lory_enterenchanted's reviews
501 reviews

A few interesting insights into Sondheim songs, pointing out especially where the music expressed something other than the lyrics, but for full impact this would need to be conveyed through a music lesson. A lot of the rest of the writing felt like filler, banal platitudes. 

A couple of teasing glimpses at the author's life -- if it had been more of a memoir, How Sondheim Changed MY LIfe, it might have been more compelling. But he doesn't seem to want to go there, rather to keep things on an impersonal, general, and therefore boring level.

And, the big "revelation" he has about the Baker's Wife from Into the Woods -- that her story is a tragedy because she turned away from the prince who dallied with her to return to her husband and child -- is just stupid. This is an example of overthinking, of wringing a story out to find some original twist on it that does not exist.

I made a playlist of songs mentioned in the book. I think listening to Sondheim, is preferable to read ing about Sondheim.

In Michael Ende’s modern fable Momo, the title character is a young girl who lives in a ruined amphitheater on the outskirts of an unnamed European city. Momo’s outer appearance is a bit strange, with her wild black hair and man’s jacket that is too big for her, but she has an outstanding ability that soon attracts many visitors: she can listen. Simply by listening, she enables friends-turned-enemies to resolve their conflicts. Storytellers are inspired when she is in the audience. And children know that their play takes flight when Momo is listening. 

But mysterious men dressed in grey begin to convince people to stop wasting their time on friendship or stories or children, and instead to save up precious seconds in their “time bank”. Only Momo can hear their real thoughts, their desperate hunger that drives them to suck time away from human beings … and her wondering response is “Does no one love you?” 

The thieves of time have visited all of us. Never has a society been so obsessed with and so successful at saving time, nor so exhausted and depressed. Meaningful work is steadily being sucked away, and deaths of despair are on the rise. The hunger for love fuels all kinds of addictions. Momo’s gift of listening leads her into the depths of the heart to save her city; we can learn from her journey as we face our own struggles. 

I've read Momo before in English, but it's been a while. As I read through it this time in German -- slowly! -- I thought how timely it remains. And while at one time I thought Momo's gift of listening was a bit dull, I now realize ever more how important it really is. Listening is more than merely hearing, more than letting sensations wash over us. It turns the act of giving attention into a doorway of creation. It's what I started to grasp through the spiritual direction training I recently completed, and what I want to continue to practice in as many ways as possible. 

The situation of the two tin suitors and the “other man” made if their discarded parts was amusing and had potential to be more so, but the rest of the story was just random. 

A pleasant read, but I didn't become as invested in the characters as I expected from other reviews. I wondered sometimes about the translator's choices -- there were some odd words sprinkled in, but perhaps that was a reflection of odd words used in the German. I also found it strange that the vanished, murdered Jews of Vienna were never once mentioned. (In 1938 there were over 200,000, in 1951 9000, today even fewer). One time only there is a flippant comment that half the people in Vienna are Nazis. But otherwise, the war that is sometimes mentioned as being in the recent past is in no way connected with the Holocaust. Maybe this was an intentional comment on people's wish to forget an uncomfortable past? I just found it strange, as characters in the book would surely have known many Jews -- including café owners.

I read the first chapter and the style was too shrill and buffoonish for me.

Lots of valuable information, and especially suggestions for practice. The very last section of "Additional Practices" is a gem. 

I have a problem with one of McBride's central formulations, her insistence that "I am my body." There is a contradiction there, how can one own something with which one is identical? The possessive suggests two entities. And yet, we ARE one. Maybe it's like the mystery of the Trinity. I need to ponder this more, both what is true and useful and what is disquieting about the statement.

