All I Know

Spring Reading Roundup

A few notes on the Spring’s reads:

Hold Still (Sally Mann)
When Hold Still was announced, I knew I would be reading it. I got my copy pretty much right away. I knew her as the photographer of some of the most arresting images of the late 20th century, and that they had become available very near explosion of the Internet, and created a stir. I was also tangentially aware of her method and some of her other works including Southern Landscapes and Proud Flesh.

I found out that Mann is intellectual with a capital I, embued with a vocabulary that left me scrambling for dictionary.com. The memoir has quite a lot to do with the condition of being Southern, messy family chemistry, death as a life theme. Mann is at her best when ruminating about the philosophical aspects of photography (although I’m not sure I concur); the discussions pop up among unrelated topics such as how not-really-an-Uncle Jerry took a mistress. Hold Still is generously augmented by pictures (imagine that), however at times they are so small that a feature from the picture discussed in the text is difficult to find in the graphic itself.

I did not find myself liking her as much as I’d hoped. Some of the tangents relayed for dozens of pages make me wonder who was editing.  Some of the topics I wanted to hear about were only briefly developed (fallout from the family pix, and/or her peculiar devotion to 18th century methods) or not mentioned at all (Larry’s illness). She’s given to some serious navel-gazing along and at times really works herself into a lather cultivating her rough-around-the-edges persona. I don’t know that photographs need always be intellectualized, especially at the expense of their aesthetic merit. In other words, I think you need a ton of indulgence for some of those landscapes. I think the emperor is often as naked as a jaybird.  Finally, some of facts she relays in Hold Still are different than what she said on the same topics a few years ago.

Still I am keeping it, and will read again, if for no other reason than to round up the rest of the vocabulary words. I did not start recording them until about halfway through on my initial reading.

The Goldfinch (Tartt)
At this writing, the Pulitzer prize-winning book has gone to trade paperback and has been the #1 bestseller there the last few weeks. I knew nothing about it when I opened it, and ended up enjoying it a lot. Noting that authors write about what they know, this author seems to know quite a lot about modern opiates. Also, she writes from the viewpoint of a male youth, very ably.

Wild (Strayed)
(Speaking of opiates…) Recommended. I liked the book better than the movie; it’s easier to understand the relationships.

Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro)
After a couple of people recommended the author, I grabbed up Never…, can’t remember why that one and not one of the others. I spent the first 70% or so percent of the book being annoyed with the fact that it is a mystery (not my genre of choice). Yes, I get that it is a device simulating what the kids experienced. Anyway, he writes well enough, but when it was all done I did not think the juice was worth the squeeze.

Gone Girl (Flynn) [in process]
So far I am not loving this the way everyone else does. Maybe it gets really good at the end.

The One Day Contract (Pitino)
I like Pitino well enough, and I like motivational books as well, so I gave this one a whirl. I spent the first half of it thinking about all the mean things I was going to say about when I wrote this review. I mean, the writing is truly awful a lot of the time. The content is trite blah-blah-blah a lot. However, every page or three is something worth putting to use, even if it is phrased poorly. About halfway through the book, you come to the title chapter. It then becomes clear that this is most of what he wanted to say, and it wasn’t enough for a book, so a lot of the content I objected to is just padding. I guess.

The book also serves as his platform for a mea culpa on some personal dalliance of which I was blissfully unaware prior, and a recap of his 2013 title run.

So there are some actionable nuggets and motivational drum-banging in here, but you have to sift to get to them. Not recommended for the impatient.

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