Marcus

I read this book a long time ago and just finished reading it again tonight. Wow. What a story! I had forgotten how intense each chapter is, how quickly the story moves and how sometimes touching, sometimes hilarious, sometimes so sad it is. Great book.

The post-pandemic world the story is set in is fairly standard fare. I think this makes the book stronger. Instead of spending a bunch of time setting up the scenario, the focus is on the characters and how they deal with their new world. It does this very well. The pages flew by. Read it.

My only complaint is the sparse punctuation and the way the author often ignores the normal rules of grammar in favor of internal monologue-style sentence fragments. Sometimes this has the effect of making the story wash by cleanly, as if it was a memory. Too often though, it results in re-reading pieces of dialogue to figure out who was talking and what they meant. The Dog Stars would probably be better with grammar and punctuation left in-tact.

Surprisingly easy and fun to read. Harris makes an convincing argument for determinism while taking into account opposing views in what seems to be a fair and comprehensive way.

I read this in my freshman lit course which was themed “apocalyptic literature.” I remember almost nothing about it, but I'm adding it to remind me to give it another go.

Don't read this if you're going to pick an instrument up later in life (after age 20). Read Victor Wooten's The Music Lesson or or basically anything else on the subject.

Reading How to Sharpen Pencils is like the moment after your first non-Great Clips hair cut, your first time behind the wheel of a BMW, the taste of real crab meat after having only eaten imitation, using a Mac after years of being stuck on Windows or when you discover that a couple cubes of ice will keep your cereal cold for the entire time you're eating it. What I mean by that is that this book is the breath of fresh air and the warm ray of light that you feel when You've Been Doing it Wrong and you've just discovered the Right Way. There is an art and craft to sharpening pencils and you've just stumbled upon the master who will teach it to you.

I read American Pastoral about 3 months ago and haven't stopped thinking about it since. It's not just that the characters are so real and so tragic and the story so gripping, but it's the way the story is told. Everything comes across so informally. The narrator can hardly believe what has happened to his life. It feels like he's always skirting around looking his situation in the face. Something about that style of storytelling has made the entire novel stick with me, I'll catch myself looking at life sideways and bam. There's Roth again waving his American Pastoral in my face.

It's like a book of hand written love poetry. Except it's not poetry, and it's not about love, it's about zombies.

A great guide to giving your kid a classical education, but you've got to be willing to commit a LOT of time to doing it, otherwise it'll feel completely overwhelming. I love the idea, but in our case following it closely wasn't feasible.

Even though we're not using it as a curriculum, we still refer back to it often for age-appropriate resources on the classics.

I'd been meaning to read the Satanic Bible for a long time now, and now that I've finally gotten around to it... I kid. This book isn't the Satanic anything, but it is strange. At times while reading it I'd try to imagine how Rushdie came up with it. I can't. His life, his thought process are so foreign to me as to be almost other-worldly. I've never read anything like it. It's magical realism, but it really has little in common with the Latin American variety of the genre. The plot is fairly straightforward, but it is intertwined with so many strange dreams, transformations, sub-plots, backgrounds and most oddly, detailed religious and pseudo-religious events, rites, superstitions and metaphors that it is hard to imagine it all coming from the mind of one man. Every time I looked, i could see, or imagine I saw, symbolism, metaphor, literary allusions and philosophy. It felt like a book that I could read over and over without ever finishing it. In a way, it's strange. I can't tell if it is a work of genius that isn't as acclaimed as it deserves, or if it's the ramblings of a man who is at least a little deranged. It eludes easy categorization.

Woven into a very real and contemporary story of two men's experiences with emigration to England is their parallel experience of possible conversion in to an arch-angel, complete with halo, and a devil, complete with horns and cloven hooves. Sometimes their supernatural transformations are almost absent from the story. There are the expected clash of cultures, family drama, relationships begun and ended and at times, the story feels normal. Then there are long dream chapters of villagers led by a teenaged girl clothed in butterflies on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The arch-angel blazing down pedestrians with fiery breath of righteous indignation. The giant goat-devil who becomes physically and culturally larger than life, both outgrowing his attic home and sparking a popular movement. The juxtaposition is both jarring and enchanting. It makes it easy to get pulled into the story, despite being unfamiliar with almost everything in it and its non-negligable length.

A couple examples of the writing:

...now whenever a trunk was opened, a batch of wings would fly out of it like Pandora's imps, changing colour as they rose; there were butterflies under the closed lids of the thunderboxes in the toilets of Peristan, and inside every wardrobe, and between the pages of books. When you awoke you found the butterflies sleeping on your cheeks.

