Category Archives: Review

BOOK REVIEW: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

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Into the WildInto the Wild by Jon Krakauer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nature is a harsh teacher. That was the last lesson Chris McCandless ever learned. A recent college graduate, McCandless struck out for the Alaskan wilderness with minimal resources, his body was found by a party of moose-hunters several months after he’d begun his Alaskan adventure.

Into the Wild gives us a well-researched explanation for how McCandless died, but it also tells us a great deal about how he lived– and that story is fascinating in its own right. Many thought McCandless must have been crazy, but refusing to acquiesce to the work-a-day world is often incorrectly diagnosed as insanity.

McCandless had an obsessive desire to find out whether he could make it on his own, not just separate from his parent’s wealth but from all the trappings of modern society. McCandless’s most iconic indicator of insanity-by-way-of-thwarting-convention was when he gave away the entirety of his $25,000 savings account and burnt all the money in his wallet. He wanted to know whether he could survive if he was returned to the state of nature from whence mankind came. Sadly, the answer was no.

It would be easy to dismiss McCandless as a dumb kid who got in over his head. Though he certainly was that. On his deathbed, in a bus carcass in the remote Alaskan wilderness, McCandless likely had a revelation that most teenagers pass into adulthood without ever realizing, that he was mortal.

However, McCandless was more than a kid with an underdeveloped sense of his own mortality. He was a kid with the courage to confront a question that most of us just let nag in the back of our minds. That question being,do we have what it takes to live not as a cog in a machine but as a human in the natural world.

I know many are intrigued by this question in part because there are entire TV channels that are practically devoted to survival shows. Yet most people don’t take it beyond sitting on a couch contemplating whether they could survive. Will thinking man (Homo sapiens) be replaced by doing man (Homo effectus)?

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There was a movie based on this book. I didn’t see it, but here is its trailer.

BOOK REVIEW: Eclipse of the Crescent Moon by Géza Gárdonyi

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Bas relief of Siege of Eger

Bas relief of Siege of Eger

Eclipse Of The Crescent MoonEclipse Of The Crescent Moon by Géza Gárdonyi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is the English translation of a volume originally written in Hungarian and titled Egri Csillagok, i.e. “Stars of Eger.”

Historical fiction works best when the event it’s built around requires no fictitious embellishment to fascinate the reader. Eclipse of the Crescent Moon takes place during the 1552 siege of Eger. During this siege, 2,000 Hungarians held off at least 40,000 Turkish invaders for over one month. (In the book the Turks have a two order of magnitude advantage.) The Turks retreated despite having had superior armaments as well as a massive numeric advantage. It’s the perfect underdog story.

Reading a purely historic account would be interesting enough, but Géza Gárdonyi creates value-added by imbuing his characters with depth, particularly his lead Gergely Bornemissza. There wasn’t much known about Bornemissza. He was a minor character in history compared to Eger’s commander, István Dobó. However, his expertise in explosives did play a role in this Hungarian success story.

The book begins when Bornemissza is a young boy. He and a girl named Éva are captured by a Turk. The couple escapes and manages to free others. They later elope to avert Éva’s arranged marriage. They have a child who is later captured by the same Turk who had captured them.

A major subplot is a trip made to Istanbul in the heart of enemy territory to attempt to aid in the escape of Bornemissza’s  adoptive father.

The book is well translated and an engaging read.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Journeys of Socrates by Dan Millman

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The Journeys of SocratesThe Journeys of Socrates by Dan Millman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Journeys of Socrates shines the spotlight on Dan Millman’s mysterious teacher from The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. We discover that Socrates was born Sergei in Russia to a Cossack father and a Jewish mother.

His youth is scarred by tragedy. His mother died in labor with him and his father died of alcohol poisoning while Sergei was away at military school. His only remaining relative that we know of, his grandfather, dies. He flees military school to avoid having to harass Jews as a soldier, and in the process he has to battle his arch-rival. He marries into a family, but that brings its own tragedy. His family by marriage are Jews living under false identities at a time when it is very dangerous to be a Russian Jew.

It is after this tragedy that Socrates’ search for warrior skills and revenge drive the narrative. In injecting so much tragedy into his life, Millman makes the main character’s transformation all the more impressive. At every turn, Socrates is faced with events that should fill him with bitterness and hatred, but he must keep going and learn to control his emotions to become the warrior that he wants to be.

