Hallucinations

#1040
Title: Hallucinations
Author: Oliver Sacks
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 2012/2013
352 pages

 Enjoyable, as Sacks always is, but more episodic than some, with modular chapters that don't really build on each other. Sacks here identifies and characterizes a variety of processes, ailments, damage, and poisons that can lead to different forms of hallucination (with a delusion or two thrown in for good measure). Sacks references many of his previous books; for a fun look at how his storytelling style has developed, read with his first book, the outdated but scholarly and highly annotated Migraine.

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story

#1039
Title: Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story
Author: Christina Thompson
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Year: 2008
288 pages

A good effort to interweave personal and cultural histories. Thompson, an American graduate student in Australia, meets and marries a Maori New Zealander. She alternates between and blends the story of their relationship with the story of European first and later encounters with Maori, analyzing some of the assumptions underlying the European view of the Maori. What's less well explored is her own feelings. I finish the book having enjoyed it, but with little understanding of what attracted her to her future husband "Seven," what their relationship was like, why they moved to the U.S., and what happened as they became a more established couple. All of this is in the story, but it doesn't have an emotional underpinning. Thompson tells anecdotes that purport to use the relationship as a parallel or springboard to the examination of European-Maori dynamics. I was ultimately left wanting more depth.

We Need New Names

#1038
Title: We Need New Names
Author: NoViolet Bulawayo
Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books
Year: 2013
298 pages

Linked short stories generally follow Darling, a Zimbabwean girl, from her hungry, conflict-saturated childhood in Africa to her dislocated/relocated young adulthood in the U.S. Most of the sections worked well, though the end point of some didn't resonate or satisfy. There are some intrusions of a poetic narrator, best understood as Darling's philosophical future self, perhaps. They add complexity and perspective, but are at times heavy-handed and detract from the intensity I imagine the story would have had if it stayed tightly connected to the developing and acculturating protagonist.

A creditable first novel. Nicely read by Robin Miles.

Birds: Mini Archive with DVD

#1037
Title: Birds: Mini Archive with DVD
Author: Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon
Publisher: Harper Design
Year: 2011
288 pages

 A pleasing collection of bird paintings. It's interesting to compare these rather stiff renditions with sometimes-inaccurate body types to those more lifelike portraits painted by Audubon. The book comes with a DVD of the images, which is fun. Also fun is reading the end matter, since the names at the time of initial publication sometimes don't correspond with contemporary common name, genus, or species.

I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats

#1036
Title: I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats
Author: Francesco Marciuliano
Publisher: Chronicle
Year: 2012
112 pages

There are books you acquire by intent, and books you are given. This falls into the latter category.

Cute enough poems that remind one somewhat of Archy and Mehitabel. Illustrative kitty photos. Marciuliano writes the Sally Forth comic strip, so he's a practiced writer and most of these poems aren't clunky.

A 1-bath book.

A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire #5)

#1035
Title: A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire #5)
Author: George R. R. Martin
Publisher: Bantam
Year: 2011
1016 pages

We knew going into this that it wasn't likely to advance the storyline much, since it covered much of the same time as the fourth book. However, it does complicate the plot nicely and fill in a lot of the simultaneous action. I'd argue also that, as does the long "camping" scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the drawn-out nature of the narrative here conveys to the reader the enormous stretches of time it takes for non-fictional action to occur (such as moving an army across a country through the snow).

With enough contract negotiation to make Fifty Shades of Grey look speedy and impulsive, A Dance with Dragons reinforces the importance of alliances and agreements, and adds several factors other than strength of arms or strategic leadership that influence the outcomes of a conflict. One is bankruptcy, and its collateral implication that if your enemy outbids you or can pay the bills, s/he can buy your army (or your bank). Since Westeros has no Jews to slaughter, I'll be interested to see whether House Lannister declares war on the Iron Bank of Braavos to obliterate its debt. Another strategy, revealed at the end of this installment, is (view spoiler). Also, (view spoiler) doesn't do wonders for your popularity.

I continue to enjoy Tyrion and Arya most. I find Daenerys increasingly annoying. Identity and loyalty to ideals are key themes, strongly stressed.

Let's get to winter already.

The Photographer

#1034
Title: The Photographer
Author:  Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre, & Fréderic Lemercier
Publisher: First Second
Year: 2003/2009
288 pages

An excellent use of pastiche, with many very wordy pages broken up through the use of both photos and photo-based illustrations. The narrative was engaging and the images really brought it to life. A great addition to your graphic memoirs/non-fiction shelf.

Particles, Jottings, Sparks: The Collected Brief Poems

#1033
Title: Particles, Jottings, Sparks: The Collected Brief Poems
Author:  Rabindranath Tagore & William Radice
Publisher: Angel Books
Year: 2004
214 pages

The prefatory material provides a useful introduction and places the work in the context of the author's life and other works, reporting as well on contemporary literary responses.

Particles (Kanika): Very short poems, often taking the form of a dialogue or near dialogue between paired opposites, generally ending with a reply that provides a twist of perspective and rebuke or statement of contentment with the second entity's experience. My favorite:

81. Beyond All Questioning
'What, O sea, is the language you speak?'
'A ceaseless question,' the sea replies.
'What does your silence, O Mountain, comprise?'
'A constant non-answer,' says the peak.

The problem with rhyming translation, even of a rhymed original, is that where the rhymed original's word choice at its best seems inevitable and the rhyme simply a serendipitous confirmation, the translation sounds, as many of these do, jangly and forced (despite Radice's use of some slant rhymes). These are structured song forms, but they are more clangy than lyrical in this translation.

Why "sea" is lower case and "Mountain" upper, I couldn't say.

Jottings (Lekhan): This collection is typically more haiku-like in feel, though more explicit in the poems' messages (sometimes to the point of banging one over the head with their moral, though this is mostly true only of the abstract poems). The nature imagery is more pronounced, or perhaps more obvious here. This may be due to the use of repetitive imagery across multiple poems. Stars, moon, sun, clouds, mountains, ponds, ocean, flowers, trees, and a musical instrument called the veena) recur, as does the theme of love (though these love couplets seem to me to be the weakest poems in this set). The emphasis on light and darkness compels one to read this as a group of albas and nocturnes.

4.
Dreams are nests that birds
In sleep's obscure recesses
Build from our talkative days'
Discarded bits and pieces.

110.
My pilgrimage does not aim at the end of the road.
My thoughts are set on the shrines on either side.

Sparks (Sphulinga): Less enjoyable, perhaps because many of the poems are abstract, religiously inclined, or appear to be invocations, salutations, or valedictions. As a group, they seem more occasional and specific than universal in their address. Those that remain focused on image and sensation are generally repetitive of the previous two collections, or unsubtle. There are many setting suns, faded cloud, ending roads, wilting flowers.

73.
The sea wants to understand
The message, written in spray,
That the waves repeatedly write
And immediately wipe away.

82.
That travelling cloud
About to disappear
Writes only its shade
As its name on the air.

The appendices include Tagore's explanation of the provenance of many of these short poems, interesting notes about the production of a handwritten collection using aluminum plates, thoughts on short poems, and the history of the creation of Lekhan; thoughts about Japan and the "extreme economy of self-expression"; a recollection by the woman who rules the lines on the aluminum plates; thoughts on modern English poets; and a different version of a poem.

All in all, well worth reading, but I'd still like to see an unrhymed version, especially of my favorite, Lekhan.