October, 2020
A good colleague of mine, who I will call Jack because that’s his name, asked me what I’ve been reading. I was quite flattered by his request because he actually assumed I could read. Because I haven’t been able to physically hold a book for the better part of a year, his question could have led to an embarrassing diversion of subjects on my part. Instead, thanks to the Kindle app on my device, it led to the idea for this blog, and a few others like it when I can’t think of anything original to write about.
The first entry is not something I’m reading but listening to: poetry. Our good friend Carolyn Miller, a wonderful poet in her own write, reads to us over the phone each weekend. We started with Yeats, but soon jumped to Seamus Heaney. I soon dragged her kicking and screaming to Bukowski, which I felt sacrilegious listening to while sober. Somewhere we took a short detour in honor of Michael McClure then swung back to Heaney. We even made Carolyn read some of her own, including one of my favorites of hers about my father-in-law.
Sticking with the Irish, I’ve been reading a few books by Roddy Doyle. The Commitments, part of his Barrytown trilogy and a delightful movie, is great, especially for a music freak like me. Also enjoyed Guts and am now plowing through Love, his latest. All should be read with a pint of Guinness.
Just finished David Mitchell’s latest, Utopia Avenue. It’s the story of a fictional pop band during the late sixties with some typical Mitchell weirdness. Hated the ending but loved the epilogue. There, I’ve ruined it for you. Read it anyway.
Sticking with the Brits, I read Stephen Hawking’s last book, Brief Answers to Big Questions. Can’t say I understood his quantum leaps in reasoning, but loved the personal vignettes.
Over on this side of the pond I’ve been enjoying Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. This guy is laugh out loud hilarious as he skewers everything from speech therapists to himself as a performance artist on a meth bender. My kind of writer. Speaking of bad drugs, the last real book I read was Devils Water by my friend Rick Wirick. Dark but ultimately redeeming, it’s beautifully written and a great read.
As I look at the list above, I can see it’s a lot of dudes, especially white ones. You literati out there can suggest a more diverse lot. The only request I have is not to suggest anything depressing because I really don’t want to increase my daily dose of Zoloft.
I could continue to riff on books on music and science fiction, my favorite genre, but I would lose the two of still awake. In the meantime take a break from ALS Land and go bury your snout in a book.
Embrace The Suck 
Hello Bob, great to hear that you are pretty well connected to poetry and literature. My nose is in a book hours a day. My once spacious office in the back yard is filing up with books. Fortunately for me, libraries are going digital and are dumping books so prices are pretty low. ALIBRIS.com is a website of all the books available in North America and the UK, so it is easier for me to have a book sent to our house than going to the library. Cheaper than the parking on the campus too. I have two books I am especially happy to have: an 1835 edition of William Paley’s Natural Theology and an 1854 edition of Francis Wayland’s The Elements of Political Economy. Wayland was an American preacher and eventually president of Brown University, not an economist, but he wrote the first American economics text rich with religious references. But I need to spend less time with my snout in a book and more time writing faster. With love, Dick and Nancy too
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This is great, Bob. You are such a good writer! I’m honored to be mentioned here. See you tomorrow!
Sent from my iPad
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Wow you certainly have been doing a lot of reading. I must admit that I do not find the time to sit down and read as much as I would like to. I guess I need to be better at time management or allowing myself more time for me.
In any case, I love reading your messages and hearing that Bob personality and sense of humor shine through.
Give my love to Laurel.
Rhonda
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Not getting into Utopia Avenue myself, but maybe that’s because I have no attention span lately. I loved Cloud Atlas. I suggest a listen to Good Lord Bird by James McBride. Recently a Showtime miniseries (unseen by me).
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Thank you Bob for the great suggestions. You are obviously well read and a wonderful writer. I wish I took more time to read. It seems that by the time I get started I’m ready to fall asleep. I’ve been exploring more film lately, in particular in French and Italian to help supplement my language studies. You remind me that I do love poetry and I am now inspired to jump back into it. Keep the inspirations coming. Have a lovely weekend.
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It’s not the big things that drive one mad but the shoestring that snaps when there’s no time left.
Bob, I’m not a big sci-fi reader, but have really enjoyed the Expanse series by James S.A. Corey. It’s been made into a series now on Amazon Prime.
