Teo Degas' Books & Decks

If you are a woman (sorry Barbie it is not you) you have told yourself one of these lies at a certain point in your life and, by doing so, you've self-sabotaged yourself successfully. Congratulations, you feel miserable. No prize for you, you just pay the price.

Written by a female coach,  Big Lies... offers a concise evaluation of fifty-nine self-lies, limiting beliefs and distorted views of your female self and your self in general. They deal with your worth, your body, self-care, success, money, love, relationships, authenticity, and your spirit. The message is, see them as lies, because they are, and do not use them to justify your situation, your misery or your empty life.

Examples of big fat lies are: I am old, I cannot do X, I have to please everybody to be liked, money is bad, it is OK living beyond your means, you have to fake who you are to get a man, love is sacrificing yourself, better be polite than authentic, grieving openly and strongly is wrong, and so on. 

Many of these beliefs could be applied to men, as well, but others are specifically female. Also, some of these big fat lies are obvious, but others are not, and are the ones that I like the most, because they are not socially popular or accepted and will help you to separate hay from grain. Having said this, even the obvious ones are important to be highlighted because the truth is that a ridiculous amount of women are spending tons of money to "improve" themselves and "gain confidence" by increasing the size of their boobs, cutting and modifying pieces of their body flesh, and faking what they are not, instead of focussing on inner, ethical or intellectual growth. 

I found some of the "lies" on spirituality redundant. Being not religious or not spiritual is perfectly OK, as long as you have ethics. The power and value of behaving ethically is overseen too often despite being more universal than any religion out there, and applying to any religion out there. I am a bit sick of religious spiritual people who say and preach that they have strong morals or look for people with strong morals and then disrespect me or treat me in ways I consider totally unethical. Spirituality is fine if you need it. It is fine to believe or practice any religion, but being agnostic or atheist with a good set of ethics is something to be proud of, not a macule on your soul, mind you.     

The book is easy to read, and a quick read as well, as every single big fat lie has a mini chapter devoted to it, so you can read them easily while commuting. 

This is a sound book, but this is not the book of a psychologist. See it for what it is.

An entertaining good-hearted read overall. 

Have you ever watched a foreign movie with subtitles and, while watching a scene, you were a bit puzzled because there was some sort of disconnection between the action and the subtitles? 

Let's start with a personal example that links well with what this book is about. 

When Spain won the Football World Cup in 2010, one of the scorers got his shirt up to show another shirt with a text written on it. I was watching one of the most viewed morning shows in Australia at the time. The presenters and newsreader didn't know what all the fuss was about, but they wanted to know. It could have cost them nothing checking with a translator in advance or just checking foreign media in English that had bothered to do so. Two people from the audience translated the text and sent it to the program via social media. The first text was a political patriotic text, which was obviously too long for 5 Spanish words. Still, the newsreader read it and was happy to feed the masses with this crap. Another viewer sent a proper translation of the text adding the context as well. The text was a posthumous homage to a deceased friend and co-footballer not a patriotic message. The newsreader read this translation as well, and ended by saying, "now we don't know which one is right, they are so different". I was rolling my eyes in disbelief.

You might ask, who cares about football, right? Put it this way, how many times have you been or are you being mislead by the media because they rely on non-translations or bad translations of items of news on subjects that matter to you? Or on hot topics of world news we are fed by the media every single day? 

***

Found in Translation is a a very entertaining unpretentious light-hearted book written by a professional translator and a professional interpreter. The authors are passionate about what they do, and are good at what they do, and their enthusiasm and expertise shows in the book. 

The book is a well-structured collection of stories that revolve about translation and interpretation coming from professionals all over the world not just the authors. We see the role of translation in   wars, politics, diplomacy, the health system, newspapers and magazines, media analysis, online network sites (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Wikipedia), History, business, multinational companies and brands, the Justice system and international courts of Justice, marketing, rescue missions overseas, International Courts and multinational institutions, sports events, stock market, Literature, the Bible and other religious texts, beauty pageants, dating sites, porn, wines descriptions. TED talks, and much more! There are many delightful bloopers and anecdotes that show the impact that a bad translation can have in our daily life and the world.

