podpolia

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!)

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.

The last time I wrote an update on the books I have been reading was in April. Needless to say, I am now even farther behind than I was before, and now that I’m working with the Amazon.com associates program, I have an added incentive ($!) to keep my list up to date. Anyhow, starting the list of books I’ve read from the one I finished on January 13, 2005 and running up until March 8, 2005, we have:

War Day — Strieber
The Dance of Legislation — Redman
The Contemporary Congress — Loomis
The Road to Serfdom — Hayek
Made In America — Bryson
The Joys of Yiddish — Rosten
The Gambler — Dostoyevsky
Battling The Inner Dummy — Weiner
Plan Of Attack — Woodward
My Father — Rasputin

War Day is a fascinating book. I started reading it in high school during study halls, and finally found a copy to buy at a used book sale. It’s about a couple of journalists who travel through a post-apocalyptic America to see just what life is like after a limited nuclear war. Definitely worth the read.
The Dance of Legislation is an interesting look into the functionings of committees and subcommittees in Congress, and one idealistic young man’s attempt to push through a piece of legislation. Definitely not the most interesting of books for people who aren’t interested in the material. I had to read it for Advanced American Government.
The Contemporary Congress is a textbook on how Congress works. There are some interesting bits, but other than that, it’s prettymuch just a textbook.
The Road to Serfdom is more interesting. It is a book about capitalism and communism, and the importance of maintaining a capitalist society. It was written in the late 1940s, so some of the material is quite dated, but still a valuable resource — it was supposedly one of President Reagan’s favorite books.
Made In America is one of the best books I think I’ve ever read. It is a fascinating history of the English language in America, and incidentally a history of America itself at the same time. The most amazing facts are given, and explain some really interesting bits of arcana about the United States and life in the modern world in general. DEFINITELY recommended.
The Joys of Yiddish follows in the linguistic field, with the language in question being (obviously) Yiddish rather than English. Even if you don’t really learn any Yiddish terms from it, you’ll gain a broader appreciation of Jewish culture.
The Gambler (yet another book by Fyodor Dostoyevsky) is, like his other works, a brilliant exercise in psychology. Dostoyevsky uses his own history as a compulsive gambler to analyze the problem, and as usual, the interactions between people.
Battling the Inner Dummy is rather an inventive book. It’s pop psychology, with the premise being that Sigmund Freud has been brought in from the past to develop and help market a series of products based on his theories. Gives a good insight into his work, and has quite a number of amusing anecdotes to go with it.
Plan of Attack is a description of the lead-up to the war in Iraq. It discusses the interactions between various agencies and individuals, and chronicles the inside history of the war. The section on the CIA agents in Iraq before the war is particularly fascinating.
Finally we have My Father. This is a fascinating book by Rasputin’s daughter, and discusses his life as he told it to his daughters, and what she remembers of his life and death. While the author is quite naturally interested in presenting her much-maligned father in a positive light, it is still a fascinating insight into a controversial figure in recent Russian history.

Well, that’s all for now. I only have 40 more books on my list that have to go up here, but I’m sick of writing about them for tonight.

It’s been a while (June 11, 2004) since I wrote about what I had been reading. Since this is my blog and you are my hapless victims readers, I feel that I should summarize or write a bit about the book. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to, but I’m going to write it anyhow, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.
I’m going to be nice and not include all 44 books I’ve read since then in a single post — so if you actually enjoy this sort of think, keep watching for more.
Without further ado, here’s the list:

Notes From Underground — Dostoyevsky
The Psychology of Religion — Strunk
Bill Gates’ Personal Super Secret Private Laptop — Beard
The Salmon of Doubt — Adams
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves — Truss
USA PATRIOT Act HR3162 — Congress
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
Shakespeare In The Red — Bazagonev
The Trial — Kafka
Of Thee, Nevertheless, I Sing — Miller
English Heritage, Volume I — Youngs

