman. Sigh. Why is that? I’ve never understood that. Jamais! Intelligence has always always been a turn-on for me.

And isn’t “Santa, Baby” one of the all-time sexiest songs you have ever heard? Her voice is so wonderful.

Also ... she was a brave woman who followed her beliefs and principles. I will always remember how she spoke up at the luncheon given by the First Lady of the time, Lady Bird Johnson. Ms. Kitt spoke up against the war and how President Johnson was sending young men to their deaths -- for what? That took courage. She paid for it too. She lost a lot of jobs after that.

We mourn. It is those of us left behind who suffer. To Ms. Kitt’s family, we send our warm regards. She will be greatly missed.

Some quotes by Ms. Eartha Kitt ...

Having my animals or my children with me exorcises that feeling of not being wanted.

I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.

I punish myself more than anybody else does if I am stupid about my actions, and I suffer, really suffer.

I was given away. If your mother gives you away, you think everybody who comes into your life is going to give you away.

I've always said to my men friends, If you really care for me, darling, you will give me territory. Give me land, give me land.

Let's take care of the necessities first: give people jobs, and find a way to get us out of poverty.

My house was bugged. They couldn't find any information on me being a subversive because I happen to love America; I just don't like some of the things the government is doing.

My recipe for life is not being afraid of myself, afraid of what I think or of my opinions.

The public has become my fairy godmother.

The river is constantly turning and bending and you never know where it's going to go and where you'll wind up. Following the bend in the river and staying on your own path means that you are on the right track. Don't let anyone deter you from that.

When the people who are responsible for our country ask you a direct question, I expect them to accept a direct answer, not to be blackballed because you are telling the truth.

When we want to have our own style of living, it is nobody's business but ours. What we do in private is our private business.

To read an obiturary about Eartha Kitt, please go here. You must register -- but it is free. And there's more about her on Wikipedia ... go here for that.

Peace and rest.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

A Scene in My Head ...

"I wasn't put on this Earth to make you feel like a man."
-- Franz Kafka

I imagine a scene. George W. Bush is standing on the ground somewhere ... a square, green, or plaza. Every child, woman, and man who feels like doing so can walk right up to him and say:

"I wasn't put on this Earth to make you feel like a man."

[By the way, 37 days left.]

Sunday, November 23, 2008

I Can Has Cheezburger

more animals

I love this one!

Ms. Manitoba is often waaaaay behind the times. I just started looking in on the blog I Can Has Cheezburger. I'm about to have knee-replacement surgery so to relieve the stress of it I am reading funny stuff more often ... watching funny movies ... etc.

You can sign up on the I Can Has Cheezburger blog to get emails of their photos w/ captions. Go here.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

David Letterman: You're an Asshole and a Bigot!

And, James Franco, you're a wimp!

Did you see James Franco being interviewed by David Letterman last night? The interview was about Franco's involvement with the movie Milk. He plays Harvey Milk's lover. So, of course, the asshole interviewer has to pull out those old tired jokes: "So, how drunk did you have to be to kiss Sean Penn?'

Old? Tired? YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

I am so sick of those kinds of jokes. We lesbiqueerTrans folk have had to endure these stupid questions our whole lives. Bigots, do you get it? It is homophobic to ask those kinds of questions. You're all trying to act so liberal because you're actually talking about queers ... but you really think that we are literally Q-U-E-E-R. The whole dialog is about your discomfort with our sexuality -- it has nothing to do with us and our magnificent sexuality.

I mean really, James Franco, the whole point of the movie is liberation from homophobia so how come you couldn't say something strong about this issue to David Letterman?

Be an ally. A true ally. Not some fake Hollywood "Oh-I-voted-against-Prop-8" kinda ally. Be real. Put yourself on the line .... like we have to in our jobs sometimes. Good golly -- grow a backbone!!!

Another thing: YOU ARE ACTORS!!! You act all kinds of things that are not about you as a person. Stick up for yourself as an actor ... don't get all kinds of squirmy when people ask "How could you kiss Sean Penn?" I'm a lesbian and I don't think it would be a big deal to kiss Sean Penn if I were acting!!!! So, that's why I think this entire line of questioning is homophobic.

