My 2000-2005 Booklog Page 1/70
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13.3.2009 My 2000-2005 Booklog page 1/70 Year Month Title Author Language Title in English trans. from Genre Editor pages rating John Cowper The Overlook 2000 Jan. A Glastonbury Romance english / - novel 1120 10 Powys Press La Grèce archaïque d'Homer à Ancient Greece from history of 2000 Jan. Claude Mossé french / Points Histoire 165 **** Eschyle Homer to Aeschylus civilizations essay 2000 Feb. L'écriture poétique chinoise François Cheng french Chinese poetry / essais Points 281 **** (literature) 2000 March Men of Mathematics E.T. Bell english / - maths Simon & Schuster 580 ***** 2000 March Bach: une vie Davitt Moroney french Bach: A Life / biography Actes Sud 208 *** Great Ideas of Modern 2000 March Jagjit Singh english / - maths Dover Publications 306 *** Mathematics The Atom Up Against The 2000 March L'Atome au pied du mur Etienne Klein french / physics Le Pommier 154 **** Wall Intellectual Terrorism essay Le Terrorism intellectuel de 1945 2000 March Jean Sévilla french from 1945 to the Current / (current Perrin 257 *** à nos jours Day events) 2000 April Bel-Ami Guy de Maupassant french Bel-Ami / novel la Guilde du Livre 316 8 13.3.2009 My 2000-2005 Booklog page 2/70 Comments What a way to start the new century off! This is a big, towering novel that left me stunned with its scope and ambition and above all the force of its magnificent prose. Set in the ancient numinous ("suggesting the presence of a divinity") town of Glastonbury with its venerable ruins and aura of mystery and memories of pagan beliefs, Powys creates, in this story of conflict between the spiritual and the material (the central figure is preparing a Passion Play as part of a plan to restore Glastonbury to its former position as one of the great spiritual centres of the world, while an industrial magnate plans for for industrialization and modernization of the the city), a timeless epic enfolding the distant and mysterious past - the Celts and pre-Celts, the Romans and the immemorial Grail of Glastonbury and its newer Christian significance - with the passions of the present and the portents of the future to build a work of cosmic proportions Powys is one of the greatest masters ever of the English language: his full, rich, smoothly flowing, expressive and inventive prose makes every page a delight to read, particularly the tremendously effective and vibrantly alive dialogues (often in the vernacular of the south-west of England) and the quite amazingly beautiful and intense descriptive passages, and he has a way of placing people in a large, very large perspective, as if we were viewing them and their actions and thoughts through an instantaneous telescope from a far-off planet, that constantly reinforces the dimensions of the work in the reader's mind. A treat is in store for those who have not yet had the pleasure and excitement of reading this very special novel. I just can't find anything to begin to criticize in this extraordinary book! A useful and eye-opening detailed account of the events and evolution of ancient Greek civilization and culture in the period that led up to the seemingly-miraculous Golden Century of ancient Greece, the 5th Century BC, by one of the best-known academic specialists in the field, who just happens to be able to write in the most elegant and readable way. An interesting analysis of the rules and aesthetic principles governing the very ancient art of Chinese poetry, which was already a long-established and absolutely major discipline in the time of Confucius (6th Century BC), by a distinguished French poet, painter, and writer of Chinese origin, member of the Académie Française. Not easy going though, as the rules are complex and subtle to the extreme, albeit essential to a proper appreciation of the infinite beauties of classical Chinese poetry, and the numerous examples studied and the explanations of the different forms and approaches are quite bewildering at first read, so much pondering and rereading is required to get the most out of this exceptionally rich study. I was delighted to find that this quite remarkable book, that I had been enthralled by when I first read it in a pocket-book edition as a young man and which has been out of print for years, has justly acquired the status of a classic and has been republished in the USA in a handy, nicely-printed one-volume edition, thus enabling me to savour anew this engaging account of some of the most brilliant intellectual achievements in the history of mankind. Written for the layman in everyday language by one of the leading American mathematicians of the first part of the past century, this is a lively, very readable account of the (often bizarre and unusual) lives and (marvellous) discoveries of the greatest mathematicians from antiquity through to the beginning of