What I'm reading This Week (Feb.15, 2009.)
Quote de jour
"Reading makes immigrants of us all. it takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere."
~Hazel Rochman
This is a quickie version today.
Only one magazine article stopped me in my tracks. In the January 2009 issue of National Geographic they featured a pictorial on endangered species. Full page photos of creatures, marked with a chilling number; the number remaining in the world. The feline eye peeking out of the magazine marked #195 is the ocelot. There are only 95 left in captivity and about a hundred left in the wild. That's food for thought.
Three books this week.
Reborn: Journals & Notebooks by Susan Sontag. These raw diary entries span from age 14 to 30 and are edited by her son David Reiff. Her intellectual leanings are evident at a tender age, as is her pretentiousness. "In the journal I do not express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself." I found the content scatter shot and unenlightening. Two more volumes are in the works, their content gleaned from Susan Sontag's 100 notebooks. Perhaps they will bear more fruit. I'm interested in her development as a writer after she achieved fame, and in her relationship with celebrity photographer Annie Leibowitz.
On a more exciting note, I'm jazzed about: How We Decide by wunderkind writer Jonah Lehrer http://www.jonahlehrer.com It's hard to believe this cute 27-year-old kid, (okay hottie in a rumpled t-shirt )has written this elegant treatise on the neuroscience of how we make decisions. No, it not just about rational versus emotional but the marriage of art and science. We all make hundreds, if not thousands of decisions every day. If Albert Camus is correct by saying, "Our lives are a sum of all our choices," I'm happy I chose this one.
I've barely cracked open A Blue Hand: The Beats in India by Deborah Baker but I know I'm going to like it. It's about the journey beat poet, Allen Ginsberg took to India in the '60s in search of the meaning of life.
"Reading makes immigrants of us all. it takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere."
~Hazel Rochman
This is a quickie version today.
Only one magazine article stopped me in my tracks. In the January 2009 issue of National Geographic they featured a pictorial on endangered species. Full page photos of creatures, marked with a chilling number; the number remaining in the world. The feline eye peeking out of the magazine marked #195 is the ocelot. There are only 95 left in captivity and about a hundred left in the wild. That's food for thought.
Three books this week.
Reborn: Journals & Notebooks by Susan Sontag. These raw diary entries span from age 14 to 30 and are edited by her son David Reiff. Her intellectual leanings are evident at a tender age, as is her pretentiousness. "In the journal I do not express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself." I found the content scatter shot and unenlightening. Two more volumes are in the works, their content gleaned from Susan Sontag's 100 notebooks. Perhaps they will bear more fruit. I'm interested in her development as a writer after she achieved fame, and in her relationship with celebrity photographer Annie Leibowitz.
On a more exciting note, I'm jazzed about: How We Decide by wunderkind writer Jonah Lehrer http://www.jonahlehrer.com It's hard to believe this cute 27-year-old kid, (okay hottie in a rumpled t-shirt )has written this elegant treatise on the neuroscience of how we make decisions. No, it not just about rational versus emotional but the marriage of art and science. We all make hundreds, if not thousands of decisions every day. If Albert Camus is correct by saying, "Our lives are a sum of all our choices," I'm happy I chose this one.
I've barely cracked open A Blue Hand: The Beats in India by Deborah Baker but I know I'm going to like it. It's about the journey beat poet, Allen Ginsberg took to India in the '60s in search of the meaning of life.
I love ocelots and this is tragic. I hope they can be adequately protected so they will survive, but that is...
Love Sontag, too, and will put this book and the Beats in India on my list.
I am also very interested in neuroscience, courtesy of you know, my parents.
I am in awe of your reading!
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