Have some class like Susan Sarandon when someone asked that stupid question of her ... in The Hunger she kissed Catherine Deneuve: "Who wouldn't want to kiss Catherine Deneuve?"

I've always really respected Susan Sarandon for that.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

This Week's New YOrker

Have you seen this week's New Yorker cover?

Gorgeous ... clever ... and meaningful.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Go see "I Have Loved You So Long": c'est magnifique!

Today I went to see Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (I Have Loved You So Long). I’ve read several reviews that raved about it so I went with some skepticism. No need. It is so very good. I highly recommend it.

To generalize wildly ... there are two kinds of European arty films:

ones that tell the story slowly and are boring
ones that tell the story slowly -- but with great precision and artfulness -- and puts me on the edge of my seat -- my attention is razor sharp wanting to catch every moment

Il y a longtemps que je t'aime is like the second kind. The director tells the story just so ... with small (and large) surprises along the way. Several scenes are only about 30 seconds long. So much told in those seconds. Artfully told. The actors are their characters -- deeply so. The writing is crisp as toast.

The story is about a woman, Juliette, (played by Kristin Scott Thomas) who has just been released from 15 years in prison. She was convicted for murder. She is picked up by her much younger sister who has a family. Juliette goes to live with her sister. Her sister’s family is interesting: husband, husband’s father who cannot speak due to a stroke, and two adopted daughters (around 8 years old and 3 years old). At least one of the daughters is from Vietnam (maybe both).

I will say no more. Do not read any articles about this movie that will reveal more than I have. You want the story to unfold while you’re sitting in the theater -- not before you go.

If Kirstin Scott Thomas does not win the Oscar for this, I will weep ... and be resentful for days.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

El Dia de los Muertos

Some poems from the wonderful website El Dia de los Muertos ...

?Que es la Muerte? Es el vaso de la vida roto en mil
pedazos y el alma dispersa como el perfume, que se
escapa de un pomo, en el silencio de la noche
eternal.

Autor anonimo

Fuente: Poema originado en Michoacan- Through the Eyes of the Soul, Day of the Dead in Mexico

What is Death?

What is death? It is the glass of life broken into a
thousand pieces, where the soul disperses like
perfume from a flask, into the silence of the eternal
night.

Unknown Author

Source: Poem found in Michoacan- Through the Eyes of the Soul, Day of the Dead in Mexico

Titulo Desconocido 2

Hace tiempo que no la veo,
hace tiempo que no la visto,
desde el ultimo dia
en que fui a su tumba
a llevarle flores.
Ayer tome el camino grande
que va al camposanto
y me percate de cuan grande
e innolvidable es su recuerdo.
Hace tiempo que no la veo
hace tiempo que no la visito.

Ignacio Garcia Cuevas

Fuente: Poema originado en Oaxaca- Through the Eyes of the Soul, Day of the Dead in Mexico

Unnamed 2

It has been so long since I have seen her,
it has been so long since I have visited her,
since the last day
I went to her tomb
to bring her flowers

Yesterday I took the long road
to the cemetery
and I realized how profound
and unforgettable is her memory.

It has been so long since I have seen her,
it has been so long since I have visited her.

Ignacio Garcia Cuevas

Source: Poem found in Oaxaca- Through the Eyes of the Soul, Day of the Dead in Mexico

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Halloween, oh yes ... oh my

Monday, October 6, 2008

Quotes from Books: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Tea, of course, made the problem seem smaller, as it always does, and by the time they finally reached the bottom of their cups and Mma Makutsi had reached for the slightly chipped tea pot to pour a refill it had become clear what they had to do.

-- from The Full Cupboard of Life: More from the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

by Alexander McCall Smith

Friday, October 3, 2008

Forgotten by K. Smokey Cormier

There are a couple of feral cats in the neighborhood. One lives under my house, a gray tabby, thin and furtive. The other looks like my cat, Boomer -- all black, like Boomer, but rib-and-bones thin. Boomer is lean and muscular, one of the handsomest cats I’ve ever seen. So often I have wondered: What should I do about the cat under the house? I have seen the feral black one on and off for three years or so.

