podpolia

Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn died the other day, and I’ve finally found a decently detailed obituary of the man. Solzhenitsyn is one of my favorite authors, although I have only read a few of his works besides The Gulag Archipelago. The Gulag Archipelago is what really sparked my interest in the Soviet government and the Gulag in particular. It remains a classic in the historiography of the Soviet prison camp systems, and is considerably better (besides being better-written) than many of the more recent highly-acclaimed histories. One can even detect an undercurrent of jealousy in many authors who take Solzhenitsyn to task for minor errors or things that they portray as distortions; rarely have I seen a substantive criticism of The Gulag Archipelago. On the whole, the man wrote a remarkable history secretly, and without access to the records of the government — and his work has stood the test of time.
Solzhenitsyn, by writing the history of part of a totalitarian regime, found himself a political figure. A quote at the end of his obituary put it well: “His biographer, DM Thomas, compared the author to another returned exile, Lenin himself, imagining ‘Lenin and Solzhenitsyn, staring cold-eyed at each other across the corpse-filled gorge of the 20th century.’” It then points out that Solzhenitsyn was a gentle man, as though that were a counterpoint to that quote. In reality, staring down the cruel is the hallmark of a gentle man — a moral lesson that the decadent West that Solzhenitsyn criticized never fully recognized.
And that’s saying nothing about his other moral and religious thinking.
RIP Alexsandr Isayevich — may the Russian conscience live on through your works.

Lately I’ve been reading the apocrypha, and I’m beginning to suspect that some of them were kicked out of the canon by the ancient church elders because of editorial considerations. For example, the use of metaphor in 4 Maccabees 7.1-6:

¹ For like a most skillful pilot, the reason of our father Eleazar steered the ship of religion over the sea of the emotions, ² and though buffeted by the stormings of the tyrant and overwhelmed by the mighty waves of tortures, ³ in no way did he turn the rudder of religion until he sailed into the haven of immortal victory. ⁴ No city besieged with many ingenious war machines has ever held out as did that most holy man. Although his sacred life was consumed by tortures and racks, he conquered the besiegers with the shield of his devout reason. ⁵ For in setting his mind firm like a jutting cliff, our father Eleazar broke the maddening waves of the emotions. ⁶ O priest, worthy of the priesthood, you neither defiled your sacred teeth nor profaned your stomach, which had room only for reverence and purity, by eating defiling foods. ⁷ O man in harmony with the law and philosopher of divine life!

Well, it’s that time again. Time for me to talk about books I’ve read, and try to convince you, dear reader, to buy yourself a copy of the book to explore for yourself, and raise me a little bit of money to keep the site up and running. Without further ado, here are the books:

Thus Spoke Zarathustra — Nietzsche
Alice In Wonderland — Carroll
Eyewitness To History — Carey
How To Live With A Neurotic Cat — Baker
Strange Stories, Amazing Facts — Reader’s Digest
Les Miserables — Hugo
The Mouse On The Moon — Wibberley
Stalin In Power — Tucker
The Hot Zone — Preston
Forensic Detective — Mann

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is definitely an interesting book. Nietzsche chose a fascinating way to exhibit a development of a philosophy. Not only can we see Zarathustra developing the philosophy through the book, but the reader can more easily separate the philosophy expressed therein from the author himself. I suspect that portions of this work are essentially a philosophical exercise, and not intended to be taken as seriously as some of his other works.
Alice In Wonderland was a book I chose one day from the High School library when I discovered that I had left the book I was currently reading at home. It’s fairly short, and always an entertaining little story.
Eyewitness To History was a very interesting book. Not only does it explore every corner of written history, but it does so using primary sources — accounts from people who actually experienced the important (and sometimes not so important) events of the history of the world. There’s a little bit for everyone in this book — some of the accounts of major disasters rival the best of today’s action/adventure fiction, but with the added kick of knowing that everything you read actually happened. Definitely a good work to read if you want to get a grasp of the reality of human experience in history.
How To Live With A Neurotic Cat was a book I found laying around one day, and since it was short, I read it. I really don’t remember anything about it, but you cat lovers out there may enjoy having a look at it.
Strange Stories, Amazing Facts was another fascinating book. This one is a series of short articles about bizarre occurrances, phenomena, and events throughout history. While occasionally the authors lean toward the overly-credible side, the articles are on the whole very well balanced, without as much melodrama than many books of this type.
Les Miserables is a classic, and with good reason. It’s incredibly long, but very detailed and full of action. The book covers an extremely long period of time, but manages to develop the characters realistically throughout. The only problem I have with it is the tendancy of Hugo to stop in the middle of an exciting bit of action and give an enormous amount of background material on something. One point in particular has two main characters escaping into the sewer system under Paris, and they no sooner disappear down the grating than the reader is subjected to half a hundred pages of the intricate history of Paris’s sewers. When you finally make it through that, the author has to remind you again what happened earlier that made him start off on that particular tangent. The background information is somewhat interesting, and helps a little with the continuation of the plot (the characters are then moving in a more three-dimensional setting), but it’s terribly disconcerting to be kept waiting for fifty pages to continue the plot.
The Mouse On The Moon is a fun little book by the same guy who wrote The Mouse That Roared. In this one, however, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick isn’t conquering America, it’s going to the moon. Once you manage to ignore the completely impossible science content, it’s a neat little story about world politics and the space race.
Stalin In Power is a study of Stalin from the time he took power in the late 1920s to the invasion of the USSR by Nazi Germany in 1941. This book is definitely for those with an interest in political power struggles and the internal history of the Soviet Union — there are so many players and they interact so quickly and get killed off almost as quickly — that it makes things difficult for those who might pick up the book for a casual read. That said, it is definitely an excellent history.
The Hot Zone is an interesting book about major killer diseases, and discusses a local outbreak of one of those ebola-like diseases near Washington, D.C. An interesting story, but it didn’t go into quite as much detail with some of the stuff as I would have liked.
Finally, we have Forensic Detective. This is an interesting book on forensic anthropology — you know, that dead-body-CSI-stuff. On the whole, I didn’t think it was nearly as good as Death’s Acre — but then again, there can’t be too many that good. Nonetheless, it’s interesting.

Ok, that’s all for now. So until next time — um… click on the links and buy books and give me money, I guess.

Well, it’s that time again. In the past two weeks, I’ve read over 3,000 pages (vacations are wonderful, aren’t they?) and I need to try to catch up with the reviews that I post on here. As of this update, I will be into books I read in this calendar year. I’ll still be a page and a half behind on the list, but it’ll still be better. Anyway, here goes:

Over The Top — Empey

Sundiver — Brin

The Way Of A Pilgrim — Fedotov

Rogue Warrior II: Red Cell — Marcinko

God Knows — Heller

Green Team — Marcinko

Empty World — Christopher

Our Marvelous Native Tongue — Claiborne

Animal Farm — Orwell

Big Lies — Meir-Levi

Over The Top is an excellent contemporary account of life in the trenches during World War I. The author (an American) joined the British Army to fight the Germans after the sinking of the Lusitania. In the book, he relates a number of his experiences ‘over there,’ some of them scary, some of them funny. He attempts to paint the war as vividly as possible, while accenting the positives (the book was largely written to encourage enlistment in the American Army after America entered the war in 1917). It is perhaps most fascinating for its careful analysis of the average British soldier, and even includes a dictionary at the back of common British military slang. This is definitely not an unbiased book, but is excellent to get a feel for the American attitudes toward the war and the British. It seems a silent movie was made about the experiences in the book (and starring the author himself) in 1918. I haven’t seen anywhere where the movie is available, even for download online. (The book is freely available for download from Project Gutenberg, but I’m too lazy to give you a direct link to it. Besides, you should be buying books from these links and helping support my site!)
Sundiver is the first novel of Brin’s Uplift Series. There’s an entire system of aliens and humans interacting in these books, and I have read a number of the books in the series, and enjoyed all of them. This one is about a trip to the sun to meet the creatures that seem to be living there. Halfway through, it turns into a murder mystery. In space. With aliens. What’s not to like?
The Way Of A Pilgrim is a collection of Russian mystical works (Christian mysticism, in this case). These stories help immensely in understanding the Russian spiritual/mystical mindset, as well as providing glimpses at Russian history and culture, as well as the lives of the religious individuals that the individual works are about. Some of the stories are naturally better than others, but on the whole the book is impressive.
Rogue Warrior II: Red Cell is a fictional account of the author (Richard Marcinko) and his escapades with his Navy SEAL buddies as they go around the country trying to find out who is behind various threats to national security. Not only does Marcinko have to worry about the bad guys, but his own government is out to get him as well. The book is a thrilling adventure story. The plot and characters are good, the action seems realistic, and the storytelling is done with a gritty, dirty flair. Marcinko can be quite foul-mouthed at times, and does his best to come across as a mindless, murdering brute, but underneath is a brilliant, calculating mind. Definitely a book that would thrill teenage guys, and those wishing to relive the adventuresomeness of youth.
God Knows is the story of King David. Yes, that’s right, the one in the Bible. But this isn’t the way the Bible tells the story — not by any means. All of the characters have their own personalities that come out at you in a way that the Bible doesn’t really do, and the storytelling weaving them together is very… well, Jewish. It has the loving cynicism that has come to be associated with Jews in America, and David (while acting as narrator) even sprinkles his story freely with Yiddish. This is an anachronism, yes, but it isn’t alone. As the book progresses, more and more things show up that David could not possibly have known about. By the time you get to the last page, you feel a sort of dissociation — David is at once the King of Israel, kvetching about getting old, and a wholly modern man. He sounds like an elderly neighbor discussing his medical problems and his life story with anyone who will ask. On the whole, it’s quite an impressive book, and gives you an entirely new insight into just what all can be read into a Bible story.
Green Team is the third in the series of Rogue Warrior books by Richard Marcinko. In this one, he and the guys are at it again — new problems to solve. The book is quite similar to Red Cell in everything but the story.
Empty World was probably one of the first apocalyptic novels I ever read. Technically, this is a book for children or adolescents, but it still makes engrossing reading for an adult. The premise of the story is that a virus wipes out almost the entire population of Earth. The small percentage that are left are all children or in their early teens. The book follows one of them, a boy from Britain, and his journey through this empty world. The story is incredibly dark, and suprisingly psychological for a book indended for younger readers. It deals directly with death, grief, and many other things that children are often shielded from, and handles them in a way that communicates directly with the audience. This is still one of my favorite apocalyptic books, and probably the one that I remember the most strongly from my middle school years.
Our Marvelous Native Tongue is a story of the English language. It discusses a lot of the history of the language, and many of its quirks. On the whole, a very informative book (I remember many of the random facts from it, although I don’t really remember much about the book as a whole. Hey, it was seven months ago, cut me some slack.)
Animal Farm is an absolute classic. Orwell used the guise of a children’s story to deliver important facts about the world as he saw it — freedom endangered by totalitarianism. Definitely one you should read. It isn’t very long, either — I read the entire thing in my spare time (study halls, lunch break, planning period, etc.) during one day at work.
Finally, Big Lies. This isn’t a book, really, so much as a pamphlet. I’m not sure where my dad got it, but I suspect that it was mailed out as a sample by the people at some political commentary magazine that wanted him to subscribe. Anyway, it attempts to tell the true story of the formation of the state of Israel, and how misleading some of the ‘facts’ put forward by those who support the Palestinians are. This is obviously tilted towards Israel, but I think it is definitely something that should be read if you are trying to educate yourself about the historical aspect of the political situation. Take some of it with a grain of salt, if you must, but take a serious look at it nonetheless.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Five more updates, and I’ll be caught up. Maybe.

Well, it’s that time again. In the past two weeks, I’ve read over 3,000 pages (vacations are wonderful, aren’t they?) and I need to try to catch up with the reviews that I post on here. As of this update, I will be into books I read in this calendar year. I’ll still be a page and a half behind on the list, but it’ll still be better. Anyway, here goes:

