"Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?"
-Connie Willis, Bellwether
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
Currently Reading: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
After finishing VALIS and The Wordy Shipmates, I have decided to commit to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Huck Finn is yet another in a long list of books I'm playing twenty years of catchup with. I was supposed to read it in high school (and college) but didn't. Time to make like Dr. Sam Beckett and put right what once went wrong.
Maybe I need to write up a list for the blog of everything that qualifies for my little project here.
Just finished (for the first time) in the last few years
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming*
1984 by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?*
The Man in the High Castle*
On the shelf, waiting to be read
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
The Sea Wolf by Jack London
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Nature's Metropolis by William Cronon
*Was never actually assigned to me in high school or college, but it did sit on my shelf for 20+ years.
I would include the following as well, but I had a lousy college professor whose style of teaching ruined these for me:
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsen
I think the only books (or plays) I was assigned to read in high school that I actually read were Oedipus Rex, Animal Farm and Julius Caesar. Those all have something in common. Hint: they aren't exactly epics.
Yeah, I'm a fraud.
But I'm doing my best to make up for it.
Maybe I need to write up a list for the blog of everything that qualifies for my little project here.
Just finished (for the first time) in the last few years
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming*
1984 by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?*
The Man in the High Castle*
On the shelf, waiting to be read
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
The Sea Wolf by Jack London
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Nature's Metropolis by William Cronon
*Was never actually assigned to me in high school or college, but it did sit on my shelf for 20+ years.
I would include the following as well, but I had a lousy college professor whose style of teaching ruined these for me:
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsen
I think the only books (or plays) I was assigned to read in high school that I actually read were Oedipus Rex, Animal Farm and Julius Caesar. Those all have something in common. Hint: they aren't exactly epics.
Yeah, I'm a fraud.
But I'm doing my best to make up for it.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Just Finished: The Wordy Shipmates
It took me a little longer than I thought it would, but I just finished The Wordy Shipmates, an examination of 17th Century New England by the always charming Sarah Vowell.
Shipmates is a look into an obscure corner of American History: the era of the first white settlers to what would eventually become Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. I learned a lot by reading it - namely, that Thanksgiving wasn't a yearly ritual, it had to be earned; that Pilgrims and Puritans aren't the same thing; that the Pilgrims wanted to separate from the Church of England, while the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wanted to reform it from within; and that the Puritans gave us the New World traditions of democratic elections and the "acceptibility" of the slaughter of Native Americans.
Vowell uses her trademark blend of insightful historical inquiry and biting social commentary, with a side of pop culture, throughout.
If I had one complaint about this book, it would be the (seeming) repetitiveness of the New England names: Winthrop, Williams, Cotton, Hutchinson. Maybe it was the strong theological subject matter or maybe it was the fact that I felt so removed historically from the people of 17th century New England; either way the result was the same: I felt that Shipmates wasn't her best work. That honor would go to The Partly Cloudy Patriot for its variety and quality of the essays within. I also liked Assasination Vacation better than Shipmates, probably for its macabre sense of history, and the fact that I had visited a lot of the places she described.
Sarah Vowell is an amazing writer. In fact, the strongest conclusion I had after thinking about it for a while was that she would make an amazing history professor: smart, funny, relatable, good with primary source materials. Unfortunately, I'm well past school and she probably makes more money writing history commercially than she ever could at a university.
Either way, I'm glad I read it, and I'm looking forward to reading her new book Unfamiliar Fishes when it comes out next year.
Favorite Quote: "The United States is often called a Puritan nation. Well, here is one way it emphatically is not: Puritan lives were overwelmingly, fanatically literary...the country that became the U.S. bears a closer family resemblance to the devil-may-care merchants of New Amsterdam than it does to Boston's communitarian English majors."
Shipmates is a look into an obscure corner of American History: the era of the first white settlers to what would eventually become Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. I learned a lot by reading it - namely, that Thanksgiving wasn't a yearly ritual, it had to be earned; that Pilgrims and Puritans aren't the same thing; that the Pilgrims wanted to separate from the Church of England, while the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wanted to reform it from within; and that the Puritans gave us the New World traditions of democratic elections and the "acceptibility" of the slaughter of Native Americans.
Vowell uses her trademark blend of insightful historical inquiry and biting social commentary, with a side of pop culture, throughout.
If I had one complaint about this book, it would be the (seeming) repetitiveness of the New England names: Winthrop, Williams, Cotton, Hutchinson. Maybe it was the strong theological subject matter or maybe it was the fact that I felt so removed historically from the people of 17th century New England; either way the result was the same: I felt that Shipmates wasn't her best work. That honor would go to The Partly Cloudy Patriot for its variety and quality of the essays within. I also liked Assasination Vacation better than Shipmates, probably for its macabre sense of history, and the fact that I had visited a lot of the places she described.
Sarah Vowell is an amazing writer. In fact, the strongest conclusion I had after thinking about it for a while was that she would make an amazing history professor: smart, funny, relatable, good with primary source materials. Unfortunately, I'm well past school and she probably makes more money writing history commercially than she ever could at a university.
Either way, I'm glad I read it, and I'm looking forward to reading her new book Unfamiliar Fishes when it comes out next year.
Favorite Quote: "The United States is often called a Puritan nation. Well, here is one way it emphatically is not: Puritan lives were overwelmingly, fanatically literary...the country that became the U.S. bears a closer family resemblance to the devil-may-care merchants of New Amsterdam than it does to Boston's communitarian English majors."
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Greetings New Readers
I just had my first readers from Australia and the Philippines. Welcome!
It's your move, South America and Africa!
It's your move, South America and Africa!
Monday, December 6, 2010
New Links
I've added a couple links at the side:
Book Blogs is an organization dedicated to people who blog about books. I'm hoping that by joining this group, I can increase traffic at the Reader. There is a nifty button at the bottom of the column, too.
Good Reads is kind of the nuts and bolts of what I'm trying to accomplish at the (more prosaic) Reader - a collection of the actual titles on my actual shelf, and a short review of each. It is going to take a while to get everything keyed in, but it is a pretty neat concept, so I think it will be worth it.
Check them out!
PS - I have attained my reading goals for December for The Stand. I'm considering resting it a while, although I may continue reading it in the hopes of finishing it earlier than anticipated.
Book Blogs is an organization dedicated to people who blog about books. I'm hoping that by joining this group, I can increase traffic at the Reader. There is a nifty button at the bottom of the column, too.
Good Reads is kind of the nuts and bolts of what I'm trying to accomplish at the (more prosaic) Reader - a collection of the actual titles on my actual shelf, and a short review of each. It is going to take a while to get everything keyed in, but it is a pretty neat concept, so I think it will be worth it.
Check them out!
PS - I have attained my reading goals for December for The Stand. I'm considering resting it a while, although I may continue reading it in the hopes of finishing it earlier than anticipated.
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