Two days ago I saw it lying, dead in the yard next door, close to my yard. I could have reached in and touched it or pulled it to me, gather it into a bag. I was leaving for work and didn’t want to take the time. “I’ll call the animal control people to come and take it away,” I thought to myself. Forgot by the time I got to work. Came home late that night. Dark. The cat, unseen and forgotten.

Yesterday, I reminded myself again. The day went on. The ants and flies feasted. Came home. Something had moved the dead cat. Now it was in my yard. Near the opening where the other cat slips into my crawl space. What moved the black cat? Was it the other feral cat? Was the live cat eating the dead cat? Cannibalism? Too upsetting to think about.

My daughters are very upset. Death has been too close lately.

Now I’ve really got to do something. But my furniture is in the back yard and my daughter and I have to move it indoors before the rain comes. Forgotten still.

Today. I call the animal control people. They only come for large animals. Cats are too small. This one is very small. Adult, but small. I have to bring it in myself. Meself? Me? There’s a cartoon character inside my head getting panicky. A detective too: Who or what the hell moved that cat?

I take the kids to school. And after all my phone conferences, I put on a pair of latex gloves, the color of marrow. I get two plastic garbage bags. I’ll double-bag it. I tell myself: Be strong. Act like your father. He’s probably done this a million times. (Yes, I used the present tense.) Don’t act like a silly girl. (The 50’s come back so quickly.)

Deep breath. OK. How am I going to do this? Should I use my barbecuing tongs and then throw them away? Really, could I ever use them again without thinking of this and getting nauseous? Or am I actually going to pick it up with my hands? Gloved, yes, but still. Still. Very still. But the insect life is very active. Ants have removed most of its face, but its ears are intact. Flies are swarming like bees. Will I vomit? My father’s voice is yelling: “Just pick it up by its hind legs and put it in the plastic bag!” I obey. The smell is intense. A living thing and, now, not living. Organic material smells very organic. Body smells of a haunting kind. Living things crawling within the dead thing. Of everything, it’s the flies that bother me the most. Will one land on my face?

“She’s a brick.” My dad’s uncle used to say of me after drilling my teeth without novocaine.

Somehow I concentrate and get the job done. Now what? Will it smell up my car for a long long time? Because I can very easily smell it through the two bags.

All windows D-O-W-N.

I drive to an industrial part of town. I am so relieved to be there. I walk in and the guy behind the counter greets me nicely then notices the bag. “I don’t think that’s a Christmas present. Okay, I’ll take it here.”

Done. Soon to be forgotten. Or not.

(c) 2008 K. Smokey Cormier

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Ms. Manitoba's Halloween Card for Canadians

:-P

Paul Newman, RIP

Warner Brothers/Seven Arts

Ms. Manitoba is greatly saddened by the news that Paul Newman has passed. He was one of the greats.

If you haven't seen Empire Falls yet, please do see it. It's one of his last roles and he was wonderful in it.

The NYTimes has a very good obit for him. Go here.

Our condolences to all of his loved ones.

Ms. Manitoba's Halloween cards ... coming soon

Friday, September 12, 2008

Photos of Amanda Means

I love very simple photos. Well, seemingly simple. Like a beautifully tight piece of writing, a lot of work goes into simple photos. You can see some really elegant ones here. They're by a photographer called Amanda Means and they're on the NYTimes website so you need to register to access them -- but registration is free. Make sure you scroll down and see the photos of the sweaty glass.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Excerpt from Garbo Laughs ...

From a wonderful book I'm now reading (Garbo Laughs by Canadian author, Elizabeth Hay):

Yes, everyone is writing a book. Leah too. But at the same time I've spent years watching people who want to write avoid writing: Leah too. She's stuck, and now she's come to me. We spring away from the page as if it's a trampoline. Fear, self-pity, laziness -- that's the trampoline we bounce upon, while down below, fading from view in a sickening fashion, is the grassy, private paradise of writing.

