"Lotus Moon" by Rengetsu *****

• Poetry
• Japanese author, a Buddhist nun, born in 1791
• This translated collection was originally published in 1994
• #7 in "The Journey Series"
• Introduction by John Stevens:
• p.9..."Rengetsu was born in the pleasure quarters of Kyoto in 1791, the illegitimate offspring of a high-ranking samurai and a young geisha."....pleasure quarters....
• p.11..."...she once likened herself to 'a drifting cloud blown by a fierce wind.'"
• p.14..."A reader  'waka' is also expected to augment the sentiments expressed in a poem with his or her own experiences."
• Afterword:  Hermitage Heart by Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei:
• "Rengetsu lived what could have easily become a tragic life."
• p.120...."One pleasure of discovering the lives and teachings of the rare women we find in the history f Buddhism is seeing how they take up the tragedies in their lives and transform them.  They remind us of the freedom that no circumstance can take from us.."
• p.123..."At dawn she sees snow blanketing the hills and knows that there must have been a fierce storm in the night.  She kindles the fire.  In its thusness, it is just thus."
• Notes:
• produced 50,000 pieces of art
• an artist, a Buddhist practitioner, and an emancipated woman
• p.35..."Am I a man dreaming I am a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I am a man?"
• Review:  Oh!  How incredibly lovely!  This is a collection of "waka",  a form of Japanese poetry, written by a Buddhist nun named Rengetsu.  The poems are organized by season and are stunning!  The Introduction and Afterword are excellent accompaniments in terms of the biography of the poet and the offering of insights into Buddhist practice and symbolism.  This is a collection which I will keep close at hand to enjoy throughout the year.

"Small: Life and Death on the Front Lines of Pediatric Surgery" by Catherine Musemeche, M.D. *****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Non-Fiction
• US author
• Originally published 2014
• Epigraph:
• "conch
  
  Hold a baby to your ear, As you would a shell: Sounds of centuries you hear, New centuries foretell.
  Who can break a baby's code? And which is the older--, The listener or his small load? The held or the holder?"
  
  ---E.B.White
• Quotes:
• p.3..."There is no such thing as a routine operation in a baby."
• p.66..."Whether a patient's demise is predictable, expected, or unavoidable, losing a patient is personal to a surgeon.  He has reached inside his patient's body, manipulated those human organs, and made changes that last a lifetime.  Surgeon and patient are forever linked by the outcome of such an intimate endeavor: both of them must live with the consequences."
• p.68..."Adult human lungs measure ten to fourteen inches in height and four to six inches across, about the size of a baseball glove.  Within the two spongy masses are a total of 300 to 500 million alveoli within 750 square feet of compressed surface area, the size of one side of a tennis court."....Absolutely amazing!
• Review:  From the perspective a a lay person who has long been fascinated by all things medical, this was an absolutely fascinating read.  I have taken for granted the notion of the existence of such a thing as a pediatric surgeon, yet had no idea that it is a relatively recent development, in fact, still coming into it's own.  The book presents case studies which in and of themselves are amazing, but the cases serve as the platform to the truly engrossing brief history of pediatric surgery, the differences between a child's body and an adult's (significantly more than just size}, the hurdles in the way of creating instruments and devices for use in these tiny bodies, the ethics and politics in this field of endeavor, and above all, the heroic ingenuity, courage, and determination of the innovators in this field.  This is a book which is definitely accessible to the lay person and it is also a riveting education for anyone who is interested in the medical aspects of fetuses, preemies, and children in general.  Excellent read! 

"A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking ***

• Book Club selection for January 2015
• English author
• Originally published in 1987
• Review:  Let's just get this part out of the way.  I am the epitome of the lay person when it comes to physics.  I could understand the book's introduction, general statements, and conclusion.  That's about it.  So, for what it's worth, my take away is that humans continue to be driven to make meaning of their existence and scientists do so by trying to find absolutes.  

