Reading is sexy XLVIII

(image source) The next two books I read had a theme of dysfunctional sibling relationships, where siblings compete for love with fatal results, also the theme of Eden, the serpent and fall from grace. Just in time for the holidays! (kidding of course)

23. The Game by A.S. Byatt This is a shorter, early novel by Byatt, which tells the story of two adult sisters, Casandra the Oxford don and Medievalist, and Julia, best-selling novelist. As children they had an elaborate, shared, imaginative life and the titular game, inspired by Medieval romances, reminiscent of what the young Brontë sisters made with their mythology of Gondal and the associated maps and stories they created together. The adult sisters are distant, but brought together when their father has a stroke. They grew apart, we learn, as the novel progresses, due to a series of perceived transgressions (Julia writing about their shared game, their mutual and competitive love of the neighbour Simon -now a jungle-dwelling herpetologist with a budding TV career, Cassandra's rather melodramatic denunciation of the family's Quaker faith and conversion to Anglicanism, Julia's sort of self-sabotaging hero-worship for her older sister). Cassandra is a spinster, with a secret obsession still for Simon, who shared her early religious investigations. Julia is married to would-be Quaker saint Thor, and has a teenage daughter Deborah. Julia finds herself on a TV show about art and ideas, through which Simon re-enters their lives. Once again, Byatt has a natural scientist as a character to involve zoology, but also the symbol and mythology of snakes and serpents. I appreciate her consistent argument that science, like art, contributes to culture. Julia, initially intending to repair her relationship with her sister, ends up writing a novel, which is a thinly-veiled story of Cassandra and her relationship with and to Simon, without much thought to consequences. This is a study of family relationships, unrequited love, ideas, the nature of art versus science, writing, mental health, suicide, charity, academia, and responsibility. The characters feel quite real and the story is engaging, though it is perhaps less of a tapestry of ideas than Byatt's later novels.

(Literary gossip being what it is, I read once that this novel started her feud with her sister Margaret Drabble, though, it's also been attributed to writing about a family tea set.)

24. Cain by José Saramago This strange and final parable from the wise old man himself, is a sort of mythical biography of Cain. It begins with his parents, Adam and Eve, and their despotic Old Testament Creator (complete with ample pride and crown) in the Garden of Eden. After their expulsion, and an interesting interlude between Eve and the guarding Cherubim, they land on their feet when taken in by a caravan (because, of course, there are other people), and eventually they make a home and a family. Cain, in frustration with God's petty testing of his faith by only accepting Abel's tributes, kills his brother in jealousy, but argues for God's partial culpability. The story is really of his life after this, as a nomad, through time and space. He serves as skeptical witness to all of the most famous Old Testament stories (from Abraham and Isaac through Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tower of Babel, Moses, Job, various wars and battles ending with Noah). The thesis seems to be that the Old Testament God is cruel and capricious (all that senseless death and destruction, including innocent children destroyed in Sodom and cruel demands of sacrifice), but Cain has a plan for retribution.

As intriguing as all of Saramago's novels, this is a most unusual book.

25. My White Planet by Mark Anthony Jarman At first I thought, that's what you get for choosing books at random off RJH's shelf. He, after all, has King Leopold's Ghost (about the exploitation of the Congo) by his bedside, and The Road (in which *spoiler alert* people are eaten) in the glove compartment of his car. I wondered whether perhaps all his favorite books would be sad. Jarman's first story (and some of the subsequent stories) of a soldier's life in Custer's army is a bit grim. Several stories are informed by the violent North American colonial wars and battles (with allusions to Sitting Bull through Louis Riel). The titular dreamy story about seven isolated men at arctic research station which has fallen out of contact with civilization, who find a shipwrecked girl, is quite creepy. But, he writes crystalline stories like poems. "Make way for my itchy antlers, my spikes of rage, my affection for the slippery slope." I have the idea that Jarman is a writer's writer. He knows how to wield words. His stories are very evocative. I recognized the unnamed Straight of Georgia (and was unsurprised to learn the author lived in Victoria, prior to moving to Fredericton) in the description of a float plane flight in Bad Men Who Love Buzz Lightyear; I recognized Fredericton with its right side and wrong side of the Saint John River in Bear on a Chain. I can see how his simple story of a New Brunswick old timers hockey team, A Nation Plays Chopsticks would charm RJH, with its descriptions of the game, the odd camaraderie, driving moose-ridden highways at night, haunting old arenas, and questioning the drive of the 'civilized' narrator (presumably Jarman) to play a sometimes violent game. I personally enjoyed the sporadic allusions to an interesting array of music (clearly he's an avid listener) - from Bobbie Gentry through the White Stripes, by way of everyone from Otis Blackwell, Neil Young, Stereolab, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Joy Division, the Tragically Hip, Sid Vicious, Syd Barrett and assorted unexpected allusions. The final two stories are even labeled "Bonus Tracks". Personally, I would read this book for the sheer pleasure of these two sentences: "If Derrida didn't exist we'd have to invent him. And then beat him up at recess," but the book is much richer than that. Read these well-crafted stories and see.

26. Myths To Live By by Joseph Campbell. Guess it's back to the imagery of the Garden and the serpent.

{Series so far: books read, more books read, books read, books read continues, more books read,  Reading is sexy I,  Reading is sexy II,  Reading is sexy III,  IReading is sexy V, Reading is sexy V, Reading is sexy VI, Reading is sexy VII, Reading is sexy VIII, Reading is sexy IX, Reading is sexy Reading is sexy X, Reading is sexy XI, Reading is sexy XII, Reading is sexy XIII, Reading is sexy XIV, Reading is sexy XV, Reading is sexy XVI, Reading is sexy XVII, Reading is sexy XVIII, Reading is sexy XIX, Reading is sexy XX, Reading is sexy XXI, Reading is sexy XXII, Reading is sexy XXIII Reading is sexy XXIV, Reading is sexy XXV, Reading is sexy XXVI, Reading is sexy XXVII, Reading is sexy XXVIII, Reading is sexy XXIX, Reading is sexy XXX, Reading is sexy XXXI, Reading is sexy XXXII, Reading is sexy XXXIII, Reading is sexy XXXIV, Reading is sexy Reading is sexy XXXV, Reading is sexy XXXVI, Reading is sexy XXXVII, Reading is sexy XXXVIII, Reading is sexy XXXIX, Reading is sexy XL, Reading is sexy XLI, Reading is sexy XLII, Reading is sexy XLIII, Reading is sexyXLIV, Reading is sexy XLV, Reading is sexy XLVI, Reading is sexy XLVII}

Reading is sexy XLVI

(image source, could easily be a representation of a certain character)

You would be forgiven for assuming that I had given up reading, based on this blog, as I haven't posted anything about books since May! I have been reading, though not at my usual rate, what with all the travelling and so forth. Also, to be honest, Mason & Dixon almost did me in. It's one of those, excellent-but-a-real-slog kind of books. You might recall, when it was last mentioned, I'd read 200 pages, a mere quarter of the book. I wrote:

12. Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon In which Mr. Pynchon's wild, Unfettered, Profound, tightly woven (and Sporadically, giving the Appearance, of Unhinged) Mind takes on the Lives of two Eighteenth Century English Astronomers, Servants of the Royal Society, now Best Rem'mbred for their Survey of of the Boundary of Pennsylvania and Maryland.... Though the language is suited to the protagonist's era (complete with unfathomable capitalization rules) and the narrative winding and non-linear, I'm 200 pages in and it's addictive. Only 600 more to go...

While less raucous than Gravity's Rainbow, it had level of detail and critical eye for history I've come to expect - both mentioning figures from the history of science like Bouguer, someone I would only expect geophysicists to know (and then, really, only those of us who work with potential fields methods, and I don't even expect anyone reading this to know what 'potential fields methods' means), and forcing me to reconsider my thoughts on General Wolfe. Dixon is identified as 'Geordie', and Wolfe's actions in Northern England, what today we would call union-busting, like his actions in Scotland (covered in the next novel I read) go beyond pragmatic into mercenary, despite the heroic image presented in Canadian history books. It does present an epic story just prior to and after the American Revolution (both George Washington and Benjamin Franklin appear as characters), but it is unflinching in detailing the violence including massacres of native people and the slave trade and its brutality, and the plight of women. Both Mason and Dixon are reminded of their time in South Africa, and are repulsed, the Quaker Dixon in particular. It wouldn't be Pynchon without the delightfully absurd Learnèd English Dog (L.E.D.), a chatty terrier, snooty pirates, the ghost of Mason's wife, sentient clocks (and Harrison's clock, of Longitude fame), a lovesick duck automaton chasing the object of her desire, a French master-chef through the woods, Jesuit plots and prostitute-nuns, a Chinese Jesuit Feng shui practitioner, serious coffee abuse, flying over leylines and a variety of magic accomplished through the magnetic and telluric fields of the earth, and the mysterious power of their surveyed line itself. It is epic, serious, absurd, and a touching tale of friendship between our odd couple, Mason and Dixon.

