Book_review on George's Blog

A War Like No Other

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:25 -0500

Summary

Victor Davis Hanson tells the story of the Peloponnesian war which is the war where Sparta and Athens fought for close to 30 years. This war starts shortly after Sparta and Athens had united to repel a Persian invasion, partially depicted in the movie 300. Ironically, this war was ultimately decided by Persia backing Sparta which broke the Athenians. For many, this war marks the end of the Greek Golden age. Taking place shortly before Alexander the Great’s campaigns, it included many Western superstars like Socrates, who participated in the early part of the war, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, and some of the eminent Greek tragedians like Sophocles and Euripides. Hanson recasts the Peloponnesian War as a Greek Civil War, because much like the American Civil War both sides shared language, culture, and many other inherited traditions, but they differed on governmental strategies. The Spartans are portrayed as being conservative oligarchs, while the Athenians were depicted as radical proponents of democracy. This difference in governing styles is often emphasized by Hanson, who uses it to explain the distinctive reactions of the two nation states to the challenges each in turn faced.

A Brief History of Time

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:08 -0500

Summary

After writing several books targeted at specialists Stephen Hawking tries to write a book targeted at the everyman. In the book he lays out where our conceptions of the universe and time came from, and how and why they’ve been updated as more and more discoveries have been made.

Thoughts

I don’t know if this book was a waste of Hawking’s time, but it was fairly clear after reading the book that the talent for mass communication that other popular science writers have is somewhat lacking here. As one of the most intelligent and acclaimed scientists of our time it is not that surprising that the average layman may have difficulties keeping up. I in part blame Einstein for this because up until his general theory of relativity it seemed to me that the basic ideas of physics could be conveyed in a way that most people could understand, but once you start talking about gravity bending time and space, I think the allegories have to be dumbed down so much that they essentially represent nothing to the non-specialist and are quickly misunderstood by the masses. That being said there were some gems in the book, specifically the anthropic principle which we’ve all thought about many times in one direction. That is, we often have heard or thought “what are the chances that this universe unfolded in such and such a way. It’s impossible for that to have been purely chance”. What this observation neglects are that in order to make the observation in the first place the universe had to have unfolded in such and such a way. Every long string of events looks improbable in retrospect, yet any outcome of a sufficiently long string of events looks improbable. I guess this is similar to the idea that if something odd DOESN’T happen in your day, that would be a truly odd day. Hawking is also of course famous for his work on radiation observed around black holes, and so he goes into how black holes work which didn’t help me to sleep any better at night. In fact, I am now convinced that no one believes in black holes. The fact that the universe spawns these giant mouths that consume everything they come into contact with is something that I will continue to ignore.

An Army at Dawn

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:22 -0500

Summary

A history of the United States entering WW2 in North Africa. This 700 page book is the first of a trilogy about WW2 in Europe. It covers a single year of the conflict starting with the US landing in Northern Africa and ending with the capture of Tunisia.

Thoughts

A fantastic history, reading this book really gives you the feeling of living through the events. Not in a first-person sense, but more as a near omniscient deity who is really interested in America’s military. What feels like every skirmish, battle, air raid, and flat tire has been listed. Every shell casing counted, and temperature noted. All this is done in a way that manages to stay compelling throughout. -The Allies I never realized just how tense the relationship was between the Brits and the Yankees. There was quite a bit of animosity and distrust between the old power and the new power that was coming of age in this war. British folks thought of the Americans as inexperienced bumbling idiots who would only be useful as a support role in WW2. The Americans had their own reservations, one of my favorite quotes that sums up this new relationship was from Harold Macmillan:

Against Nature

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:31:24 -0500

There is no doubt whatever that this eternally self-replicating old fool (Nature) has now exhausted the good-natured admiration of all true artists, and the moment has come to replace her, as far as that can be achieved, with artiface.

