Archiv der Kategorie: Gelesen und besprochen

poetry slam-dunk

Oh my sloppy joe, forlorn,
rippling with mirth, 
down my chin you ran, 
like a plantain.

Once upon a hot summer ragu
In the blue bayou.
Of mint and thyme
And bristly porcupine

speak, if you must
smile, only just…

Your skin – soft and golden
In the august sun – slow and swollen
Sesame and quints
Saucy vitamins.

But my memory 
fades as the twilight 
till just the secret melody lingers 
in the bare boughs –

and whispers to me, 
whispers of charles mingus

Rains will surely come
and wash you away
or on a ship you’ll depart 
to return never
into the haven of my heart.

But perhaps on a rainy day –
Dark and gaunt –
I may forget

To remember never that day
in september.

finish

seeking chaos – sandpaper for the soul that i have polished to an indifferent, non-stick finish, repelling disturbances – irrational, inconclusive, incoherent, outlandish. 

Bücher 2020

* Monika Maron Munin oder Chaos im Kopf LIT
* Ian McEwan Machines Like Me LIT ****
Alain de Botton The Course of Love (Audio-book) ***
Alain de Botton The Art of Travel REF **
Lea Singer Der Klavierschüler LIT ****
* Salman Rushdie Quichotte LIT ***
H.G. Wells Experiment in Autobiography BIO ****
* H.G. Wells The Time Machine LIT **
* Georgi Gospodinov Physik der Schwermut LIT ***
Henning Mankell Mörder ohne Gesicht (in deutscher Fassung) DETFIC
Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep ***
Renee Patrick Design for Dying: A Lillian Frost & Edith Head Novel DETFIC **
Renee Patrick Dangerous to Know: A Lillian Frost & Edith Head Novel DETFIC **
Renee Patrick Script for Scandal: a Lillian Frost & Edith Head Novel DETFIC **
* Annie Proulx Das grüne Akkordeon LIT ****
R. N. Morris The Gentle Axe DETFIC *

Currently reading…

Albert Camus Die Pest LIT

On the »to read« pile

Paul Auster Talking to Strangers: Selected Essays
Anthony J. Cascardi The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes SB
Italo Calvino Die unsichtbaren Städte LIT

Bücher 2019…

Herta Müller Herztier LIT ***** + *
Tom Holland Rubicon SB
Richard Harris Dictator (second time around, to complete the trilogy begun backwards) LIT
Oliver Sacks The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat LIT ***
Mary Stewart Crystal Cave (The Arthurian Saga, Book 1) third or fourth reread, i lost track… LIT
Sibylle Berg Vielen Dank für das Leben LIT **
Mary Stewart The Hollow Hills (The Arthurian Saga, Book 2) LIT
Mary Stewart The Last Enchantment  (The Arthurian Saga, Book 3) LIT
Siri Hustvedt Summer without Men LIT ****
Luciano de Crescenzo Die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie Band 1 + 2 SB ***
Étienne de La Boétie Von der freiwilligen Knechtschaft des Menschen SB
Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm Kinder- und Hausmärchen LIT
Lukas Rietzschel Mit der Faust in die Welt schlagen LIT **
Alexander Sergejewitsch Puschkin Jewgeni Onegin ( annual reread) LYR (unrateable)
Alain de Botton The Consolations of Philosophy (reread or rather: bedstand companion) SB
Jane Bowles Two Serious Ladies LIT ***
Beryl Bainbridge According to Queeny LIT ****
Amor Towles A Gentleman In Moscow LIT **
Nick Hornby Funny Girl  LIT **
Damon Galgut Arctic Summer LIT***


Miss Gregory is not my cup of tea. 100+ frustrating pages of the first book of the Wideacre Trilogy is all i could endure.
Angelesen: Sibirische Sommer mit Dostojewski von Jan Brokken. Frau Karnovsky schreibt sehr richtig, dass Brokkens Schreibstil eine Geschmackssache sei. Dieser Stil schmekct nach einem amtlichen Bericht: soweit enfernt von Literatur war nur Frau Rossbacher, bisher.