The excerpt is from PRINTERESTING, who were particularly amused by the "Print causes Civil Unrest". Perhaps that's my problem, I am both a printmaker and a coffee-drinker at sea.

13. No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod This is a novel of great beauty. I read it because RJH said it was one of his favorites; I am embarrassed to say I didn't know MacLeod (an amazing Canadian author) previously. The title brings us back to General Wolfe; it is a quotation from one of his letters arguing that Scottish Highlanders lead his troops into battle at the Plains of Abraham because, "they are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to a rough country, and no great mischief if they fall." It tells the story of the MacDonald family, through the eyes of Alexander MacDonald, now an orthodontist in Toronto. He recalls his childhood on Cape Breton Island, where he and his twin sister were raised by their grandparents, after a terrible accident on the ice, when his parents and brother were crossing to their lighthouse. It is also the story of his elder brothers, who grew up, half-wild in their ancestor and clan patriarch Calum Ruadh's home, and grow to be men who are expert miners, sent around the world, but longing for Cape Breton. It is the story of his grandparents, of the Island, of the entire mythic history of Clan Donald, of the Scots and their relationship with the French. Its characters are of such fullness and humanity that it is hard not to think this is a memoir, our narrator really knows and loves these people. Even the dog and horse worked their way into my heart. It's a love story about Cape Breton itself, but it also ties their exile to many who have to leave home, like the Mexican and Caribbean seasonal fruit pickers in Ontario, and it makes the story universal. It is about Home. Read it.

14. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain. A dark and amusing little satire about pride, honesty, and small town politics.

15. Sugar & Other Stories by A.S. Byatt. Byatt's first collection of stories has a recurring theme of death and how the surviving cope. There are some ghosts; both children and parents haunt this collection. There is injustice. There is suicide, accidental death and one, possible, future homicide. It's a dark little collection, not as sweet as the name implies.

16. Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. Pinkola Estés is a Jungian analyst and storyteller. In this book about women's psychology, she approaches issues through the lens of fairytales and archetypes, employing stories and characters like Bluebeard, Baba Yaga, the Red Shoes and the Inuit Sealskin to provide insight. Each tale is interpreted as symbolic of a single female psyche; both Bluebeard and his bride, as well as her sisters are all aspects of a single mind. We have our own inner predators, but our own healers too. It's a style that is a bit foreign to me (I tend towards the literal and when in doubt, rely upon my logic and rational abilities) but I do love a good fairytale, and am certain there is both insight and sound advice within.

{Series so far: books read, more books read, books read, books read continues, more books read, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII,XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL,XLI, XLII, XLIII,
XLIV,
XLV}

Reading is sexy XLIV

(image credit: Ramon Casas- Decadence 1899) Wow, I have been woefully neligent of reporting on my reading. I've also been reading a bit less, but the main problem was my response to a certain book (see below). I felt so strongly that a proper review required re-analysis of data, charts and maps (undoubtedly a surefire way to diminish my imaginary, book review audience to vanishingly small size and/or make it come to question my sanity) and then never found the time to do so. Of course, the solution is to post some brief reviews with a pointer to a future planned post where I explain that those of us with a facility with numbers are not mean, arrogant, ogres to be avoided, and we may even have incredibly useful data-analysis skills which we would be willing to share with people who are not self-righteous jerks or glorying in their innumeracy as if that made them culturally superior collaborators in other fields.

