loveitallabove

Toni Morrison (1931 - 2019) In 2019 the living earth lost a giant. Toni Morrison died . The week she died I had just watched the new documentary about her life The Pieces I Am (2019). It is an artful, art-filled documentary, complemented by artist works, from Mickalene Thomas to Hank Willis Thomas to Jacob Lawrence. Mickalene Thomas did the opening credits. Please check it out. In the film, at one point, Morrison starts to talk about the use of the idiom of the “American Melting Pot.” Morrison makes a gesture with her hands as if to caress the vessel, adding that “Black people are the pot.” Well, at least that's the way I remembered it right after the film. Morrison further amplifies and qualifies the idea, adding that it is how everyone else relates to African-Americans by which being American is truly defined. It felt like a light going on; not unlike the first time I heard that the melting pot metaphor itself is in fact a concept used to suppress labor: namely, if you do ...

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami My rating: 4 of 5 stars While not quite as fantastic as some of the other works, this small smart collection of stories is precious and succinct. I continue to be amazed at how Murakami draws you forward as a reader, wanting to read the next and the next page, even when seemingly so little is happening. The details are little little lamps along the road of shared humanity, familiar and encouraging, faulty and reassuring. View all my reviews

King Henry VI, Part 2 by William Shakespeare My rating: 5 of 5 stars I have just now gotten to part 2 of the Henry VI plays. the first had amazing speeches and frickin' Joan of Arc and I thought it couldn't get any better. THAN this one's got conjurors who evoke prophetic specters, multiple beheadings, and a mad rebel named Cade who just starts to try to take over the whole country, no Empire for like no good reason then gets killed after hiding ten days without food in a hedgegrove. The language is extraordinary from the get go where pious Henry says, "O Lord, that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!" I am going to make that my motto! View all my reviews

Dear members of SJMA’s community, Community and advocacy are at the heart of the Museum’s work. With that in mind, I wanted to write with a few updates and to keep you apprised of the Museum’s accomplishments, especially at this time of change in our nation. Government support is so important to the San Jose Museum of Art. The Museum has received critical support from the  National Endowment for the Arts’ Artworks program for several of our recent major exhibitions—including  Border Cantos: Richard Misrach| Guillermo Galindo   (2016) and  Postdate: Photography and Inherited History from India  (2015). These competitive NEA grants support opportunities for the public to engage with “diverse and excellent art” across the country. They play an instrumental role in enabling mid-sized, community-based institutions like SJMA to develop and present ambitious original projects.   It is similarly than...

Silas Marner by George Eliot My rating: 3 of 5 stars The language and psychology of this classic were extraordinary, felt like Joyce at its best; but at the same time it was pure treacle. Still, I am proud to say I've "read" George Eliot: maybe someday Middlemarch. View all my reviews

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston My rating: 5 of 5 stars Performed by Michele-Denise Woods, this classic work flows so smoothly read aloud, like it was meant to be. Strangely the last disk broke, so I had to read the last portion from the novel itself: a perfect mixture of how to take in this book like true nourishment. There is so much truth to Hurston's observations about men and women, primal like old testament source material and wielding metaphors new and timeless. Kind of amazing to think how many ships this books set to sail, as short and simple as it is. View all my reviews

Buddha, Vol. 8: Jetavana by Osamu Tezuka My rating: 5 of 5 stars ...and I'm done! Buddha, too. The lesson (no spoiler, really...): it's about us, y'all; the divine is in each and everyone of us. So proud to have done this Tezuka Saga. View all my reviews

Buddha, Vol. 7: Prince Ajatasattu by Osamu Tezuka My rating: 5 of 5 stars The trials of middle age and bureaucracy. View all my reviews

Ayako by Osamu Tezuka My rating: 5 of 5 stars I was reading one of the Buddha books when waiting at the DMV and a Japanese man younger than me, got really excited saying "TezuKAH, he is the greatest. Very great. You must read more." He described Ayako as one of the artist's best, a classic that deals frankly with great problems for Japan after the war. His enthusiasm and intensity was so sincere and well received by me. I went right out to Kinokuniya and bought it. After page 200 or so I could not keep myself form reading the rest of the book in one sitting. When Tezuka does his adult works, there are illustrations that are so exquisite. His pacing is extraordinary, and his storycraft completes with great literature. Concurrent with this I am listening to Gogol's Dead Souls . There are parallels in the change from agrarian to modernist society, the pitfalls and tragi-comic themes. View all my reviews

