When Reading Slows Down

I used to read quite often. After all, this is the thing I used to always do while commuting to and from work. However, recently this habit has diminished, for various reasons.

Joining a Silent Book Club

I did something new recently. I joined a silent book club!

Revisiting the Kindle Question

Five years ago, I actually wondered the pros and cons of reading books using a Kindle. I kept on reading books in their physical form, as that has been my default and preferred method. However, given that I have recently been on the road for a month, I thought that it was the perfect opportunity to try out a different medium. And now I have a few thoughts about it.

When Reading Results in a Conversation

I was in the metro the other day, on my way from work. I happen to have been reading a big fat book, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (review coming soon). This is a book that has more than a thousand pages, and yes, these are the times when I wonder why I opted not to buy an e-reader. It would have been more convenient. However, it turns out that lugging a big fat book during my commute also brings small surprises.

To Kindle or not to Kindle

As readers of this blog might notice, I tend to read a lot. When I was in graduate school, I referred to reading as my one-hour vacations, and I would explicitly take some time off during the day to go to the library and read something that was totally unrelated to what I was currently working on. I've carried this habit all along, even now, and I read about at least 20 books a year more or less. And for some reason, I've always preferred reading using traditional methods, with an actual book in my hands. Until now.

Thumbs Up for Herodotus

The other day, I was in the underground. I was reading, as usual, and this time, I was reading a book that was given to me as a gift by a close friend, a few months ago, on the occasion of my graduation. It even had a message written inside, so unlike my other books, this one will remain in my bookshelf even when I am done reading it.

Filipinos and Reading

The other day, I was in a local bookstore waiting for a friend to show up for dinner. As it was a bookstore, I went inside and browsed some books. What I saw was rather pathetic.

Erik Satie is Alive Again

I suppose this entry is a mixture of things.

First of all, I somehow got inspired to go to the Music Library and photocopy a bunch of sheet music by Erik Satie. Specifically, the music in question is his series of Gnossiennes, written around the turn of the century. There are six of them all, and as I remember, I know how to play the first four of them, and I was working on the last two pieces, when things didn't work out with me and the music scene.

So I once again decided to work on them, and I photocopied all six scores just a few hours ago, and went to my practice room and worked on it. I was glad that I still had it in my hands to play the first four without stumbling badly. So there, Erik Satie is back in my working repertoire. Wow. The folder containing all of my photocopied music is slowly getting thick.

I finished reading the novel entitled Ghost. I loved it. The main character David, sees something, maybe a ghost, maybe something else, in the slumber room of the funeral home that he works in. The novel doesn't actually tell the reader what David saw, so both sides took the whole book in arguing what that actually was. People who believed in the supernatural courted David into joining some nutcase Second World Society, while people who were skeptics such as the scientific university community went ahead and dismissed the events. It was a hilarious, yet very interesting book.

So there, I returned that book to the library, and started working on this new book, entitled The Accidental, by Ali Smith. It supposedly is about a stranger in a town in England. How it goes I don't know yet, I just started it, but I will review it once I finish it, as usual.

The sky is so clear at the moment, and I take that as a sign that it must be very cold outside. Winter is back, and I suppose it is again the time for long coats and gloves.




(Taft Up Close, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Post-Mortem Fiction

It is such a happy thing when one is already done with the semester's work when there are still 3 weeks left of the semester. I am already done with the two papers that I have to write for my two classes, and all that is left are a couple of presentations here and there, and that is it for me for this semester.

Some of my friends have been planning on freezing me, like cryogenics, so that I would stop and not work, but apparently, that plan has been foiled.

Anyway, I still have plenty of reading to do. I have a dissertation proposal to write up, and I need to dish that out within this academic year. And regarding that, I have been harvesting plenty of ideas.

This afternoon, I attended a cognitive science talk about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. It was rather interesting and impressive. I also had a chat with the speaker after his talk, and it actually gave me ideas on how to test my predictions and what experiments to run.

Speaking of experiments, I am reading a book on experimental syntax. The thing is, I will be a research assistant for a syntactician next semester, and the deal is that he takes care of the theory, I take care of the experimental design. It's empirical research, which indeed excites me, and I know how to do the stats, there isn't a problem with that, but I haven't applied statistics to syntax yet. So I am doing my background reading so I will have an idea on the works that this area produces.

