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Jim Al-Khalili "Quantum: A Guide For The Perplexed" (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)




Reading books like this just makes you realize how smart and creative theoretical physicists are, and I am intelligent enough to understand the main gist of the book. He really, really tries to make this stuff understandable. He used examples and used pictures, and didn't use sophisticated language either.


I did come away with incredible admiration for folks who actually do understand this stuff and can apply it to real world applications because this is the most counterintuitive thing you will ever come across.

Another very strange thing about this book is that some of the concepts are so counter to reason that it really casts doubt in my mind on my own atheistic beliefs which are seriously derived from reason and rationale thought.

Quantum physics really seems to highlight the limits of our understanding while simultaneously showing how brilliant we are. We can create predictive mathematical formulas that WORK under all sorts of experimental conditions. But we don't know why they work.

All in all, hats off to the author for even attempting to bring this subject down to layperson's terms.
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Gavin Maxwell "Ring of Bright Water" (Penguin)



Originally published in 1959, Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell is a delightful memoir about the author’s life at a remote house on the coast of Western Scotland near the Hebrides. His descriptions of the location and the bountiful nature he was surrounded by had this reader longing to visit this idyllic place. When he first arrived he was accompanied by his dog, Jonnie, but after the death of his beloved pet, he acquired an otter named Mijbil while on a trip to Iraq.

The author documents Mijbil’s delightful and mischievous behaviour, and many of the hilarious incidents reminded me of trying to contain a toddler. His curiosity was boundless and he had a need to examine everything that came his way. Unfortunately, Mijbil met an untimely death and the author was devastated. Although he tried to replace Mijbil, nothing seemed to pan out for him until quite by accident he met a couple who had a young otter that they needed to find a home for. Once again his highland cottage was sanctuary to an otter, this time a female called Edal.

The author’s love of nature brings a richness to the descriptive writing, and his visual images and observations make Ring of Bright Water a memorable read. Although in today’s world the author would be chided for bring these creatures out of their own environment, he was living in a different time and his love and care for these otter companions is both touching and admirable.

Malcolm Arnold 9

Sep. 23rd, 2025 06:09 pm
jazzy_dave: (Default)
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Malcolm Arnold
Symphony no.9
National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland/Andrew Penny





Arnold is probably better known for his film scores such as Bridge on the River Kwai,but his 9th symphony is his crowning achievement in my opinion. Composed in the eighties, this is his crowning glory with a heart aching lento in the fourth movement. The movement is bleak and intense, spare and grief stricken, like a gigantic funeral march but with a radiant resolution at the end. Without that final chord, the surrender to nihilism and despair would be total
Awesome..

Arnold: Symphony No. 9, 4th Movement



ENJOY
jazzy_dave: (bookish)
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Anita Brookner "Hotel du Lac" (Penguin)





"Hotel Du Lac" is primarily a character study… not just of this story’s cast, but of the narrator herself.

Visualize a small hotel located in a remote but picturesque village on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. One that is quiet even during the prime vacation season. Hotel du Lac maintains a reserved, quaint, yet formal atmosphere. Imagine traveling alone to such a place to escape a disaster you recently created at home. Here, you find yourself to be one a half-dozen guests left on the premises following the summer season. These simple circumstances provide the basis for Brookner’s story, and to make the minimal plot more interesting, she provides a narrator who is a well-known author of romantic fiction writing under a pen name. Her true identity is kept a well-preserved secret.

Anita Brookner’s writing style is captivating and the plot is intriguing. In the story, the narrator is compared to Virginia Wolfe, and Anita Brookner truly does have a similar way of story-telling. She is very good at drawing out details in a way that paints a complete picture. But there are several negative factors that detracted from "Hotel du Lac" being a perfect novel.

The story takes place in a vacuum of time. Based on some trivial details like descriptions of the clothing and the fact that television has been invented, it appears to take place in the 1950s… though the way it is presented makes it more like a story from the Victorian Era. The characters exhibit strangely unrealistic formal behavior and extremely rigid manners, creating an aura of surreal existence.