----------------

[climbing on soapbox for a moment]

When was the last time you read a book by a Canadian author?

Friday, September 5, 2008

Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Published on This Day in 1957

From the Writer's Almanac ... I want to post this today because there are so few French Canadians (or are they just invisible to us?) in U.S. literature ...

It was on this day in 1957 that Jack Kerouac's book On the Road was published (books by this author). His inspiration for the book came ten years earlier. He was living in New York City with his mother, trying to write his first novel, when he met a drifter named Neal Cassady, an ex-convict from Denver who had actually been born in a car, and who became a car thief when he was fourteen years old. By the time Kerouac met him, Cassady had stolen more than five hundred cars and had been arrested ten times. Kerouac later wrote, "All my other current friends were intellectuals ... [but Cassady] was a wild yea-saying overburst of American Joy."

Kerouac and Cassady became close friends, but Cassady eventually had to move back to Denver. Kerouac wanted to follow him. He started reading histories of the great American migrations out west. He studied maps of the new highways that ran all the way from the East Cost to California. He was particularly attracted to Route 6, drawn in a red line on his map, which led from Cape Cod to Los Angeles. He made up his mind to follow it all the way to Denver, where he could meet up with Neal Cassady. He scraped up enough money for the journey and set out in July of 1947.

Kerouac's journey did not start out well. He rode a trolley to the edge of Yonkers and then hoped to hitchhike the rest of the way across the country. But when he reached Route 6, at the border of Connecticut, he got caught in a rain storm and there were no cars to pick him up. He finally gave up, made his way back to New York, and used almost all his money to buy a bus ticket to Chicago.

He had better luck hitchhiking once he got outside of Chicago. When he crossed the Mississippi River, he began to feel that he was really part of the American West. In Omaha, he was amazed to see his first real cowboy, a man in boots and a ten-gallon hat. He rode all the way from Nebraska to Wyoming on the back of a flatbed truck with a group of hobos. He saw the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains for the first time.

When he finally made it to Denver, he met up with Cassady and his old friend Allen Ginsberg, and the three of them partied for weeks. Kerouac eventually moved on to San Francisco, where he worked odd jobs for a while. He finally took a bus back to New York City in October, and he was so broke that he had to panhandle for bus fare to get to his mom's house in Ozone Park.

Kerouac knew he wanted to use the experience for a novel, but he struggled with various fictional plotlines: a man in search of his father, a convict in search of his runaway daughter, a young man in search of his lost love, and so forth. He finally figured out how to write the book after receiving a series rambling letters from Cassady, one of which was 40,000 words long. He realized the novel had to be written about Cassady and in Cassady's own voice, which Kerouac described as "all first person, fast, mad, confessional ... with spew and rush, without halt, all unified and molten flow; no boring moments, everything significant and interesting, sometimes breathtaking in speed and brilliance."

So, in April of 1951, Kerouac sat down at his kitchen table, wound a continuous roll of paper into a typewriter, turned on an all-night Harlem jazz radio station, and in twenty days wrote the first draft of his new novel. The text was single-spaced, with no commas or paragraph breaks. Kerouac showed it to various publishers but they all turned him down.

He spent the next several years working on other novels, but finally in 1957, he decided to revise his novel to make it more acceptable, with paragraph breaks and normal punctuation. He went through many different titles, including "Souls on the Road," "American Road Night," "Home and the Road," "Love on the Road," and "Along the Wild Road," until he finally chose the simplest title: On the Road.

On the Road came out on this day in 1957, and a great review appeared in The New York Times. It became a best-seller at the time, and it still sells about 100,000 copies a year.

Notice how there's no mention of Kerouac's being French Canadian?

More from Wikipedia ...

Family and childhood

Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, in Lowell, Massachusetts to French-Canadian parents, Léo-Alcide Kerouac and Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque, natives of the province of Québec, Canada. Like many other Quebecers of their generation, the Lévesques and Kerouacs were part of the Quebec emigration to New England to find employment. His father was related to Brother Marie-Victorin (né Conrad Kirouac), one of Canada's most prominent botanists and his mother was second cousin to future Quebec premier René Lévesque.