He proceeds to train under a warrior trained in the way of Japanese swordsmanship, a man named Razin. Razin only reluctantly accepts him as a student. He then lives at a hermitage, learning to reign in his mind and to respond freely and appropriately to attacks. His teacher at the hermitage, Father Serafim, teaches him to fight, while encouraging him to give up his vendetta. Finally, he travels abroad to train with a convened collection of sages from various traditions (Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity,etc.)

Socrates narrative arc is well developed. He is pitted against a powerful enemy named Zakolyev, aka Gregor Stakkos, a military school rival who became an antisemitic Cossack gang leader. Socrates is reluctantly drawn into a final decisive battle with this nemesis, but there is a twist at the end to further complicate that event.

I’ll admit I’ve had mixed feelings about Millman’s work. I was a big fan of the original books Way of the Peaceful Warrior and to a lesser extent Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior. Those books provided great insight into mind-body development in a readable narrative form. However, I later picked up one of his subsequent books and found it to be some sort of numerology/astrology drivel. That was disconcerting not only because it offended my sensibilities as a Cartesian skeptic, but even more so because it seemed to fly in the face of the Peaceful Warrior message– which was one of self-empowerment, not passive acceptance of some randomly bestowed fate.

So I picked The Journeys of Socrates reluctantly. However, I found this book to be the most readable of all. It is written like a novel or the memoir of someone who led the rare novel-shaped life.

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BOOK REVIEW: Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

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Cat's CradleCat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cat’s Cradle is Vonnegut at his most brilliant and witty.

The book follows a writer, John/Jonah, as he does research for a book on the Hiroshima A-bomb. To learn about the (fictitious) inventor of the bomb, the deceased Felix Hoenikker, he interviews  Hoenikker’s children and former supervisor. In the process he becomes entangled in global catastrophe in a way he couldn’t have imagined.

As it turns out, Hoenikker had invented another weapon of mass destruction, one that would make the H-bomb look like a firecracker. However, ice-9, as the weapon was designated, wasn’t intended as a weapon at all. Ice-9 turns all water into ice at temperatures below 114 degrees Fahrenheit. The idea was to make marshes crossable by Marine Corps units. It’s the failure to anticipate the ramifications of using such a chemical, i.e. the hydrologic cycle, that’s the central premise of this book.

A lot of the book deals with a fictitious religion called Bokononism. Bokononism is the cynical faith of the Island of San Lorenzo, and it perfectly reflects Vonnegut’s mildly misanthropic attitudes. The first sentence of the Book of Bokonon says it all, “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.”

At the beginning of Cat’s Cradle we find out that John is a Bokononist, but that he’d grown up a Christian. Bokononism is prohibited on the island by the dictator, Papa Manzano. The reader comes to discover that not only is the prohibition a fraud designed to give the religion more sex appeal, but also that Manzano is a practitioner himself. This is just one of the quirky oddities that defines life on San Lorenzo.

It’s when John and all the Hoenikker children are assembled in San Lorenzo that the action really unfolds. Manzano is dying and turns the presidency over to Franklin Hoenikker (the non-midget son of the father of the bomb); Manzano later commits suicide in the oddest imaginable way. Franklin convinces John to take the presidency, but it becomes moot as the book approaches climax.

I’ll leave you with my favorite piece of Bokononist wisdom, “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” By the way, you should go to San Felix island off the coast of Chile. [Picked via a spinning globe.]

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BOOK REVIEW: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

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Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and SpiritIshmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A man answers an ad that says, “Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.” Expecting to find a charlatan, the man is surprised to find his new teacher is, in fact, a gorilla.

Like Socrates, this gorilla, Ishmael, uses questions to guide his pupil toward crucial knowledge. Ismael teaches his student to challenge some of his most deep-seated beliefs such as, the world was made for humans, humans are the ultimate culmination of biology, humans are inherently separate from (and above) nature, and that humans are fundamentally flawed in such a way as to make ruination of the planet inevitable.

The core of the book differentiates two human cultures. The author calls them the “takers” and the “leavers,” but they correspond to what we might call “us” and the “aboriginal peoples.” Takers are specialized, agricultural, and technologically advanced (if you’re reading this review on a computer and not chiseled on a cave wall, you, my friend, are a taker.)

The lives of “Leavers” aren’t that different from those of humans 10,000 years ago. They are tribal as opposed to (to borrow Desmond Morris’s term) super-tribal. [In a tribe everyone knows everyone else. Morris suggests that things go to shit –re: war, crime, and deviant behavior– in super-tribal societies.] Leavers live like animals in that they tend towards equilibrium within their ecosystem. Takers do not.

If you long for thrillers or potboilers, this isn’t the book for you. It’s a thinking person’s book. The nice thing about Ishmael’s use of the Socratic method is that one can think through the questions in parallel to the narrator’s discovery. In this way, the reader can install himself or herself into the conversation.

At the most generic level, the book’s value is in showing one how much one takes for granted. We can’t see forests for trees.

One may agree or disagree with the author, but either way one will be subjected to powerful food for thought. Some of the discussion may evoke a visceral emotional reaction that one may have trouble reconciling with logic, such as the discussion of the morality of feeding the starving.

The downside of the book is that the dialogue can be strained in places and it can get a bit repetitive. The latter serves to reinforce key concepts, but some of them feel as though they are reinforced inordinately. In making the narrating protagonist struggle, Quinn creates a lead who seems a bit dense sometimes. Also, as I indicated, the journey is by-and-large in the mind, and so the tension is limited. There is some drama when the narrator shows up one day to find that Ishmael has been evicted. However, this is resolved without too great a difficulty and they resume lessons with  Ishmael’s irritability being the only change to be seen. There is drama at the end that will remain unspoiled herein.

I’d recommend this book as a thought-provoking exercise for the mind.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway

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The Sun Also RisesThe Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Get Speechify to make any book an audiobook

Whatever the blurbs or critics might say, this book is about the raft of men left in the friend-zone after brief dalliances with Lady Brett Ashley. One may have been led to believe it’s about the life of Jake Barnes. Barnes is the lead character, but he’s not the most influential character.

Besides Barnes, the list of men who fall hard for Lady Brett Ashley include, boxer Robert Cohn, the bankrupt Michael Campbell, and the bullfighter Pedro Romero. Oddly enough, the physically toughest, Cohn, is the one who falls the hardest. Barnes may be the strongest in this sense; perhaps because his relationship with Ashley is over before the novel begins. Barnes comes off as likable with a pragmatic “live and let live” nature. (He can maintain a friendship with a woman that he loves, a feat that seems beyond Cohn’s ability. Campbell is used to having lost everything, and so seems to bob comfortably in Ashley’s wake. We don’t reliably learn about how Romero takes it.)

As the blurb says, The Sun Also Rises is about a journey from Paris to Pamplona. In Paris, the cast of Lost Generation friends hang out in cafés. In Pamplona they attend bullfights. In between, Barnes goes fishing with friends.

In a broader sense, the book is about dissatisfaction and restlessness, and not only within Ashley. This is summed up nicely by Cohn’s words to Jake, “Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it?”

Of course, the book shines in its language. Hemingway’s lean buy meaty prose is readable and engrossing. The minimalist dialogue beautifully conveys the interaction of a group of intimate friends.

Here’s a great line that captures the character of Hemingway’s writing in this book, “The beer was not good and I had a worse cognac to take the taste out of my mouth.”

The book rises to crescendo with the Pamplona bullfights and Hemingway adeptly ends on a sad note apropos of the morning after a great party.

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BOOK REVIEW: Vagabonding by Rolf Potts

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Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World TravelVagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Vagabonding is a book about how to make the leap from a cubicle-dwelling company-man (or woman) to a wandering free-spirit.

This book serves two functions. The first is to answer questions about how one goes about seeing the world if one is not independently wealthy or a recent lotto winner. In this role it provides information such as how one can fund one’s travel time, and, perhaps more importantly, how one can get a job after one has an 18 month void in one’s resume.

The second function is to psyche one up to take the leap. In this role it is more persuasive than informative. In both roles it succeeds, but it is in this second role that it is most useful. The Introduction title is “How to Win and Influence Yourself” and Chapter 1 is entitled “Declare your Independence.”

Each chapter has a list of tips and/or references, quotes from those who have done it, and a profile of a famous person associated with the lifestyle, including: Thoreau, Whitman, Muir, and Annie Dillard. The quotes show you that mere mortals have made this leap. The profiles show that you that you will be in excellent company if you do it.

One of the most important themes in this book is simplified living. If one isn’t independently wealthy, one will have to make “sacrifices” to adopt this lifestyle. However, if one learns to live lean, one will be able to make do with much less. One must also live lean during one’s travels. Potts’s advice is to travel light, and leave the electronics at home. (The latter may seem impossible these days, but as a person who recently lost a laptop in a travel accident, I respect the logic.)

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is ready to take the leap, but only if you’re serious.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A disgraced reporter and an emotionally-troubled/intellectually-gifted ward of the state pair up to solve a forty-year old locked door mystery. In the process of investigating what happened to a young woman who vanished without a trace from an island estate, they end up solving a much bigger set of mysteries– and putting their lives in peril in the process.

