Compulsively Aimless

Good Reads Review of Zone One   Zone One, Colson Whitehead I admit I discovered this book because of the current pandemic situation we’re living in and while there are some eerie parallels in Colson whitehead’s zone one to COVID-19, this book is much bigger than that. Whitehead uses this dystopian environment to refocus on how we view everyday activities when it’s taken away from us. There are periods of dark humor but also great moments for reflection. One of the biggest enjoyment in reading this book for me was Whitehead's poetic use of language. He is a true master of vocabulary and poetic images. A fascinating and enjoyable read that is hard to put down.

Today's list is a short, obscure but mildly amusing group: reference books.   The Flag Book by Preben Kannik (M. Borrow s & Co. 1959) .   Beautifully laid out color flags of the countries of the world as it existed in 1959.  Includes country heraldic flags, military flags, and ceremonial flags.  Purchased from the Berlin Heights, Ohio Library book sale. American Place-Names, George R. Stewart (Oxford University Press, 1970).  You will learn from this concise and selective dictionary for the continental U.S. that Apponagansett Bay, Apponaug, RI and Appoquinimink, DE and PA are Alqonquian meaning "uncertain." Or that Zoar, Ohio was named by a German religious sect, which considered it a name for a city of refuge since Lot fled for refuge from Sodom to Zoar.   There are 550 pages of amusements here. Bought at the State Department used book store.  It contains a brief inscription, "Thought you'd like this...Eberhard."...

Henry Allen has deftly told you his family story and perhaps your family story as well. Where We Live is a concise string of pictures painted about childhood homes, the home of his grandparents, his father's Navy Ship from WWII, his college dorm, and summer homes. His descriptions of time and memories put into words the thoughts and feelings you may have had about had associated with family and places lived. I had to pause after reading his essay on summer homes. It truly caused me to put the book down and pause and think about these summer places where all of our good memories reside but seem so fleeting. A book that will enhance your own view of where you've lived. 

Difficult for me to add much as a reviewer but it is a fascinating glimpse into an aristocratic family and the Victorian-era childhood of Sir Osbert Sitwell. For a reader in 2020, the high style of the writing can be almost as challenging as Shakespearian verse to move through. Long, meandering sentences with colons, semi-colons, dashes, and ellipses, and loaded with vocabulary so rich, you might feel like you're coming down with verbal gout. Sir Sitwell is highly perceptive of nature, his family history, and the artistic scene at the time. The final chapter of the book focuses on a family portrait painted by John Singer Sargent. The portrait was a sign of status for the parents but the childhood glimpse of the great artist by a young Osbert and his sister Edith influenced them later in life to become artists in their own right. I'll have to let this one sit for a while before I decide on whether I have the stamina to read the other five volumes. In any case, I'm...

During the last week of December, my family and I traveled to Barcelona and Madrid. Before we went, I took a look around my library to collect what existing books I had about Spain. It was an irregular assortment. Most of them turned out to be my father's.  My parents traveled to Europe in 1970 and each picked a country: my mother picked England and my father picked Spain. Here's my limited assortment.  Spain , Jan Morris (Oxford University Press, 1979).  Morris provides a concise biography of the country through selective samples of people and places.  By the end, he's given a flavorful portrait of the country. Picked up at the State Department used book store. Spain , Nikos Kazantzakis, (Simon and Schuster 1963).  Divided into two parts, it is a very different book from Jan Morris's.  Kazantzakis writes portraits of Spanish cities through people he meets in his travels.  The second part of the book presents Spain through the eyes of Don ...

  Peter Matthiessen writes with at a level above most travel writers, or most writers period. In his quest to find the rare and elusive Snow Leopard in the Himalayas, he takes us on the physical journey but also weaves in a second journey of the spiritual. Matthiessen was also a former CIA officer, naturalist, zen teacher, and co-founder of the Paris Review. His observations on time and spirit of place are enough to make the reader seriously contemplate conversion to the zen way. His developed zen sensibility makes for insightful observations of time written in almost a prose-poetry. A critic once asked Beethoven to explain one of his pieces and Beethoven simply sat down and played the piece for him. Likewise, there are elements of Matthiessen that are better shown than explained. Here are a few favorites: "Wind flows snow from the pristine points that glisten in the light and there are magic colors in the clouds that sail across the peaks on high blue journeys....

The flag is wool with forty-eight stars, and forty feet by twenty feet.  There’s a color picture from 1920 of my grandmother under the flag hung vertically waiving a slight breeze from a limestone archway.  My grandmother was posed at the entrance of her family home, the residence of her father, Dr. John Tennyson Haynes, the Commandant of the Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Home of Sandusky, Ohio.  Even though the picture is a moment frozen in time, the flag waves with one corner of its stripes—one senses the air and flag wafting about my grandmother. The flag linked generations. My great grandfather was the son of Dr. Moses Haynes who had served in the Civil War as an army surgeon for the 69th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. John Haynes had followed in his father’s footsteps and become an Army doctor who was appointed at the turn of the 20th Century to manage the Soldiers and Sailors Home. The Soldiers and Sailors Home was a type of Veterans Affairs hospital established for veterans ...