Chăn lợn là một nghệ thuật. Bọn chúng không chỉ ăn no rồi ụt ịt cả ngày mà còn tranh đấu nhau mãnh liệt. Qua những chi tiết nuôi dưỡng lợn và những lời trò chuyện với bọn chúng, nhà văn Nguyễn Xuân Khánh dùng chất lợn để miêu tả những ô nhiễm của bản chất loài người. Những hư cấu đi quá xa với sức tưởng tượng của tôi. Tuy truyện khá thú vị nhưng tôi vẫn thích đọc sách phi hư cấu hơn.
Kantor and Twohey provide readers blow-by-blow behind the scenes of their investigative report into Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults. Their stories of talking to the sources as well as fending off the Weinstein army of lawyers and spies are fascinating. The book also covers Christine Blasey Ford’s account against Bret Kavanaugh. I have tremendous respect for both of these New York Times’ journalists. An engaging and enraging read, which caused me to stay up and get up early in the morning in the past three days to plow through.
Calport’s Digital Minimalism is a practical, approachable guide to unplug from the digital world and getting back to the real world. He lays out a plan for a thirty-day digital detox including uninstalling apps off your phone (especially social media apps), limiting access your phone (even when taking a walk), and learning new skills with your hands (setting goals for fixing your house). Whether I can apply his philosophy of technology use into my own life remains to be seen, but he has inspired and motivated me to make some changes to my digital life. I uninstalled Facebook app off my phone and temporarily deactivated my account. I unfollowed a handful of people on Twitter and logged off. I didn’t have Twitter app installed on my phone. My next goal is to limit my use of my phone. I am also intrigued with the concept of financial independence, but I am not sure if I can incorporate it into my life at this time. If you are thinking of minimizing your digital life, this book is worth reading.
Less of a style guide and more of a love letter, Moran’s book explores the craft of composing sentence by sentence. “A good trick, when drafting a piece, is to press enter after every sentence, as if you were writing a poem and each full stop marked a line break.” He advises, “This renders the varied (or unvaried) lengths of your sentences instantly visible.” Through his thoughtful observation of Frank Sinatra’s singing and Bill Evans’s playing, Moran illustrates how rhythm, cadence, phrasing, and flow bring your sentences to life. He offers helpful tips such as using plain words, setting type that makes your writing visible to yourself, and keeping a sentence succinct even a long one. I dig his beautiful, poetic prose even though his florid style gets tedious at times. This book is enjoyable. I’ll definitely read it again at a slower pace to fully absorb his advice.
Here are a few notable passages:
On death (p.112):
[T]he death of a sentence is as natural as the end of life. Every sentence must die so the next one can begin. A full stop should offer a good death: natural, painless, clarifying, renewing.
On caring (p.117):
With a full stop, a sentence becomes self-supporting. It can go out into the world without the author leaning over the reader to clarify its meaning—without a reader, even, except a conjectural one. Writing a sentence well involves caring, taking pains for the benefit of others. But it is a special kind of caring: not the empathetic concern we have for people we love, but care for the anonymous humanity that may, at some future point, encounter the evidence of our presence in the world. This kid of care does not seek thanks or feedback, but offers itself up for all to enjoy, or ignore, as they wish.
On Sinatra (p.135-136)
A phraseologist like Sinatra overlays the meter with something like confiding in speech. He is all about the lyrics—you can hear him enunciate every syllable—and it feels as if he is saying as well as singing them to you, stretching out and twisting the pitch of words as we do in speech. Sinatra sings in sentences.
On flow (p.175):
Beauty may look after herself, but flow in writing does not. Flow should feel natural but almost never is. It arrives only after the way has been carefully cleared and paved. Flowing sentences are forward-facing, drawing what they need from the previous sentence and then setting up the next one.
On cadence (p.182):
Writing gets much of its rhythm from its full stops—or, more precisely, its cadences. Cadence is is used generally to mean the rising and falling rhythm of writing. But it has a more precise meaning. A cadence is what comes in writing, speech or music at the end of each phrase. In music, a phrase is the smallest unit able to make sense of its own. And it ends at this point of half repose, a cadence, where it feels as if the music has, just for a moment, arrived somewhere, usually back at the piece’s tonal center. In speech, a cadence is the fall in pitch at a natural stopping point, the end of a phrase. The voice drops on the last three syllables: a descending tritone. The American poet Amy Lowell called the cadence a “rhythmic curve … corresponding roughly to the necessity of breathing.”
