"Once there was a Fox who
​lived in a deep, dense forest."

​- Coralie Bickford-Smith, The Fox and the Star
​

The incredible artwork of this children's book struck me from a shelf at Sundance Bookstore in Reno, NV. Its intricate patterns of a dark, unexplored forest and a fiery patch of fur lost in it, makes The Fox and the Star one of the most beautifully illustrated books I've come come across.

Only after enjoying the story and pictures a dozen or so times, did I realize that I actually had already met the author and illustrator Coralie Bickford-Smith by way of Penguin's clothbound classics.  She designed their richly colored, pattern-based covers that reference a Victorian-era sense of design and quality construction (My favorite is Les Miserables with its red cardinals and dark gray cloth binding).

Moreover, Fox is printed on a hardy  paper stock (which smells amazing), and bears a font created by Coralie herself. All these design and construction features add up to an heirloom quality book whose craftsmanship is a work of art in and of itself—let alone the positive, Aesop-esque story. [JG]
​

In 1643, a self-taught, undefeated master samurai put down his katana and wakizashi and wrote one of history's most powerful self-help books. Not just intended for men-at-arms, Miyamoto Musashi's The Book of Five Rings, maps out a path to mastery in all walks of life. 

In fact, in the Translator's Preface, Thomas Cleary begins with "a molecule of linguistic anthropology," by spotlighting the Japanese word shin-ken, which means "real sword." It originated in feudal Japan, around the time of Musashi and the samurai caste, but continues to live in the culture to this day. Shin-ken is used to mean something done with "deadly seriousness" and "utter earnestness." And Thomas Cleary's translation of Five Rings is an accessible, applicable version of Musashi's ancient teachings on leadership and discipline for us to reflect on today and sharpen our own sense of shin-ken.

I first heard about this book after Navy Seal Jocko Willink, author of Extreme Ownership, recommended it on his weekly podcast. I admittedly had low expectations, wondering if a long-dead samurai's warrior code would be at all relevant to me, a nerdy, non-violent marketer living in San Francisco. But I promised myself long ago that I would always take up the recommendations of people I greatly admire like Jocko to trace their own creative lineage and influences. 

I was not disappointed. The Book of Five Rings is a concise instruction manual for fostering inner discipline, and a refreshingly relevant work from antiquity. It's also a perfect afternoon- (hike) -length read. [JG]

Authentic Guides vs. Posers

The Wind Scroll, as well as many other passages throughout, give voice to Musashi's warnings of false teachers, both external and internal. "What I see on inquiry into other schools is that some are pretentious talkers, and some perform fancy maneuvers with their hands; even though they may look good to people, there is surely no heart there at all."

His main criticism with competing Japanese schools that profess to instruct martial arts, is that they blind its students by teaching them a narrow vision that is too focused on "the small,"—concrete tactics that ignore "the large," context—namely, a warrior's mental landscape and discipline. 

Mental Discipline & Training

Skills with tools and practiced movements, Musashi contends, are only a part of the true way of the martial arts. Inner discipline, the controlling of the will, the regulating of moods amidst changing externalities, one's intuition of an enemy's motives and one's ability to trust that intuition, the power to still one's mind and trust one's training, to see the opponent's next steps, these are required to wield the sword and survive. 

Will & Mood

In The Killing Sword section, Musashi explores the role of the will and the mood and their relationship. He likens the will to "the master of the house" and the mood as "the servant". Both essential, but the master must always be in control of the house, and therefore the servant is controlled by him. Watch that the master does so; that the mood, especially at important times, is controlled to the will. 

Small & Large

In The Fire Scroll, Musashi emphasizes the importance of being able to focus on both the small minutiae and suddenly, rapidly shifting to a wider perspective.  Eventually, this ability can be mastered until "the commander" and "the soldier" inside a man exist as one, and both known one another, and even still, the enemy troops become one's own troops, to be directed through both small and large actions. 

