Tag Archives: fiction

BOOK REVIEW: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

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Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Heart of Darkness is a story within a story (i.e. a frame narrative) in which the protagonist, Marlow, tells a group of men on a ship on the Thames about his adventures captaining a boat on the Congo River. The use of a frame narrative both gives this novella/ novel a confessional feel, but also imagines Marlow’s audience feeling his tale particularly viscerally as some of them might be caught up in similar intrigues themselves.

Marlow’s job in the Congo is transporting ivory. However, the core of the story revolves around a trip to extract an agent of the ivory trade named Kurtz, and to transport the ill man to medical care. Kurtz is an intriguing character. This isn’t a man one can feel indifferently towards. Some love his intellect, charisma, or even his ruthlessness. Others despise him as the face of villainy. Kurtz represents imperialism at its most vile. Some natives are at war with him. Others respect and fear him. However, he’s willing to destroy them all on a whim to make the flow of ivory come more swiftly.

Marlow isn’t a member of Kurtz’s fan club initially and thinks the agent is completely insane, but he becomes intrigued with him as their journey progresses. In a way, Marlow is the moderate face of Imperialism. He doesn’t like the way the natives are treated, or the power plays and bureaucracy of the trade. However, he’s an active and willing participant, and, ultimately, when given a choice to work against the system or in support of it he chooses the latter. He hands over Kurtz’s report on the “Suppression of Savage Customs.” He also shows his sympathy towards Kurtz through his interaction with the dead man’s fiance.

This is definitely 19th century literature. While the book is very short, it’s readability isn’t high by today’s standards. It’s organized into just three parts or chapters, and the prose isn’t built for speed. Also, while it turns out to be a gripping tale, it’s slow off the blocks. It must also be put in the context of 19th century literature because the themes of imperialism and suppression of “savagery” have long since been settled. Viewed through today’s lens, the story might not ring true. Though I suppose there’s still a heart of darkness in urban environments today, behind walls rather than across seas.

What are the book’s strengths? While it may seem silly, the title is pure-D awesomeness. Also, while it’s not organized or written for readability by today’s standards, by 19th century standards it’s a page-turner. It’s certainly a compact tale. As I indicated, I’m not sure whether to call it a novel or a novella. Reading this book isn’t a major time investment, and it does pay off. Conrad’s use of descriptive language is often beautiful. Conrad’s characters all ring true and serve to sit one in a world of darkness beyond the imaginings of the London elite, where sad and terrible things happen to make their world possible.

Lastly, the book makes one think. Like Kurtz, one is likely to love it or hate it.

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BOOK REVIEW: Rashōmon and Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

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Rashomon and Other Stories (Tuttle Classics)Rashomon and Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Six stories make up this brief collection. All six are intriguing, well-written, and shine a light onto the dark side of mankind. The works of Akutagawa collected herein are all morality tales, but aren’t written in a moralistic tone. In fact, it’s not clear that the author wishes to convey lessons on virtue and vice as he’s intrigued with the instant at which an ordinary person turns bad. That instant, and the inflamed passions that often inspire it, is a prevailing theme throughout most of this small anthology. Akutagawa beats AMC by the better part of a century in showing us how bad breaks.

The first story is entitled In a Grove. This is a murder mystery in which we are given conflicting accounts of a man’s murder through the process of the investigation of the act. The final account that we are offered is that of the victim himself–as presented by a psychic medium. [Only two of these stories contain supernatural elements–this one and the last. Most of the collection involves realist premises. One must remember that Akutagawa was writing in the early part of the 20th century, and scientific rationality hadn’t yet gotten as strong a hold as it does today.] In this case, the use of a psychic is really just a plot device to give the reader insight into a truth which couldn’t otherwise be revealed. Having heard the perspectives of the murder and the dead man’s wife, one is left with questions owing to the self-serving nature of those statements. Of course, the final section reveals a twist–that I won’t spoil.

