TPC-CultureVultures

Friday, February 11, 2011

Egyptians, We Send Our Love and Hope

Have you seen the photos from Egypt at the New York Times web site?

No!!! Better go now.

They will make you weep for joy.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Pixar Movies in Chronological Order

A while ago my daughters and I went to the Pixar exhibit at the Oakland Museum and now we're watching all the full-length Pixar movies in chronological order. Below is the list -- if you're interested.

Tonight we watched Cars. Paul Newman is the voice of Doc in the movie. So, I went poking around on the 'net about Paul Newman and found a photo of him when he was in the Navy -- I posted it in my previous post.

now the list:

Toy Story
Bugs Life
Toy Story 2
Monsters, Inc.
Finding Nemo
The Incredibles
Cars
Ratatouille
WALL-E
Up
Toy Story 3

Someone asked me what was my favorite so far. Very hard to answer. Toy Story, methinks. But, to tell you the truth, I'm really enjoying all of them. Which doesn't mean I'm not critical of them ... you know, the usual -- too much testosterone poisoning -- fighting, weapons, explosions. Other than that stuff -- very creative, lots of humor. That's what I enjoy.

Paul Newman in the Navy

Photographer: Navy photographer, unknown

What a beautiful lad!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Book List 2011

Imagine that! A whole year gone!

2010 really flew by, and all I could manage was 60 books. This year's list is much longer. No time to waste.

This is the list for 01/01/2011:

