Retz, Quirk

I just finished reading the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, a French clergyman and politician of the XVIIth century. I didn't quite know what to make of him. His memoirs are excellent, rising to the level of the Duc de Saint-Simon for portraiture, but for the rest, it was less interesting. I think it's because I had trouble following his impressions of the Fronde, as I don't know enough about the Fronde itself.

I wanted to take some notes about Intuition and Metacognition in Medical Education, because I think this is relevant to a broader application, including my own teaching. The teaching strategies recommended are fostering reflective writing and reading; using a facilitative teaching style that includes reflective questioning; provide feedback on thinking, perspective taking and reflection; and finally model reflection, self-assessment, and self-evaluation. (Pp. 93-4)

On teaching styles and types of behavior

Assertive	Suggestive	Collaborative	Facilitative
Gives directions	Suggests alternatives/choices	Elicits/accepts learner’s ideas	Elicits/accepts learner’s feelings
Asks focused questions	Asks leading questions	Uses open/ exploratory questions	Uses open/ reflective questions
Gives information	Gives opinions	Relates personal experiences	Offers feelings of encouragement

Each teaching style is appropriate for achieving a specific level of objectives.

Assertive and suggestive teaching styles are appropriate for helping the learner develop a cognitive base i.e. gain knowledge and understanding. Facilitative and collaborative teaching styles encourage development of meta-cognitive capabilities, including reflection, self-questioning, perspective taking, and self assessment.

(Pp. 102-3).

Sulivan, Marquez, Metacognition, Volk, Kanipe, Yakobson

I've read an issue of Majesty and an issue of the National Enquirer, as well as an update of the F*** My Life blog, since my last post. The latter blog is one of the few that makes me laugh, although I suspect it is not authentic -- too sharply written too consistently.

I have also read several books by Jean Sulivan: Au dela de la mer, Traversee des illusions; the novel Obsession de Delphes; and Le plus petit abime.

I read several essays, Metapatterns by Tyler Volk, which I found a silly treatment of an interesting premise; Yakobson's Israel and the Family of Nations, which argues for both a state for the Jews and the Law of Return, which turned out to be tautological in argument, however much I agree with either; and Cosmic Connection, by Jeff Kanipe, about how astronomy can affect our lives.

I read several Marquez: Clandestine in Chile, a first person reportage of a Chilean film maker returning illegally to his homeland to make a documentary about the junta; Memories of my Melancholy Whores, about an old man recalling what life is about through the series of prostitutes he patronized -- Marquez is a good writer, but sexist in the extreme; Of Love and Other Demons; and Chronicles of a Death Foretold, also about exactly that, the death of a man who knows he is to be assassinated and doesn't understand his own death.

Finally, there was a pile of metacognition books: Intuition and Metacognition in Medical Education, by Quirk, which showed me what I was doing in class was recommended for other types of classrooms, at least; Papaleontiou-Louca's Metacognition and theory of mind; Ong's Orality and Literacy, which had some interesting things to say about the effect of print on the speed and silence of reading, and how that affects authors; and Comprehension Connections, by Tammy McGregor.

Vargas Llosa, Kassow, Lacey, Mariani

Since my last post I've read an issue of The Economist. I've also read some excellent Vargas Llosa. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is an unbelievably vivid novel, I loved it. His book Perpetual Orgy on Madame Bovary is one of the best books on literature I've ever read -- the chapter on how Flaubert actually wrote was particularly interesting. I read Vargas Llosa's Nobel lecture. I also read Kassow's Who Will Write Our History?, about an archive that survived the Warsaw Ghetto. For all my reading about the Shoah, this book contained more heartrending details, and was also inspiring about what survives and what does not in human history. I also read Introduction to Film by Nick Lacey, which was full of excellent detail about the types of shots and types of cuts which are going to be useful to me. Finally I read a biography of Gerald Manley Hopkins by Paul Mariani, which was either uninformative or the poet's life was very uneventful indeed. One unusual characteristic of the biography was that the author would put in the day of the week and date at the start of various paragraphs. I found it distracting and wondered if the author was being lazy, but for references it would be very useful.