4. Heavenly Intrigue - Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History's Greatest Scientific Discoveries by Joshua and Anne-Lee Gilder This was great. You should read it. I read a lot of history of science, and sometimes when you read a book like this you think perhaps the history of science books should be left to people who aren't scientists. I am a big fan of Tycho Brahe. The Danish sixteenth century astronomer not only found a supernova, but his excellence as an experimentalist and insistence on repetability of measurements literally provided a definition of the modern scientific method. He does not get enough credit. That's partially because he had one biographer who disliked him (as the Gilders convincingly show) and he was painted as a hot-head, who lost his nose in a duel over a woman of questionable reputation (which is quite unfair, and also fails to express the sheer commonplace nature of dueling amongs the Danish nobility of the time). Further, Tycho lived his life in the open, including his devotion to his life-long, common-law wife and his efforts to ensure his offspring could inherit, so it's not so surprising he had a metal nose made and got on with it. Without Tycho's data Kepler would not have been able to calculate his three laws of planetary motion (and come within a hair's breath of Newton's law of Universal Gravitation). It would have been very easy to erroneously assume orbits were circular, not ellipses (as the orbits are damn near circles) but Tycho's data was too good for this and included estimates of accuracy. Tycho often gets a lot of flack from theorists for failing to entirely accept the Copernican heliocentric model of our solar system. The Tychonian model has the planets rotating the sun, and the whole kit n' kaboodle circling the Earth. This is often explained as his reticence to make that 'paradigm shift'. The Gilders put the lie to this idea. They show that he would have accepted the model, except the notion that the Earth rotates around the sun would lead any good astronomer to deduce that there would be stellar paralax. (Hold your index finger up and look at it with alternating eyes closed - left-right-left-right. The finger appears to move because of binocular paralax. As we trace out our orbit through space, we expect the stars' observed positions to change through the same effect. This does in fact happen, but because the Universe is many many orders of magnitude larger than Tycho knew, the effect is so small, it was not observed till the 20th century. So, like a good experimentalist, he was unable to accept a theory which was counterdicted by the data.) I've read previous (disappointing) biographies of Kepler. This biography certainly paints him in an unflattering light, though the assessments from his diaries are self-assessments. The authors produce a convincing argument that Tycho Brahe was murdered (an expert experimentalist and alchemist/pharmacist, he was poisoned) and then establish a motive, a rather bizarre and anti-social character, opportunity for Kepler that they use to argue that .... guess who did it? While a using forensic science to solve a murder from 1601 will by necessity require some circumstantial evidence (I am convinced of the poisoning but not entirely of the poisoner), they tell a good story. Further, since they go back to the primary sources, they avoid the mistake of far too many scientists, of re-telling legends. It's good to know that one does not in fact die from neglecting to relieve one's bladder at a royal banquet. I'm sure some guests of this week's upcoming nuptials will be relieved.

5. Natural Experiments of History. Edited by Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson. Now, I read this because the journalist brought home the uncorrected page proofs, as newspapers can not store these free books from publishers indefinitely. So, it's not impossible a couple of the more eggregious statements were removed by a sensible person at the Harvard University Press before the final version was put to press. One can only hope so, though I doubt they will bother re-plot the data, unfortunately. I was intrigued. The editors point out that any field of study involving the past cannot be directly investigated with experiments, however some "natural experiments" can often be drawn from amongst events which have occured which can allow us to draw insight from comparative case studies on one end of the spectrum through to quantitative analysis. I think this is great, and fairly obvious to an earth scientist - someone trained with all the numerical tools of a physicist to study the earth where natural changes happen over geological time. I read the chapters on a variety of subjects which would not normally cross my path (Polynesian cultural evolution, parterns of boom and bust in settler societies of the 19th century, development of new world banks and the relationship to government, ecology and inter-island comparisons in Polynesia or intra-island comparisons between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the present-day economic consequences of slavery on Africa, land tenure and public good in India, the spread of the French revolution in conquered regions of what is now Germany). These were very interesting and for the most part convincing - partially because the analysis of numerical data was so shallow and claims so small that they had to be convincing (i.e. x and y are positively corrolated, when with some no-how it would have been posible to establish far more significant claims.) The attitude of the editors, Diamond in particular, was rather unfortunate. I should have guessed when I read in the Prologue that the inability to make controlled and replicated laboratory experiments "misleads laboratory scientists into looking down on fields of science that cannot employ manipulative experiments" that perhaps this was not to be a book which celebrates scholarship without petty inter-disciplinary biases. The comparisons to science are neither helpful nor accurate and the comments about statistics are downright rude. By the time I reached the Afterword, and read the scorn-drenched sentence, "Mathematicians and physical scientists who have never tried to measure something as important as urbanization or happiness often sneer at the efforts of social scientists to operationalize these concepts, and they quote examples of operationalizing pulled out of context to justify their scorn," I wondered about the burden of carrying around such a chip on ones shoulder and whether that was what blinded them to the possible benefit of seeking some advice from "mathematicians and physical scientists" - you know they sort of people who have known about the importance of error analysis since Tycho Brahe, when handling messy data. I will say what I do think is dreadful: Diamond's own chapter actually states that he and co-author aren't staticians so they hired one and these are the results (without any sort of evidence whatsoever... unless you count the advice to go read the article they wrote with the aid of the stastician elsewhere). That would not pass the peer review in science. It's simply inconceivable. I doubt that there's anything wrong with their models, but have the respect to share them with your audience rather than say, this is the right answer, trust me. Further I am saddened that a dataset which strikes me as downright heroic (imagine gathering the records of all slaves exported from Africa for centuries) is not used to its full potential (and I indent to show what I mean by this in a further post). Lastly, there are entire paragraphs written to explain the unexpected "trends" in voter turn-out versus nature of land tenure in India when is obvious that a random-number generator could produce an equivalent plot. THERE IS NO TREND. Basic hypothesis-testing, which is something taught to undergraduates in say, biology or statistics could have avoided these needless errors. Some of these articles could have been vastly improved if the authors learned to judge the quality of a linear fit by looking at the chi-squared per degrees of freedom. Pity they took more time taking cheap shots at the numerate, and too little time to learn why and how we apply numerical methods. These words and attitudes really taint what otherwise would have been a fascinating book.

