I was looking for a break from all the fiction I’ve been reading, and I happened to find a book on the shelf at work. It Called How The Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill. Actually, the title is longer than that, but everyone seems to know about this book so I’ll leave off typing the (very long) subtitle. Well, I’m not really fully convinced that the Irish “saved civilization” so far, and I’m two-thirds of the way through, but I suppose Cahill might nab me by the end. I doubt it, but it’s possible. Still, what I am enjoying …

There was a time when I would have thought that anyone would agree that being a literate person is a good thing—literacy, by which mean more than a mere ability to read, I also mean a decent knowledge of what has been written, at the very least by significant writers in the world (however one defines that). But since leaving University, I have discovered that, no, in fact, most people don’t think that waY at all. I should have seen it before; while one of my two siblings shares my bookish interest and some of my reading habits, most of …

Last post for the day: via Adrienne, a little gem I’m so glad I remembered to download and check out. It’s a prayer I can relate to and understand, a wonderful little MP3 from Neil Gaiman’s new CD, Telling Tales. Gaiman’s a better reader than I imagined from his interviews on the old TV SF show I used to watched in Canada, the name of which I cannot remember. Anyway, the MP3 is definitely worth a listen, especially for the end.

Tuesday, sitting in the natural beauty of Deokjin Park, I finished reading the first of the graphic novels I plan on reading this month: The Watchmen. (Next, I think, is Paul a un travail d’ete by Michel Rabagliati, so worry not, Jean-Louis… I just wanted to start with something relatively easy, ie. something in English.) In any case, I’d heard a lot about The Watchmen, and vaguely recalled the department did my undergrad English degree using it as one of the works of literature that was studied in the freshman lit class (though not in my freshman lit class, unfortunately). …

Prospect Magazine a worthwhile piece about Graham Greene written by Julian Evans; Greene is a novelist whose work is fairly available at the library where I work. Thanks to that fact plus the fact that my friend John Wendel sings Greene’s praises highly, I’m planning on reading what I can, while I can.

I was reading this article about Walter Ong, who I knew only a little about, and I found this fascinating quotation at the end: The spoken word, as we have seen, is primary, and yet from the start it was destined—or, in another way, doomed—to be supplemented with all the devices and even gadgetry which have reduced it more and more to space. The predicament of the human word is the predicament of man himself. Its very flowering bears within itself evidence of its own limitations and eventual transmutation. The evolution of the media of communication, with the continuous psychological reorganization which …

While I was in Canada, I took the chance to pick up work by several poets whose work I enjoy, as well as the latest works by people I know and whose work I like and respect. This includes two books of poetry by previous teachers I studied with, David Solway and Tim Lilburn, and it makes sense to talk about both books together because they both deal with that weird, bleeding-edge interface (in the old sense, not the new) between man and “nature” whatever that means. David Solway begins this book of poetry with—among other things—a quote from Henry …