 Why we need translation or translators in the age of globalisation? Why is important having good translators? Are machines ever going to replace translators? What about Google Translate and Translating programs? Which fields require of translation and interpretation? Wouldn't it be nice if everybody spoke English so we do not need to translate? What does translators do? How do you translate Creole languages or words that do not exist in your language? Or vice versa? Does a good translator finds easy to translate everything in his language/s of expertise? The authors reply to these and other pertinent questions and offer an overall view of where translation is, whether you notice it or not, see it or not, or you think you need it or not.

The target of the book is the general public, so the language used and the approach to the subject is light and easy to understand. No jargon. Beyond the interesting anecdotes, there is the realisation that translation and interpretation are something more that a conversion of language X into language Y, and that translation pervades the world we live in. This is NOT a manual on translation or a book on translation theories, methodologies or techniques, or on the History of translation. No boring stuff!

I missed more focus on areas as translation of historical and anthropological texts, which provide the modern translator with some specific challenges. but this is just me. Yet, one of my favourite episodes, the one of the Treaty of Waitangi, which I have had the pleasure of seeing in person, is in the book.

I found this book among the list of best illustration books of 2014 chosen by Amazon's editors. Really? Unbelievable! This is an enlargement and remake of the author's blog entry, available for free on the Internet. See it here :)

I consider this one of the most appalling books I have read lately, and at rip off price of 10+ bucks for the Kindle edition. Give that money to charity! The book is not worth it.

The author is truly lost in translation, and wants you to get you lost as well. The ratings of the book seems to indicate she has succeeded.

The introduction is a clear example of pompous, vacuous well-intentioned "crappola" that says nothing and means nothing but wants to impress and fool the general public. Still, I had hopes that this would be, well, just a crappy introduction. Sadly it is not.

How did the author came across some of the non-existent words, some very translatable untranslatable words, is beyond my understanding. I came across something really similar in Tumblr a couple of years ago, and it is free and way better! (the blog is called Otherworldly). Otherwise, just google "untranslatable words into English" and you will find gazillion entries, most of them featuring the same bunch!

The Malaysian word in this book does not exist. I believe the Malaysian guy who says so in his review mostly because he/she is Malaysian and must know.

The Spanish "vacilando" (not a verb, but a verb tense, mind you) does not translate the way the author defines it. The verb "vacilar" has many different meanings, all translatable into English. You never use a gerund on its own, but within a a sentence that has another verb (or it is implicit in it), so that is always easier to translate than a noun or concept. The meaning presented in the book is not mainstream or standard Spanish. It might be slang, Spanglish or a regional/national use of the word, so, if that is the case, well, mention that instead of presenting it as a  general Spanish word. The definition is roughly translatable in English as wanderlust/ing or lurking around. A Spanish word that has no translation whatsoever is "sobremesa", for example, but that is not included in the book.

I don't know Japanese, Inuit or Norwegian, but if the Malay and Spanish words are non-existent or inaccurate, how many of the others are incorrect or understood wrongly?

Many of the words in the book can perfectly be translated into English, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, some others approximately. Just one example Commuovere in Italian is not a specific Italian word (the Spanish "conmover" has a similar meaning), and it can be easily translated into English as "being moved (by something)" as in the movie really moved me.  What makes a word untranslatable is not what it means, it is, most times, the embedded cultural meaning and use. When you use it, how you use it, who does it use it (age group, social group, racial group), the relevance of the word in the culture of a given social group or country, if it is a polite or rude word, etc. For example, you can translate the Portuguese word "Saudade" as nostalgia, longing, or as "blues", but the word has so much embedded cultural meaning in Portuguese literature and song lyrics, or even in the spirit of the Portuguese spirit, hat you cannot capture that in English. If you understand that, you also understand that the illustration in the book accompanying the word "Saudade" does not make any sense. Some words convey ways of living or thinking that are alien to the English speaking reader, so the translation has to do an U-turn to have specific words translated. The same also happens the reverse way.

The illustrations are lovely and cute, and I really enjoyed them. Very naif children's book sort of style, something that is very much my liking. However, the illustrations are there to illustrate, and they do not succeed at doing so at times because the meaning of some words is barely grasped. If this was just a stand alone book with no text, my rating would be way higher. 