So whenever that notion comes in, I get uncomfortable. However, otherwise I agree with so much of what she presents. We have got to befriend and healthfully inhabit our bodies. Not doing that is causing most and perhaps all of the harm in our world, inwardly and outwardly. Here's a statement I underlined: "When we are feeling out of control in an area of our lives, experiencing pain or illness, or longing for connection with someone, it is easy to attack our bodies without realizing that our response is a defense against feeling something else that is painful." (250)

I can trace this pattern in my own life and would venture that it underlies not only self-harming behaviors and illnesses but the attack on other people's bodies and ways of living. Each one of us is trying to defend against painful feelings we don't want. Until we stop doing that, turn to the feelings and bring them into transformation (the chapter on "Feeling Feelings" speaks to this), peace will never come to our earth. 

And so embodiment is not just a self-healing practice, but a peace practice, the only one, in my opinion, that has any hope of being effective. And so I'm very thankful for this book and any others that usefully explore the theme. This is the future!

I loved Holmes's The Age of Wonder, about science and scientists in the Romantic era. This book could be seen as an extended footnote to that one, focusing as it does on the romantic era of ballooning. Though it's been superseded in our minds by the far more powerful and controllable technology of airplanes and space travel, Holmes reminds us that the dream of flying began with the simple balloon. 

What today is a relatively safe novelty experience was at the time of its invention an awe-inspiring revelation. Human beings were no longer bound by gravity! This gave rise to some exaggerated claims -- that ballooning would spread peace and democracy everywhere by erasing the arbitrary boundaries between nations, for example. This, of course, did not prove to be the case. 

Balloons did play a role in history, as they were used for wartime reconnaissance in the Civil War and  for communication during the siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War. But their most important effect might have been on our imaginations. Holmes includes a wealth of literary examples, from Poe to Dickens to Verne (though he regrettably omits one that falls slightly out of the time range he's covering: the balloon that carries the Wizard in L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.) Ballooning evokes a daring journey that takes one into a strange land, dangerous and magical, possibly difficult or impossible to return from, and that is ripe material for storytelling. 

Indeed, rising up into the air inspired an incredible degree of foolhardy recklessness in some aeronauts, who seemed to think that overcoming gravity meant that they were now invulnerable to any other limitation, and were prone to wishful assurance that the wind they wanted at any particular moment would blow in the right direction! The stories of some of their disastrous journeys could stand as a metaphorical warning for the inflated hubris of our industrialized Western culture. We, too, have taken off in a direction we now find hard to control, and seem to be headed for a crash landing. 

However, those aeronauts who managed to stay a bit more sensible might inspire us with their bravery in the cause of science -- meteorology and an understanding of the earth's atmosphere began with them. The revolutionary discovery that gases could be weighed and some were lighter than air also meant a new direction in chemistry.

The book ends with a particularly sad story about a doomed polar expedition, which put an end to romantic dreams of heroic exploration by balloon. But the balloon, with its silent, wind-borne flight, still tugs on our heartstrings in a way noisy airplanes and rockets can't. I've never been up in one, but now I'm quite tempted to give it a try ...

Immersive, compelling historical fiction that taught me much about the history of Hawaii. As it approached the modern era I found it more of a slog, and didn’t share the pro-capitalist, militaristic perspective of the writer, but other than that it wax a fascinating story about intersecting and clashing cultures. 

I could not believe Victorian characters would really think or behave this way, but as an alternate history romance it was decent , if a bit lacking in real conflict or tension. Prone to a lot of modern psycologizing that I did not find convincing and obligatory sexual suggestion (very mild). The language was not too annoyingly anachronistic but also not very memorable, lots of cliches. Georgette Heyer, how we miss you. 

There’s a lot of good material but I feel Jamison was trying to do too many things in one book. And sometimes the language felt padded. Needed more ruthless editing. 

She also comes across as a frustrating and annoying  girlfriend. One feels sorry for her partner. 

Like many very smart people she can talk and argue and rationalize but it stays on the surface. Pretty words that skate over some deeper reality. It’s typical that she snobbishky fears she’s too smart for AA. Her appreciation of less intelligent people risks being condescending, and her privilege certainly shows — with all her fancy degrees and writing residencies. But that’s judging the person not the book. 

I think I might like The Empathy Exams better, if it’s less self absorbed.