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Bob Hamilton

Goodreads Author

Born

The United Kingdom

Member Since

December 2009

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/earthdreamer

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11 posts
Bob Hamilton's Blog: Earthdreaming

It's over a month now since I last posted an entry to this blog. I suppose that reflects being caught in a state of limbo. I've had a couple of wonderful and delightfully quirky reviews of Earthdream from members here whom I now consider to be friends. I've been convinced by them that there is a readership here for my book, albeit quite a small one. I ask a lot of the reader I think ... possibly t Read more of this blog post »

1 like · Like • 2 comments • flag

Published on May 07, 2011 06:50

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Bob Hamilton’s books

Average rating: 4.0 · 11 ratings · 6 reviews · 1 distinct work

Earthdream: The Marriage of Reason and Intuition

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 1991

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* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

Bob is Currently Reading

Bob Hamilton is currently reading

Geek Love

by Katherine Dunn

bookshelves: currently-reading

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May 07, 2011 03:47PM

Bob Hamilton rated a book it was amazing

The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll

by Álvaro Mutis

bookshelves: currently-reading, novels

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Bob Hamilton said: " I've just finished the first of the seven novellas (Snow of the Admiral) contained in this volume. I loved it. There's very little plot. It's all about the characters and Maqroll's wonderful digressions. It probably wouldn't be to everyone's taste, b I've just finished the first of the seven novellas (Snow of the Admiral) contained in this volume. I loved it. There's very little plot. It's all about the characters and Maqroll's wonderful digressions. It probably wouldn't be to everyone's taste, but if you love language and beautiful prose, then this is for you. As a taste, this is the captain of the river barge describing his experience of falling in love:

Everything changed when I met the girl. She penetrated a corner of my soul that had been kept sealed and even I didn't know was there. With her gestures, the scent of her skin, her sudden, intense glances that filled me with overwhelming tenderness, with her dependence that was a kind of unthinking, absolute acceptance, she could rescue me instantly from my confusions and obsessions, my discouragement and failure, or my simple daily routine, and leave me inside a radiant circle made of throbbing energy and powerful certainty, like the effects of an unknown drug that produces unconditional happiness.

This review will end up being written over quite a period of time because I intend to savour these novellas and ration their delights. I've now just finished the second (Ilona comes with the Rain) and it has been every bit as good as the first. Mutis conjures up the most exotic female characters imaginable. I'm left with a palpable feeling of regret that I've not had my life touched by these magical women - although since they are as tragic as they are beautiful, it may be just as well that I haven't encountered the like of them in real life!

Here is Maqroll describing life with Ilona:

Life with Ilona was invariably lived on two levels, or rather in two simultaneous and parallel directions. On the one hand, your feet were always on the ground, you were always intelligently but not obsessively alert to what each day offered in response to the routine question of surviving. On the other hand, imagination and unbounded fantasy suggested a spontaneous and unexpected sequence of scenarios that were always aimed at the radical subversion of every law ever written or established. This was a permanent, organic, rigorous subversion that never permitted travel on the beaten path, the road preferred by most people, the traditional patterns that offer protection to those whom Ilona, without emphasis or pride but without any concessions either, would call "the others."

I like to think that Ilona would not have lumped me in with "the others" and included me in her circle, but that may be wishful thinking!

I am left wondering how much of this book belongs to Mutis and how much to the translator, Edith Grossman. Without being a Spanish speaker I guess I will never properly know. The fluidity of the prose suggests that she has done an astonishingly good job. It's very much a joint work of creation.

PS Blogging at Goodreads here ...more "

Apr 06, 2011 01:35PM · see review

Bob Hamilton is currently reading

Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics

by John Derbyshire

bookshelves: currently-reading, mathematics

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Mar 04, 2011 01:22PM

Quotes by Bob Hamilton (?)

“In its quest to discover how the patterns of reality are organised, the story of modern science hints at a picture of a set of Chinese puzzle boxes, each one more intricately structured and wondrous than the last. Every time the final box appears to have been reached, a key has been found which has opened up another, revealing a new universe even more breathtakingly improbable in its conception. We are now forced to suspect that, for human reason, there is no last box, that in some deeply mysterious, virtually unfathomable, self-reflective way, every time we open a still smaller box, we are actually being brought closer to the box with which we started, the box which contains our own conscious experience of the world. This is why no theory of knowledge, no epistemology, can ever escape being consumed by its own self-generated paradoxes. And this is why we must consider the universe to be irredeemably mystical.”
― Bob Hamilton, Earthdream: The Marriage of Reason and Intuition

tags: mysticism, paradox, science

9 likes

Bob’s Quotes

“Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

48 likes

“Education is not the piling on of learning, information, data, facts, skills, or abilities--that's training or instruction--but is rather a making visible what is hidden as a seed...
To be educated, a person doesn't have to know much or be informed, but he or she does have to have been exposed vulnerably to the transformative events of an engaged human life...
One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated.”
― Thomas Moore

73 likes

“We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.”
― Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

tags: courage, life, risk

169 likes

“Everything changed when I met the girl. She penetrated a corner of my soul that had been kept sealed and even I didn't know was there. With her gestures, the scent of her skin, her sudden, intense glances that filled me with overwhelming tenderness, with her dependence that was a kind of unthinking, absolute acceptance, she could rescue me instantly from my confusions and obsessions, my discouragement and failure, or my simple daily routine, and leave me inside a radiant circle made of throbbing energy and powerful certainty, like the effects of an unknown drug that produces unconditional happiness.”
― Álvaro Mutis, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll

tags: love

21 likes

“Weather is a purely personal matter. There is no such thing as a climate that is cold or hot, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. People take it upon themselves to create a fantasy in their imagination and call it weather. There's only one climate in the world, but the message that nature sends is interpreted according to strictly personal, non-transferable rules.”
― Álvaro Mutis, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll