Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Reading is an act of interiority, pure and simple. It's object is not the mere consumption of information… Rather, reading is the occasion of the encounter with the self… The book is the best thing human beings have done yet.
-- Lewis Carroll --


Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
-- Ernest Hemingway --

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man…. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.
-- Albert Einstein --

Have a great Monday!
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My Rescued Orphans

One person's garbage is another person's treasure.
Well, maybe in this case "garbage" is too strong of a word… at any rate, I capitalized on what other people did not want, this weekend.
I went to the 49th Annual Rockcliffe Park Used Bookfair and I picked up a total of 32 books for $68.50. That's an average of $2.14 per book.
And I mean, these are gorgeous, lovely books! Some of them are hot off the press, like Martin Amis's The Pregnant Widow, which I was going to buy at full price.
I think I paid $4 for it here!
Wow -- some real beauties were to be found -- let's not call them "used".
Let's call them…. "previously loved." Discarded by original owners. Nabbed up, literally adopted by me -- and I have cleared out an entire shelf of old slip-cased National Geographics to make way for these lovelies.
My shelf issues are at a critical Stage of Displacement… in other words, if anything is to go on, something else has to come off.
My question tonight involves first editions.
One of the most awesome books I snapped from the Realm of Obscurity was this pristine edition of John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent.

<-- The thing is PERFECT!
One of my favourite arguments I like to muster in any sort of literary environment is, "Who is a better writer, Steinbeck or Hemingway?"
You'd be surprised at how this innocent [yet devilish] question will turn the calmest of folks into raging piranhas. It's a downright barracuda of a question to drop at your next gathering!
Anyhoo -- my answer is always Steinbeck.
I just love him. Yes, better than Papa.

So, as you can imagine -- the only disfigurement on the dust jacket of this book was from the bit of drool that fell from my mouth as I slapped the thing into my book box.
And now -- my question...
I have since wondered if this is a FIRST EDITION.
My research has revealed that the book was published in 1961 by The Viking Press.
With this very dust jacket on it.
My book is a 1961 Viking, but nowhere in it does it SAY "First Edition".
My fellow Bookovores [<-- should be an official tax-exempt cult]… can you please help me on this conundrum? Do first editions always have to declare their... Firstness?
Is it possible that I may have nabbed a first edition for $3.00?
In which case I will be very content, this winter? Should I be setting aside a special exalted place on my shelf for this serendipitous gem?
Or should I just place it amongst the other rescued orphans?
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Niagara

Niagara

Exhibitionism in nature is just that, natural. Your
observation has no effect, one way or the other.

You might drive in the very opposite direction
this morning -- hating the world and all planets.

Glaring, not saying the words. Feeling them burn
holes in your soul is punishment enough, today.

Imagine that before you were, and after you shall
be, a torrent over a lip of rock tells misty secrets.

c. Ciprianowords, Inc. 2010

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Our secular and scientific culture has not replaced or even challenged these mutually incompatible, supernatural thought systems. Scientific method, skepticism, or rationality in general, has yet to find an overarching narrative of sufficient power, simplicity, and wide appeal to compete with the old stories that give meaning to people's lives. Natural selection is a powerful, elegant, and economic explicator of life on earth in all its diversity, and perhaps it contains the seeds of a rival creation myth that would have the added power of being true - but it awaits its inspired synthesizer, its poet, its Milton…. Reason and myth remain uneasy bedfellows.
-- Ian McEwan --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
-- Richard Feynman --


Have a great Wednesday!
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Meeting Sara Gruen

Last Tuesday I mentioned that bestselling author Sara Gruen was going to be in my neighborhood. Well, tonight was the night and I was there.
Sara began by sharing some vignettes of her experience with meeting the bonobos from the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa -- then she read from her latest novel [Ape House] and fielded questions from the audience.
She spoke very lovingly of the bonobos, and recounted a fascinating incident between her and Panbanisha [to whom she dedicates her novel]. When Sara first met Panbanisha [a Congolese bonobo ape] she showed some photos. Pictures of Sara's dogs evoked no response from the ape. But when Panbanisha viewed images of Sara's children in a bathtub, surrounded with soapsuds, the ape spelled out on the lexigrams "Babies/washing/bubbles".
They immediately established a friendship, and when Sara left, Panbanisha "said" to one of the scientists "Where's Sara? Build her nest. When's she coming back?"

Sara Gruen was so interesting and down-to-earth and lovely.
Overhearing the conversation between her and the two ladies ahead of me in the lineup to meet her -- I learned that the movie version of Water For Elephants is due for release in April of 2011. It will be starring Reese Witherspoon and Sara will have a cameo appearance in it.
When taking the photo above [with yours truly in it, spoiling the shot]…. Sara said to the photographer [a Chapters worker]… "OK, say 1 - 2 - 3 and then snap it!"
She then turned her face towards me [a wonder-filled moment, I assure you] and then whipped it back on "3".
"It's the only way I can look natural," she said.
This is when I spelled out, on my lexigram thing --> "Natural/yes/very".

"You cannot have a two-way conversation with a great ape, or even just look one straight in the eye, close up, without coming away changed."
-- Sara Gruen --

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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

That's what lying had done to the world. All the lying that people had been doing since the dawn of time, all the lying they were doing still. The price everyone paid for it was the death of trust. It meant that no two humans, however innocent they might be, could ever approach one another like two animals. Civilization!
-- Michel Faber, Under The Skin --


Have a great Monday!

