|
|
I didn't quite make it to even half
my 2003 goal of reading 50 books, but I still read more than I had since
junior high school.
I love to
talk about books that I've read recently, so if you have an opinion on a
book that I've read or want to suggest that I read something that your
enjoying, let me know! I've added some notes mostly to help myself
remember, but you're welcome to peek into my thoughts by clicking the box
next to each title.
 | Candide ««
by Voltaire (12/2003) |
| Texas «««
by James Michener (11/2003) |
| The Old Man and the Sea «««
by Ernest Hemmingway (9/2003) |
| Uncle Tom's Cabin «««
by Harriet Beecher Stowe (8/2003) |
| Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings (excerpts) ««
by Roy Balser (7/30/2003)
 | [The Presidential Question:] Speech in the
United States House of Representatives. July 27, 1848. |
| A House Divided: Speech Delivered at
Springfield, Illinois, at the Close of the Republican State
Convention. June 16, 1858. |
| Address Delivered at the Dedication of the
Cemetery at Gettysburg. November 19, 1863. |
| Second Inaugural Address. March 4, 1865. |
| I was surprised at the dryness of Lincoln's
speeches. Although I'm sure his delivery was much more
motivating than mine, they just don't hold the punch I expected.
The biggest thing to stand out to me was how he described the
impending civil war. The war clearly began over the issue of
allowing slavery in new territories or not. This is news to me
because the politically corrected version of history I was taught in
school said that the issue was states' rights. I've always
believed this was simply a PC way of framing the issue of slavery,
but Lincoln's speeches leave no doubt -- the war was about slavery
and no other issue. |
|
| Rabbit, Run ««
by John Updike (7/28/2003)
|
It was written by
John Updike, author of The Witches of Eastwick. His writing style
was great, and it really was fascinating to live with these people
for a couple weeks. The story was rather tragic, and I don’t think
I actually got the point. The main character’s nickname is Rabbit,
and at the beginning of the story, he leaves his wife and 2 year old
son because she was drinking. He hooks up with this woman, who is
not a prostitute per se, but she doesn’t work and just hooks up with
men who pay her rent and bills. After 3 months, his wife delivers a
new baby. With the pushing of his minister who has been trying to
get him to go home all along, he decides to return to his wife.
Everything’s fine for a few weeks until he gets frustrated because
she’s not ready to be intimate with him after delivery. He goes
back to find his other woman that night, and his wife gets drunk and
accidentally drowns the new baby in the bathtub! He goes home for a
few days, but after the baby’s funeral, he gets mad at his wife for
killing the baby, and he goes to the other woman’s house. She turns
out to be pregnant. He gets scared and mad, and he runs away down
the street. The end. I went to the
Internet to see what other people thought, and it seems they agreed.
The main character is nothing more than a self-centered,
irresponsible jerk. Captivating storytelling, but show us some
redeeming quality in this guy. |
|
| Killer Angels «««
by Michael Shaara (6/21/2003)
| Good description of the battle of Gettysburg,
which tries to go into the minds of the Generals on each side.
Portrays Lee as just being a stubborn old man, who at this point, is
really making illogical/emotional tactical decisions. Touches
a bit on the motivations behind the war, which has always mystified
me. In the story, a group of the Federals (the North) meet
their first Black man. They are afraid to even touch him, and
question their own motivation in the war. When asked, the
Confederates can't even pin down precisely what they're fighting
for. They just say their "rights". Presumably, they
don't want a federal government telling them what is or isn't
acceptable. The only problem with this story is that the only
issue on the table is slavery. This isn't like your
traditional European wars fought for land, taxes, and wealth.
I still can't imaging killing your friends & even family for such
intangible reasons. (After reading Lincoln's speeches, I have
update thoughts about this.) |
|
| The Sound and the Fury «
by William Faulkner (6/7/2003)
| Perhaps the worst book I've ever read. |
|
| Basic Sailing by M. B. George & Sailing Fundamentals
by Gary Jobson
| This isn't really what I meant when I said I was
reading 50 books, but, oh well. |
|
| Catch 22 «««
by Joseph Heller (5/17/2003)
| The setting is near the end of WWII. The
general consensus seems to be that the war had already been won, and
the remaining fighting only serves the purpose to gain prestige for
the commanders. It was carried so far that one general made up
that he liked photographs of "tight bombing formations". From
then on, everyone started dropping all bombs in tight formations,
even when a spread formation would be tactically better. |
| The story mocks bureaucracy and how it can be
more powerful than logic. For example, when a private with the
first name of Major was mistaken as having the rank of Major, it was
simpler to promote him directly to Major rather than correct the
paperwork. In another instance, when a soldier was killed
before he even checked into the division, no one knew how to handle
the paperwork. From then on, his backpack and personal items
became "the dead man in Yossarian's tent". |
| Through the first half of the book, the story
doesn't really follow a timeline. Instead, each chapter is
centered around a person. We read that persons perspective of
events that are mentioned in previous chapters. It was fun to
read in that in early chapters, I felt like I had no idea what
they're talking about and wondering if I had missed something, but
as I read on, the story came out. Heller also like to use
unusual verbiage.... "never" becomes "always don't" as in when the
new colonel posts a sign that Sunday's parade had been cancelled and
one of the soldiers remarks, "But we always don't have a parade on
Sunday." |
| As his colonel attempts to gain recognition by
continuing to raise the number of flights required before an airman
can return home, our hero, Yossarian, decides that he has had enough
and refuses to fly additional missions. From here, we've got a
classic military dilemma when a soldier refuses orders on principle,
theoretically jeopardizing the greater strategy. To save face
and to prevent revolt by other airmen, Yossarian's commander offers
to send him home as a hero and a spokesman for the cause of the war.
