The Swallow... listening for E.T.

It's about to happen in real life...

http://www.exploratorium.edu/tv/index.php?project=104&program=1497

Italo Calvino Offers 14 Reasons We Should Read the Classics

http://www.openculture.com/2014/08/italo-calvino-offers-14-reasons-we-should-read-the-classics.html

Curryfest

For those who wanted to know, this is the curry mix I used:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0057GYP2G/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_3?pf_rd_p=1944687562&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000FL3Z3S&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=055MM1WDPM6VJWQ3A7T8

And this is the bear that doug wants to fight:

Thousand Cranes Meeting

If you'd like to carpool, meet at my place at 7pm.

Come hungry, cuz Joe is bringing his Dutch oven for dessert, and I'm bringing Japanese curry.

If you're driving yourself, go up provo canyon, take the Nunn's park turnoff. You immediately come to a 4 way stop where if you turn right it takes you to the bridal veil parking lot, if you turn left you go under the highway. Don't take either turn, just go straight. Keep going past bridal veil falls on that street. Before the street meets back with the highway, you'll see another parking lot on your right for upper falls picnic area. We'll be there.

Gentlemen,

Is there any way we can meet either next Tuesday or Thursday?

Gracias.

18 Books Ernest Hemingway wished he could read again for the first time

18 (Free) Books Ernest Hemingway Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time

in Literature | September 6th, 2013 19 Comments

In the 1930s, Ernest Hemingway wrote a series of short pieces for Esquire magazine called the “Key West Letters.” One of those pieces, the 1935 “Remembering Shooting-Flying” has an interesting premise—Hemingway claims that remembering and writing about shooting are more pleasurable than shooting itself. Or at least that he’d rather remember shooting pheasant than actually shoot clay pigeons. In the next paragraph, this nostalgia for good shooting gets tied up with good books, such that the essay betrays its true desire—to be a meditation on reading. Before he catches himself and gets back on topic, Hemingway launches into a long parenthetical:

I would rather read again for the first time Anna Karenina, Far Away and Long Ago, Buddenbrooks, Wuthering Heights, Madame Bovary, War and Peace, A Sportsman’s Sketches, The Brothers Karamazov, Hail and Farewell, Huckleberry Finn, Winesburg, Ohio, La Reine Margot, La Maison Tellier, Le Rouge et le Noire, La Chartreuse de Parme, Dubliners, Yeat’s Autobiographies and a few others than have an assured income of a million dollars a year.

Is this hyperbole? Literary bluster? The genuine desire to encounter again “for the first time” the literature that transformed and widened his world? Maybe all of the above. Better to stay home and remember the greats—write about them and hope for a time when they’re new again—than to fill one’s time with mediocre and forgettable books. At least that seems to be his argument. And while I’m sure you have your own lists (feel free to add them to the comments section below!), some of you may wish to take a shot at Hemingway’s and savor those works that for him overshadowed nearly every other. To that end, we’ve compiled a list of the books he names, with links to online texts and audio, where available. Enjoy them for the first time, or read (and listen) to them once again. And remember that the texts are permanently housed in our collections of Free Book Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (eBook—Audio Book)
Far Away and Long Ago by W.H. Hudson (eBook—Audio Book)
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (eBook)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (eBook—Audio Book)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (eBook—Audio Book)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (eBook—Audio Book)
A Sportsman’s Sketches by Ivan Turgenev (eBook)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (eBook—Audio Book)
Hail and Farewell by George Moore (eBook)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (eBook—Audio Book)
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (eBook—Audio)
Queen Margot by Alexandre Dumas (eBook)
La Maison Tellier by Guy de Maupassant (eBook)
The Red and the Black by Stendhal (eBook—Audio Book)
La Chartreuse de Parme by Stendhal (eBook)
Dubliners by James Joyce (eBook—Audio Book)
Reveries over Childhood and Youth by William Butler Yeats (eBook)
The Trembling of the Veil by William Butler Yeats (eBook)

Original Link: http://www.openculture.com/2013/09/18-books-ernest-hemingway-wished-he-could-read-again-for-the-first-time.html

