Bookzen

A Desirable Residence by Madeleine Wickham, reviewed by KJR for Bookzen

2005-11-07T17:22:00.000+01:00

The London Sunday Telegraph is reputed to have called A Desirable Residence by Madeleine Wickham "witty and wise," and it is almost difficult to add a lot more about this fairly well-written, plot-driven novel about average, middle-class Brits in mid-life crises. As circumstances of their various crises draw them together, they seem to prey on each other, exascerbating their own and each other's crises further.

Real-estate problems, buying, selling, and renting, form the initial linkages, though other crises soon intervene, including adultery, school exams, fraud, indebtedness, money-laundering, thwarted ambitions, envy, loneliness and just plain boredom. The four young people, children of the adult figures, are sketched very well and their stories are perhaps the most compelling, told as they are with a view to the intensity of adolescent angst, ennui, searching and vulnerability. This novel is in no way profound or moving, nor a page-turner, though it is an interesting, enjoyable read, an accurate and insightful portrayal of the very real if ordinary, uncomfortable, awkward, and embarrassing messes most of us find ourselves in from time to time thoughout our lives.

As in real life, there are a lot of loose ends that go unexplained, and much of life's less flattering detritus is swept aside, where hopefully, as the characters plod on, it will lie out of sight, gradually to be passed over, if not forgotten. The ending is a bit like a fairy tale, though perfectly plausible and real enough, as if charity, forgiveness, atonement and repentence, practised in sincere measure, can turn back at least some of the tide.

Categories: book, bookzen, novel, a, desirable residence, madeleine, wickham, bookblog, blog, literary, reviews

Kepler's reopening! 11am Sat Oct 8 2005

2005-10-06T22:37:00.000+02:00

Yes isn't that wonderful! I have fond memories of that place and had been really sad to hear that the famous Kepler's had had to close recently. Some people have come forward and invested in this special bookshop in Menlo Park.

So this will be quite a party on Saturday, not to be missed!

A9 map

keplers.com
savekeplers.com

Read the article - Community Investment Rescues a Bookstore via...NYT

Technorati Tags: kepler, kepler's, menlo, park, palo, alto, bookshop, books

Google Hacks Review

2005-03-17T16:27:00.000+01:00

bloggzen - total immersion blogging technology innovation

Google Hacks,
Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching
By Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest
2nd Edition December 2004 O'Reilly

Reviewed for Bookzen by KJR

Mastering the information in "Google Hacks" is necessary for being a competent, educated person today, which means understanding how to take full advantage of information interconnectivity . Whether you are in business, academia, entertainment, or industry, whether you are in junior high school or a post-graduate program, whether you are an admin or a president, those of us who are connected expect our peers to be equally savvy. Not having a full grasp of "Google Hacks" is almost tantamount to applying for a job without knowing how to read.

Having said that, there are probably some seven-eighths of the world's population today that are either unaware of what I am talking about or unable to take advantage of the information riches available online due to economics (poverty), education (ignorance) or politics (repression). Included here also are those who might have the means, but don't know they have the need (oblivious). Google Hacks is a seminal, watershed book. Those who can master this information will be on one trajectory, while the others will be effectively excluded from living as full participants in the contemporary world.

Google Hacks symbolizes the alarming divide of rich vs. poor, smart vs. ignorant, connected vs. unconnected, the paradigm of a good future based on access to and understanding of information resources, vs .a bad future based on lack.

Innovative anthropologists, Gregogry Bateson, Caleb Gategno, Alvin Toffler, and Susan Sonntag, in the 1960's said that what you know would not be as important in the future as knowing how to learn what you need to know. Today's smartest anthropologists and economists, Carol Greenhouse, Arjun Appadurai say that the global flow of images, finances, technologies, and ideologies move us to "think beyond the nation," because national borders are less important to groups of people who share information across borders. Google embodies and facilitates these trends, and "Google Hacks" how to take advantage. So, read this book from cover to cover, and do it today, or at least leaf through "Google Hacks", to be sure you understand what's on every page.

"Google Hacks" is very accessible, covering basics of how to search the world's most powerful general purpose Internet search engine. The hundreds of "hacks" include topics such as how to compose a search, why to use different search engines, different types of searches, how to understand search results, and how to understand the trends underlying searches. It reviews using gmail as a networked filesystem, and how to index information with Google, including how not to. Search engine advertising is discussed in detail, even including how to write better ads. Curious about Usenet groups, how you can and cannot program Google, or using Google to mine more out of Ebay and Amazon? My personal favorite hacks are understanding the importance of and using misspelled searches, and calculating mindshare. What? Read the book!

Technorati Tags: Bookzen Google Hacks O'Reilly Google Book review

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Guillermo Cabrera Infante

2005-02-23T21:53:00.000+01:00

NYT - G. Cabrera Infante, 75, a Cuban Novelist in Exile, Dies By WOLFGANG SAXON
"Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a Cuban novelist in exile whose lavishly textured prose conjured the country he knew before the revolution he once supported, died on Monday at a hospital in London, where he had lived for 39 years. He was 75".

His most famous book is Three Trapped Tigers 1967, about Havana nightlife before Castro.

Hunter S. Thompson

2005-02-23T16:14:00.000+01:00

The creator of Gonzo journalism wrote his own ending.

NYT - With an Icon's Death, Aspen Checks Its Inner Gonzo By KIRK JOHNSON
"Over the decades that Hunter S. Thompson lived and wrote here in the high Rocky Mountains of central Colorado, Aspen became an aerie for the rich and the beautiful - the very sort of place, right under his nose, that he was famous for fulminating against in his books. "Freak power in the Rockies," as Mr. Thompson once dubbed the spirit of his adopted home, gave way to Louis Vuitton".

NYT - Hunter S. Thompson, 65, Author, Commits Suicide By MICHELLE O'DONNELL
"Hunter S. Thompson, the maverick journalist and author whose savage chronicling of the underbelly of American life and politics embodied a new kind of nonfiction writing he called "gonzo journalism," died yesterday in Colorado".

The Guardian - Tributes for 'gonzo' writer Hunter S Thompson by Duncan Campbell
"He created a new style of journalism, bequeathed us the phrase "fear and loathing", was played on screen by Johnny Depp and Bill Murray, kept a peacock as a watchdog and claimed to have first seen President Bush passed out in a bathtub in a Texas hotel".

BBC - Hunter S Thompson commits suicide
"Hunter S Thompson, the American counterculture writer, has been found dead at his home in Colorado".
Tags: Hunter S. Thompson Gonzo
Flickr photo tags: Hunter+S+Thompson

Arthur Miller

2005-02-22T13:23:00.000+01:00

Arthur Miller is gone but his important legacy will continue to enlighten the world.

BBC - Broadway lights go out for Miller

One of the greatest dramatists married one of the greatest stars
Theatres on Broadway have darkened in tribute to Arthur Miller, the American regarded as one of the greatest dramatists of the last century.

The author of Death of a Salesman died at 89 of heart failure on Thursday evening, surrounded by family and friends at his home in Connecticut".

The Arthur Miller Society

Arthur Miller's major works

Code Louvre

2005-01-22T15:12:00.000+01:00

IMG_0377
Originally uploaded by cyberedge.

artzen - art culture info expo
francaiszen - la vie
bookzen - literary reviews

The makers of the film of the Da Vinci Code with Tom Hanks, have permission to shoot inside the Louvre Museum. They will probably start shooting in May. The louvre is only funded by it's visitors which is the agrument for charging such exhorbitant fees for filming there. This has caused many filmamkers to use alternative chateaux...

Le Figaro - "Le Louvre exige plus de 50 000 euros par jour pour un tournage dans la cour Carree."

BBC - Louvre allows Da Vinci Code shoot

"The Dan Brown Code" by Dennis Neuenkirchen is a very interesting and amusing article, that questions the accuracy of Dan Brown's research about Paris. It is on one of the essential Parisian websites Bonjour Paris . Run by Sarah Gilbert herself a highly acclaimed novelist and writer.

Explore Da Vinci Code Secrets with Canals of France
Canals of France is offering 8-day itineraries that explore the controversial sites, history and brotherhood made famous by Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

Mind Hacks

2005-01-19T01:31:00.000+01:00

bloggzen - total immersion blogging technology innovation

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"Mind Hacks" Tips & Tools for Using your Brain in the World By Tom Stafford, Matt Webb - Reviewed for Bookzen by KJR

"Mind Hacks" is an excellent starting place for the exploration of the human mind, apparently a very popular interest right now. Curiosity regarding how we think seems in vogue, since so many are reading one of a group of recently published books on the subject. Including "Mind Hacks" there is "The Mind Map" by Tony Buzan and Barry Buzan, "Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" by Malcolm Gladwell" The Undiscovered Mind" by John Horgan, "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins (PalmPilot creator) and Sandra Blakeslee, and from Steven Johnson, who wrote the Foreword to "Mind Hacks, " there is "Mind Wide Open. "

All of these delve into that uncharted land called how our grey matter works and how we can live better lives by knowing more about it. Each of these books has a delightfully different take on the subject, and "Mind Hacks" itself is full of references for further reading. Is it more than just a co-incidence that these books are all out right now, being talked about, blogged about, and voraciously read? Why this insatiable synchronicity of people wanting to know more about how we are made and how we think?

In more classical studies, "Mind Hacks" would be filed under physical and cultural anthropology. And though you will be introduced to words like limbic, cortex and cerebellum, keeping track of technical medical terms is not essential for understanding and learning much from this book. While it seems written for popular audiences, and uses everyday examples to illustrate how we as human beings tend to think, and why, "Mind Hacks" is helpfully structured to take you just as deep as you want to go.

As to whether the mind can be hacked, just ask a songwriter, movie producer or ad exec; though by "hacks," the authors really mean examples, and there are hundreds. For instance, why do we tend to see faces when we look at clouds? Why do we scrutinize other peoples' faces so intently? Why, if we see six of the same thing, do we tend to see the seventh object as the same, too, even if it isn't? Why do we smell chalk when we think of Dick, Jane, and that "silly, silly Spot?" What do we really find irresistibly interesting and what bores us to death? Did left-handed people evolve differently and why do they have more traffic accidents? Why are some people better at math? Why do sunglasses make the world more interesting visually? (It's all in the mind.) Why do people respond differently to the same instructions? And by implication, what is the best way to design a web page? All of this is covered in "Mind Hacks" including which sectors of the brain are responsible, and how the research was done.

"Mind Hacks" is a good starting place for exploring your mind, partly because it would fit nicely with some of the other books mentioned here and in the book itself, but also because Mind Hacks is at the center of an expanding culture of exploration and investigation of mental phenomena,including blogs about "Mind Hacks" and related phenomena (just technorati "Mind Hacks" for instance.) There are the sites of the book's publisher O'Reilly for starters and a page relating to topics covered in "Mind Hacks" about why posting flickr zeitgeist might be a distraction for people who actually want to read your blog, and there is the excellent "Mind Hacks" blog itself mindhacks.com, which does not seem to be accessible from the O'Reilly site. Both authors have their own blogs - Idiolect by Tom Stafford and Interconnected by Matt Webb.

"Mind Hacks" suggests that you can read it sequentially or dive in randomly.
Either way it is an accessible book about some of the curiously strange ways in which we think, remember, and respond, based on how we evolved and what was then and is now most important to us as biological organisms. Even better, it is totally overflowing with examples and simple exercises -- the "hacks" -- that you can do by yourself or with friends. Better yet, buy the book and give a "Mind Hacks" party! Ask your guests to open the book randomly, exclaim on the particular mental characteristic explained on that page, and then put everyone through the exercise or group discussion implied. Like, "How do you prefer your first cup of morning coffee, and how do you feel if you don't get it that way?" Pavlov got it right more than a hundred years ago.

And speaking of Pavlov's dogs, there is much in "Mind Hacks" to suggest that we humans share many of our emotions, thoughts and feelings with other animals, whose brain structures evolved similarly and whose reactions in research are so similar.