​Mountain & Sea

Again from The Fire Scroll, Musashi emphasizes the importance of differentiating one's own physical movements and mental landscape as the opposite of an opponent. Establish one's energy as solid or fluid, depending on the opponent's own, in order to separate oneself from their game and play one's own, to control the situation. 

in8. "Learning is the gate to the attainment of the way...not the house." 

7. "When the mind does not leave any traces in any particular place, but turns to what lies ahead, with the past dying out like the wake of a boat, not lingering at all... [you will win]."

6. Appearance and intention are fundamental to the art of war. Appearance and intention mean the strategic use of ploys, the use of falsehoods to gain what is real."

5. "When the great function appears, it does not keep to guidelines." 

4. "If you do not pursue a genuine path to its consummation, then a little tit of crookedness in the mind will later turn into a major warp. Reflect on this." 

3. "In whatever field of endeavor, knowledge of how to avoid losing out to others, how to help oneself, and how to enhance one's honor is part of military science." 

2. ​"The field of martial arts is particularly rife with flamboyant showmanship, with commercial products; they think of themselves as commodities, and also make implements as items of commerce. Distinguishing the superficial and the substantial, I find the attitude has less reality than decoration." 

1. "In discerning the lay of the physical situation, there is what is known as positioning yourself with the sun at your back. This means that you take up your stance with the sun behind you. If the situation does not allow you to keep the sun at your back, then you should strive to keep the sun to your right." 

 

In Romantics, Edmond Rostand reimagines the cliché star-crossed lovers tale via a hilarious three-act comedy. Percinet and Sylvette, teenage neighbors in love, take turns secretly reading Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to one another day after day. Their situation is tragically similar, with their two backyards separated by a tall brick wall, built out of mutual hatred shared by their fathers.

But in the opening act's twist, we the audience learn that the fathers are actually best friends, ones who've staged this charade and built the wall in an elaborate plot of reverse psychology. They want their son and daughter to marry, and think that the rebellious youth will fall for one another only if it's forbidden and the chances of being together are sufficiently bleak.  

More charades ensue, including a staged kidnapping and seduction, and who knows what when becomes increasingly important as Romantics unfolds in the walled, shadowy backyards. But it's a fun, witty, lighthearted play and deliberately pokes fun at certain romantic-comedy tropes, while still staying true to Rostand's affinity for sincerity and idealism. 

And there is so much of Rostand's later, better known plays, in Romantics: a rhapsodizing, dandy of a poet-hero, Straforel, (Cyrano de Bergerac), a head-strong, idealistic, yet perhaps naive youth, Percinet (The Eaglet), references to animal-like qualities, including roosters (Chantecler), and a spiritual quest shared between two lovers who, at its conclusion, understand themselves and love much more (The Princess Far Away). 

Today marks my favorite writer's 150th birthday. So, it's fitting that I recommend today Romantics, his first successful play, launching his full-time writing career, which eventually birthed my favorite fictional character, Cyrano de Bergerac, and one of my favorite works, Chantecler. It's also fitting, I think, for Rostand to have begun his career with such a positive, clever, witty play—a play that has, to use my idol's own words about his own artistic idol, Victor Hugo, "a soul filled with stars." [JG]

3.

"Too mighty book, 
I cannot bear so dolorous a look! 
So, till tomorrow, I will close its cover, 
and make of Romeo a living lover." — Percinet

2. 

"Father is quiet. I could steal away. 
Dusk wraps the world. Ghost-dim, the
elder flower adds subtle sweetness
to this magic hour." — Sylvette 

1.

"A wholesome bath of fact meet those who roam. 
Aye, life will trim our little cockerel's comb." — Straforel

Like his debut novel, Ready Player One, Ernest Cline’s second outing is chock full of more video game and sci-fi references as teenage nerd protagonist Zackary Ulysses Lightman fights to save the world from aliens. Him and the planet's worth of die-hard gamers, who, turns out, have actually been piloting real military spaceship drones against alien attack ships since the late eighties!

