I recently finished teaching the poem “An Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins.

I think the line from the poem “ waving at the author’s name on the shore” has finally helped me to define how I feel about reading an author’s biography while reading the author’s creation.

I can’t NOT read some biographical details. For one thing, there’s plain curiosity. Who IS this person who “has given birth” to this book which I am enjoying (or not..). In addition, knowing something about the period in which the author lived does explain some things, at least in some books. Chingiz Aitamatov, whose book “The day lasts more than a 100 years” I’m still reading, had first hand experience of living under the repressive former Soviet Regime. Mark Twain uses some phrases in his books which don’t make sense unless you understand something about the period  in which they were written.

However, I understand Hemingway wasn’t a “nice” guy. Should I care? I enjoyed many of his books! Does it matter if I know that? I’m basically interested in the fact that he had first hand experience of the battles he wrote about in “For whom the Bell Tolls”.

O.K, full disclosure here – I have to admit that I do remember Hemingway drank absinthe which is almost pure poison. Not at all relevant to anything, but the detail has stuck in my  mind.

That’s why I relate to the line from the poem.

I believe that it is good to know something about the author’s biography, but keeping a distance is a good idea. There is no need to get into the fine details.

I found the book “The elegance of the hedgehog” by Muriel Barbery to be a book I couldn’t read.

The book is told in two voices – that of an unusual concierge in an upscale building in Paris and in the voice of a precocious 11 year old who lives in that building.  Each chapter alternates between the two. I could not deal with the parts told by the 11 year old and stopped reading the book.  I later heard people praising the book. This was about two years ago.

Then came the movie! BRILLIANT!

I have excited things to say about every aspect of it – the acting, the pace in which the plot moves, the way those endless strings of words were expressed without being tiresome, the awesome visuals and the wonderful music! And it IS a worthwile story, just like people told me, but I didn’t find the book readable!

I recommend it!

What a fascinating book!

The writer moves between the innermost feelings of people, to the wide open space of the desert in Kazakhstan, to outer space!

And through all of this runs the issue of people trying to maintain their dignity under the repressive Soviet regime.

I recommend!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m reading David Lloyd’s ebook on the computer but a different book before going to bed at night. I was planning to write about that book today.

But I have decided to stop reading Zeruya Shalev’s Book “The Remainder of Life”. Her writing is polished and fluid but I find the characters whiny and annoying and do not relate to the plot. I gave it a chance but yesterday I officially stopped reading it and began another. Too soon to share though – next week!

Today we took a fascinating guided walking tour in the old city of Jerusalem. The bad weather was not an issue as it was a tour of places underground! The highlight was a visit to what we call Zedekiah Cave (in English it is known as King Solomon’s Quarries). A HUGE place – worth checking out the photos on Google, my pic. here doesn’t do it justice and it is just a part. But it is the other picture I want to talk about – there is an area with thousands of names on the walls! And not just names! The largest portion of the names are those of British soldiers stationed in Jerusalem before the British left the country. They took the trouble to inscribe precise details regarding the units in which they were serving. Others, many many others, included their full addresses back home including zip codes! Can you imagine those young men doing that? The guide said they were taken to the cave to get boring history lessons… It was too dark to take a picture of the whole area of the wall with writing so I went for close-ups!

And finally, check out Beatrice Coron’s “Spelling Spider” which she says “spins a bilingual alphabet” (French and English). She is a paper-cutting artist. You can either see a peek from that alphabet book or hear the TED Talk. Enjoy!

We went to the Israel Museum (in Jerusalem) today and saw a WONDERFUL triptych video projection called “Going Places While Sitting Down” by Hiraki Sawa.

Although you don’t actually see the child, there is a child there imagining a whole host of wonderful things he/ she sees while travelling a magical land on the rocking horse. The child never leaves the house but finds the imaginary world right there, among the ordinary things in a British Country House.

In my mind this connected immediately to Saturdays’ Books – a child’s ability to imagine such things indicates growing up with books and a rich language – the building blocks of imagination!

Here is a link to an excerpt I found of the video installation. You are only seeing part of it and only one of the three panels. Perhaps this exhibition will come your way!