Anyway, I am also reading a new book, entitled Ghost, by Alan Lightman. This is about a guy who starts working in a funeral home. So far, I like what I am reading. The last book I was reading, however, was interesting, interesting good and interesting bad. The thing is, the book is about a terminally ill woman, who dies. But instead of expiring, she just goes on living in another part of London. The book is entitled How the Dead Live by Will Self. Somehow, the premise was interesting, but the book was dragging. I suppose I found it unsustainable to the very end, that I dragged myself into finishing the book. It didn't sustain my interest, is what I am saying.

Anyway, so I returned that book to the library, and I moved on.

What else should I write about in this entry? Not much, except that the weather is getting a little colder every day. Winter is slowly creeping in, and the leaves are all gone now. Another year ends, and another year begins pretty soon.



(Wilhelmina, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Surreal Waste

So I finished the book I was reading. It was Julia Darling's Crocodile Soup. Somehow I was disappointed.

It was very fragmented. It was rather delusional and hallucinatory. It concerns a lesbian with a bad relationship with her mother, and somehow, she and her twin brother are able to talk to each other using telepathic signals. She is in love with another woman, Eva, but Eva does not love her back, since Eva is straight. Somehow, the line between imagination and reality is very blurred.

The format is ok, I do not mind the surrealism integrated into the plot. But what I mind is the fact that 300 pages of that is definitely tiring. In any rate, I was never impressed.

Someone asked me why I still finish a book even if I start to hate it. Why is it that I still try to finish the book until the end? Maybe it is because I still have the hope that the book would somehow change its mood near the end, and it would satisfy me. Also, maybe it is because I like it that I can say that I finished reading the book even if I hated it. And since I finished reading it, I have the right to critique it.

So there, I returned that to the library. I then started this new book, entitled How the Dead Live, by English author Will Self. Somehow, I find myself liking books written by British authors. I liked reading books by Jim Crace and Irvine Welsh. And I have a feeling that I will like this one too. Speaking of this book, this is about a terminally-ill woman with breast cancer, and then she dies. But instead of decomposing, she just moves to another part of London, where all the dead people stay.

I suppose this is the second dead-themed novel I have read. The first one was Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead, which was a book I read two years ago. That was interesting too.

I suppose death and dying is a fascinating topic. People obviously wondered what happens to people when they die. Some people took the religious view of being sent to heaven or hell, some people conducted experiments and attempted to die. People definitely are a curious bunch. And this curiosity definitely manifests itself on novels such as these.



(Cats as Guardians, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Portal

I just finished reading the novel I was reading (yeah, redundant) just recently. And again, it was an enjoyable experience. Nice, two great books in a row.

I had been reading The Spanish Bow by Andromeda Romano-Lax. This is a historical novel, based on the life of Spanish cellist Pablo Casals. I liked it a lot, since it blurred the boundary between fact and fiction, and there were plenty of characters that really existed in history, such as Francisco Franco, Adolf Hitler, Varian Fry, Manuel de Falla, and others. It was such an enjoyable read that actually made me curious about the cello.

Of course, I am no cello player, but I started listening to cello music this past two weeks, and in fact, I am now practicing Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites, transcribed for piano of course. I am working my way on his Prelude in G. It is one of the best pieces of music I have ever heard.

Speaking of transcriptions, it used to be the case that I never played music that was rewritten from one instrument to the other. Due to the fact that the instrument that I learned to play was the piano, the repertoire is huge. I have so many things to choose from. Unlike players of other instruments, the piano does not suffer from lack of things to be played.

However, since I now have people I know who play other instruments, sometimes, one wants to play things together, and there usually is not a lot of things that are written for say, piano and harp, or piano and flute, or piano and violin. Of course, there are pieces written for these, but sometimes, one has some tune in mind, and that isn't always possible to be played with the right combination of instruments.

Anyway, I was planning on going out to a hike of the Chimney Bluffs along the shores of Lake Ontario tomorrow, but it seems that the weather is not permitting. So I might have to postpone that until the weather becomes more friendly, that means, until next year.