I returned the book for refund. Why would I want to keep a book whose information is incorrect or wrong? Even if the book was accurate in its approach to the rest of the foreign words, it would still be a rip off and some of the definitions are questionable It takes you 10 minutes to read the 100+ "pages". What is more, there are masterpieces of illustration sold by Amazon at similar or cheaper prices!

Originally published in 1983, We is a mesmerising book, still relevant for our culture and psychology, and the best book I have read this year so far. 

This is Johnson at his best.  We shows what Johnson can (could) do when he takes the necessary time to work and write properly, with focus and direction, thinking about the reader and putting his vast knowledge to our service. Together with Inner Work, this is Johnson's best book, Jungian analysis explained in plain wholesome awesome language.

Despite what the title might induce you to think, this is not a romantic book or a dating book or a book on how to get the man/women of your dreams. Yet, it touches on romantic relationships from a psychological perspective. 

It is Johnson's trademark using classic mythology to dig a hole in our personal and cultural psyche and explain who we are, how we behave and why. Like many of his other works, We uses a myth (in this case the myth of Tristan & Isold) as a connector to take us in a long ride that goes from the 12th century to the 21st century having the ideal of romantic love in society, in relationships, and in our psyche. 

The book is well structured and it is narrated in a very beautiful prose. Although no footnotes are provided, the book is the most academic of Johnson's. The general introduction, and the chapters On Myths and Note for Women form a sort of prologue. In them you get, in a nutshell, what the aim of the following exploration is, what the book is about, and a short consideration on the the versions of the myth used for the study. Johnson uses as a basis the version of the myth in the Bédier Compilation, except for the three years that follow the drinking of the potion, for which he uses the Béroul's version (the first poet that told the story) as it is closed to the archetypal realms. It is important to remark that Johnson approaches and analyses the myth from a Jungian Psychology point of view not for a Literary point view. 

Four parts follow. The beginning of each part is a condensed summary of the myth, which is followed by several chapters analysing the symbols, characters, and dynamics explored in that part of the myth.

The conclusion, structured in three chapter, is great, brilliant at times. In it, Johnson tries to give a practical solution to what to do with the information he has given us.  The book ends with a list of references of the books quoted in the book, as well as a recommended reading list. A bit outdated, but good nevertheless.

Why using a myth to analyse the ideal of Romantic Love, you will ask. Johnson summarises it in this simple way:

"The myth not only records the dynamics of romantic love in the male psyche, it also reflects the fate of the feminine in our culture" (... )A myth is the collective “dream” of an entire people at a certain point in their history. It is as though the entire population dreamed together, and that “dream,” the myth, burst forth through its poetry, songs, and stories. (...) The myth of Tristan and Iseult is a profound expression of the Western psyche."

The way Johnson is able to dissect a myth without forgetting the historical context that led to its birth is something remarkable taking into account that he is not a historian. This is not to say that some of his statements are not controversial, which is so mostly because of lack of a proper academic apparatus and footnoting; this is the case, for example, of the relationship between Catharism and the birth of  Romances in the Middle Ages. I was mesmerised by Johnson's easiness at having a myth peeled off, layer by layer, until it connects with things that we modern humans still do.

This reflection on the female/feminine element and patriarchate in the Western Culture are priceless and very relevant to this very day. Most of the Note for Women reflects on this issue and on the fact that this is a male-made myth not a female one, and the shortcomings that can derive from the vision of the feminine from it.

There are different levels of analysis of the myth, all interconnected and intermingled: 1/ The historical approach to the text to understand why it is what it is. 2/ The analysis of the symbols in the myth. 3/ The analysis of the dynamics between our own psyche, that is, between our conscious and unconscious. 4/ The depiction of the ways of relating in romantic relationships the myth show, and how we are still replicating them; and 5/ the reasons for the ideal of romantic ideal being so strong (and destructive at times) in the Western Culture. This is also a great book to understand what Anima/Animus are and what Psychological Projections are and how they manifest. 

Johnson succeeds on many fronts in this book, especially at analysing what romance and romantic ideals are, and how they undermine our personal lives and society. He is able to explain the substratum that is the basis of the need for romance and romantic ideals and what the ideal is seeking in our inner world and in our unconscious.  

