Odds and Ends

I read Les tambours noirs, by Josue Montello, a wonderful anti-slavery novel from Brazil, told in the first person in flashback. I also read a classic of Persian poetry, Nizami, entitled Chosroes et Chirin, as well as a novel which made next to no impression on me, Les oiseaux by Tarjei Vesaas. I just finished The Forsaken, by Tim Tzouliadis, about the Americans imprisoned by the Soviets, and I was riveted by the sadness and the inhumanity. It ranks right up there with the Nazi concentration camp literature I read when I was a teenager, Les medecins maudits and Les medecins de l'impossible. Apart from that, I read an issue of The New Yorker, an issue of The Economist, and two issues of Eclectic Reading, as well as an issue of The New Scientist. I also read Guided Inquiry, by Carol Kuhlthau, one of the last volumes about analogical cognition, this time written by a library scientist. It was excellent.

UNESCO list part III

I read so many books since yesterday I don't know where to start.

I read an interesting turn of the century Japanese novel, called Life of an Amorous Man by Seikaku Ihara. What is striking about this novel is its treatment of the gay lifestyle, which is remarkably un-judgmental for the time it was written. it's a short novel, I read all the short ones up front to clear my nightable. I also read a meditation on the crucifixion of Christ, La Cite inique, by a Muslim, Hussein Kemal. It was remarkable for the insight into the humanity of various actors in this passion play, without of course considering Christ more than a prophet appealing to conscience. From a woman Korean writer, Ch'oe Yun came Avec cette neige grise et sale, about the illicit publication of political tracts, which ends in the death of the leader, also a woman. It was short, and it was a potent cautionary tale about the freedom I take for granted.

In the ancient texts category, translated from the Persian, I read Faramarz, fils de Khodadad Samak-e Ayyar, possibly the oldest extant Persian novel. I also read Zhen Fu's Memoires d'un lettre pauvre, about a faithful talented wife who dies unappreciated in a classical Chinese family.


I read a colonial novel, The Cross and the Sword, about the Dominican Republic, by Manuel Galvan, which I found unremarkable; Fernandez's Adriana Buenos Aires, which I enjoyed for its witty experiment in structure -- and I usually don't like experiments in structure; I attempted La carthagenoise by German Espinosa, but I found it literally unreadable, and I plowed through Proust and Joyce. There are in that book as many periods as there are chapters. I gave up after three periods. More colonial novels with Emechita's Le corps a corps, an Ibo novel about the induction of a 16-year-old into the militias in Biafra, and Krishkanto, probably the last of my Bengali novels, about a youth's growing up first in rural, then in more urban Bengal.

I tore through a pile of reading on analogical cognition, including Similarity and Analogical Reasoning, by Vosniadou and Ortony; Complex Cognition, by Sternberg and Ben-Zeev; Integrating the Mind, by Maxwell; Sternberg's Handbook of Intelligence; and three or four articles. Not much was of use, since this area of research lends itself to experimentation, whereas I am primarily interested in insight and wisdom. Among the essays I read also Proust was a neuroscientist, by Jonah Lehrer, about illustrations in the arts of neurocognitive facts.

On top of that, I read Vanity Fair and two issues of The Economist. I guess you won't be surprised that I didn't do much else by read in the last 24 hours.