Anyway, I returned the book that I was reading, and began on another one. If the previous book was a portal to turn-of-the-century Spain, this book takes me to contemporary England. It is about a woman, who has a weird relationship with her mother, and it turns out that she has a crush with another woman in the museum where she works at.

Hmmm....



(Against the Sky, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Gods, Goddesses, and the Theory of Relativity

Never had I finished reading a novel and was immensely satisfied as when I finished the last novel that I read. I was reading Fieldwork, which happened to be the first novel of Mischa Berlinski. And I was very satisfied reading this one.

Fieldwork tells the story of a Dutch anthropologist who happened to have murdered a missionary in the hills of northern Thailand, which is narrated through the eyes of an investigative journalist, who happens to be the author himself. Like the book I read before this, the author is also a character in this novel. But unlike the previous one, I found this one more believable. Somehow, being an investigative journalist is a more believable role than a killer and thief of medieval manuscripts.

Anyway, so the story starts by having the author hearing about a Dutch anthropologist who was imprisoned in the Thai prison. He contacts the prisoner, and then later establishes a correspondence, but sometime afterward, the prisoner commits suicide. Thus, there starts the mystery of the Dutch anthropologist turned murderer turned corpse.

The journalist investigates, starting from the university that the woman attended in the United States, interviewing former professors in the anthropology department, former roommates, former boyfriends, and other people. Slowly, the book reconstructs the adventures of Martiya van der Leun, an anthropologist who initally went to Thailand to study an indigenous group, but ended up settling with them for a long time, until the tragic events of her killing a missionary.

I do not want to give away the details, since doing so might impede the efforts of other readers of fully appreciating this novel. However, I suppose I was able to identify with the main character of the story, and therefore I enjoyed this novel.

Martiya van der Leun was a Third-Culture Kid; he was raised by his father, who was also an academician, in a culture apart from his own, thus forming one's own culture. Martiya grew up in an ethnic village in Asia, and therefore could converse fluently in the local tongue.

The novel tackles issues of religion in society, as Martiya grows to appreciate the native culture of the Dyalo, while battling efforts of a family of missionaries, whose life-long goal was to convert the Dyalo from animism to Christianity. When the clash hit climax, she snapped and therefore killed David Walker, one of the missionaries.

It made me think, how cultures are different, how cultures have their own religious belief system. The Dyalo in the novel believed that spirits of nature provide them with food, a good rice harvest, healthy children, among others. If one experiences a flood, then they think that they have angered the spirits. If they have a bad harvest, then they must have angered the rice spirit.

Then comes the Christians in the book, who tells them that they can be set free from slavery, that they do not have to please the nature spirits anymore, because all they need to do is to believe in Jesus, and they would be saved.

But come to think of it, the missionaries only substituted one mystical belief system with another one.

I mentioned earlier that different cultures have different belief systems. But if one steps back and looks at the bigger picture, there are some universal traits. These belief systems, whether one believes in the nature spirits or in the Christian god, these are just Man's attempt in explaining the things around him, that are otherwise unexplainable.

There used to be a time in which people believed that they got sick because of bad luck. They thought that they became sick because they displeased the spirits or some god. However, with the discovery of microbes and viruses, these beliefs were obliterated.

Still, I do acknowledge that there are still things around us that cannot be explained. That's why the belief in a supernatural being tends to be universal. Humans just want an explanation.

Anyway, I never really do this, but for this book, I wrote the author a note of appreciation. Ha! I suppose that's the first time I sent fanmail.

So I returned that book to the library, and now I am starting on another one. This one is called The Spanish Bow, by Andromeda Romano-Lax. It is set in Spain, and it apparently is about a cellist. That's what I know so far.



(Non-Euclidian Geometry, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Traverse

I've been very busy lately. I suppose that is the reason why I am not too faithful in blogging for the past few weeks.

Anyway, one major thing that occurred to me this past weekend was Chicago. The thing is, a friend of mine needed to go to Chicago for some business. And since my schedule permitted it, I hopped in. We drove the distance from Buffalo to Chicago on Thursday, did the business on Friday, and went back on Saturday. As one can discern, it is not a lot of time for sight-seeing. After all, it wasn't a sight-seeing trip.

