currents

A Search for the Sublime

The book Blue Arabeseque is an exquisite  memoir by Patricia Hampl and a type of love story. She examines her engagement with art at an impressionable point of her life as a young English graduate and beyond. A reviewer describes her writing as "mature, balanced, lively and comprehensive..." A reminder of the power and importance of art...

Me to We

Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World  by Kieburger and Kielburger is a well-researched book that can be used by parents, children (anyone really) who wants some support to begin thinking about global change through individual action. The time seems particularly right...
Excerpt from book:
At a tender age I discovered that it isn't doing spectacular things that makes you remarkable in the eyes of God, but instead, it is when you light just one candle to dispel a little bit of darkness that you are doing something tremendous. And if, as a global people, we put all the little bits of good together, we will overwhelm the world. -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The Great First Line

No matter what genre of writing one is creating, something very important to the reader's engagement is the great first line. This struck me in particular, as I walked into Central Park and by the Strand Bookstore's kiosk store near 59th street. I bought Istanbul: Memories and the City by recent Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. His first line: " From a young age, I suspected there was more to my world than I could see..."
This line sets the mood for intimate and profound observations about his city of origin that he chooses never to leave.

Ordinary Ways

The Summer of Ordinary Ways was the book I picked up at the Minneapolis airport. I didn't want to leave the country abruptly, so a few hours with this memoir of childhood on a Minnesota Farm was the perfect pick. A story of madness, animal blood, buried dreams, Catholicism and rural secrets, Helget tells the story of emotional triumph in the face of great difficulties. The straightforward descriptions of farm life twenty years ago and observations of the character of imperfect adults were some of the most gracefully composed language I have read in a while. She is affilated with the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, which is worth a Google.

A Freedom Story

The living people who can tell a Holocaust survivor story is dwindling with time. I just found a book by Robert O. Fisch, The Metamorphosis to Freedom, that is an amazing narrative of life in Hungary, the camps, and the descent into communist life. It is a book with a small amount of words that combine for powerful impact. The text is illustrated by Fisch's spare woodcut prints that speak through symbols and a somber palette. The message is that the freedom that many of us take for granted was something that "came to [him] slowly. over the years."