Despite what many reviews say, this is not a religious book or John does not preach. First at all, Jungian psychology is more spiritual than any other psychological discipline,but it is not religious. Even Johnson says that you have to decide what religion and God mean to you, and he speaks of God and the Gods. In that regard, you can criticise his Jungian approach, not the way Johnson links spirituality and psyche, as soul and self are concepts intrinsically linked in Jungian Psychology and Johnson is doing a Jungian approach to the text. In other words, a disregard for the connection between self and soul is not Jungian. Yet, just read Johnson's definition of soul in this book, which is treated as a psychological entity, and tell me that this is religious. It is not. Johnson, despite being a religious person, is good enough to detach himself for his personal religious preferences and speaks in ways that touch people like me, who are not religious. If this was not enough, the use of some Christian references are not literal. Johnson never uses his examples from the Bible in a literal way, ever. Just see the way he explains the Jesus' human-divine duality. Having said that, I think Johnson is a son of his time, and uses religion and spirituality as synonyms, something that is not so common nowadays.

The analysis of the myth shows us patterns of behaviour, psychological structures and couple dynamics that go from the far past towards this very day. As Johnson says, the myth doesn't tell us what to do with that information; this is he aim of his conclusion.  The answer is given by using the same mythological basis, but using the advice of two different mythical languages 1/ the myth of the Oglala Sioux Nation (the story of the Bison Spirit Woman), and 2/ in the language of dreams, by using the dream of one of Johnson's clients (The Bell of the Holy Virgin).

Johnson concludes that romantic projections are, in essence, deep down,  a quest to communicate with the most sacred part of our inner self, but just expressed in the reverse way. The passions of romance or drugs and the seek for physical possessions have in common a misdirected unhealthy way to reach that what our psyche-soul seeks. We need to redirect that energy to the right place, so that we can "channel it correctly so that it will enrich our lives— in the realms both of spirit and of relationship— rather than sabotage them".  How do we return to our inner sacred core, to our soul? "What is required is not so much an external, collective religion, but an inner experience of the numinous, divine realm that is manifested through the psyche" Dreamwork and archetypal inner work are a perfect alternative, numinous and spiritual at many levels, which can reach those places inside us that we consciously want to reach but unconsciously were are too afraid to. 

~~ One of the most interesting episodes of the myth, to me, appears narrated in part three, while the lovers are in the enchanted Garden and Isold tells a hermit that confronts them on their wrongdoings:

“Lord, by God Almighty, He does not love me, Nor I him. It was because of an herb potion Of which I drank And he drank, too: it was a sin.”

I was expecting Johnson to comment on it at length as it is really intriguing. It is a moment of awakening, of consciousness of the unconscious, if that can be said. It is like Adam and Eve a la Reverse. It is a lucid dreaming sort of episode as well, because when they are saying that, they are truly not projecting. The episode contrasts remarkably with the attitude of both characters before and after this episode. No word is devoted to it. How is that possible? I am dying to find this episode explained the Jungian way. Anyone?

~~ The major flaw of the book is the last chapter of the Conclusion. I was in awe at finding Johnson's projections on other Culture so patently obvious. He compares Western ways of relating and Eastern-Indian ways. He spent a good deal of time in India, obviously with good families and friends, and uses his own experience to produce a pink version of the Indian way of relating in family and romantic relationships. Some affirmations made me cringe, even shriek. Statements of the sort that Indian families are healthier, and they produce non neurotic children, that they are not romance based and that projections basically do not exist. I consider that a big blind cloth in front of Johnson's eyes. Have you ever watched a Bollywood movie? That would suffice to show how projections show in Indian culture, specifically. The fact is that relationships between women and men in India are far from ideal and vary from family to family, like in the West. Too many women are still treated as mere objects and possessions, women are raped on a daily basis in Delhi, and their raping and rapists are justified by a good part of society and the legal system. The documentary on the girl brutally raped and murdered on a bus in India a few years ago, would suffice to show how many men treat women in India, and how well educated people did justify it. Some women of my age only speak to their husbands when they are asked to do so. The cast system is still well alive in India, even though it is not politically correct to say so. There are 3-5 years old children begging for money, alone, at 5am in the morning in some major train stations. You can ignore that part of Indian reality, of course. I think that there are good and bad families everywhere, in India and in the West, and that the way Indian people project is different from us, but they still project.