Both of the lead characters are well-developed and sympathetic, if not necessarily likable in a conventional sense. Mikael Blomkvist is a bit of womanizer or at least a lady’s man– whatever you wish to call him, he sleeps with at least three major female characters over the course of the book. He is also rash (or, perhaps, aggressive) in his professional life. However, he is also pragmatic and kind. Lisbeth Salander is not just tattooed but also pierced, leather-clad, and goth. Her story of female empowerment may be largely responsible for the wild success of this book. When she finds herself abused and violated, she takes matters into her own hands. Her strength and intelligence, wrapped in a package that suggests neither trait, is beguiling.

The book is obviously highly readable, but it’s oddly structured. It climaxes early, leaving well over a hundred pages at the end to wrap up subplots. This includes the disposition of Blomkvist’s professional predicament and the question of with whom he will ride off into the sunset. These are threads that couldn’t be left hanging, but it begs the question of why one reads to the bitter end– though you certainly will.

I guess I should mention that this isn’t a book for the faint of heart or the puritanical– in case one hadn’t already grasped that. It is graphic and intense in spots.

I did see the Daniel Craig/Rooney Mara version of the movie. I’m told it was not as good as the first film, which was made is Sweden (I should have mentioned the book is set in Sweden.) However, I thought it was quite good, and fairly true to the book given the challenges of turning a 650 page novel into a movie.

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BOOK REVIEW: Dracula by Bram Stoker

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DraculaDracula by Bram Stoker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dracula leaves Transylvania to find a new pool of victims, and the only thing standing between him and the people of London is Dr. Van Helsing and his cast of allies.

The novel begins with the arrival in Transylvania of Jonathan Harker, a real estate agent from England. Both Harker and his beloved wife, Mina, play an important role in unraveling the mystery of Dracula. Soon after a ghost ship rams into port, Lucy Westenra (a friend of Mina’s) begins to suffer an unusual illness. A Dr. Seward brings in Dr. Van Helsing who has a rare expertise in her particular ailment. Professor Van Helsing’s knowledge is essential to driving Dracula out of London and back to Transylvania. They pursue the vampire– resulting an a final show down.

Bram Stoker uses a series of journal entries, letters, and memos to convey the story. This is an interesting approach, and popular at that time, but it does have its limitations.

Dracula was written early in the age of science and reason. While it was an age of superstition, there is an attempt to elevate vampirism from a strictly supernatural phenomena to one in which science has something to say.

The 19th century language and approach to tension makes for a less gripping tale than one would likely see today, but it is still a very readable book.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi

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A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to StrategyA Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy by Miyamoto Musashi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Miyamoto Musashi is probably the most famous swordsman in Japan’s history. Oddly enough,he’s not known for his experience in battle(he lived at the tail end of the Warring States period and was only in a couple of battles), but for his time spent in musha shugyo (warrior’s errantry), during which he engaged in over 60 duels. It is The Book of Five Rings that largely accounts for his continued fame. That being said, Musashi was quite the renaissance man, a painter and sculptor of note. He also left behind a school of swordsmanship, Niten Ichi-ryū.

The Book of Five Rings is divided into five parts: earth scroll, water scroll, fire scroll, wind scroll, and void scroll.

The earth scroll provides an overview of martial science and an introduction to Musashi’s school, which is noted for its simultaneous use of both the large and short sword. A section is devoted the rhythm of martial arts, a crucial topic. It also includes what might be considered Musashi’s 9-point budō kun (a list of warrior precepts.)It’s worth mentioning a couple of these.
#7 Become aware of what is not obvious.
#9 Do not do anything useless.

The Water scroll describes Musashi’s approach to swordsmanship. It covers a range of elements of a martial art including footwork, the focus of one’s eyes, physical posture, mental posture, techniques,kiai (spirit shout), and approaches to cutting and thrusting.

The Fire scroll deals with the strategic or interactive aspects of the battle. Among my favorite quotes from this scroll is, “If your own power of insight is strong, the state of affairs of everything will be clear to you.”

The Wind scroll teaches us about other martial arts. Musashi discusses martial arts that use an unusually long sword, an atypically short sword, that focus on powerful strikes, and those that focus on many rapid strikes. He contrasts other martial arts with his own on subjects such as their focus with the eyes and their footwork.

The void scroll deals with, well, emptiness.

Musashi had great insight into strategy from his career of dueling. His book is worth being read and reread.

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