He stands motionless while small groups of residents rush past in different directions. Some (not all) are carrying weapons. Clubs, bottles, knives. All of the groups contain white youngsters as well as black. He raises his trumpet to his lips and begins to play.

Little buds of flame spring up on the concrete, fuelled by the discarded heaps of possessions and dreams. There is a little, rotting pile of envy: it burns greenly in the night. The fires are every colour of the rainbow, and not all of them need fuel. He blows the little fire-flowers out of his horn and they dance upon the concrete, needing neither combustible materials nor roots. Here, a pink one! There, what would be nice?, I know: a silver rose. And now the buds are blossoming into bushes, they are climbing like creepers up the sides of the towers, they reach out towards their neighbours, forming hedges of multicoloured flame. It is like watching a luminous garden, its growth accelerated many thousands of times, a garden blossoming, flourishing, becoming overgrown, tangled, becoming impenetrable, a garden of dense intertwined chimeras, rivalling in its own incandescent fashion the thornwood that sprang up around the palace of the sleeping beauty in another fairy-tale, long ago.

Easily one of the best books I've read this year.

Very formulaic, but reading them out loud won me lots of points with the four year old crowd :)

I think this is my favorite from CS Lewis. He has a talent fiction and was great at coming up with other worlds, but the writing in the Narnia books is just so-so... Mere Christianity and The Great Divorce (the only other two I've read by him) were great, but sometimes got monotonous. This format, on the other hand, seems perfect for his message and style.

2019 update to 2013 and 2008 review.
I finished the In Search of Lost Time series and have since revisited it many times. This is now one of my favorite books.

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2013 update to 2008 review.

Five years of time and reading has given me a very different perspective on this Proust. I'll re-visit this review after reading the book again, which will probably happen after I slowly work my way through the other books in the series. At this point I've finished In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower and I'm 1/4th through The Guermantes Way.

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I guess I'm going to be in the minority giving this book a 2 star rating, but I can't bring myself to go higher. It's true, the language is beautiful, the writing is impeccable and there are some really powerful insights into human nature but the story was just so. extremely. boring. It tries to be a love story but never makes it past infatuation. Proust goes on and on with memories and reflections and introspection but the plot barely moves. I much prefer Tolstoy's mix of great insight into human nature interwoven with a plot that pulls you in and keeps you interested in the characters. Skip this and read (or re-read) Anna Karenina.

As long as this book was, I feel like it could have easily gone on another couple hundred pages. Most of what's in the beginning of the book we know from other bios and the end, everything from about the first iPod on, seems to go by in a blur. There isn't a lot of technical detail and the way the design process is explained seems superficial at times.

Criticisms aside though, the book gives a lot of insight into who Jobs was. While I'm still in awe of what he accomplished in his life, it's somewhat depressing to think that it takes this kind of personality to do what he did. Maybe a company like Apple could be the product of someone more humane and less flawed in his relationships, but as far as I know, it hasn't happened yet.

Jobs had his moments of compassion but it seems like they were far and few between. He'll be remembered more for what he created, the great, and often controversial, leaps forward in technology that he led and most importantly, for pushing people to do more than they ever thought they could.

I take pride in the fact that my kid has read his first Hawking book at age 7.George's Secret Key to the Universe definitely succeeded in keeping Max interested and entertained. He was impressed at how we're made from the stuff of stars and he loved finding out how black holes work. He also now knows a little about the planets and the solar system and thinks that science in general is probably a fairly cool thing to learn more about.For my part, I also learned a few things–how particles can escape from a black hole and that black holes are (in theory) finite. I also learned quite a bit about the life-cycle of stars. The most important part to me was that the writing wasn't terrible. There's nothing that bugs me more than a kids book that feels like it was written by a high school drop out. Lucy Hawking is a charming writer.My only minor quibble, as a skeptic of anthropomorphic global warming, was the occasional focus on “saving the planet,” ostensibly from the human race. It wasn't overbearing though and it was offset by the rather more interesting idea of finding a new planet for future generations. My preference would be to encourage kids to pursue science from motives other than fear or guilt.We'll be starting on Lucy Hawking's next book, [b:George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt 5495650 George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt Lucy Hawking http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61w5auRmhIL.SL75.jpg 5563318] tomorrow night.

I read more than half of this then got kind of bored with it. Robert Moses was a fascinating guy, his impact on NY is huge, and Caro is an excellent biographer but there was a lot more detail there than I care to cram into my brain.