Over The Top — Empey

Sundiver — Brin

The Way Of A Pilgrim — Fedotov

Rogue Warrior II: Red Cell — Marcinko

God Knows — Heller

Green Team — Marcinko

Empty World — Christopher

Our Marvelous Native Tongue — Claiborne

Animal Farm — Orwell

Big Lies — Meir-Levi

Over The Top is an excellent contemporary account of life in the trenches during World War I. The author (an American) joined the British Army to fight the Germans after the sinking of the Lusitania. In the book, he relates a number of his experiences ‘over there,’ some of them scary, some of them funny. He attempts to paint the war as vividly as possible, while accenting the positives (the book was largely written to encourage enlistment in the American Army after America entered the war in 1917). It is perhaps most fascinating for its careful analysis of the average British soldier, and even includes a dictionary at the back of common British military slang. This is definitely not an unbiased book, but is excellent to get a feel for the American attitudes toward the war and the British. It seems a silent movie was made about the experiences in the book (and starring the author himself) in 1918. I haven’t seen anywhere where the movie is available, even for download online. (The book is freely available for download from Project Gutenberg, but I’m too lazy to give you a direct link to it. Besides, you should be buying books from these links and helping support my site!)
Sundiver is the first novel of Brin’s Uplift Series. There’s an entire system of aliens and humans interacting in these books, and I have read a number of the books in the series, and enjoyed all of them. This one is about a trip to the sun to meet the creatures that seem to be living there. Halfway through, it turns into a murder mystery. In space. With aliens. What’s not to like?
The Way Of A Pilgrim is a collection of Russian mystical works (Christian mysticism, in this case). These stories help immensely in understanding the Russian spiritual/mystical mindset, as well as providing glimpses at Russian history and culture, as well as the lives of the religious individuals that the individual works are about. Some of the stories are naturally better than others, but on the whole the book is impressive.
Rogue Warrior II: Red Cell is a fictional account of the author (Richard Marcinko) and his escapades with his Navy SEAL buddies as they go around the country trying to find out who is behind various threats to national security. Not only does Marcinko have to worry about the bad guys, but his own government is out to get him as well. The book is a thrilling adventure story. The plot and characters are good, the action seems realistic, and the storytelling is done with a gritty, dirty flair. Marcinko can be quite foul-mouthed at times, and does his best to come across as a mindless, murdering brute, but underneath is a brilliant, calculating mind. Definitely a book that would thrill teenage guys, and those wishing to relive the adventuresomeness of youth.
God Knows is the story of King David. Yes, that’s right, the one in the Bible. But this isn’t the way the Bible tells the story — not by any means. All of the characters have their own personalities that come out at you in a way that the Bible doesn’t really do, and the storytelling weaving them together is very… well, Jewish. It has the loving cynicism that has come to be associated with Jews in America, and David (while acting as narrator) even sprinkles his story freely with Yiddish. This is an anachronism, yes, but it isn’t alone. As the book progresses, more and more things show up that David could not possibly have known about. By the time you get to the last page, you feel a sort of dissociation — David is at once the King of Israel, kvetching about getting old, and a wholly modern man. He sounds like an elderly neighbor discussing his medical problems and his life story with anyone who will ask. On the whole, it’s quite an impressive book, and gives you an entirely new insight into just what all can be read into a Bible story.
Green Team is the third in the series of Rogue Warrior books by Richard Marcinko. In this one, he and the guys are at it again — new problems to solve. The book is quite similar to Red Cell in everything but the story.
Empty World was probably one of the first apocalyptic novels I ever read. Technically, this is a book for children or adolescents, but it still makes engrossing reading for an adult. The premise of the story is that a virus wipes out almost the entire population of Earth. The small percentage that are left are all children or in their early teens. The book follows one of them, a boy from Britain, and his journey through this empty world. The story is incredibly dark, and suprisingly psychological for a book indended for younger readers. It deals directly with death, grief, and many other things that children are often shielded from, and handles them in a way that communicates directly with the audience. This is still one of my favorite apocalyptic books, and probably the one that I remember the most strongly from my middle school years.
Our Marvelous Native Tongue is a story of the English language. It discusses a lot of the history of the language, and many of its quirks. On the whole, a very informative book (I remember many of the random facts from it, although I don’t really remember much about the book as a whole. Hey, it was seven months ago, cut me some slack.)
Animal Farm is an absolute classic. Orwell used the guise of a children’s story to deliver important facts about the world as he saw it — freedom endangered by totalitarianism. Definitely one you should read. It isn’t very long, either — I read the entire thing in my spare time (study halls, lunch break, planning period, etc.) during one day at work.
Finally, Big Lies. This isn’t a book, really, so much as a pamphlet. I’m not sure where my dad got it, but I suspect that it was mailed out as a sample by the people at some political commentary magazine that wanted him to subscribe. Anyway, it attempts to tell the true story of the formation of the state of Israel, and how misleading some of the ‘facts’ put forward by those who support the Palestinians are. This is obviously tilted towards Israel, but I think it is definitely something that should be read if you are trying to educate yourself about the historical aspect of the political situation. Take some of it with a grain of salt, if you must, but take a serious look at it nonetheless.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Five more updates, and I’ll be caught up. Maybe.

