The vacation has ended, and while it was hardly relaxing, time spent in San Francisco is always a good idea. In the six days or so I was there, I figure I went to seven films (six of them part of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival), five concerts (four of those from the San Francisco Symphony’s American Mavericks series), three Symphony rehearsals, four museums, and four bookstores. And did a whole lot of walking.
Since I’ve returned from the trip, and for the first time in about three weeks, I’ve actually completed a book, Eric Hansen’s Stranger in the Forest, in which he describes his trips across the length of the island of Borneo in the 1980s. A review is forthcoming. Also on the way are a couple of further items related to my San Francisco trip: a third article on the American Mavericks series, and a short look at one of my very favorite San Francisco attractions, the Jolika Collection of New Guinea Art at the de Young Museum.
As for upcoming reading, I spent part of this morning assembling from my ever growing stacks of books around twenty that I might like to read in the immediate or near future. Painfully, this has been narrowed down to a baker’s dozen. Alphabetically by author:
Robert Crumb and David Zane Mairowitz – Kafka
Shusaku Endo – Silence
Martin Gayford – The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Provence
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein – 36 Arguments for the Existence of God
David Guterson – Our Lady of the Forest
Stuart Isacoff – Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization
Yasunari Kawabata – Beauty and Sadness
Jhumpa Lahiri – Unaccustomed Earth
Alan Palmer – The Baltic: A New History of the Region and Its People
Boris Pasternak (transl. by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) – Doctor Zhivago
Stacy Schiff – Cleopatra: A Life
Paul F. State – A Brief History of Ireland
Yi Chung-jun – Seopyeonje: The Southerners’ Songs
Any suggestions as to where I should start?
Thirty-Two Minutes 