Tolstoy's favorite books

http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/leo-tolstoy-creates-a-list-of-the-50-books-that-influenced-him-most-1891.html

War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich — many of us have felt the influence, to the good or the ill of our own reading and writing, of Leo Tolstoy. But whose influence did Leo Tolstoy feel the most? As luck would have it, we can give you chapter and verse on this, since the novelist drew up just such a list in 1891, which would have put him at age 63. A Russian publisher had asked 2,000 professors, scholars, artists, and men of letters, public figures, and other luminaries to name the books important to them, and Tolstoy responded with this list divided into five ages of man, with their actual degree of influence (“enormous,” “v. great,” or merely “great”) noted. It comes as something of a rarity, up to now only available transcribed in a post at Northampton, Massachusetts’ Valley Advocate:

WORKS WHICH MADE AN IMPRESSION

Childhood to the age of 14 or so

The story of Joseph from the Bible - Enormous

Tales from The Thousand and One Nights: the 40 Thieves, Prince Qam-al-Zaman - Great

The Little Black Hen by Pogorelsky - V. great

Russian byliny: Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets, Alyosha Popovich. Folk Tales - Enormous

Puskin’s poems: Napoleon - Great

Age 14 to 20

Matthew’s Gospel: Sermon on the Mount – Enormous

Sterne’s Sentimental Journey – V. great

Rousseau Confessions - Enormous

Emile - Enormous

Nouvelle Héloise - V. great

Pushkin’s Yevgeny Onegin - V. great

Schiller’s Die Räuber - V. great

Gogol’s Overcoat, The Two Ivans, Nevsky Prospect - Great

“Viy” [a story by Gogol] – Enormous

Dead Souls - V. great

Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches - V. great

Druzhinin’s Polinka Sachs - V. great

Grigorovich’s The Hapless Anton - V. great

Dickens’ David Copperfield - Enormous

Lermontov’s A Hero for our Time, Taman - V. great

Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico - Great

Age 20 to 35

Goethe. Hermann and Dorothea - V. great

Victor Hugo. Notre Dame de Paris - V. great

Tyutchev’s poems – Great

Koltsov’s poems – Great

The Odyssey and The Iliad (read in Russian) – Great

Fet’s poems – Great

Plato’s Phaedo and Symposium (in Cousin’s translation) – Great

Age 35 to 50

The Odyssey and The Iliad (in Greek) – V. great

The byliny - V. great

Victor Hugo. Les Misérables - Enormous

Xenophon’s Anabasis - V. great

Mrs. [Henry] Wood. Novels – Great

George Eliot. Novels – Great

Trollope, Novels – Great

Age 50 to 63

All the Gospels in Greek – Enormous

Book of Genesis (in Hebrew) – V. great

Henry George. Progress and Poverty - V. great

[Theodore] Parker. Discourse on religious subject – Great

[Frederick William] Robertson’s sermons – Great

Feuerbach (I forget the title; work on Christianity) [“The Essence of Christianity”] – Great

Pascal’s Pensées - Enormous

Epictetus – Enormous

Confucius and Mencius – V. great

On the Buddha. Well-known Frenchman (I forget) [“Lalita Vistara”] – Enormous

Lao-Tzu. Julien [S. Julien, French translator] – Enormous

Thursday night meeting - Hedgehog

Even though it's summertime, let's go back to our cold-weather confines at Joe's Gourmet Grill. I have to make an appearance at a Church meeting so if you don't mind let's start at 8 p.m.

If I can "host" again in October, it would be great to go up in the canyon so I can cook a dutch oven meal for you guys. Just not in the cards this week for me to pull that off.

Scott's Nominations

Half Way To Heaven - Mark Obmascik

Familyhood - Paul Reiser

In A Sunburned Country - Bill Bryson

Raising Steam - Terry Pratchett

William Shakespeare's Star Wars

Bone - Jeff Smith

Behold, my 6 offers:

1. The Choice by Russell Roberts
2. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
3. 100 Años de Soledad by Gabriel García Márquez
4. The Night Stalker by Phillip Carlo
5. Life on the Mississipi by Mark Twain
6. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by F.D.

