podpolia

In my ongoing effort to write up all the books I’ve read on here. Unfortunately, I’ve gotten to a point in the list that I really don’t remember very well, so some of the summaries are going to be sketchy at best. Anyhow, from March 10, 2005 to April 11, 2005 we have:

Our Haunted Planet — Keel
Death In The City — Schaeffer
Here I Stand: A Life Of Martin Luther — Bainton
The Idiot — Dostoevsky
Plato — Hare
The Girl Who Owned A City — Nelson
6000 Years Of The Bible — Wegener
A Short Life Of Christ — Harrison
Amerika — Kafka
The Government Inspector And Selected Stories — Gogol

Our Haunted Planet is one of those interesting little factoid books that discusses weird facts and stories. All of them should be taken with a grain of salt, but if nothing else they’re a wonderful insight on the foibles of the human psyche.
I remember that Death In The City was good, like all of Schaeffer’s books that I’ve read, but other than that I really don’t remember much about it.
Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther was a very good book, and gives an incredible amount of insight into the time period in which Luther lived. It is truly impossible to understand the man if you do not understand his times, and this book really gives a thorough background on both.
The Idiot, like all of Dostoevsky’s writing that I’ve read, is an absolutely phenomenal piece of writing. The characters are so real, and so easily identified with that it becomes truly frightening to read some of his works. There is good and evil, the wise and the foolish, and one can see oneself reflected in every single one of them.
Plato is a nice short work on the historical background and basic system of philosophy of Plato. Considerably shorter and easier to read than, say, The Republic, but also less detailed.
The Girl Who Owned A City was not a book that I started out intending to read. Actually, it’s a youth book, somewhere around the early teen years. The daughter of some of my parents’ friends had it at our house, and I picked it up and glanced over it, started reading a bit of it, and quickly made off with it. I read the whole thing in an afternoon and evening, and was absolutely thrilled with it. Not only is it an excellent post-apocalyptic story (in the style of Empty World by John Christopher, a book that had an enormous impact on my thinking in middle school), but it is also a study in psychology and politics. I was amazed at the depth of some of the material they got into, all from the point of view of an eleven year old girl. Basically, as long as you think you could appreciate a book written at a teenager’s level, read this book.
6000 Years of the Bible was a decent overview of the history covered by the Bible. It starts 6000 years ago (obviously) and covers the history of the area of ancient and modern day Israel. Not bad, overall, although I don’t really remember much besides that.
A Short Life of Christ was also interesting, giving a decent overview of the life of Jesus. Once again, it’s been about 8 months since I read it, so the details are lacking.
Amerika was good in the same way that Kafka’s work is good — in a weird, twisted sort of way. It’s sort of painful in much the same way that The Trial is painful — the reader wants to get into the story and make things right, tell the protagonist what he’s doing wrong, but is helpless to do so, and must simply follow along and wait for the inevitable end.
The Government Inspector And Selected Stories is a fairly good collection of Gogol’s work. Many of his stories are similar to Kafka’s in the ‘cringe factor,’ but they have the added benefit of being funny at the same time.
Well, that’s it for this installment of the list. Luckily, I seem to be adding to it at a slower rate than I’m reviewing it (since the last installment, I’ve only finished one book), so I might conceivably be done in the near future, and have this go back to being a somewhat-monthly feature, rather than a couple-of-times-a-weekly thing.
We shall see.