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Hi, Bob . . . Always so impressed with your indomitable spirit! And love your love of reading! I brought 500 Irish books into my senior living place, Atria Willow Glen, and in between reading my current political tomes, I’m attempting to read those Irish books I’d always intended to! Well, some of them! I adore Heaney (have a shelf full!) and even sent one of his works about his relationship with his mother to all the Moms in our extended family for this past Mother’s Day! I was thrilled to actually meet him here in San Jose and to have one of his books he signed! I really enjoyed R.F. Foster’s “On Seamus Heaney,” just published this year. I’ve read a couple of Roddy Doyle’s and now have his “Love” on my list. Hope I can substitute a chardonnay for the Guinness you’re recommending! I know . . . I know . . . and yet . . .
Since I’m incarcerated (o, sorry, just in “serious lock down” here), I have more time to read than ever. Just since August, I’ve read Brendan Behan’s “Borstal Boy,” his plays, “The Quare Fellow,” and “The Hostage;” “Brendan Behan’s Island (with gorgeous illustrations by Paul Hogarth);” “Hold Your Hour and Have Another,” a collection of some of his articles from the “Irish Press” (and beautifully illustrated by his wife, artist Beatrice Behan); and a Behan biography by Ulich O’Connor.
Have I told you before that Brendan Behan’s uncle Padraig Kearney wrote the Irish National Anthem? His mother, Padraig’s sister, was Kathleen Kearney. Me, too. I was born Kathleen Kearney myself. Over there, I am known as Kathleen Mary Kearney Keeshen (the Keeshens were Famine Irish) though over here, I’m just “Kay Keeshen.”
I also hit a ton of books (biographies, autobiographies and their works) on Oliver St. John Gogarty (o, my, what a guy!); Flann O’Brien; and Sean O’Faolain.
And, if you are interested in a feminine point of view, you may be interested in the classic Edna O’Brien trilogy known as “Country Girls,” some 50 years old now. I’m on the third one now, and like the Irish themselves, they are often tragic, but also usually funny too!
More to recount, but this is long enough. Always delighted to see your posts! Keep on keepin’ on, Guy!
Slainte (Irish for “to your health, of course!)
Kay
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You have such wondrous diverse literary tastes. Rare is the reader who travels from Yates to Bukowski, from Hawking to Sedaris
or Devil’s Water to Doyle (actually I don’t know Doyle, but you make him sound intriguing).
Your neurons have an eccentric way of viewing lifes’ stories. Are your filters conscious or merely fascinating.
Where you drank of Bukowski, i salivated to Tropic of Cancer and Miller’s 2 page detailed description of a spider crawling up the wall or a tongue exploring parts intimate.
Years ago I heard Heaney share his poetry in NYC: one line stays in my memory – The completely solitary self: that’s where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.
I want to track down Utopia Avenue. Sounds perfect for a music agenty, lawyery friend, formerly of LA.
To thine own self, a-muse
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Hi Bob, glad to see my Roddy recommendation endured! Hope you’re enjoying the Irish colloquialisms, any queries on them let me know. Seems they may be gaining some transatlantic traction? https://www.irishpost.com/news/gobshite-printed-in-the-new-york-times-for-first-time-ever-187539
Very much enjoying your writing.
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Loved your post Bob. Shared it with my wife, Barbara. Read on!
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Hi Bob,
I’m hoping you’re reading this, as I’ve been remiss in reaching out; I ran into Lucy Lofrumento last fall at our respective Davis reunions, and she told me this terrible news. I’m thankful Karl jogged my memory. You seem to be handling this with extraordinary grace, which is nothing less than what I’d have expected. I hope you’re as comfortable as possible and able to enjoy the love of those close to you. I will keep my eye on your blog and keep you and your family in my thoughts.
With much fondness,
Peter Feinberg
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Hey Bob,
I think I know the Jack you are talking about. I heard about the following book with an interview on KQED and decided to buy it. I checked and it is available at audiobooks.
Law & Leviathan (redeeming the administrative state) by Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule (yeah, a couple of old white guys).
Agree, David Sedaris is quite a kick. Only heard him on Fresh Air but, hey it works.