Alice Neel

I read an issue of Eclectic Reading and one of OK Magazine since my last post. I've also just read two books on the artist Alice Neel, one eponymous and one about an exhibition, Interior Exterior. and I am thinking a lot about pure creativity. I did some drawing and painting in the last 24 hours, which I haven't done for several years. If I don't create, I feel a sort of pressure that makes me restless, I suppose. But my creativity is about talking with friends and writing in my diary, not just painting or writing a play.

Metacognition, Sullivan, Vargas Llosa, Mags

I've read an issue of National Examiner, an issue of The New Yorker, and an issue of The New Scientist since my last post. I read two volumes of essays on metacognition, by McKinnon, Waller et al. I will be taking notes from only one essay, but I am increasingly thinking that my work is difficult for people to use because it requires metacognition. I read Vargas Llosa's Green House. Uh-oh, I thought, I've ordered everything he's ever written, and I don't like this first book. And I read Sullivan's Au dela de Dieu. This essay on paradoxes was written philosophically, it seemed to me, even mystically. But I read it because it was recommended to me as fantastic, but I didn't think it was that earth-shaking.

Garcia Lorca, the last of Nabokov, Metacognition

Since my last post, I've read the works of Garcia Lorca, whose revolutionary play Sans titre I thought was really interesting, although more as writing than as theatre. I found his sad story more captivating than much of his writing -- he was shot, along with hundreds of other village inhabitants, during the dark days of the Spanish civil war. Which reminds me, I should read about that. I've also finished the novels of Nabokov. It seems my favorite will be Sebastian Knight, as I was not captivated by Ada, although Look at the Harlequins I thought was rather good. Finally, I started to read the first of about twenty books on metacognition, for professional reasons. I just read, you guessed it, Metacognition, a collection of essays edited by Metcalfe and Shimamura. It didn't contain much that was useful for me in terms of improving my metacognitive strategic exercises, but who knows? The reading may stimulate my thinking, at least.

Strauss, the last of France, Borges

I read the three essays by Leo Strauss published under the title City and Man. I can't say I thought that much of it, it is perfectly fine but doesn't seem to say much that is new. On the other hand these were published lectures rather than a monograph.

I am also midway through my last volume by Anatole France. Some of the novels were obviously serialized, and some of the writing bears the mark of someone who had to earn a living that way. But he is witty -- viz. in La revolte des anges that bourgeois mother who says virginity was fine when girls were married at puberty, but surely no one expects it of a 25-year-old? This was worthy of Oscar Wilde. He is also adept at satirizing society through fantasy, as he does with Ile des pingouins. The biggest surprise was his unabashed Catholicism, not in evidence generally, but showed through in his book on Joan of Arc. Who knew?

I also read a couple of books by Borges as I am reading his complete works. Universal History of Infamy is one strange idea for a book, an unconnected litany of horrible things done across time and space. Possibly the next book, Universal History of Eternity will be a bit more uplifting.

I also read Le Monde Diplomatique's quarterly, Manieres de penser, the CAA quarterly and an issue of Academic Matters.

Anatole France, Boyd on Nabokov, mags

Since my last post I've read an issue of Cook's Illustrated, an issue of Vanity Fair and an issue of OK Magazine. I've also read six volumes of the complete works of Anatole France, of which the two volumes on Joan of Arc interested me the most. I also devoured Brian Boyd's biography of Nabokov, second volume only. I enjoyed all 792 pages thoroughly. I didn't read the south Americans, as advertised previously. A whole afternoon on my sun-drenched deck, a warm day at last! It was really enjoyable.

Colette, mags

Since my last post I read the last of Colette's books, and her plays. I was almost relieved to find something I liked. Julie de Carneilhan is marvelously well-observed, as were her memoirs of occupied Paris, Le fanal bleu. I suppose that must be what made her such a great nature writer as well. I'm onto Luis Borges next, on an extended tour of Latin American literature, with Lorca and possibly Marquez next.

I've also read another issue of The New Yorker and The New Scientist.

Mags, Colette

Since my last post I read an issue of The New Yorker, and stared a new issue of The Economist. I also completed the reading of Andre Malraux. His long meditation on the sacred and the unseen in art certainly was wonderful. I was interested to read that his work had been criticized, too much for its value according to his editors, for getting certain particular facts wrong. I agree, this is a work with a broad sweep, and I don't care if he got one of the dates wrong.