My desire to read any of Diamond's other books has plummeted.


6. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. This gothic novel set in Franco's Spain (well, Barcelona, which thinks of itself as Catalonia) is a wonderful read. We have the romance of books, the intrigue of noir tension of life in the dictatorship, love stories, loss, families, tremendous characters, and real suspense. It's also a love letter to a wonderful city. Read it.

7. Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno. I really enjoyed these bittersweet, occasionally surreal or magical stories illustrated by some of my favorite illustrators (kozyndan, Caroline Hwang, the little friends of printmaking, Jay Ryan, Rachell Sumpter...). They really are beautifully crafted. Plus, it raises funds for literacy programs, so go ahead and buy it. The Swedish bankrobbers in 1973, the wife who turned into a cloud, the tragic miniature elephant, the imaginary Iceland and the city in the heart will be with me for a while.

8. Why work? Liam Gillick I picked this up at the Biennale at Auckland because I could, and the title amused me, and I liked the Medieval woodblock prints. I can't say I fully understood the turgid prose. Someone might suggest that grammar is useful when trying to communicate effectively, and introduce Mr. Gillick to the concept of the apostrophe. Just sayin'


{Series so far: books read, more books read, books read, books read continues, more books read, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII,XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL,XLI, XLII, XLIII}

Reading is sexy XXX

(image Courtesan reading a love letter (Edo) via this site) It occurs to me that this is not a well-advised post title, but, c'est la vie.
1. A Whistling Woman by A.S. Byatt. This is the fourth and final (?) book in a cycle by Byatt, completing the quartet which began with The Virgin in the Garde, Still Life, and Babel Tower. This is a rich world Byatt has created, around the life of the North Yorkshire Potter family, and red-headed, independent, intellectual Frederica Potter in particular, during the 50s and 60s. The first novel is intertwined with a play about Queen Elizabeth I being performed for Elizabeth II's coronation. The second is intertwined with the story of Van Gogh. The third is intertwined with a battle over censorship, freedom and pornography with a character's novel Babeltower. The fourth is rich in symbolism, but does not have as much of a dualistic structure. The character Agatha's fairytale story Flight North begins the novel, and the story of its publication is a thread in the novel, but plays a far more subtle role than say, Babeltower in Babel Tower. Ironically, now that I've claimed the final novel is less dualistic, one of the major themes is the syzygy in the Gnostic sense (a male-female pair of aeons), in the Jungian sense of archetypal pairings, and in the zoological sense (and the discussion of sexual versus asexual reproduction) - not to omit, the on-going story of the twins John Ottokar and Paul/Zag (and his rock band Zag and th Syzygy Zy-goats) and the discussion of whether monozygotic twins are an example of asexual reproduction with the one twin as both mother and genetic pair of the other. Other major themes include blood, birds, mind & body, reproduction, mirrors and light, Manichaeism and the Biblical stories of Abraham and Issaac, and that of Joshua. The novel, as you may have gathered, takes on a lot: mental illness, religion and cults, psycotherapy, changing role of women in society and evolution of the actual family unit, duty, media and television in particular, love of knowledge, love, domestic violence and counter culture. Frederica and her son Leo are still living in South London with Agatha and her daughter Saskia. Byatt makes various allusions to The Golden Notebook and the concept of free women, or unmarried women with children sharing a home to share child-rearing duties. Frederica is still seeing computer scientist and Quaker John O., but soon he accepts a job at the University of North Yorkshire (where several characters from previous novels work including Marcus, Frederica's brother). Frederica is convinced by Edmund Wilkie to host a television show about ideas called Through the Looking glass. This is a way for Byatt to weave in all sorts of knowledge, whether it be neurology, sociology, art history to even things not found in universities, like astrology, along with the imagery of Lewis Caroll (not without its own binary pairs). Meanwhile, the Quaker Spirit's Tigers (including psychologist Elvet Gander from Babel Tower) merge with Gideon Farrar (Still Life)'s Children of Joy, and we watch in increasing dred as the budding cult falls under the sway of Manichaen Joshua Lamb (or Ramsden), a charismatic man whose mental health was shattered when his father acts on the belief he was commanded by God to sacrifice his family. Joshua survives, his family does not. The group contains other religious characters and one ethologist from the previous novels and centres around Lucy Nighby, a woman battered by her husband, who may, or may not have attacked both he and their children - again the bloody image of sacrifice of children. At UNY, biologist Luk Lysgaard-Peacock is in love with Jacqueline Winwar (who in turn loves Marcus, who may love Ruth, who is embedded in the Children of Joy). Gerard Wijnnobel is organizing a conference on Mind and Body (another means of Byatt to express her love of knowledge) while a growing encampment called the Anti-University of counter-culture student protesters, plans their response. Byatt deftly weaves all her strands together, making a strong argument for interdisciplinary, unfettered celebration of knowledge, for real people living true, if messy lives, and for independence.