Knowing that this would require him to lie, Yossarian again follows
his principles, and backs out on the agreement. And this is
where I became disappointed... He decided that he should run away
instead. End of book. I wish that he stuck to his point
and somehow helped not only himself, but his fellow airmen as well. |
|
| The Tipping Point
«« by Malcolm Gladwell (4/1/2003)
| OK book. He divides influential people into
3 categories: Mavens, who are experts of their field or hobby;
Connectors, who are social glue bringing together diverse groups of
people; and Salesmen, who convince the rest of us that something is
good. He describes how it takes all three to "tip" a social
phenomenon from a special cause to a norm, or "epidemic". His
examples include tennis shoe fads and elimination of graffiti on New
York subways. |
| He has an interesting story about how Paul
Revere, a natural salesman, drew out a substantial militia force as
he rode to Boston, but at the same time, William Dawes, carried the
same message, but drew no support on his ride to Lexington. |
|
| East of Eden «««« by John Steinbeck
(3/22/2003)
| Sick, twisted, sad, depressing, pitiful, .... I
couldn't put it down. Follows the lives of three generations
of two families. I now know the Hamiltons and the Trasks much
better than my own family. The gist seems to be that we don't
have to repeat our parent's mistakes (although many do). We
make our own choices in life. |
|
| The Fallen Man ««
by Tony Hillerman (3/1/2003)
| Fun book I picked up in Arizona, which mixes
Native American tradition and folklore with a modern day murder
mystery. The story was good and I enjoyed reading about some
of the places that I had just visited. |
|
| Rip Van Winkle ««
& The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
«« by Washington
Irving (2/7/2003)
| I loved the way his page long sentences flow.
The stories were very nice to read, but unless I missed the boat the
morals were quite weak. Old Rip van Winkle was brow beaten by
his wife. He lucked out by going to the woods, sleeping for 20
years, and then coming home to the good news that his wife passed
away, and he lived happily ever after! |
|
| The Poet «,
Self Reliance «««, &
Thoreau
«« by
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2/4/2003)
| I was so unimpressed by reading Emerson’s “Poet”
that I went to the internet and read a bit more about him and
Transcendentalism. Then, I read Self Reliance. In
context, it’s much better. From what I read on the web, people in
his time didn’t think to rely on their own intuition. Instead, they
followed what their neighbors did or what their religious or
political leaders told them. One site called Self Reliance
the original self-help book. That’s kind of interesting. In
all, I still didn't care too much for his writing, but he has so
many fantastic quotes that I have to recommend it. |
| "A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who
in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles,
keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys
a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a
cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls.
He walks abreast with his
days, and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does
not postpone his life, but lives already. He
has not one chance, but a hundred chances." |
| "The other terror that scares us from self-trust
is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because
the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than
our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.... Why drag
about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you
have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should
contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom
never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure
memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed
present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have
denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the
soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe
God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in
the hand of the harlot, and flee. A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and
philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply
nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the
wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to- morrow speak
what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict
every thing you said to-day. -- ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be
misunderstood.’ -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?
Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther,
and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise
spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood." |
| "Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift
you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole
life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have
only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do
best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is,
nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who
could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have
instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great
man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he
could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of
Shakespeare." |
| "The civilized man has built a coach, but has
lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so
much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of
the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac
he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the
man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he
does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole
bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His
note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the
insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a
question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not
lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in
establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue." |
|
| A Brief History of Time
««« by Stephen Hawkins (1/28/2003)
|
A pretty readable
book describing the Big Bang theory, our ever-expanding universe,
and black holes. Once he introduced imaginary time in the last
few chapters, he got pretty far out there! Overall, I liked
it. Good stuff! |
|
| Around the World in Eighty Days
««« by Jules Verne
(1/2003)
| Nothing fancy here. This is just a great
story about traveling across cultures and around the world. |
|
| Walden ««««
by Henry David Thoreau (1/2003)
| I thoroughly enjoyed this book although I
probably didn't take it as seriously as Thoreau had intended. Even,
back in his day, he seemed to be telling us to that we're wasting
our time in the rat race. |
|
| Empire Falls «««
by Richard Russo (12/2002)
| If you ever think that you have a pathetic life,
read this! Good story about the people of a small paper mill
town in Maine after the mill is shut down. |
|
|
|
