#2

The King's Painter: The Life of Hans Holbein
by Franny Moyle

#3

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
by Lulu Miller

Most unique:

Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures (My review in Books on Asia)

and

Water, Wood and Wild Things by Hannah Kirshner (Review in Kyoto Journal)

Favorite New Translation:

"An I-Novel," a novel by Minae Mizumura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter. (My review in Chicago Review of Books)

Hōjōki: A Hermit's Hut as Metaphor (My review in Asian Review of Books)
by Kamo no Chōmei, Matthew Stavros

Most Inspiring

Last Year, I began revisiting Japanese flower arrangements and foraging. This year, I started a class at the London Floral School called DUTCH MASTERS FLORAL COURSE. I also took a class at the Huntington gardens. I am reading Flower Hunters by Lucy Hunter (review--not by me-- here) I also realized Lauren Groff, whose award-winning novel Matrix I read this year, wrote a short story called Flower Hunters (New Yorker)

Gifting Books for Christmas:

Water, Wood and Wild Things (Review in Kyoto Journal) by Hannah Kirshner

A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth: Stories
by Daniel Mason

As Kingfishers Catch Fire: Birds & Books
by Alex Preston, Neil Gower

The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds, by Jon Dunn

Most Beautiful:

As Kingfishers Catch Fire: Birds & Books
by Alex Preston, Neil Gower

Best History of Science/Science:

109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos
by Jennet Conant

And:

The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness
by Mark Solms

Best Re-Read:

The Relic Master
by Christopher Buckley

Death Comes for the Archbishop
by Willa Cather

A Blossom Like No Other Li Qingzhao
by Wei Djao

The Wages Of Guilt: Memories Of War In Germany And Japan
by Ian Buruma

The Spy Who Loved Us: The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game
by Thomas A. Bass

Most Thought-Provoking and World Changing:

Timothy Morton's All Art is Ecological (3QD Essay here)

Be My Guest: Reflections on Food, Community and the Meaning of Generosity
by Priya Basil 3QD Essay here.

Best Writing Craft Book:

A Field Guide for Immersion Writing: Memoir, Journalism, and Travel
by Robin Hemley

Best Exhibition Catalogue

Holbein: Capturing Character
by Anne T. Woollett (Editor), Austeja Mackelaite (Contributor), John T. McQuillen

--2021 Book Towers Below--

First Stack: Chinese Calligraphy and Mi Fu

I re-read quite a lot on Chinese calligraphy this year.

My essay on an exhibition at the Huntington Gardens in 3QD is here: Calligraphy in the Garden

And In Praise of Oranges in Gulf Coast Journal is here.

All of my notes are here.

Another World Lies Beyond: Creating Liu Fang Yuan, the Huntington’s Chinese Garden, edited by June Li

The Burden of Female Talent: The Poet Li Qingzhao and Her History in China
by Ronald C. Egan

A Blossom Like No Other Li Qingzhao
by Wei Djao

Embodied Image
by Robert E. Harrist Jr

Kraus’ Brushes with Power
Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy

Sturman’s Mi Fu: Style and the Art of Calligraphy in Northern Song China Style and the Art of Calligraphy in Northern Song China

Kazuaki Tanahashi ‘s Delight in One Thousand Characters: The Classic Manual of East Asian Calligraphy

Shakyo Practice book and A Kanji Stroke Order Manual for Heart Sutra Copying

The Skills of How to Imitate Wang Xizhi’s Preface to The Poems Composed at The Orchid Pavilion Running Script Chinese Calligraphy

Chinese Calligraphy of Heart Sutra (Contrastive Version of Classical Inscription Rubbings of Dynasties)

Below, haven’t read but looks interesting!

Taction: The Drama of the Stylus in Oriental Calligraphy 石川九楊著『書-筆蝕の宇
Ishikawa, Kyuyoh; Miller, Waku

The Second Stack:

On Foraging and Fermentation

This was probably the main reading obsession of the year, and I wrote a review on Katz's new book in the Dublin Review of Books (he has come out with a new one since!) and an essay at 3 Quarks Daily, A Walk on the Wild Side. (My notes for the post are here).

Eating Wild Japan: Tracking the Culture of Foraged Foods, with a Guide to Plants and Recipes
by Winifred Bird (Review in Asian Review of Books)

Water, Wood and Wild Things (Review in Kyoto Journal) by Hannah Kirshner

Gina Rae La Cerva’s Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food

John Cage’s A Mycological Foray: Variations on Mushrooms

On Flowers: Lessons from an Accidental Florist
by Amy Merrick

Water, Wood and Wild Things (Review in Kyoto Journal) by Hannah Kirshner

Forage, Harvest, Feast: 40 Plants, 500 Recipes, a Wild-Inspired Cuisine
by Marie Viljoen

Rewilding

Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life

by George Monbiot

Fermentation

[First published in Dublin Review of Books]

Sandor Ellix Katz:

Fermentation as Metaphor & The Art of Fermentation

The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America's Underground Food Movements

And

Koji Alchemy

Interview with author Rich Shih in Serious Eats

Foundations of Flavor: The Noma Guide to Fermentation
by Rene Redzepi, David Zilber

The Third Stack: Memoir

All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf by Katharine Smyth

“Perhaps there is one book for every life. One book with the power to reflect and illuminate that life; one book that will forever inform how we navigate the little strip of time we are given, while also helping us to clarify and catch hold of its most vital moments. For me, that book is To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf’s novel about her parents, Julia and Leslie Stephen, who died when Virginia was thirteen and twenty-two, respectively. First published in 1927, it tells the story of the Ramsays, a family of ten who, along with an assorted group of friends, spends the summer on a remote island in the Hebrides. Tells the story of the Ramsays? I should rephrase: To the Lighthouse tells the story of everything.”

Smyth’s book is one of the most poignant and beautiful books about family life that I’ve ever read. She has portrayed all of the trials and challenges of being an only child and about having a flawed parent. Her book is a portrait of a marriage and portrait of a father and a daughter. It’s very close to my heart since I lived through something similar when I was a little bit younger than her and watched as my father suffered through cancer —in and out of the hospital. I wish I had had a book to keep me company, something to help me make sense of it all. That would take me decades. Her writing about the last days in the hospital was beautifully written. It was so poignant. While I would’ve appreciated more about Virginia Woolf — only if that didn’t require cutting out any of her own story. I truly appreciated the way she slowed down to be attentive to all the details of the days preceding and after his father died. It was extraordinary how she leaned into things that many writers would not seek to dwell upon.

"The insufficiency of emotion in the face of such a disaster...."

In tone, it reminded me something of Daniel Mendelsohn's An Odyssey. It had things in common with these as well:

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
by Lulu Miller

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
by Katherine May

To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession
by Dan Koeppel

The Wine Lover's Daughter: A Memoir
by Anne Fadima

More memoir here.

The fourth Stack: New Hobbies

Birding, Wine, and Sashiko

Birds Art Life, by Kyo Maclear

Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder: A Memoir
by Julia Zarankin

To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession
by Dan Koeppel

The Wine Lover's Daughter: A Memoir
by Anne Fadima

As Kingfishers Catch Fire: Birds & Books
by Alex Preston, Neil Gower

The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds, by Jon Dunn

Last Year and Next Year:

My new stack on Henry VIII and the Tudors

My essay based on last year's favorite book, The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium, by Juan Pimental, was published in Pleiades this fall.
Book by Shawna Kenney, my writing teacher at UCLA

Pleiades cover

Some exciting reads from this year.

Comments (0)

Top Reads of 2019

讀萬卷書，行萬里路

There is a wonderful Chinese saying that, traveling 10,000 miles is better than reading 10,000 books. In 2014, Michelle Obama mentioned these words, by Dong Qichang, on a visit to Peking University, to encourage young people there to get out and see the world. But, of course, you can also "see" the world in books.

Artist Zhang Hongtu interpreted the saying differently. For according to Zhang:
Dong Qichang said that to make a painting, one must “travel ten thousand miles, read ten thousand books.” That is to suggest that to attain wisdom, both books and travel are necessary. I prefer this interpretation since, if I had to choose one over the other, I would certainly choose books.

2019: Inspired by Susan Orlean's wonderful description of her fond memory of the piles and piles of library books of her childhood; those stacks of checked-out books forming totem poles of the narratives she had visited-- I continued doing less scattered reading and reading around themes: this year, there were five big totem poles: The Perfect Library, Leonardo da Vinci, Venice, Natural Wine, and Borneo!

Also there was a slight detour into Descartes, poetry and castrati music!

Ok, drum roll....

2019 Top Reads:

#1 Top Read of the year: Robert Macfarlane's Understory

Best in Fiction: A homage to the Quixote, Salman Rushdie's new novel, Quichotte was his best in years. In January 2020, a review I wrote about the novel apeared in the Dublin Review of Books. Very happy about that. Don Quixote will always be my Novel to Cross a Desert With.