Untamed by Steve Bloom

2005-01-18T01:14:00.000+01:00

fotozen - private view
ecozen - animals ecology philanthropy

This is the most wonderfull resource, absolutely essential, a unique record of life on earth.

by Steve Bloom " />
Untamed by Steve Bloom
For more than ten years, wildlife photographer Steve Bloom traveled all over the world, roaming through the jungles of Borneo, the African savannahs, and the frozen banks of Antarctica to assemble this dazzling collection of photographs of animals in their natural environments. With an international range that is rare in books of animal photography, the 200 photographs in Untamed bring to life a vast panorama of animal diversity, and of the landscapes, climates, and habitats in which they live.

'Touching' wildlife captured on film
Ten years ago photographer Steve Bloom set out to visit all the world's continents and capture nature on film.via...BBC

See a video on Steve, shown on CNN, Discovery and National Geographic.

T S Eliot Prize for Poetry

2005-01-17T22:05:00.000+01:00

Hungarian-born George Szirtes' collection of poetry has picked up the £10,000 TS Eliot Prize.via...BBC

The Poetry Book Society awards the annual T S Eliot Prize for Poetry.

The Prize - described by Poet Laureate Andrew Motion as "the Prize most poets want to win" - was launched in 1993 to celebrate the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and to honour its founding poet.

The £10,000 prize money is kindly donated by Eliot's widow, Mrs Valerie Eliot.

George Szirtes- Blog post 16.01.05 "If people understood each other's suffering a little better and made less noise about their own, the climate might improve somewhat. The odd energy and melancholia of the human world."

George Szirtes books and publications

New York City: Photographs from The New York Times

2004-12-14T22:20:00.000+01:00

fotozen - private view

New York City: Photographs from The New York Times
Since it first published a photographic halftone in 1896, The New York Times has engaged some of the world's best photojournalists to record the life and times of a uniquely vigorous town. This book of postcards presents 30 photographs from The New York Times Photo Archives.

NYT 10 Best Books 2004

2004-12-14T19:13:00.000+01:00

FICTION

Gilead By MARILYNNE ROBINSON

The Master By COLM TOIBIN

The Plot Against America By PHILIP ROTH

Runaway By ALICE MUNRO

Snow By ORHAN PAMUK

War Trash By HA JIN

NONFICTION

Alexander Hamilton By RON CHERNOW

Chronicles: Volume One By BOB DYLAN

Washington's Crossing By DAVID HACKETT FISCHER

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare By STEPHEN GREENBLATT

- Take part in a NYT discussion about the 10 Best Books of the Year

- NYT 100 Notable Books of the Year

Google World Library

2004-12-14T17:58:00.001+01:00

This is very exciting

bookzen - literary reviews

Radcliffe Camera photo by planethalder on flickr

Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database By John Markoff and Edward Wyatt NYT

"Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web".

sfgate's Best Books 2004

2004-12-14T17:40:00.000+01:00

Hosted by ImageShack.us" />

sfgate.com has just published thier list of the best books of 2004

It is a very long list, with short a synopsis of each book, here are a few that caught my eye -

Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939 by Virginia Nicholson
Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology by Adam Gopnik
A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, 1854- 1967 by Rachel Cohen

BookCrossing programmer Dan Clune still missing after one month, reward rises to $10,000

2004-12-09T01:52:00.000+01:00

Bookcrossing has asked all thier members to spread the word but when I looked on Technorati this I only found 8 mentions in blogs, so please re-blog about this and pass the info on, thank you!

Dan Clune disappeared from the Long Bridge Bar and Grill (Sandpoint, Idaho) on November 6, 2004 just before 2AM, he was wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt and blue knit ski cap.

Danny's story will be on COURT TV Catherine Crier Live Friday December 10th at 5:00pm ET/PT

Please help find him http://www.finddanny.com/

Simply Duveen Dahlink

2004-12-03T13:46:00.000+01:00

Two important art books for christmas about the inimitable Duveen.

bookzen - literary reviews

Duveen : A Life in Art by MERYLE SECREST

The Art of the Art Deal: A Portrait of the Old Master New York Times review By ROBERTA SMITH
There are dozens of paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and scores in the National Gallery in Washington that art-world insiders once called Duveens.

Forget that these works were painted by the likes of Gainsborough, Botticelli, Velazquez or Rembrandt. All had been sold, usually to the collectors who donated them to the museums, by the hugely successful, publicity-prone art dealer Joseph Duveen. Passing through Duveen's extensive empire seemed to give the pictures an afterglow that wasn't entirely a result of his penchant for overcleaning. via...NYT

Duveen The Story of the Most Spectacular Art Dealer of All Time By S.N. Behrman Introduction by Glenn Lowry

A startling number of masterpieces now in American museums are there because of the shrewdness of one man, Joseph Duveen, art dealer to John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, and William Randolph Hearst. In a series of articles originally published in The New Yorker, playwright S.N. Behrman evokes the
larger - than - life Duveen and reveals the wheeling and dealing, subterfuge, and spirited drama behind the sale of nearly - but not quite - priceless Rembrandts, Vermeers, Turners, and Bellinis.via...NYT Books

Salon Nautique de Paris - Prix Litteraire

2004-12-03T10:10:00.000+01:00

Not to be missed, all the great French sea dogs will be there. Find a boat for your holidays and the best boating book to read in your cabin...

francaiszen - la vie

4-13 December 2004 the 44th Salon Nautique de Paris is gaining impetus with new attractions, a new area dedicated to Fishing (Village de la Peche) which will delight well-informed fisherman and initiate youngsters, not to mention the show's main attractions.

3rd Prix Litteraire Salon Nautique - le Point

The sea, maritime adventures, tales of great voyages, the islands or maritime regions…there are so many subjects for novels, travel diaries and other books!

The French Nautical Industries Federation (FIN), the Syndicat National de l'Edition (SNE), and the magazine le Point have joined together to pay tribute to works whose subjects centre around the sea. A judging panel, composed of personalities from the world of water sports and publishing, will award a prize to a novel and a finely illustrated book.

List of competitors

The winners will receive their prize at a ceremony held on Wednesday 8 December at 6.00 pm in the Forum des Navigateurs.

The Literacy Site

2004-11-26T17:46:00.000+01:00

This is a new addition to the Animal rescue site's good causes, please help and spread the word.

About The Literacy Site

Remember the magic of your first book? Perhaps you were nestled in the arms of a parent, or sharing a giggle with a friend. Whatever your first memory of a book, books are a powerful tool; they stir the senses, inspire the imagination and spark a love of reading that can last a lifetime. But what of children who have no books? The Literacy Site gives you a way to share the magic of books and promote the love of reading among children who might otherwise never discover the joy of their first book.

Your click on the red "Give Free Books" button at The Literacy Site generates books for children in need, funded by site sponsors and provided through our award winning charity partner, First Book. In the last three years, First Book has distributed over 20 million books to children in hundreds of communities.

The number of books we put in children's hands depends on the number of visitors who click the "Give Free Books" button on The Literacy Site. Please click every day, and encourage friends and family members to do the same.

Christmas Preview Evening

2004-11-19T23:44:00.000+01:00

Not to be missed!

Hatchards 187 Piccadilly, London, W1J 9LE 020 7439 9921

invite you to a special CHRISTMAS PREVIEW EVENING
on Thursday 2nd December 2004 6.00-8.00pm

Browse through our extensive range of Christmas books and enjoy our festive
entertainment.

There will be high-profile authors in all departments including:

Annabel Goldsmith, Gyles Brandreth,
Flora Fraser, Robert McCrum,
Michelle Paver, P.B. Kerr,
Michael Dobbs, Ken Follett, William Boyd, P.D. James,
Monica Ali, Tracey Chevalier,
Robert Lacey, Adam Zamoyski, Peter de la Billiere,
James Muirden

-----------

Sting will be signing copies of his candid autobiography Broken Music at Waterstone's, 24-26 Birmingham High Street, B4 7SL on Tuesday the 23rd of November at 1pm.

Please note that due to time constraints Sting will only be signing copies of the promoted title and no other merchandise. We are unable to take reservations for this event. Free, no ticket required. Please ring 0121 633 4353 for more details.

Places of Peace and Power by Martin Gray Reviewed by KJR for Bookzen

2004-11-19T17:27:00.000+01:00

ecozen - animals ecology philanthropy

Places of Peace and Power is a book about the ancient sacred sites around the world and why they are so interesting. Enjoyable and stimulating on many levels, this is a travel journal describing the process of researching, traveling to, and searching out a variety of the world's oldest, sacred religious sites; yet it is also an exploration of various forms of Eastern religion and meditation practice; as well as a guide to a variety of obscure historical notes and esoteric philosophies.

Martin Gray's overall thesis about why ancient sites are important today is based on a series of visions he had while on his journey to the sites known to the ancients for millennia. Gray believes that by using a kind of telepathic mental, spiritual, and cognitive power, humanity will figuratively join hearts and minds to create a force field that will empower us to make it through the social, political, and environmental crises that loom just over time's horizon. And humanity wll not be entirely alone in this effort. Aiding us to overcome our current low coping threshold will be the earth itself. Planetary energy fields, according to Gray's visions, emanating from the sacred places of power, will act as acupuncture points, to transform a critical mass of "seekers," igniting a chain reaction of enlightenment that will echo round the globe.

Gray's thoughts about his "unified being awareness and the age of global awakening" are not entirely new. Some of this is similar to the so-called 100th monkey theory of distance learning, which holds that as a critical mass of members of a species learn a new coping strategy, others in the species simultaneously learn it, too, possibly through a kind of shared telepathy. Gray's idea about humanity sharing a vision, his "unified being awareness," is also much like the planetary awakening foretold by Arthur C. Clarke in his novel "Childhood's End." It is even shares concepts with the events foretold in newspaperman and Internet guru Dan Gillmor's book, "We the Media," also reviewed on this site. According to Gillmor, as a critical mass of bloggers, chatters, and mobile photo phone users establish and maintain alternative communications channels that criss-cross the globe, we are shifting our perceptions of social and political events, as well as our perceptions about ourselves.

Humanity's coping with the ecological and political disasters confronting us is also the basis for much of classic science fiction, from William Gibson to Frank Herbert to H.G. Wells. Gray is almost like a latter-day Buckminster Fuller, whose message is that humanity must and will cope successfully, with mother earth's help. In a refreshing way, though Gray's thesis is spiritual, he is not offering an apocalyptic vision or simply saying "god will provide," nor is he turning his back on society's problems as has been the tendency of late. His message is similar to that of the Gaia movement. As Gray himself notes, even Carlos Casteneda, writing about mystical power in the don Juan books, discusses similar concepts about the energy our earth has to offer us. Perhaps the universality of Gray's concepts only goes to prove his point that the "unified being awareness" is already occurring.

Despite its currency in the culture, Gray's thesis will still be implausible, possibly laughable to many, as he himself admits. Nevertheless, the book is greatly enhanced by Gray's down-to-earth good sense and straight-forward narrative. Gray is credible and sounds authentic, like someone who is truly well-educated, with the common sense of a man who has been successful in business. He is an anthropologist, a professional-level photographer, and has travelled around the world several times (largely on a bicycle, no less!), meditating and listening to the messages the places of power have to offer.

According to Gray, you will know well enough by now, reading this review, whether this book is for you. If you have had a hankering about visiting a particular cathedral or mountain hot spring or runic dolman, you might want to read this book. If you have stood at the rim of the Haleakela volcano in Maui and felt the earth's energy surge through you, if you have looked out at the jungles from atop a pyramid in Mexico and felt the awesome vision of the architects who built them, or if you have heard unseen heavenly choirs while standing in the small stone stall where Saint Francis of Assisi sold cloth as a young man, things I myself have experienced, or even if you just have wondered how the people of the earth are going to surmount the gordian knot of troubles that face us, you will find in Martin Gray a kindred spirit.