Wishlist/Prospect reading

To compliment my current compulsion
Samuel Johnson The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

To feed my five-year-old monkey
Tom Holland Dynasty 
Mary Beard SPQR, Women and Power

To dip my toes in the Mediterranean
Roberto Bolaño 2666


On the »to read« stack

Dorris Lessing The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five
Zeruya Shalev Für den Rest des Lebens
Susan Sontag Stories
Jimena Canales The Physicist & the Philosopher

Wishlist/Prospect reading

To compliment my current compulsion
Samuel Johnson The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

To feed my five-year-old monkey
Tom Holland Dynasty 
Mary Beard SPQR, Women and Power

To dip my toes in the Mediterranean
Roberto Bolaño 2666





Legende
LIT = Literatur Fiction
SB = Sachbuch N(on)F(iction)
CO = Comic Graphic Novel
LYR = Lyrik Poetry
*****

Bücher 2016

Pflichtlektüren

C. Ransmayr Die Letzte Welt
H. Hesse Der Steppenwolf
S. Zhadan Depeche Mode
M. Duras Moderato Cantabile
H. Kang Die Vegetarierin
C. Brontë Jane Eyre
I. Nemerovsky Die Familie Hardelot 

Dazwischen

Robert Harris Dictator (Cicero Trilogy)
A. Bennett
– Cosi fan tutte
– The Uncommon Reader 
C. McCullough (Masters of Rome series)
The first man in Rome
 
The Grass Crown
Tracy Chevalier Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre
Heather Glen The Cambridge Companion to the Brontës

E.M. Forster Howard’s End (zum 3. Mal)

 

…auf dem Nachttisch

E. Hemingway Men without Women
Siri Hustvedt Summer w/o Men
Adam Tooze The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 1916-1931 (…immer noch)
Steven Weinberg To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science
M. Stewart The Crystal Cave (zum 3. Mal)

H.G. Wells The Time Machine

…unter dem Weihnachtsbaum

H.P. Lovecraft The Complete Fiction

Arthur I. Miller »Deciphering the Cosmic Number«

320px-cgjung pauli

There are some books you do not find, they find you. As the one I will review here. The book was a gift I received for my birthday from someone who knows my interests: physics, as this is what I studied, and the workings of the mind, or psychology, a faculty that I have been interested in since long.

The book is a dual biography of two outstanding scientists of the 20th century: Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli, and how they met and worked together. The hardcover edition has roughly 350 pages, quite a lot of illustrations and eight pages with reproductions of photographs in the middle.

I would divide the book roughly in three parts.

The first part is an entertaining description of the lives of Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli from the beginning of the century until the 30s, embedded in the development of quantum physics and psychology, with lots of references to other famous scientists from the epoch as well as from three thousand years of science that preceded. In that era fell two of Pauli’s most important achievements: the exclusion principle (Pauli principle) and the prediction of a new particle, the neutrino, discovered shortly thereafter.

What was particularly striking to me was that Pauli, apart from being a pointed critic, led two lives: the day-life of a genius of his time, and a night-life spent drinking, whoring, fighting. It was the latter that brought Pauli to ask Jung for help, when he saw that his life started falling apart. Given that Arthur I. Miller, PhD in physics, is Emeritus Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at University College London, the first part is, sadly, also the best part.

The second part is basically an enumerative description of the psychoanalysis of Pauli’s dreams by Jung. I mostly lacked the understanding of the references to alchemy, mandalas and symbolism, and did not find a proof for Jung’s interpretation of Pauli’s dreams being more than a best-guess ex-post explanation. I found the second part rather boring and I admit that I even skipped some sections. Nonetheless, Miller had spent quite some effort on working through the rich correspondence between Pauli, Jung and other psychologists, as well as what was left in terms of documentation. Certainly of value is the critical acclaim of what role Jung played for nazism.

The third part mostly deals with the post-war era of quantum physics, cumulating in Pauli’s third achievement: the formulation of CPT invariance. Apart from that, it shows Pauli’s and others‘ fruitless efforts to derive the fine structure constant from first principles. The third part again is embedded in the history of post-war physics, making references to other great scientists of that time.

Is the book worth a read? Yes, I would definitely recommend it. It can be understood by laymen both of physics and psychology, who do not allow themselves be let betrayed by the somewhat lurid title. The book is quite entertaining which helped me to get over the deficiencies in understanding Jung’s theories.