Barcelona, Spain

A Scene from Barcelona

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Summer readings, 2009

The unbearable lightness of being (Kundera, 1984/2004)

Kundera

Atonement, unabridged audio (MacEwan, 2007)

The year of magical thinking, the play (Didion, 2007)

The year of magical thinking (Didion, 2005)

In retrospect : The tragedy and lessons of Vietnam, abridged audio (Vandemark & McNamara, 1995)

Guns, germs, & steel: The fates of human societies, abridged audio (Diamond, 1997/2001)

The shadow of Sirius (Merwin, 2008)

Readings in Progress:
The mismeasure of men (Gould, 1999)

Didion

Empire and communications (Innis, 1950/2007)

On the origin of stories : Evolution, cognition, and fiction (Boyd, 2009)

The nature of fiction (Currie, 1990)

Philosophy in the flesh : The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999)

The question concerning technology, and other essays (Heidegger, 1977)

Animal signals (Maynard Smith, 2003)

Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language (Dunbar, 1996)

Glamour shot

Lost in splendrous Sebago Lake, Maine

Yasu, A Canine’s Canine.

Animal accompanies man with computer

Balik Pulau, Penang

Probably a Dragon Fruit Plantation

E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View

The book tells the story of how a young upper middle class English girl goes about realizing her first love & overcoming social/self deception; a delighful, short read with settings in Florence, Italy. I read a red hardcover copy from the Penn State University Library, probably the Abinger Edition re-printed in 1977. The following are some striking quotes from the book noticed in my first reading of this Victorian-era fiction (emphases are mine):

– pg.58: “It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire…”

– pg.73: “The luxury of self-exposure kept her almost happy through the long evening.”

– p.75: “She could not modulate out of the key of self-abasement in which she had started.”

– p.87: “They wished that they also knew Italian, for our phrases of approval & of amazement are so connected with little occasions that we fear to use them on great ones.”

– p.94: “Youth seldom criticizes the accomplished fact.”

– p.94: “An engagement is so potent a thing that sooner or later it reduces all who speak of it to this state of cheerful awe… It has a strange power, for it compels not only the lips, but the very heart.”

– p.108: “Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of refined nature.”

– p.120: “Secrecy has this disadvantage: we lose the sense of proportion; we cannot tell whether our secret is important or not.”

– p.126: “How d’ye do? Come and have a bathe.”

– p.143: “He will work off his crudities in time. I rather mistrust young men who slip into life gracefully.”

– p.158: “[My father]… says that there is only one perfect view – the view of the sky straight over our heads.”

– p.161: “The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness & hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.”

– p.171: “He looked at her, instead of through her, for the first time since they were engaged. From a Leonardo she had become a living woman, with mysteries and forces of her own, with qualities that even eluded art.”

– p.202: “It isn’t possible to love & to part.”

A Scene from an Art Museum

Mother & Son