Lists of books and links, plus more alphabet blogging

[tarigwaemir]

Stanley Hall, on the Feast of St. Frederick

Rare astrological convergence today: all three grad students and the P.I. in our lab were present in the wetlab at the same time!* What this omen may signify is still unknown.

* For those of you who don't spend your days in a research laboratory, "wetlab" means experimental work, which largely consists of transferring small to middling amounts of liquid from one tube or flask to another. (I say middling because I do have to make up large batches of media on occasion.) The opposite term is "drylab", which describes computational or theoretical work.

I was listening to NPR in the (wet)lab just now, and they aired a program on Nelson Mandela, with excerpts from the recording of his speech at the trial which sentenced him to life in prison. Mandela's quiet, measured voice ends his defense with the following words:

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

(Full text of his speech is here.) It sent shivers down my spine. (I may have a cynical streak but I can never claim to be a cynic because I admire idealism too much.)

Taken from sub_divided: This time it's the Telegraph's 50 Best Cult Books. As always, bold the titles you've read, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish, and asterisk* the ones you always meant to read but somehow never got around to.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969) * - I keep meaning to read Vonnegut but never got around to it.
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1957-60) * - After worldserpent and more recently sub_divided reviewed the books, I'm definitely going to pick up Justine next time I see it.
A Rebours by JK Huysmans (1884)
Baby and Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock (1946)
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (1991)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963) * - I'm a little afraid to read this book because it sounds so depressing.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961) - I actually read the first two-thirds before I had to return it to the library. I never got around to checking it out again though.
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951) - Holden Caulfield exasperates me so, so much.
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (1993)
The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (1971)
Chariots of the Gods: Was God An Astronaut? by Erich Von Däniken (1968)
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782) *
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)
Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health by L Ron Hubbard (1950)
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley (1954)
Dune by Frank Herbert (1965) - I really enjoyed it but to this day, I'm still confused by it.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968)
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973)
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter (1979)
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973) *
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (1982)
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948) - I skipped over this book in my bookblogging.
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (1979) - This one too, although I wish I did blog about it...maybe one of these days I'll get around to it.
Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly (1990)
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and Russell Munson (1970)
The Magus by John Fowles (1966)
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (1962)
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (1958) * - This book is on the list of top 50 translations!
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000)
On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957) * - I get kind of fed up by the Beats but I think I ought to read the book before I hit 30.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson (1971)
The Outsider by Colin Wilson (1956)
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1923)
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (1914)
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám tr by Edward FitzGerald (1859) - Started reading it in the stacks but decided in the end not to take it out. Alas.
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (1937)
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1922)
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)
Story of O by Pauline Réage (1954)
The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942) - I started reading it in French and then got dictionary fatigue. I should just give up and find an English translation.
The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda (1968)
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883-85)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig (1974) - My mother bought this book after she saw it mentioned in Henri Nouwen's The Genessee Diary. I need to tackle it when I'm in a more tolerant mood and less inclined to be brought to laughter by the writer's self-important tone.

Recently discovered links that may be of interest:

Wordie: "Flickr for words". A social networking site for logophiles.

August Poetry Postcard Fest: Exchange poetry on postcards every day in August.

Is Bertie Wooster the only fish-faced hero?: A discussion in the London Times back in 1937 on the lack of chinless heroes in British fiction. Mentions of Bertie Wooster and Peter Wimsey as possible exceptions, with both Wodehouse and Sayers writing in to defend the state of their literary creations' chins.

50 outstanding literary translations from the last 50 years: As selected by the Translators Association of the Society of Authors. I would attempt to make another "memetically transmitted disease" (as worldserpent says) out of this book list, but I've read very few of these translations.

10 greatest sci-fi films never made: As chosen by David Hughes, who apparently just wrote a book on the subject.

Top 10 food scenes in children's literature: From the Guardian.

RA DIO HEA_D/HOU SE OF_CARDS: Link from Steve. Radiohead's new music video which used a complicated laser system to capture 3D images, which were reconstructed using code made freely available through Google.

Advanced Beauty: Another link courtesy of Steve. "Video sound sculptures" released once a week for eighteen weeks. Gorgeous stuff.

Nick Hornby on ebooks: I remember aiwritingfic and ramble_corner making posts about ebooks earlier. Here's an essay on the subject from someone in the publishing industry.

Return to alphabet blogging: ambientlight asked about nationalism. Oh dear, nationalism is a complicated subject for me (for anyone, really), and I have no idea if I can do justice to it in a few paragraphs. Let's see if I can reduce it to a set of salient points.

• I might as well have been born in the U.S.--I was only six months old when I immigrated here--but I did not get my American citizenship until I was 17. That means that for most of my life, I was not an American citizen.
  
• My parents were born shortly before the Korean War broke out. That means that they grew up during a time when Korean nationalism was at its peak. (Koreans are still very nationalistic, but it's become a lot more toned down.) They also attended college when student demonstrations protesting military dictatorships were going on every week and many democracy activists were thrown in jail.
  
• My parents, while being critical of Korean nationalism, still express very nationalistic sentiments. They are proud of being American citizens and having the right to vote, but they also dislike American foreign policy and the way Americans view the rest of the world. In this respect, they have an easier time understanding the viewpoint of foreign countries.
  
• Being raised in such a household, I share much of my parents' biases and tendencies.

