A Garden of Peace: A Medley in Quietude

A Garden of Peace: A Medley in Quietude by Frank Frankfort Moore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My favourite quote (p. 81), paraphrasing Genesis 2:8, and also used in Sid Meier's Civilization V for the Hanging Gardens wonder:

I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God, it would be in a garden at the cool of the day," said Mrs Friswell, gently.

I admit that I discovered this book because of the quote in Civilization V. It felt like I was reading one of Dirk Bogarde's novels, where numerous characters appear at his house, providing amusement, and often derision, by the author who attacks all and sundry in the first person narrative of a segment of his life. Moore's work is a must for all who are considering designing and creating a garden. Set against the background of the Great War (although this setting is only revealed by its publication date and the conclusion), Moore covers a good deal of literary, architectural, historical, theatrical, and cultural ground, and there is a rich tapestry of people, places, events, books, plays and so on to mine for more interesting discoveries. This particular book was printed from a scanned copy of the text only and does not include the original photographs, which can be found online at archive.org. It would appear that the garden actually existed, as described. This is a remarkable book and it is one of my favourites. Why such literary gems slip from our collective memory is a wonder, and it is nothing less than wonderful to rediscover these buried in the crevices of history.

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My Favourite Apps: TasteKid, Hemingway, and Vocabify

I would prefer this to an app any day, but I admit the apps reviewed here are good! (Flickr: Paul Townsend/CC BY-ND 2.0)

I don't normally like apps of any kind. I'd much rather use a browser and a website. But that is an attitude rather than a fact, and when it comes to apps that solve life's petty dramas, then I must change my tune. Here I give a quick review of TasteKid, Hemingway, and my latest app, Vocabify.

TasteKid (now TasteDive - WTF?)

By a random trial and error method, I have found various books, movies, and music by making connections between various media. For example, one of my pianola rolls is a foxtrot entitled The Flapper Wife, and this led me to the book, and then on to a series of movies and music of the period, by following the trail of authors, publishers, composers, and musicians. For several years now, I have been using TasteKid to do the same thing, but with considerably less effort. Is it just me or did TasteKid change its name to TasteDive while I was writing this? Now it makes me think of nasty tasting things from "down there". Oh, I am so annoyed! Semantics aside, the recommendation engine is good, and has helped me to discover lots of new music, books, and movies, based on the recommendations of others. For example, today I searched for a composer like Richard Wagner, and discovered the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. Whether the similarities would pass scrutiny is not the point. The recommendations provide opportunities to look beyond our own bounded rationality, and for that, this is my favourite app. Oh, wait, it is a website. Oh well. But why oh why did they rename it TasteDive?

Hemingway

When writing for news media websites, there are a variety of text editors and readability measures that help authors to cut down superfluous, flowery, or woolly (I love that word) sentences to help focus on plain language. It is not my ideal way to write, but it does tend to force one into the journalistic style of writing, which is indeed a skill unto its own. My favourite author, Ernest Hemingway, was known for his iceberg principle, where he strips down his sentences to the bare minimum. This enables the reader to use their imagination to fill in the blanks. The app requires payment of a fee, but I do not mind paying for something that is useful. Think of it in terms of design (see Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Wind, Sand and Stars):

[P]erfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.

Vocabify

Scattered throughout my travel and writing diaries are words that I am familiar with, but do not really know. I write these down, with definitions, but time and again I see the same words, and I ask myself, what is the definition of this word? Typically, I cannot answer, even though I might be able to use the word in a sentence. Then along comes Vocabify. There are a couple of words that it is unable to provide definitions for, and I provided feedback to the creator. I wanted to be able to add words. But this seems to defeat the purpose of the app, in that it attaches to databases with decent definitions, and one can only add words from these databases. Most of the words that I cannot find in Vocabify are technical jargon in either political science or philosophy. But the creator told me this in a quick response to my feedback, and it is only in beta form at present. The app operates via an add-in to my browser, and I can add words as I discover them (I have already combed my diaries for my lists of words and added these). The app then sends me an email each day with one of my words and its definition. The app works on the basis of rote learning, and frankly, for learning definitions or the spelling of words, much like tables of multiplication, there is no better way to learn.

So there you have it. Three "apps" that I use and enjoy on a regular basis.

The Lost Estate

The Lost Estate by Henri Alain-Fournier

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Three-quarters of the way through this book I thought it was more for children or at a pinch, YA fiction. But the last score pages had me racing to the finish in happy-joy-sad-nostalgia in that the novel captures the feeling of saudade, enveloping me as the third-party observer yet bringing me in close. I could not help several instances of déjà vu but I am not sure whether I have read parts of this before (as I had done with Steinbeck's Red Pony in an abridged version in primary school) or otherwise the imaginations of the older boys' recalls my own thoughts during those times when teenage boys are physically present but otherwise not there. I wonder, too, whether a feminist critique of the moral "rightness" of our hero's actions would not reveal a whole bunch of anti-morality should one shine a contemporary light on this, the third tale of the Belle Époque I have read in the last few weeks. I was fortunate enough to read most of this book while sitting on a cane chair on the grass in the warm autumn sunshine of the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, creating a dreamy ambience that made the digesting of this novel all the more enchanting.

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