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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
It occurs to me that I ought to read the rest of the Divine Comedy when I finish the Inferno, then read La Vita Nuova, and then I would probably have enough background to understand and like The New Life. Who knows, maybe I'll do it. I wonder if Dante's other works are available in reputable translations?
Update: Hmm, well seems like given that I like the terza rima, the Dorothy Sayers translation may be the only way to go for Purgatory and Paradise. All the other translations appear to be in prose or blank verse.
...Except Lawrence Binyon, which also has rhyme. Guess I will go to a bookstore and look at some of them side by side.
"Pape Satàn, pape Satàn, aleppe!" Plutus began in a gutteral, clicking voice. The courteous sage who knew all reassured me:
"Don't let fear harm you; whatever power he has Cannot prevent us climbing down this rock.
It seems to me like that "Pape Satàn, aleppe!" line was the first thing I ever knew from the Inferno. I think Eliot quotes it somewhere, probably in The Waste Land, and that my researching his quote in high school was the first thing that ever brought Dante to my attention. Could be misremembering though.
It baffles and delights me how Dante, a pious Christian, can sprinkle pagan deities and ideologies throughout his afterlife. He basically has to do it, because all his literary reference points are pre-Christian; I like that he does not seem embarrassed about it.
posted evening of May 13th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Inferno
Reading the Inferno today and I was having a little trouble with figuring out what it should sound like. So I took the obvious path and started reading aloud. And what a revelation! I think I am going to read this whole book aloud -- the sound is lovely and I'm understanding it better. I think I "get" terza rima now, the way it leads you through the canto; Pinsky's introduction was helpful in this regard, but what really made it concrete was to listen to the reading.
My sense of reading poetry aloud has been heavily influenced by Heany's reading (or "declamation"?) of Beowulf, which I've been listening to a lot in the last couple of weeks.
Try reading this aloud:
"My son," said the gentle master, "here are joined The souls of all who die in the wrath of God, From every country, all of them eager to find
Their way across the water -- for the goad Of Divine Justice spurs them so, their fear Is transmuted to desire. Souls who are good
Never pass this way; therefore, if you hear Charon complaining at your presence, consider What that means." Then, the earth of that grim shore
Began to shake: so violently, I shudder And sweat recalling it now. A wind burst up From the tear-soaked ground to erupt red light and batter
My senses -- and so I fell, as though seized by sleep.
-- See how the meter leads you on through the passage. I'm finding it impossible to stop reading in the middle of a canto.
posted evening of May 12th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Beowulf
"We live for the strike of a match." Here's video of him recording on NPR for the Bryant Park Project -- more audio here -- Laura Conaway writes about another episode of BPP mentioning "I Often Dream of Trains" here. Will try and embed it later on. Here's audio of him on KQED's California Report. Also: he will be playing at Symphony Space in November, with Captain Keegan.
...Also: Here is a live performance of "Creeped Out", from Irene Trudel's show on WFMU. Hitchcock has an interview in this episode of "Paul Morley's Guide to Musical Genres" on BBC2.
posted afternoon of May 12th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
I've been thinking about doing a "top 100 books" post, where the criterion for inclusion would be "the hundred books that I would recommend for you to read, in the order that they come to mind, and that I'm able to write a paragraph supporting why I think you should read them." This seems to me like a better paradigm than the traditional "top 100" list where the author(s) of the list are asserting that their judgement is a good guide to objective reality.
So, not sure if or when I'll actually get to it but the thought has been going through my head. It will probably take a few weeks of working on it once I actually start, anyway. I may decide to make a birthday project of it, depending on what my weekend looks like.
posted afternoon of May 12th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
There is a comparison to be made between Into the Wild, and Vagabond -- the structures of the two films are not identical but they have a similar project in mind. Sean Penn is (obviously) no Varda, oh well. I am interested to read Krakauer's book; my expectation is that a lot of what came off in the movie as sappy, was Penn's additions.
I was driving to Home Depot today, and the car behindin front of me was (I'm assuming) driven by an evangelical Christian. The car had several bumper stickers that helped me make this assumption; the one I'm thinking about now said,
This car is washed in the BLOOD of Christ
It was weird -- it looked vaguely like a horror movie promo. (It also made me wonder about transubstantiation occurring in the car wash.)
I was looking through my bookshelf today for something to read, and thinking, I really need something different, a change of pace. Well what caught my eye was the Inferno, which I have been meaning to read for a while -- since 2005, when I bought this translation. I read the book a long time ago, in high school, in a different translation, and maybe again in college; but I think my ear has developed enough since then that I will get a lot out of rereading it now. So here I go!
posted evening of May 11th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Dante
This morning Sylvia and I rode our bikes into town to buy bagels for breakfast, and back. I think that is the farthest Sylvia has riddden on her own so far! She was fine for most of it but had trouble with the (gradual, but long) hill up South Orange Ave. from the train station to the bagel shop.
Here is Sylvia baking muffins with her grandmother (2003). And Sylvia's other grandmother, at her birthday party last month.
...My sister, who is herself a mother, passes along a link to this narrative of Mother's Day History.
For your Mother's Day viewing pleasure, The Mothers:
posted morning of May 11th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Sylvia
This morning Sylvia and I rode our bikes into town to buy bagels for breakfast, and back. I think that is the farthest Sylvia has riddden on her own so far! She was fine for most of it but had trouble with the (gradual, but long) hill up South Orange Ave. from the train station to the bagel shop.
last month.