The premise of The Suicide of the West is that the West is in decline, and the decline is fueled by the rise of liberalism. Despite the strong title, most of the book is an attempt at an objective definition of liberalism. Only the beginning and end actually discuss why liberalism could potentially lead to the end of Western Civilization. Burnham doesn't believe liberalism is the cause, per se, of the decline of the West, but “that liberalism has come to be the verbal systematization of the process of Western contraction and withdrawal; that liberalism motivates and justifies the contraction and reconciles us to it.” To me that sounds like a convoluted way of saying it is the cause, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

What exactly is this dangerous ideology capable of motivating the decline of Western Civilization? “Modern liberalism, which contrary to the traditional doctrine, holds that there is nothing intrinsic to the nature of man that makes it impossible for human society to achieve goals of peace, freedom, justice and well-being. Ideals that liberalism assumes to be desirable and to define “the good society.” Liberalism is about optimism. Liberals believe that all men have equal civilizing potential. They hold that freedom of speech should extended to all, no matter how extreme their ideas, and that the vote of the people should always decide who is right. Liberalism believes in the potential of humankind to be raised to a state of world peace and harmony never before seen in history. Terrible and obviously suicidal, right? I didn't think so either.

The question is, do I, or indeed, do liberals really believe this? With enough education, science, technological progress, good government etc. is it possible to take humans with all our foibles and create the perfect society? What about just ending hunger? Poverty? War? Oppression? The belief that any or all of those goals are realistically achievable is actually fairly modern according to Burnham. It became popular within the last 400 or 500 years, starting with Bacon and Descartes. Before them, and others like them, achieving the perfect society wasn't the goal or ideal of government. It simply wasn't considered possible given human nature and human history. People weren't waiting on science to create an earthly paradise, they were waiting on Jesus.

If liberals believe that they should work on the noble goal of forming a perfect society, what do conservatives want? A conservative wants slow change. He prefers either to maintain the status quo or possibly even return to how things were in “the good ole' days.” The basic idea is “if things work okay now, why risk the unknown potential negative implications associated with changing them? Instead, let's do everything we can to maintain what we have.” Does that sound pessimistic to you? Depressing even? It does to me. Is it realistic though? Is it more rational than the liberal's constant tendency to reform? Maybe.

If a perfect society is possible, why haven't we achieved it yet? A liberal's answer is fairly simple: people are still ignorant and we still have not created the necessary social institutions to remedy the ignorance. For someone like Burnham, this is the perfect chance to lay into the ideology and, at times, succeed in making it look pretty absurd.

He does this by showing how liberalism explains away any crime committed by someone who is poor, a minority or in almost any other social situation, as a failure of society, rather than as a personal failure of the criminal. He shows that often the problems liberals are trying to solve are problems of people who have no desire to have their problems solved and how liberals, motivated by guilt, waste enormous resources trying to bring about worldwide equality.

It's hard to argue that liberalism is ALL bad, and Burnham doesn't. He cautiously concedes that liberalism has led to some societal good. Still, despite the fact that many liberal ideals are laudable, most attempts to implement them are misguided. The human condition can be improved, but you can't always convince terrorists to resort to peaceful methods for achieving their goals by negotiating with them. You can't solve hunger by sending lots of money to Africa and alas, you'll never create a perfect society by having millions of voters with diverse motivations and interests participate in a democracy. To state the root of the problem, “the liberal assumes... that men, given a knowledge of the problem and freedom to choose, will opt for peace, justice and plenty. But the facts do not bear him out either for individuals or for societies. Individuals choose, very often, trouble, pain, injury, for themselves and for others.” In other words, the problem of liberalism lies in human nature as defined by history.

Most people desire life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the social conditions necessary to optimize those rights. The question then becomes, what is the best way to achieve these conditions? An ideologist will have a ready answer to almost any problem that arises. In the case of liberalism, the solution is almost always the opposite of “conserving” tradition or the status quo. Instead, a liberal's approach is to value hope over experience and to destroy or drastically reform existing foundations and build again. Occasionally this approach leads to desirable results but, as any software developer will tell you, starting over usually isn't the best way to fix a bug.

The correct approach, Burnham would argue, is to look at each problem individually and without the lens of an ideology, liberal or otherwise. Something much easier said than done. He points out: “As a rule, a man, when his ideological lenses are shattered, is in haste to replace them with another set ground to a new prescription. The unfiltered world is not his dish of tea.”

A conservative prefers renewal to reform. He advocates an “equality of legal rights” rather than striving for equality of class or condition. He opts for individual improvement over collective, patriotism over internationalism, family and community over the “bloodless abstraction” of humanity and peace over strength as the “highest social value.”

