posted Sep 6, 2010 3:15 PM by Yongming Wang
by Jeremy Collins, from The Georgia Review, 2009 Pushcart Prize XXXIII Best of the Small Presses
Haven't read a good piece like this for a while. About the movie Rocky, about Stallone, about the author's own life, own literary life. |
posted Jun 4, 2010 7:37 AM by Yongming Wang
published by Knopf, 2010. 656 pages. Too much unrelated materials. It will be much better if condensed to
300 pages. Good coverage on president election, senator election, and 2004 Democratic Party Contention
speech which signaled the rise of Barack Obama. |
posted May 19, 2010 1:51 PM by Yongming Wang
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updated Jun 4, 2010 7:36 AM
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5/19: Start reading this collection of short stories, poetry, and essays.
5/20: "Our Pointy Boots" fiction by Brock Clarke (* * * *), from Ecotone: Soldiers came
back from Iraq war, suffered a great deal psychologically. Just want to go back to a normal
life. May never succeed to be a normal person again. Great writing technique, using "we"
as the point of view. Very hard to write like this.
5/21: "Tom & Jerry" fiction by Christie Hodgen (* * * *), from Ploughshares: A four-month
pregnant girl spent three months in hospital waiting for the sad inevitable. Another
example of violating writing rules. The protoganist in this story is "You". So far this is only
second person I met who writes to "You"; another person I remember is Nabokov.
5/21: "The Crying Indian", essay by Ginger Strand (* * * * *), from Orion: the frauds
committed by Advertising Council and the organization Keep America Beautiful in 60's
and 70's. They helped creating the biggest waste and environmental pollution in modern
history, that is: the disposable packagings. It's shocking, and thought provoking. Well
written.
6/4: "The Boneyard", essay by Ben Quick (* * * *), from Orien: Vietnam war, chemical
weapon, Agent Orange, C-123, Herbecide, American folly.
6/4: " |
posted Apr 24, 2010 6:42 PM by Yongming Wang
Finally put system upgrade and the tenure reappointment thing behind. and have some time to read.
A excellent collection of short stories. Subtle, delicate, detailed, vivid description, and some very good stories. |
posted Mar 6, 2010 4:29 PM by Yongming Wang
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updated Apr 24, 2010 6:48 PM
]
I don't know why it's so difficult to finish this book. It's not because of its language. It almost took me two weeks, still not finish it, only about 90%.
It should be interesting reading, it's the best stories of last year. I admit that the writings are all very good, all delicate, subtle, and very detailed. But why most stories just do not interest me. I just feel that they lack the substance. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong.
And I remember following titles:
"Yurt" by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum; "Beyond the Pale" by Joseph Epstein; "A Shadow Table" by Alice Fulton; "The Farms" by Eleanor Henderson. |
posted Feb 19, 2010 8:03 AM by Yongming Wang
For the past one and half month I didn't read almost anything. I've been watching Grey's Anatomy, the TV series. This is the best TV show I ever watched. I actually watched it twice. Six seasons, average 20 episodes for each season. That's a total of 120 episode. Times 40 plus minutes for each episode. Times 2. That's roughly 160 hours I spent watching it.
It can also be called "The life and death in the hospital". It is dark and twisty, full of tragedy and sad stories. but it's at the same time hopeful and uplifting. |
posted Jan 3, 2010 8:24 AM by Yongming Wang
posted Jan 3, 2010 7:42 AM by Yongming Wang
"The Cost Conundrum: what a Texas town can teach us about health care." by Atul Gawande, New Yorker, June 1, 2009
The best case study so far I have seen about American's health care system. McAllen, the most expensive Medicare place in USA, costs average of $15,000 per enrollee, three thousands more than the annual income per person in this small southern town. Why and how? The reason is, the author contends, that when the doctors become businessmen, become the investors of the hospitals where they work in, the overuse of visits, tests, procedures are inevitable.
What is the solution? Gawande suggests the Mayo Clinic model in Rochester, Minnesota and Grand Junctions model in Colorado, which both have the best quality of health care in the country, and near the bottom of the average cost, only one third of that in McAllen. |
posted Jan 1, 2010 6:31 AM by Yongming Wang
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updated Jan 3, 2010 6:29 AM
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A total asshole, drunker, womanizer, worse in every way than Dali except that he is not a genius in any art or creativity. But this book still made the New York Times bestseller. What can you say?
This reminds me of an incident that happened almost twenty years ago, when I first arrived at America. A single woman whose last name is Fisher had an affair with a married man. (I forgot the man's name.) One day she went up to the man's house while the man was not in the home, and shoot the man's wife. Fisher went to jail, of course, and sentenced to some years; but something also happened that totally caught me in shock, that is, Fisher became infamous and famous at the same time, Fisher became a multi-millionaire thanks to a book deal she signed with the publisher which detailed her affair with the man.
The moral I learned from this incident? In this country, if you can't do something exceptional to get famous and rich, then do something notoriously bad. Like this woman Fisher twenty years ago, and this Mr. Tucker Max now. |
posted Dec 5, 2009 12:44 PM by Yongming Wang
A letter to daughter.
By Kaifu Lee (李开复), the former CEO of Google China, former Vice President of Microsoft, former Vice President of Apple, former professor of Carnegie Mellon when he was only 28 years old, and invented the first truly computer voice recognition system which was named the greatest invention of the year by Business Week of 1988.
Reading his blog is such a joy and inspiration.
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