So basically, it is this whole thing. Huysmans was a novelist in the 19th century whose early works were part of the naturalistic school which sought out beauty and truth in the mundane, but later in his life this changed. He began to feel cramped and redundant inside the confines of nature and wished to supersede it through artifice. Maybe this would give us a more visceral or concentrated glimpse of beauty? Enter what is known as the “Decadent” literature. This school found its poster child in Dorian Gray, and this is how I came to hear about it. On a reread of the Picture of Dorian Gray, there was this quote:

All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:12 -0500

Summary

All the Pretty Horses follows the story of John Grady Cole and his best friend Lacey Rawlins. Cole, sixteen years old, was raised on a ranch his entire life. His grandfather has just died and he discovers the ranch is about to be sold. He convinces Rawlins to join him and they both take off to Mexico hoping to find cowboy work.

Thoughts

My initial summation of this book was going to be “Hemmingway meets Coen brother’s No Country for Old Men”, but then I found out that Cormac McCarthy wrote No Country for Old Men. So now I guess the summation should be “Hemmingway meets McCarthy”. Sidebar This impression is created by a writing style called Polysyndeton. Going down this rabbit hole a little, it turns out that this is the style that gives the King James Bible and Shakespeare their distinctive cadence. From what I can tell it is a fancy name for run on sentences that would get red lined on English exams.

American Gods

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:21 -0500

Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.

Summary

A recently released prisoner named Shadow is on a return flight home when there is a mix up and his seat gets upgraded to first class. Waiting for him is a mysterious stranger with a job offer.

Thoughts

Unsurprisingly, I really enjoyed this book. A book that almost lives up to the hype, but would have been slightly better to have stumbled on without knowing anything about it. Neil Gaiman draws out scenes and situations so vividly that they became almost scars in my memory. In the age of pictures, it is difficult to make people see with just words. That is not a problem in this book, you will see what is happening, even if sometimes you didn’t want to.

1984

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:32:29 -0500

Finished this book UNABRIDGED, double plus good. Hated how believable it was. This should be required reading. The main new idea I got this time through was that the party doctrine sounded a little bit like biocentrism. They had just swapped the party for consciousness. Biocentrism says reality exists only by conscious observation. Winston said reality only has true existence by the party’s doctrine. He who owns the present owns the past. Winston’s point about immortality through the party is also the same point that people have made about the “I” continuing to exist through the other “I"s that succeed it. In Winston’s case he believed he was immortal because the party would never die. I think this is a great insight by Orwell, because it would seem that it is impossible to set up a society without bringing along metaphysical baggage. The desire (need?) for metaphysics is like a sexuality that if repressed just comes through the cracks in very disturbing ways.

2666

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:24 -0500

I had bought this monstrosity of a book shortly before moving to Africa. I had heard an interview about it on NPR which piqued my interest. I had planned to read it in my down time and on flights but I was a beta reader back then and only got a couple hundred pages in before getting distracted. One of my pacts I’ve made with myself is not to have a book on my bookshelf that I haven’t read and this one had been staring at me for half a decade. I picked it back up and was surprised how interesting it was. It is actually 5 novels in one book that are tied together by common thematic elements. There is an obscure German author who goes by the pseudonym Archomboldi and the book opens with 4 literary professors from different parts of Europe who are obsessed by this obscure author. The author’s real name is unknown, but they spend many years trying to glean personal details about him from his publisher and anyone else who has ever heard of him. They end up in the small town of Santa Teresa Mexico where they had gotten a tip he was hiding. This small Mexican town plays as the second key thematic element and becomes a focal point that shows up again and again in the other novels. There is a rash of women being killed in Santa Teresa, over 200, and the police can’t seem to do anything about it. This is the backdrop for the lives of the next several novel’s main characters. We follow a washed-out professor, a detective, a journalist from Brooklyn, and many many more characters who are somehow all drawn to the town in one way or another. I guess Bolano was a good short story author, and this is his magnum opus where he writes his longest book. I didn’t realize this while reading, but it makes sense because really this book is group of short stories that are linked together loosely by various details. I definitely had to shift into low gear on this book, as you must be prepared to get sidetracked by anyone’s life story at any point. Also, there isn’t always a neat ending to the novels. Many are left feeling a little unfinished. If you are ok with that and are not in a rush, the book takes you many strange and interesting places. From Chile with a struggling film crew that is trying to make a raunchy B movie into the head of an aging black man who is the last member of his communist cell in Boston. The magnitude of detail in this book is mind boggling. Just thinking about the amount of imagination it took to create these many backstories is overwhelming. I started to become more and more worried as I came to the end that things would not be tied up, but in the last 30 pages he pulls it out a sort of No Country for Old Men ending. An ending that is not complete but is still satisfying in its own way.

