Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: books

  • Lonely Planet California by Lonely Planet

    Lonely Planet California (Travel Guide)Lonely Planet California by Lonely Planet

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    FORGET La La Land. Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, writer, and statesman whose ingenious wit melded with erudition and humanity endeared him to the American public urged the people on the East Coast, especially educated unmarried women in the east – to move to California for its primordial beauty: “Fly, scatter through the country, go to the Great West, anything rather than remain here.” Also, Henry David Thoreau described California as a pristine virgin land where a terrestrial River of Lethe flew the Lethe of the Pacific. The collective literary rhapsody comes to life in this world-famous travel book with its signature vivid colorful pictures and detailed, itemized information on the region in suavely offhand  convivial narrative style that entices you to love California at first sight.

    Abundant with its rustic and restive natural beauty unsurpassed by glamour of tinsel cities and its unique melding of multifarious cultures and rich history, California is a sun-kissed prize of the States. Take a hiking in Mt. Shasta, and this awe-inspiring mountain will stir your imagination and makes you believe it a home of a sky-spirit as the native tribe believe. If you are in mood for being in touch with the caress of the blue waves away from the meele and reality just for one day, you can elope with your beloved or with your own weary self to Big Sur. Nested against mysterious-looking redwood forests, the Big Sur Coast has all the elements for being a lovers’ paradise where you can be in your most unguarded self and be a Phoebe Cates or her lover in movie Paradise. On the next day, a visit to Santa Barbara will be quite a cultural feat by visiting the 18th century villas, shops, and churches built by Spanish conquistadors and priests. Or you and your fido friend can do some super-fun splashes or even venture surfing at Huntington Beach on weekends. And of course, there are Disneyland and Universal Studio if you want to meet your favorite characters from childhood and roll with what the best amusement parks can provide to your wildest dream at the best.

    This book is a comprehensive overview of the places and history of California in addition to rich remedial information on the rates of currency and estimated expenses expected of traveling the region if you come from a different country. Written by several veteran globe trotters and well-traveled Californians in compilation, reading the book will give you a sensation of listening to your friend’s travelogue or experiencing a jolly tour guide by an amiable cicerone all to yourself for free. Moreover, the book will equip your mind with knowledge of the region, so that when you actually go there, you will appreciate the beauty of the region like never before.

  • Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz

    Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its SoulOnward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    It was eight years after the founder of Starbucks Howard Schultz had resigned from the position of CEO when the company that he had sown with the wind and reaped in whirlwind was at stake amid the catalytic financial crisis in 2008. The perilous state of Starbucks called for its creator’s return to take the helm of a distressed ship on the verge of sinking into the abyss of obscurity with all its hopeful expectations, respectful achievements, not to speak of all of its shipmates from the management down to the store employees. Schultz could not let all of it happen. He accepted the calling in the capacity of CEO to save the ship and continued sailing onward, which forms the basis of this book.

    What might be considered as an autobiography of a business tycoon at first blush of the title of the book will lead the reader to an interesting peek-a-boo of a successful enterprise that is armed to the teeth with its unique philosophy of practicality and idealism rooted in operational rigor and accountability striving for a healthy balance of profit and social conscience to provide customers with prime quality coffee proprietary to the brand. Schultz’s ambition to perfect the art of making fine espresso as the company’s distinguishing attitudinal value of coffee-making from the competitors is akin to that of craftsmanship of a seasoned artisan of a medieval guild. For example, in the afternoon of one Tuesday in February 2008, Schultz closed all of the US stores to improve the making of espresso because pouring espresso was something of an art, and therefore required a barista to attend to the quality of the beverage even though it meant the huge loss of profits for closing the stores just for one day. To Schultz, taking the ordinary to elevate it to an art also relates to a business principle of putting the sincerest endeavors to the foundation and innovation of the company; it is a right way to win as he believes, “Coffee can’t lie,” which is also reminiscent of what Theodore Roosevelt commented on his favorite coffee as being “good to the last drop.”

    In addition, Schultz offers many more interesting tidbits of the company without disclosing its trade secrets in an informative way: That Starbucks is company-owned and not franchised is something new to learn. Unlike William Rosenberg, the founder of Dunkin’ Donuts, who was a fervent believer of a franchise, Schultz adamantly opposes the idea of franchising Starbucks because ceding ownership of stores to individuals will most likely to mar the enterprising spirit of the company and loosen the cohesiveness of esprit de corps, let alone the principles of providing a customer with the best quality beverage in a social yet personal environment between one’s house and job. Besides, the company’s provision of full health care benefits to all employees, ranging from the corporate heads to part-time attendants in stores points to the veracity of Schultz fostering of social conscience in the course of making profits, withal.