The second story is the title story, Rashōmon. The title is the name of a gate in Kyōto, the largest gate of Kyōto, in fact. However, Kyōto has fallen on hard times, and our protagonist is a newly masterless samurai who has sought the gate’s shelter from the rain. There, he contemplates whether he should take up a life of crime, which seems to be his only means of survival in the current economy given his skill set. The gate has become a repository for the corpses that are amassing as victims of the hard times accumulate. Within the gate, he finds an old hag who loots bodies for a living. His interaction with the old woman helps him to decide his own destiny.

The third story is called Yam Gruel. While “yam gruel” (or anything with the word gruel in it) might not sound appealing given today’s usage, a fact one must know is that during the time of the story it was a highly-prized and rare dish. The story follows a milquetoast administrator who leads a rather pathetic life in which he has but one ambition, to eat his fill of yam gruel. As a member of the samurai class, he’s invited to an Imperial banquet each year. However, because of his low status and the high-value of yam gruel, he never gets more than a taste. One year he openly bemoans the fact that he never gets his fill. A powerful samurai overhears this complaint, and it puts a seed of mischief in his mind. While this tale isn’t about breaking bad, it is about inflamed passions.

The fourth story sticks out as different from the others. While the bulk of the stories center on that moment at which a more-or-less good person goes bad, The Martyr tells us about a protagonist that never goes bad, despite having every right to. This might seem like a sea change in theme, but in reality it’s just another way of shining a light on the dark seed that resides in people. Only this time it does it by way of contrast. All of the other characters are deeply flawed, and we see that most vividly when contrasted against the one who always behaves virtuously. In this case, that virtuous character is Lorenzo, a novice monk who is accused of a severe breach of good conduct. Lorenzo becomes an outcast and a vagrant due to these allegations. Yet, despite all this, he acts heroically–even to assist those who’ve betrayed him.

In the fifth story we revisit the theme of breaking bad. In Kesa and Morito we are presented with two regret-filled accounts of the instant at which an adulterous couple decides to kill the husband of the woman involved in the affair. Each member of the cheating couple thinks that the other desperately wants the killing to go forward. In reality, both consider it a foolish decision driven by a brief moment of passion. This is another tale about letting one’s passions get out of control.

The final work is a retelling of the story of a monk named Hanazō who decides to prank his fellow monks because they chide him about his huge nose. Hanazō sets up a sign that says a dragon will appear from the local lake at a certain time and day to fly up into the heavens. The joke doesn’t turn out at all as the monk intended. I won’t go into the moral of the story to avoid giving too much away, but suffice it to say there is a moral.

I highly recommend this collection. As I’ve suggested, the collection isn’t just a disparate collection of tales, but has an integrating theme. Akutagawa was truly one of the masters of the short story. He wrote 150 stories before dying at the age of 35 in a suicidal drug overdose.

For those who like to see how literature is portrayed in, below one can watch the film version of Rashōmon.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Color of Magic by Terry Prachett

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The Color of Magic (Discworld, #1)The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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The Color of Magic is a hero’s journey tale done in comedic fashion. It’s the first book in Prachett’s disc world series. An incompetent wizard, Rincewind, becomes the guide to a goofy but wealthy tourist named Twoflower. However, as it happens the events that confront these two on their journey are part of a game being played between gods. I loved the humor, liked the story, but wasn’t a fan of the organization of the book.

I should admit up front that fantasy is–hands down–my least favorite genre, and I can’t say that view didn’t jaundice my perception of this book. However, it’s a testament to Pratchett’s humor and readability that I continued reading it.

What is my beef with fantasy in general? First, once one introduces magic, how does one maintain tension in an environment in which anything can happen effortlessly? Obviously, fantasy fans find plenty of tension to keep them reading, but I just don’t get it personally. I know that one retort is that the same could be said of other speculative fiction genres. To the degree that is true, I also don’t care for those other genres so much either. However, sci-fi (for example) has a basis for constraints that can be widely agreed upon. Second, the appeal of feudal society for setting perplexes me. I guess there is a certain romance to these periods for fans (perhaps because they imagine themselves in the statistically-unlikely role of king or knight as opposed to the much more likely position of serfdom, but whatever), but I see this type of society as backward and unsustainable (a ten millennia old kingdom maybe possible in a world of magic, but not in a world as we know it.)

I know fantasy fans will be able to come up with examples of how their favorite authors avoid both of the pet peeves mentioned. In truth, Pratchett does a good job of negating these pitfalls. With respect to the magic problem, he makes the protagonist wizard really inept and, therefore, easily in situations over his head. Simply put, he makes his lead weak relative to those confronting him. With respect to the setting issue, Pratchett creates an entirely different kind of world, the disc world. This is not Charlemagne’s Europe with wizards.

Prachett is often compared to Douglas Adams. In fact, if you Google “the Douglas Adams of fantasy,” you are sure to pull sites pertaining to Pratchett. One can see the same type of absurdist humor in Prachett’s work. Here’s a compilation of a few of my favorite lines:

“Being Ymor’s right-hand man was like being gently flogged to death with scented bootlaces.”

“No, what he didn’t like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.”

“Yah. I outnumber you one to two.”

“He wondered what kind of life it would be, having to keep swimming all the time to stay exactly in the same place. Pretty similar to his own, he decided.”

“But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.”

“Your affected air of craven cowardness does not fool me.”

Pratchett appeals to the downtrodden in all of us. This can best be gleaned from the tale of Goldeneyes Silverhand Dactylos. Dactylos is a superb craftsman who is blinded, has his hand cut off, and suffers ever greater indignities because the Emir wants him to never again produce anything as lovely. It’s like the myth about Shah Jahan having the hands cut off Taj Mahal craftsman, except Pratchett’s Emir keeps asking the same man of increasing handicaps back to construct ever greater marvels of engineering.

The book is arranged in just four chapters. This is a bit of an oddity for commercial fiction, and I don’t really care for the sparse employment of breaking points in this book. Again, if I was enough of a fan of fantasy to read this in a single sitting (or even a few sittings) I would likely not find this to be an issue. However, I read it over time and interspersed with many other books (a lot of which were more captivating to me personally.) This might seem like a ridiculously nit-picky point, but for those of us who have a lot of reading up in the air at once, being able to readily put a book down and pick it up seamlessly later without losing the story is of great benefit.

If you like humor, this book will appeal to you. If you like fantasy, I suspect you’ll doubly like it–as long as you have a sense of humor. If you don’t like either, this book will not be for you.

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BOOK REVIEW: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

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Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1)Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Ender’s Game is the story of a boy, Ender Wiggin, whose intelligence and capacity for ruthlessness lead the military establishment to believe that he’s the last hope for mankind. The book is set in a future after the Earth has been invaded twice by an alien species called the buggers, and now the Earth is planning its own “preemptive” invasion to end the bugger threat once and for all.

The novel follows Ender’s life from his short home life as a “third”—a rare third child for which special permission must be granted—through his post-war life. (This entire timeline transpires before adulthood.) The bulk of the novel takes place in Battle School, where Ender receives his training in military tactics and strategy and spends much of his time in zero gravity war games. He rises up through the ranks quickly, as expected, but not without stirring some animus in the process. He learns strategy both through war games and through the mind-field of real world animosity by others who are jealous or feel insulted by his brilliance.

As Commander material, Ender is considered to be in the Goldilocks zone. His older brother, Peter, is too cruel; his sister, Valentine, is just too kind. (All three Wiggin children are geniuses.) Ender has the right mix to fight the buggers. His problem is that the world forces him to be ruthless and his compassionate side makes it hard to cope.
While Ender leaves home young and early in the novel, there is a subplot involving the older Wiggin children that is revealed over the course of the book—showing the reader more of the tormenting brother and the loving sister who shaped his worldview. Ender does interact with Valentine in person on a couple of occasions, but his only interaction with Peter is a brief mention of correspondence at the end of the book.

Ender is an intriguing character. He is always the outsider, by birth as a third and then through isolation in Battle School that is facilitated by the conflicted head of the Battle School, Col. Graff.

I won’t get into the ending except to say that there is a twist at the novel’s climax. I will say that the reveal of this twist felt a little anti-climactic to me. However, as the real story isn’t about fighting the buggers, but Ender’s internal struggle, this isn’t as dismaying as it might otherwise be.

One can tell that this is a series book because it climaxes and resolves relatively early, leaving a fair amount of space to set up the next book. This actually helps the twist offer some surprise because the reader sees that there are so many pages left for the novel to resolve itself.

Card does an interesting thing in making the central character stronger than everyone around him–at least until he’s introduced to his new guru, Mazer Rackham–the Commander who won the key battle of the second bugger invasion and who is alive by virtue of a relativistic trip. Ender’s superiority seems like a recipe for boredom, but it works because what we don’t know is whether Ender is stronger than everyone else pitted against him combined, and, moreover, we don’t know whether he is strong enough inside to withstand all the horridness to which he is subjected. A lot of the tension of the novel is really internal to Ender. Unlike Peter, who would revel in ruthlessness, Ender is tormented by all of the violence he must perpetrate.

I’d recommend this novel. It has its flaws, but it is quite readable and Ender’s character is intriguing from start to finish.

The movie version is coming out tomorrow. I haven’t seen it, but here is the trailer.

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BOOK REVIEW: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

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American Gods (American Gods, #1)American Gods by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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American Gods is the story of a hapless and gentle brute who goes by the nickname “Shadow.” We meet Shadow as he is being released from prison a few days early because the wife that he loved dearly has passed away. While the description of Shadow’s imposing size and criminal activity might lead us to believe he’s an unsavory character, we find him sympathetic from the outset–though we don’t learn that it was virtue more than vice that landed him in prison until late in the book.

Given that the name of the book is American Gods others who’ve read it may wonder why I say it’s about Shadow instead of being about a war between America’s old gods and its new ones (e.g. technology and mass media.)The latter statement is more likely what one will read on the dust jacket. However, for me it was the character of Shadow that kept me reading. As with any great novel’s main character, Shadow is put in predicament after predicament, and one must see how he’ll handle them. Eventually, we suspect that enough will be enough and he will have to choose to act in his own best interest rather than in the moral manner.

The importance of character in this novel doesn’t mean that it’s lacking a plot. Early on we are given a great hook when Shadow is introduced to the character of “Wednesday.” The hook is that Wednesday seems to know things about Shadow that no one could, and he makes a proposal to Shadow. The reader is thus drawn in and wants to know how Wednesday knows the impossible and whether Shadow will agree to the vague offer. While we don’t know what agreeing will mean for Shadow, we suspect that it’s tailor-made to land him back in hot water.

While Shadow seems to be always ending up with the short end of the stick, what makes things interesting is that he’s not dumb. He doesn’t stumble into these traps unwittingly. Rather, Shadow defies convention and, by some measures, is really quite a sharp man. Often, he sees the folly of his decisions but is compelled by virtue to act in ways that put him at risk.

Shadow is on a journey of self-discovery throughout the book, and what he ultimately discovers about himself is spectacular.

In a way American Gods is Neil Gaiman’s commentary on America, and Shadow represents America at its most virtuous. We see plenty of America’s faults and failings in the process, its vainglory and hunger for power. But in Shadow we see a character who is honor bound to do what he thinks is the right thing–even when it comes at great personal cost and even when he knows he is being manipulated.

I found this novel to be highly readable and would recommend it. It has Gaiman’s characteristic humor, darkness, and dark humor.

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BOOK REVIEW: Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

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Wise BloodWise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Wise Blood is a character-driven novel about a young veteran, Hazel Motes, who becomes a devout atheist. If that sounds like an oxymoron, let me explain. After becoming enamored with a preacher (and having the blood of a preacher man in his veins), Motes begins to preach the tenets of his newly formed Church Without Christ. In essence, Motes believes in religion without believing in God (the opposite condition of that which some of us find ourselves.)

This was Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, and it’s the first of her novels that I’ve read. I have, however, read some of her stories, and Wise Blood displays a dark humor similar to that found in O’Connor’s best know story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

Throughout the book, Motes struggles to convey the depths of his disbelief. He attacks false prophets. He follows through on an act of self-mutilation that he had earlier discovered the preacher, Asa Hawks, could not. Thus proving his lack of faith to be stronger than the preacher’s faith. Motes is wooed by both by the nymphomanical daughter of Hawks, Sabbath Lily, and later by his landlady, Ms. Flood. While Motes doesn’t necessarily remain chaste, he does maintain a kind of priestly detachment from the pleasures of the flesh.

An interesting part of the story details Motes’s interaction with a con-man named Hoover Shoats who co-opts Motes’ preaching sessions and starts his own Holy Church of Christ Without Christ–which passers-by find to be a source of amusement–as a bastardization of Motes’ message. Motes rejects Hoover, but sees his mission being usurped anyway. Motes shows deadly seriousness in his desire to be taken seriously in the word that he preaches.

This novel was apparently built from a series of stories, and a little bit of discontinuity can be sensed early on. However, that’s just part of the charm of a book that is sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes humorous, and sometimes both.

I would recommend book for anybody, excepting those hard-core pious who grow red-faced with rage in the face of atheism or other beliefs.

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BOOK REVIEW: Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

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Mostly Harmless (Hitchhiker's Guide, #5)Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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[NOTE: If you would like to read my reviews of the first four books, you can do so by following the hyperlinked title: 1.) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 2.) The Restaurant at the End of the Universe  3.) Life, the Universe, and Everything 4.) So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish]

This is the fifth and final installment in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series (not including Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing, which I don’t.) Fans of the series will recognize “Mostly Harmless” as the sum total of the Earth’s entry in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The story focuses on a trio of characters from the original book’s cast: Arthur Dent (of course), Tricia McMillan (a.k.a. Trillian), and Ford Prefect–with the Random addition a new fourth feature character. As the series had already begun trending, this story is more human-centric than the earliest installments. The central story could be divorced from the sci-fi genre with relatively minor modifications. However, as Restaurant at the End of the Universe uses time travel as a sci-fi plot device, this book uses the concept of a parallel universe.

The story begins with our main characters separated from one another. Arthur Dent is making sandwiches of Perfectly Normal Beast (an Orwellian turn-of-phrase as one might expect) on the planet where he crash landed. Trillian, or one of them, is reduced to doing an interview with an astrologer. Ford Prefect is breaking into his place of employment to avoid the accountants in his usual manner of hijinks.

Adams throws each of these characters a monkey wrench. Dent finds out he has a daughter, Random Dent, and that her mother–Trillian–is dropping her on his doorstep. Ford discovers that the Guide is under new and nefarious management, and that they have created an edition with dire ramifications. Trillian, or one of them, gets her big break being picked up by a Grebulon ship only to discover they want her to advise them on astrology.

The notion that no one escapes the feeling of being without a home is a central theme in the book.

This isn’t Adams’ best work. The story has grown stale. It lacks the creative brilliance derived from plot devices like the Infinite Improbability Drive, and–while there may be something to be said for a story with more humanity– it leaves one missing idiosyncratic characters like Zaphod and Marvin. That being said, even at his worst Adams is amusing and thought-provoking. If you enjoyed his earlier books, you could certainly do worse than to finish the series. In the unlikely event that Adams isn’t your cup of tea, this final installment probably won’t revise your assessment.

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Shame List: 25 books I should have read by now

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To force myself to get cracking on more of the best books, I’m baring my shame. Below is a list of some of the books that it’s downright appalling I’ve failed to read as of yet. This is by no means a complete list. In fact, the initial list I compiled was about three times as long. (And it still wasn’t all-inclusive.)

I had to apply a few selection criteria to get to a reasonably-sized list. Some of these criteria are unique to a particular book, and will be noted under the book’s listing. However, there are also general criteria. If a book is commonly referred to in pop culture and I haven’t read it, that’s a cause for concern. In other words, if I’m not getting the literary references on The Simpsons, I’m a little embarrassed.  (Or pop science references made on Big Bang Theory.)

Also, I believe that one should read broadly and outside one’s comfort box. This means that one should read the counter arguments to what one believes, so as to not be happy stewing in one’s ignorance. This is part of becoming wiser and trading one’s narrow view of the world for one which is broader.

Some of these choices are idiosyncratic to myself– as opposed to being classics or masterpieces. For example, I was trained as a Social Scientist, so books on that subject might not make most people’s “essential reads” list. Also, I’m a martial artist, so my bonus picks are tied to that interest.

So, in alphabetical order, without further ado:


Brief history of time

1.) A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

This may be an odd choice as I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t understand anything Hawking says beyond the Acknowledgements page. I once read that this book had the distinction of being “the most unread book on everybody’s bookshelf.” (I don’t know whether that’s urban legend or established fact– but I can believe it.) An Engineering PhD student from a very prestigious technical university once admitted to me that he couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. I did read The Universe in a Nutshell, which has a lot of pictures and, thus, is more my speed; it was kind of “A Brief History of Time … for Dummies.”


Confederacy of Dunces

2.) A Confederacy of Dunces by James Kennedy Toole

The backstory behind this book is fascinating and has an important moral. Toole killed himself, presumably because he couldn’t get it published. Then, posthumously, it became a critically-acclaimed hit after his mother took it around and forced literary types to read it. NEVER GIVE UP!


Farewell to Arms

3.) A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

I’m a big Hemingway fan. I’ve read a few of his novels, many of his short stories, and even some of his non-fiction. This is my elusive great white Hemingwhale.


As I lay dying

4.) As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

I was a late comer to Faulkner. I’d always heard that his writing was wordy and that it straggled. As those are bad habits of my own, I figured I should feed myself more Hemingway-esque writing. However, after reading several of Faulkner’s stories and his novel Sanctuary, I developed a man-crush on his use of language.


Beloved

5.) Beloved by Toni Morrison

Like many books on my list, I’ve got a copy of this on my bookshelf, and I even started it once. I’m not sure what distracted me. I picked it up originally to see how Morrison wrote accented dialogue. This is part of my advice to self to read outside my own history and experience.


cloud atlas

6.) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

I like cross-genre books. Furthermore, I’ve heard good things about the organization of this as a series of incomplete stories that are tied together in the final part.


crime and punishment

7.) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

This is another one that is on my bookshelf and that I started. It’s not that I didn’t like the opening (though like most all literature of its era is not exactly punchy.) Rather, it’s that I tend to end up with too many books up in the air at once. Therefore, if one takes over, the others get dropped.

I hope I don’t have a subconscious aversion to Russian literature, but–I must admit–I’ve read far too little Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Turgenev, and (to a lesser extent) Chekhov. (I’ve read quite a few Chekhov short stories.)


Don quixote

8.) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Again, I own this one. I don’t believe that I ever started it. However, anything with a sense of humor is a winner in my book.


GunsGermsSteel

9.) Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

While doing my Masters in International Affairs, I almost took a course  that used this as a textbook, but I had a conflict with a required course. The question of how some civilizations progress (when others don’t) is fascinating to me–as is the subject of Diamond’s more recent book Collapse, which looks at why certain civilizations unravel.


Heart of Darkness

10.) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

This one is particularly sad because: a.) I own it. b.) I’ve started it on more than one occasion. c.) It really does seem like a fascinating story, and d.) [the kicker] It’s extremely short. It’s not even properly called a novel, but more a novella or–maybe even–a long short story.


Les Miserables

11.) Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

I hate to admit that I might have some subtle anti-French bias because I’ve never read any Hugo or Camus.


Leviathan

12.) Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

This is another one that is about balanced reading. I’ve always tended toward a libertarian view of governance. So I’ve read John Locke and many other arguments for why government should stay small and limited. Leviathan is the granddaddy of counter claims. It’s about why the government must be involved in everything. I’ve read a lot of commentary on the Hobbes-Locke divide, but not this book. While I may not agree with Hobbes, that’s exactly why I should have read him. I have read Marx and others who’ve made more modern arguments for the primacy of governing over the governed.


Life of Pi

13.) Life of Pi by Yan Martel

I read the cover blurb of this when it came out and thought it would be interesting. When the movie was coming out, I thought about it again, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.


Lolita

14.) Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov

I saw the 1962 movie, but have never read this book. This is one that is often cited in pop culture. I know the general premise, but it would be good to read it.


Meditations

15.) Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

I’ve read quotes from this book, and I once started it from the beginning. I agree with the life philosophy espoused in it, so I should have finished it by now. I particularly like the quote, “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”


lives of a cell

16.) The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas

I began it once, and it’s tiny. So double shame on me for not finishing this one yet.


Origin of species

17.) The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

I’ve read a lot of commentary on Darwin’s ideas, but not this book– at least not in full. I include it because it’s one of the seminal works on the biological world as we know it. It contains many ideas that should be considered when reflecting on the nature of man and animal alike.


Satanic Verses

18.) The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Any writing that makes someone take a hit out on the author must be powerful stuff. Enough said.


The Stranger

19.) The Stranger by Albert Camus

This is one whose pop culture references, I suspect, elude me.


things they carried

20.) The Things They Carried  by Tim O’Brien

I’ve just heard that his is an outstanding and very readable book. It’s supposedly a great example of a sparse but evocative style. I’m interested in the literature of war, so it’s right up my alley.


Tipping point

21.) The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

This is really a stand-in for a number of pop social science titles by Gladwell that examine the behavior and decision making of individuals and groups. Blink might have been a choice as well, but I’m a little more interested in the tipping point phenomena.  I’ve read vast troves on behavioral economics and related fields, but Gladwell is such a household name that I should probably be more familiar with his work.

 


The Trial

22.) The Trial by Franz Kafka

Another one that I own, I’ve started, which has many pop culture references, but which I’ve never gotten through.

 


wisdom of crowds

23.) The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

This is sort of a counter claim social science book. I once read an old book entitled Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay. MacKay suggests (as Tommy Lee Jones did in Men in Black) that in groups otherwise intelligent people are stupid and panicky.


to kill a mockingbird

24.) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Again, there are tons of pop culture references out there on this one. I’ve heard it’s a well-crafted book, but–for whatever reason– I’ve never read it.

 


Ulysses

25.) Ulysses by James Joyce

I have no illusions that this would be fun reading, but some consider it the best English language novel of all time. Also, I have read some of James Joyce’s shorter stuff, and I dig his use of language. My fear is that it will be like “the greatest American novel,” Moby Dick, which I did read and would rate far lower.


Bonus Shame Picks

I just realized that my list was appallingly Western-centric, and so I’ve added a couple bonus picks  to rectify this because I’m too lazy to go back and cut a couple of the others.


Tale of genji

26.) The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

Written in the 11th century, this Japanese work is considered by many to be the world’s first novel–or at least the first modern novel.


Water Margin

27.) The Water Margin by Shi Nai’an

This 14th century Chinese novel is one of the four classics of ancient Chinese literature. It also supposedly contains a lot of kung fu flick elements.

 


Your turn. Come on,  confession is good for the soul. What books are you ashamed that you haven’t gotten around to reading yet?

BOOK REVIEW: World War Z by Max Brooks

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World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie WarWorld War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

World War Z, as the subtitle suggests, is written as a series of interviews of key (or in some cases typical) people involved in the Zombie War. The viewpoints addressed include various political leaders, military service members of various branches and nations, strategic planners, doctors, and even civilians caught up in the diaspora that resulted from the plague.

The approach of the novel is unusual. To the degree there is a lead character, it’s the UN employee who conducts all the interviews. However, we don’t experience the interviewer’s story arc and are left with very little insight into this individual. Rather, the story is a global arc of mankind’s experience of zombies from “patient zero” through the clean up in the years following the war. And, it is a global tale. The stories of these individuals take one to places like Chongquing, Meteora, the Amazon, Barbados, Johannesburg, the Alang ship breaking yard (an excellent choice for a post-apocalyptic setting, I must say), Denver, and even onto a ballistic-missile-toting submarine sitting on the ocean floor.

Where Brooks’s book excels is in making one think, and in that regard it does an excellent job. This isn’t about edge-of-the-seat adrenaline injections to which most Zombie book authors aspire. I don’t deny that there are emotional parts to the book, but the tension is reduced by virtue of being a collection of survivors’ tales. That is, we know the story-tellers survived more-or-less intact. Also, because of the intrusions of the interviewer and the authenticity of responses (some are more skilled and open story tellers than others), we never lose sight of the fact that this is a couple of people talking war stories.

That being said, we take a cook’s tour of gut-wrenching food for thought over the course of the novel. Consider a government that abandons its citizenry, and even uses some as bait to help save others. Brooks tugs at the readers’ heartstrings through an interview with a K-9 soldier who describes the role of man’s best friend. Brooks portrays the best and worst that mankind has to offer–as one would surely expect to experience them in such a world gone wrong.

I must admit, some of the topics may be more interesting to me as a social scientist than they will be to others. One interviewee discusses the mismatch between job skills needed and job skills available in a rapidly evolving post-apocalyptic landscape. This speaks to present-day society as much as it does to a dystopian future. The author devotes an interview to questioning the man responsible for reestablishing trust in the dollar in an economy that has by necessity reverted to barter. There is also discussion of revolutions in governance that find their catalyst in the Zombie War. There are intriguing turns of events such as the makeshift flotillas of U.S. citizens converging on Cuba because Fidel’s authoritarian regime was uniquely prepared to close itself off during the earliest days of the outbreak.

With the movie coming out this Friday (June 21), I will say that I can’t see much in common between the book and the trailers for the movie that I’ve seen to date. However, I can imagine the movie being an extension or outgrowth of one of the many vignettes expressed in the book. This is not to say that the movie will be bad (or that it won’t be), but if one sees the movie one will still be left with impetus to read the book.

I enjoyed World War Z because it makes one think–a feat that isn’t the strong suit of Zombie literature.

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Your Post-Apocalyptic Guidance Counselor Is In

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I’ve been reading World War Z because I had heard it’s an interesting book and because it went on sale–presumably in anticipation of the movie that comes out next week that shares a name (but probably little else besides Zombies) with the novel. I don’t usually read zombie or vampire literature because there’s so much of it and rarely does it offer anything new or intriguing. (Once one’s read Bramstoker and Matheson, what more is there to be said on the undead.) Brooks’ book is an exception. Told as a series of oral histories collected by a UN employee who serves as a quasi-protagonist–but not necessarily a central character–of the book, World War Z  chronicles the human dimension of the Zombie War.

The book tells a series of personal vignettes from the earliest sign of the pandemic through the cleanup afterward. One of the issues that is discussed is the mismatch between the skill sets the survivors had and the skill sets that were needed to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. In one of the interviews, a bureaucrat discusses the need for job retraining because they had all these information age analysts, managers, coordinators, etc. but few people who knew how to make new things, grow food, or repair damaged infrastructure. They had all these mid-level white-collar people and they needed blue collars.

This got me thinking. To be honest, I haven’t had a job that would be useful in a post-apocalyptic wasteland since I was a 22-year-old infantry-trained law enforcement officer. Everything since then has involved life in a cubicle or small office uncovering, creating, evaluating, analyzing, describing, modifying, and disseminating information. Then there has been writing, which I love, but which isn’t exactly going to pull humanity back from extinction. (Let’s not kid ourselves that “reading is fundamental” when society has to be rebuilt from the ground up–fed, clothed, etc.)

This isn’t to say that I would be altogether useless in a post-Zombie Apocalypse world. I lived years 0 through 18 on a working farm. That was a long time ago, but I’m sure I could remember something about how to engage in activities that are actually directly related to keeping people alive (as opposed to keeping them informed.)

So will you be useful post zombie apocalypse? What would you be interested in doing if your current Dilbert-esque work life became irrelevant?