I started and finished A Sense of Direction in one evening; I couldn't really stop thinking about it, so I couldn't put it down. I found it...
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This is the first Kurt Wallander mystery I've read; I liked it enough to begin searching for the rest of the series. In this one, the reader knows from the beginning who the murderer is, so the suspense turns on the effort of the police to figure it out and capture him. The murderer's motive also gets clearer as the police uncover it; the process that Wallander goes through to direct the search, and his self-doubts about his procedures, add a great deal to the interest of the book.
This is the "everything you always wanted to know but didn't know how to ask" book on Pizza. Mr. Reinhart covers the territory, not only how to make pizza dough but how to make your oven simulate a pizza oven; and the first part of his book is about the places in Italy and in the USA where he finds interesting pizzas; this part will also tell you a lot about what he regards as the criteria for a great pizza. He also provides recipes for a variety of toppings; my only criticism is that his toppings tend to be skimpy (and he admits that for him, less is more); I've eaten good pizza in the USA and in Italy and I've never seen a pizza with as little topping as he recommends. I'd suggest that you double his amounts, for starters.
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(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
This is an intellectual's summer read, not too serious or heavy, but not mindless. The plot is based on one a traditional gay themes: rich older man "buys" (literally in this case) the company of a younger man. But Halfhill does well at getting inside the head of his young man, Jan Phillips. And he adds some twists... involving Jan's mother in the story, and involving a world-wide conspiracy of older gay men who attempt to defuse international crises and attacks.
Harold Bloom is one of those astonishing people who seem to have read everything about everything and remembered it all. Unfortunately, his arrogance matches his knowledge, and that makes his book tendentious in many places. But it is an excellent series of essays about 26 major writers from Dante to Samuel Beckett, attempting to explain what makes each of them so unique and so important.
This book is one of Bloom's contributions to the great debate about whether there are books that one HAS to know in order to be "cultured," or whether the definition of culture is relative or even arbitrary. Obviously, Bloom comes down on the side of a permanent canon of "great books" and composes an elegy on the thought that the canon is in danger of being lost/forgotten.
At the end of his book, Bloom provides a list of canonical works. Anyone can pick the list apart, both for items included, such as all of the works of Samuel Johnson, and for items omitted [it’s a Western Canon, so there is no hint of the literatures of Asia]. In general, it’s a useful checklist if you want to know what “great” works of Western literature you’re missing. I’ve been using it as a reading list for the past couple of years.
The list is of literature, not philosophy [although he does include the Pre-Socratics, Plato, a bit of Aristotle, Plutarch (!), Lucretius, one essay of Cicero, Rousseau and Nietzsche] or history [except Herodotus, Thucydides, Froissart and Gibbon], or the social sciences [except Hobbes, Vico, William James, and Freud]. All of these non-literary authors are either highly literary themselves or have had an immense impact on literature of their own and subsequent eras, but their inclusion and the exclusion of so many other philosophers, historians, and social scientists, indicates a major weakness of his list.
I raise this issue of what non-literature is included only because one of the most tantalizing features of Bloom’s book is what he refers to as the “independence of the aesthetic.” He seems to think or imply that the literary experience can serve as the basis for a philosophy of life. I haven’t tried to tease it out but it is an interesting idea, one that especially appealed to the German Romantic writers.
This book is one of the darkest that Purdy has written, about a veteran named Garnet Montrose who returns to his Southern home totally disfigured and nauseatingly repellent to anyone who sees him. His primary relationships are with two young men, Quintus Pearch and Potter Daventry, whom he hires to rub his feet and deliver messages to his childhood sweetheart, now the widow Georgina Rance. The story is told in first person, and once you get caught in its grim magic, you will not want to finish it but you won't be able to stop reading.
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Wendell Bowerman has commented on (9) products.
Sidetracked: Kurt Wallander Mysteries # 5 (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Henning Mankell
Wendell Bowerman, September 16, 2011
This is the first Kurt Wallander mystery I've read; I liked it enough to begin searching for the rest of the series. In this one, the reader knows from the beginning who the murderer is, so the suspense turns on the effort of the police to figure it out and capture him. The murderer's motive also gets clearer as the police uncover it; the process that Wallander goes through to direct the search, and his self-doubts about his procedures, add a great deal to the interest of the book.American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza by Peter Reinhart
Wendell Bowerman, September 15, 2011
This is the "everything you always wanted to know but didn't know how to ask" book on Pizza. Mr. Reinhart covers the territory, not only how to make pizza dough but how to make your oven simulate a pizza oven; and the first part of his book is about the places in Italy and in the USA where he finds interesting pizzas; this part will also tell you a lot about what he regards as the criteria for a great pizza. He also provides recipes for a variety of toppings; my only criticism is that his toppings tend to be skimpy (and he admits that for him, less is more); I've eaten good pizza in the USA and in Italy and I've never seen a pizza with as little topping as he recommends. I'd suggest that you double his amounts, for starters.(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
Bought and Paid for: A Jan Phillips Novel
Wendell Bowerman, September 9, 2011
This is an intellectual's summer read, not too serious or heavy, but not mindless. The plot is based on one a traditional gay themes: rich older man "buys" (literally in this case) the company of a younger man. But Halfhill does well at getting inside the head of his young man, Jan Phillips. And he adds some twists... involving Jan's mother in the story, and involving a world-wide conspiracy of older gay men who attempt to defuse international crises and attacks.The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages by Harold Bloom
Wendell Bowerman, September 8, 2011
Harold Bloom is one of those astonishing people who seem to have read everything about everything and remembered it all. Unfortunately, his arrogance matches his knowledge, and that makes his book tendentious in many places. But it is an excellent series of essays about 26 major writers from Dante to Samuel Beckett, attempting to explain what makes each of them so unique and so important.This book is one of Bloom's contributions to the great debate about whether there are books that one HAS to know in order to be "cultured," or whether the definition of culture is relative or even arbitrary. Obviously, Bloom comes down on the side of a permanent canon of "great books" and composes an elegy on the thought that the canon is in danger of being lost/forgotten.
At the end of his book, Bloom provides a list of canonical works. Anyone can pick the list apart, both for items included, such as all of the works of Samuel Johnson, and for items omitted [it’s a Western Canon, so there is no hint of the literatures of Asia]. In general, it’s a useful checklist if you want to know what “great” works of Western literature you’re missing. I’ve been using it as a reading list for the past couple of years.
The list is of literature, not philosophy [although he does include the Pre-Socratics, Plato, a bit of Aristotle, Plutarch (!), Lucretius, one essay of Cicero, Rousseau and Nietzsche] or history [except Herodotus, Thucydides, Froissart and Gibbon], or the social sciences [except Hobbes, Vico, William James, and Freud]. All of these non-literary authors are either highly literary themselves or have had an immense impact on literature of their own and subsequent eras, but their inclusion and the exclusion of so many other philosophers, historians, and social scientists, indicates a major weakness of his list.
I raise this issue of what non-literature is included only because one of the most tantalizing features of Bloom’s book is what he refers to as the “independence of the aesthetic.” He seems to think or imply that the literary experience can serve as the basis for a philosophy of life. I haven’t tried to tease it out but it is an interesting idea, one that especially appealed to the German Romantic writers.
In a Shallow Grave by James Purdy
Wendell Bowerman, September 6, 2011
This book is one of the darkest that Purdy has written, about a veteran named Garnet Montrose who returns to his Southern home totally disfigured and nauseatingly repellent to anyone who sees him. His primary relationships are with two young men, Quintus Pearch and Potter Daventry, whom he hires to rub his feet and deliver messages to his childhood sweetheart, now the widow Georgina Rance. The story is told in first person, and once you get caught in its grim magic, you will not want to finish it but you won't be able to stop reading.1-5 of 9next