the 20th Century: Zeno, Archimedes, Descartes, Fermat, Pascal, Newton, Leibniz, the Bernoullis, Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, Monge, Gauss, Cauchy, Lobatchevsky, Abel, Hamilton, Galois, Sylvester, Boole, Riemann, Poincaré, Cantor and half a dozen other giants. Written for those like me who have forgotten everything they ever learned about maths at school, the (very brilliant, natch) author takes you effortlessly through the thought processes involved (often astoundingly simple and almost always breathtakingly beautiful, in the way a surprising solution to a chess problem can be aesthetically beautiful) to an appreciation of the significance of the achievements of these great minds. A short, too short really, account of the life of this musical giant and the circumstances in which he wrote his major works. This universal genius, who was recognized throughout his life as a master had to work like a nignog all his life producing works now considered to be universal masterpieces on an assembly-line basis to earn his daily bread and to hold onto his job. Think of the way popular "musicians" are treated today in comparison! But then in 300 years time their "works" will be forgotten while people will continue to listen to and be inspired by and to revere those of the creator of The Passions, the Cello Suites, the Chaconne and many other eternal masterpieces. This was hard slogging and definitely needs a careful reread. Still, it was stimulating to have a glimpse into what has been going on in the higher spheres for the past many decades. A good, enticing introduction to the magical world of quantum mechanics. A virulent attack on political correctness in France from the bad old days of the fifties when the French PC and Stalin called the shots up to the present day, in the pamphleteering tradition of the politically engaged French press. Not very academic or sedate in tone but lively reading, even if a bit too right-wingish for my tastes - but then, should one only read prose that conforms with one's own way of looking at the world, one's Weltanschauung? One of the only two novels that Maupassant wrote, this hard-hitting account of the rise and fall of a handsome, dashing, talented, cynical and very egotistical journalist working and womanizing his way up the social ladder with brutal determination is written in the straightforward, tell-it-as-it-is style that makes his short stories so impressively stark and powerful and which contributes effectively to the emotional and social power of this realistic drama that somehow captured a certain self-aggrandizing and mercantile spirit of our modern times. This man could write! 13.3.2009 My 2000-2005 Booklog page 3/70 Year Month Title Author Language Title in English trans. from Genre Editor pages rating 2000 April Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse french Steppenwolf german novel le Livre de poche 195 7 Trésor de la nouvelle de la Anthology of French 2000 April littérature française t. 1 anthologie french Short Stories: 17th-19th / short stories Les Belles Lettres 231 ***** - XVII-XIXe siècles Centuries Trésor de la nouvelle de la Anthology of French 2000 May littérature française t. 2 anthologie french Short Stories: 19th / short stories Les Belles Lettres 242 ***** - XIXe siècle Century Les Editions de 2000 May Je m'en vais Jean Echenoz french I'm Leaving / novel 253 6 Minuit 2000 May Phèdre Racine french Phedre / theater Librio poche 91 ***** essay Jean-François 2000 May La Grande Parade french The Big Parade / (current Plon 343 **** Revel events) 2000 May l'Ecole des femmes Molière french The School for Women / theater le Livre de poche 190 **** Stay Living and other 2000 May Rester vivant et autres textes Michel Houellebecq french / short stories Librio poche 93 *** stories 2000 May The Irish Civil War Helen Litton english / - history Wolfhound 135 **** 2000 June Journal d'un vieux fou Junichiro Tanizaki french Diary of a Mad Old Man japanese novel Folio 222 8 2000 June Night Train Martin Amis english / - novel Vintage 149 6 2000 June Heavy Water and other stories Martin Amis english / - short stories Vintage 231 *** Mr. Barrett's Secret and other 2000 June Kingsley Amis english / - short stories Penguin 185 **** stories 13.3.2009 My 2000-2005 Booklog page 4/70 Comments Although I have always liked what I have read by the great German-Swiss writer I was not as interested by this famous book as I was expecting to be, finding it much calmer and staider than I was expecting. I suppose that the spiritual and intellectual implications of his prose passed way over my down-to-earth positivist Anglo-Saxon head. As indicated by the title this is a treasure-store of a number of the most celebrated French short stories from the 17th Century (Scarron, La Fontaine) and 18th Centuries (Voltaire, Diderot) through to the glorious 19th Century.