Book List 2010

A Concise History of Indian Art - Roy C. Craven
A History of Cambodia - David Chandler
A History of India 1 - Romila Thapar
A History of India 2 - Percival Spear
A House in Gross Disorder - Cynthia B. Herrup
A Journalist, A General, and An Army in Burma - U Thaung
A New History of India - Stanley Wolpert
A Spy's Revenge - Richard V. Hall
A Tale Of Millions: Bangladesh Liberation War - M. Rafiqul Islam
Agnes Smedley - J.R. & S.R. MacKinnon
Alexander The Great - W.W. Tarn
Among the White Moonfaces - Shirley Lim Geok-lin
An Advanced History of India - Majumdar, Raychaudhuri & Dutta
Asian Dragons & Green Trade - Simon Tay & Daniel Esty
Bangladesh From Mujib to Ershad, an interpretive study - Lawrence Ziring
Beating the Blues - Thase & Lang
Before Kampuchea - Milton Osborne
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
Black Dog of Fate - Peter Balakian
Buddhism in Vietnam - Minh Chi, Ha Van Tan, Nguyen Tai Thu
Cambodia Silenced: The Press Under Six Regimes - Harish Mehta
Captains of Consciousness - Stuart Ewen
Ceylon - S. Arasaratnam
China's Second Revolution - Harry Harding
Chinese Carving - Craig Clunas
Chinese Customs - Henri Dore
Chinese Warlord - The Career of Feng Yu Hsiang - James E. Sheridan
Colonial Masculinity - Mrinalini Sinha
Decolonizing the Mind - Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Desis in the House - Sunaina Maira
Discos and Democracy - Orville Schell
Dread - The Rastafarians of Jamaica - Joseph Owens
Enemies of the People - Anne F. Thurston
Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Charles Mackay
Facets of Taoism - Holmes Welch & Anna Seidel
Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce
Fire in the Lake - Frances Fitzgerald
First Person Singular - Joyce Carol Oates
Flashbacks - Morley Safer
Flower of the Dragon - Richard Boyle
Folklore From Contemporary Jamaicans - Daryl C. Dance
Folklore of Tamil Nadu - S.M.L. Lakshman Chettiar
Gandhi - Louis Fischer
Gandhi's Truth — On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence - Erik H. Erikson
Gangsters and Revolutionaries - Robert Cribb
Grasshoppers & Elephants - Wilfred Burchett
Heritage of China - Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization - Ed. Paul S. Ropp
Hero And Deity - Pham Quynh Phuong
Hinduism - Its Historical Development - Troy Wilson Organ
In One's Own Shadow - Xin Liu
Incursion: From America's Chokehold on the NVA Lifelines to the Sacking of the Cambodian Sanctuaries - J.D. Coleman
India Wins Freedom - Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
Indian Art - Philip Rawson
Indonesian Confrontation - Gabriel Tan
Into Cambodia - Keith William Nolan
IsvarChandra Vidyasagar -
Khmers Stand Up! - Justin Corfield
Laogai - The Chinese Gulag - Harry Wu Hong da
Leviathan - Hobbes
Life - Keith Richards
Lo t'o Hsiang Tzu (Rickshaw) - Lao She
Mandarins, Jews, and Missionaries - Michael Pollak
Mandate of Heaven - Orville Schell
May 13 - Kua Kia Soong
Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan - Melody Ermachild Chavis
Microeconomic Theory - Gould & Ferguson
Minorities of the Sino-Vietnamese Borderland - Maurice Abadie
Murder and Mayhem in 17th Century Cambodia - Alfons van der Kraan
Myths About The Ethnic Chinese "Economic Miracle" - Go Bon Juan & Joaquim Sy
Nakshi Kantha of Bengal - Sila Basak
Offerings: The Ritual Art of Bali -
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
One Blood — The Jamaican Body - Elisa Janine Sobo
Orientalism - Edward W. Said
Outwitting the Gestapo - Lucie Aubrac
Painting Islam as the New Enemy -
Pearl S. Buck, A Cultural Biography - Peter Conn
People's War, People's Army - Vo Nguyen Giap
Personal Voices - Chinese Women in the '80s - Emily Honig & Gail Hershatter
Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg
Physiology of the Human Body - Guyton
Pol Pot - Philip Short
Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China - Anne Birrele
Porcelain From The VungTao Wreck -
Primitive Art - Frank Boas
Prometheus Rising - Robert Anton Wilson
Punjabi Century 1857-1947 - Prakash Tandon
Rasta & Resistance - Horace Campbell
Rastafari Roots & Ideology - Barry Chevannes
Rastafarian Theology - Imani Nyah
Reading Lolita In Teheran - Azar Nafisi
Red China Blues - Jan Wong
Reeducating Chinese Anti-Communists - J.A. Fyfield
Resistance and Reform in Tibet -
Revolution Postponed - Margery Wolf
Rickshaw Coolie: A People's History - J. Francis Warren
Roots of Rastafari - Virginia Lee Jacobs
Rosie - Anne Lamott
Rural Development in China - Fei Hsiao Tung
Sandakan: A Conspiracy of Silence - Lynette Ramsay Silver
Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye (The Biography Of A Master Film-Maker - Andrew Robinson
Screenwriting 434 - Lew Hunter
Self Censorship: Singapore's Shame - James Gomez
Sexual Behaviour of Women in Singapore - V. Aputharajah
Shanghai Refuge, A Memoir of the WWII Jewish Ghetto - Ernest G. Heppner
Sherpas Through Their Rituals - Sherry B. Ortner
Shirin Fozdar: Asia's Foremost Feminist - Rose Ong
Singapore:Journey Into Nationhood
Singapore The Air-Conditioned Nation - Cherian George
Singapore & The Many-Headed Monster - Joe Conceicao
Singapore Women Re-presented - Constance Singam and Audrey Chin
Singapore's People's Action Party: Its History, Organization and Leadership - Pang Cheng Lian
Sisters in the Resistance - Margaret Collins Weitz
Sisters of Heaven - Patti Gully
Son of the Revolution - Liang Heng & Judith Shapiro
Stories of Your Life - Ted Chiang
Strangers Always A Jewish Family in Wartime Shanghai - Rena Krasno
Stress and Mental Health in Malaysian Society - Tan Chee Khuan
Stuff on My Cat -
The Adventures of Wu - H.Y. Lowe
The Argumentative Indian - Amartya Sen
The Art of the Novel - Milan Kundera
The Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama
The Autobiography of An Unknown Indian - Nirad C. Chaudhary
The Bengal Muslims 1871 - 1906 - Ahmed
The Birth of Vietnam - Keith Weller Taylor
The British Humiliation of Burma - Terence R. Blackburn
The Canterbury Tales - Chaucer
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence - Victor Marchetti & John D. Marks
The Devil Finds Work - James Baldwin
The Discovery of India - Jawaharlal Nehru
The Dragon Empress - Marina Warner
The Emergence of Modern Turkey - Bernard Lewis
The Fajar Generation - Poh Soo Kai, ed.
The Forgotten Army (Indian Mutiny) - Peter Ward Fay
The Gene Hunters Biotechnology and the scramble for seeds - Calestous Juma
The Gift - Lewis Hyde
The Great Hedge of India - Roy Moxham
The Hatchet Man of Singapore - J.B. Jeyaretnam
The Journey to the West, Vol. 1 - Anthony Yu
The Last Emperor - Edward Behr
The Lives of Agnes Smedley - Ruth Price
The March of Folly From Troy To Vietnam - Barbara W. Tuchman
The Men Who Ruled India Vol. I The Founders - Philip Woodruff
The Men Who Ruled India, Vol. II The Guardians - Philip Woodruff
The Mind's I - Hofstadter & Dennett
The Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson
The New China - Alvin Rabushika
The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes - Arthur Waley
The Penang Po Leung Kuk -
The Political Economy of Social Control in Singapore - Christopher Tremewan
The Politics of Sri Lanka - Robert N. Kearney
The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution - Lee Hong Yung
The Rape of Bangladesh - Mascarenhas
The Rastafarians - Leonard E. Barrett, Sr.
The Remembered Village - M.N. Srinivasan
The Rice Birds: Folktales from Thailand - C. & K. Velder
The Rig Veda - Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, transl
The Rise & Fall of the Knights Templar - Gordon Napier
The Singapore Council of Women and The Women's Movement - Phyllis Ghim Lian Chew
The Singapore House - Norman Edwards
The Sinkiang Story - Jack Chen
The Soong Dynasty - Sterling Seagrave
The Spirit of Chinese Politics - Lucian Pye
The Syonan Years I - Lee Geok Boi
The Syonan Years II - Lee Geok Boi
The Tragedy of Wanit -
The Ugly Chinaman - Bo Yang
The Unmaking of Malaysia - Ahmad Mustapha Hassan
The Wha Chi -
The Wilting of the Hundred Flowers - Mu Fu Sheng
This Is Not Civilization - Robert Rosenberg
Time Bombs in Malaysia - Lim Kit Siang
Transition to Neo-Confucianism - Anne D. Birdwhistell
Unmasking Najib - Lim Kit Siang
Victims and Perpetrators - Ea Meng-try & Sorya Sim
Vietnam & America: The Most Comprehensive Documented History of the Vietnam War - Gettleman, et al
Vietnam Cultural Window
Wanted: Equality and Justice -
Warsaw of Asia: The Rape of Manila - Boni Escoda
Western Birds - Roger Tory Peterson
Wild Swans - Jung Chang
Witness to an Era - Frank Moraes
West Indians And Their Language - Peter A. Roberts
Who Killed Aung San? - Kin Oung
Women in the Holocaust - Dalia Ofer, Lenore J. Weitzman, Eds.
Writers' Workshop in a Book - Cheuse and Alvarez
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Your Memory: A User's Guide - Alan Baddeley

