Joe C
Lucid, compelling, careful, thorough examination of the Mormon position on a broad range of metaphysical questions. Not a complete working out of Mormon theology by any means, but a plausible sketch of its foundations and a great jumping off point. (I'm hoping to find others who've picked up where he left off. Any suggested reading?)
Often a strange little book, with a brilliant start and rockier (though provocative) finish. Well worth reading as a novel imagining of a different kind of political theory, in which mercy, and not justice, is the primary social virtue.
A meandering psychological thriller; the intensity lags in places (I spent some 50 pages wondering if I had already made it past the real climax of the novel). But the book's acclaim is well-deserved if only on the basis of its gripping set of characters, a particularly impressive feat, given their essential unlikability and the distance between the narrator, Richard Papen, and the college friends he never seems to truly know. (Whether he knows himself and presents himself honestly is yet another open question.) A book I will likely still be thinking about for some time.
Easily lives up to its status as a classic. Far and away the best work of popular history I have ever read. Absolutely devastating.
A well-written memoir and a story worth telling. I struggled to enjoy the book as much as I felt it deserved, especially for the first 100 pages or so, where I wished Walls had constructed the book more as a novel and less as a memoir (although it certainly is closer to a novel than most memoirs).
God's Monsters is an excellent introduction to scholarship on the supernatural creatures of the Bible with detailed exegesis and careful original translations of important passages and stories. The prose and content are very accessible, especially for anyone with some familiarity with the Bible. It reads somewhat like a pop culture-infused set of freshman lectures on the topic.
But that was also the source of my biggest frustration. The book remains theologically superficial, often seeming to want little more than to shock the believer with the news that God is up to some pretty nasty tricks with an unsavory cast of lackeys. The final (brief) chapter explores this a bit more, but the theologically rich territory of why God might do these things or what the writers of the Bible may have been trying to understand or express takes a back seat to merely gawking at the horrors of the Bible.
A fantastic, strange, absorbing story. The writing is sometimes clunky, with off-putting casual misogyny. Much more different than the films than I had expected.
Deeply thought-provoking - useful for radical questioning of modern economic life and all it presupposes. Granted there's plenty here that extrapolates away from the empirical basis of the text (a modern anthropological account of the history of money that is fascinating in its own right), but the paradigm he presents is well-worth grappling with. I look forward to engaging with criticisms of the text and thinking through how some of his arguments might be sharpened or improved.
I can understand why this book gets both a lot of love and a lot of hate. As a new dad, I found the relationship at the core of the novel deeply moving (a nameless father and son, travelling the ash-covered road together at something like the end of the world). The emptiness of the characters and of the plot, where so many details are completely left unsaid, worked well for me. It meant I found myself filling in the blanks myself, reflecting on my own life and relationships, lost in thought and often having to go back and listen again to what I had missed. (I listened to the audiobook, which also means the narrator helpfully filled in who was speaking, since I understand McCarthy's prose doesn't specify.)
My new favorite work of (non-systematic but deeply transformative) Mormon theology. Beautifully written. Definitely cried.
So much more enjoyable than I expected with plenty of episodes of butt history I was not at all familiar with. Very much enjoyed the episodes from the 19th century on up to the 90s but found the more contemporary discussion less engaging, perhaps because it veered into straightforwardly moralizing territory?
A meandering and sometimes self-indulgent memoir, but full of fascinating stories, musings, and commentary from one of the most important thinkers of the last century. The breadth and depth of the intellectual life Sen cultivated for himself as a young scholar is inspiring and impressive.
Lots of fascinating ideas. Pretty unsatisfying exposition of those ideas - many ideas were too simplified or dumbed down to actually be able to follow the relevant arguments or find them remotely plausible.
Fascinating history. A strong call for a more compassionate and realistic approach to addiction. I particularly enjoyed Fisher's interpolations of his own experience with addiction, treatment, and recovery.
Fantastic biography that can't help being much more than a biography of England's life. In Givens's able hands, the story of England's life becomes a deep meditation on the trials and travails of the Mormon intellectual, depicted almost as a dramatic (Shakespearean?) tragedy. I suspect I'll be returning to this book again and again as I grapple with some of the same questions England did.
A lovely, poignant epistolary novel. It took a little while to get into for me, but the friendship between the two women who are the center of the story soon hooked me.
A surprisingly beautiful collection of personal essays. Not every one is a winner, but I'll be coming back to many of these again. Above all, Green has inspired me to find and collect the sparks of radiant light that can help me to keep loving the world in dark times.
I wanted to like this one and really enjoyed the set-up of the novel. But ultimately I wasn't sold on the characters or their relationships and got a little tired of being told just how much everyone is really so good at heart.
Excellent, careful (and often heart-breaking) history. Theoretical analysis was sometimes thin but consistent and illuminating nevertheless.
Not a genre I typically read, but a fun read nevertheless. The mystery unfolds slowly, then all at once. Some powerful moments and arresting scenes, but the characters are ultimately fairly flat and the plot unfolds like a decent-but-not-amazing season of a lite action/horror TV show.
I read this book after one of my US History students told me he had read it and wanted somebody to talk about it with (huge teacher win!). Talking through Salinger's classic with a 16-year-old helped me frame my thinking from the correct perspective. Holden Caulfield may not be the most charismatic protagonist, but the further you get into his thinking, the more fascinating he becomes. Holden's narration is at its most intriguing when he makes seemingly casual references to traumatic episodes in his life. Even at the end of the novel when he has revealed so much, Holden still feels like a stranger, perhaps, as he continually suggests, even to himself.
I hated this book. Well, I hated it for as long as I could, but it was so insistently funny and tender and moving that I eventually gave in and loved it.
Rand's crowning work is little more than a modern morality play. The good guys (and they're almost all guys) are tall, handsome, strong, charismatic, and intelligent. The bad guys (also almost all guys) are bloated, sniveling, conniving, slothful, and perverse. The conclusion of the novel, both in terms of its plot and its philosophy, is inevitable within its own constructed reality. If Rand's purpose in writing Atlas Shrugged was, as she stated, to convince her readers of her “objectivist” philosophy, her methods were poorly chosen. Unless you come to this book already sharing Rand's view of the world, you will likely find yourself (as I did) revolted by her rejection of compassion, disturbed by her unabashed racism, and incredulous at her overly simplistic characters and their apparent motivations.
That said, I found the book enjoyable enough and certainly worth reading, given its significance for modern American political thought. The plot is compelling enough to have kept me wanting to read on and through a thousand pages of diatribe, Rand forces each reader to come to terms with her political philosophy. For me, personally, this has forced me to reluctantly adjust the way I think about the role and purpose of government, even if I'm a long way from accepting Rand's views. Her impassioned defense of personal agency hit home with me as well, but her static, predestined characters send a mixed message that undermines her intended effect.
Three stars.