A Clockwork Orange

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:32:42 -0500

After talking about it yesterday oh my brothers, I got curious, and your humble narrator checked out the book. Overall, I couldn’t believe how much of the book was fit into the Kubrick movie. It made me respect the movie that much more. To me, it seemed to perfectly communicate the ideas of the book without much loss in translation. Anthony Burgess wrote it in 3 weeks. He originally wrote it with 21 chapters to signify 21 years, the age of an adult, but when trying to get it published in New York the publisher wanted to cut the last chapter. Needing the money, he agreed, and this is the version that the film was based on. Naturally this burned the author’s beans and he thought that this was a huge mistake. Inevitably, this book ended up becoming his most influential as well as his least liked book that he authored.

A Philosophy of Education (Homeschooler Series)

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:32:05 -0500

I find myself questioning how things are typically done to see if there are any better ways out there. Currently my interest is focused on education. This book is widely recommended by overanxious parents everywhere. If I remember correctly Alethea was founded on some classical principles that were most likely inspired by Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) and Sayers is a contemporary of Mason (1842-1923). Most likely influenced by her. Their methods have a lot of overlap but some differences as well. Charlotte Mason thought that all kids should have the right to an education and not just the rich ones. She came up with her own method of education which minimized the amount of time talking by the teacher and replaced it with the students “narrating” what they had just read. This narration is a cornerstone to her method as she believes it cements what the student has learned in their minds and helps the student to incorporate the new knowledge into their brains. I sure hope this is true as this is the main reason I write these reviews. She also believed that children did not need to be trained how to think but instead should be exposed to the best thinkers and use their innate reasoning to process the best kinds of information. She believed that every subject (excluding math) should be taught in a literary form as story is the best way to learn. The younger children would narrate paragraph by paragraph, then chapter by chapter and then finally an entire book at a time. This narration would start out in verbal form but would eventually become written. In short starting from around age 6 children should be exposed to the best art, literature, music the world has to offer and this “mind stuff” will be good food for a growing brain. This nutritive aspect of learning is also prominent in Mason’s thinking. For the postmodern push back, Mason assumed everyone would be on the same page when she said “best stuff” i.e. Dickens, Rembrandt, Mozart etc. But why not Peterson, Heffner, and Cardie B? I tended to agree with her approach as I feel like kids often underachieve because they aren’t asked to achieve anything worth achieving. The other thing about her method which was interesting was she didn’t like tests, or homework, but structured her curriculum to be consumed (dependent on stellar focus, which may be a relic by now) at high speed in the morning and then in the afternoon to work on handicrafts or learn out in nature. Give the children beautiful things to think about and they will become beautiful thinkers. Overall, I enjoyed the book, and it gave me some valuable perspective from a very experienced and well-read person. The downside of this is that I don’t know how realistic it was as a lot of it sounded insane in a modern context, but I would love to be wrong on that point.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:27 -0500

I’ll keep this one short. As the cover says, this book was written by the guy who also wrote kite runner, which was a very good book. This being my second book of his the appeal wasn’t there as much for me this time around. This story was also centered in Afghanistan (I started reading before the US troop pull-out and subsequent Taliban takeover in 2021, so it was synchronistic) and follows the life story of two women who end up living in the same house because one of them was forced to marry this dude as a child and the other was kind of forced due to the ongoing war. Similar to Kite Runner its cool to get a glimpse into the life of folks where you have no clue how they do what they do. This book was really entertaining and easy to read. The story itself was very dark. I enjoyed reading this book but wouldn’t label it as a “must read” especially if you get your hands on any of his other stuff first. Good stuff, prepare for despair.