I remember being a little dismayed during a Korean class discussion in college when a classmate said that he thought the Japanese occupation had been good for Korea. (He is a Korean-American, whose grandparents had been collaborators under the occupation.) I was shocked, and then shocked to realize that I was shocked. That should probably describe how I feel about nationalism. It's very bizarre to feel patriotic towards a country that you've barely seen, especially when you're no longer even a citizen. It's even more bizarre to realize that I didn't understand how bizarre it was until I went to college and actually had all these discussions. I don't know if I would feel more or less comfortable if I felt this sort of patriotism towards the U.S. But the Fourth of July has never meant anything more to me than fireworks, and I don't think of the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution as my national history, even though it is.

I think loyalty, whether it be to a person or to a group or to a country, can be moving, but loyalty can easily be misplaced and become nothing more than a blind attachment. Still, I think that group identity is as important to people as individual identity, and the sense of belonging to a nation (or an ethnicity or a religion) provides that. It's true that this fundamental urge of human beings to become an "us" can be twisted into an "us versus them" but I don't think the urge itself is wrong, as long as we try to remain self-aware.

Steve is currently looking for a roommate (to replace the one who's just moved out), and he asked if anyone I know is looking for housing. Hence, I'm in turn asking the friends list: would you or anyone you know be interested in moving into a room in a three-bedroom apartment in San Francisco? (I can attest that the rent is very cheap--half of what I pay for my studio--and the inhabitants are very nice, although I may be just a little biased. ^_^) Let me know if you're interested, and I'll put you in touch.

Yours &c.

Comments

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

For example, while a fried whiting may lack dignity, a boiled salmon has natural grace and repose

*giggles* Though I love Wodehouse's response best, of course. Thanks for the link; that was fantastic!

The Bell Jar actually reminded me a bit of Catcher in the Rye, but the protagonist is less annoying. (I share your sentiments on Holden Caulfield.) I didn't think it was that depressing -- it was a convincing portrait of a person going through depression, but I thought the main character was annoying enough that it balanced things out, if that makes any sense.

[troisroyaumes]

Oh, that's good to know. I think I'm more tolerant of getting annoyed (because sometimes one likes to indulge in annoyance at the world) than getting depressed, so perhaps I'll get around to reading The Bell Jar after all. ^_^

[issen4.livejournal.com]

You post the most adorable links. Oh, Bertie.

[troisroyaumes]

Glad you enjoyed! ^_^

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

thanks a lot for the interesting and thoughtful meme response! i realise(d) that it is a rather sensitive subject, and i hope it wasn't too presumptuous of me to ask. ^_^;;

[troisroyaumes]

Not presumptuous at all! And it wasn't so much sensitive as difficult to discuss since the issue is very complicated. But it definitely got me to think, which is the best sort of blogging topic. ^_^

[twelve.livejournal.com]

My sister is, but I don't think my parents will let her housemates be male. :( Still, I'll ask her for you.

[troisroyaumes]

Well, it would only be one male housemate (Steve), since his roommate is female. Let me know what she says! I do understand though; my parents would never let me live in a mixed-gender house unless I was married.

[twelve.livejournal.com]

I just woke her up and asked, and she verified what I was suspicious of. We both don't think our parents would let her live in a place where one of her housemates was male, no matter how fantastic his character was. ^^; I'm sorry to get your hopes up, Tari, but I figured there was no harm in asking. We'll be looking at other housing options for the rest of the month. :x

[troisroyaumes]

No worries, I completely understand. Good luck with the housing search!

[jaebi-lit.livejournal.com]

Do you remember the salt shaker trick from Full Grown Men, where Alby stands the shaker up on a pile of salt? The movie's playing at Lumiere in SF this week, and I went to a showing today w/a director Q&A afterward, so I had to ask him how they did the salt shaker trick. Apparently it's not done with a prop or anything - it just stands up on the pile of salt! And the actor got it "in every take."

How're you doing and what're you up to these days?

[troisroyaumes]

Hello! Sorry for the belated response. And whoa, now I definitely feel the need to try out the salt shaker trick for myself. It seems so improbable.

I've been fine! My mother returned to New York last Wednesday, and I've been rather busy with working in lab and trying to get my driver's license without killing anyone or wrecking any cars. ^_^;; How are you doing? We should definitely hang out sometime; are you free this weekend? If I manage (by some miracle) to pass my road test on Friday, I would definitely like to celebrate with friends. ^_^

[jaebi-lit.livejournal.com]

Ooh, driving tests. I failed the first time around because I went too slow (I thought it was a 25 mph zone and so I was going 20--turns out it was 35 mph) but the second time it was a cinch, although I was horribly tempted to break every rule in the handbook just to see how long the examiner would put up with it. ^^ Good luck! And watch out for pedestrians.

I'm busy all day Saturday and Sunday afternoon, but what about brunch or dinner on Sunday? Or we could hang out in Berkeley Friday night, if you want to meet up post-test :)

[troisroyaumes]

I took it once in New York last summer and got an automatic failure on parallel parking. ^_^;; I'm determined to get it now and get it over with, especially now that I'm in a state that doesn't test on parallel parking or three-point turns. But my driving instructor just told me that he doesn't think I'm ready yet, so it's been postponed for another couple of weeks. >_>;;

In any case, Friday night or Sunday night are equally good. Would you mind coming over to Berkeley? Maybe we can go for jjajangmyeon.

[jaebi-lit.livejournal.com]

Parallel parking is hard! I'm not surprised it's on the test in NYC, though.

Friday night & Korean food sounds good, I can bart over from work. And hanshik, mmmmmmm.

[troisroyaumes]

Great! I can meet you at the BART station. Shall we say around 7:30 PM?

[jaebi-lit.livejournal.com]

sounds good!