Ok, so I stand corrected. Many of you SAW the book review post the other day, and none of you actually clicked on any of the links. Looks like I’m going to have to try again! And why not? My posts on reading are still a year behind, I don’t really have much to say on current world events until the situation between Lebanon and Israel develops further, and I actually feel like writing this right now. Maybe somebody will CLICK ON THE LINKS this time. Really. Go ahead. CLICK THE LINKS. Then buy yourself a nice book. Just move the mouse over one of them, and push the little button. Easy! You know you want to…

Gulag: A History — Applebaum
Great American Scandals — Farquhar
Great Short Works — Dostoevsky
Francis of Assisi: A Portrait — Almedingen
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers — Roach
The Handbook For Spiritual Warfare — Murphy
Biblical Demonology — Unger
The Clothes Have No Emperor — Slansky
Prime Evil — Winter
At The Dawn Of Tyranny — Sagan

Gulag: A History is an excellent historical analysis of the Soviet Gulag. This account is not as limited to personal experience in the camps as accounts by Solzhenitsyn or Shalamov, and is more of a general history. Definitely an excellent book if you’re interested in the topic.
Great American Scandals is really a fun book. It talks about the various scandalous things that have happened in the corridors of power in Washington, and treats them all with a gossipy, humorous flair. It’s interesting to get a look at the human side of some of this country’s great leaders, as well as to learn more about the personal environment that history happened in when history was happening. Of course, it wasn’t history yet, but the people participating in it knew it would be history some day. Actually, it would be history immediately after they did it. ANYWAY.
Great Short Works is a compilation of several of Dostoevsky’s shorter works (duh). They’re pretty great (also duh). Dostoevsky is probably my favorite author, and it’s nice to be able to read more stories by him. The shortness of the stories (and I should note here that most of these ’short’ stories are more than 100 pages long) doesn’t detract from his typically powerful character development and psychological insights. The book includes Записки из подполья (“Zapiski iz podpol’ia,” or The Underground Man, the work that gave this website its name).
Francis of Assisi: A Portrait is, as the title suggests, a moderately short biographical portrait of Francis of Assisi. The book deals with a great deal of the politics within the Catholic church, and Francis’ dealings with those in power. I didn’t know much about St. Francis before reading this. Now I do.
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is really a fun book, despite the ominous-sounding subject matter. If you’re at all interested in forensic anthropology, the funerary business, medical training, or just dead bodies in general, this book is quite fascinating. Even if you’re not, it would also be pretty good. It’s vaguely morbid, but in a very un-morbid way. The Comtesse would despair (!).
The Handbook For Spiritual Warfare is quite a tome. I’m fairly sure it took me almost two months to get through it (with the previous book being read while I was still partway through), but that may have had something to do with the whole student teaching thing going on at the same time. In any event, the book is mostly a thorough analysis of the Bible from a spiritual warfare point of view: there are angels and demons, and both can (and do) interact with humans on an occasional or even frequent basis. Dr. Murphy builds a cogent biblical argument supporting his point of view, and even though I did not completely agree with everything he said, he did make some very interesting points.
Biblical Demonology was a book along the same vein, although it did not go into the depth of analysis that the previous book did. It seemed to be more historically aligned, although still not as much as I might have liked.
The Clothes Have No Emperor is like a hilarious (if somewhat anti-Reagan) crash course on the 1980s in America. Organized by date, the book presents major, minor, and just weird news stories and events, usually with a comical twist. Definitely recommended if you’re like me and can remember things from the ’80s, but weren’t old enough to actually be able to follow current events, and therefore don’t really know what went on.
Prime Evil is a compilation of a number of really good horror stories. All of the stories were very good. Definitely not something to read at night, at least for those of you who dislike reading things like that at night.
And finally, At The Dawn Of Tyranny was a book about native nations in colonized areas, and how they functioned and interacted with colonizing powers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The two major examples in the book are the natives of Tahiti, and the people of the kingdom of Buganda in Africa (as you may have guessed, it was in the region of modern day Uganda). It is mostly a political work, rather than an anthropological one, but it does have some fascinating cultural details about both cultures. This is the type of book that seems like it would be boring (a political study of proto-nations during the era of European colonization?), but is really a fascinating read.

Ok, that’s all for now. Remember, feel free to CLICK THE LINKS. You are getting sleepy. Very sleepy. You want to CLICK THE LINKS!