Also, Pine Islands by Marion. Poschmann

Best in Non-Fiction: Titian: The Last Days, by Mark Hudson. I wrote about Titian's Pieta at Vox Nova at Patheos. (Runner Up for best non-fiction is The City of Falling Angels, by John Berendt

Most Beautiful Book: Flora Magnifica: The Art of Flowers in Four Seasons, by Makoto Azuma

Biggest Surprise Discovery: Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night & American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

Most Thought-Provoking and World Changing: The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World, by Lawrence Osborne. This book completely changed my way of understanding wine. In particular, I finally understood why I have never been a fan of California wines--especially those made in the "international style." This book stimulated me to go on reading about natural wines and European terroir. I loved this wine masters series as well. So far, we only watched Italy--but we are planning to move on to France next year. This is a New world for me, indeedy!

Also world changing was Miraculous Encounters: Pontormo from Drawing to Painting. This is an absolutely gorgeous Getty Publications catalog for the exhibition held at the museum in early 2019.

Best Science: It's hard to believe, but I didn't read any science at all this year--except one book on exoplanets. But I did read a lot of science fiction. Does that count? And one of the SF books I read, The Three Body Problem, was absolutely fantastic! In a post Searching for Exoplanets with Columbus at 3 Quarks Daily-- I wrote about three others SF books with surprising religious themes: the beautifully written The Book of Strange New Things and the two books by Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and Children of God. These three last ones having a fascinating religious theme. Details in Searching for Exoplanets with Columbus

Best Re-Read: "Take my camel, dear,' said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass." One of my all-time favorite novels; Towers of Trebizond. We re-read it for my bookclub--but ladies did not like it, which is puzzling since I think it is a wonder of the world.

In 2020, I would love to re-read Dorothy Dunnett's the House of Niccolò series. And my favorite book from 2017, The Kingdom!

The First Stack: The Perfect Library

In January, I wrote a very personal essay over at 3 Quarks Daily about my experience leaving my books behind in Japan, and how wonderful it has been re-building my lost library with Chris here in Pasadena. The essay began when a friend of mine learned that I had never read Alberto Manguel’s Library at Night. Manguel was a friend of Borges and one of the world's greatest lovers of books. My friend insisted I go straight home and order the book! Which I did. I have read several of his other books as well. I am a huge fan of his writing and his The Library at Night is my biggest surprise discovery of 2019--since how could I have not known about Manguel? The Perfect Library was my favorite essay of the year--and definitely the most personal thing I wrote in 2019. I wrote one more personal essay in 2019, called Tokyo Blossoms. I ended up taking my first-ever creative writing class --online at UCLA Extension. It was on the personal essay--I enjoyed it beyond belief! Next quarter, I am taking a beginning short story class and an intermediate level narrative nonfiction class. This tower was a very small stack of books, hardly a tower at all--but included, Packing up my Library, Piano Shop on the Left Bank, and Phantoms on the Bookshelves (would like to re-read this one).

The Second Stack: Leonardo

The big art news of 2019 was the sale of a newly discovered Leonardo. I told the tangled tale of the discovery and sale of the picture in a post at 3 Quarks Daily, called On the Trail of Leonardo. As I write this, the painting is MIA. It is not being included in the Leonardo "exhibition of a lifetime" going on now at the Louvre. And, I think it speaks volumes that Salvator Mundi was sold in Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale. Why? Because that is where people spend the big bucks.

Anyway, as we were going back to Milan, I read quite a few more books, starting by re-reading the Ross King book on the Last Supper. I wrote about my "out of body" experience in front of the last supper in this post at 3 Quarks in 2016, called Eyes Swimming with Tears (James Elkins has a new book out, by the way). My favorite books on Leonardo are in my notes here. This year, the great new reads were (all Monumental books!): Living with Leonardo: Fifty Years of Sanity and Insanity in the Art World and Beyond, by Martin Kemp; Isaacson's new biography on the painter, and most recently: The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World's Most Expensive Painting
by Ben Lewis. Highly recommend all these books!

Small Stack #1 Castrati Music and the Whitsun Festival 2019

I am a big fan of Baroque music and love the counter-tenor voice. So I was delighted to learn that Cecilia Bartoli, who has served as the artistic director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival since 2012, was dedicating this year’s four day festival to the music of the castrati. I became even more interested in going when I learned that for the first time since 1735, audiences would be able to listen to and compare Alcina by Handel back to back with his fierce competitor Porpora’s Polifemo, originally performed in London by Farinelli at the competing theater company that was giving Handel such a terrible headache. Handel was a difficult man at times. A huge row with the castrato superstar Senisino had caused a breakaway group from Handel’s company, forming the Opera for the Nobility. Senisino was joined on stage under Porpora’s artistic direction by Farinelli and these two opera companies–Handel’s and Porpora’s–would set London on fire; with one woman uttering the famous words, One God, one Farinelli…

After re-watching the movie Farinelli --which was shown at the arts theater in Pasadena in honor of the Festival, I read two novels about the castrati : one by Anne Rice, which I didn't like and one by the Dutch novelist and musician Margriet de Moor. I also read a great history called the World of the Castrati by Patrick Barbier. There is a ton of details in my essay, Gender-Bending Rock Stars: Counter-Tenors, Castrati And The Wild And Crazy Baroque.