Joe's Nominations

As far from a theme as you could possibly get. Good luck!

The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Hellhound on his Trail
Marathon Man
Washington: A Life
A Guide to Being Born
The Last Place on Earth

Kristian's Nominations

Here we go:

Amis, Lucky Jim
Bolano, The Savage Detectives
Bradbury, The History Man
Cather, The Professor's House
Martinez, The Oxford Murders
Williams, Stoner

Steve's Nominations (Round Tres)

There's nothing thematic going on here. Just some books I'd like to read. Also, I swear I made this list before I saw Brandon's (Kawabata must be in the air).

Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance, Kenneth Silverman
The Undertaking: Life Studies from a Dismal Trade, Thomas Lynch
Marcovaldo, or Seasons in the City, Italo Calvino
Palm-of-the-Hand Stories, Yusanari Kawabata
Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
Railsea, China Mieville

Next Round of Nominations

Sorry to have missed some of you last night. Hope your feeling better now, Joe, after huffing those paint fumes all night. And we'll just have to wait and see if Steve gets a letter from the Stake President soon regarding some very troubling remarks he made about the Boy Scout organization.

Time for everyone to nominate books for the next round. I already posted a few options.

And welcome to our newest member, Kristian Heal. We'd love to see what reading suggestions you have.

And Doug! You're going to nominate something this time, right? That way you can guarantee the provo library has it on tape.

Anyway, I'm excited for another batch of good stuff to read for the next few months.

Brandon's Nominations Round 3

The Last Samurai by Mark Ravina
Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe
Underground by Haruki Murakami
Sanshiro by Natsume Soseki
A Modern History of Japan by Andrew Gordon

Steve's Nominations (for June?)

I think I'm due to nominate.

These are all books about travel and adventure of one sort or another. Some boats, some planes, some wandering on foot.

Island of the Lost, Joan Druett

N by E, Rockwell Kent

In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin

West with the Night, Beryl Markham

Wind, Sand, and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell

My Next Nominees....Better Late Than Never

Here are my next suggestions. They are all books I have not yet read by writers I enjoy. I tried to think of some creative theme, but nothing jumped out at me so I went for this approach.....again.

To Have And Have Not - Ernest Hemingway
One of the few Hemingway titles I have not read. I haven't read any Hemingway for awhile, so I figured why not.

The Comedians - Graeme Greene
Thought this one could be very interesting, though I cannot think of a time when I have found Greene to be uninteresting.

The Trumpet-Major - Thomas Hardy
This is the only Hardy novel I have never read. I only recently bought a copy. I don't think it will be quite like Jude The Obscure for those of you who remember that one.

Cakes And Ale - W. Somerset Maugham
I have not read any Maugham for a very long time. I discovered his books while at BYU and read quite a few in a short period of time.

The Great Train Robbery - Michael Crichton
One of Crichton's early novels. Crichton always seems to be good for a bit of escapism.

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
An early novel by Stephenson. I have read many of his novels and have enjoyed all of them, especially Quicksilver, The System of the World, and The Confusion (known collectively as the Baroque Cycle), as well as Anathem. He tends to write long novels, but this one is more manageable.

Brandon's Nominations - Round 2

I wrote the following entry before we read the sparrow, but I still like it so I'm going with it.

As our book club name and roster implies, we've lately been reading a lot of books by, about, and for the dudes.

Time for some variety, I say. Time, in fact, to read a book written by, and starring, a woman. Here are my nominees:

Housekeeping by Marylinne Robinson
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Rebecca by Daphne Dumaurier
Sula by Toni Morrison
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

New round of nominations

Excited to see the gang again on Thursday night. Here are some options to consider for whichever month falls to me:

Hellhound on His Trail
The Rent Collector
The Shipping News
The Princess Bride
The Last Battle

Last attempt failed. Trying again.

Ready to eat and talk The Sparrow? How's next week looking for all of us? Maybe Thursday (1/16) at 7:00.

The Sparrow

Hey Gents,
Who's ready to get some grub and talk about The Sparrow? I know I am.

Alternate plan: get some grub and not talk about The Sparrow.

Would next week work for everyone? Maybe Thursday at 7:00.