However, we still managed to see a few places here and there. We didn't actually go to the city, but to the nearby suburbs. I went to see and visit the Baha'i House of Worship in Wilmette. The building was rather architecturally amazing. It was interesting to note that the temple had symbols of many different religions all over the world. The building patterns seemed to be based on the number 9, of which whether it really has some significance or not, I do not know. Apparently, there are Houses of Worship for every continent, and I just visited the one for North America. It is also the oldest standing temple; the oldest one was in Ashgabat, but it was destroyed many years back. The newest one is the one in Delhi, India, which is nicknamed "The Lotus Temple". They are currently building one in Santiago, Chile.

Anyway, I am back here in Buffalo, and I have finished reading my previous novel, entitled In the Hand of Dante, by Nick Tosches. I hated that book. It did not make sense, and I was simply lost, dragging myself into finishing the book. It was too scattered, and the narration felt like it was pieced together simply by the bound material it was printed on.

Anyway, I moved on, and I started reading this new novel, entitled Fieldwork, by Mischa Berlinski. This one is about a woman who apparently was incarcerated in a Thai prison, and then suddenly she dies. The main character on the other hand decides to investigate the story of her death, which takes him to California, to Chiang Mai, and other places. I like the progression so far. The ironic thing is, both my previous novel and this one shared one trait, that is, the author is a character in the story. In the previous novel, Nick Tosches was a character, and an evil character nonetheless. He killed a number of other characters and stole a manuscript of Dante's "Divine Comedy". In this novel, Mischa Berlinski is the journalist, living in Thailand, who stumbles upon the story of the dead woman anthropologist, who spent the past few years living in the Thai prison in Chiang Mai.

So, this one comes out interesting. I wonder how it would end.



(Leafy Stairs, from my Letchworth Park Series)

The Big Read

I suppose this is a post that is 5 years late. Back in 2003, the BBC conducted a survey about the most favorite books in Britain. Here are the top 200 books that made it to the list. I am listing them all, and the ones I have read are in boldface.

1. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
7. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
18. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
20. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling
23. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling
24. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling
25. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
26. Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch by George Eliot
28. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
29. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
31. The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
35. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion by Jane Austen
39. Dune by Frank Herbert
40. Emma by Jane Austen
41. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
42. Watership Down by Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm by George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
48. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
53. The Stand by Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
56. The BFG by Roald Dahl
57. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
60. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
61. Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
63. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
65. Mort by Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
67. The Magus by John Fowles
68. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
69. Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Perfume by Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda by Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
77. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses by James Joyce
79. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
80. Double Act by Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits by Roald Dahl
82. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
83. Holes by Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
85. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel by Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
89. Magician by Raymond E. Feist
90. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather by Mario Puzo
92. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
93. The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine by Anya Seton
96. Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer
97. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls in Love by Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
101. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
102. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach by Alex Garland
104. Dracula by Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc by Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
109. The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game by Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls by Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
119. Shōgun by James Clavell
120. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose by Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
124. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
128. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt
130. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
132. Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
133. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
134. George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
137. Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan
139. Girls in Tears by Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers by Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
144. It by Stephen King
145. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile by Stephen King
147. Papillon by Henri Charrière
148. Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett
149. Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
150. Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music by Terry Pratchett
152. Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement by Ian McEwan
155. Secrets by Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
158. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
159. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
162. River God by Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
165. The World According to Garp by John Irving
166. Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late by Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches by Roald Dahl
170. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
171. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
172. They Used to Play on Grass by Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
174. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
175. Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby by Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl
178. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
179. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
181. The Suitcase Kid by Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
183. The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner by George Eliot
185. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
186. Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith
187. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
188. Goosebumps by R. L. Stine
189. Heidi by Johanna Spyri
190. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
192. Man and Boy by Tony Parsons
193. The Truth by Terry Pratchett
194. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
198. The Once and Future King by T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
200. Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews

17 titles. Not bad.



(Forest Path, from my Letchworth Park Series)

Enduring Love

There are a few times in which one would feel warm and fuzzy after undertaking a certain activity. I suppose reading a romantic book would be one of them.

