Diderot, Zweig

Since my last post, I've finished reading the complete works of Diderot, ending with a work on how to play the harpsichord late last night. Yes, I was having trouble sleeping. I also read Stefan Zweig's essay on Erasmus. It was supposed to be a biography, but it was not - not enough material in the time he had, I guess.

Diderot was impressive for a number of reasons. First and foremost, his range is amazing: he wrote a plan for a university for Catherine the Great, a book of mathematics, a book on playing the harpsichord, several books of criticism, several plays, an enormously anti-clerical novel called La religieuse, and some political essays, so say nothing of his Encyclopedie. His books of criticism were hard to read as they attacked other works line by line, but their tone reminded me of my intellectual mentor of some years back.

SO next, I'm going to read more Zweig, and some odds and ends from other lists that I have to pick up from the library.

I have now read 115 complete works, and my new goal is to reach 125 complete works by the end of the summer. I have Zweig on order, and there is Sainte-Beuve in the library, and Benjamin Constant, but I don't know who else? Maurois? Gide? That's still only 5, I need 5 more...I should target single book wonders!!!!!!!!!!!

Delton, Micklewait, Puig, Mags

Since my last post I've read an issue of The New Yorker, The Economist, The New Scientist, and OK Magazine. I also read Delton's 29 Mistakes Writers Shouldn't Make, which was actually very good, Micklewait's God Is Back, an exploration of the role of religion in public life. I especially liked the analysis of American-style religion. I also read Kiss of the Spider Woman, by Manuel Puig, which was interesting, although I am tiring of his habit of mixing fantasy and real life. However, as a standing on its head of Scheherazade, I thought it was very good. I've got the last volume of Alice Munro stories to get through, and then it's on to the complete works of Denis Diderot.

Petrach, Chenier, Puig

SO I read Puig's Mystery of the Rose Bouquet, Chenier's poetry and prose, Petrarch's Africa and a biography of Donald Barthelme. Well, I was bored by all of it. I was curious about Petrarch's poetry, as I was about Chenier's life. Barthelme seems to me to be a minor figure. And Puig, well, I thought his play ordinary.

Running out of reading, Puig

I did indeed run out of reading, and had to resort to trying to find something int he house I hadn't read -- slim pickings! I read 637 Best Things Anyone Ever Said, which turned out to be about half Woody Allen witticisms, instead of Tacitus and Plato. All is well, I ordered more books, and I got the first five of 20 volumes of the complete works of Diderot from the library. All is well.

I am at present reading the complete works of Andre Chenier, a French poet who died during the Terror. I also read a stack of Manuel Puig's novels. I find him most of all formulaic, with the blend of fantasy and reality. He is certain daring in terms of structure and I will say this for him: his experiments in structure serve him, unlike so many others. I suppose he will be at his best for Kiss of the Spider Woman. I have read Heartbreak Tango, Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages, Under a Mantle of Stars, Tropical Night Falling, Mystery of the Rose Bouquet, Blood of Requited Love. They are all short and fantastical.

Munro, Ficowski, Puig, Chekhov

Since my last post I've read an issue of OK Magazine, an issue of The New Yorker, and issue of the Utne Reader and an issue of The Economist.

I've also read all the stories of Alice Munro published in collections, Pubis Angelical by Manuel Puig, a biography of Bruno Schulz, Regions of the Great Heresy by Ficowski, and the plays of Anton Chekhov. The Puig novel was interesting from a structural point of view, with the intertwined stories of two imaginary women with a real, Latin American one. The stories of Alice Munro were keenly observed and psychologically true, as well as understated. I don't think, however, that they will be read much in fifty years. The collections I read were Runaway, Who do you think you are?, Away from her, Hateship, Courtship, Friendship, Loveship, Marriage, Friend of my youth, and The love of a good woman. I read Chekhov because I wanted to add him to my list of great dramatists.

I'm now about to run out of reading, as I've only got about 500 pages to go in an anthology about film.

Schulz, Giraudoux

Since my last post, I've read an issue of OK Magazine.

I also read the complete novels of Jean Giraudoux. He was interesting because his writing covered a wide range of types of novels. Certainly he displays ample mastery of the various genres, but what that meant in practice is that I only liked a couple of his novels.

