Monthly Archives: May 2010

Armchair BEA: Highlighting a few blasts from the past

Posted on May 25, 2010 by unfinishedperson | 12 Comments

In lieu of going to Book Expo America this week, a group of book bloggers has opted to have their own BEA from home. I am one of those bloggers. To find others, click on the button at left.

To kick off my own Armchair BEA-related posts this week, I thought I’d take a suggestion from the list of BEA-related post topics and suggestions called “Blast from the Past” and focus on some books (and authors) that most likely aren’t being featured at the BEA conference in New York.

Christie and Westlake

I have to start with the usual suspects here on my blog: the works of Agatha Christie and Donald E. Westlake, especially his John Dortmunder series. As some of you who have been here previously might know, I am participating in the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge and my own personal challenge to read all 14 novels (plus a dozen short stories) in Westlake’s series about the bungling burglar, John Dortmunder. I’ve been a fan of Christie since — it seems like — forever, when my mother introduced me to her works when I was a teenager. As for Westlake, I’m a Johnny-come-lately to the party, thanks to my brother-in-law, Warren, who introduced me to Westlake. Since being introduced to him, Westlake is fast becoming my favorite writer. I can’t get enough of him.

For a sample chapter of one of his novels, Memory, a non-Dortmunder novel, and only recently published, click here.

Random books off my bookshelf

I thought I’d share a few other favorite classics chosen at random from my bookshelf.

Fiction

Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe (click for my review of it)

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (a review I found online by Saul Bellow)

Non-fiction

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (excerpts of the book via the PBS series The Question of God)

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O’Connor, edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (a review from Joyce Carol Oates)

Poetry

Ariel by Sylvia Plath (Plath reading one of my favorites from the collection, “Daddy”)

All of Us: The Collected Poems by Raymond Carver (a sampling of his poems from a site called “Heroes of Poetry”)

Brief Introduction (for those of you who may not know me): I am unfinishedperson, one-time author of the now-defunct blog Just A (Reading) Fool. All those posts are merged here, with most of them found under the category of “Books.” Since moving my blog here, I’ve begun a series called Midweek Review where I look back on my reading during the week, sometimes including a book review or other thoughts on readings. I’m still in the process (an ongoing one) to organize my book reviews by author and title to make it easier for readers to find them, but in the meantime, I hope you’ll stop by anyway and leave a comment.

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Posted in Books, Mind

Tagged Armchair BEA, Books

I’ve seen all good people turn their heads…and cough?

Posted on May 24, 2010 by unfinishedperson | 7 Comments

What is it with the progressive rock group Yes and misheard or incomprehensible lyrics?

I don’t know, but here I am writing about the band again after writing first discussing the band and one of its lyrics that my wife misheard back in June of 2008 with the song, “Roundabout.”

Today’s song is “I’ve Seen All Good People,” and not necessarily misheard lyrics, but heard and still wondering what I heard.

A couple of weeks, I was listening to our local classic rock station (yes, we have one and it plays the same damned songs over and over) when I heard the song, one of the five dozen songs it has in its rotation.

To refresh your memory on this classic piece of crap, here you go:

I’ve seen all good people turn their heads each day
so satisfied I’m on my way.
I’ve seen all good people turn their heads each day
so satisfied I’m on my way.

This is how the song begins and how it ends. Is the dude who wrote the song a doctor? Did he mean to say “I’ve seen all good men turn their heads each day (and cough) so satisfied I’m on my way”? He must have a pretty good practice where he doesn’t ever hear anything bad in those coughs.

The song doesn’t get any less muddy after those first lines either:

Take a straight and stronger course to the corner of your life.
Make the white queen run so fast she hasn’t got time to make you a wife.

The foof? What about the black queen? And what if the white king or black king want to make you their bitch, then what?

