Reviews and Comments

Very much looking forward to this one.

This yearly collection of award-winning poetry, fiction, essays and memoirs is always a great read.

This copy of Amy Beal’s history of American experimental music in Germany was owned by Tom Verlaine. I purchased it from a Brooklyn book store. :-)

This copy of Garcia Lorca’s poems was owned by Tom Verlaine. I purchased it from a Brooklyn book store. :-)

Another set of semi-autobiographical stories originally published in one magazine or another. I find Joan Didion’s writing to have a mysterious pull on me. Almost mesmerizing in its phrasing, its stories pulled from her life, about things both mundane and surreal. I found this set to be slightly less compelling than that of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, but I was grateful to read it nonetheless.

One of the key scholars of the Intellectual Left in Britain, Stuart Hall wrote on culture, class, race, representation and politics.

I adore her writing. Really looking forward to this one.

I enjoyed this book for the most part. I think her argument has value, which is to say that the Left tends to leave stirring the electorate’s passions to the far right, which is why they sometimes have difficulty getting people to the polls. At times, I felt that her phrasing was overly formal and it made me feel like I was taking a graduate course in Political Science. At other times though, the text was more accessible and enjoyable. Overall, a good introduction to her writing.

Mouffe’s latest is a call to combine the struggles against authoritarianism with the struggle to save the planet. A new author for me. Looking forward to it.

A really enlightening read detailing how the culture we are born into profoundly influences our interpersonal relations, our personal space, our priorities, even how we think. Bridging gaps between cultures can be an almost insurmountable task, though it must start with becoming more fully aware of our own. Thought provoking, even 48 years after it was first published.

An anthropologist, Hall’s work sheds light on how individual cultures communicate by use of body language and other non-verbal communication, their use of personal space and how their identity is influenced by their culture. His work was thought to aid in cross-cultural communication and was respected in both anthropological and psychological fields of study. Beyond Culture was included in a list of books which were recommended by Brian Eno. You can find the list on openculture.com.

The author has a talent for weaving myriad, seemingly unrelated observations into a fairly cohesive whole and tying them together with thought provoking final lines. Within these poems are vignettes of economic hardship in his native Greece, existing as an other in a world which doesn’t welcome him, and just getting by in a rather bleak landscape where the biggest threat to your existence might be the cost of living or it might be the person who lives next door.

We are all complicated and bring our baggage along wherever we go, and Ari Banias has deftly acknowledged his while steadfastly not giving up his pursuit of living life on his own terms.