Also, the entire story is based on the narrator’s observations and her analysis of the other guests at the hotel. This presents a problem for the reader because the novelist is shy, introverted, non-committal, indecisive, and according to the other guests, plain and mousy. She has no social skills. She quickly draws conclusions about the other guests and shares her thoughts with the reader. As the story progresses, she admits that writers are either known for being remarkably wise, or remarkably naïve- with no real personal experience. And it becomes apparent that the narrator’s judgement of people is jaundiced by her own lack of personal experience and lack of mature wisdom.

Personally, I was tired of the narrator’s critical assessments and harsh judgement of the other guests. I became bored and would gladly have abandoned her for the company of those she shunned. But Anita Brookner had other plans. The reader is stuck with this drab and boring woman right to the bitter end.

The conclusion is both anti-climactic and annoying because this incognito author really believes life is like the romance novels she pens. Moreover, right up to the final scene she is so tentative and wary she cannot assert herself.

Anita Brookner illustrates exceptional character development. It’s just too bad the character was not more likable.

Album Of The Day

Sep. 20th, 2025 09:29 pm
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This is a classic prog rock alobum from 1969. Its 40th annoversary edition is just awesome. CD and DVD double in a slipcase style.

King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crrimson King

In The Court Of The Crimson King - An Observation By King Crimson, Primary, 1 of 19
In The Court Of The Crimson King - An Observation By King Crimson, Secondary, 2 of 19
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John Boyne "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" (Definitions)




I reread The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas before starting All the Broken Places and it had an even greater impact on me second time round.

The stark contrast between Auschwitz seen through the eyes of a naïve, 9-year-old forced to leave the luxury of his 5-storey home in Berlin when his father is promoted to the rank of camp commandant and the vivid images stamped on my mind from newsreels showing the liberation of the camps and the horrors of the atrocities committed there, from documentaries about the holocaust and the final solution and from interviews with survivors made this book a chilling and compelling read.

When Bruno innocently ponders why the hordes of passengers being forced to board an already packed train on the opposite platform can’t just cross over and join him on his empty train going in the same direction, I pictured the grim reality with a sick feeling in my stomach.

The characters are all really well drawn: the repetition of phrases, mispronunciation of key words and gripes over the lack of playmates, lessons and The Hopeless Case perfectly portray Bruno as a self-preoccupied and privileged young boy while the depiction of his new friend Schmuel on the other side of the fence is simply heart-breaking. The coldness and cruelty emanating from Lieutenant Kurt Kotler send shivers down the spine while Mother’s medicinal sherry and Father’s iron fist create a real impression of home life.

For a relatively short book The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas packs a powerful punch and poses many questions for adult and younger readers alike. A harrowing and haunting work of fiction, a tense and atmospheric read and a unique perspective on this unforgettable period in history.
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Jacqueline Harpman "I Who Have Never Known Men" (Vintage)



For years, 39 women and 1 younger girl have lived in an underground bunker in a cage. Patrolling guards are their only contact with the outside world, and at this point they despair of ever escaping, resigned to death in prison. Most of the women can remember their former lives, but the younger girl remembers nothing but the cage. But one day, a mysterious siren goes off just as the guards are opening the hatch to deliver them food, and after the guards disappear, the women are able to escape. But will they find freedom outside of the bunker?

This is a bleak dystopian novel that is less about what happens to its characters and more about the human spirit in the face of despair. The writing is beautiful, and every word is tense. My only complaint was that I desperately wanted to know more, to understand why and how, but Harpman does not answer these questions and leaves them to her protagonist and the reader to ponder.
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Terry Eagleton "After Theory" (Penguin)





When the very foundations of your civilisation are literally under fire, however, pragmatism in the theoretical sense of the word seems altogether too lightweight, a laid-back response.

After Theory begins as an intellectual history and concludes as a cautionary tale. Unfortunately, in between there is a messy didactic midriff where Eagleton labours to define Truth and Morality. Such an exploration undercuts the wonderful narrative of the opening chapters, where Eagleton paints with tremendous skill and never avoids landing a quick jab:

The most avant-garde cultural journal of the period, the French literary organ Tel Quel, discovered an ephemeral alternative to Stalinism in Maoism. This is rather like finding an alternative to heroin in crack cocaine.

and

Fate pushed Roland Barthes under a Parisian laundry van, and afflicted Michel Foucault with Aids. . .It seemed that God was not a structuralist.