The Third Stack: Venice

For me, the highlight of 2019 was traveling to Venice. We were in Italy for six weeks. We spent a week in Orvieto looking at the Signorelli frescoes. We also retraced our footsteps on the Piero della Francesca pilgrimage. We spent almost a week in Milan... but it was our nine days in Venice that stands out. I am only going to list the books I read on Venice, because--in fact-- I am still reading and haven't started writing about it. We traveled there to see Titian's Transfiguration. But --so sad to say--it was under conservation. Great excuse to go back! But we did make a kind of Titian pilgrimage, staying in the quarter where we lived and breaking down in tears in front of his last painting in the Academia. That work, the Pieta, made a great impression on us--in great part because of a fabulous book we read by Mark Hudson, called Titian's Last Days. It was my favorite non-fiction of the year. I wrote this about my experience on Vox Nova at Patheos. We traveled for Titian but returned in love with Tintoretto.

Also on Titian: Titian: His Life, by Sheila Hale; The Titian Committee, by Iain Pears; Titian: Lady in White, by Andreas Henning (Norton Simon Museum Exhibition Catalog)

On Carpaccio: Ciao, Carpaccio!: An Infatuation, by Jan Morris [Re-read twice and it's still out to read again!}; Carpaccio: Major Pictorial Cycles, by Stefania Mason

My reading so far: Venice Is a Fish: A Sensual Guide, by Tiziano Scarpa (and Dream of Venice in Black and White): If Venice Dies, by Salvatore Settis, Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice, by Erica Jong [worst book of 2019]; A Fury in the Words: Love and Embarrassment in Shakespeare's Venice, by Harry Berger Jr.;Venice and Its Jews: 500 Years Since the Founding of the Ghetto, by Lenore Rosenberg; The Horses of St Mark's: A Story of Triumph in Byzantium, Paris and Venice, by Charles Freeman [FANTASTIC!!! GOING TO RE-READ]; The Science of Saving Venice, by Caroline Fletcher; The City of Falling Angels, by John Berendt (runner up for best in non-fiction!) Also fascinating: Venice: Extraordinary Maintenance, by Gianfranco Pertot

Fantastic Cookbook:Venice: Four Seasons of Home Cooking, by Russell Norman. Also FUN: Brunetti's Cookbook, by Roberta Pianaro, Donna Leon

Post about wine and Venice coming up next week at 3QD.

Small Stack #2: Poetry

Very happy to have more translations of the Chieko Poems published in Transference, Western Michigan University's journal of poetry translation. There was a lot of great stuff this issue. Here is a link to the translations.

Here is the entire issue.

University of Iowa's journal of literary translations EXCHANGES published some of my translations earlier this year

I was struck this autumn that I sometimes don't understand the difference between very lyrical prose and poetry... in Kotaro's poem, it is free form--and yet his are perfect poems. What makes them so, though? So, I watched a masterclass online given by Billy Collins on the craft of poetry, and I just loved it. I feel learning something about the art can help so much as a reader and lover of poetry. Following this up I read The Art of Voice: Poetic Principles and Practice, by Tony Hoagland. Sally recommended Looking for Dragon Smoke, by Bly--which I am looking forward to reading early in 2020, along with two other books by Hinton, I have. Read Hunger Mountain by David Hinton, and am now very curious about his work.

Fourth Stack: Natural Wines

Lawrence Osbourne, in his book, The Wet and the Dry, writes movingly about Dionysus; reminding us that the poet Pindar compared the god of the vine to that of "the pure light of high summer." That is the kind of wine (wine light) I want to drink--especially in summer-- a wine that embodies the pure light and sunshine of the season. So far, that means the volcanic babies of Sicily (Long live Arianna Occhipinti!) and the glorious amphora whites from Georgia. We loved this wine from Baia's Wine (Baia, like Arianna is a young and very talented and amazing wine maker!) "liquid honeysuckle and thyme--" without the overwhelming sulphur of the Sicilian COS amphora either. Lingering sunlight and perfume... sunny and cheerful wine.

Venissa, too, if we can afford another bottle someday...