So I finished reading Beginner's Greek by James Collins. This is, according to the imprint page, a novel about married people, adultery, and New York City. Basically, it is about a guy who falls in love with the woman he sat with on a plane from New York to Los Angeles. He gets the phone number, but he loses it. Idiot, I know. Years later, he sees the woman again, but is unfortunately married to his best friend.

Now, I know what you are thinking. No, they do not commit adultery. But their partners do. See, Peter, upon seeing that Holly (the girl from the plane) is already not available, decided to get married to Charlotte. However, it turns out that Peter doesn't really love Charlotte, and Charlotte doesn't really love Peter. Sometime in the book, Charlotte runs away with another guy. And Jonathan, who is Holly's husband, haves different affairs with different women, but gets struck by lightning and dies.

I do not want to say exactly what happens to Peter and Holly in the end, but I ended up smiling and happy. It can be a good romantic comedy. I suppose it is a perfect illustration as to how the human heart can be lacking in reason.

I have read some people complaining about this book, saying that it is soap opera material, but I have to say, the way it is written, it has full of wit and I believe totally describes how romance in our society is handled out.

So I returned that to the library, and then picked up this other book that has been sitting on my shelf. Entitled In the Hand of Dante, this has a different tone to it. According to the imprint page, it is about Dante Alighieri, manuscripts, collectors, New York, Sicily, criminals, and theft. Looks like a historical suspense novel. I will of course review it after I am done.




(Gorge and Mist, from my Letchworth Park Series)

Revolutionary

Time for my book review entry. I just finished reading My Revolutions by UK writer Hari Kunzru. It was a very impressive read, I suppose.

The story is about a person, who was basically a terrorist. It is written non-linearly, with multiple storylines in multiple times written interwoven together. So one deals with his childhood, another deals with his time with the terrorist organization in London in the 1960s, and another deals with the present, where he has a family and adopted child, trying to live a normal life until his past haunts him back.

I suppose I like Kunzru's writing style, which I first encountered when I read one of his other books last year. He writes in a very engaging style, and while it does not have to do with the level of suspense there is between every chapter, I suppose it just has something to do with the smooth way it transitions from one timeline to another.

So I returned that book back to the library, and instead picked up another one, this time by James Collins, entitled Beginner's Greek, and I am liking it. It starts with a guy on a plane, and he dreams that he will fall in love while in the plane, and somehow it begins to be true. The title page says that it is about couples, adultery, and New York. We'll see what happens.



(Mesmerized, from my Letchworth Park Series)

Controlled Chaos

So, I finished the book that I was reading for the past month. I suppose I slowed down in my book reading rate, due to the fact that I was busy traveling, taking pictures, and so on. But now, I am back here in Buffalo, and so my brain needs some fodder again.

I picked up my previous book in a bookstore in Copenhagen, and started reading it there. I had the intent of leaving it whenever I would finish it, but it happened that I wasn't able to finish it until yesterday. So, upon finishing it, I replaced it in my bookshelf. My bookshelf is occupied by academic books for the most part, but it has some fiction as well, mostly those which I bought during exceptional cases, like this one, since most of the time, I just go to the library and borrow a tome.

So, this book was about the son of a dice-player. Apparently, there was a cult of dice-people, living randomly, based on the decisions of the dice. Now this book was designed to be humorous, but sometimes I find it drab, especially the beginning part. Perhaps that was the reason why I took a month to finish it. Anyway, the main character is a Wall Street trader whose father is the bizarre founder of the dice cult. He goes on searching for his father, and loses his sense of order. In the end, he finds his father.

Very bizarre.

Anyway, so that was over. And now I started reading on a novel by Hari Kunzru, entitled My Revolutions. I suppose I picked this one up because I had a great time reading another of his novels about a year ago, when I picked up Transmission, of which I reviewed here. I am sure that this book doesn't have the comic feel that the other one had, but from the few pages that I read yesterday, I had a feeling that I would enjoy this one, even though it had a more serious tone to it than the first one.

So there. I better get back to working on my paper revisions.