Mr. Gray also gives slide shows about the places of power and the visions he received there. His book and more information, including photographs, are available online at sacredsites.com and nomadics.net

55th Annual National Book Awards

2004-11-18T19:27:00.000+01:00

The National Book Foundation
Non Fiction
WINNER:
Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
(Henry Holt & Company, LLC)

Young People's Literature
WINNER:
Pete Hautman, Godless
(Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)

Poetry
WINNER:
Jean Valentine, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003
(Wesleyan University Press)

Fiction
WINNER:
Lily Tuck, The News from Paraguay
(HarperCollinsPublishers)

Read the New York Times' Review
South America Epic Wins the National Book Award By EDWARD WYATT

Blogexplosion

2004-11-14T16:28:00.000+01:00

This seems to be working, it can be addictive...

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Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

2004-11-11T22:35:00.000+01:00

Reviewed by KJR for Bookzen

"Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf is a thoughtfully written, often amusing indictment of Western culture in general and of the inappropriate, suffocating, snobby stuffiness of upper class English culture in the twentieth century, the mid-1920's in particular. "Mrs. Dalloway" is told through a headlong rampage of free associations, non-sequitors and streams of consciousness from its half dozen characters and omniscient narrator, all woven together to tell what went on in the lives of these people on one day. It is the day, and evening, that Clarissa Dalloway plans the final preparations and gives her big party. In telling the story of this one day, of course, the narrator tells us more or less everything of any significance about each of the characters: their fears, failings, disappointments, illusions, and longings.

In the hindsight of fully eighty years since it was written, "Mrs. Dalloway" seems contemporary for its audio-visual cinematic quality. Whole parts of the book are mere sights and sounds, loosely tethered to the story, more as omens, as examples of the randomly ordered forces of nature at work in the world. In this regard, the novel is very modern and naturalistic, self-consciously so.

Insanity, respectability, rank and power, boredom, personal worth and the meaning of life are brought up repeatedly. With such a juxtaposition of disparate ideas, we are tempted to smile at the comic poetry of description; yet we are uneasy with the frantic pace of manic depression so clearly evident. There is too much being thrown up at us, and little of it is grounded. As it describes humanity's relentless pace toward obvious and meaningless oblivion, Mrs. Dalloway reminds me of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" or "Fall of Amerika." The momentum and cynicism of the free associative stream of consciousness is clearly very close to Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and to James Joyce's "Ulysses." There is here a craziness, however, zany, perfect, articulate and implacable, that is haunting, and unsustainable, like the madness of Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano."

In saying that the work itself is the deft creation of a human being on the verge of madness, I do not intend any criticism of the book or of Virginia Woolf. There is too great a tendency, given her unhappiness and eventual suicide, to declare that Virginia Woolf was unbalanced and that her imbalance shows through in her works. I would say rather that she clearly describes here a world that is mad. She proposes further, that those who try to square the contradictions and horrors of modern life, of loneliness, injustice, war, human frailty and chance, may seem completely mad, but only to those too stupid, insensible or caught up in the madness to notice what is really going on.

This last point forms the indictment of Western culture at the core of this book. It is an indictment of our failures, not necessarily with a suggestion of solutions. It is an indictment of our inability as educated, civilized human beings to be comfortable with our own needs and feelings. It is an indictment of our preference for denial and ignorance, of our preference for form over substance. She herself wrote in her diary about two years before the book's appearance, when it was still entitled "The Hours":

19 June 1923--I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity;
I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work at its most
intense. . . . Am I writing The Hours from deep emotion? Of course the
mad part tries me so much,

Salgado

2004-11-09T22:03:00.000+01:00

fotozen - private view

londonzen - park life

artzen - art culture info expo

ecozen - animals ecology philanthropy

Salgado - reviewed by KJR for bookzen

Finally after twenty years, Sebastiao Salgado's images are being published, as described in an excellent article in the New York Times. Considering himself a photojournalist of the world's less fortunate, the Brazilian photographer uses the camera to bring information to others. He says of photography,that it is only a language: what is more important, is what is being discussed. Though Salgado, like Atget, Cartier Bresson, Ansel Adams, Lee Miller, Robert Frank, and Stieglitz, can say this since the language his Leica produces in his hands is highly articulate.

Reportedly, this book Sahel:The End of the Road, was not published earlier because agents and publishers who saw the images were reduced to tears, and felt that no one would want to buy such a book. Salgado, who has taken photos in Vietnam, India and Africa, responded that it is our moral obligation to understand the fate of the others! So much for spin, design over content, ignoring what is really going on, and Fox News. Perhaps, quite tellingly, the book is not being published in the heartland, but by that bastion of eccentricity (thank god!), The University of California Press, as a joint project between the departments of photography and journalism at Berkeley. Not surprisingly those bystanders to the War on Terror, France and Spain thought the book important enough to be published way back in the mid-eighties. (Is there a connection between that event and recent international headlines?)

---------------
The Instituto Terra, a non-profit organization created by Sebastiao Salgado and Lelia Wanick Salgado, proposes a highly innovative approach to Brazil's deforestation crisis.

How to help
--------------

Power: Auction at Bloomberg, Nov 17th 2004 - An auction of
prints by world-class photographers

Mighty names from the world of art and documentary photography have donated 60 power-inspired prints for a charity auction on Wednesday 17 November at the Bloomberg auditorium in the City.

For the second year running, PhotoVoice has invited world-class photographers to contribute to this prestige event whichwill raise money for its projects around the world.

Among the contributors are Sebastiao Salgado, Juergen Teller, Sarah Moon, and Philip Jones Griffiths. Particularly compelling are images of George W. Bush (Larry Downing/ Reuters), Kevin Spacey outside the Old Vic (Nobby Clark) and Yann Arthus Bertrand’s magnificent ariel shot of the Kenyan Savannah. Thomas Hoepker (Magnum Photos) has donated his iconic image of Muhammed Ali from 1966.

Wednesday 17th November 6.30-9pm £10 donation

Bloomberg L.P
39-45 Finsbury Square London EC2A 1PQ

Guardian First Book Award 2004

2004-11-04T18:11:00.000+01:00

Readers groups help pick first book award for five novices. The five are a mix of genres, in keeping with the £10,000 award's choice from fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Guardian shortlist
- Ground Water by Matthew Hollis is a collection of poems
- Natasha by David Bezmozgis is a book of short stories
- Susanna Clarke is shortlisted for her novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
- Rory Stewart's non-fiction is represented by The Places in Between, and Mutants
- Armand Marie Leroi On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body
via...the Guardian

Bhutan - the book

2004-11-03T16:17:00.000+01:00

ecozen - animals ecology philanthropy

Bhutan Book
According to Guinness World Records, at over five by seven feet (and 133 pounds), this staggeringly beautiful photographic book is the largest published book in the world about one of the world's smallest countries. A limited edition of 500 copies will be produced. The $10,000 "price" (less than $100 per page) is a donation to Friendly Planet The worlds largest book can also be ordered on Amazon via...Kottke

The book was on display at poptech see more photos on Flickr

Dan Gillmor Awarded

2004-10-30T15:56:00.000+02:00

I am so pleased that Dan was given this award, he really deserves it!

bloggzen - total immersion blogging technology innovation

Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People and Business and Technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, has won the 2004 World Technology Award for Media & Journalism.

Read our review of his book on Bookzen

Holinghurst wins Booker

2004-10-20T13:18:00.000+02:00

THE LINE OF BEAUTY BY ALAN HOLINGHURST WINS THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2004

The results of the 2004 Man Booker Prize were announced at
an awards ceremony at the Royal Horticultural Halls
on 19th October 2004.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2004

2004-10-07T17:44:00.001+02:00

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2004
"for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's cliches and their subjugating power" Elfriede Jelinek Austria b. 1946

Her website

BBC review of "the piano teacher" her book that was made into a film.

Brightness Falls by Jay McInerney - reviewed for Bookzen by KJR

2004-10-01T23:05:00.000+02:00

"Brightness Falls" by Jay McInerney is an engaging, fascinating tale involving the meteoric paths of a group of mostly prosperous young New Yorkers, blind to their own foibles and decadence, who believe their brand of personal pleasures makes life meaningful, while their native intelligence and privilege make them attractive, invulnerable and significant. Having stated this premise, I have foreshadowed the melancholy, slightly lugubrious ending. Like other Jay McInerney books, "Brightness Falls" is fast-paced and absorbing, a good story told well, in a kinetic prose bordering on poetry, both literary and peppered with the insouciance of the now. The theme? -- Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll meet money, the menagerie of New York society and life's limits.

Reading this book is like eavesdropping on New Yorkers during the mid-eighties, and quite enjoyable. Set within the publishing and investment banking realms, the author describes both, to my own moderate experience with each, well and believably. While the events in this book probably did occur to numerous people during the turbulent times described, I am not aware of "Brightness Falls" being a roman a clef, or a description via fiction of actual events concerning prominent people, though it may be. A tale of the wretched consequences of excess combined with narcissism, the book could well be about the late nineties.

I found this novel funny, evocative, serious, thought provoking, satirical, and possibly even profound. The story concerns that particular time in the life of many well educated, successful young professionals when they reach a certain stage of life and in their careers: when partying and friends seem more fun and enjoyable than ever, when sexual attraction to colleagues and associates carries the extra zing of justifiable narcissism, when coping with the centrifugal forces of career and money have become second nature, when women who thought themselves almost too young to marry suddenly want babies desperately, and when the married first begin looking around for more exotic, willing partners in dalliance.

Very much like "The Titan," also reviewed on this site, "Brightness Falls" concerns people confronting the interstitial balances among personal ambition, professional competence, character, and deep-seated longing. Business and pleasure become associated, connected, and inextricably intertwined. Questions the book raises are: what are the differences between a friend, lover and business associate? Or the difference between personal and professional lives? How much lying and manipulation are okay in a relationship if you intend to set the record straight or to do the right thing eventually later? It also asks, in the same vein, what is important? -- though perhaps that answer is finally existential, appropriately enough since the central characters believe themselves to be the disillusioned heirs of post-modernism.

McInerney, like his characters, is self-consciously literary, and unless you majored in literature at a good college, you may want to keep a notepad handy so that you can track down some of the references later. The title itself comes from an Elizabethan poem that mourns the loss of life in the face of aging and time's passage. Issues of human frailty, personal responsibility, and homelessness are dealt with sensitively, if with some irony.

Nevertheless, this is a book about the strong and the good surviving to be strong and good another day. It is also, as in Hardy or Shakespeare, told with a certain fatalistic nod to destiny, three-strikes and you are definitely out, regardless of who's to blame. It is also, like Dickens or Trollope, a tale that favors those of noble character, and perhaps, of noble, Waspish birth, who may get a chance to redeem themselves, having once fallen to the squalor of lesser beings. Finally, this novel's partying in the Hamptons, liquor-soaked scenes of adultery, and unease with the West Coast, evoke F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is referred to several times, as is Hemingway, and the denouement in uncannily similar to the major works of these authors.

Au revoir tristesse

2004-09-27T13:36:00.000+02:00

I loved her books which I read whilst at school, she had a great passion for life.

bookzen - literary reveiws

Francoise Sagan, the rebellious French writer who achieved fame as a teenager with her first novel, "Bonjour Tristesse," a precocious tale of sexual disillusionment, but whose international reputation dimmed as literary tastes changed, died yesterday in Honfleur, in northern France. She was 69. By Eric Pace via...NYT

Man Booker Shortlist Announced

2004-09-21T23:31:00.000+02:00

THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2004

Shortlist Announced
Achmat Dangor, Sarah Hall, Alan Hollinghurst, David Mitchell, Colm Toibin and Gerard Woodward are the six authors shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2004, the UK's best known literary award. The shortlist was announced by the chair of judges, Rt. Hon Chris Smith MP, at a press conference at the Man Group offices in London today (Tuesday 21 September).