IN SHORT
Personally, I would recommend starting with We, and then read Johnson's He and She, and not the other way around, even though We is a later book, just because you want to start with a clear idea of what Johnson does, how he approaches any myth or subject, and not having to guess that. We is a brilliant book and He and She do not match that greatness as they are published lectures not real books.

A NOTE ON THE COVER
The covers of Johnson's books on Kindle are usually dreadful, you wonder why investing so little in making the book shine also outside, but the cover of this Kindle edition is just beautiful and perfect for the book. A wild poppy.

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Flotsam is a very short wordless graphic  book full of wondrous images and a great storyline. I love wordless picture books because they are more demanding on the artist, as the images have to carry the narrative on their own, and they are more open to interpretation (more a door to the imagination than a finished story) but also more Universal.

David Wiesner's drawing and illustration style are marvellous, crispy clean, detailed, almost hyper-real, delicate at times, flamboyant at others, with a great use of colour and wondrous imagery.

Flotsam is a message-in-a-bottle sort of story, the bottle being replaced by the images in an old camera that lands on a beach where our main character is spending his day.

Life is wondrous, you just have to look at it with a bit of attention. There is magic in the ordinary and we are all interconnected. Those are the main points in the message embedded in the story.

I consider that the story is fragmented unnecessarily. I truly loved the Magritte-like photographer-in-the-photographer photograph going from the present to  the past. That is fantastic, a great concept and well realised. The pictures about the sea world that the character sees in the photos are wondrous, but less original and with more artistic and illustration trites than the rest of the imagery. To me, the story about the photographer's photo of the photographer has so much potential for development that it is a pity that the author distracted himself with the underwater world and forgot to connect the first photo in the story with the photo of the first photographer who used the camera. That would had been way more interesting and would have rounded up the story more organically. The ending of the book is great.

Awarded the  best children book for 2006, devoted to children between 5-7y.o.a, the book is also good for adults and illustration lovers.

The "book" is not a book properly speaking, as it has 40 pages in paper and 26 or so in Kindle format. There must be a name for this sort of "books" that are not really books but are not novellas either. The Kindle format gave me so many problems in my tablet that I had to return it. I think this book is great to have in paperback.

I was looking for one of the Taschen wonderful compilation books on Arts, and I could not find any at my local bookshop, so I bought this book instead, to have it as a coffee-table book. This being the case, and the book being so bulky and edited, I did something I rarely do, which is buying a hard-copy book without spending enough time browsing through it. Big mistake.

You know a book of this kind is biased and not serious when countries with a huge large history of awesome architecture that have passed the proof of time are forgotten in favour of the UK and USA. I don't mean to say that the buildings in the book are not great, it is that the way the book is structured gives the impression and "sells" that UK is the country with the most wonderful awesome innovative architecture out there, disregarding the bigger achievements in architecture of countries like France, Italy and Spain. As the book includes architecture from Ancient times and Antiquity, the bias becomes even more obvious because parts of the world with wow ancient architecture are completely misrepresented in favour of countries like... Australia.That is not to say that one country is better than other, because I do love Australia, but the History of Architecture in Australia is not of the calibre of that of Greece for reasons that are obvious to any Art Historian. Yet, Greece's entries are.... just FIVE!

Isn't that called an imperialistic view of the world?

Just to give an example of the crap selection, take Syria and Lebanon for example, two countries with wow Ancient and Medieval architecture. Syria's only building included is the Great Mosque. Architectonic wonders as Palmyra, Boshra, Aleppo's Old Souq (now destroyed), any of the Templars castles, architectonic water deposits are forgotten.... Lebanon's only building listed is the building of a nightclub as if some of their Ancient temples and castles were not wow; Balbek, comes to mind.

There is also a meagre misrepresentation of Asian architecture, in general, and I missed the Utopian Garden in Singapore, although this might be just because it was finished after the update of the book.  Ethiopia just one entry, Thailand two entries, come on! Botswana not even included.

Of course you cannot include every single great building or architectural wonder in a book of this sort, but if you do a selection of this sort, so biased and narcissist, you have lost my respect as a publishing house and editor.