Welp, I really overdid it this year.

Yes, I've been reading. Book review to follow.

Friday, January 14, 2011

My LinkedIn profile photo

What do you think? Would employers go for this? Young, blond, and you can get her to say what you want?

2010 Book Review

Yes, we actually did read some of the books on that interminable fucking list. So it's not a whole lot.

Besides, the excuse is, ve haff bin ketchingk up on ze past six years' backlog of Science News.

Srsly. We're all, like, up to 2010 January or something now.

So here's the review so far.

Book List 2010

Not too shabby, eh? The ones I thought worth reading are starred. Number of stars indicates rank of book. Limit: 5. Anything over 3 stars is pretty much recommended reading, although some of it might be a bit arcane for the average reader's taste. Or as Gabriel Garcia Marquez' translators like to say, recondite.

Incidentally, we here at La Casa de Los Gatos are changing our reading policy. We're reminded, as all our loved ones and friends exit the planet, that time is not necessarily on our side, as avid readers. No more lengthy reviews. It's not like anybody's reading them anyway, right? And no more trashy reading. Only the stuff that will blow my socks off. Anything else goes out the door.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Romance: Yin and Yang

Paper-white narcissuses, one hundred bulbs in shallow pools of moistened pebbles, their roots exposed, clinging, pale anchors steadying the blooms as they angle toward the sun. The windows are never completely closed because the sweet powdery scent would be unbearable. In those corners where sunlight is an unfulfilled promise, there are bowls of varying sizes holding hydrangea clusters, dried, the color of barely brewed tea. With no water to weigh them down, the blooms rattle against their china vessels whenever a draft sidles through the garret. The petals scraping lightly against the bone-enriched walls sing the song of a rainfall. I choose to remember these things only. The rest I will discard.

I will forget that you entered 27 rue de Fleurus as a "writer" among a sea of others who opened the studio door with a letter of introduction and a face handsome with talent and promise. You stood at the front of the studio listening to a man who had his back to me. I entered the room with a tray of sugar-dusted cakes for all the young men who sit and stand, a hungry circle radiating around GertrudeStein. After years of the imposed invisibility of servitude, I am acutely aware when I am being watched, a sensitivity born from absence, a grain of salt on the tongue of a man who has tasted only bitter. As I checked the teapots to see whether they needed to be replenished, I felt a slight pressure. It was the weight of your eyes resting on my lips. I looked up, and I saw you standing next to a mirror reflecting the image of a wiry young man with deeply set, startled eyes. I looked up, and I was seeing myself beside you. I am at sea again, I thought. Waves are coursing through my veins. I am at sea again.

-- from The Book of Salt by Monique Truong

***************************************************************

Yin yang. Balance. Very important. The flip side to the excerpt above ...

Here’s a scene from one of my favorite shows right now -- PARKS and RECREATION. I just love Amy Poehler. She plays that mixture of incompetency + earnestness so well. Here's the scene ... Amy’s character is called Leslie Knope (love that name!), she’s with her friend, Ann, and is very nervous about going out on a first date. She’s asking Ann for advice and is now asking “what if” questions.

Leslie: What if he shows up with another woman? What if one of my sleeves catches on fire and it spreads rapidly? What if, instead of Tic Tacs, I pop a couple of Ambien and I have to keep punching my leg to stay awake?

Ann: Those are all insane hypotheticals and I promise you they won’t happen!

Leslie: They have happened. All of these have happened to me.

[Pause]

Leslie: No, there’s more. One time I accidentally drank an entire bottle of vinegar ... I thought it was terrible wine.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Glee: Teenage Dream

This is amazing and wonderful ... a valentine to all the young gay men out there ...

[If it doesn't stream smoothly, go right here.]

Ms. Manitoba has lived through severe homophobia. This video made me sob. I cried for sadness and joy. Sadness for all the young ones who have lost their lives because of homophobia. Joy that we have come at least this far. In my day, Lee Grant couldn't say "pregnant" on her TV show and now we have this. I am thankful. More road to go, however.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Sharon Olds

Photograph by Catherine Mauger.

Happy Birthday, Sharon Olds.

Sharon Olds is one of my very favorite poets. I fell in love with her poems in the early 80's. This is one of her most beautiful, most devastating poems.

I Go Back to May 1937

by Sharon Olds

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,

I see my father strolling out

under the ochre sandstone arch, the

red tiles glinting like bent

plates of blood behind his head, I

see my mother with a few light books at her hip

standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,

the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its

sword-tips aglow in the May air,

they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,

they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are

innocent, they would never hurt anybody.

I want to go up to them and say Stop,

don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,

he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things

you cannot imagine you would ever do,

you are going to do bad things to children,

you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,

you are going to want to die. I want to go

up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,

her hungry pretty face turning to me,

her pitiful beautiful untouched body,

his arrogant handsome face turning to me,

his pitiful beautiful untouched body,

but I don’t do it. I want to live. I

take them up like the male and female

paper dolls and bang them together

at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to

strike sparks from them, I say

Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

* * *

I once had the pleasure of reading this poem at a fund-raiser.

And from today's edition of The Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of best-selling poet Sharon Olds, born in San Francisco on this day in 1942. Her collections include Satan Says (1980), The Dead and the Living (1984), The Gold Cell (1987), The Matter of This World (1987), The Sign of Saturn (1991), The Father (1992), The Wellspring (1996), Blood, Tin, Straw (1999), The Unswept Room (2002), Strike Sparks (2004), and One Secret Thing (2008). Since she began publishing in the 1980s, her poems have appeared in more than 100 poetry anthologies.

She grew up in Berkeley, California, where she was brought up as a "hellfire Calvinist," she said. Though a nonbeliever from a young age, she said that she was greatly influenced by the "great literary art and bad literary art" of her church. Psalms were great art, she said, and hymns were not. She said, "The four-beat was something that was part of my consciousness before I was born."

She went across the Bay to Stanford for college, where she studied a bunch of different languages, including French, German, Greek, Italian, and Middle English. And then she moved to New York City to do a Ph.D. in literature at Columbia. She wrote her own poems, but she wasn't happy with them. She felt as though she were imitating the poets she studied for grad school. She was 30 years old, desperately wanting to find her own voice, and had what she calls a "religious experience" wherein she made a deal with the devil on the steps of Columbia's library. She once described it like this:

"I said to free will or the pagan god of making things, or whoever, let me write my own stuff. I'll give up everything I've learned, anything, if you'll let me write my poems. They don't have to be any good, but just mine." It was in the syntax of her prayer that came an epiphany. She explained: "What happened was enjambment. Writing over the end of the line and having a noun starting each line — it had some psychological meaning to me, like I was protecting things by hiding them. Poems started pouring out of me and Satan was in a lot of them. Also, toilets."

She started going to writing workshops at the local YMCA, and eventually she published her first collection of poems, called Satan Says (1980). She later realized that she wrote in the structure of the hymns of her youth, which is what felt comfortable to her, but that she "had to ride over the end of the line" to craft her poems.

When her first book was published, she was a few years shy of 40. Within a decade, she'd released several highly acclaimed, best-selling collections, and she'd also become the director of the Graduate Writing Program at NYU. She was so busy that she decided for one year she would not watch TV, read a newspaper or book, or go hear music, just so that she'd have enough time to do her job and keep writing poetry.

She was poet laureate of New York from 1998 to 2000. She still teaches creative writing at NYU, and she writes poems from her apartment on the Upper West Side, in a rocking chair with a view of the Hudson River. She uses different colored ballpoint pens to compose poems, and sometimes puts stickers on the pages of her drafts, which remind her of the stained glass windows of her religious youth. She said that she loves "odd" or "strange" words. She said: "By the time I see that it's a poem, it's almost written in my head somewhere. It's as if there's someone inside of me who perceives order and beauty — and disorder. And who wants to make little copies. Who wants to put together something that will bear some relationship to the vision or memory or experience or story or idea or dream or whatever."

She once described poetry as coming from her lungs, and said that to her, "Poetry is so physical, the music of it and the movement of thought." She said that over the years, she has noticed that ideas for poems will come to her when she's dancing or running, and that these ideas seem to come to mind with the act of breathing deeply, with the intake of oxygen. She said, "Suddenly you're remembering something that you haven't thought of for years."

Her advice to young poets is this: "Take your vitamins. Exercise. Just work to love yourself as much as you can — not more than the people around you but not so much less."

She once said: "I'm not asking a poem to carry a lot of rocks in its pockets. Just being an ordinary observer and liver and feeler and letting the experience get through you onto the notebook with the pen, through the arm, out of the body, onto the page, without distortion."

And, "Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown."

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Crazy Heart: Mini review

I tried to watch Crazy Heart -- I really did. What a lousy unbelievable story! A wet dream for white male sixty-somethings. Here's this 57-yr old, has-been country singer. A terrible drunk. And this barely-30-yr-old woman (Maggie Gyllenhall) falls in love with him. The guy is a wreck!!! And broke! AND ... *she's* got a kid. Maybe there is a woman in this country that would fall in love with this character and take him in -- but all her friends would be talking about her behind her back: "She's gone absoFUCKINGlutely nuts!!!" There are no women I know who would do that to their child -- I don't care how cute this guy is when he plays with the kid. Nobody I know would bring a train wreck into their child's life. (Okay, maybe lots of us start out when we're young with train wrecks and then have kids with them -- that's different.)

Really ... this is fantasyland for older men (executive producers who give the green light to screenplays like this!!).

I am a Jeff Bridges fan from waaaaaaaaaay back. And he is very good in this. It's the premise that is so wrong. And Jeff Bridges has done much better work in my opinion: The Fisher King, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Fearless, and the-not-well-known film - The Amateurs.

The other acting is very good too. But I just kept shaking my head.

I loved Jeff Bridges' singing and the songs are quite good. But, I just kept shaking my head.

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton: Dark Shadows

Ms. Manitoba is behind in the news ... but I just heard that these two will be working together on a Dark Shadows feature film. I'm so excited!

I was really into Dark Shadows the tv show back in the day. I had a night job (Ms. Manitoba has told you before -- I've had a million jobs!) as a switchboard operator ("one ringy dingy, two ringy dingy" ... to quote another favorite of mine) in New Jersey. So, I'm really looking forward to this one!

Monday, November 15, 2010

Michael Pollan talks to moths ...

Michael Pollan says that moths should: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Pants.”

[once again Ms. Manitoba's brain strikes]

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Gerald Durrell: Learn From Our Mistakes

Gerald Durrell wrote a letter to seal in a time capsule, and he said:

"The world is to us what the Garden of Eden was supposed to be to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were banished, but we are banishing ourselves from our Eden. The difference is that Adam and Eve had somewhere else to go. We have nowhere else to go. We hope that by the time you read this you will have at least partially curtailed our reckless greed and stupidity. If we have not, at least some of us have tried. … All we can say is learn from what we have achieved, but above all learn from our mistakes, do not go on endlessly like a squirrel in a wheel committing the same errors hour by hour day by day year after year century after century as we have done up to now. We hope that there will be fireflies and glow-worms at night to guide you and butterflies in hedges and forests to greet you. We hope that there will still be the extraordinary varieties of creatures sharing the land of the planet with you to enchant you."

Gerald Durrell was a zoologist and writer Gerald Durrell and was born in Jamshedpur, India, in 1925. He loved animals. From the Writer's Almanac:

He worked for a while collecting animals for zoos, but his methods clashed with the zoology ideas of the day— he wanted to get rare animals and increase their populations, not just get the showy animals that people would pay a lot of money to see.

His dream was to open a zoo of his own. His older brother, Lawrence Durrell, was a successful novelist, and Lawrence suggested that Gerald should write an autobiography in order to raise money. So in 1953 Gerald published The Overloaded Ark, a huge success in Britain and America, and he went on to write 32 more books, mostly nonfiction, many of them best-sellers, including A Zoo in My Luggage (1960), A Bevy of Beasts (1973), and My Family and Other Animals (1956), a memoir of his childhood.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

This is so Canadian - Quality over Quantity

From Yahoo news ...

TORONTO (Reuters) – Book lovers seeking a copy of the winner of Canada's premier literary award are out of luck, unless they're ready to settle for an electronic version.

"The Sentimentalists," a surprise winner of the C$50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize this week, is trickling only slowly into bookstores as its tiny publisher cranks out copies.

The book, by first-time novelist Johanna Skibsrud, is sold out across Canada.

Nova Scotia-based specialty publisher Gaspereau Press can produce only 1,000 copies a week of their finely bound books, using an old-fashioned press.

...

Indigo has sold all four of its hardcover copies of the prize-winning book, which is based on the story of Skibsrud's father, a Vietnam War veteran. It has thousands more on order.

Canadian media said Gaspereau Press has received offers from a few large publishers, including UK-based Random House, to print more, but it has so far refused, sticking to its mantra of quality over quantity.

Giller winners often sell tens of thousands of copies, a huge multiple of original sales. "The Sentimentalists" had a first run of 800 books and was reported to have sold around half of that before the novel was placed on the longlist of nominations for the Giller nomination.

But Silver said Indigo has sold hundreds of copies of its electronic version, up from just a handful before the prize was announced...

(Reporting by Claire Sibonney; editing by Janet Guttsman and Rob Wilson)

I'm proud that I spent some of my youf in Canada.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Happy Halloween! And Feliz dia de los muertos!

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Book List 2010

Sadly behind on everything this year, except dealing with medical crises and lawsuits. Wevs, as y'all might say.

This is the list for 01/01/2010:

Book List 2010

A Ceremonial Death - B.J. Oliphant
A History of Cambodia - David Chandler
A House in Gross Disorder - Cynthia B. Herrup
A Journalist, A General, and An Army in Burma - U Thaung
A Mercy - Toni Morrison
A Novel Bookstore - Laurence Cousse
A Point of Light - Zhou Mei
Agnes Smedley - J.R. & S.R. MacKinnon
Among the White Moonfaces - Shirley Lim Geok-lin
An Advanced History of India - Majumdar, Raychaudhuri & Dutta
Ancient Roman Feasts & Recipes - Jon Solomon
Asian Dragons & Green Trade - Simon Tay & Daniel Esty
Beating the Blues - Thase & Lang
Before Kampuchea - Milton Osborne
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
Black Dog of Fate - Peter Balakian
Buddhism in Vietnam - Minh Chi, Ha Van Tan, Nguyen Tai Thu
Cambodia Silenced: The Press Under Six Regimes - Harish Mehta
Captains of Consciousness - Stuart Ewen
Chinese Customs - Henri Dore
Christmas Island -
Colonial Masculinity - Mrinalini Sinha
Daniel Deronda - George Eliot
Death for Old Times' Sake - A.J. Orde
Desis in the House - Sunaina Maira
Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce
Fire in the Lake - Frances Fitzgerald
First Person Singular - Joyce Carol Oates
Flashbacks - Morley Safer
Flower of the Dragon - Richard Boyle
Folklore of Tamil Nadu - S.M.L. Lakshman Chettiar
Gandhi's Truth — On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence - Erik H. Erikson
Grasshoppers & Elephants - Wilfred Burchett
Hero And Deity - Pham Quynh Phuong
In Pursuit of Mountain Rats - Anthony Short
Incursion: From America's Chokehold on the NVA Lifelines to the Sacking of the Cambodian Sanctuaries - J.D. Coleman
In The Woods - Tana French
Into Cambodia - Keith William Nolan
Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar - Subhal Chandra Mitra
Juliet, Naked - Nick Hornby
Khmers Stand Up! - Justin Corfield
Looking for the Aardvark - A.J. Orde
May 13 - Kua Kia Soong
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Helen Simonson
Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan - Melody Ermachild Chavis
Minorities of the Sino-Vietnamese Borderland - Maurice Abadie
Murder and Mayhem in 17th Century Cambodia - Alfons van der Kraan
Myths About The Ethnic Chinese "Economic Miracle" - Go Bon Juan & Joaquim Sy
Nakshi Kantha of Bengal - Sila Basak
Nonsense - Robert J. Gula
No Cowardly Past - James Puthucheary
Offerings: The Ritual Art of Bali -
Orientalism - Edward W. Said
Outwitting the Gestapo - Lucie Aubrac
Pearl S. Buck, A Cultural Biography - Peter Conn
People's War, People's Army - Vo Nguyen Giap
Pham Xuan An, General of the Secret Service - Hoang Hai Van & Tan Thu
Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg
Pol Pot - Philip Short
Primitive Art - Frank Boas
Reading Lolita In Teheran - Azar Nafisi
Rosie - Anne Lamott
Sapphires & Garlic - Ruth Reichl
Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye (The Biography Of A Master Film-Maker - Andrew Robinson
Screenwriting 434 - Lew Hunter
Self Censorship: Singapore's Shame - James Gomez
Shanghai Refuge, A Memoir of the WWII Jewish Ghetto - Ernest G. Heppner
Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
Sherpas Through Their Rituals - Sherry B. Ortner
Shirin Fozdar: Asia's Foremost Feminist - Rose Ong
Singapore:Journey Into Nationhood
Singapore The Air-Conditioned Nation - Cherian George
Singapore & The Many-Headed Monster - Joe Conceicao
Singapore Women Re-presented - Constance Singam and Audrey Chin
Singapore's People's Action Party: Its History, Organization and Leadership - Pang Cheng Lian
Sisters in the Resistance - Margaret Collins Weitz
Sisters of Heaven - Patti Gully
Square Foot Gardening - Mel Bartholomew
Still Life - E.E. Horlak
Strangers Always A Jewish Family in Wartime Shanghai - Rena Krasno
Stress and Mental Health in Malaysian Society - Tan Chee Khuan
The Art of the Novel - Milan Kundera
The Birth of Vietnam - Keith Weller Taylor
The British Humiliation of Burma - Terence R. Blackburn
The Devil Finds Work - James Baldwin
The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barberry
The Emergence of Modern Turkey - Bernard Lewis
The Emperor - Ryszard Kapuscinski
The Enthusiast - Charlie Haas
The Gift - Lewis Hyde
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Played With Fire - Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest - Stieg Larsson
The Hatchet Man of Singapore - J.B. Jeyaretnam
The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh
The Likeness - Tana French
The Lives of Agnes Smedley - Ruth Price
The March of Folly From Troy To Vietnam - Barbara W. Tuchman
The Mind's I - Hofstadter & Dennett
The Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson
The Narrow Strip of Land - Tran Mai Nam
The Pantropheon - Alexis Soyer
The Penang Po Leung Kuk -
The Plague - Albert Camus
The Political Economy of Social Control in Singapore - Christopher Tremewan
The Remembered Village - M.N. Srinivasan
The Rise & Fall of the Knights Templar - Gordon Napier
The Singapore Council of Women and The Women's Movement - Phyllis Ghim Lian Chew
The Singapore House - Norman Edwards
The Syonan Years I - Lee Geok Boi
The Syonan Years II - Lee Geok Boi
The Tin Drum - Gunther Grass
The Triads in Singapore and Malaya - Leon Comber
The Ugly Chinaman - Bo Yang
The Unexpected Corpse - B.J. Oliphant
The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler
Time Bombs in Malaysia - Lim Kit Siang
Victims and Perpetrators - Ea Meng-try & Sorya Sim
Vietnam & America: The Most Comprehensive Documented History of the Vietnam War - Gettleman, et al
Vietnam Cultural Window
Warsaw of Asia: The Rape of Manila - Boni Escoda
Who Killed Aung San? - Kin Oung
Women in the Holocaust - Dalia Ofer, Lenore J. Weitzman, Eds.
Writers' Workshop in a Book - Cheuse and Alvarez
Yogini Cult & Temples - Vidya Dehejia

Your Memory: A User's Guide - Alan Baddeley

Go ahead. Tell me I overdid it. See if I care.

Obviously I'll never finish this fucking buttload of books before January. Stay tuned for the book review.

2009 Final Book Review

This is it! The final review of books on my reading list for the year.

2009 Final Book Review

A VietCong Memoir - Truong Nhu Tang

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? A very, very interesting look at the VN war from the inside. The writer, who now lives in France, was a member of the "middle" - neither pro-Viet Minh nor pro-American, initially. He describes how his sympathies turned towards the Viet Minh (later derisively termed by the Americans "Viet Cong"), and the resulting power shifts and political ideologies created by the long battle by VietNamese nationalists against foreign occupation, colonization, and all the ills attendant thereupon. He suffered for his ideology, and is understandably somewhat bitter as a result, but his memoir is well worth reading.
Reread? As time permits.
Armed Communist Movements in Southeast Asia - Lim Joo Jock, Vani S., Eds.

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? A series of scholarly papers on the nature and capabilities of the armed factions of the Communist party throughout Southeast Asia. Technical. Requires a reasonable familiarity with the history and politics of the region. Only for those with real interest.
Reread? Probably not.
Comet In Our Sky: Lim Chin Siong in History - Tan Jing Quee and Jomo K.S., Eds

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? A must for anyone with any interest in the history of Southeast Asia. A revealing look at the machinations of the British and the puppets that they used in order to hold on to the last vestiges of their crumbling empire. It will change your outlook on history and politics, regardless of your current ideology.
Reread? Yes.
Kranji - Romen Bose

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? Only for those with any serious interest in the WW II as it played out in the Pacific Theater, and the commemoration of the individuals who lost their lives therein. Light reading, despite the heavy subject matter.
Reread? No.
Lavinia - Ursula K. LeGuin

Borrowed? Bri. Blame him.
Recommended? Interesting, but only to SF fans, feminists, and those with an interest in the classics. Not her best effort, but readable.
Reread? No.
Musicophilia - Oliver Sacks

Borrowed? Bri. Blame him some more.
Recommended? Highly. Few scientists are as enjoyable and thoroughly readable, in fact, delightful, as Dr. Sacks. La Casa de Los Gatos has never read a book by this author that didn't cause a neuronal tingle, and lots of "Aha!" moments as his skillful hand draws the skeins of various observations into a magical tapestry with the underlying scientific theories. An utter joy for anyone interested in the human brain.
Reread? Pleez. We begs and begs.
Niels Lyhne - Jens Peter Jacobsen

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? A pretty book. Not sure that I liked it much. It's lyrical. The author is skilled. Had the same feeling as when reading Virginia Woolf. Skilled writer, subject matter not very interesting. Nevertheless, the literary world swoons over both writers. We are willing to accept blame for being an eccentric curmudgeon with unlikely, as it were, likes and dislikes. Feh.
Reread? Nope.
Sisterhood: The Untold Story - Joash Moo

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? Not really. Interesting only if you have prurient attitudes about transsexuals, or if you want some anecdotal information about transgender life in Malaysia.
Reread? Nuh-uh.
Slaughter and Deception: Batang Kali - Ian Ward & Norma Miraflor

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? Oh boy. This is one of the incidents that will never be forgotten by the people who experienced it, and that the British Foreign Office has done their best to cover up for decades. Post WWII, Malaya was ready for independence, but the British (who fled like chickens when the Japanese came bicycling over the Burma road) were not ready to give up their colonies. As a result of their wartime Lend-Lease agreements with the US, the British needed resources to repay their indebtedness, and the colonies were their resources. Needless to say, the natives did not agree, having lost many of their number in the fight to defend their nation (after the British, assuring them for decades that they were protected, turned out to have lied, and fled to evade the consequences), and during the terrible war years that followed. This book is the description of one of the post-war crimes that occurred, when British troops massacred an entire village for the "crime" of being, apparently, unable to understand English. Britain's My Lai. Ward and Miraflor have done a fine job of documenting the incident. A must-read for anyone interested in the history of WWII, colonial history, Southeast-Asian history, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and British history.
Reread? Ah, yeah, sure. Soon as I need to lose some more weight or something.
The Communist Struggle in Malaya - Gene Z. Hanrahan

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? Hanrahan is a "cold warrior." 'Nuff said. Nothing in this book that you couldn't find elsewhere in a more objective presentation.
Reread? Puh-leez, as in, never.
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje

Borrowed? Ms. Manitoba, of course.
Recommended? Highly. Frankly, I didn't expect to like this book much. Any time a book is raved about by all and sundry, you can pretty much bet that it appeals to the lowest common denominator, cough, cough, Dan Brown. Ondaatje is, of course, worlds above the likes of Brown. Not sure if I'm ready to put him in my pantheon of Great Writers (Kafka, Garcia Marquez, Rushdie, Zola, Mo Yan, Tanizaki, Tagore, Sharat Chandra, et al). Must read more. Excellent book, highly recommended.
Reread? Groan. As soon as there is time.
The Mak Nyahs: Malaysian Male to Female Transexuals - Teh Yik Koon

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? This book is actually the result of research into issues affecting the lives of the transgender/transexual community in Malaysia. The author is sympathetic, yet objective. For those interested in gender issues, social issues, transgender/transexual issues in Asia.
Reread? Not really.
The Queen's Gambit - Walter Tevis

Borrowed? That wretched Canuck, at it again.
Recommended? To chess lovers, Tevis fans, and anyone who needs a fun read. Not a weighty tome, although as chess-impaired, we have to admit that a lot of it just went Whoooosh! right over our heads.
Reread? No.
The Ultimate Guide to Chinese Tea - Bret Hinsch

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? A good guide for beginners. The writer is quite the Sinophile, and clearly knows his stuff, but if you're not into Chinese tea, this book is a little too too for you.
Reread? No.
The Worst Album Covers In The World Vol. 2 -

Borrowed? The offender shall remain nameless.
Recommended? Sure, if you want to guffaw at teh Tacky. Enjoyed it. Good break from reading about war crimes.
Reread? No.
The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon

Borrowed? The Canadians have infiltrated this blog as well as our heads. We welcome our new Canadian overlords.
Recommended? Highly. Never liked Michael Chabon before, but this book set that right in a big way. This is a writer who, if he keeps producing stuff like this, is going to win some big-assed fucking prize, and you heard it here last. Love the Yiddishkeit. Read it. You'll love it. Nu, what have you got to lose?
Reread? Oh hell to the fucking yeah.
Vietnam: A Long History - Nguyen Khac Vien

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? For a history of VietNam from a VietNamese viewpoint, by an eminent and highly respected VietNamese scholar, look no further. Sad to say, the post-revolutionary period to the present is somewhat lacking in the fine detail of the earlier periods, but this is the definitive tome if you want VietNamese history uncoloured by colonial prejudice.
Reread? Geeze, when? Love to, but WHEN?
What is the What - Dave Eggers

Borrowed? Blame those damn Canucks. They're taking over the world, eh?
Recommended? Highly. Dave Eggers is another writer that I never could get into before. I'm told I need to read Zeitoun to appreciate the full magnificence that is Dave Eggers, but if you can read this book and not think that the writer is simply effortlessly brilliant, well. Dave Eggers, I used to fucking HATE you. I'm converted now. The trick to writing someone else's story is to become invisible, to allow the subject to have their own voice, yet to be the master of that story, to patch it and polish it and put it in order so that someone who doesn't know the protagonist can form an idea of just who that person is, what shaped them, their pains and griefs, their triumphs and losses. Eggers does this masterfully. Zeitoun next.
Reread? Let's see, was it "Hell to the yeah?"
Who Won The Malayan Emergency - Herbert Andrew

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? Um. Herbert Andrew was, like, some low-level gunny in Malaysia sometime after WWII, during the period called (euphemistically) the Emergency. He has opinions. Not all of them seem to be grounded in fact.
Reread? This book would totally be a candidate for "Hell to the No."
Women Against The Raj - Joyce C. Lebra

Borrowed? No.
Recommended? For historians, feminists, military buffs, Singaporeans, Malaysians, Indians, Southeast-Asians, and the curious. The book describes the women of Malaysia (of Indian origin), who bravely armed themselves, formed the Rani of Jhansi regiment, and fought against the Japanese. The stories of the women who survived are interwoven with the historical background in which they lived and fought. Fascinating book. Highly recommended.
Reread? Time, time.