One could easily write a doctorate on these books. Consider the symbolism of names alone (Marcus and his mystical, instinctive approach to mathematics, compassionate Ruth, Lady Wijnnobel is née Eva Selkett, Joshua Lamb, Elvet Gander, Daniel with his foresight and tests of faith, Lucy Nighby who makes a religion of light, Lyssgard-Peacock, and even Avram Snitkin). I'll refrain from attempting to summarize such a richly-woven a web with a few lines. The cycle as a whole is both long and heavy, but very rewarding, and I highly recommend them.

2. Noh - The Classical Theater. Performing Arts of Japan IV by Yasuo Nakamura, introduction by Earle Ernst. No one is going to read this post and then read this book, if for no other reason than its obscurity. I found it in a used bookstore, years ago. I would have prefered Bunraku: The Puppet Theater, but this is what I found, and I do have a thing about masks. The author varies between claims that the ancient theatre is in fact avant guarde or whether it is so slow and stylized to be undoubtedly boring. The history of Noh, in excruciating detail, is likewise a mix of the undoubtedly boring with some real gems of ideas and stories. The introduction vivdly presents Tokyo, immediately after WWII, where Prof. Ernst was ironically tasked with censorship in name of the democracy, to prevent the feudalistic from re-appearing. He recognizes art, rather than nostalgia for neofeudalism. The author, mathematician-Noh expert Nakamura, relates the history of Noh from 200 BC to (his) modern day, the training of actors, the masks, music, sets and costumes (down to the socks). Just when it might get boring, he explains the difference between dramatic and supernatural parts as akin to the difference between living in three and four dimensions (with a metaphor that could have be straight out of Flatland), or a juicy story about an emperor's advisor who became addicted to Noh, or a love affair between a shogun and young Noh apprentice.

3. From the Notebooks - The Unwritten Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Stephany Aulenback, John Beckman, Marc Bojanowski, Judy Budnitz, Ian Caldwell, Rachel Ingalls, Sam Lipsyte, Tom Lombardi, Carey Mercer, Lydia Miller, Sigrid Nunez, Michelle Orange, Salvador Plascencia, Matthew Sharpe, Miriam Toews, Jincy Willett, Diane Williams This is of course a McSweeney's project (issue 22). F. Scott Fitzgerald kept a notebook. It contained, amongst other things, 32 more-or-less wild story ideas. McSweeney's gathered authors together and asked them to select one. Everyone wanted "girl and giraffe" so they include two stories on that theme, and many others (i.e. "the man who killed the idea of tanks in England - his after life" or "Fairy who fell for a wax dummy"). I enjoyed these various stories very much, though some more than others. Stand-outs include Plascencia's "Returned" wherein the ocean follows a girl, Lombardi's "The Bear" ("Lois and the bear hiding in the Yellowstone") and Sharpe's "Bert as a Boy".

McSweeney's say they leave the unselected ideas as an exercise to the reader. So, I assign you the task of writing a story of what I deem the most promising, unselected Fitzgeraldian idea:
A tree, finding water, pierces a roof and solves a mystery

{Series so far: books read, more books read, books read, books read continues, more books read, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII,XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX}