#Reading journal April 2024
“Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things,
…to make the stone stony.”
(Art critic, V. Shklovsky)
In this case Camille Claudel makes a ‘waltz’ feel like seduction.
READ: Start New Yorker 25.03.2024 – EXCELLENT profile by Molly Fisher a/b Quinta Brunson: creator and star of “Abbot Elementary”. I have to watch this show!!
READ: New Yorker – poem “Ed Hopper (Yellow and Red) by W.S. Di Piero (American, 78 yr) – Just a list of items EH painted…no depth. – poem “Untitled” by Nasser Rabah (Nasser Rabah was born in Gaza in 1963) – okay.
READ: The New Yorker article by Adam Gopnik a/b book “Takeover: Hitlers’ Final Rise to Power” (25 March 2024)
READ: Having trouble sitting (after hip replacement operation 2 weeks ago)… for a long period of time in “day bed” for reading. The sit position is putting too much pressure on the hip wound. So….I put the laptop in the book case…and walk around with my French book. If I need to look up a word…just stop at the bookcase. This keeps me moving at a low level.
READ: FINISHED “Nord Stream” this week. I do enjoy reading French…it keeps my mind active in a very strange way! Hope to finish Sonnets for Albert (A. Joseph), poems about his father. Winner T.S. Eliot Prize 2022
READ: Start “Les Fossyeurs” ( The Grave Diggers) – exposé about the conditions in French retirement homes for thet aged. Just so great to have a “relaxing day bed” in the living room. I can read and sometimes….just close my eyes and rest.
READ: Continue reading “Les Fossyeurs” – read more about this on the internet….what a financal corruption and scamming $$! After the book the Orpéa Organization was forced into bankruptcy. Finished – BLOGPOST IS READY.
READ: Start and finish: Camille et Paul by Dominique Bona (NF)
READ: 2 poems by A. Hecht: Double Sonnet and La Condition Botanique.
READ: Start: Les Siècle des Intellectuels (NF) (purchased: 01.04.2022) M. Winock (historian) – Trying to read 5 KINDLE French books I bought in 2018 (6 years ago!!) – First chapters are all about Zola, Dreyfus Affair, trials (Dreyfus and Zola) and the consequences. Did learn that Zola was “murdered” in 1902 when a roofer admitted he stuffe Zola’s furnace ventilation in his house! Alos…all the brouhaha about this affaire…the only thing that REALLY moved things along was the fact the countries were prepared to BOYCOTT the 1900 World Fair in Paris if something was not resolved!! Many chapters (ch 1-13) …but I decided b/c this book so SO long to read the Wikipedia “Dreyfus Affair” page and have all the essential info. So….time to skim to the next topic.
READ: Zipping through this book…lots of “intellectueles” I’ve never heard of, info about starting new politcal parties, trying to fight the swell of fascists in France (1920s- 1930s). I’ll be glad when this book is ended. Pg 400 – Not all of the ‘intellectuels” interest me….so I’m concentraing on the authors: Bernanos, Malraux. Gide (Nobel Prize), Roger Martin du Gard (Nobel Prize), Mauriac (Nobel Prize), Zola, Satre and Aron.
READ: Going to speed read the rest of “Intellectuels”…b/c it is rather boring and more books to read. – Book becomes more intresting when we read what the “intellectuels” felt/did (…or did not do!) in the face of Hilter’s threats/actions 1938. There were some philosophers of a “shaded reputation” H. de Montherlant? (see Wikipedia)…collaborator with Germans, had a thing for sexually abusing street boys…but went on to be elected to a lifetime position in the Acade1mie française in 1960,…hmmm.) FINISHED…skimming about last 30% of the book. Just want to be rid of it!
READ: Moving along….The next book is: (purchased: 01.04.2022) On ne peut pas tout dire – Petit éloge de la “censure” by Sebastien Fontenelle. The book is only 137 pages...thank God, for small miracles! = AWFUL
READ: BOXE by Jacques Henric…essays about boxing, ugh. BOXE …is just awful, I cannot even bring myself to finish it! I did write a blogpost and recommende “After the Count” by Stephanie Convery (Australian) as one of the best books I’ve ever read about boxing.
READ: Just moving on to the next French book on the TBR: Laurent Gaudé “Écoute nos défaites”. According to Goodreads it is historical fiction so I’m hoping for a good story. (201 pages) = AWFUL!!
READ: “L’autre qu’on adorait” by C. Cusset….AWFUL.
READ: “Le Colonel et l’appât 455 by F. Hachtroudi = AWFUL
READ: “Impunité” by Helene Devynck – AWFUL ! Reducing my French reading time for a few days, need a break.
READ: Australian magazine…ISLAND…just browsing, will read more later.