"The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell *****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Originally published in 2014
• English author
• 1984
• Miner's strike...socialist movement
• Holly Sykes.....Ed Brubeck
• Daymares...Miss Constantin
• Dr Marinus/Horologists  v.  Pfenniger/Anchorites
• Rhymes
• Esther Little, 
• "asylum"..  hide in a body
• Vocabulary:
• coracle:  a small, round, or very broad boat made of wickerwork or interwoven laths covered with a waterproof layer of animal skin, canvas, tar covered or oiled cloth, or the like: used in Wales, Ireland, and parts of western England.
• Cathar: (in medieval Europe) a member of any of several rigorously ascetic Christian sects maintaining a dualistic theology.
• psychosoteric:  created by author
• epiphyte:  a plant that grows above the ground supported non-parasitically by another plant or object, deriving its nutrients from rain, air, dust....from air
• chatoyant:   reflecting a single streak of light when cut in a cabochon.
• Quotes:
• p34..."What if...what if Heaven is real, but only in moments?  Like a glass of water on a hot day when your dying of thirst, r when someone's nice to you for no reason, or...".
• p.41...."Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices."
• p.52..."Life's a matter of Who Dares Wins."
• p.58..."....his voice is like the wind swerving through a weird day."....referring to Bob Dylan
• p.100..."Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed.  Power is a visitor to,, not a possession of, those it empowers.  The mad tend to crave it, many of the sane crave it, but the wise worry about its long term side effects.  Power is crack cocaine for your ego and battery acid for your soul.........The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields an bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral."....Immaculee Constantin
• p.126..."You, Hugo.....are a sordid, low-budget French film.  The sort you'd stumble across on TV at night.  You know you'll regret it in the morning but you keep watching anyway."....LOL...Holly to Hugo Lamb
• p.135..."...for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good."
• p.150..."Love is the anesthetic applied by Nature to extract babies."
• p.151..."Love wants love in return, and I right, Olly?  Like drugs, the highs look divine, and I envy the users.  But when the side-effects kick in --jealousy, the rages, grief, I think count me out.  Elizabethans equated romantic love with insanity.  Buddhists view it as a brat throwing a tantrum at the picnic of the calm mind."
• p.157..."here's the truth:  who is spared love is spared grief
• p.161..."Racial differences I'be always found to have an aphrodisiac effect on me, but class difference is sexuality's Berlin Wall."....Hugo
• p.263..."A journalist marries the news, Seymour.  She's capricious, cruel and jealous.  She demands you follow her to wherever on Earth life is cheapest, where she'll stay a day or two, then jet off.  You, your safety, your family are nothing."...Ed Brubeck
• p.325..."I riff on notions of the soul as a karmic report card; as a spiritual memory-stick in search of a corporeal hard-drive; and as a placebo we generate to cure our dread of mortality."
• p.387..."Adverbs are cholesterol in the veins of prose.".....LOL
• p.427..."One cannot cross the same river twice."...i like that
• p.565..."There's a link between bigotry and bad spelling.  I've met it before."
• p.565..."...if you could reason with religious people, there wouldn't be any religiou people."
• p.597..."Civilization's like the economy, or Tinkerbell:  If people stop believing it's real, it dies."
• Notes:
• References to Orwell's "Animal Farm"
• Horologists/Atemporals refer to the body as "bone clocks", when the body dies they go to "the dusk" for 49 days then "awake" in a child's body (p.449)
• Anchorites move into another's body and do not physically age, "a girl who lived like a hermit in a cell, but in the wall of a church.  a living human sacrifice, in a way."(p.436), they fuel their atemporality on engifted souls
• The two groups are referred to as Carnivores and Herbivores
• Capitalism metaphors
• Iceland fares well post "Endarkenment"........connection to "enlightenment"?
• Doubt is the chink in the armor of the Anchorites....to beat them one must take advantage of it
• Anchorites stay at twelve......disciples?
• Frequent use of the phrase "it is Scripted"....like Jews..."It is written"...lending a statement weight.....fatalism?
• Anchorites...all white...racist white power
• Review:  David Mitchell has done it again.  He has written a cross-genre, mind-twisting, thought-provoking novel.  Mitchell's use of language is marvelous.  His characters, particularly the protagonist, Holly Sykes, and Marinus are vividly memorable.  The plot is complex and multi-layered and then winds down into a singularly profound statement about the power of the will to survive and continuity over time.  Meanwhile, Mitchell is somehow also able to make clear and pointed statements about the state of our social-political irresponsibility, our climate busting, Dark Ages inducing behavior as a species and the soul destroying properties of power. If that isn't enough, this is just a gripping story full of mystery, imagination, and plot twists. Outstanding! Moral of the story?  "Civilization's like the economy, or Tinkerbell:  If people stop believing it's real, it dies."

Link to 2015 Reading Journal

my2015readingjournal.blogspot.com

"Blood Memory" by Greg Iles ****

◆  Audiobook
◆  Originally published in 2005
◆  German author

Review:  Greg Iles definitely knows how to tell a multi-layered story very well.  As is often true with his novels, the protagonist becomes a vehicle for the exploration of a human experience via the examination of its psychological, social, and physical perspectives.  Iles has demonstrated the consistent ability to describe the macro and micro of complex issues, in this case incest/sexual abuse.  Set in New Orleans, the protagonist moves from confusion to complicity to clarity in a manner that strikes this reader as realistic and very human.  Nice twists and turns as well, which are de rigeur for a good serial killer mystery.

"The Time Regulation Institute" by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar *****

• Book Club selection for November 2014
• Turkish author
• Originally published in translation in 2014
• Originally published in 1962
• Author lived from 1901-1962, going through the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the secularized, Western style society envisioned by Ataturk.
• Review:  An absolutely brilliant satire of capitalism and bureaucracy set during the transition period in Istanbul under the rule of Ataturk. The forced adoption of Western priorities did not sit too well with traditionalists of Istanbul and this novel is one of the results! I laughed out loud multiple times reading this.  The writing is somewhere in the vicinity of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Just imagine all the time lost by adding up the minutes misplaced by clocks set to the wrong time?  I know...mind boggling......right?  Well some bureaucrat at the Time Regulation Institute figured it out.  Way too funny!