Again, why is liberalism the root of the Suicide of the West? Because it values global equality over strength, global order over national order. It means that the West must stop expanding either through the spread of native ideas and truths that we hold to be inalienable as well as stopping all physical expansion such as colonialism or imperialism. Burnham argues that if we choose not to expand, we are choosing to contract. Liberalism doesn't deny this contraction, in fact it tries to reconcile us to it.

Despite being written over 45 years ago, The Suicide of the West feels fresh and remains relevant. It definitely altered my way of viewing the world and it has really caused me to take a closer look at what I know and believe.

This is an excellent biography. I picked it up fully not intending to read more than the first couple chapters. I couldn't put it down. Einstein led a fascinating life and Isaacson is a phenomenal writer. I came away with not only a basic understanding of relativity, but more importantly with an understanding of who Einstein was, his politically charged ideas, how he thought and how his ideas changed the world forever.

Usually in a book you find a character that you identify with–someone whose motives you understand. I didn't find that character in The Idiot. The unifying trait of all of them is the way their lives are directed by passion. None of them are rational–whether blinded by love, money or vice; whether good or evil, they each act to slowly bring about their own ruin. It's tragic and disconcerting to watch them slowly come unravelled.

Though Prince Myshkin is the “idiot” the book is named for, he is definitely not, at least at the time the story takes place, an idiot. He's innocent and good, but is consistently (and disconcertingly) brazenly honest. It is shocking. When he bares his soul to people who care nothing for him, it's almost too much. The Idiot is a blood on wool contrast of his goodness and the depravity every other character where the end result is the same for everyone.

This story, like most serialized Russian novels, is episodic and probably unnecessarily long. Among the many tangents are, as are so often found in Russian literature, philosophical and religious ponderings, commentary on the stratification of Russian society and descriptions of contemporary historical events. Through it all there is a beautiful, tragic love story where human flaws are shown raw and unpolished. The ending is insane. It's bizarre. Surreal. It's worth reading the whole book for the ending.

It may seem overly generous to compare Stegner to Tolstoy or even Shakespeare, but I don't think it's out of the question. With each book I read from him I am further struck by how much of the human experience he captures and by how well he does it.

All the Little Live Things is a book of contrasts more than it's a book of plot. The story revolves around an aging couple juxtaposed with both a young couple and with the children of the 60's in a few of their various incarnations. All are represented in a way that shows not only sympathy for their choices, but a profound understanding of their motivations. Stegner weaves their lives together in a beautiful and tragic story that will remain with you long after the last page.

In the beginning, it can be struggle to get interested in the book because the protagonist is such a curmudgeon, but as the story unwinds it becomes, in what is typical Stegner fashion, beautifully heart wrenching. Stick with it, it's worth it.

In a sense, this is McCarthy's version of Dostoyevsky's existential dialogue between Ivan and Alyosha in the Brothers Karamazov. The only way this works is if the case for both sides (meaning vs. nihilism) is made equally well. It's a hard and risky thing to do and, Cormac McCarthy being who he is, is the perfect guy to try it.

The Naked and the Dead is less about strategy or tactics than it is about soldiers. It's about the dynamics between commanders and their subordinates. The way men of different backgrounds deal with being placed together and forced to cooperate. The constant affronts to personal morality that war brings, and the way war pushes endurance and courage to their absolute limits. It's also about power dynamics, love and lust , and of course death.

It takes a Tolstoyian effort to sandwich that many themes between the covers of one, huge albeit, book and Mailer manages to... well, not really approach Tolstoy but he manages to weigh in as a Tolstoy-light. In the best possible way. The Naked and the Dead is easier reading than War and Peace . It has far fewer characters, settings, and scope, but it still manages to explore a lot of the same ground in a meaningful and compelling way. It's impressive, especially for a work written when Mailer was essentially just a kid.

This was my favorite of the series so far, (I haven't read the final 3). I thought their return to Narnia was fun and there were some really touching moments in the story.

I am having a hard time reviewing the story itself because after reading it I feel so much anger toward the real-life antagonist, Rafael Trujillo, the dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930-1961. There are few first-hand encounters with him in the book, but the effects he had on the islanders are so lucid that it's hard not to come away from reading this with at least a little rancor.

That aside, In the Time of Butterflies is a beautifully written story of how a family of strong women and their husbands lived, loved, and fought under an oppressive regime. It's a very human introduction to the recent history of the Dominican Republic and, apart from the parallels to actual history, a well-paced, well-written story with plenty of action and emotion.