John Lococo
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Ah Robert – start talking about books and a librarian can’t keep quiet. 🙂 If you want to stay in Ireland, you can read (if you haven’t already) “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland”. It’s 1 of the NYT 10 best books of last year – basically a history of “The Troubles” that reads like a novel. Or (since I’m a big fan of GOOD detective fiction) you can read Tana French – beginning with “in the Woods”. She has such an amazing gift for dialogue, you can “hear” the brogue. Another interesting feature (aside from the terrific plotting) is that the main character in the first novel becomes a minor character in the 2nd, and vice-versa: a minor character in the first novel becomes the main character in the next……”And now for something completely different” (as the Monty Python crew would say)……….The other literary work I’ve read recently that I think you would also like (if you haven’t already read it) is Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns – The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” (the vast movement of black Americans out of the South between the first WW and the 1970s.) The title comes from a poem by Richard Wright, and since you read poetry I’ll quote the whole piece since it sort of sums up what the book is about: “I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown. I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns, and perhaps to bloom.” So – thus ends the literary advisory section of this message. 🙂 I really need to tell you how much I enjoy your blogs – Jan sent me the link way back and I’ve been a devoted fan ever since. Thank you for sharing so much of everything – sometimes I laugh, sometimes I cry, but always I’m filled with enormous admiration for the strength and courage of spirit displayed by both you and Laurel. I think you are probably right, and she should be nominated for sainthood, though there should be some kind of equally important award for the guts and ingenuity you have brought to dealing with this miserably debilitating disease. Here, I try to be careful: Milw. has had to open up the State Fair grounds for a field hospital to accommodate all the covid cases. So, I don’t go out much -and when I do it’s only when absolutely necessary (like to finally get my hair cut!) – just bought gas for the first time in 2months! While the weather was warm, friends would come over for coffee or lunch or whatever on the patio; but weather has turned really cold, though the promised snow has not yet arrived, thanks to whatever weather gods are in charge.Otherwise, I zoom with with my book clubs, communicate via this medium, attend my Unitarian church on line – and talk on the phone like I haven’t done since I was a teenager. Hamish the Cairn Terrier has defied all odds: we just celebrated his 14th birthday! and I’ve never before had a Cairn live much past 12. I’m very grateful, since he’s lots of company…….. Interesting sidelight on the effects of the ghastliness in the outside world that we all are living with: a friend ’s dentist told her he’s never had so many cases of cracked teeth: it seems that people are so stressed or angry or otherwise upset that they are unknowingly grinding their teeth at night hard enough to cause nasty cracking………Like every other thinking person, I am trying to stay sane until this election is over – trying not to consider all the possibilities that could interfere – hoping for not just a blue wave but a blue tsunami! (I took my ballot to the DePere city clerk 2 weeks ago.) I confess that I am most fearful of the effects of the _______Republicans jamming through the appointment of “Missy Ice Cube” (I don’t care how many children she has, she’s One Cold Fish at heart) to the Supreme Court. We shall see how all that will eventually play out, but just now it looks dismal for all kinds of protections she apparently thinks (though won’t admit) unconstitutional. But enough of that. I will end this diatribe by sending much love and all good wishes to both you and Laurel – I did love the wedding picture of Katie and George. 🙂 Again thanks Bob, for all the blog entertainment, Karen
On Oct 9, 2020, at 4:32 PM, Embrace The Suck wrote: > > >
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Hi, Bob. I just read this number since I’m working my way through your past posts. I like learning about your reading habits. So I’ll share some of mine.
I read mostly fiction. I like a long read; and a series is satisfying if the writing and characters are worthwhile. Some of my favorite authors are Austen, Hardy, Henry James, Fitzgerald, Tolstoy, Morrison, Tartt. Right now I am re-reading John Irving. Somehow, his Insistence on courage and humor in the face of the Under Toad seems comforting during these strange times.
Here are a couple of recommendations for you. Irving’s second novel, “The Water Method Man” is finally available on Kindle. For me, this is his out and out funniest book; yet it poignantly explores issues of love, friendship and responsibility.
Another fun read is Nick Hornby’s “Juliet Naked.” It may speak to your interest in music and wit.
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Coming in late here, but if you want recommendations for non-dude writers (from a dude), I second the recommendation made above for Tana French; I’m also a big fan of Alice Munro’s short stories.
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