If this was not bad enough, the editor has done a terrible job with the indexes. The indexes are fragmented, the Index of Buildings (not by type but by name!) and the Index of Countries are one at the beginning of the book and the other at the back. No index of featured architects is included. The Index of Countries is in between the Glossary and the Index of Contributors. And no type of building index either. An example of how not to make an index, Mr Editor.

The photos are nice, some of them great, some others not, and not all buildings come with a photo. The texts are informative and well written and might you help to understand (or probably not) why some of those buildings are there beyond being... British as a main point to be included in the book. 

I have decided that the book is perfect for toilet reading :)

Darkroom is not your usual graphic memoir. 

Despite the author being a female, Quintero's Memoir is not the usual female memoir in vogue. I have read a good deal of graphic novels by female artists and, most of them, seem to share common themes: sexual identity, troubled childhood, Mental or psychological problems, love and relationships, or women issues in general. Quintero's Memoir in that regard is a different league. Dark Room connects more with a group of graphic memoirs coming from artists who immigrated into the USA and tell their story of struggle or just their experiences adjusting to the new culture and country. Quintero's Memoir relates to those, but the fact that she comes from a well adjusted family with no neurosis or mental problems, and Racial Segregation forms a good deal of the Memoir puts it on a different league as well. 

Quintero's Memoir deals with immigration, race, social upheaval and identity.  Not white, neither black, the Quinteros arrived from Argentina in 1961 and settled in the Alabama Black Belt area, in a time when segregation and Civil Rights libertarians were going to change the course of History in America. Lila and her family view and dealt with Segregation in a way that was not what it was expected from them, but they could not but be appalled by the reality of Segregation and life conditions of Afro-Americans, and they indeed were supportive of the Civil Rights movement.

Dark Room is both a personal and family memoir. It is also a memoir about the troubles of immigration, of being always The Other. The book it is perfect to illustrate Alterity processes. In a way, it is just normal that the Quinteros would see "the others" in American society, the Afro-Americans, with empathy and humanness and with empathic eyes. They themselves were "the others" to both white and black people. This gave them an unique vantage point, and also created trouble for them in their personal relationships. I also like the fact that we witness the different fortunes of the Quintero's siblings, as immigration affects differently to the members of the same family because people are, after all, individuals.

Dark Memoir is a lovely Memoir that goes from the personal to the familiar, stopping at the historical. Quintero herself reveals that memory is not the only source of her Memoir, as an historical approach is given to the narration of some of the horrific events happened in Alabama during the 1960s. Moreover, she was academically advised and supervised to produce a Memoir that is clear about the value of our personal memory in a Memoir, especially when dealing with historical events. I think that shows. There is some sort of detachment in the narration at times, that comes from a sound approach to the genre.

Johnson is a Jungian classic, and there is a reason for that. He mixes with easiness, elegance and clarity depth psychology and Jungian Psychology, mythology and dream work. He makes of Jungian conundrums something fun. Johnson, like Campbell, knows inside-out Western Mythology, Eastern Mythology and Philosophy and Christian/Catholic Mysticism.

 "She" is a collection of lectures given by Johnson (first published in 1976  and reviewed in 1989) revolving about the analysis of the Myth of Eros and Psyche (aka Amor and Psyche). The book is very enjoyable to read. Even if you are not interested in Depth or Jugian Psychology, you will enjoy the reading, and the way Johnson de-constructs a myth and gives it psychological  meaning. It is like seeing an orange being squeezed through a macro lenses. Fascinating.

"She" is not only an exploration of the female psyche, but also an approach to "the feminine in all of us", and also a tale of exploration of inner expansion and a dive into the unconscious. As a woman, I could relate to many of the things Johnson unveils.

 Much of the turmoil for a modern woman is the collision between her Aphrodite nature and her Psyche nature. (p. 8)

Bingo!

There are  two distinct parts in the book and in the myth examined: the one before Psyche's tasks and the one after the tasks start. Johnson says of the second is the one that shows more clearly the patterns of development of the feminine principle. However, although I could relate to many of the things he mentions there, I thought that some of the comments could also apply to the male psyche or to humans in general.