Kerouac often gave conflicting stories about his family history and the origins of his surname. Though his father was born to a family of potato farmers in the village of St-Hubert, he often claimed aristocratic descent, sometimes from a Breton noble granted land after the Battle of Quebec, whose sons all married Native Americans. However, research has shown him to be the descendant of a middle-class merchant settler, whose sons married French Canadians. He was part Native American through his mother's largely Norman-side of the family. He also had various stories on the etymology of his surname, usually tracing it back to Irish, Breton, or other Celtic roots. In one interview he claimed it was the name of a dead Celtic language and in another said it was from the Irish for "language of the water" and related to "Kerwick".[2] The name, though Breton, seems to derive from the name of one of several hamlets in Brittany near Rosporden.[3]

Kerouac did not start to learn English until the age of six, and at home, he and his family spoke joual, a Quebec French dialect.[4][5] When he was four he was profoundly affected by the death of his nine-year-old brother, Gérard, from rheumatic fever, an event later described in his novel Visions of Gerard. Some of Kerouac's poetry was written in French, and in letters written to friend Allen Ginsberg towards the end of his life he expressed his desire to speak his parents' native tongue again. Recently, it was discovered that Kerouac first started writing On the Road in French, a language in which he also wrote two unpublished novels.[6] The writings are in dialectal Quebec French, and predate the first plays of Michel Tremblay by a decade.

Kirouac was the original spelling ... like so many immigrants, the immigration official at the door to the U.S. of A misspelled the name -- according to family members still living.

Like many other people, French Canadians in the U.S. are a kind of invisible ethnicity. Most people don't know much about us or our history. Like in the Writer's Almanac, we aren't even identified as French Canadians.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Dame Edna's Gynecologist

Here's an excerpt from a recent Jon Carroll column from the San Francisco Chronicle:

In 2003, Scott Simon had Dame Edna Everage in the studio, and wonderful, adorable chaos ensued. Dame Edna (who is, for the few who do not know, a character created by Australian comedian Barry Humphries) took over the show immediately and totally. At one point she complimented Simon (whom she invariably called "little Scott Simon") on his skill as an interviewer, in that he knew enough not to ask any questions.
Quite the best way to handle Dame Edna. I once did an onstage interview with Molly Ivins, and I adopted the same tactic. I asked a question, took a sip of water and listened for 20 minutes. Many people told me in all seriousness how sensitive my handling of her had been.

With Dame Edna, it's impossible to know what was material from one of her shows and what was created on the spot. I think there was an element of improvisation in a rather complicated riff about Julio Iglesias' father, who was, she said, her gynecologist. "He's very old now, and his hands shake. Of course, that's not necessarily a drawback."

At that point you can hear little Scott Simon pounding the desk and gasping. Thank God he was not required to ask questions, because at that moment he could not.

'nuff said.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Updated Book List Part 2

This is the new book list. As I said, it's pretty lengthy. And it will undergo further revision because I have a box full of books on Indian culture, history, politics, economy, etc., and a box full of books on China that need to go into this mix at some point.

Damn, I think I'm addicted to books. And I STILL haven't read all my Science News, dammit!