The six shortlisted books were chosen from a longlist of 22 and are:

Achmat Dangor - Bitter Fruit - Atlantic Books
Sarah Hall - The Electric Michelangelo - Faber + Faber
Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty - Picador
David Mitchell - Cloud - Atlas Sceptre
Colm Toibin - The Master - Picador
Gerard Woodward - I'll go to Bed at Noon - Chatto + Windus
http://www.themanbookerprize.com

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

2004-09-21T13:54:00.000+02:00

The Oxford DNB is a collection of 50,000 specially written biographies of men and women who have shaped all aspects of the British past, from the earliest times to the end of the year 2000. The stories of these lives told in substantial, authoritative, and readable articles will be published simultaneously in sixty print volumes and online in September 2004.

Get biographies by email

A9 paying you to search

2004-09-18T23:33:00.000+02:00

bloggzen - total immersion blogging technology innovation

This is what they say "Why use A9.com
The web is easy to use, but using it well is not easy. We are inventing new ways to take search one step farther and make it more effective. We provide a unique set of powerful features to find information, organize it, and remember it—all in one place. A9.com is a powerful search engine, using web search and image search results enhanced by Google, Search Inside the Book results from Amazon.com, reference results from GuruNet, movies results from IMDb, and more.

A9.com remembers your information. You can keep your own notes about any web page and search them; it is a new way to store and organize your bookmarks; it even recommends new sites and favorite old sites specifically for you to visit. With the A9 Toolbar all your web browsing history will be stored, allowing you (and only you!) to retrieve it at any time and even search it; it will tell you if you have any new search results, or the last time you visited a page."

John Battelle's review of Amazon's new revamped search engine A9 in Business2....Update...Amazon Gives A9 Users a Discount

British Library puts Shakespeare online

2004-09-12T10:37:00.000+02:00

londonzen - park life

artzen - art culture info expo

Painting Reproduced Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library

The British Library is putting online 93 high-resolution digitised copies of 21 of Shakespeare's plays.via...BBC

British Library - On this site you will find the British Library's 93 copies of the 21 plays by Shakespeare printed in quarto before the theatres were closed in 1642.

Shakespeare Oxford Society - The theory that he was in fact the Earl of Oxford

Project Gutenberg - Download - The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

The Globe Theater

The Royal Shakespeare Company

We the Media : Grassroots Journalism by the People for the People by Dan Gillmor - Reviewed by KJR for Bookzen

2004-08-31T14:55:00.000+02:00

bloggzen - total immersion blogging technology innovation

We the Media : Grassroots Journalism by the People for the People by Dan Gillmor is a rich, insightful, valuable book about the state of the news and information media, focusing on the creativity, innovation and change brought about by the Internet. Mr. Gillmor closely examines the contributions of participatory, interactive online media, particularly the proliferation of people reading and writing web blogs, or blogs. Mr. Gillmor's premise is that a variety of online forums now often contain information, news, analysis and commentary that is different than or has a different emphasis than traditional media.

In his view, these new web forums, written and designed mostly by non-journalists, which are enabled by state-of-the art social-networking software, are both taking over some of the roles played by the mainstream news media, and putting pressures on media for change. This is particularly true now, he asserts, since millions of people worldwide read and write blogs, e.g., blogs and other online forums are not occurring in a vacuum, any more than Fox News.

Even for someone familiar with blogs, publishing and broadcasting, "We the Media" is thorough, refreshing and interesting. For someone new to blogging, or for someone who wants an exhaustive examination of the issues and ramifications, this book will be crucial. The book is also important for the background it provides about the traditional electronic and print media -- radio, television and newspapers -- their history, why they exist, whom they are run and owned by, and how they operate.

Free speech and participatory democracy are obvious interests and concerns of Mr. Gillmor, and his closest assocates. He traces political dialogue historically through the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, expressing much concern about the real dangers to free speech now posed by governments and corporations worldwide. Part of his premise and his expressed hope is that the spread of online media access will enable more free speech, and a more informed citizenry, leading we all hope, to a better world.

Mr. Gillmor, a seasoned reporter and columnist covering Silicon Valley technology for the San Jose Mercury News, a Knight Ridder publication, knows well the topics about which he writes. He has long written his own blog, one of the first by a professional journalist, and now one of most widely read and commented on. He is a technically saavy, factual observer, a thoughtful commentator, not given to hyperbole. This is a serious book based on both statistical and anecdotal evidence, and has been commented on and corrected by scores of amateurs and professionals from the fields of software technology and journalism. He even declares that this edition of the book is a true work in progress. To see more comments and thoughts, or to download the free ebook, go to http://wethemedia.oreilly.com/

One of his first anecdotes about the power of blogs to impact attitudes concerns a seminar, during which he and other celebrity bloggers in the audience posted comments about the proceedings. As people in the audience read these comments from mobile wireless devices as the meeting was still in progress, audience attitudes toward the speaker changed, which altered the tenor of the meeting. Rather like students noiselessly passing around notes in class about the stain on the teacher's tie, though in this case, the teacher, a major corporate executive, lost his job.

The point of this anecdote, and of the book itself to some extent, is that even by incrementally adding new or different information and perspectives to standard news reportage, or even to the facts being given out in a seminar, individual bloggers can create differing public perspectives, and thus, can have an impact on events.

I myself have seen numerous blog entries by otherwise ordinary people, who have blogged about events behind the scenes of major news stories, often apparently more out of a sense of 'gee-whiz' than even of trying to scoop a story. Mr. Gillmor's point is that if a critical mass of people read what an individual blogger is writing, particularly if that information is interesting and newsworthy, there will be an impact, however incremental.

He also notes that often, with today's powerful mobile technologies, individual bloggers often witness, photograph and report events that the mainstream media, even if present, miss or do not publish. Further, he suggests that we are just beginning to see the impact of low-cost, high-quality mobile devices. Online commentary about standard news reporting also keeps issues alive, he notes, by creating powerful feedback loops, which themselves become newsworthy. Mr. Gillmor offers many examples.

Mr. Gillmor is also very interested in group blogs and forums, such as Wiki-pedia, where thousands of articles are posted and edited by thousands of people. He describes many sites using new technologies, such as Technorati and Google, He suggests that such sites are not only providing "non-standard" information, but that the social networking aspect of such sites is providing people with new experiences, models and definitions of successful community involvement. He gives many examples and makes numerous recommendations for information-based enterprises that readers might undertake.

If the proliferation of personal computers connected to the Internet has given millions of people the opportunity to become media outlets, it has also made it more difficult for those of us in the audience to tune into really different, valuable viewpoints. Fortunately, for those bloggers who would find an audience and for those of us who would read refreshing perspectives, Mr. Gillmor has plenty of advice on how to proceed. Be sure to look at the sections on web sites, acknowledgements, notes and the index at the end of the book, all very worth checking out.

The Man Booker Prize Longlist 2004

2004-08-28T12:00:00.000+02:00

Man Booker Prize

Tuesday, 21 September: The shortlist will be announced

Tuesday, 19 October: The winner of The Man Booker Prize 2004 will be announced

Th long list

Author Title Publisher

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Purple Hibiscus 4th Estate

Nadeem Aslam Maps for Lost Lovers Faber & Faber

Nicola Barker Clear: A Transparent Novel 4th Estate

John Bemrose The Island Walkers John Murray

Ronan Bennett Havoc, in its Third Year Bloomsbury

Susanna Clarke Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Bloomsbury

Neil Cross Always the Sun Scribner

Achmat Dangor Bitter Fruit Atlantic Books

Louise Dean Becoming Strangers Scribner

Lewis Desoto A Blade of Grass Maia Press

Sarah Hall The Electric Michelangelo Faber & Faber

James Hamilton Paterson Cooking with Fernet Branca Faber & Faber

Justin Haythe The Honeymoon Picador

Shirley Hazzard The Great Fire Virago

Alan Hollinghurst The Line of Beauty Picador

Gail Jones Sixty Lights Harvill Press

David Mitchell Cloud Atlas Sceptre

Sam North The Unnumbered Scribner

Nicholas Shakespeare Snowleg Harvill Press

Matt Thorne Cherry Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Colm Toibin The Master Picador

Gerard Woodward I'll go to Bed at Noon Chatto & Windus

"The Ecology of Eden" by Evan Eisenberg reviewed for Bookzen by KJR

2004-08-18T23:20:00.000+02:00

"The Ecology of Eden" by Evan Eisenberg originally struck me as a seminal work, like Darwin's "Origin of the Species" which was written almost 150 years ago. Not because of original and breakthrough research or observation in the field per se, as Darwin did. More importantly for me at this time, Mr. Eisenberg has assembled numerous findings from diverse branches of groundbreaking twentieth century sciences, and put all the pieces together*. This is important because while the fields of palaeontology, sociology, anthropology, biology, genetics, ecology, and archaeology were telling us many important things about the world we live in, very few people were connecting the dots until recently.

Mr. Eisenberg then, asks fundamental questions, like the one asked in the first few chapters of Genesis and in all other creation stories of all other peoples on the planet, namely, "Why do we have the sense that something has gone terribly wrong?" He then takes all of the sciences mentioned above, including literature, myth and religious lore, to provide the answer. Essentially he is saying that we live in a relatively closed system, such as described by Newton's "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction," but multiplied out into the thousand-fold greater array of more implications, on both a global scale and a nano scale, that we are now aware of and are able to measure.

Personally, I found it very stimulating to be shown how genetical dynamics affect plant biology and anthropology and vice versa, to see in detail how our actions and those of our ancestors affected and are still affecting virtually every life form on the planet, genetically and ecologically, as well. Mr. Eisenberg touches on everything from why human beings seem to like nice green lawns to why we as a species still seem to be at war with the forests, and the implications and consequences for the human race and all other creatures in the years ahead.

While it is this connecting the dots of both the latest and most secure of the findings of twentieth century science in order to shape a new world view that makes this book so revelatory, what make it extraordinary for me is his connecting the dots all the way back to creation myths and the Bible. Having often in my youth and young adulthood wondered what I could say to my right wing fundamentalist anti-evolution parents and their friends to explain why I had left the fold, I felt upon reading this book that even my father, an otherwise intelligent man, would have been able to grasp evolution and so many more things had he had this book to read when he was fourteen. So I think this is a book that can change lives and have a benefical political impact, particularly in the dark age in which we find oureselves, in which all people can read and vote, but in which most do neither.

*Until recently, relatively few books consciously combined a variety of branches of science, though there is an increasing tendency to do so now. Those brave few from the past that stand out in my mind are" The Origin of the Species," as already noted, which took eighteenth century biology and palaeontology and came up with the first coherent theory of evolution; another was a book Carl Jung edited in the last years of his life, "Man and his Symbols," that came out in 1968, that brought together psychology, archaeology and art history; around the same time, a book called Human Nature (Penquin), brought together anthropology, sociology, and ecology, and of course, there were the books of Norman O. Brown, which looked at literature through the eyes of psychology, with a view of creating a new understanding of anthropology, sociology, and psychology. I find the current vogue for general systems theory a very fresh breath of air.

Glasses for Humanity

2004-08-12T20:12:00.000+02:00

Robert Tolmach founded this nonprofit organisation to help the world see. I am sure that there are 1,000's of pairs of glasses lurking. Please clean out your bags and cupboards they need your specs. Valaunteer your time or give them money to make this superb idea a reality. Tell your friends, have a glasses collection day at work. Thank you.

ecozen - animals ecology philanthropy

Robert Tolmach's introduction>>

Welcome to the web site of Glasses for Humanity, a new nonprofit organization.

When I decided to move from the business world to the social sector, I looked for the opportunity where my time and efforts would make the greatest possible difference. That led to the creation of Glasses for Humanity.

If you ask yourself the similar question—where will your charitable dollars make the biggest difference—you, too, may find Glasses for Humanity to be the answer.

Billions of people in the world and millions of children in the United States can’t see clearly. Indeed, millions of people needlessly go blind each year from avoidable or treatable causes. This undermines literacy, education, safety and productivity, and the chance to lead a fulfilling life.