READ: After the Water, poem by Rebecca Rushbrook in ISLAND 170 magazine (Tasmania)….it was so toughing. Impressions of life during the Australian floods 2022. Poem was shortlisted for the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. What to read today? I have no idea.
READ: ISLAND – non-fiction story “Treading Water” – okay.
READ: 52 Poems by Jean Valentine “Home Deep Blue” …they have an emotional tint referring to her private life, but if you don’t anything a/b her life the poems just glide by without any impact. Ms Valentine has been lauded for her poetry but I just do not get it.
READ: Start again…Mme de Sévigné – working out first “who’s who” – I made it to alost to ch 4 ( pg 75). Easy reading but not trying to learn history ” La FRONDE ” uprising 1648-1953. Just not going to be bothered by the nobility and the increaseing of taxes by Queen Ann of Austria and Mazaran.
READ: FINISHED 53 poems by Anthony Joseph “Sonnets for Albert” It was an exceptional collection…perhaps the best I read this year! Blogpost was easy to write and then uploaded this morning.
READ: Studying Poetry…reached pg 65. Pretty dry stuff about T.S. Eliot and his modernist poetry ideas, not very enlightening,
DEAD RIP: So sad to read Helen Vendler (1934-2024) died today at the age of 90 yr.
Her essays and reviews were gathered in “Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poets” (1980), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism; “The Music of What Happens: Poems, Poets, Critics” (1988); “Soul Says: On Recent Poetry” (1996); and other collections.
Her many studies include “The Breaking of Style: Hopkins, Heaney, Graham” (1995), “The Given and the Made: Strategies of Poetic Redefinition” (1995) and “Last Looks, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill” (2010).
In her interview with The Paris Review, Ms. Vendler compressed her critical method into seven words: “I write to explain things to myself.”
READ: FINISHED Madame de Sévigné and posted review.
READ: Started poems in Poetry Ireland Review. On The Road (Noel Howley) and Reprimand To Brigid (Caitriona Lane) …both very good!
READ: Zola “Page d’Amour” – classic
READ: Time to take on this “bad boy” who has been lingering in my bookcase for 3 years! Paul Morand: writer, diplomat, collaborator with Vichy WW II, finally elected to Académie française 1968 despite protests from De Gaulle. Paulien Dreyfus won Prix Goncourt de la biographie 2021 et prix de la biographie de l’Académie française 2021 for this biography.
READ: Finally getting started with biography of Paul Morand. Preface (pg 11-16) – Paul Morand: Controversial writer/thinker in 20th C. France that you don’t hear much about. Collaborated with Vichy in WW II...and when the war was over Morand tried to completely transform himself….to fall into favor with the 1960s literary world. What will happen in this book? Scratch an old wound or settle an account….or both.
READ: The New Yorker dd. 22.04.24 – great article: “No Time to Die” by (Dr.) Dhruv Khullar – really good insights about healthy and aging.
- Marginal decade – the end of our lives when medicine keeps us alive but ou independence and capacities bleed away.
- By preparing for the future the skeptics say, we mistake a long life for a worthwhile life.
- If anything, longer lives now appear to include more difficult years.
- Training dozens of hours a week might take MORE time than it will ever tack on!
- You might live to be 100 yr if you could pick your genes
- …but picking a healthy lunch option itn’t likely to be enough!
- Healthy aging is like investing in retirement: contribute what you can…a daily walk, an extra hour of sleep and the benefits compound over time.
- Healthy aging seems to require a shift in “mind-set” as much as a shift in “muscle mass”.
READ: poem by Catherine Barnett (pg 34 New Yorker) “Hyacinth” ….pretty good.
READ: poem by Tracy K. Smith (pg 44 New Yorker) “Vision” ….average, did not make a huge impression on me.
#BadLuck Just when I was getting some words right in the @NewYorker crossword puzzle…I dropped the magazine in the toilet. Don’t ask how his could happen…it just did.
NancyElin 
OH MY! What a reading list! You certainly put your hip healing time to good use. I loved the image of you slowly walking your new hip around the loungeroom with a French book in hand and a research stop each lap 🙂
What else is there to do with a “healing hip”? Walking around the room was really a good idea…I had to keep the pressure off my the hip wound. Starting to create my own “themes” for a month reading. April was “clean up the Kindle”. I think May will be “start 1-2 long difficult books that I have been putting off for more than 10 years!!” Love the first week of the month…..preparing a “draft reading list”. Thanks for stopping by…I know you have some “busy” weeks ahead.
Oh so your running activities have been curtailed, I hope the hip is healing well and you’ll be back to normal soon. You’ve certainly been reading plenty!
My running days are over…now just long walks and bike rides! “I no longer cling to the good things in life….” (M. de Montaigne). I’m accepting inevitable decline gracefully! 🙂