Well, it has been a while since I did one of my reading updates, so it’s time to do one again. I try to do these every so often, and it has been about three months since the last one, and I’ve read thirty more books since then. In any event, if you’re new to my site or if you’ve simply forgotten, here’s the drill as it is supposed to work: I write a blog post about ten books that I’ve read, and include my comments on them. I also include links to Amazon, where you can buy the books fairly cheaply, and I get a small percentage. The money goes towards the costs of the domain name, and other such blog related fees, and possibly to more books to review if I end up with a couple leftover dollars.
In reality, I write the post and include the links, most of you glance over the post, a few of you click on the links, and none of you buy anything. I continue being poor, and all of us remain vaguely irritated with one another about the whole situation. Nevertheless, in order to keep up the beautiful circle of blogger and readers, we both continue to do this ad nauseum. Far be it from me to alter the facts of life! Here we go:

Ender’s Game — Card
The Limerick — Legman
World Of The Odd And The Awesome — Berlitz
What The Church Teaches — Conway
Germs: Biological Weapons And America’s Secret War — Miller
Good As Gold — Heller
The Philosophy Of Space And Time — Reichenbach
Kolyma Tales — Shalamov
You’re Only Old Once — Seuss
An Interpretation Of Christian Ethics — Niebuhr

Ok, now the reviews:
Ender’s Game is a classic of science fiction. I had heard about this book for years, but had never gotten around to actually reading it, and I wish I had when I was younger. Not only is it an excellent read as far as the science-fictiony elements, but it’s also a masterful insight into childhood psychology. As the preface to the copy of the book I had said, many people violently disagreed with the thought that young children actually thought in the way that Card presents it. I know that my own thoughts as a child were not quite so developed and precise, but at the same time I remember thinking a lot of the types of things that so disturb people with idyllic ideas of what childhood was like (in other words, people who don’t really remember it). Definitely recommended.
The Limerick — Legman
is a book about (what else?) limericks. There was an interesting (if occasionally dry for the layman) introduction explaining the history of limericks, and doing some analysis of them. The rest of the book was filled with examples. Having grown up with my only real exposure to limericks being a 45 rpm record of various Ogden Nash limericks and poems, I did not realize just how naughty the limerick genre is generally considered to be. A few of the limericks were quite naughty. The rest of them, however, were extremely naughty. It was definitely an entertaining (if ribald) read. I suggest against reading it all in the course of a day or two, however, as you will start feeling the necessity of talking in limerick form, and be vaguely irritated with yourself when you can’t.
World Of The Odd And The Awesome is a book filled with interesting tidbits of facts that are interesting, if a bit odd. I don’t know how true all of them are — I’ve heard that Berlitz is not necessarily known for his strict adherence to the truth — but they definitely make for an interesting look at the odder side of existance as we know it.
What The Church Teaches is a book from a Catholic perspective about what Catholics believe. As you might expect, it’s quite similar to what a Protestant would write about the same topic, but actually goes out of its way to examine the differences and how those differences relate to interactions between different members of the various Christian faiths. Quite thoughtful and insightful in many places.
Germs: Biological Weapons And America’s Secret War is a fascinating tour of the American projects run out of Fort Detrick during the early part of the Cold War, as well as what the Soviet Union was doing at the same time. Advanced biology like this is not something easy to understand, but Miller manages to explain it carefully and thoroughly, and also shows the political maneuvers that led to the rise and decline of the offensive weapons programs in both countries. After reading this book, I definitely felt better informed about biological weapons and defense, as well as the possibilites of biological terrorism and what those might mean. Definitely a good book.
Good As Gold isn’t much like Catch-22 in most ways. While there are many of the same crazy, logic-bending bureaucratic maneuvers, the book focuses much more directly on family relations. True, the main character goes on a meteoric political career, but on the whole this is a more introspective and social work. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing — pulling all of the Catch-22 zaniness (zanyness?) in a book about family just wouldn’t work well. On the whole, it’s an interesting and amusing book on family life for a Jewish family, and how that family interacts.
I have to admit that I did not read all of The Philosophy Of Space And Time. I read the first two parts (of three), but the calculus that the third part was based on went over my head. The book as a whole is absolutely incredible, however. The book discusses such fascinating things as 4 dimensional geometry, and manages to explain them in a way that you can almost visualize the behavior of objects in 4-d space. Not an easy read by any means — I suggest that you only tackle this if you have a decent grounding in geometry and some of the more basic bits of calculus (or even more advanced, if you want to be able to finish it), as well as an acquaintance with philosophy. Fascinating book though.
Kolyma Tales is another set of stories from the Soviet Gulag. The book is shorter and has a more literary feel than Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago (books one, two, and three), which is more of a history. There is more of a personal feel, and it somehow connects more deeply than Solzhenitsyn’s work does (on the whole, at least. The Gulag Archipelago is also quite poignant in places).
You’re Only Old Once is a Dr. Seuss book for old people. I was visiting my grandmother’s house in Indiana, and someone had given the book to my grandfather. It’s a story about being old — the doctors, the poking and prodding — but with the typical Dr. Seuss flair.
Last (and least) we have An Interpretation Of Christian Ethics by Reinhold Niebuhr. I don’t remember much about what this book was about (I’m assuming it was on Christian Ethics, but one never knows). I remember being glad that it was fairly short, and telling everyone who asked (and many of those who did not) that, “Reinhold Niebuhr is a blowhard.” Quite probably, if I hadn’t decided to read this book myself (if, say, it had been assigned for school), I would have stopped about 40 pages into it, and thrown it across the room. I tended to do that with books I didn’t want to read for school, like this one. In any event, I don’t plan on reading anything else by Niebuhr. It’s possible I even agreed with some of what he had to say, but his know-it-all style of writing was such a turn-off that if he tried to talk to me like that in real life, I would not hesitate in tossing HIM across the room with disgust. Luckily, that isn’t likely to happen, as he is DEAD.
In any event, I don’t recommend reading this book, although feel free to buy it both to get me money, and possibly to throw it across the room for the therapeutic value.
Oh, one more thing — The Adventures of Brisco County Jr — Not actually a book, but how can you possibly turn down a sci-fi western with Bruce Campbell? The only way to improve that concept is to add zombies with bad food-based special effects.