We have put together a remarkable team with expertise in such areas as vision care, public health, microfinance, marketing and other disciplines. Together, we have developed a comprehensive and businesslike plan, which harnesses market forces to combat vision loss of all forms. This approach is extraordinarily cost-effective.

This site describes our leveraged, scalable and financially-sustainable program to collect used eyeglasses in the United States, to provide eye exams and eyeglasses for 30 million people in developing countries and half a million children in the United States each year, to significantly reduce the incidence of avoidable
blindness, and to generate $50 million per year in new revenues for vision care and research.

We know of no opportunity where your charitable dollars can improve the lives of so many people. Please consider joining us in our efforts. And if you’d be so kind as to register with us, we’ll keep you posted on all our progress, celebrity events, and plans.

On behalf of the entire team behind this effort, thank you for your interest and support.

Sincerely,

Robert Tolmach

President

Glasses for Humanity

Friendsterorizing a funny article, must read...

2004-08-07T17:27:00.000+02:00

bloggzen - total immersion blogging technology innovation

"LA INNUENDO is a free bimonthly magazine which takes a satiric look at Los Angeles lifestyles, culture, and politics, focusing on the entertainment industry in all its terrible, wonderful manifestations. Our demographic is hip and savvy- young professionals who live, shop and socialize in the city's trendiest neighborhoods. We are a publication
like no other in Los Angeles: smart, funny, and most of all, compulsively readable".

"Friendsterorizing" The intelligentsia's hot new trend By Richard Rushfield

Marfya Fillipovna* is at work. It may not look like work, certainly not the sort of work you know...more>>

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald reviewed by KJR for Bookzen

2004-08-07T15:22:00.000+02:00

There is very little tenderness in any of the nights in the ten years detailed in Tender is the Night, the exception being of course, the nights when the young Dr. Richard Diver is falling in love with his sexually abused young patient on the grounds of the menatl hospital outside of Zurich. As part of her therapy, they meet on lovely summer evenings, and his presence, sanity, clarity, and love cure her. But when the story opens some four years later, the cracks in the relationship and in her condition are showing. Though it is Helen that is origianlly the patient, by the middle of the book, as he wanders almost aimlessly and confusedly, erratically about Paris in search of this thing or that, we realize that something is amiss, perhaps going amiss with Dick Diver, as well. Perhaps it is right at this moment that the theme of the book shifts. What had been a cynical description of a romping group of ex-pariots becomes a tale of a man coming unwound.

I feel a bit self-conscious writing a reveiw of such a famous book, so much has aleady been written, and evev in thinking about the book for this review, I have already read a brief note about it myself. Apparently this book is one of the author's attempts to describe his own failing relationship, adultery, problems with drinking, and destructive behavior. Even taken as a complete work of fantasy, if we could forget the tragdies in the life of Scott Fitzgerald that we are all aware of, this book is a bit sobering, for it is a convincing story about the nightmare of an intelligent, accomplished, idealisitc man self-consciously watching himself being sucked under for the last time.

I think I have read or been told that the title is a phrase from another literary work, perhaps by Matthew Arnold, and knowing the verse might shed more light on the work. One could also say that this book, taken historicaly, is a a bit similar to some of Hemignway's works of the same period, and provides lots of insight into how rich Americans might have behaved in Switzerland, Paris and the south of France in the 1920s and 30s. But it is much more than that. Often it is very insightful, and frequently poetic, an engagingly apt description of human beings at serious play.

In the sordidness of his fate lies much of the pain Diver experiences. The incidents that cause, precipitate and mark Dick Diver's decline are all small doses of ignominy and unfortunate coincidence. If he were a lesser, or a more superficial, less thoughtful or intelligent person like those around him, he would pick himself up, clean up his act and go on as if nothing had happened, as most of the others do. But he is not, and he is stung, feeling trapped in an unsuitable marriage, knowing he is his own worst enemy, and seeing his desires turn to dust. In fact, the irony is that while all of the people around him gain some measure of inspiration, credibility or stature from knowing him, they all seem to delight in his fall. When he begins to have difficulties due in part to the nobility of his undertakings and to his stoic attempt to see his obligations to others through, people seem only too glad to be rid of him at the slightest sign of his demise, and take advantage of the vacuum he is leaviing.

Yes, certainly, by the end, Dr. Richard Diver is wallowing in misery, and self-destructive behaviour, though he seems both more susceptible to the consequences, and brought lower by his very consciousness of what is happening to him. Like a struggling victim in quicksand, each writhe seems to draw him deeper in.

Lysergically Yours by Frank Duff reviewed by KJR for Bookzen

2004-07-29T15:28:00.000+02:00

bookzen - literary reviews

"Lysergically Yours" by Frank Duff reads like a cross between Jay McInerney and William Gibson, full of nefarious action and dark characters, all described in a cyber-aware language of grungy, punker realism. Fast-paced, "Lysergically" is a gripping tale of a skateboarding, code hacking, college-aged drug dealer trying to finance his way through university, then trying to save his life. With total non-challance and a discussion of the merits of his theory about such matters, Jerry eats free pizza at the physics lab lunches and impersonates faculty at the chemistry department dinners to make ends meet. He finds himself getting the attention of equally esoteric young punkers also trying to figure an angle on surviving in Toronto, and their introduction to the reader and into the story is surprisingly well paced for a first novel.

Everything is described in the flippant off-handed way of a young person for whom all kinds of amazing details are sliding by way too fast to catch. Particularly rewarding are the humorous if hard headed descriptions of the ways and means of drug dealing and then gambling, including bar room discussions of Dostoyevsky's own thoughts from "The Gambler."

While the novel is reminiscent and evocative of university life, choosing courses, making ends meet, dressing sloppy, drinking beer, and finding a date, this novel is much more than just a gritty campus memoir. It is suspenseful, in both the story line and the pacing, and brought to life by the switching between long, langorous mouthfuls of descriptives to short staccato observations of danger. In its language and creation of suspense in the invisible hacker life underground, "Lysergically" is like the best of William Gibson, morphed with John Grisham ("Pelican Brief").

Possibly it is the author Frank Duff's gift for language, the ability to spit out laconic one-liners that reduces all of life to fast non-idealized transactions that gives the book so much punch. Of course, the plot is so well thought out that it rambles along seemingly aimlessly, with the momentum of a freight train. The word thriller has to be used to describe this novel.

If not messianic, nor utopian, Duff's message is at least vaguely optimistic, that good will prevail, and that the progress enabled by science will touch many lives for the better in the future. There is also the punk embrace of the gritty reality many of us wake to daily, a world of weapons, dirt, greed, violence, and stupidity. As you might guess from the title, there is some of the late Timothy Leary's missionary zeal in the message. "Lysergically Yours" is one of the few books, including Dune Messiah, about the drug-induced ability to see into the future, a talent which is used in that book as well as this to avoid immediate catastrophic danger.

"Lysergically Yours" is available at selected US and Canadian bookstores, online, and as a free text file download at http://256k.org/fd/

My friend Robert MacLean won the AA short-screenplay contest in Los Angeles-TWICE!

2004-07-20T10:06:00.000+02:00

artzen - art culture info expo

Bob's latest news:

Dear Family, Friends and Associates, I won the AA short-screenplay contest
in Los Angeles-TWICE! Once would have been plenty. The winners are posted at
aascreenplaycontest.com
and the two-minute script is below for your possible amusement.

It's called DARK IN HERE.The second one, JUST LOOKING, is too long to share
with you at this moment.

In other news, have signed with Dutch drama agent Pieter Vink and Anco Entertainment
to translate and perform some of my plays in Europe and Turkey. They're under
"Auteurs" at toneelwerken.nl

And finally, in addition to the film projects I'm already spending my youth
on, Despina Mouzaki's company Cinegram here in Athens cinegram.gr
want to co-produce LINDA, my low-budget comedy about a Greek whore and the American
president, for the international market. We're looking for partners for them.
Best from Bob

Here's the AA winner: DARK IN HERE

INT. BEDROOM - DAY

A MOTHER and her LOVER are having sex. A NOISE.

INT. HALL - CONTINUOUS

Wrapping her robe on, the MOTHER meets her nine-year old SON coming in from

baseball WHACKING his ball into his glove. She kisses him, hugs him and

puts him into a closet.

INT. CLOSET - CONTINUOUS

Her SON stands there in the dark. SOUNDS OF SEX OFF-SCREEN.

INT. BEDROOM - CONTINUOUS

The MOTHER and her LOVER are doing it. A NOISE. She looks out the window.

INT. HALL - CONTINUOUS

The MOTHER hurries her LOVER into the closet. Her HUSBAND COMES IN the

front door. She hugs him.

INT. CLOSET - MEANWHILE

The SON and the LOVER stand there. SOUNDS OF TALK OFF-SCREEN.

SON

Dark in here.

(no answer)

I have a baseball.

(no answer)

Want to buy it?

(no answer; makes to leave)

OK, I'll ask my dad.

LOVER

(holds him there)

How much?

SON

Two hundred and fifty dollars.

Pause. The Lover takes out his money and counts it.

INT. FRONT HALL - ANOTHER DAY

The SON comes in from baseball with the glove. His MOTHER in her robe

kisses him and puts him in the closet.

INT. CLOSET - MOMENTS LATER

The SON stands there. The door OPENS and his MOTHER pushes her LOVER in.

They stand there. VOICES OFF-SCREEN.

SON

Dark in here.

(no answer)

I've got a glove.

(no answer)

Want to buy it?

LOVER

How much?

SON

Seven hundred and fifty dollars.

Pause. The Lover nods and reaches into his pocket.

INT. FRONT HALL - ANOTHER DAY

The SON is on his way out, his FATHER coming in.

FATHER

Want to throw the ball around?

SON

I sold it. And my glove.

FATHER

You sold them? For how much?

SON

A thousand dollars.

FATHER

That's not honest! They're not worth that! I hope you're going to tell

this in your next confession!

INT. CHURCH - ANOTHER DAY

The FATHER comes out of a confessional and nods at his SON, who GOES IN.

INT. CONFESSIONAL - DAY

The SON kneels by the screen.

SON

Dark in here.

NEW ANGLE: we see that the PRIEST is the Lover.

PRIEST

Don't start that shit again.

THE END

Read more of Bob's work on his site that I developed
for him.

Solitary Summer by Elizabeth von Arnim - Reviewed by KJR for Bookzen

2004-07-15T13:31:00.000+02:00

"Solitary Summer" is a sunny book full of reflections on nature, books, authors, society, and gardening. If you remove the references to horse carts, these memoirs of Elizabeth von Arnim might be those of a contemporary suburban matron living with her children and wealthy husband in a large house far out in the country in the US or Europe. But this is not a contemporary story, and the narrator is an aristocrat circa 1900 with education, freedoms, wealth and comforts much rarer in her own day than in ours. Some of her discussions about the poor people in the local village betray her aristocratic roots. I think to a modern reader, she like Henry David Thoreau, whom she reads and idolizes, will seem a bit politically incorrect, but only just a bit.

In the main, her comments about people who do not enjoy thoughtful books, who do not enjoy nature, or who do not enjoy the life of the mind would ring true in any age. Like most true intellectuals, she is a rebel and a non-conformist, and has the ability to laugh at herself and her foibles. After experimenting with her unorthodox ways of gardening and child rearing, more often than not she returns to doing it the traditional way. Yet through her chaotic missteps, she learns and explains to us why the old ways may be the best.

I found her many reflections refreshing. It was fun to share her life. Her writing style is very accessible, friendly, and open. Essentially, these are the memoirs of a woman who is seeking consciously to know herself better through the peace and relative solitude of a summer spent wandering in her large garden and the surrounding fields.

At the end, as the cold rains of October pelt the windowpanes, she confides to her older, stoic husband that she doesn't know herself any better for her summer strolls, though she appreciates herself and women in general more. As readers, we probably appreciate her more, too, and wish that there were more volumes of her sound reflections on the nature of life and happiness for us to read.