Despite the book being so old, is still fresh. Johnson's reflection on the validity of mythology for the modern world is wonderful, as myths contains a distilled imprint of human psychological structure, which is universal and timeless. Johnson does even more, he links myth and dreamwork in a two-way path. He shows, for example, how the myth herewith analysed replicates itself in an apparently unrelated dream of a female patient of his. Most importantly, he points out that some dreams have a mythological structure which makes them perfect to delve into our inner self and psyche. 

A WHINE

I have to congratulate HarperCollins e-books for ripping-off customers. Being charged 11+ bucks for 99 pages of an old book on Kindle sucks.

I always find pearls of wisdom in anything Johnson writes, his approach to the world and our psychological humanity make me ponder, always. Besides, he is a kindred spirit, an humanist in the proper sense of the word,  always worth of my time, even though, too often, I end lamenting that he is keeping most of his secrets to himself.

This book is a collection of four small essays, one of them dealing with projection. Unfortunately, the common denominator of the articles is not projection, but rather inner work and the concept of Maya or illusion. That would had been a more honest title and descriptor. If you are looking for a in-depth book on psychological projection, or a basic approach to psychological projection, this is not your book.

1/ Inner Gold
Half memoir half  simple approach to  psychological projection, it is a lovely piece of writing, with a Memoir sort of tone that I love. 

We barely understand how much of what we perceive in others and the outside world are actually parts of ourselves. Please observe the energy investments you make. (p.30)

To understand what Johnson says, you need a basic understanding of what projection and shadow are. Johnson does not explain readers what projection is, how projection mechanisms work, why is formed, and how to do something he insistently tells readers to do: to reclaim our inner gold or to return it to somebody else. How do you do that? No answer. Most people have the level of consciousness of a thermostat, they do not know they project, nor recognise that they are projecting or that others are projecting on to them, nor know anything about it, so unless Johnson gives the "recipe", there is no way to go. You expect a recipe because Johnson was an active psychoanalyst, and he must have it! The beans must have been spilled in the Garden of Eden, not sure if my Animus can get there and bring me a few. 

2/ Loneliness
This is my favourite piece. Again, there is a nostalgic feeling and Johnson's memoir approach to it. I love the way he categorises loneliness in three varieties (loneliness for the past, loneliness for the future, and loneliness for being close to God). Johnson basically says that loneliness is a state of mind and the soul, an interior matter, if you feel lonely you have to do inner work to solve it, connect with your essence, restore your connection with your unconscious, ground yourself in the energy of the world, bear your pain and:

 If you can transform your loneliness into solitude, you’re one step away from the most precious of all experiences. This is the cure for loneliness.

Did you need of Jungian Psychology to learn this?  If I were feeling lonely, I would love to ponder on many of the things Johnson says, but I think that would not be enough to cure my soul. Perhaps therapy? 

3/ Love Story
This is a very short reflection of the figure of  Beatrice in Dante's Divine Comedy. Beatrice is presented as a  soul guide or psychopomp. There a few pages sketching some wonderful thoughts but, overall, they are superficial and uninspired. 

4/ The one and future King
This chapter is odd and intriguing at the same time. Johnson is deeply religious (an ex-Benedictine monk) and it shows here, as this is a reflection on the meaning of the doctrine of the Second Coming of the Christ from a non-literal and archetypal point of view. Even if you are not religious, you will enjoy his approach. I think some of the things he says are beautiful and spiritually soothing, and his reflection on literalism is brilliant:

Literalism knows no end, and literalism is the death of insight. But that sublime archetypal structure is always available in its true, interior way, for anyone who chooses to touch it and is capable of touching it. Sometimes the point of contact becomes accessible only in our deepest, darkest moments. (....) Speech is literal and rational and cannot easily contain the depths of the mystery. For that we need symbols and symbolic language. (...) We can discover within ourselves the capacity to sustain both the presence of the divine and the holiness of daily life. The two are, in fact, one. (pp. 75-76)

Johnson speaks of God often, so if you are an atheist or agnostic you have to decide what God means to you. I thought that he connects well with some of the teachings of the New Thought Church.

This is a basic introduction to editing, no matter you are a beginner editor, a peer-reviewer or just want to edit your own texts.

One expects the book of a professional editor to be good, easy to understand, and well organised, and, generally speaking, this is the case.