I also read the complete fiction of Bruno Schulz, the Polish writer who was murdered in a ghetto during World War II. I found that, after reading peans to him, that the translation must have not rendered the virtuosity of his Polish. I suppose this is to be expected, only Tolstoy was fortunate enough to have a Constance Garnett. But I found him capable of the telling detail, and heavily autobiographical, and easy to read.

Giraudoux, Vargas Llosa

Since my last post, I read an issue of Cook's Illustrated, an issue of an astouding teen magazine called Pop Star, and an issue of Le nouvel observateur. I read three plays by Vargas Llosa, and I thought the last of them, La Chunga, was the most interesting. It is like Rashomon in structure, i.e. it shows several different possible occurrences for the ending of a story. The play is about which of these actually occurred. It is not about truth, however, it is about what goes on in people's heads. The fact that it considers what happened between a madam everyone assumes is a lesbian and a beautiful young woman must have made it controversial at the time, in Latin America.

I've also begun the complete works of Giraudoux, the French interwar novelist. I actually like it, I've already read three of them. Thank goodness for that! I've been slogging through stuff quite a bit.

Fenelon, Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa

Since my last post, I read an issue of Eclectic Reading and an issue of The Economist.

I have also completed reading the works of Fenelon. I confess to being disappointed, since his book length essays were almost all devoted to disputing Jansenism.

I also read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's memoirs of his youth To Live to Tell the Tale, which doesn't talk about his writing much, and Vargas Llosa's memoir, which also talks about politics and not writing. I am now reading the last of my Llosa novels, the one about Gauguin, Fish in Water.

Garcia Marquez, Sales, Stern

Since my last post, I've read an issue of The New Yorker, an issue of OK Magazine, an issue of Hello!Canada, and two issues of eclectic reading.

I finished the Garcia Marquez on Bolivar, which was excellent. I also finished reading the complete works of Saint Francois de Sales. These three books of spirituality and/or theology were excellent. Although 500 years old, I found them to be relevant. It was an easy read, in part because the editors had modernized the spelling of some of the more difficult words. I also read Remy Stern's But Wait..There's More, a book about the infomercial industry, including a long profile of Ron Popeil. It was actually fascinating -- I was shocked at how successful these businesses are. A spanking, fascinating good read.

Vargas Llosa

Yesterday, I read three books by Vargas Llosa, only one of which I liked. The first was Captain Pantoja, a very skillful satirical novel; the second was the famous Conversation in the Cathedral, which started out with a bang but didn't sustain my interest; and the third was The True Life of Alexander Mayta, which I did like, about a communist revolutionary. This last book was also very skillful, told by a journalist writing Mayta's life, complete with the nuns turned Communists, the general suggesting the book shouldn't be written, and finally Mayta himself, who is now only interested in going to work in the well-paid oil platforms of the neighboring country. Excellent.

Vargas Llosa wrote an unusually wide range of novels, but quite a few political novels, I'm now discovering.

I have three books on the go: one on film theory, one by Francois de Sales on spirituality; and an excellent on about Simon Bolivares by Garcia Marquez. This last book is in the great tradition of The Death of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar and all those novels about Alexander the Great, imagining what the great general was like in his last years.

Showalter, Stiles, Vargas Llosa, Marrus, Del Ponte, Dunlosky, Nelson, Hacker, Perfect, Shaughnessy

I've read an issue of Eclectic Reading since my last post.

I read quite a few non-fiction books today. I finished the biography of Commodore Vanderbilt, The First Tycoon. It was an excellent biography, it's just I belatedly discovered I wasn't interested. I also read Showalter's Jury of her Peers, which I was more interested in as the writers under discussion got more recent. I read Marrus' Vichy France and the Jews, where I was surprised to learn that the antisemitic laws were not enacted under German pressure. I then devoured Carla Del Ponte's memoirs, Madame Prosecutor. I got a huge kick out of such a strong woman being on a mission of justice, although I'm not sure I'd want her as an employee! I also read Vargas Llosa's book on Les miserables by Victor Hugo, but I didn't like it nearly as much as the book on Madame Bovary. The hate him/love him pattern continues.

Then I read a number of books on metacognition: the eponymous Metacognition by Dunlosky and Metcalfe, probably the best overview of any I've read; a reader, Metacognition, edited by Nelson; Metacognition in Educational Theory and Practice, by Hacker et al, which didn't contain much about higher education unfortunately, but confirmed some of my classroom practices; ditto Perfect et al's Applied Metacognition, ditto; and Shaughnessy et al's Meta-cognition, ditto.

Timpson, Vargas Llosa, Paxton, Garcia Marquez, Allara, Yserbyt, Morton, Sulivan

I have read an issue of The New Yorker and an issue of The Economist since my last post.

I also read a truckload of books. I'm right in the middle of Garcia Marquez's News of a Kidnapping, the story of a woman journalist abducted and held for sixteen months. It's riveting. I also read Vargas Llosa's Death in the Andes, which I didn't like, and The Bad Girl, which I loved. He is the first writer for which I've ever felt such a dichotomy. I read two books about Alice Neel, one, Black and White, a catalogue of an exhibition of her drawings; and Pictures of People by Pamela Allara, a biography and discussion of her work. I also read a collection of essays misnamed Metacognition, by Yzerbyt et al, which was mostly about neural processes in learning. I also read an Adam Morton essay on metacognition and strategic thinking, also misnamed. I read an excellent history of Vichy France by Robert Paxton. I also read several books by Jean Sulivan, Consolation de la nuit, and Les mots a la gorge. The most important book in all of this, from my point of view, was Timpson's Metateaching and the Instructional Map, which was primarily about the instructional map, but contained some student evaluation questions which are much more appropriate to my way of teaching. I record them here for future reference. All of them are to be graded from 1 (low) to 5 (high):

teacher knowledge
teacher enthusiasm/energy
teacher preparation/organization
teacher clarity
student engagement
content/activity meaningfulness
positive learning climate
feedback to students

to which I would add

applicability of learning to other situations
learning compared to other courses

Sganow, Herman

Since my last post, I read an issue of The New Scientist, a biography of Victor Fleming, the director of such films as Gone with the Wind, and Mistress of the Vatican by Eleanor Herman.

I devoured the Herman in about three hours. I had never heard of the powerful sister-in-law of a pope, Olimpia Maidalchini. The book was a quick, easy read. I was a big disappointed in the Fleming biography by Sganow, it became too much like a list of movies made and what the author thought of them. I was shocked to learn that many early classics are now lost.

I plan to read more to day than I did yesterday.

Marquez, Altshuler, Gulland

Since my last post, I read an issue of OK magazine.

I also read a wonderful book about landmark art exhibitions, From Salon to Biennale. It contains reproductions of works of art, parts of the catalogue and some contemporary reactions, like the art teacher who wrote to the mother of the only woman Impressionist telling her her daughter aught to burn her paintings. I also read Country for Children by Marquez, a wonderful book of photographs about Columbia. I also read two of four historical novels by Sandra Gulland, one about, of course, Louise de la Valliere, and the first of a trilogy about Josephine de Beauharnais. I suppose I'm the worst sort of reader for historical novels, I've read the source material and I'm correcting the French and Italian mistakes.

Cheever, Belchers

I read an issue of The New Scientist since my last post.

I just finished reading the Cheever biography -- a tragedy amidst literary success, of an alcoholic who couldn't accept his own homosexuality. A lot of people got hurt in the process, it made a good, easy read a depressing one. I also read the Belchers' Collecting Souls, Gathering Dust, about two women artists, one conventional and unsuccessful and one unconventional and successful. There is no doubt in my mind that the yoke of convention broke the back of many a woman looking for fulfillment and self-expression. However, this case study fails to prove it, however well-researched and well-written.

Sulivan, Johnson, Vargas Llosa, Boyd, Burrin, Lehrer

I read an issue of The Globe since my last post.

I also read some excellent books. The first is the first volume of the eponymous Nabokov by Brian Boyd, which I devoured in a few hours. I also read La France a l'heure allemande, by Philippe Burrin, about Vichy France -- an excellent and fascinating piece of work. I read Sulivan's Joie errante, about which I can't quite whether it's a novel or a memoir. I read Johnson's Invention of Air, about an early scientific controversy, an easy read, in parallel to the controversy in the US about creationism. I read Jonathan Lehrer's Metamind, which was not as close to the topic I was interested in, metacognition, as I had hoped. It was analytical philosophy. and I am now reading Vargas Llosa's Wellsprings. I can't tell yet if I'm going to love it or hate it.