Book Reviews
Be the light. Be the joy
I have received a number of new subscribers recently, thanks to recommendations from other Substacks, despite the fact that I haven’t posted anything new in two months. So, I thought I would give you, at least, some links to some new-ish book reviews published on other sites.
Last Woman by Carleigh Baker (2024), from ZOOMER
The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard (2024), from ZOOMER
The Human Scale by Michael Lista (2023), from The Miramichi Review
Also, here are some other books I’ve read in recent months and not noted previously:
Little Fish by Casey Plett (2018)
Field Note #2: On Property by Rinaldo Walcott (2021)
Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (1878)
Recursion by Blake Crouch (2019)
Field Note #5: On Browsing by Jason Guriel
Field Note #6: On Writing and Failure by Stephen Marche (2023)
Field Note #7: On Class by Deborah Dundas (2023)
Thomas Jefferson: Author of America by Christopher Hitchens (2005)
Ulysses by James Joyce (1920)
The Marigold by Andrew F. Sullivan (2023)
George Washington: The Founding Father by Paul Johnson (2005)
James by Percival Everett (2024)
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (2021)
I had intended to write a summary review of the “Notes” series. It has just been a very busy and exhausting couple of months. I thought they were all worth while. Marche is the funniest. Walcott is the smartest. Guriel got me to purchase Dennis Wilson’s “Pacific Ocean” (1977) from iTunes. I think it’s good. I don’t think it’s as good as Guriel thought. Oh, well.
Yes, I read Ulysses. Not sure I’ve recovered. I listened to it. I wasn’t expecting the internal essays on Shakespeare or the take off on the Green Knight. The Molly section was, well, great. Will be looking for a good book-long essay on the work to fill in the gaps. It helped that I had listen to Homer not that long ago!
Watch for my upcoming review of James. Just saying.
The books of Jefferson and Washington were a diversion, useful to contemplations of what is the contemporary insanity. Hitchens is always worth reading, whatever detours he goes on, though I avoid his atheism fundamentalism for the most part.
The Marigold is a lot of fun. Very contemporary Toronto. A bit of a mess, but fun.
Small Things Like These is not a mess at all. Very tidy. A little boring. Not sure it’s a novel. Act I of a novel, perhaps?
Little Fish is a song. What a voice! So strong, so powerful.
Recursion was fun, Return of the Native not so much.
*
Also, I have been working on a piece on 2012, tied to Primo Levi. But it’s slow going. The primary event of 2012 is the death of my wife from breast cancer. In my thoughts, that year is all about her, but I don’t want to write it as about her. This has been my challenge since 2012. How to recover my life. When you are a caregiver to a dying person, you give up your ego, but when that person is gone, how do you get it back?
Bit by bit, perhaps. Or perhaps, never. Not completely.
In the months after she died, I read a number of Levi’s Holocaust memoirs. It was exactly right, how he was able to articulate what had happened in the clearest way, so as to clear a path for the future. I hoped to do the same, though of a much reduced scale, of course. A human scale, maybe, to quote Lista.
Anyway, that is still ongoing. I’m trying to sort out what to say and what doesn’t need to be said. There are many times when I wrote, pushing out everything, but now that isn’t where I’m at. Now, I think it’s important to be more precise. But that takes time.
So, stay turned, I guess.
Last week, I saw Santana in Toronto, a bit of Woodstock — he started the concert with “Soul Sacrifice” — and it was just what I needed.
Carlos was fantastic. Just amazing. And ooozing 60s vibe.
"Remember your own divinity," he said. "The world is separated between ignorance and darkness and truth and light. And we're not going to talk about the darkness, because we are evolved and we are the light. Remember that. Be the light. Be the joy."
At the end of the concert, the screen dissolved into one word: ONENESS.
It was kind of awesome. So many sounds coming off that stage, so many styles of music and, yes, joy. Then we walked out of the "Budweiser Stage" and crammed along a pedestrian bridge over Lakeshore Blvd, listening to the drivers in the parking lot honk in frustration at each other.
Someone had already lost their joy...
I've still got a bit of mine.