(Pensive, from my Letchworth Park Series)

Hunting for Mermaids and Herring Buffets

First things first. I changed my time settings to Central European Summer Time while I am here. That meant that the time posts for my previous entries are messed up, shifted six hours ahead. But that also meant that when I finish writing a post, it would be published immediately, and not six hours later. I was just annoyed with it and couldn't deal with it anymore. Ok, on to the real entry for the day.

I find it rather bizarre to not be reading a book. The last time I was reading something was on my way here, I was reading a Stephen King novel. And when I finished it, I simply left it on my hotel in Helsingør. Anyway, I got myself a new book today, but I will explain about that later.

Today was my second day in Copenhagen. They say that Copenhagen is an expensive city, but there are ways to circumvent that. Case in point: yesterday I visited the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek for free, since it was a Sunday. And today, I made an itinerary that didn't involve an entrance fee at all.

So, I woke up, had breakfast in the hotel, and headed out around 9:30 AM. I woke up earlier than that but most of the attractions of the city open up at 10:00 AM, so there was no point in going out earlier.

Anyway, today, I headed northeast from my hotel, with the Little Mermaid statue as my destination. First, I reached Statsholmen, which is the seat of government of Denmark. The main feature of this is Christiansborg Slot, which houses the Parliament.



This is the building. It has some ruins underneath it, which I wanted to visit today, but I arrived about fifteen minutes before it opened, so I got distracted and went somewhere else. I continued walking northeast instead. So I bumped into the stock exchange building, the Børsen, which is seen below.



After that, I found myself inside Holmens Kirke, which is the church where Queen Margrethe II took her marriage vows. It was a beautiful church, full of intricate carvings inside. Take a look at this detail of the side pulpit.



After that, I walked further and found myself crossing the canal at Nyhavn, the district where you can find colorful houses lined next to each other. I will be here later on for lunch, but in the meantime, I went further and walked next to the waterfront, until I found the statue. Here she is.



Then, I went back southwest, and entered the Marmorkirken, which is a huge marble church imposing against the Amalienborg Palace. After taking pictures inside the church, I went back to the palace courtyard to watch the changing of the guards. Here is one of the shots I took.



I wonder how heavy that head-thingy is.

Afterwards, I went back to Nyhavn, and found this Lonely Planet-recommended restaurant, which offered a herring buffet. There were ten different dishes featuring herring, and I tried each one of them. Some were sweet, some were salty, some were just right. I downed them with dark Carlsberg beer. Of course, after all, I am in Denmark, why wouldn't I try Danish beer?

After lunch, I slowed down, and went to the Botanisk Have, which is another green area in the city. The thing I notice with Copenhagen is that there are plenty of greenery around. And people like spending time in them.

After taking some photos, I found a Danish bookstore with English books. Since I wasn't reading anything, I bought a book entitled The Search for the Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart. It looks exciting, so I will let you know how that would turn out. After all, I have a four-hour connection in Brussels this Wednesday, and I need company.

How to Reheat a Baby

It is sometimes funny thinking about the metaphors that I use whenever I talk about my qualifying paper. Well yes, I have finally decided a few months ago that I would personify my qualifying paper into a baby, as outlined here (By the way, I just found it ironic that in that post, I was talking about being a father-to-be and yet, the accompanying picture was depicting a tomb. How opposite is that?).

And so yes, Magnus has been born for quite a while now, and he was reincarnated once. It is time to chop him up, and reincarnate him one more time. I have my second draft here with me, and I am fixing it. The good thing though is that the issues that I have to fix are more presentational, rather than content-related. That is a good thing. It means that the revision isn't as hard as the first one. All I need to do is stir a little, microwave a little, reheat a little, and voila!

So there, hopefully, within a few days, I can churn out a new version of Magnus.

Time for my book review one more time. I just finished reading this novel by Tod Wodicka. In short, I hated it. It was a complete waste of my time. The only reason I read through it was because I never stop reading a book halfway. But, the book was awful. The main character is a demented old man with a rather disfigured nose, and yes, that nose plays quite constantly in the story. This man seems to be time-warped, well, he believes that he still is in the medieval period. He wears old clothes, acts old, and talks old. Because of that, he alienates his family. The main conflict basically arises from that aspect.

