DAILY PHOTO: Blue Skies Over Budapest
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BOOK REVIEW: Night Mary by Rick Remender
Night Mary by Rick RemenderMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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In this graphic novel, the protagonist is a young woman, Mary, who is a talented lucid dreamer – i.e. being conscious in one’s dreams. While lucid dreaming is a real thing, the sci-fi “magic” of the story world is that, using an experimental medication in conjunction with skilled dreamers allows the lucid dreamer to observe and take part in the dreams of another person. Said experimental medication was developed by Mary’s father, who’s a bit of a shady “evil scientist” type, and he employs Mary as his lucid dreamer (even though she is still a high school student.)
The story is intense and provocative. Character development is good and we learn that Mary is dealing with her own mental health issues, presumably PTSD-like traumatization related to an automobile accident she was in with her mother, but she may have already been anxiety prone. Mary’s father is a complex character throughout. He’s cold and distant as a father and obsessive as a scientist, but not altogether dastardly. I enjoyed falling into the story and found it to be narratively taut. That said, it wasn’t with out some problems of pacing and villain monologuing around the climax.
The artwork by Kieron Dwyer succeeded in creating a visceral horror / surreal feel. Also, the use of different color palettes for the real world versus various dream worlds helps to clarify where one is, which is useful in a story that shifts between the real (waking) world and dream scenes.
If you enjoy stories set in dreams and the sci-fi of the unconscious mind, you may want to look into this one.
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BOOK REVIEW: Puella Mea by e.e. cummings
Puella Mea by E.E. CummingsMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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Free online at: Project Gutenberg
This is a single poem, Cummings’s longest, a love poem to his first wife. It’s a longform poem – at least by the standards of poets of the Modern era, though at less than 300 lines it’s far from epic in scale. It’s a beautiful love poem, favorably comparing the wife in question to Helen of Troy, Medea (from “Jason and the Argonauts,”) Guinevere, and other historic beauties.
It’s a highly readable poem; its short lines pack a lot of punch, and while Cummings writes in free verse, he’s not afraid to drop a rhyme or play with the texture of meter to give his lines an appealing sound quality.
The edition I read included art from Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and Kurt Roesch. It’s definitely worth checking out this edition, particularly if you enjoy Modern and Surreal art.
I’d highly recommend this for poetry readers.
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Snow Birds [Haiku]
Beautiful Scum [Tanka]
the algae pond - dappled with leafy fractals, patterns shift. what moves: water or branch? or, perhaps, just my mind
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DAILY PHOTO: Rocky Kanyakumari
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Soulless Voyager [Free Verse]
I am the soulless voyager cut loose from the dock in a rudderless craft Kicked this way and that by angry winds that greet all flat surfaces, and -- having met a surface -- pushes it away with maximum effort Where will my ghost ship take to land? After all, every voyage must end -- be it purposeless or purposeful A craft can only circle (having been caught in the currents) for so long before it's whipped off into sand or rock or some unlikely port That's the great mystery, the mystery by which life is made worthy of living one never knows whether one will be tossed to a port or a rocky shoal, a shoal whose rocks will rip open the ship, like a deer dressed by a poor hunter, being torn at jagged angles so as to be unworthy to be called a ship or boat or even "thing that floats," becoming a rusty structure, resting at an odd angle near the shore but maybe this ghost ship will be tossed roughly against the rubber bumpers of a dock, coming to rest such that what remains can be offloaded
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DAILY PHOTO: Yellow Cosmos
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The Thoreau Life [Common Meter]
What a way to live one's life, in a cabin made of wood; never to be governed by: "I have to! I must! I should!" To set one's sights on the day's needs as one's only master, and not be told, "you move too slow, you must live life faster." To start the day by a cue from rays of the rising sun. To end the day when the day ends, not only just've begun.
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BOOK REVIEW: Humour: A Very Short Introduction by Noël Carroll
Humour: A Very Short Introduction by Noël CarrollMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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As both Mark Twain and E.B. White made abundantly clear, humor is like a frog; dissection kills it and few are interested in watching that happen. Which isn’t to say that dissection isn’t useful. But it does mean that readers who are looking for a book that’s a laugh-riot are looking in the wrong place. Most of the example jokes were ancient when the book was first published eight years ago. (They’re good jokes. Bad jokes don’t become old jokes, they die ignominiously.) All that aside, this book provides an intriguing look into such questions as: 1.) why do we find things humorous in the first place? (We take humor for granted, but – think about it – there’s no rationale for things being funny that automatically springs to mind;) 2.) how, if at all, does humor relate to our broader emotional experience; and 3.) when, if ever, is humor unethical?
This concise guide has three parts. In the first part, we learn the various theories of humor, and learn that the author favors Incongruity Theory (i.e. humor is – first and foremost – a recognition of and response to incongruities.) In the second, the author discusses the debate over whether humor is an emotional experience, or something else. Finally, we learn about the value of humor and, in particular, the ethics of humor. There’s a continuum from those who believe that humor – in and of itself – is always ethical to those who think that it’s virtually always unethical (unless one can find a joke without a butt,) with many nuanced variations, in between.
I found this to be an intriguing guide to the philosophy and psychology of humor, and – if that’s what you’re in search of – you should check it out.
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Tiger Riding for Beginners 