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Saturday, August 4th, 2007
This morning I finished up a woodworking project that has been sitting in my basement for a week or so -- it is an oaken bench that will go in my front yard next to the garden -- tomorrow I will take it outside and put linseed oil on it. Bob and Greg came over in the afternoon and we played some music, including a very nice version of "House of the Rising Sun" -- I have finally persuaded Bob to play it in 4/4 time (like Dylan) instead of (I think) 6/8, like The Animals, which sounds corny to my ear, at least when done by somebody who is not The Animals.
posted evening of August 4th, 2007: Respond
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Friday, August third, 2007
I am thinking a lot as I read Snow about how to structure the reading diary so as to avoid revealing important plot points, while still talking about my reaction to the story as it unfolds. I think I'm doing that pretty well.
posted afternoon of August third, 2007: Respond
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Chapters 27, 28, 29 of Snow: The story is changing in important ways here. A lot that has only been hinted at is coming out into the open, along with an affirmation (in 27, "Only much later would he realize that -- apart from Necip -- everyone he met in Kars spoke the same code") that what is in the open is not necessarily the whole story. The narrator, who has been gradually insinuating himself into the story since Chapter 1, now has an identity and a history. And unmasks himself, saying near the end of 29, "Here, perhaps, we have arrived at the heart of our story." The story is about Pamuk the novelist trying to understand the "difficult and painful life" of his character Ka.
posted afternoon of August third, 2007: Respond
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I am reading Sylvia Moominsummer Madness for bedtime stories now, not sure if this is the first or second time we have reread it. Last night, she was absolutely loving the bit with Snufkin getting his revenge on the Park Warden, it seemed like she remembered it very clearly from last time (at least a year ago). Anyways, I want to put together a Moominpost for KIDLIT but I haven't figured out quite what yet. It seems to me like reading diaries belong on this site -- after all that is the primary purpose I had in mind when I created READIN -- and that site is more for analysis. There should be analysis of this particular book and of the series in general; I'm not quite sure yet, where to start.
posted morning of August third, 2007: Respond
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I am finding the writing for a blog with comments (over at KIDLIT) very satisfying -- at least at this early date -- and it solidifies my resolve to add comments to this site. I have ordered a new server, from Sub300, so that should be arriving soon. Once it comes, I will have both it and my current server (which is on its last legs, so to speak) on line for a while, figure out enough PHP to clone the current site (though probably not bother with the blogroll) using PHP and MySql in place of ASP and flat files. Once I do that, I will change www.READIN.com to point to the new server, junk the old server. And start working on the redesign. I got a lot of ideas about rendering groups of associated posts and comments thereto. I will put these ideas together in a READIN redesign -- hopefully a community of commenters will start to come together over here. If not I may have to find a community that wants my software because I think it will look pretty cool.
posted morning of August third, 2007: Respond
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Thursday, August second, 2007
Bergman died recently. I have only watched Wild Strawberries, which I absolutely loved, and The Seventh Seal, which I thought was very beautiful but way too static for it to draw me in, and Fanny and Alexander, which I just couldn't sit through for want of any plot line that I could see. I have The Virgin Spring and Smiles of a Summer Night on my Netflix queue and am looking forward to watching them. But that's not what I wanted to blog about; instead I wanted to mention this mashup of Bergman and Kurosawa, which I thought of while I was reading Roy's post on Bergman: The Seven Seals: The story of a lonely Norse marine biologist in mediæval Sweden, and his quest to repopulate his aquarium -- decimated by the black death and rogue warlords -- along with his bumbling furry sidekicks.
posted morning of August second, 2007: Respond
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Wednesday, August first, 2007
Neato -- four years into my time as a "blogger", I have joined a "group blog" for the first time. I'm posting about children's books at KIDLIT. Should be fun.
posted afternoon of August first, 2007: Respond
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Monday, July 30th, 2007
Chapter 26 is hilariously funny, the satire much broader and more self-evident. (Until the last page anyway; I'm not totally sure what is happening there but Pamuk seems to be pulling back from the humor.) Ka is poking dry fun at Blue and at himself, and he has been given permission to do so -- Kadife tells him, "You're a dervish; Blue says so. He believes God has graced you with lifelong innocence." The days in this story seem extraordinarily long -- this is only the afternoon of the second full day Ka has been in Kars.
posted evening of July 30th, 2007: Respond
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Sunday, July 29th, 2007
(Or, the Creeping Hegemony of Robyn Hitchcock) I was listening to The Last Waltz on my computer this evening and I suddenly thought, why don't I see what happens if I use the "shuffle" feature in iTunes? - "Weary Day" by the Delmore Brothers, performed by John Miller. This is on a compilation called String Theory, that I got as a pledge premium from WFMU, and it is without question the best thing I have ever gotten from a public radio station in return for a contribution.
- "This is How it Feels" by Robyn Hitchcock, from "Moss Elixir". Funny -- this is the last song on the record and I haven't really noticed it before.
- "Muleskinner Blues" performed by Old & In The Way, from "Breakdown".
- intersong chat from Robyn Hitchcock's July 1st concert at Three Kings Pub -- including the line, "no amount of moon landings could compensate for the Beatles breaking up."
- "Railway Shoes" by Robyn Hitchcock, from "Live at the Cambridge Folk Festival". Hmm...
- "Let's Go Thundering" by Robyn Hitchcock, from the March 14, 1997 show at the Knitting Factory. A very nice performance.
- A track whose title I do not know, from the end of a Taj Mahal compilation Janis gave me.
- "Lonesome Blues" by Henry Williams and Eddy Anthony, from the compilation "Violin, Sing the Blues to Me". This is one of the best records around.
- "She Belongs to Me" by Bob Dylan, performed by Robyn Hitchcock, from the November 14, 2004 show at Maxwell's. I'm not generally a big fan of Hitchcock's Dylan covers but this one has some nice moments.
- "Ñawi (Kichwa)" by Yarina, from "Ñawi". Yarina performed at Sylvia's school last year, and I bought their CD. Fantastic rhythms.
- "Opus 57" by the David Grisman Quintet, from the October 3, 1997 show at Somerville Theater. A long piece that starts out kind of dull but gets a lot more interesting.
I turned the shuffle feature off a couple of songs later, when it got to the Carter Family, which I'm listening to now.
posted evening of July 29th, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, July 28th, 2007
Chapter 23 of Snow contains the most detailed and almost-sympathetic presentation yet of a (bloodthirsty) Turkish nationalist viewpoint. I am not sure what to make of how familiar it sounds to me: it reads almost exactly like thousands of American conservative/hawkish opinion pieces -- ok, more eloquent than 99% of those pieces, but not different in kind. But where do I go with this? Some possibities: - The Turkish context is a huge factor which I am missing totally because I am not Turkish. Pamuk is writing for a Turkish audience.
- Pamuk is writing for a western audience and is eliding over distinctions that exist between our nationalists and their nationalists.
- They really are exactly the same.
What else?... Ka's ironic distance is making sense here as the only way to keep himself clear of Sunay's nationalism. If I'm understanding correctly his cosmopolitanism means the presumption is that his sympathies are with the nationalist in a dispute with fundamentalists -- my own sympathies would certainly default that way.
posted evening of July 28th, 2007: Respond
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