If I were his family, I would have committed him to a mental asylum. Because that is what he is, crazy. He has a number of loose screws in his head. And using medieval logic as an excuse for drunkenness is just plain pathetic (Apparently, people back in the Middle Ages only drunk alcoholic beverages because water was dangerous to drink.). So yeah, you got this demented alcoholic, who acts like a child, even though he is past retirement age.

So there, I returned it to the library, and now I am starting on this new book, by Stephen King. Wow, it has been a while since I last read a book by this guy. The last time I read one was back in August of last year, when I read about fatal cellphones.

So now, I am reading Dreamcatcher. I remember seeing the movie, but the DVD was pirated, and the quality was bad, so I didn't persevere in watching it. Fine, I did not see the movie. Well, that doesn't matter since from my past experiences, Stephen King is better consumed as a book and not as a movie anyway. So this will be the book that I suppose, am taking with me during my trip to Denmark. And the good thing is, I don't even have to return it here, since I got this one in a used-books bookstore almost a year ago. If I am done, then goodbye! Hopefully this is a good one.



(Water Flowing, from my Watkins Glen Series)

Are You Psychologically Real?

So, what happened today? Well, there are still a number of things that I dealt with starting with the morning.

First, I landed in Sao Paulo, Brazil and booked a ticket to Santiago, Chile. Then, upon arriving, I caught the plane to Lima, Peru, to which, as of this hour, I am airborne.

Oops, I guess I am mixing fantasy with reality. I am indeed an airline geek. I have this online virtual flying game that I sometimes play. Anyway, back to reality, psychological reality.

I just came back from the lab after running a participant for an experiment. Wow, I guess my activity in the Psychology Department is increasing slowly more and more by the hour. My records are now there, since I am now legally able to run experiments, having performed the educational requirements by the Institutional Review Board.

I guess this has something to do again with my "rebellion" from the linguistics of my undergraduate years. See, the thing with linguistics is that sometimes, their theories may not be aligned with what really exists. There is this thing called language, and the linguists study it, and posit theories about it. But are these theories real? Do the structures that linguists posit actually exist in speakers' heads?

When I was an undergraduate, I learned about linguistic models, tree structures, and how speakers transform structures in their heads in real-time, in order to build the vast amount of sentence structures that exist in any language. However, are those transformation really real? Do the linguists have proof that those transformations actually exist in the human brain?

So there, I rebelled, went out and sought other flavors of linguistics. Now, I prefer the flavor of linguistics that does not isolate itself from other disciplines, and instead collaborate with other fields in their research. So for me part, I try to collaborate with psychology in my research. No wonder I decided to be an experimental linguist. So I measure things.

Anyway, enough of that, it may bore you, although I am not. So, let me do my periodical book review again. I finished The Egyptologist, which to my opinion, is one of the best books I have read recently. It is written in the epistolary form, where the bulk of the text is a collection of letters, cables, and diary entries. I like this form due to the fact that it leaves the task of piecing information together to the reader. And so since this was a detective story revolving around people scattered all over the world, from Sydney to Cairo to Boston to London, then it was the most brilliant choice of form. It is about an arrogant archaeologist and his exploits, partly historical, since the novel is set around the time the tomb of King Tut was discovered. Anyway, I do not want to reveal the whole thing, so I will leave it like this. But if you liked reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and Dracula by Bram Stoker, then I suppose you will like the guessing game of this novel.

So I returned that book, and started on this new one, All Shall Be Well, and All Shall Be Well, and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well by Tod Wodicka. Very long title, and so far, it begins rather interestingly. I will review this once I am done.

So there, ten days to go before I cross an ocean and head to a different land. I should finish this new novel before that, since I don't want to carry a borrowed book across the ocean and back.

Speaking of things being carried, it is funny that my second draft for my qualifying paper has been back and forth the Atlantic. Why? Because I gave it to my adviser to read while he was in Paris, and now that he is back, he gave it back to me, after meeting with him and discussing the additional revisions (which are not as much as the first draft), and then I will work on it, carrying it with me when I go to Denmark, and back. I'll be working on it within this week, while on the plane, and while over there.

So there, still busy, even if it is the middle of summer.



(Falling Water, from my Watkins Glen Series)