Sometime in the past year I read several books from a modern author. The author is an immigrant, the books are award winning, the prose is exceptional, and the books are unrelentingly depressing. This person is supposedly writing about a particular immigrant experience, but the whole canon was utterly alien to me. I spent some [...]
Category: books
More about Mary Evershed and Dante
I'm still reading Mary Evershed's own book about Dante and the early astronomers. She begins with a useful set of chapters explaining various theories and discussing Ptolemy. Part II is then her discussion of Dante. I'm not there yet. However, I did finish the biography that George sent me by Tracy Daugherty. Besides being interested [...]
Language
Tom Wolfe wrote a book called The Kingdom of Speech in 2016. I recently reread it. Its most basic premise is that what differentiates man from animal is the ability to speak. What differentiates man from animal is the ability to speak Tom Wolfe, The Kingdom of Speech He writes extensively about Daniel Everett, a [...]
What came before the Internet?
I recently read a fascinating book called The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage (Walker and Company, NY, 1998). The author's thesis is that the telegraph was very similar to the modern internet in its ability to connect people from all over and to send information anywhere, almost instantly. He traces the invention of the telegraph [...]
Reading for Writing
I just finished reading The House of Green Turf - a romantic thriller by Ellis Peters. She is better known as the writer of the Brother Cadfael mysteries. I have read lots of commentary on how to become a (better) writer and one of the most consistent pieces of advice is to read in the [...]
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