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Under The Skin

Tonight, appropriately enough, I finished my 2010 Halloween Selection.
<-- Under The Skin.
By Michel Faber. [Published in 2000 by Harcourt].
I always try and read an eerie or creepy book to coincide with the night of chills and spookiness, and this one was NOT disappointing at all. It was a terrific book, and probably one of the strangest novels I have read in a long while.
I got my copy from the Library. Can you see the little sticker at the bottom of the spine? It is a face in aghast pose, hair standing on end, and the genre designation is "Horror".
Typically, this is not my type of book, but I had read Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White and so I knew that the man can write. Hearing that this one was "creepy as the first third of Psycho" [Booklist] I thought I'd give it a shot.
Wow.
It was a real page-turner.
Michel Faber lets the reader into the story on a very gradual basis… we are continually learning more and more about what is really going on, right up until the very end. I was telling my co-workers about the book as I went along on the first day, just a couple of chapters in. I described the scenario, but I myself was unsure as to what exactly was going on.
The protagonist, a "woman" named Isserley [read the book to find out why I have the word woman within quotation marks] picks up hunky male hitch-hikers ["hitchers"] along a stretch of Scottish highway, anesthetizes them while still driving along, and then -- umm -- takes them [unconscious] to the secluded Ablach Farm, where she lives.
See, I was describing this to my co-workers [first day] and they had many questions that I myself could not answer. Questions like, "What happens to these guys?"
On the second day [I am a painfully slow reader] I knew more information but it was still quite sketchy, and the thing is, my co-workers wanted answers. I knew a bit more, but still, it was like shining a flashlight on a cave wall -- you can only see so much at any given moment, the big picture is darkness.
Now, on the weekend, I have devoured the rest of the book and I want to recommend the thing to all who will read my blog… if you like a suspenseful, thought-provoking -- and yes, creepily disturbing read -- Under The Skin is a book I think you should get your hands on.
It blends elements of science fiction / horror / thriller -- and presents a riveting story in a package that is true literature, in the sense of relevant, important, timeless.
I can't wait until tomorrow when I can finally answer all of the questions I was asked about the mysterious elements of the story.
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Splash du Jour: Friday

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked -- as I am surprisingly often -- why I bother to get up in the mornings.
-- Richard Dawkins --

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

I have given the evidence to the best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system -- with all these exalted powers -- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
-- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
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Ape House

I am a bit astounded at some of the negative comments I have read, here and there, about Sara Gruen's latest novel, Ape House.
I think she is getting an unjustified bad rap!
[Wrap?] <-- Whatever the correct term is, reviewers are being mean is what I mean!
Most of the criticisms seem to be involving the idea that the book is not really about monkeys, in other words, the main characters end up being people [God forbid].
See, for this I was thankful. I don't really like monkeys all that much. Even though I myself tend to drag my knuckles now and then, overall -- I still find people a lot more interesting.
OK, so the book is hilarious and serious all at once. Always a great mix for me.
And the hilarious stuff isn't too goofy, and I appreciate that. I hate goofy. Hilarity in fiction, for me, has to be restrained and appropriate.
Gruen stays within these Bookpuddle-induced limits.
There is stuff simultaneously funny and not-at-all-funny about the entire premise of the book.
An apiary is bombed by activists. No. Wait. An apiary is where bees are kept.
Ummm... an ape……. thing…. no [better yet] an ape house is blown to smithereens by militant whackjobs who think the bonobos [<-- a species of Congolese ape] would be better off unconfined. Funny, yet not at all.
Isabel Duncan, the fully-dedicated Jane Goodall-like proprietress is horribly injured. She's taken to the hospital for reconstructive surgery, and during this time the apes roost in the surrounding trees, as the media trucks are put into high gear to catch every moment of the impending drama.
I don't want to spoil the book for readers who have not been there yet, so I don't want to say much about the pornographer guy that buys the escaped apes and creates his own subscriber-funded reality show, exploiting them with the help of cameras that capture their every now-domestic activity -- or the Joe Six-Pack type of honest reporter from the New York Times [or is it the Weekly Times? A tabloid? Only we, the reader need to know…] who takes a special interest in the case and writes the ground-breaking story that will finally emancipate our distant ancestors.
Or not.
By way of many revolving subplots, Sara Gruen shows us [and I think she does it in a very entertaining and convincing way] that our own alleged evolutionary superiority can be validly questioned as we observe how we may yet be susceptible to the exploitation of innocence when it comes to our fascination with the [as yet] animal kingdom. There are times when all of these apes are, without exception, more evolved than we are. [<-- Funny] And times when true reality kicks in, and we realize where we are on the favorable evolutionary side of things. And this fact should never give us license toward exploitation. It should always point to greater responsibility, and respect for others.
No matter who those others should be. [<-- Not so funny]
I think it is a remarkable book.
A final word, and then I am going to go and eat a bunch a bananas, regurgitate them, and then eat them again --> I liked this book more than I liked Water For Elephants.
And go figure -- I like elephants better than monkeys.
One week from tonight Sara Gruen shall be a mere few blocks from where I am writing this -- at my favorite bookstore, and I shall be there.
I hope that in the crush of other people lined up like so many shrapnel-stricken bonobos, I have the presence of mind to say "I loved your book" as she signs my own copy.
To get yours -- click --> HERE.
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

A little coffee place I saw this weekend, on Bank Street.
Hmmm… is Yann Martel receiving any royalties on this?

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

If the entire course of evolution were compressed into a single year, the earliest bacteria would appear at the end of March, but we wouldn't see the first human ancestors until 6 a.m. on December 31. The golden age of Greece, about 500 BC, would occur just thirty seconds before midnight.
-- Jerry A. Coyne, Why Evolution is True --

Have a great Monday!
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