    Onward is a testament to the steadfast adherence to cardinal principles of playing a good clean competition in a business world without becoming a tainted soul. That is, achieving success in promoting its entrepreneurial profit growth and humanistic idealism is all over but the shouting. It might make the reader wonder if Schultz has heard the adage of Ralph Waldo Emerson during his lecture to the audience in the height of the Lyceum Movement: “Knowledge, plus moral character, promotes business success.” All in all, Schultz’s touchy-feely narrative surprisingly devoid of self-aggrandizement or ostentatious display of his lifetime achievement, relates a tale of a man whose ambitious but admirable philosophy of entrepreneurship rigorously kept against the insurmountable odds with  the heart of a man responsible for his legion of employees and their families appertains to the reader in one way or another. Upon reading the book, the reader will feel a bit privy to his/her regular Starbucks on a next visit in a nice sort of way.

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  • ‘Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney’, by Paul Johnson – review

    CreatorsCreators by Paul Johnson

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    Kurt Vonnegut encouraged anyone dabbling in the act of creativity: “To practice art, no matter how well or badly, is to make your soul grow. So do it.” Accordingly, the art of creation is a noble act of finding a meaning of life in which man searches for his freedom of will and will to meaning by translating the principles of sentiments and reason that are universal in humankind to various forms of creativity, ranging from writing and painting to music and dance, and to even gardening and making people laugh. Such act of making something out of nothing requires Herculean feats of courage and spirit that serves as a sovereign remedy for the existential ills of everyday life, however ordinary or exceptional. Paul Johnson’s Creators, which looks into the bright side of clever, talented individuals contrary to his previously published Intellectuals in which he recounted the hypocrisy of historically famous intellectuals, presents his thesis: that we all have creative traits in us is our divine prerogative of humanity; and to produce works of the arts involves prodigies of courage as well as talent that is sublimated to the aesthetic expression of intellect and beauty, such as to be in the cases of luminous artists whose oeuvres marked their standing in literature, painting, and music.

    Each chapter on each different artist draws up on the artist’s unyielding courage and creativity, which is a quintessential element of creative originality of outstanding quality. Johnson admits that an artist tends to be egotistical due to his extravagant faculty of creativity into which the artist pours out everything that is in him. An unusual degree of courage that is akin to physical courage of a soldier on the front is demanded of the artist unless he bows to the final enemy of creativity, such as age or increasing debility. Take Beethoven’s struggling against his deafness by using a toothbrush in his mouth to feel the tonality of each piano key while composing his immortal symphonies. Great impressionist painter Toulouse-Lautrec’s inherited disabilities and grotesque deformities as a result of hereditary inbreeding could not stop him from producing beautiful paintings with his triumphant willpower and courage until his death at the age of thirty-seven. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote incessantly despite his chronic illness due to his weak and unreliable lungs that eventually killed him in his early forties. Emily Dickinson wrote poetry without encouragement and public response, while David Hume failed to receive public recognition upon publishing Human Understanding. So did Anthony Trollope of The Macdermots of Bally Cloran that was neither reviewed nor sold of a single copy.

    The life of an artist is full of peculiar aspects and strange satisfaction often spurred on by personal weaknesses, such as in the cases of Jane Austen and George Eliot whose real name was Mary Ann Evans. Both of the women led lonely and lugubrious lives without experiencing felicities of love and adulation by men despite their brilliant spirits and ingenious minds. Surely beauty was in their time and still is only skin-deep, but their plainness left them in spinsterhood and forced themselves to spur loneliness on writing that was the solace in which they could fall in love with the men they desired. In effect, the reader will learn that it was the courage to express their spirits and feminine aspiration to be loved that fed on their creativity. Also, self-awareness, careful nursing, and restricting of the talents and subject matters, rather than audacious rampant criticism of society in general in undisciplined tempest of words, were added to the wings of their creative spirits.

    In light of the above, art is not genius but a work born of love and labor of its creator whose Herculean degree of courage and desire of expressing imaginations and intellect perform a painful but delightful feat of ingeniousness. Johnson avows that rational and professional methods of using skills, experiences, creative industriousness, and self-confidence are the ingredients to create the work of art. Also, he affirms the reader that there is no need to make a pact with the devil or perform a magical ceremony to invoke a creative spirit because inspiration comes from within. It is how to find it and reveal it like a hidden diamond in its most radiant luminescence. Written in common words devoid of academic locutions and once again his usual consummate narrative skills, this is Johnson’s another scintillating book to be acquainted with the human face of geniuses whose works have produced pleasure in our senses and minds.

  • Martin Luther: A Life From Beginning to End by Hourly History

    Martin Luther: A Life From Beginning to EndMartin Luther: A Life From Beginning to End by Hourly History

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    Martin Luther represents the rapidly changing 16th century Europe where, many thanks to wide popularization of printing press, the spread of new knowledge, including Copernicus’s suggestion of the universe as being heliocentric and the discovery of new sea trade routes by the Spanish and the Portuguese, was available to the mass. Accordingly, this reading of Martin Luther: A Life from Beginning to End elegantly narrates Luther’s role of not only a religious reformist but also a cultural leader of the epoch. The reader will learn that Luther was in the right place at the right time to be in the vanguard of the Reformation by defining the emerging Protestant church and putting Europe in medieval mindset toward the new Europe in a modern way of thinking like never before.

