Books read in May 2020

1. Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, by Thich Nhat Hanh (1992)

Lovely and wise. I felt so grounded during my reading of it. One of my favorites of his.

2. The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan (1996)

Took me a while to get into. I forgot how dark Amy Tan's work is at times. It is her classic mix of Chinese-American mother/daughter/wife/husband conflict in the present, and almost mythical Chinese tragedy in the past. Haunting at times. What happened right before the end made me so sad and a little mad.

3. Jamaica Inn, by Daphne du Maurier (1936)

Yes! I remembered liking the author's most famous work, Rebecca, and this was another treat of the similarly atmospheric, neo-Gothic variety. Delicious spookiness and suspense without being a scary novel. I didn't think much of the romance but otherwise thought the protagonist was excellent, a true heroine. Brave, sturdy, and stubborn - and well-written enough that she didn't feel annoyingly so.

4. The Book of Waves: Form and Beauty on the Ocean, by Drew Kampion (1998)

Mesmerizing photos (and all from film cameras, of course) - oddly mannish quasi-rhapsodic writing. I learned a bit from the "science explanation" sections, which was what I really bought the book for, but not all of that was readily clear to me. The cross-section illustrations in those sections, of wave patterns at various beaches, were very pleasing though.

5. Car Pool, by Karin Kallmaker (1993)

Fun, fast, fluffy lesbian romance. Bonus fun points for the detailed Bay Area references from a local author.

Islands, again

"Many years ago I had a hermitage in a wood about two hours' drive from Paris. One morning I left the hermitage to walk in the woods. I spent the whole day there and practiced sitting and writing poetry. It was very beautiful in the morning, but in the late afternoon I noticed that clouds were gathering and the wind was beginning to blow, so I walked home. When I arrived at my hermitage it was a mess because in the morning I had opened all the windows and the door so that the sunshine could come in and dry everything inside. The wind had blown all the papers off my desk and they were scattered everywhere. The hermitage was cold and miserable. The first thing I did was close the windows and the door. The second thing I did was to make a fire. When the fire began to glow I heard the joyful noise of the wind and I felt much better. The third thing I did was to pick up all the scattered sheets of paper, put them on the table, and put a stone on them. I spent twenty minutes doing that. Then, finally, I sat down close to the wood stove. I felt wonderful, and the hermitage had become warm and pleasant.

"When you find that your conditions are miserable because the windows of your eyes are open, the windows of your ears are open, the wind from outside is blowing in, and you have become a victim -- a mess in your feelings, your body, and your perceptions -- you should not try hard. You should go home to your hermitage; it is inside you. Close the doors, light the fire, and make it cozy again. That is what I call 'taking refuge in the island of self.' If you don't go home to yourself, you continue to lose yourself. You destroy yourself and you destroy people around you, even if you have goodwill and want to do something to help. That is why the practice of going home to the island of self is so important. No one can take your true home away."

- Thich Nhat Hanh

Peace Begins Here

Read in February 2014

1. Peace Begins Here: Palestinians and Israelis Listening to Each Other, by Thich Nhat Hanh

2. Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. M.D. Herter Norton

*Titles link to the pertinent Goodreads page — feel free to add me as a friend.

Read in March 2013

1. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson

2. The Book of Perceptions, by Truong Tran (poems) and Chung H. Chuong (photos)

3. Once: Poems, by Meghan O'Rourke

4. True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart, by Thich Nhat Hanh (reread)

5. The Book of Light, by Lucille Clifton

Read in June 2012

1. Graceling, by Kristin Cashore
An enjoyable one-night read. Reminded me of the young adult fantasies I loved in middle and high school.

2. True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart, by Thich Nhat Hanh
Succinct reflections on mindfulness and love, from a Zen perspective. A beautiful little volume.

3. Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, by Gail Dines
A feminist sociological account of the modern porn industry. She traces its history, beginning with the nude magazines of the fifties, to explain how it came to its current internet-based, multi-billion-dollar form. Her descriptions of the brutality of today's porn — the blatant misogyny and racism, as well as the sexualization of children via "pseudo-child" or "teen" porn — are highly disturbing, but crucial to her discussion of how porn affects its viewers and society at large.

4. Nativity Poems, by Joseph Brodsky
Of the multiple translators who put these poems into English, I certainly prefer the style of some over others (things like how they preserved rhyme and meter, etc.). The poems of his younger Christmases were more compelling and beautiful to me, but I can't remember much else beyond a few passages that glow in my memory.

5. Mastiff, by Tamora Pierce
Not up to her usual standards, e.g. the twist did not work for me, but still enjoyable for nostalgia's sake. Oh, and the romantic interest is too perfect, by which I mean, actually too perfect.

6. There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate, by Cheri Huber
Deep and deeply useful, accessible insights. More Zen.

7. The Terrible Girls, by Rebecca Brown
There is an odd flavor to these short stories, at times evocative and profound (re-readable to be sure), at times dry and head-scratching strange. The prose is definitely not the main dish here. And the subtle connections between the stories are genius to me.

8. From Housewife to Heretic, by Sonia Johnson
The memoir of a second-wave feminist excommunicated from the LDS church for her pro-ERA activism. She is a likable, engaging narrator; her passion and down-to-earth-ness are infectious and her story is compelling. I'm looking forward to reading her later works.

9. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
This was a happy complement to the movie, which I very much enjoyed. Another one-night read — just as fast and gripping as I'd heard it was.

10. Translation is a Love Affair, by Jacques Poulin
A small novel, vivid and refreshing to taste. I like the narrator-protagonist a lot. I like the book for its wisdom in what it does not attempt as well as for its success is just being lovely and pleasant.