All those lesser known grapes that are not on the road usually traveled, the legendary dorona grape, the Tsitska, Krakhuna, and Tsolikouri from Georgia; the zibbibo in Sicily and waiting in great anticipation to try the Hamdani, Jandali, and Dabouki white grapes from the Holy Land. Always love Cassis. Definitely recommend: Tasting the Past, by Kevin Begos.

For sunshine reds, so far, the only light summer red we have had is the 100% sangiovese from il Borro and the COS "pithos" fermented in an amphora from nero d'avola and frappato grapes. (nero d'avola is one of my favorite red grapes).

I guess most people around here have a favorite Feynman quote. Mine is from his famous discourse on wine-- an aside during one of his lectures at Caltech, where he said that "Life is fermentation."

For years, I thought that "life is translation." That was my motto--typical translator--

Not anymore though. Now, life is fermentation. For sure!

Osbourne goes on to explain that the ancient Egyptians, like the Cretans, designated the rising of the star Sirius in high summer (July) with fermentation. And this to them suggested the life force (fermentation and intoxication, life from decay...)

And in the Amber Revolution, Simon Woolf off-handedly mentions that the huge amphora (qvevri) were sometimes used at the end of life, in death, cut to allow for a body in burial.... like in Borneo).

Favorite of the bunch: The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World, by Lawrence Osbourne

Others:

Lawrence Osbourne's The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey

Simon Woolf's Amber Revolution

Alice Feiring's
For the Love of Wine: My Odyssey Through the World's Most Ancient Wine Culture

Kevin Begos' wonderful Tasting the Past: The Science of Flavor and the Search for the Origins of Wine

Small Stack #3 Descartes

In Spring this year, I had the chance to revisit Descartes and his mind-body duality in a class held at the Huntington Library, in Pasadena. Taught by Descartes scholar Gideon Manning, we spent six weeks reading Descartes and having fruitful conversations about the philosopher’s work. Maybe Descartes is better read when one is in mid-life? Because I found Meditations to be much more appealing compared to when I first read the work thirty some years ago. Recommended reading: Russell Shorto’s Descartes’ Bones (I loved this one and plan to re-read it) and AC Grayling’s The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind.

Fifth Stack: Borneo

I took my first-ever writing class this autumn and one of the prompts was to write about a place you have never been. I really enjoyed doing that and wrote about my favorite place I have never been: Borneo! It was great fun to re-read old classics like Gavin Young's, In Search of Conrad and Eric Hansen’s travel classic, Stranger in the Forest. I also re-visited Lorne and Lawrence Blair's Ring of Fire films. I met Lorne Blair in Ubud not long before his tragic death. Anyway, this walk down imaginary memory lane led me to discover a writer, I had never heard of before: Carl Hoffman (who wrote the best seller, Savage Harvest and his new double biography called The Last Wild Men of Borneo about Bruno Manser and American tribal art dealer Michael Palmieri. He is a fantastic writer and those books really were riveting! I also picked up The Wasting of Borneo, by Alex Shoumatoff. I am a long time fan of his work and this book was very sad...

Palm oil is a funny thing. This oil that we never knew we needed thirty years ago is now in everything. From shampoo and toothpaste to every snack known to man-- It is nearly impossible to avoid. Shoumatoff says he is down to a drop a week in toothpaste and shampoo... I don't think I use any—but will go check my shampoo bottle (nope, I’m good). But it is really hard to avoid the stuff, since it is in everything... And so the destruction continues. After the forests are cleared, monocrop oil palms are planted, and this habitat destruction has pushed the island's animals to the brink of extinction--including our cousins, the orangutans.

How can we continue with this destruction?

Looking Forward

First: My favorite writer William Dalrymple's new one on the East India Co., Anarchy. Hard to believe it is taking me this long to get to it! My first project will be to finish my reading on Signorelli and Freud. I have a stack of books and am really looking forward to getting into those. I would also like to finish my "walk down memory" lane, reading what little there is on Ladakh and the murals at Alchi. Hoping to visit China for 6 weeks this summer so will turn to China after that... I haven't flown across the Pacific since leaving Japan. I hope we make it work.

Also reading now into 2020, the Shadow King. There is so much to say about this magnificent novel.

Final must mention: Overstory, by Richard Powers

A review I wrote about the book The Power of Nunchi will appear in the Kyoto Journal in 2020.

My 2018 reads were written up in in 2019 in two blog posts at 3 Quarks: Do Octopuses Have Souls? I only read one of those books from that post in 2019--but it was fantastic: Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy, by Evan Thompson. And: A Symphony Of Vanishing Sounds (The Insect Apocalypse).