Well, I’m still very far behind in making my list of books that I have read. As in, almost a year behind — the first book on this list was one I finished reading on April 15, 2005. Anyhow, without further ado, here are this entry’s ten books:

Gideon’s Trumpet — Lewis
Fear And Trembling — Kierkegaard
Complete Short Stories And Poems — Poe
Death’s Acre — Bass
The Amityville Horror — Anson
Dreams of Terror and Death — Lovecraft
The Master and Margarita — Bulgakov
The Picture of Dorian Gray — Wilde
Books That Changed The World — Downs
What If? — Cowley

We’ll start at the top. Gideon’s Trumpet is the story behind the Supreme Court case of Gideon v. Wainright, the case that set precedent that required defendents not on trial for their lives to also be given court-appointed defense lawyers. This is definitely an interesting story for those who are interested in the Supreme Court and its role in making law.
Fear And Trembling is a fascinating piece by Soren Kierkegaard that discusses religious themes and morality, and focuses a great deal on the Biblical story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac. Kierkegaard develops a very deep and subtle moral framework from which to view Abraham’s activities, and goes into the story in depth.
Edgar Allen Poe’s Complete Short Stories And Poems is a full collection of his famous (and not-so-famous) works. I found myself to be quite drawn to his nautical stories, even moreso than to the more well-known short stories like Hop-Frog, The Pit and the Pendulum, or the Tell-Tale Heart (which all make their own apperances in this book). The book is fairly long (as one would expect with a complete collection) but definitely worth the time to read.
Death’s Acre is an absolutely amazing book by the (relatively) famous forensic anthropologist Bill Bass. In it, he discusses his career, some of his more noteworthy cases (some of which are better than a lot of fictional detective stories) and his research facility, the “Body Farm,” where he and others do research on the decomposition of human bodies. This facility is what gives the book its name. Despite the topic, most of the book is not terribly disgusting. Some parts might make some people squeamish, but for the most part all of the parts about decomposing bodies are handled in a professional, medical manner that gives a great deal of intellectual insight into the topic without being overly disgusting. This is definitely a book I would recommend.
During this particular period of time, I seem to have been interested in “scary” books, because the next book I read was The Amityville Horror. This is the original book about the events that would lead to the creation of several books and the movie (plus the atrocious remake of the movie) by the same name. I would not immediately classify this book as either fiction or non-fiction. Some aspects of the story seem to be valid while others just seem… well, fishy. Regardless of whether it is real or not, it is definitely an entertaining read.
Sticking to the spooky theme, the next book I read was H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreams of Terror and Death. I have heard of Lovecraft for years, but never really paid much attention to it. I ran across this book, glanced over it, and thought it looked interesting enough to give it a try. I was very thoroughly suprised by how amazingly well written the book was. It takes some time to get used to Lovecraft’s style of writing, but once you are used to it, you are given a tour of an entirely new world that is somewhat like our own, but at the same time with an incredible surreal and supernatural cast to it. The book is a series of short stories that distantly interconnect and all take place in this world. The stories are all creepy, but at the same time very very good.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is one book that seems to have been coming up quite a bit lately (if you read back through my archives for a week or two, you’ll see why). This is possibly the funniest piece of Russian literature I have ever read. The concept behind the book is basically that the devil comes to Moscow in the late 1920s and creates massive chaos. There is a love story and a story of a tortured writer calle ‘The Master’ intertwined with the antics of the devil and his henchmen, and the whole turns out to be a spectacular and wonderfully entertaining book.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is another semi-supernatural book. It has become a bit of a classic, although I really do not see why. I was thoroughly unimpressed with the writing style of Oscar Wilde, which read like a cross between some conceited, pansy, upper-class British git and the stereotypical superficial, whiny, pseudo-titillation of a bunch of gossipy housewives. The concept behind the story is very good, and a few of the characters are interesting, but for the most part the book is made up of flat, walking caricatures swapping ‘clever’ dialogue, and doing very little else. The only really good thing about the book is that it was short, so I didn’t need to waste TOO much of my life reading it.
In case you couldn’t tell, I didn’t really like that one, so reading Books That Changed The World was somewhat of a relief. The book is a brief discussion of a number of important books that have really made a difference in the world, what they were about, and how they had impacted society. Short, concise, to the point. You get a brief slice of contemporary history, and discussion of some of the world’s great books at the same time.
The final book in this particular list is What If? which is a collection of short analyses of what may have happened if various military engagements had happened a different way. This sort of thinking about history is fascinating to me. Talking about the array of possible results from any one event requires solid knowledge of contemporary history, human behavior, and the characters involved. If you like military history, this book is definitely something you would be interested in.
So, until the next time I manage to get around to writing up a list of books I have read and descriptions of them (partially to educate you, my fair reader, and partially in a simple mercenary attempt to con people into buying stuff from Amazon and making me money), happy reading!

Mikhail Bulgakov has shown up again in the parts of the internet that I generally prowl. Not only that, but while I was trying to rearrange my junk today in my bedroom, my copy of The Master and Margarita crept out from under my bed. It might be making a break for the door, or possibly just the stack of books that’s waiting to be shelved. Either way, I’m beginning to think I’m being haunted.

I got a piece of spam email today that caught my eye. I glanced at it while going through and telling Evolution to delete it, and the text looked suspiciously familiar. Allow me to quote:

“But there was no time for regrets. Stepa dialled the office of Rimsky, the Variety Theatre’s treasurer. Stepa was in a delicate position: for one thing, the foreigner might be offended at Stepa ringing up to check on him after he had been shown the contract and for another, the treasurer was an extremely difficult man to deal with. After all he couldn’t just say to him : ‘ Look here, did J sign a contract yesterday for thirty-five thousand roubles with a professor of black magic? ‘ It simply wouldn’t do! ‘Yes? ‘ came Rimsky’s harsh, unpleasant voice in the earphone. ‘Hello, Grigory Danilovich,’ said Stepa gently. ‘ Likhodeyev speaking. It’s about this … er … this fellow . . . this artiste, in my flat, called, er, Woland . . . I just wanted to ask you about this evening–is everything O.K.? ‘ ‘Oh, the black magician? ‘ replied Rimsky. ‘ The posters will be here any minute now.’ ‘Uhuh . . .’ said Stepa weakly. ‘ O.K., so long . . .’ ‘Will you be coming over soon? ‘ asked Rimsky. ‘In half an hour,’ answered Stepa and replacing the receiver he clasped his feverish head. God, how embarrassing! What an appalling thing to q ot ktmthu j tltp ukskt lunu rtouku mukur q furr urr sdjksdfsdfsdlgkj sdflkjsdf lksdjfsdfsdf”

…followed by an advertisement promising longer orgasms. In case you didn’t recognize it as quickly as I did, it’s from The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. (The obligatory attempt to make money is here.) I have no idea how they managed to choose that particular piece of writing for their decoy, but I thought it was rather ironic as I have had the author’s name stuck in my head off and on for the past several days. (Come on, Mikhail Bulgakov is just fun to say!)