    Luther was born in 1483 and christened Martin on the feast day of St. Martin, the day after his birth. The oldest of five siblings, Luther was brought up in a strict disciplinarian household in which his miner father’s no-nonsense work ethics and mother’s strict methods of corporeal punishment (e.g., she beat her son’s hands until they bled for stealing a nut from a market.) had strong impacts on his character and belief system. Academically speaking, Luther was a reasonably intelligent student, not a brilliant one with flying colors aiming to be a lawyer at the University of Erfurt. His favorite subject was classical literature of which Virgil’s Aeneid was his passion that led him to the humanistic idea of reading original texts in contrast with other mandatory subjects including rhetoric, reasoning, and argument based on a translated version of writings of Aristotle with commentaries. His original aspiration to become a lawyer was fatefully changed when he encountered a turbulent thunderstorm on his way to see his father and became so frightened that in fear of mortal danger, he prayed to St. Anne that if she protected him from the storm, he would take a vow of monastic life. Hence, instead of returning to the university, Luther went to the monastery of the Augustine to become a monk.

    Luther’s doubt and despair over his inability to please God according to the nominalism, a medieval school of thought teaching that good works through the Church would please God, continued to vex his conscience and question the true meaning of Christianity, all the more fueled by his study of scripture in its original language. Luther’s indignation at the dogmas ruling over Christianity not the Gospels alone in its original text resulted in the famous 95 Theses opposing the Church’s sale of indulgences on a variety of grounds nailed to the door of All Saints’ Church in Withenberg, which ignited embers of the Reformation especially against Church of Rome. Surely, that the papacy was secular, not divinely appointed was to infuriate the Church and excommunicate him. Notwithstanding the mortal threats from his foes, Luther was a man of convictions and successfully led the Reformation movement with a group of his followers. Be he ever imperfect, Luther was also a generous and kind man who cared for orphans and the sick even by lodging them in his house. Furthermore, Luther helped a group of nuns escape from a convent in 1523 during the Reformation and married Katharina von Bora, one of the escaped nuns without home and family whom Luther affectionately called, “My lord.”

    In the eyes of Rome, Luther might be an infidel heretic to be condemned in the Sixth Circle of Inferno, but he was more of humanistic thinker, a pioneer educator putting his ideas into actions to upend the fallacies of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy and its practices under the pretext of redemption of fallen souls and blessing of celestial graces through the Church that had already become corrupt with the cardinal sins. What distinguishes Luther from other religious leaders is his role as a public activist, advocating church reform based on Christian freedom and the message of the Gospel in scripture without resorting to the use of violence because it was not of Christian conduct. He worked on the vernacular bible based on Erasmus’s recent edition of the New Testament in its original Greek by transcribing into German word by word without the use of commentaries in order that his translation would be accessible to the public and convey the contexts as truthfully as possible to the original. Also, Luther encouraged medieval German’s history of folk hymns in the vernacular during mass by rewriting the hymns himself, one of which was famed “A mighty fortress is our God.”

    To encapsulate, the achievements of Luther that have influenced our modern way of thinking appertain to education of minds of people on the ground of individualism which are: (1) examination of each Christian’s conscience; (2) the sufficiency of scripture alone as the bedrock of Protestant church tenets; (3) building a direct relationship to God through only Christ, not through a priest; (4) active participation of laypersons in church worship; (5) emphasis on grace, forgiveness, and salvation by faith alone; and (6) the use of hymns in the vernacular for the mass. Had it not been for Luther’s pyrrhic vanguard of the Reformation movement, Europe would have still remained in the medieval mode of thinking and living.

  • Stardust!

    Sometimes I feel like a mad scientist who relentlessly pursues any signals of supernal intelligent being in the universe when I write my book reviews, poems, and occasionally attempted short short stories on my little lonely blog. I do it because for the love of act of writing and the ambition of writing better. Simple as that.

    And Voila! At last, I was able to catch such signal coming from the most unexpected galaxy of Great Writers this week: That my book review on a fabulously well-written modern thriller, The Flight Attendant got the attention of its equally fabulously brilliant author, Mr. Chris Bohjalian, who not only read the review but also gave me kindly comments on the review thwarts all of my provisional existential worries like magic.

    So I guess my endeavors to improve my writing skills for love of literature and history have not been in vain after all. Francis Bacon’s timeless adage of “Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” has been one of my credos. Now Mr. Bohjalian’s warm encouragement shall be my new, fresh literary memento. What more can I say? I now have stardust.

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  • The Great Surprise from Chris Bohjalian

    I have just checked my neglected tweeter and found out that Mr. Bohjalian, the writer of The Flight Attendant about which I wrote a book review, left such a kindly compliment thereon. I am much obliged for the commendation. This made my day!

    The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian