- Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love – Dani Shapiro, 2019. I read it because Gretchen Rubin picked it for a podcast book group – but I haven’t yet listened to the podcast episode! A completely compelling book on a topic that has personal interest to me. And wow, she keeps mentioning how people insist she doesn’t look Jewish, but since there are no photos I had no idea how much so until I looked her up after reading.
- Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure – Amy Kaufman, 2018. I have a soft spot for reality TV and have watched a couple of episodes of Bachelor/Bachelorette, but reading about it is actually more up my alley. This was good-not-great.
- Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England – Tom Wessels, 1997. Nature and Environment selection. I wasn’t able to make it to the group meeting and read it quickly, so no quotes pulled, but I very much enjoyed it. Tom Wessels is a legend around here—I haven’t been able to attend one of his talks or walks yet because they fill up so quickly! This is a useful and interesting primer on recognizing evidence of what’s happened in a section of forest, from fire to clear-cutting, long after the events. The illustrations throughout the chapters help identify specifics but I wish at least some had been in color. Makes me want to go back to the Harvard Forest, which is not that far from us (Petersham) and has a teaching trail showing some of these features.
- Invested: How Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger Taught Me to Master My Mind, My Emotions, and My Money (with a Little Help from My Dad) – Danielle Town, 2018. A potentially mildly-good book ruined by howlers at the beginning that could really hurt financially naive people. I may write up more details at some point.
- The Sea, the Sea – Iris Murdoch, 1970.
- La Belle Sauvage – Philip Pullman, 2017. I so loved revisiting Lyra’s world, and Malcolm is a great character—this book doesn’t really stand on its own without His Dark Materials, but I’m eager to read the rest of the trilogy when it comes out and then re-read HDM.
- Sharp Objects – Gilliam Flynn, 2006. I really enjoyed Gone Girl, but this… UGH! I finished it because I wanted to know what happened, but I kind of wish I hadn’t. Gratuitously disturbing but also entirely preposterous, which is sort of a saving grace I suppose. Oh, and unlike GG the “twist” ending was pretty obvious.
- Death in Venice – Thomas Mann, 1924. Great Books selection.
Death in Venice – Thomas Mann, 1924
Another Great Books selection I had always wanted to read, and wow, it is indeed amazing. I tried a couple of translations: Kenneth Burke’s and H. T. Lowe-Porter’s. I noted some interesting differences:
- Burke translates “schwermütig-enthusiastischen Dichters” as “the heavy-hearted, enthusiastic poet,” which HTLP has as “melancholy and susceptible” (apparently the poet referred to is August von Platen-Hallermünde).
- In Aschenbach’s dream of ancient rites, Burke uses “the foreign god” vs HTLP’s “the stranger god.”
And one of the most haunting passages, after Aschenbach visits the barber:
- Burke: “It was raining sparsely and at intervals, but the air was damp, thick, and filled with the smell of things rotting. All around him he heard a fluttering, pattering, and swishing; and under the fever of his cosmetics it seemed to him as though evil wind-spirits were haunting the place, impure seabirds which rooted and gnawed at the food of the condemned and befouled it with their droppings. For the sultriness destroyed his appetite, and the fancy suggested itself that the foods were poisoned with contaminating substances.”
- HTLP: “It rained a little now and then, the air was heavy and turbid and smelt of decay. Aschenbach, with fevered cheeks beneath the rouge, seemed to hear rushing and flapping sounds in his ears, as though storm-spirits were abroad—unhallowed ocean harpies who follow those devoted to destruction, snatch away and defile their viands. For the heat took away his appetite and thus he was haunted with the idea that his food was infected.”
Other quotes
- Aschenbach’s longing to travel: “Desire projected itself visually: his fancy, not quite yet lulled since morning, imagined the marvels and terrors of the manifold earth. He saw. He beheld a landscape, a tropical marshland…”
- “His love of the ocean had profound sources: the hard-worked artist’s longing for rest, his yearning to seek refuge from the thronging manifold shapes of his fancy in the bosom of the simple and vast; and another yearning, opposed to his art and perhaps for that very reason a lure, for the unorganized, the immeasurable, the eternal—in short, for nothingness. He whose preoccupation is with excellence yearns fervently to find rest in perfection; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?”
- Keeping the epidemic a secret: “So Aschenbach felt a dark contentment with what was taking place, under cover of the authorities, in the dirty alleys of Venice. This wicked secret of the city was welded with his own secret, and he too was involved in keeping it hidden.”