A History of Cambodia - David Chandler
A History of Malaysia - Barbara Watson Andaya & Leonard Andaya
A History of Modern Indonesia - M.C. Ricklefs
A History of Selangor - J. M. Gullick
A Will For Freedom - Romen Bose
Alexander the Great - W.W. Tarn
Between Two Oceans - Murkett, Miskic, Farrell, & Chiang
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
Blood on the Golden Sands - Lim Kean Siew
Broca's Brain - Carl Sagan
Chandranath - Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay
Chinese Customs - Henri Dore
Clay Walls - Kim Ronyoung
Daniel Deronda - George Eliot
Dictionary of the Khazars - Milorad Pavic
Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce
First Person Singular - Joyce Carol Oates
From Pacific War to Merdeka - James Wong Wing On
Gandhi's Truth - Erik H. Erikson
How I Adore You - Mark Pritchard
In The Time of The Butterflies - Julia Alvarez
Kempeitai, Japan's Dreaded Military Police - Raymond Lamont-Brown
Kempeitai:The Japanese Secret Service Then And Now - Richard Deacon
Labour Unrest in Malaya - Tai Yuen
Life As The River Flows - Agnes Khoo
Malay Folk Beliefs - Mohd Taib Osman
Malaysia - R. Emerson
Memory in Mind and Brain - Morton F. Reiser
Modern Japan, A Historical Survey - Hane Mikiso
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Murder on the Verandah - Eric Lawlor
Niels Lyhne - Jens Peter Jacobsen
Orientalism - Edward W. Said
Orlando - Virginia Woolf
Outwitting the Gestapo - Lucie Aubrac
Palli Samaj (The Homecoming) - Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay
Patchwork Shawl Chronicles of South Asian Women in America - Shamita Das Dasgupta
People's War, People's Army - Vo Nguyen Giap
Power Politics - Arundhati Roy
Primitive Art - Franz Boas
Raffles - Maurice Collis
Rehearsal for War - Ban Kah Choon & Yap Hong Kuan
Rethinking Raffles - Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied
Revolt in Paradise - K'tut Tantri
Rosie - Anne Lamott
Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye (The Biography Of A Master Film-Maker - Andrew Robinson
Screenwriting 434 - Lew Hunter
Shanghai Refuge, A Memoir of the WWII Jewish Ghetto - Ernest G. Heppner
Sherpas Through Their Rituals - Sherry B. Ortner
Shut Up, I'm Talking - Gregory Levey
Sisters in the Resistance - Margaret Collins Weitz
Soldiers Alive - Ishikawa Tatsuzo
Strangers Always A Jewish Family in Wartime Shanghai - Rena Krasno
Taming the Wind of Desire - Carol Laderman
The Art of the Novel - Milan Kundera
The Bengal Muslims 1871 - 1906 - Rafiuddin Ahmed
The Birth of Vietnam - Keith Weller Taylor
The British Humiliation of Burma - Terrence Blackburn
The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan
The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600 - 1800 - C.R. Boxer
The Emergence of Modern Turkey - Bernard Lewis
The Eye Over The Golden Sands - Lim Kean Siew
The Gift - Lewis Hyde
The Mak Nyahs: Malaysian Male to Female Transexuals - Teh Yik Koon
The March of Folly From Troy To Vietnam - Barbara W. Tuchman
The Nanking Massacre - M.E.Sharpe
The Origins of The Second World War in Asia and the Pacific - Iriye Akira
The Pacific War - Ienaga Saburo
The Plague - Albert Camus
The Price of Peace - Foong Choon Hon, Ed.
The Prince and The Discourses - Niccolo Machiavelli
The Remembered Village - M. N. Srinivas
The Right To Die - Derek Humphry & Ann Wickett
The Tin Drum - Gunther Grass
The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler
Till Morning Comes - Han Suyin
To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Tokyo Rose - Masayo Duus
Vietnam: A Long History - Nguyen Khac Vien
War & Memory in Malaysia & Singapore - P. Lim Pui Huen, Diana Wong, Eds.
Witness To An Era - Frank Moraes
Women in the Holocaust - Dalia Ofer, Lenore J. Weitzman, Eds.
Women, Outcastes, Peasants & Rebels - Kalpana Bardhan
Writers' Workshop in a Book - Cheuse and Alvarez
You'll Die in Singapore - Charles McCormac
You'll Never Get Off The Island - Keith Wilson
Your Memory — A User's Guide - Alan Baddeley

Updated Book List Part 1

Book review to follow.

So in January of this year, I posted a book list of 101 books. Here it is, in its original and (somewhat) pristine glory.

A Cloistered War - Maisie Duncan
A Field Guide To Writing Fiction - A.B. Guthrie Jr.
A History of Malaysia - Barbara Watson Andaya & Leonard Andaya
A History of Modern Indonesia - M.C. Ricklefs
A History of Selangor - J. M. Gullick
A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton
A Point of Light - Zhou Mei
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
A Will For Freedom - Romen Bose
Abraham's Promise - Philip Jeyaretnam
Agnes Smedley - J.R. & S.R. MacKinnon
Asian Labour In The Japanese Wartime Empire - Paul H. Kratoska, Ed.
Baba Nonnie Goes To War - Ron Mitchell
Between Two Oceans - Murkett, Miskic, Farrell, & Chiang
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
Chandranath - Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay
Chinese Customs - Henri Dore
Clay Walls - Kim Ronyoung
Daniel Deronda - George Eliot
Dictionary of the Khazars - Milorad Pavic
Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce
From Pacific War to Merdeka - James Wong Wing On
Golden Gate - Vikram Seth
How I Adore You - Mark Pritchard
In Pursuit of Mountain Rats - Anthony Short
In The Grip of a Crisis - Rudy Mosbergen
Kempeitai, Japan's Dreaded Military Police - Raymond Lamont-Brown
Kempeitai:The Japanese Secret Service Then And Now - Richard Deacon
Kim - Rudyard Kipling
Krait:The Fishing Boat That Went To War - Lynette Ramsay Silver
Kranji - Romen Bose
Labour Unrest in Malaya - Tai Yuen
Lest We Forget - Alice M. Coleman & Joyce E. Williams
Life As The River Flows - Agnes Khoo
Living Hell - Goh Chor Boon
Malay Folk Beliefs - Mohd Taib Osman
Malaya and Singapore During the Japanese Occupation - Paul H. Kratoska, Ed.
Malaysia - R. Emerson
Modern Japan, A Historical Survey - Hane Mikiso
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Night Butterfly - Tan Guan Heng
No Cowardly Past - James Puthucheary
Operation Matador - Ong Chit Chung
Orlando - Virginia Woolf
Outwitting the Gestapo - Aubrac
Palli Samaj (The Homecoming) - Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay
Power Politics - Arundhati Roy
Prehistory of the Indo-Malayan Archipelago - Peter Bellwood
Red Star Over Malaya - Cheah Boon Kheng
Rehearsal for War - Ban Kah Choon & Yap Hong Kuan
Revolt in Paradise - K'tut Tantri
Rosie - Anne Lamott
Rouge of the North - Chang Ai Ling
Shanghai Refuge, A Memoir of the WWII Jewish Ghetto - Ernest G. Heppner
Singapore & The Many-Headed Monster - Joe Conceicao
Sisters in the Resistance - Margaret Collins Weitz
Soldiers Alive - Ishikawa Tatsuzo
Strangers Always A Jewish Family in Wartime Shanghai - Rena Krasno
Taming the Wind of Desire - Carol Laderman
The Age of Diminished Expectations - Paul Krugman
The Art of the Novel - Milan Kundera
The Crippled Tree - Han Suyin
The Double Tenth Trial - C. Sleeman, S.C. Sillein, Eds.
The End of the War - Romen Bose
The Gift - Lewis Hyde
The Makioka Sisters - Junichiro Tanizaki
The Malay Archipelago - Alfred Russell Wallace
The Malayan Union Controversy, 1942-1948 - Albert Lau
The Marquis - A Tale of Syonan-To - S.J.H. Conner
The Nanking Massacre - M.E.Sharpe
The Origins of The Second World War in Asia and the Pacific - Iriye Akira
The Pacific War - Ienaga Saburo
The Plague - Albert Camus
The Price of Peace - Foong Choon Hon, Ed.
The Rape of Nanking - Iris Chang
The Tin Drum - Gunther Grass
The War in Malaya - A.E. Percival
The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler
Three Came Home - Agnes Newton Keith
To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Tokyo Rose - Masayo Duus
War & Memory in Malaysia & Singapore - P. Lim Pui Huen, Diana Wong, Eds.
Women in the Holocaust - Dalia Ofer, Lenore J. Weitzman, Eds.
Women, Outcastes, Peasants & Rebels - Kalpana Bardhan
Writers' Workshop in a Book - Cheuse and Alvarez
You'll Die in Singapore - Charles McCormac
A Choice of Evils - Meira Chand
Force 136:Story of A Resistance Fighter in WWII - Tan Chong Tee
King Rat - James Clavell
Murder on the Verandah - Eric Lawlor
No Dram of Mercy - Sybil Kathigasu
Rehearsal for War - Ban Kah Choon, Yap Hong Kuan
Singa, Lion of Malaya - Gurchan Singh
Singapore The Pregnable Fortress - Peter Elphick
Sinister Twilight - Noel Barber
Sold For Silver - Janet Lim
Syonan - My Story (The Japanese Occupation of Singapore) - Mamoru Shinozaki
The Fall of Shanghai - Noel Barber
The Jungle is Neutral - F. Spencer Chapman
The War Of The Running Dogs - Noel Barber
You'll Never Get Off The Island - Keith Wilson