Let’s continue and see if we can make sense of this:

‘Cause it’s time, it’s time in time with your time and its news is captured
For the queen to use.
Move me on to any black square,
Use me any time you want,
Just remember that the goal
Is for us to capture all we want, (move me on), yea,yea,yea,yea,yea (to any black square)

Don’t surround yourself with yourself,
Move on back two squares,
Send an instant karma to me,
Initial it with loving care yourself.

I get that somehow there’s a chess metaphor here, but “Initial instant karma with loving care” ? And how do you capture instant karma to put your initials on it? Hmmmm?

Yes doesn’t provide the answers. In fact, after these next couple of lines:

‘Cause it’s time, it’s time in time with your time and its news is captured
For the queen to use.

The band just descends to repeating what we were thinking the whole time:

Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didda. Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit…

And keeps repeating different portions of the song on what could have been an endless loop until after almost seven minutes, somebody finally called the whole thing off — thank God!

____________

I did find a site called SongMeanings, where users tried to fathom the lyrics.

Among my favorite comments is this one:

I was really hooked on this song a couple of weeks ago, and I was talking to my dad about music in general and he brought up this song as well. He said he used to get real drunk and drive home listening to this, and he’d always wait until it finished before he got out the car and went to bed, and that would complete the night for him. It’s truly a beautiful song, and will be etched upon my memory as long as it has been on my dad’s

The emphasis is mine.

If his dad had been so drunk, how could he even remember the song? And I’m surprised his dad is still alive after driving drunk all those times.

My last favorite comment on that page is:

I heard that Jon Anderson wrote this song after having an acid trip about life being like a game of chess.

Maybe if I took some acid, I’d understand it. Maybe this weekend.

Sort of like you have to smoke a lot of weed to understand Pink Floyd’s The Wall movie. Got it.

Cooooool, baby. Cool.

I’ll get back to you after this weekend, dudes and dudettes.

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Posted in Music, Unfinished rambling

Tagged humor, I've Seen All Good People, Music, Yes

Sherlock Holmes at 93, Dortmunder in ’85 and me in 010 (TSS)

Posted on May 23, 2010 by unfinishedperson | 2 Comments

Looking ahead to today

For this week’s Sunday Salon (click on the badge at left to be taken to the site to see what it’s all about), I plan on continuing to read A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin, which I picked up at the library on Friday. When I saw it on the shelf as I was shelf-reading, I was just going to add it to my listography list of books “found” while shelf-reading. Then I decided with already 85 books in that list, and a less and less likely chance that I’ll get to even a quarter of them, I thought to myself, “Why not just pick it up now and read it?” So far, I’m glad I’m did — and I just learned this morning that the book is being made into a movie scheduled to be released next year.

In short, the book is about a retired Sherlock Holmes, at the age of 93 in 1947, living in a Sussex farmhouse and his struggles with memory, including an old case and a recent trip to postwar Japan.

Also today, I might continue reading Good Behavior by Donald E. Westlake, the sixth novel involving burglar and, more often than not, bungler John Dortmunder. This is all dependent on whether or not I end up taking my regular Sunday afternoon nap, which all signs today, especially with a cloudy, rainy day scheduled, point toward a very good probability of happening.

If I can finish the Cullin book, which I believe I should be able to do so today, maybe even this morning before Mass, I might get to moving a bookshelf from our living room into our office. What has necessitated this is our cat, who likes, for some reason, to knock books off aforementioned bookshelf. Another bookshelf we have in our living room is in disarray, in part due to our cat knocking books off there too.

Finally later today, my wife and I have been invited to a picnic and a movie with a friend. The movie is Amélie.

Looking back at this week, this month

Earlier this week, I reviewed my reading so far this month and have revised my reading plans for the next few months as a result. I also reviewed Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie, my lone entry in this month’s Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Carnival, sponsored by fellow Sunday Saloner Kerrie from Mysteries in Paradise. However, 10 other contributors, including Kerrie herself, had 29 other posts for the carnival, which I encourage to peruse at your leisure, perhaps today even.

I will leave you with the trailer for Amélie.