Cell Book, Mo Book

2004-07-13T21:50:00.000+02:00

bloggzen - total immersion blogging technology innovation

Chinese author moves into texts

A Chinese author is writing a novel aimed to be transmitted in text message-size chunks.

Qian Fuchang has reduced his novel Outside the Fortress Besieged into 60 chapters of 70 characters each, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.via..BBC

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser - Reviewed by KJR for Bookzen

2004-07-12T16:02:00.000+02:00

"An American Tragedy" is about a youth trying to escape the suffocation of poverty and intellectual abuse in pursuit of the American Dream. Though the reason for escape is sound, the dream to which he aspires is ephemeral at best, available to few, and appreciated and understood by even fewer. "An American Tragedy" bears much resemblance to Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment," though the crimes are more minor and, possibly ironically, the punishment more harsh in twentieth century America than in nineteenth century Russia.

I wish I had read this book when I was 16 or 17 to wise me up, though it might have been considered hackneyed and trite by the oh-so-sophisticated 60's-era teachers at my schools in the proper, snobbier, wealthier suburbs surrounding Boston. Like those in the Bush White House, I was not from the pages of "A Separate Peace" or "Catcher in the Rye." Like Clyde Griffiths in this book, I was raised in a born-again religious right American family, and my father was still teaching Bible class and Sunday School some fifty years later.

The tragedy, which by implication Dreiser thinks is a peculiarly American one, concerns the attempt of a young man, a boy of only about 13, who can pass for 15 because of his size, attempting to free himself from the suffocating constraints of the church mission where his parents care for and preach to the indigent. And unlike his associates who have taken jobs as bellhops at the largest and grandest hotel in Kansas City to make ends meet, for Clyde, this job is not just a means to a fast buck or a way to feed himself: being a bellhop is the first step on the road to opportunity and access to such things as fancy clothes and powerful motorcars. Like the Tom Cruise character in "Heaven Can Wait," who buys lots of hats to proclaim his success as a boxer in 1880's Boston, Clyde buys himself slacks and sweaters, coats and hats to proclaim that he is on his way. He even begins lavishing expensive clothes on his unappreciative floozy girlfriend, to the extent that he cannot loan money to his older sister, who having earlier run away from home herself, shows up again later abandoned and pregnant. Ironically, it is the unconditional love of his mother, which he originally found so suffocating, that sustains and nurtures Clyde at the end.

Involved in a joy ride in a stolen car that ends tragically, Clyde creates a new life for himself in another city, only to feel trapped again within a couple of years when his girlfriend becomes pregnant. The pregnancy occurs just as Clyde has met the love of his life, an attractive, upperclass young woman whose family has a summer house on the lake.

It is his intense desire to be free at virtually any cost, his obsession with freedom and access to the good life that he sees around him, that eventually costs Clyde his freedom. As with Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment," Clyde never doubts his guilt or tries to deny it. He believes rather that it was his own stupidity that led to his feeling caught in a situation in which he even began to seriously contemplate a crime. This endless fascination with the crime itself as a means of escape he blames on his having been found out. Unable to defend himself, Clyde cannot escape the prejudices of a legal system wanting to make an example of him, and is a victim of the political ambitions of law enforcement officials seeking to show themselves tough on crime in an election year. As such, "An American Tragedy" could be considered an argument against capital punishment.

As a book written in 1925 about life in the American Midwest of 1910 or so, this book, with its descriptions of roadhouse bars, stolen cars, juke boxes, electrically illuminated marquees, telephone calls, and political corruption, feels very modern. I thought before reading this book that fatal car accidents and teenagers racing fast cars was the province of the 1950's and of James Dean and Marlon Brando. Not so; they were doing it back when Brando's grandmother was a girl.

August evening

2004-07-10T12:11:00.000+02:00

londonzen - park life

EDWARD SAID MEMORIAL CONCERT
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim (conductor/piano)
Barbican Concert Hall, London EC2
Wednesday 4 August 2004, 7.30 p.m.

The London Review of Books is delighted to bring the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under their conductor Daniel Barenboim to the Barbican on 4 August to celebrate the work of Edward Said, who died in September last year.

Support the National Trust by visiting one of their wonderful properties

2004-07-08T21:49:00.000+02:00

bookzen - literary reviews
ecozen - animals ecology philanthropy

The National Trust young writers competition

Are you under 18 with an eye for a story?

Our historic houses and beautiful countryside properties teem with thrilling, mysterious, spooky and romantic stories. Now the National Trust and Young Writer magazine are offering a fantastic prize for the best stories or poems inspired by a visit to a Trust property.

The two age categories are 7-11 and 12-18.
Closing date for entries is 31 August 2004.

"Summer" by Edith Wharton, reviewed by KJR for Bookzen

2004-07-06T18:27:00.000+02:00

bookzen - literary reviews

Like many of her books, "Summer" by Edith Wharton is a commentary on manners, social classes and life's circumstances. Typically, she touches on the more comfortable echelons of society, though it was surprising to me how deeply she delved into the very poverty-ridden outer margins of society. We see here a "misalliance," a briefly joyous-seeming fling that becomes life changing, and then life threatening. In "Summer," set around 1900, a solitary young woman, possibly abused as a small child, now sheltered by her guardian to the point of being limited, lives in a remote and isolated New England town. She is bored to the point of suffocation. As June's warm breezes caress her, she meets a young man who is better educated, with much wider opportunities than anything she has experienced or indeed, can even really imagine. This is the dark story of a romance, the warmth and promise of which fades as autumn nears. Though for the more aware reader, and for our heroine, Charity Royall herself, the promise will have always been illusory.

From the perspective of the seasonal title, the story is a bit of a "midsummer nights dream." There are scenes of festive homecoming celebrations, dances, fourth of July fireworks on the big lake, kissing in the field above the town, and bicycling to a secret rendezvous deep in the woods. Yet, however pleasant and optimistic are the events of summer, more robust preparations for the cold winds and snow that will surely follow when fall turns to winter must be taken. As the scene turns to autumn, it clearly becomes time for people to pick up their lives again where they had left them, as much as is possible.

This "preparation for the cold of winter" theme itself is something of a cultural shibboleth, that which distinguished the cultures of warmer climes from those of colder climes. This tradition is quite ancient and embedded in the more temperate, as opposed to tropical, cultures. Because the book harps on this theme allegorically, it is something of a morality tale, a warning on many levels against too much summery optimism.

Hinging as it does on the changing seasons, the book treats us to many descriptions of summer weather, of the trees and plants and shifts in the light and temperature as June fades away into September. These climatic changes become thematic, light-hearted at first, then dire, chill and even ironic as we near the conclusion.

Though worse disasters are avoided, and while the main characters console themselves with the brighter sides of mere survival, this book is also about how trapped some of us are, about how difficult, dangerous, and even disastrous it is for us to move beyond our assigned realms. Though there are cheery moments, loving scenes, and beautiful descriptions of nature throughout, this is a book full of foreboding, of misfortune, if not of tragedy, on the verge of happening. This book is a reminder of how confining, desperate, barren, and even grisly life can be, and of how close some of us are to that thin outer edge much of our lives.

I found this a sobering, grim tale, never an escapist, happy or uplifting book. In fact it is a bit of a strange tale, never really engaging, though I must admit, after stumbling into it, enticed by the sunny-sounding title and the author's reputation, I did find myself drawn in, feeling a bit sympathetic with the characters, and curious as to the outcome.

The young woman from the country who might find herself in danger from the more sophisticated, perhaps callous, if not irresponsible gentleman, is a theme that rings through the literature of England, America and France for at least the last 400 years. It seems to have become irrelevant in our modern age, though, since we do not see it so much nowadays, not since John O'Hara's 1950's "Butterfield Eight." Maybe after 1972 and Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying" it is thought to be no longer relevant in the West, though I suspect it is still relevant in less developed cultures where women's rights, equality and freedom are still more in question, perhaps in South America, Asia, the Middle East, or Africa.

If you aren't going to the British Grand Prix next weekend , go to LA

2004-07-04T20:01:00.000+02:00

bookzen - literary reviews
londonzen - park life
francaiszen - la vie

Swink invites you to celebrate the Lying, Cheating & Stealing online theme issue:

Sunday, July 11th

1644 Elevado Street
Los Angeles, CA 90026 (in Silverlake)

Reading starts at 7:00 pm
Celebration starts at 8:00 pm

Open bar

Please RSVP to laparty@swinkmag.com or at 310.861.5996

Swink is a new L.A. NY literary magazine.

Are you just a Blogger, or can you really write?

2004-06-26T13:27:00.000+02:00

This guide is based on the style book which is given to all journalists at The Economist.

The write stuff
Have you got it? Take a quiz based on The Economist's Style Guide

2004-06-26T12:37:00.000+02:00

bookzen - literary reviews

BLOGGERS! Enter for a chance to win a free book!

Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
by Debra Hamel

Neaira (pronounced "neh-EYE-ruh") grew up in a brothel in Corinth in the early fourth century B.C. and became one of the city-state's higher-priced courtesans while still a teenager. Read about her life as a prostitute and about the larger world of fourth-century Athens in which her drama played itself out.

A "gripping story of politics, sex and sleaze in ancient Athens...." --The Sunday Telegraph

amazon | more information | Bloggers! Enter to win a free book! (drawing 8/1/04)

Poetry London Party

2004-06-23T18:39:00.000+02:00

bookzen - literary reviews
londonzen - park life

THURSDAY 24 JUNE, 7pm at FOYLES
You are invited to the launch of the Summer Issue of Poetry London.

Two prominent American poets, Maurice Manning and Philip Fried, will give their first UK readings with Ruth Padel and Polly Clark.

7pm on Thursday, 24 June at Silver Moon, third floor of Foyles, 113-119 Charing Cross Road, London WC2 (Tottenham Court Road tube).

Admission is free, there will be free wine, and there is access for disabled people.

Poetry London is available from Foyles at £4.00

Dan Gillmor's grass roots book cover - it will be published in August

2004-06-22T23:14:00.000+02:00

bloggzen - total immersion blogging technology innovation

bookzen - literary reviews

We the Media : Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People
By Dan Gillmor

Grassroots journalists are dismantling Big Media's monopoly on the news, transforming it from a lecture to a conversation. Not content to accept the news as reported, these readers-turned-reporters are publishing in real time to a worldwide audience via the Internet. The impact of their work is just beginning to be felt by professional journalists and the newsmakers they cover.

In We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, nationally known business and technology columnist Dan Gillmor tells the story of this emerging phenomenon, and sheds light on this deep shift in how we make and consume the news. [Full Description]

Buy it from O'Reilly >>

Good luck Dan : From we the readers

Amazon is not at everyones fingertips...it could be...

2004-06-18T17:36:00.000+02:00

Mission

Literacy is the dedicated purpose of Books for a Better World. It seeks to enfranchise, to empower and to motivate children in developing nations by establishing libraries and scholarship programs.

History

Books for a Better World is a non-profit, educational organization founded in January 2000 by Kae Robb who at the time was a Spanish teacher at Phoenix Country Day School. Since she was a small child she has had a passion for books and for travel. The concept of Books for a Better World is best told in her own words. More>>

How to Help>>

Tahar Ben Jelloun wins the 2004 International Impac Dublin Literary Award

2004-06-18T15:32:00.000+02:00

Impac Literary Award Goes to a Moroccan

Moroccan author, Tahar Ben Jelloun, was named the winner yesterday of the $120,000 International Impac Dublin Literary Award, the world's richest prize for a single work of fiction published in English...via ">NYT

Winner of the 1994 Prix Maghreb, Tahar Ben Jelloun was born in Fez, Morocco, and emigrated to France. A novelist, essayist, critic, and poet, he is a regular contributor to Le Monde, La R�pubblica, El Pa�s, and Panorama. His novels include The Sacred Night, which received the Prix Goncourt in 1987, and Corruption (The New Press).

This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun translated from the French by Linda Coverdale details >>>>

The Short List

The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster

Any Human Heart by William Boyd

Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

The White Family by Maggie Gee

This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun
Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale

Balthasar's Odyssey by Amin Maalouf
Translated from the French by Barbara Bray

Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry

Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi
Translated from the Dari by Erdag M.G�knar

House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk
Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

details >>>>

Bill Bryson wins Aventis Prizes for Science Books 2004

2004-06-15T15:12:00.000+02:00

American author, Bill Bryson has won the General Prize for the Aventis Prizes for Science Books 2004, with his first popular science based book, A Short History of Nearly Everything (Doubleday/Transworld). Travelling through time and space, Bill Bryson�s book introduces us to the universe, the world and the rise of civilisation.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson�s quest to explain the world that we live in through an in-depth study of seven distinct topics: the origins of the universe; the historical discovery of the size and age of the earth; relativity and quantum theory; the present and future threats to life and the planet, the origins and history of life and the evolution of man. His sheer curiosity invites readers to question the origins of the universe and how we got from there being nothing at all, to here being the people that we are today.

The shortlisted books:

In the Beginning Was the Worm ByAndrew Brown (Simon & Schuster)
A Short History of Nearly Everything By Bill Bryson (Doubleday/Transworld)
Magic Universe By Nigel Calder (Oxford University Press)
Mutants By Armand Marie Leroi (HarperCollins)
Nature via Nurture By Matt Ridley (Fourth Estate)
Backroom Boys By Francis Spufford(Faber & Faber)

About The Royal Society The Royal Society is an independent academy promoting the natural and applied sciences. Founded in 1660, the Society has three roles, as the UK academy of science, as a learned Society and as a funding agency.
About The Aventis FoundationThe Aventis Foundation is generously supporting the Aventis Prizes for Science Books.

Ever since the Prizes were originally established they have had the same aim - to encourage, the writing, publishing and reading of good and accessible popular science books. They have grown to become one of the UK�s most prestigious non-fiction literary prizes.

How to enter>>

New Man Booker prize

2004-06-02T19:13:00.000+02:00

The Man Booker International Prize will recognize one writer for their achievement in fiction. Worth �60,000 to the winner, the prize will be awarded once every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language.

The first winner will be announced in mid 2005. The prize is sponsored by the Man Group, which also sponsors the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Read it

2004-05-28T00:36:00.000+02:00

Amnesty International report 2004

In a dangerous and divided world, it is more important than ever that the global human rights movement remains strong, relevant and vibrant.

The Amnesty International Report 2004, launched this week, reflects these challenges. It documents the human rights situation in 155 countries and territories in 2003, and summarizes regional trends.

View the 2004 report online

Catch Robert MacLean's Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival

2004-05-11T02:10:00.000+02:00

It's
only 7 minutes long but you'll laugh your socks down.

THE
MOMENT OF ACCEPTING LIFE: it's about sex and death-I mean what else?-and
it's at Short Film Corner in the Market throughout the festival for viewing
any time.

This Thursday the 13th at 15:50 it's on the big screen.

It won at Bombay ("Best First Film of a Director") and Dallas (Festival Co-Directors'
Choice Best Film"), has been screened at 20 festivals, was bought by HBO and is
on British, French, Italian & Japanese TV. Have a good Cannes!

Bob MacLean's KISS OF DEATH is being coproduced by Victor Solnicki and Ipso
Facto Films with the participation of the BBC.

CHOCOLATE AND CHAMPAGNE is being produced by Frank Capra at Screen Gems, North
Carolina. Play was in NY.

His one-acts are everywhere, and he has recently completed musical comedy POLITICALLY
CORRECT SEX.

...Bob is an old friend...I put him online...for the price of a large fish...

De vigne

2004-05-08T12:34:00.000+02:00

Noble Rot: A Bordeaux Wine Revolution
By William Echikson

Tipple trouble - The Economist

"At times the book's characters are a little too obviously typecast as �goodies� or �baddies�. The goodies are working-class Frenchmen who live on the right bank and whose cause is promoted by democratic Americans, who can see through the mystique of old Europe. (The book has a distinctly post-September 11th feel.) The baddies are the snobs of the left bank, in alliance with lazy and corrupt British wine critics." Read more

Publishers Weekly
In vino veritas. Yet as Echikson (Burgundy Stars) shows in this entertaining journey through Bordeaux's wine-making landscape, the truth of wine is also highly subjective and subject to change. Bordeaux has long epitomized fine wine. In 1662, Echikson relates, the English diarist Samuel Pepys... Read more

Stop Discrimination: World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day, 8 May 2004

2004-05-08T12:33:00.000+02:00

Intolerance and the lack of respect for diversity represent major obstacles to achieving the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement's core aim of protecting human dignity, and have an adverse impact on key aspects of its work.

On 8 May, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and National Societies worldwide commemorate the birth in 1828 of one of the Movement's founders, Henry Dunant, who inspired the creation of the ICRC in 1863.

Based on the belief that all those injured on the battlefield had a right to receive care no matter which side they were fighting for, the principle of non-discrimination was at the very heart of the founders' earliest convictions and remains so for the Movement today.

Make a donation
You too can make a difference for war victims.
Supporting the ICRC: not just another donation - an act of humanity.

Play in LA on Sunday

2004-04-28T22:33:00.000+02:00

A friend, Robert MacLean, sent me this invite, do go if you can he is v. funny!

If you're in LA on Sunday,2 May 9:00-10:00 PM or have friends who are, want to let you know that three of my one-acts are up:

MERCEDES ORANGE "How a woman turns orange and finds true happiness." (A ground-breaking work that treats an agent as human!)

BLUE LADY "A sculpture of a man's dead wife comes to life and offers him a second chance."

THREE LAUGHS "Having a name like Fartmore can be good for you!"

Sunday 2 May 9:00-10:00 PM FirstStage in Hollywood 6817 Franklin at Highland 323 850 6271 FirstStageLA[at]aol.com

OA database of Russian literature and folklore

2004-04-25T19:26:00.000+02:00

OA database of Russian literature and folklore Alexander Osipovich, Virtual
Archive, Moscow Times, April 16-24, 2004. An overview of the open-access
Fundamental Digital Library of Russian
Literature and Folklore (known by its Russian acronym, FEB). Quoting David
Powelstock, professor of Russian literature at Brandeis University: FEB is "the
most remarkable web resource for the study of Russian literature I have ever
seen. I've been working with the [FEB section on the poet] Lermontov..., and
it is hard to exaggerate how wonderful a tool this is....It's really phenomenal."
Quoting Igor Pilshchikov, FEB's editor-in-chief: "In philology, as in other
fields of the humanities, a great deal of effort is spent on routine tasks like
searching. Traditionally, philologists spend about 80 percent of their time
searching for material, and 20 percent actually analyzing it. With our site,
this ratio can be reversed." (Thanks to Shelflife.)
Posted by Peter
Suber at 2:33 PM.

Sheet music archive

2004-04-25T19:21:00.000+02:00

I found this very useful site Open
Access News - News from the open access movement

OA repository for sheet music Indiana University has launched an OA repository
for / sheet music. Quoting
the press release: "The site currently provides access to metadata and some
digital images from two sheet music collections from the Indiana University
Lilly Library. Metadata is available for the approximately 24,000 pieces in
the Lilly Library's Sam DeVincent Collection of American Sheet Music, along
with digital images from over 1,000 pieces in this collection. Metadata for
over 500 pieces from the Lilly's Starr Sheet Music Collection is available,
as are digital images for most of the Starr items. This site supplements access
to metadata for these two sheet music collections that has been available to
Open Archives Initiative (OAI) metadata harvesters such as the Sheet
Music Consortium, the UIUC
Digital Gateway to Cultural Heritage Materials, http://oai.grainger.uiuc.edu/
and the University of Michigan's OAIster
project since early 2003." Posted by Peter
Suber

A9

2004-04-17T13:08:00.000+02:00

The new Amazon A9 search engine has many useful features. John Battelle reviews it on his search engine blog. Mark Federman points out several disconcerting aspects. Could this be joing the list of privacy unfortunates, with Google GMAIL and Orkut?

Search Inside the Book?: In addition to web search results we present book results from Amazon.com that include Search Inside the Book. When you see an excerpt on any of the book results, click on the page number to see the actual page from that book. (You will need to be registered at Amazon.com.)

What's New & Cool on A9 Search >>
Search Inside the Book?:

Adjustable Columns:

URL Short Cuts:

Search History:

Click History:

Site Info:

Web Search:

Get the A9 Toolbar now.

Iris Murdoch

2004-04-15T21:03:00.000+02:00

bookzen - literary reviews

Kingston university buys Murdoch library By Michelle Pauli
Iris Murdoch: collection preserved intact

Iris Murdoch's library of more than 1,000 books, notes and original manuscripts has been acquired by Kingston university .
The collection, which includes books on subjects ranging from philosophy to poetry, as well as makeshift bookmarks and handwritten notes, was put up for sale by her husband, John Bayley, last year. via...The Guardian

Steinbeck leads 2004 Hall of Fame Inductees

2004-04-03T22:50:00.000+02:00

The Writers Hall of Fame� announces the names of its 2004 inductees.

John Steinbeck, Deborah Chester, Constance Levy and Dale Freeman will be honored at an induction ceremony April 21. Each year, the board of directors recognizes four individuals, one posthumous and three living, who have made major contributions to the field of writing. via...PRWEB

Pollution news wins

2004-03-14T01:47:00.000+01:00

Scripps Howard Foundation announces National Journalism Award winners
A Naples Daily News 15-day series about widespread pollution of the Gulf of Mexico won the national Edward J. Meeman Award for environmental reporting when the Scripps Howard Foundation ...via Topix

Vladis Krebs Analysis

2004-03-13T23:04:00.000+01:00

Study Finds a Nation of Polarized Readers By EMILY EAKIN

Bush at War" and "Sleeping With the Devil" are just two of the political books that have dominated the best-seller list of The New York Times in recent months. But according to Valdis Krebs, a social-network analyst in Cleveland, these volumes ? the first a blow-by-blow account of White House deliberations in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the second an expos? of corruption and hypocrisy in American-Saudi relations ? share an unusual distinction. They occupy a sparsely populated middle ground, rare titles that have been bought by people who generally tend to shop for much more partisan polemics.

Could it be that readers of these books represent some of the coveted undecided voters in the November election? via...NYT

))) I think that the practice of offering clients a list of books bought by people who bought a certain book undully influences their buying patterns.

WMD?

2004-03-10T00:44:00.000+01:00

Not convinced by the intelligence
In exclusive extracts from his memoir of the search for weapons of mass destruction, Hans Blix casts light on Tony Blair's crucial role in the build-up to war and the bullying tactics employed by the US. via...The Guardian - Books

U book

2004-03-04T01:51:00.000+01:00

Got a Book in You? More Companies Than Ever Are Willing to Get It Out By GAYLE FELDMAN

Since September, the nation's second-largest bookseller, Borders Group, has quietly been conducting an experiment in six Philadelphia-area stores, not as a bookseller, but as a publisher.

"It's easy to publish your own book!" the "Borders Personal Publishing" leaflets proclaim. Pay $4.99. Take home a kit. Send in your manuscript and $199. A month or so later, presto. Ten paperback copies of your novel, memoir or cookbook arrive. via...NYT

Poesie d'amour

2004-02-26T01:51:00.000+01:00

100 Greatest Love Poems ever Written on Poetry.com

In Love
Wanting Love
Lost Love
Love of Life
Love of Friends
Power of Love

the library of the earl of macclesfield removed from shirburn castle

2004-02-26T00:43:00.000+01:00

Lot# 1: ALDROVANDI, ULISSE (1522-1605).

The publication of Aldrovandi's works is complicated, involved a number of editors, and patrons, and carried on for many years after his death in 1605.

In fact only four volumes were published in his lifetime, when the author was in his eighties. At his death he bequeathed his library, unpublished manuscripts and museum (the greatest of its day) to the city of Bologna.

Among other things, his work is notable for describing or figuring several birds for the first time, including the toucan and the bird of paradise.

A fine set of perhaps the most beautiful zoological encyclopaedia of the renaissance comprising:...details Sotheby's

Author leaves club

2004-02-01T00:55:00.000+01:00

Robert Harris, author of Enigma, Fatherland and Pompeii, has left the 197 year old Literary Society. Thus adding to the unrest resulting from the recent enstatement of Lord Armstrong as president.

There were difficult moments at the recent club commitee meeting. Due possibly to the fact that he has never written a book!

Read the Telegraph article.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

2004-01-29T00:25:00.000+01:00

Mark Haddon won the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year Award for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

I am very pleased that this book won the award. I heard it on BBC Radio4 and liked it immensely.

Chekhov by K

2004-01-27T02:11:00.000+01:00

The great plays of Chekhov of which this is one (Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, Cherry Orchard) all have in common the portrayal of bourgeois boredom. This is ironic since we think of bourgeois boredom as something peculiarly American, middle class, and possibly occurring somewhere in the sunbelt. We also tend not to think of 1890's Russia as a fertile ground for writing or staging plays about middle class ennui and angst, unless we have read Chekhov, or perhaps Tolstoy, or Turgenev, who wrote around the same time, and depicted similar scenes. Very ironically, it was this very boredom and separation from the economic hardship of the lower classes that led to the social upheaval and bloodbath we now call the Russian Revolution of 1917-21. Even more ironically, of course, Chekhov, like his own characters and those in the audiences who saw these plays in early twentieth century Russia, was totally unaware of the coming eruption. Chekhov died right after these plays were written, in the 1890's.

If you can keep yourself from wanting to warn the characters throughout a performance of one of these plays, "The Bolsheviks are coming, quick, leave for America!" as I tended to do when I first read them, they are amusing little anecdotes about human foibles, inertia, naivete, selfishness, and bluster. After seeing a performance or reading one of these plays, I find myself saying to my friends the next weekend, "What you just said is right out of Chekhov!" And much of what we say to each other if we live comfortable lives in idealistic, progressive, well meaning households does sound very much like Chekhov.

These plays are not tragedies, though fortunes, careers, loves, and lives are lost. I do not regard them as comic, though one is tempted to smile and to laugh out loud even once or twice in each. They are amusing flights of voyeurism of the mildest sort, as we might experience when spending the weekend with someone we know and like, but not very much; or as we experience when going to a dinner party where little demand is placed on our participation or our thought.

These plays are without any wrenching melodrama, and are like the opening twittering scenes in a play by Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, or Noel Coward. Most of the characters, though full of optimism about the future and twitching with eagerness to embark on a new project, can't seem to muster sufficient enthusiasm or energy on their own behalf, other than talking endlessly, so the plays end with the house being sold out from under them or the love of their life being killed in a duel while they wait for the carriage to take them to the train station. If the characters don't care about their situations, how can we be expected to?

So, the involvement we feel for a Chekhov play, if we do feel involved, is that he has depicted people living lives much like our own, lives perilously out of control, but in the safest, hardest to react to kinds of ways. Chekhov's characters can be said to have almost reached the point described by T.S. Eliot as "quiet desperation." One must ask, given the historical setting, should we who read these plays and find so much similarity to our own lives be looking over the horizon in anticipation of the next social cataclysm?

Whitbread Award Winners

2004-01-13T02:00:00.000+01:00

The five Whitbread Award winners are:

WHITBREAD FIRST NOVEL AWARD
Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
>> read more

WHITBREAD NOVEL AWARD
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
>> read more

WHITBREAD BIOGRAPHY AWARD
Orwell: The Life by D J Taylor
>> read more

WHITBREAD POETRY AWARD
Landing Light by Don Paterson
>> read more

WHITBREAD CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD
The Fire-Eaters by David Almond
>> read more

Tuesday 27 January 2004
Announcement of the Whitbread Book of the Year at a presentation ceremony at The Brewery, London EC1.

Haikus by K

2004-01-10T15:53:00.000+01:00

Frost

Stones, leaves,
holliy berries,
blades of grass,
covered in frost!

Frosty Farms

Red dawned horizon
over French farms'
frosty rolling hills.

Overflowing Rain

Winter rains fill draught's low pond,
Overflowing into streams.

Book Club Hopping

2004-01-09T23:52:00.000+01:00

Fast Company - We've added a new element to the Fast Company Book Club. If you participate in a discussion group and send us a report on the discussion, we'll consider it for inclusion in our new online collection of book reports. via...FC now

Book reveiw by KJR

2003-12-20T18:40:00.000+01:00

Couples by Jophn Updike

Another look at the American Dream and the pursuit of wealth and hedonism gone sour. Though I am only a quarter of the way through this book, you just know that there isn't going to be a happy ending, since in all the ways we judge people to be deserving of happiness, such as having wisdom, good intentions, generosity of spirit, and charity of heart, these characters are lacking, however prosperous, well-bred and educated.

When I first tried to read this book in the late spring, early summer of 1969, I was in my junior year at Harvard, and smoked unfiltered cigarettes. I could identify with the description of the Radcliffe woman who woke up one morning after a late night of smoking to find that her lungs hurt. There is an element of grittiness, ala Keruoac's "On the Road" to this novel.

Possibly ironically, I was engaged to a Radcliffe woman at the very time I was reading this book. One day while we were on the Boston subway to a subrub like Tarbox where all the Peyton Place action occurs in the book, she turned to me, pointing to the book in my lap, and shrieked, "How can you read that disgusting trash about middle class adultery and wife-swapping?" She was near tears.

She must have read the book's cover, since I hadn't got to any parts like that yet, and hadn't, therefore, been able to tell her about any such incidents. But that was the book's reputation, with large displays proclaiming such things in the papberback book stores in Harvard Square. Having read one of Updike's "Rabbit" books for a Harvard seminar the summer before my freshman year, I was at least partly intrigued by the prospect of reading more graphic descriptions of adultery.

Two weeks later, this same woman, citing irreconcilable differences, presumably one being my reading of "Couples," broke off our engagement, saying to me, "You don't own me you know!" Blaming the book for what was an unhappy moment for me at that time, I never read further than about a third of the way through. I have now decided to revist those beginning passages I had read way back then, with a view to finishing "Couples" this time.

As an English major at Harvard then, I had been steeped in a fairly rigorous diet of Hemingway, Conrad, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forrester, Ford Maddox Ford, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Lawrence Durrell, Edward Gibbon, and Sir Walter Scott among others for the prior five years. I recall thinking that Updike's writing was thin, somehwat like Elia Kazan's "The Arrangement," a best-seller in 1968, in which the prose does not rate being called such, but should rather be called, text, by which the potboiler, best-selling plot is told. At that time however, I found, Durrel to be thin as well, a judgement I rescinded less than two years later.

Updike's prose is a bit like Hemingway's I think now: it is modern and sparse, and can lapse easily into and out of lyricism at a moment's notice.

As for the woman I was engaged to in 1969, two years later I received a letter informing me that she had married a man from my sophomore English class, and about fifteen years ago, I silenlty thanked my lucky stars that she had broken it off with me, since we were truly not right for each other. With the memories of that time flooding me now, I offer another silent prayer of gratitude, wishing that it would have been possible that I had never met her.

Crime and Punishment by Feodor Dostoevsky

2003-12-11T22:56:00.000+01:00

Review by KJR

The major preoccupation of Crime and Punishment is fairly nightmarish, being a ruminaton about committing a grisly crime in order to steal money; and then an even more intense, fearful obsession that the crime has been discovered. As a crime novel, this book may be among the very first detective fictions, other than the even earlier Edgar Allen Poe works, that delve into both the psychology of the criminal and of the detective. As a crime story, or "Policier" as they say in French, it is fairly engaging. The character of Porfiry Petrovitch prefigures that of the TV detective Lieutenant Columbo, and there is even a discussion on the circumlocutions of investigation and interrogation.

This work, like all of Dostoevsky, really brings out the peculiarly obsessive nature of the Russian personality. Many of the characters are portrayed very colorfully and humorously as excessively emotional, verbose, mercurial, violent and abusive. I found myself laughing out loud at some of the antics described in the party and bar room scenes. Very comic, and as classic as Chaucer's Tales, if ultimately tragic.

My major fascination upon rereading it recently three decades after having taken a course on Dostoevsky at Harvard and only reading half of its 750 pages at the time, is that it prefigures both modernism and post modernism, by several decades, more so than any of the American or English fiction of that time. The characters discuss the new philosophies of biological and social evolution, socialism, utopianism, and psychology, even pre-figuring Freud, as well. More astonishing, the novel is post-modern to the extent that the main character, Rodion Raskolnikov, concludes that for all the advancement of mankind's new ideas, most people in society, and certainly most leaders, are only interested in power and money, and will do whatever it costs in terms of bloodshed to attain those ends. Raskolnikov sounds much like the veterans of World War I, who some 45 years later with the surrealists, would declare that there is nothing heroic or glorious at all about war, but that war can be described only as the most horrific, inglorious, degrading experience imaginable, both in spite of and because of all propaganda to the contrary.

However, you could also say that Dostoevsky believes that his main character is too cynical, and that life after all does offer redemption and even moments of self-discovery and bliss, particularly to those fortunate enough to be well-educated and of strong character. This theme was the main topic I recall from the Harvard lectures in the spring of 1969.

Some of these contrasts might be due to the fact that like Chekhov after him, Dostoevsky was ill and knew that he was dying. Some of the outbursts of Raskolnikov and the alternately cynical and hopeful outbursts of other major characters are perhaps permitted to a novelist, a dying man, who wants to say what is within him, regardless of what anyone else may think.

Of course, this book also contains several fascinating and touching love stories, the main one of which builds the sense of redemption, hope and faith. Two of the love stories could have been broken out as separate romantic novellas, and while the main plot line is exciting and interesting enough, some of the sub-plots, particularly those involving the elderly rake Svidrigadlov, could have easily been expanded upon.

Finally, the book works as historical revelation about the conditions of everyday life in 1870's St. Petersburg, Russia. The abysmal poverty everywhere is described graphically, without the sense that it is being thrown up in contrast to the safe, secure, clean lifestyles of the presumably bourgeois reader. As in other Dostoevsky novels, the descriptions are replete with detail: we know the color and condition of the wallpaper of every room we enter, and how the upholstery is finished, as though being shown a socioeconomic barometer as to the inhabitants' place on the spectrum from privileged, to comfortable to desperate. Then there is the middle-aged office worker who frets about getting fat, not going to the gym and not being able to quit smoking, despite his doctor's advice.

Crime and Punishment is a manyed-layer metaclassic in every sense, a coherent and engaging multi-plot novel from the very beginning, until the last few sentences of the somewhat contrived ending.

Call of the wild

2003-12-06T20:43:00.000+01:00

Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Call of the wild
Derided and marginalised, nature writing in Britain has been in decline for 70 years. But the winner of this year's Guardian First Book Award, Robert Macfarlane, detects signs of a renaissance

Saturday December 6, 2003
The Guardian

In or around November 1932, nature writing in Britain was dealt a death-blow by Stella Gibbons. Cold Comfort Farm, one of the finest parodies written in English, took as its target the rural novels of Thomas Hardy, Mary Webb, the BrontÃ« sisters and DH Lawrence. Mercilessly, Gibbons sought out and sent up the hallmarks of the rural genre: all those characters called Amos or Jeb, all those idiots savants, all that loam and, especially, all those gushingly naÃ¯ve descriptions of "nature" and "landscape". Gibbons's book was such a wickedly brilliant skit it became that rare literary object; a parody that remained standing once the genre it mocked had collapsed."

I often heard someone at home referring to Cold comfort farm....