Although many of the things Dunham recommends are a bit too obvious (especially if writing is part of your job or just your job) they should never be forgotten. At times, it is painful seeing academics doing the sort of mistakes that Dunham mentions in this book. Actually, these are some of the mistakes I do make while writing for work, or writing a review.

An editor basically reads a text at least twice, and systematically checks the relevance and precision of the content, whether the focus of the author is there or not, if the grammar and orthography of the work are correct, and if the language used is good or not. Editors follow style or criteria rules and guidelines generally imposed by the publisher, although if you are self-editing you can create yours to keep consistency while writing. Then, comes the hard task of checking things systematically, for which you create a checklist or task-list to avoid tricks and treacheries of the eye and the mind and make sure that everything you should have checked is, indeed, checked.

The structure of the book follows this sort of order.    

The book is clearly written, without any pomposity or technical jargon. A priori, I thought this would be a dry book, but I found it to be not only useful and practical, but an enjoyable light reading as well.

The chapter I find most interesting and useful is chapter 9 (The Editor's Tools), which not only provides us with a commented bibliography and a list of online resources, but also an example of check-list. I also enjoyed Dunham's comments on the relationship with editors and authors in chapter 9, which are great to level your head when correcting somebody else's work or peer-reviewing, something that I tend to forget because I get exasperated by some people's "crappola". And also his comments on the use of Wikipedia for references.

Some of his comments on common grammatical and orthographical mistakes are spot on and very easy to understand, therefore, very useful. I also like some of the explanations Dunham gives about confusing (fusing) words. I noticed that, while he explains the rule on how to use brackets, just to put an example, he says it in a way in which brackets are used and incorporated into the explanation without the need of any example. Cool, even tubular :)

The book examines and includes all types of editing. You will find similar challenges and methodical approach to editing any type of text. However, editing for a newspaper, for an academic journal or the Government are intrinsically different as they target different readers, and they do so in different ways regarding language used and length and depth of the text. You cannot expect the general reader to understand technical stuff, but you expect academics working on a given discipline to deal easily with that stuff without the need of dumbing down their writing. So, I would have liked a chapter devoted to the challenges that different publications and texts demand from the editor, and the way editors face them. 
 
Some of the explanations about punctuation were just sketched and not clear enough or not well explained, for example, the use of Em and En dashes.

Although the book is well organised and I like the structure, a few things were off, to me. I would have placed chapter 9 after chapter 10, included some of the subjects mentioned in the appendix in chapter 10 and enlarge them, and offer a separate bibliography and resources section. Besides, the bibliography mentioned is a bit old. Even though the books are classics, or manuals that any editor should have, there must be most updated improved editions, and  why not including other specialised books dealing with specific matters?  

I found odd that the some articles mentioned in the endnotes have no pages mentioned. They come from newspapers and other periodical publications, I guess. I was taught, that even when the news comes from a newspaper, you provide the reader with the page where the article is found. That is for academic writing, of course. There must be a reason why pages are not mentioned with those articles. Were they retrieved online? Is there any rule about this that professional editors follow?

Now, how much quoting is too much? Well... too many quotes is always too much. Elements of Style and Words into Type are mentioned ad nauseam, so I ended wondering, if these books are so great, why bothering writing anything else?  Dunham is a professional experienced editor, so I wanted to hear his voice loud and distinctly clear, even if he shares the same opinions and approaches his work in very similar ways other editors do. In fact, Dunham shines when he does so, when he is his own self, and speaks from his own experience without paraphrasing or quoting anybody.

Most of the grammar elements and common mistakes he discuses in his book are great, but we can find that sort of information in any basic grammar book, like Practical English Usage or a Practical English Grammar, just to mention two examples of exhaustive reliable books coming from Oxford University. However, I missed a chapter on footnoting or endnoting; too many writers and academics do not use notes properly, they do not know where to place them, or what sort of information to include in them. The same can be said of creating indexes, a bibliography, glossary or your own style sheet. Said differently, how would an editor approach endnotes, footnotes, bibliography, indexes and glossaries in a given text? How to edit those? 

IN SHORT

I found the reading good and entertaining, and, as a first good approach to editing, a great book with plenty of useful items of advice. I was expecting an ABC of editing, but for that you have to go elsewhere.