I love how again in Armada, Ernest Cline celebrates so much sci-fi and also pokes fun at and subverts certain clichés of the genre. It's a lighthearted space adventure that flew me to the moon and made me feel like a kid again. ​Although simpler in scope that RPO, I'm really excited to hear that this one will be getting its own movie too. [JG]

3. "It was an ATS-31 Aerospace Troop Shuttle, one of the ships used by the Earth Defense Alliance in both Armada and Terra Firma. And it was about to land in front of my high school."

2. "I wasn't a soldier. I was just a kid from the suburbs who played a shitload of video games. I wasn't prepared to fight an interplanetary war!"

1. "Directly below us was a large white ranch house flanked by several barns and outbuildings and a long row of tower grain silos topped with steel domes that glinted in the morning sun, like rockets waiting to be launched. The farm was surrounded on all sides by a vast sea of fields and rolling green hills and prairies, broken only by a single dirt road that snaked away across the northern horizon. I also spotted three other EDA shuttles drifting in the sky around us, all descending on a course similar to our own. As our shuttle continued its descent, the plowed field adjacent to the farm collapsed in on itself, like a perfectly rectangular sinkhole, then split in two and slid apart, like two massive elevator doors set into the earth." 

After miserably failing a routine health evaluation, Bond reluctantly follows M's orders to check in to Shrublands health clinic. There he dries out for two painfully dull weeks, allowed only water, tea, vegetables, plenty of sleep, books and walks. No work. No drink. No women. It's there at Shrublands though that 007, in a near-back-breaking massage appointment, meets a shadowy character with ties to a secret organization known only as SPECTRE.

They've just stolen two atomic bombs from England, and are ransoming them, under threat of detonation. In the unprecedented emergency, M calls in every agent to scour the globe for leads, Bond himself leaving Shrublands for the Bahamas to investigate a suspicious 'treasure hunt' led by Emilio Largo.   

Amidst the private yachts, moonlit scuba diving, and bloodthirsty sharks, he dives deeper into the ranks of SPECTRE, crossing paths with Domino Vitali, Largo's mistress, and ultimately comes to confront who will ultimately become 007's arch-nemesis, the cerebral Enst Stravro Blofeld. 

Paging in as one of Fleming's longest missions (262 pages / 4 hr read time), Thunderball, returns Bond to the familiar, yet exotic locale of the Caribbean like in Moonraker, Casino Royale, and Dr. No. Some of my favorite passages from the novels are in here, especially Fleming's descriptions of the underwater worlds, and Domino Vitali's appearance. [JG]

3. "Two days later, Bond was once more back in the half-world of the nature cure. The routine of the early morning gass of hot water, the orange, carefully sliced into symmetrical pigs by some ingenious machine wielded, no doubt, by the wardress in charge of diets, then the treatments, the hot soup, the siesta, and the black, aimless walk or bus ride to the hearest tea-shop for the priceless strength-giving cups of tea laced with brown sugar. Bond loathed and despised tea, that flat, soft, time-wasting opium of the masses, but on his empty stomach, and in his febrile state, the sugary brew acted almost as an intoxicant." 

2. "James Bond was right. The outcome of this rather childish trial of strength between two extremely tough and ruthless men, in the bizarre surroundings of a nature clinic in Sussex, was to upset, if only in a minute fashion, the exactly-timed machinery of a plot that was about to shake the governments of the Western world."  

1. "Everywhere there were octopuses, small ones, but perhaps a hundred of them, weaving on the tips of their tentacles, sliding softly away into protecting shadows, changing their camouflage nervously from brown to a pale phosphorescence that gleamed palely in the patches of darkness. The whole fuselage seemed to be crawling with them, evilly, horribly, and as Bond shone his torch on the roof the sight was even worse. There, bumping softly in the slight current, hung the corpses of a crew member. In decompression, it had risen up from the floor, and octopuses, hanging from it like bats, now let go their hold and shot, jet propelled to and fro inside the plane—dreadful, glinting red-eyed comets that slapped themselves into dark corners and stealthily squeezed themselves into cracks and under seats."