Eagleton weaves his history of Theory and points out that its time has now passed. It thrived from 1965-80 and compares these fifteen years with the rupture of High Modernism from 1910-1925. He argues that Barthes, Derrida and others were the Joyce and Schoenberg of this later, messier time. He also notes how most of the Theory Gang were left-leaning, if not further radicalised. The proximity to May '68 isn't really confronted subsequently, nor the spot of bother which was both the Cultural Revolution as well as the Islamic Revolution of Iran 1979, the latter of which proved to be a pickle for Foucault. I suppose this is picking battles, but such remains distracting, especially given the strange turn the book takes to epistemology and ethics, which comprise chapters 4-7, nearly half of the text. Slightly flawed perhaps, but still a recommended read.
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Raymond Williams "The Long Revolution"(Pelican)




I've become very interested in critical theory recently, especially in the areas of Marxist Criticism and Cultural Studies. I've been reading some of the primary texts of these movements in an effort to understand where they are coming from and how they can be used in literary criticism and beyond. So far I have finished several short excerpts and essays as well as two books, including The Long Revolution by Raymond Williams. While all of this reading has been truly enlightening, The Long Revolution has stood out to me as one of the most interesting and mindblowing pieces of nonfiction I have ever read.

In this book, Williams sets out to describe the state of literature, democracy, education, and culture in England, how it got there, and where it's going. He does so by tracing the history of various institutions, including public education, the popular press, and standard English, and showing how they have become what they are. Using many (somewhat exhausting) pages of facts and statistics as evidence, Williams comes to stunning and revolutionary conclusions. I was absolutely blown away by his ideas because they seemed so right and felt so honest.

First, Williams sets down definitions for important terms that he will be using for the rest of the books. These terms have so many uses in casual speech that he defines the way he wants the reader to understand them in the context of his book. He defines what it means to be creative, and shows how all people create to some degree in their everyday lives. He also defines culture, not just as art and clothes and the lie, but as structures of feeling, the way people thought and felt about things, the general sense of what it was like to live in a time. Once those definitions are complete, he shows the various ways that an individual can relate to society as a whole, and the different ideas of what it means to be individualistic verses social. His great gift is subtlety, and he can show all the important social reasons why individualism became the dominant idea of how people relate to society while also showing how pure individualism has failed society and is now being reevaluated by a new generation of people. The chapters Individuals and Societies and Images of Society and the end of Part 1 left me literally speechless. It's Williams's balance and fairness, his reliance on research, his refusal to be pedantic or dogmatic, that makes this book so refreshing and so effective.

So often, when we talk about culture we blame low quality arts, be they books, movies, or music, on the masses, as if the working class were inherently less intelligent than the rich or entitled. Williams doesn't just argue against that, he shows with real evidence that much of that classist thinking goes against the actual history of these institutions. He shows, for instance, that the relatively low state of the popular press (magazines and newspapers) today is not, as many people think, the fault of the poor taste of the masses, but instead that the popular press has been affected by changes in printing, distribution, taxation, advertising, and consolidation of ownership more than anything else. The glut of sensational tabloids is sold just as much to the rich as to the poor, and the changes in newspaper styles and distributions are independent of education reforms that taught more of the working class to read. The proliferation of low-quality books, movies, music, and newspapers, he argues, is not the fault of the inherent bad taste of the masses, but a side-effect of the ownership of these cultural institutions by speculators who are only interested in making money. Quality artists, interested in furthering the art form, cannot compete with the scale of distribution that the large companies produce. The problem, it seems, is not that people are inherently stupid or that the lower classes have inherently bad taste, but that our current system of capitalism makes our cultural institutions into a matter of speculation and profit. Anyone who is interested in independent publishing should absolutely read Part 3, Britain in the 1960s, which looks at the publishing industry in a way I've never seen before.

Williams writes in a style that is easy to read and understand. Although there are some slow sections where he is setting down definitions or charting history using facts and figures, his conclusions are always strong and flow naturally from his research. The book is older, published in 1961, so I'm sure it has mistakes and is outdated in some places, but most of it still reads as being contemporary and relevant. His structure is perfect, his writing is incredibly readable, and his ideas are engaging. I don't know that I have ever enjoyed academic writing so much, and I thoroughly intend to read more of his books very soon.
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