PC Reading List

I just got my copy of the most recent issue of The Three Penny Review. I haven’t started reading it yet (just because I am behind on my reading), but it looks like it will be a good one, as always.

What I like about The Three Penny Review is the mix of articles and poetry. It carries information on all sorts of cultural events — new releases of books, theatre, music, movies… you name it. It is filled with very thoughtful articles, and often has very good poetry too. If you’ve not seen a copy, you should have a look. It provids a couple of hours of good reading with each issue, and spawns a lot of good thought for weeks to come.

Give it a go, if you are the sort who likes reading that makes you think.

High Fidelity
This is a humorous blog. Each post is a top five list, like what you see in the movie and book High Fidelity.

My Acrostics
Most of the posts here are in the form of an acrostic. It’s a way of “loosening up” before doing my more serious writing.

Recommended Reading
What I’ve been reading and what I think of it. It’s very much like this blog I keep here. I’ve got yet one more version of this blog at Live Journal

showintale
This blog has gone through several changes. What I am doing with it now is mostly looking at fantasy, science fiction, and speculative fiction books, movies, and what have you.

Tech Reviews
This is the newest of my blogspot blogs. I use it to review bits of technology that I use on a daily basis.

doggerel indeed
I write each of these rhymes within 5 minutes. Like the acrostics blog, it is a way of getting loosened up for my “real” writing. It’s like the other blog I keep here, called lightverse, and another one, my lightverse at xanga blog. Obviously, I enjoy the rhymed poetry blogs.

I’m transferring some old blogs over to this site. This was originally posted here in January 2006.

In an earlier post, I made mention of the “poetics of the oppressed�” and its relation to The Da Vinci Code. I want to elaborate on this just a bit more.

It ties back, really, to the book’s self-representation. Throughout the story, we seem to be reading a championing of the oppressed, in this case the suppressed Sacred Feminine. Robert Langdon has apparently made a lifetime of study of the topic, and is a professor of symbology at Harvard, where he teaches the importance of the Sacred Feminine in archetypes and symbols which permeate human consciousness. According to the novel, it is in our greatest art where we find the Sacred Feminine alive and thriving, refusing to be suppressed by the powers that be — Peter’s legacy of dominion over Mary as it stands today in patriarchal structures (especially the Church).

So, here’s the question I ask. How much does The Da Vinci Code partake in a poetics of the oppressed? To what extent does it demonstrate for us the ways in which a text can speak for those whose voices have been suppressed throughout history?

To me, the novel doesn’t do much to partake in this endeavor it supposedly champions. While there is some subversion of the motif of the knight rescuing the damsel in distress (as demonstrated in Teabing failing in his role as knight), it is not significantly overturned. The book is still, largely a boy-saves-girl-from-danger story (i.e.,Langdon saves Sophie). It is just too formulaic — without any real poking at the boundaries of the formula — to have much to say for the suppressed and oppressed.

Perhaps it seems to much to ask of a popular novel, hoping it will play a more subversive role (as most more serious literature is almost expected to do). Surely we are not expecting Dan Brown to write a best seller that sounds like Sylvia Plath or Tony Harrison’s poems. And no, that really is not the point. But there are, here and there, “pop�” novels that do a pretty fair job of subverting the status quo. One of my favorites which does so is the series by Jasper Fforde beginning with The Eyre Affair. That is worth a read, if you like something that goes past standard formulas, and yet still remains light and entertaining reading.

By the way, have you ever wondered what a course in symbology might entail? Well, nothing, really, since there is no such thing. But here is a nice tongue-in-cheek look at what it might involve, if there were such a thing:

Symbology at Harvard

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I’m transferring some old blogs over to this site. This was originally posted here in January 2006.

One of the fun things about The Da Vinci Code is its play with ideas and people in history which seem to weave together a plausible theory (if not a plausible story). Brown’s choice of name for his character Jacques Sauniere is one of those fun little tidbits of information.

Berenger Sauniere lived in the late Nineteenth Century, and he plays an interesting role in the quest for the Grail, at least if you believe the Grail to be a collection of documents offering proof for Jesus and Mary’s subsequent generations.

In 1883, Sauniere was assigned at age 33 to the parish at Rennes-le-Chateau, where he promptly began efforts to restore the church there. In about 1886 or 1887, it appears that during his restoration works, he stumbled across a set of documents (contents of these documents remains a sort of vague mystery). His interest in the documents led him to spend a great deal of time investigating the church’s graveyard, where he eventually decoded something found on one of the tombstones (again, the details here are vague and mysterious). The breaking of this code led him to travel to Carcasonne, from which journey he returned and experienced a remarkable turnaround in his fortunes. Generally, it is thought that his finds and fortunes had some relation to a discovery of the Grail.

The linking of one of his characters to this historical figure through the use of naming is one of the things in The Da Vinci Code that makes the book fun. A good fiction writer is often conscious of such techniques for teasing his readers, and allowing those “in the know�” to feel they have shared a sort of inside joke with the novel. Besides the Sauniere connection, the book’s references to things like the Gnostic Gospels (as mentioned in earlier posts) and brief mentions of word etymologies give the reader a feeling that s/he is involved with a sort of clever game with the author — something, perhaps, very similar to the decoding game in which Sophie and Langdon engage.

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Much of the poetry that appears on the pages of the magazine is good, but not always memorable. Out of last year’s 12 issues, the one I most remember is Todd Boss’s poetry. It was very good, and sticks with me. There were others that I enjoyed in the moment I read them, but Boss is one of those that I have sought out, looking for other publications by him and hoping to find a book to purchase.

Not every entry will jump out at the reader like that, but the thing is… some will. For me, that is enough reason to keep reading the publication.

But, even more, each issue is always entertaining, and usually has at least one thing to make the reader really think. When added to the occasional really memorable poem or poet, that makes Poetry the magazine I keep coming back to.

But some of the material there at live journal has appeared on my other recommended reading blog at blogspot, and both take material from my main blog at writing up. believin at Writing Up has been the blog I have kept most extensively or in-depth. This place will not be quite as ambitious, in some ways. Instead, I will focus on offering something that is useful and insightful (which is better than what is at the previous incarnations of my recommended reading blogs), but not long-winded analysis (which believin often tends to get into). I’m almost considering those trial runs. I hope this one will be the real thing.