American Holocaust

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:12 -0500

In this book David Stannard sets out to explain how the conquest of the Americas was the worst genocide in history. This book tells the story of pre-America in a much different light than how our history book explained it. Full of new information and insights overturning old, preconceived notions. For example, many thought that the population of both north and south America was around 20ish million pre-Columbus. New figures put that number at closer to 100 million. In addition, the common theory is that homo sapiens crossed into America via a now submerged land bridge that connects Asia and Alaska. Initially thinking was that this would put people in the Americas around 12,000BC, but newer evidence dates some artifacts in Mexico to 20,000 years prior to that. Which means there were already civilizations in place prior to the agricultural revolution. This and many more interesting facts are found in this overall depressing book. I will say the author is high atop his horse as he lays out all the atrocities committed by the conquistadors and early American settlers. Overall seeming to show a complete lack of understanding of human nature in a given context. This led to the writing style being unnecessarily preachy at times. The overall value and interest of the book made up for this though so I would still recommend it. It is easy to judge the past instead of learning from it.

Animal Farm

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:32:25 -0500

This book has been on my list for a long time. A very entertaining short story written by the same guy who wrote 1984. The story takes place on a farm where a pig, shortly before his death, prophesied about a day when the animals would unite and overthrow their human farmer overlords and run the farm themselves. This prophecy comes to pass a couple years after the prophet’s death. The story then follows the conditions and developments that take place at the newly “freed” farm. The story on the whole is very well written and carries a similar sense of despair as 1984 did. Written shortly after WW2 it was Orwell’s unpopular (at the time) critique of the Bolshevik revolution and the new USSR. I feel like this book as well as 1984 gets taken out of context and applied to all types of movements to greater and lesser degrees of accuracy. While this book was written critiquing communists, I don’t think the point was a critique of communism per se, but more a critique of censorship and ideologies. Overall great/ easy read.

A Gentleman in Moscow

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:36 -0500

This is a story that takes place entirely inside a hotel in Moscow from just after the Bolshevik revolution to just after World War 2. The main character is a man who was part of the bourgeoisie, a count. He is spared summary execution by the red army because he had penned a poem that helped start the revolution. For this reason, instead of being executed he was sentenced to live the rest of his life inside an iconic hotel that is a block away from the Kremlin. The story is told from his perspective. That is to say from someone that is watching his entire world be turned upside down. Reading this book will make you nostalgic for an Era that can never be recreated. Whereas you could argue that the bourgeoisie still exists the gentlemen that used to occupy it (at least in our imagination) have been replaced with people named Chad who drive their daddy’s BMW. I also had watched a couple episodes of the show “The Great” around the same time (which is very loosely based on Catherine the great) which cemented this idea. The show is set largely in a palace, with fancy ball parties and what not. But it was upsetting me to watch because the language of the show is modern and casual. Littered with penis jokes and modern curse words. Which was in keeping with the shows aesthetic but annoyed me for some reason. I think that reason is after reading this book the main character is an example of best-case scenario of nobility. He is well read, charming, respectful, and honest. So, when those folks are given wealth, it seems natural like fish in water. But when we see people like the characters in “The Great” it reminds one of a pearl necklace on a pig. Of course, the latter is probably more common, but the former is what we like to remember.

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:09 -0500

This is a book I literally stumbled on because of the title. It ended up being probably my favorite book I have read all year long. It is a collection of short stories each based around a central theme. Stories range from Noah to astronauts. I must say after the first story I was only halfway on board, but by the end of the second story the author had won me over. I have not been as challenged mentally by a book in a long time. Delightfully dark and depressing with just enough humor and love to keep you from giving up. Which could be an allegory for life I suppose, either way I highly recommend this book. Get it in audio-book form, each story is about an hour long and will give you something to think about while you are stuck in traffic.