Buddha, Vol. 6: Ananda by Osamu Tezuka My rating: 5 of 5 stars Each book more more Buddha: in this one he's magic! Two more to go!! View all my reviews

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware My rating: 3 of 5 stars Ware's whole approach is pretty intense: extraordinarily ordinary, told with an unforgettable storytelling strategy. While this feels like a classic, I have a hard time adoring this as I might like. View all my reviews

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami My rating: 4 of 5 stars I just love reading Murakami, even if this wasn't my favorite so far. This book begins in the first person, for two characters; from which I never quite recovered. I enjoy better how he creates characters slowly, and at a near distance. On the other hand, the author puts it best when he writes,"I love Maugham. I’ve read The Razor’s Edge three times. Maybe it’s not a spectacular novel, but it’s very readable. Better that than the other way around." View all my reviews

But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman My rating: 4 of 5 stars Maybe the most ambitious Klosterman book yet? But not sure if I liked it. I read it in pretty much one sitting, on the plane to Iceland. Early on I thought it sucked. A high point, a conversation about dreams with Richard Linklater Buddha-like: "...I sense he's sweeping the floor of a very large room as we chat - his sentences are periodically punctuated by the dulcet swoosh of a broom. 'Dreams used to have a much larger role in the popular culture..." View all my reviews

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is a terrific representation of the story of the Salon of mid-to-late 19th c. Paris, starring Messonier, Manet, Baudelaire, Nadar, Napolean III, Pissaro, et al. King interweaves remarkable overarching observations about culture, society and aesthetics with fascinating factoids about the artists and other cultural innovations. It's a strong audiobook presentation, a smooth listen. To be honest, I did not know that one of Manet's great, technical innovations was the white ground for oil paintings, rather than the darker grounds used since the Renaissance. I also did not quite realize the central role Pissaro played as an organizer of collective exhibitions and more than Monet. Saxophone invented in 1840?! View all my reviews

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers My rating: 3 of 5 stars Another great audiobook that I had a tough time getting through as a real book. Dion Graham hit it out of the park...and good on Eggers to have a gifted African American actor be him, I guess. The work is very self indulgent and self aware of that. Early parts of the novel cut a little too close to home being so near to my own mother at her terminal stages of the cancer, then it was sweet to hear him tooling around the Bay Area. For Eggers's writing, I am more a fan of other later works, and I am glad my commute facilitated getting through his strong, lengthy, freshman opus. View all my reviews

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse My rating: 4 of 5 stars I just "read" this for the second time, now as an audiobook. It was so satisfying to explore life's rich pageant; and to see one's life made up of changeable moments: chapters, moving from void to void. And in the end one of your oldest and dearest friends can lean forward to kiss you on the head, and you are Nirvana when you least expect it. View all my reviews

Buddha, Vol. 1: Kapilavastu by Osamu Tezuka My rating: 5 of 5 stars Enjoying my forays into Manga, especially with a master of the medium ;), and digging in alongside my son. Though this one, on completion, I kicked out to my dear, old friend in Wisconsin. My boy's still on the Dragon Ball Z, One Piece and lighter fare. Hoping maybe to get through the following volumes. In this one, From my ignorance, i am still not even sure whose gonna be Buddha ;) View all my reviews

East of Eden by John Steinbeck My rating: 5 of 5 stars Like a second degree in literature, I have been doing a great number of classic works on audiobooks as part of my commute. East of Eden was just about as epically intimate as intended. It felt so satisfying to touch a classic work like this in auditory format, listening is different than reading. In fact, it can be trusted better, right? View all my reviews

Introducing Derrida by Jeff Collins My rating: 3 of 5 stars This précis was a good read, and helped my thinking around Derrida who I have read a decent amount of, but outside of any academic context that might have framed his thinking more broadly for my benefit. This work did not really do that but I enjoyed a few of the anecdotes it draws out, like Derrida's interpretation of the story of Pharmakon and the development of park outside Paris with Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. View all my reviews

Hunting Badger by Tony Hillerman My rating: 0 of 5 stars Fun to read/hear really good detective fiction on the ride. Makes me think of my mom <3 View all my reviews