Having at last received the last 11 volumes of the complete works of Colette, I read three more volumes yesterday. These are easy reads, and I was surprised to hear of Colette's affair with her own stepson, Bertrand de Jouvenel, since I had also read de Jouvenel's work as a futurist. Poor him, his work is valuable, but his obituary will read: "Deflowered by his own stepmother, the flamboyant, sexually omniverous writer Colette..." I hope he doesn't have an alert on his name for blogs... I was interested to read her books of non fiction, about her life with women or her learning to be a writer, but I find her work in fiction so far to be bland, in French anodin. There are still quite a few volumes to go, I plan to finish this off on the week-end holiday at the latest.

Sand, Malraux

I read Sand's autobiographical works, and I was wrong. It wasn't 1192 pages, there were 461 more pages in the next volume! She said something about Balzac, with a wonderful turn of phrase: "un esprit large, mais pas infini; un homme doue, mais pas sans defaut." I hope I can say that about myself some day.

Well, I moved on to Malraux, volumes 2, 4, and 5, and I have to say I'm really enjoying the essays on art. They are wonderful. He is not so much considering art in history as pondering the role of creation in humanity. I learned some interesting things -- I didn't realize Goya was so modern or so interested in sadomasochism, for example. I've only got another 800 pages or so to go....

I also read an essay on Japanese security, called Securing Japan by Richard Samuels.

I also read a magazine called The Meat Paper and an issue of The New Scientist since my last post.

Nabokov, Georges Sand

I have read with great pleasure Sebastian Knight, Pnin, another novel whose title escapes me momentarily, and Speak, Memory by Nabokov. I did something I rarely do when I read -- I laughed. First, at the dry rejoinder when his Minister of Justice father took a lot of money rather than a title from Czar Alexander ("another failed count'), and then at his own off-hand comment: "in my twenty years of exile, I of course devoted a prodigious amount of time to chess problems." Yes, I laughed out loud. His writing is extremely vivid, and I thought Sebastian Knight really was a tour de force.

And I'm now about halfway through Georges Sand's Histoire de ma vie. I told my partner I was forever cured of worrying about being a narcissist writer -- 1129 pages of small type about her own life? Unbelievable. I am enjoying it thoroughly.

Mags, Malraux, Pasternak, the start of Nabokov

I've read an issue of The New Yorker, one of The New Scientist, one of Esquire, two of Eclectic Reading, and one of The Economist. I've also finished the second volume of the complete works of Malraux -- actually the third volume, with the second on its way, and the complete works of Pasternak. He's known in Russia for his language-stretching poetry, but here he is knows for writing Dr. Zhivago. I'd seen the movie so often that I was comparing it the whole time. The book is, as you might expect, a lot more subtle. I'm now reading the Cambridge Companion to Nabokov, as a prelude to reading his complete works.

Mags, Simmermann, Posner, Naftali, Sauter, Croning, Sheehan, Moghaddam, Corum, Sheehan, Michaud, Nabokov

Since my last post, I have read two issues of The Economist, an issue of Airpower in French and one in English, and one issue of The New Yorker. I have also read a stack of books for professional reasons. These are: How States Fight Terrorism, by Doron Zimmermann and Andreas Wenger; Countering Terrorism by Richard Posner; Dick Couch's Chosen Soldier; Homeland Security by Mark Sauter and James Carafano; Blind Spot by T. J. Naftali; Attacking Terrorism by Cronin and Ludes; When Terrorism and Counterterrorism clash by I.S. Sheehan; Understanding Terrorism by F. M Moghaddam and A. J. Marsella; Fighting the War on Terror by James Corum; The Roots of Terrorism by Louise Richardson; and M.A. Sheehan's Crush the Cell. There are two or three titles missing, gifts from my partner that I've now donated to the university library without taking down the titles. I have also read Brand's Traitor to His Class, a biography of Franklin Roosevelt which contradicts some previous biographies I've read; Claude Michaud's Stratégie et sociologie de l'entreprise, an excellent book full of insights such as I haven't read in a good long time; and now I'm reading the Cambridge Companion to Nabokov, in preparation for reading his complete works.