So, naturally, at the end of 8 months, I have acquired another boatload or two of books and upon reinspecting the list and the number of books read and the general topics, I find that I am, once again, rushing ahead of myself.

I mean, how could I possibly read about WWII and its effects on the European colonies of the Far East without first reading the histories of the various countries involved, political, economic, social, cultural. Oh, my.

So much to read, so little time.

At any rate, by my count, I have added 70 books to that list (at least), but of the original 101, I have read 84. Which leaves a mere 17 books in order to complete the assigned reading list. However, I now want to change the list itself and put some of my new acquisitions on it. Therefore, I will review the number of books I've read between the last review and the present, and will then publish the new list. It's quite long, but I don't expect to read more than perhaps 20 of the books on it, as I'm hoping to have surgery later this year. Cuts into one's reading time something dreadful.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Wounded by Percival Everett

I don't do this very often ... write about a book I'm reading. I usually wait until my mid-year review of all books read ... then my end of year "Books read by Ms. Manitoba" list. But I'm reading a book that is just so good I want to recommend it now: Wounded by Percival Everett.

First, the writing is so very very good. The writing is so good you are there in the action, living and breathing and walking with the characters. Plus, the characters are so interesting and well-formed -- so much so, that you don't even feel that they are characters -- they're real people. At least I wished they were and I wished I could go visit them. Right now. Mr. Everett is also tackling some tough subjects: an anti-gay hate crime and a prickly gay man; racism in Wyoming and the rest of America; disappointment and betrayal in marriage; cruelty towards animals. Big topics. And he treats them with sensitivity, respect, and intelligence.

To read a full description of the plot, go to amazon.com here.

I highly recommend Wounded by Percival Everett.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Beijing's National Stadium Looks Gorgeous at Night

Here's a photo released by Getty Images taken by Clive Rose.

Ms. Manitoba strives to be fair. It sure doesn't look like a bedpan in this photo. See my earlier post.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

The San Francisco International Festival of Short Films

Aug 6 to 9 ... check it out at this site:SF Shorts web site

And if you want to watch a very cool short film, go here and watch Johnny Kelly's Procrastination.

It Looks Like a Fu**ing Bedpan!

Photo by Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

Folks, I'm not schooled in architecture ... I'm one of the common people ... of course, that never stops me from commenting on something. But the National Stadium in Beijing looks like a hospital bedpan to me. The New York Times has an article on it in today's online edition. The writer of the piece, Nicolai Ouroussoff, says that people have nicknamed it the "Bird's Nest". Sorry. "Beijing Bedpan" to me. Considering that, Ouroussoff's following words cracked me up:

"Given the astounding expectations piled upon the National Stadium, I’m surprised it hasn’t collapsed under the strain."

Friday, August 1, 2008

When do I get to vote on YOUR marriage?

Leah Garchik is reporting in her column today (sfgate.com) in the San Francisco Chronicle:

P.S.: As to fashion statements, Donald Currie saw the T-shirt in the window of the In-Jean-ious Lounge on Castro Street: "When do I get to vote on YOUR marriage?"

I REALLY REALLY WANT ONE OF THOSE T SHIRTS!!

I may even drive into San Francisco tomorrow to get one. I better call first and have them hold one for me.