Quyển tiểu thuyết bi thảm, hồi hộp, và rùng rợn được dàn dựng khéo léo của tác giả Nguyễn Ngọc Thạch. Thường thì câu chuyện được kể qua một nhân vật chính nhưng những nhân vật trong truyện của Thạch đều được kể riêng. Người đọc sẽ thấy được những khía cạnh khác nhau. Cùng sống chung trong một căn nhà bề ngoài thì rất giàu sang nhưng tình người bên trong thì rất tệ hại. Cách viết của Thạch đơn giản và ngắn gọn nhưng đặc sắc. Thạch cho đọc giả nếm được mùi ác độc của đàn bà: “Con ong độc nhất ở đuôi, đàn bà độc nhất ở nơi tấm lòng.” Sao khi đọc mấy quyển sách tiếng Anh liên tiếp, tôi khao khát được đọc tiếng Việt. Tuy đọc sách này như uống ly nước độc nhưng thật đã khát.
Pamela Paul and Maria Russo, editors of The New York Times Book Review, have put together a pleasurable, approachable guide to nurture kids into the life of reading. The authors’ goals are to show reading at home is for pure joy and not burden. The kids are free to read whatever they want, not what expected of them. I find the concept of family library simple, effortless, and yet effective. We just need to have books anywhere around the house within their reach—including in the bathrooms. I appreciate the authors’ relaxed, unpressured ways to instill reading into the kids’ life. In addition, the book is filled with recommendations for different ages. If you want to raise a reader, pick up this book.
I have been following Tolentino’s writing in The New Yorker for a few years. She brings a young, Asian-American voice to the publication. Her first book, Trick Mirror, consists of personal essay combined with journalism. Her writing is honest, even handed, and fierce. As someone who grows up and makes a living on the web, I can relate to her essay on how the internet has transformed from an online space for people sharing their own passion on sites like GeoCities into “unlimited channels, all constantly reloading with new information: births, deaths, boasts, bombings, jokes, job announcements, ads, warnings, complaints, confessions, and political disasters blitzing our frayed neurons in huge waves of information that pummel us and then are instantly replaced.” Tolentino is a feminist and her perspective on sexism is refreshing. I must confess. I learned about queefing from reading this book. So yes, Trick Mirror is an informing, enlightening, fascinating read.
I wanted to read this book because it ranked number one on The New York Time’s “The Best 50 Memoirs of the Past 50 Years.” It is a well-deserved recognition. In a concise, two-hundred-page memoir, Gornick recounts her fierce, unflinching relationship with her forceful mother: “We are locked into a narrow channel of acquaintance, intense and binding.” In writing about her childhood, Gornick gives readers a sense of what it was like living in the Bronx building where noise, music, food, and sex always occurred. From her expose to and experience with sex to her rocky relationship with her husband to her open affair with a married man after her marriage had ended, Gornick writes with feeling, freedom, and fearlessness. In addition to the emotional, blunt honesty, I love Gornick’s impeccable prose.
Jim DeRogatis began writing about R. Kelly as a music critic until he received an anonymous fax about the Pied Piper of R&B’s predatory behavior. DeRogatis and his partner Abdon Pallasch took on the role of investigative reporters to unveil the open secret of R. Kelly’s “sex cult” with young girls. Using his voice, sex appeal, and music talent, Kelly manipulated, abused, controlled, and even urinated on them. In his latest book, DeRogatis builds the case against R. Kelly that he has worked on for almost two decades. Before reading this book, I was on the camp of separating the art from the artist. After finishing it, however, I am done with this teenage-fucker. It is an eye-opening, heart-breaking, and soul-crushing read.
Patricia Lockwood wanted to be a poet. Instead of going to college, she stayed home to write. She got married at 19. With not much financial support, she moved back to her parents’ rectory with her husband. In her debut memoir, Lockwood invites us into her the house of God where her dad is a priest, a Republican, a gun nut, and a Demo-cat hater. Lockwood shares, “My father despises cats. He believes them to be Democrats. He considers them to be little mean hillary clintons covered all over with feminist legfur. Cats would have abortions, if given half a chance. Cats would have abortions for fun.” A Republican, a preacher’s wife, and a mother of five, her mother is no less a character herself. Her mother reveals her father’s secret, “Like the time he shot the German shepherd that bit his bare legs in their little jogging shorts, or the time I got so mad at that priest who insulted my interior decorating that I told him I was going to come down so hard on his dick.” Almost every sentence in the book is witty and funny. Underneath those bright moments, however, Lockwood sheds lights on the darker truth about rape, suicidal attempt, and men’s power over her. It’s a poignant, poetic, hilarious, and insightful book on religion I have read.