June 19, 4:00 PM Literature
I bought one non-fiction book while we were shopping at Costco this morning:
- The Wild Ride: A History of the North West Mounted Police 1873 - 1904 (2012) by Charles Wilkins.
Then later this afternoon I bought a novel by David Foster Wallace,
- The Pale King (2011). This is his unfinished novel that was published after his death in 2008.
June 18, 9:00 PM Literature
I have finished reading "No Trace". I enjoyed this novel much more than Maitland's earlier novel. I particularly enjoyed the numerous meetings of the police forces to bring together the various teams that were working on the case. I think this gives a better sense of how crimes are actually solved. A lot of hard work by a lot of people.
June 17, 4:00 PM Literature
I am now at about the 2/3 mark in "No Trace". I am enjoying this novel much more than the earlier one by Maitland. I have a much better sense of the daily routine of the police in this story.
June 16, 8:00 PM Literature
I found some time today to continue reading "No Trace".
June 15, 9:00 PM Literature
I need another fast reading novel, to balance the various slow reading books that I have on the go. A nice Australian mystery fits the bill nicely: Barry Maitland's "No Trace".
June 15, 5:10 am Literature
I want to try something new this morning. I am about half way through reading Marjorie Gerber's book, "The Use and Abuse of Literature. The current chapter mentions close reading a number of times. I want to play with this notion. The fundamental idea is to read for content. What is she trying to say in this book? What are the main points and how does she support them? And what is my reaction to them?
My approach is to use a mind mapping program to clarify the overall structure of her book. Thus I begin with the program, not the book. In this case I will use MindManager.
The chart is simply a schematic copy of the table of contents. It is often useful to know a little about the author. In this case there is a brief biography on the flap of the book's cover. She has impressive academic credentials.
Here is an expansion of the material from the Introduction:
Here is another screen capture of the latter three sections:
I definitely find that the process of creating such a diagram forces one to select/create important summary comments.
June 13, 9:30 am Literature
I began the morning by making a few notes for the mystery novel, "The Quincunx". This is going slow at the moment as I try to develop a system of characters, timelines and notes that is useful to keeping track of the details.
Notes for this are located under the Literature menu heading.
June 10, 3:00 PM Literature
I have begun reading Jonathan Franzen's book of essays, "Farther Away". It is a wildly ranging collection, some personal, some formal. The one's with a birding theme are particularly good. It is a theme he obviously cares about.
5:00 PM I have finished this book. It was a delight. If I had to summarize the book in one word, the word I would choose would be authentic.
I will be dipping into this book again, and again.
June 9, 9:00 am Literature - Calgary
I have begun reading the ebook, "The Social Conquest of Earth" (2012) by Edward O. Wilson. This is a non-fiction book that examines the biological history of human evolution. My first reaction is very positive. The opening chapters are quite readable and clear. I will likely make a few notes on this, but at the moment I am content to yellow highlight certain sentences and keep reading.
June 1, 3:00 PM Literature - Kingston
I have finished reading "The Troubled Man" (2011) by Henning Mankel. It was an interesting contrast with American crime/mystery stories. I truly enjoyed it and will try to find a couple of more by the same author.