Notes From Underground (as you may have guessed by now) made quite an impact on me. It led to the name of this blog and the title underneath it, for one. The book is really a study of depravity, and is simply immense in its unflinching look at fallen man. Truly a superb book.
I really don’t remember reading The Psychology Of Religion, and I can’t find it at the moment (I currently measure the book piles in my room in cubic feet). Not saying it wasn’t good, just that I don’t remember it (it HAS been 10 months.)
The Bill Gates book is amusing. That’s about all I’ll say for it.
The Salmon of Doubt is somewhat of a dissappointment. If you’re looking for a lost Douglas Adams book, this isn’t the way to go. It’s only fragments of what would have been his next book — you get some wonderful bits, but they’re disconnected and succeed only to the extent that they can stand alone. Probably best for those hardcore fans of Adams’ out there, and those who are interested in seeing how his writing process worked.
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves is fairly good. By the end of the book, however, I was ready for it to be over with. There were amusing bits, but after a while it got repetetive in its assaults on the less skilled at grammar and punctuation among us.
The Patriot Act is like all government documents: fairly boring. It’s interesting to note the disparity between what it actually says and what it is portrayed as saying, however. Reading it only reenforced my opinion that people were overdoing the protesting of it.
What is there really to say about Shakespeare? The dramas and historical plays are brilliant. Some of the comedies are really good as well. I’m not going to go through play by play and summarize them, but I finished this book thinking how much we’re losing as a society by not teaching this as heavily as we used to. So many of today’s idioms and so much of our vocabulary came from Shakespeare that it’s a real shame he’s neglected like he is.
Shakespeare in the Red is a retelling of Shakespeare’s stories in a briefer version that would pass the censors of the former Soviet Union. Some of them are distorted beyond belief to fit into what was considered ‘acceptable’ by the communist party. If the author was more of a poet, this would be a classic of satire.
The Trial is really a painful book to read. So much of what’s going on in the book seems absolutely wrong, and the reader wants to yell at all the characters. Nevertheless, it’s a brilliant book.
Of Thee, Nevertheless, I Sing is a book about America by a Democrat in the late 1970s. If I lived through the events he described, if I was a Democrat, or if the book were 100-150 pages shorter, I’d have enjoyed it much more. Some of it was quite good (the movement of the political spectrum and the parties from Goldwater to McGovern, for one), but the rest dragged.
English Heritage was one of my textbooks for my English History 1066-Present class last semester. The book, as far as textbooks go, was ok — certainly better than the class. But that’s another kettle of worms, and I’ve written enough for now.

UPDATE 12/03/05 6.23PM: Added Amazon links.

In my wanderings around Amazon’s website, I ran across this — the complete Penguin Classics collection. This is an absolutely stunning list of books. If I had the space and the money, I might buy a set — there are a lot of things in this list that I want to read. I’m quite pleased with myself, however. I went through the entire list of books in the set, and I’ve read 96 of them.

I haven’t been writing much in here recently, because the news hasn’t been overly interesting. Bits and pieces here and there, yes, but nothing that I though required me telling you what I think about the topic. Also, I just finished the last week of classes and am moving into finals week, so I had other things to do (actually, instead I was playing Combat Grounds).
Since you’ve had several days where you didn’t have me telling you what to think about things (and I know you enjoyed the break, because I had more than three times the regular number of visits over the past few days), I thought I would go back to boring you with what I was reading from September 19, 2004 (where I left off in the last books post) to January 12, 2005. Without further ado, here’s the list:

The Time of Troubles — Platonov
Presidential Elections — Polsby
The Revolution of Peter the Great — Cracraft
Lady Chatterly’s Lover — Lawrence
Unexplained Facts: Enigmas and Curiosities — Gould
The Russian Revolution, 1917 — Wade
Something’s Alive on the Titanic — Serling
America (The Book) — Stewart
Anna Karenina — Tolstoy
How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) — Coulter
The Decameron — Boccaccio

You can probably already gather why the post is named what it is, but I’m going to torture you with my descriptions of the books anyhow.
The Time of Troubles is quite a good book discussing the (duh) time of troubles in Russia in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The smutnoe vremia followed the death of Ivan the Terrible (or, as Dr. Snow prefers, Ivan the Dread), and lasted for 15 years. Platonov was a Russian historian and writer, and wrote the book in the early 1920s as a condensed version of another work on the same topic in 1899.
Presidential Elections was a textbook for my Political Parties and the Election class. It was actually very good as far as textbooks go, and there were only a few sections that could have been shortened to benefit the readability. The authors used a number of helpful examples from past presidential elections to throw light on the trends of them as a whole. Definitely recommended for anyone wishing to study presidential elections.
The Revolution of Peter the Great was the second book required for my History of Tsarist Russia class (Platonov’s was the first), and it was considerably more boring than the first. The book rather sacrificed a linear view of Peter the Great and the reforms he brought about. Despite having a wealth of information on all of the reforms, they’re not tied sufficiently to a broad framework, and instead are divided by subject. This makes the book fairly difficult to follow and gain a broader understanding of Peter’s reforms. It also makes the book pretty boring to read — more of a reference work really. Individual chapters (on separate subjects) are fine, but unless you’re really dedicated, you probably don’t want to read the whole thing.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover was required reading for my English History 1066 – Present class. Don’t ask me why, we never really figured that one out. Lawrence definitely had something he was saying with this book, but at the same time he chose to discuss and focus on sexuality in such a way that it completely alienated many of the very people who the book should have spoken to. While much of it is incredibly well written and would deserve to be a classic of English literature, the sleazy bits really don’t flow very well with the narrative, and seem to be there only to titillate — which clashes with the entire gist of the book.
Unexplained Facts: Enigmas and Curiosities is a book that really belongs to another time. It’s amazingly rigorous and academic, and examines a number of incidents that were mysterious — ship collisions, apparent violations of laws of physics, a murder mystery that led to a change in English law, a naval accident — none of which you’re likely to hear about in any history class. Gould writes about each with style and at length, and shows that there still are mysteries out there to be solved. Quite a good book.
The Russian Revolution, 1917 is a thorough discussion of… (suprise!) the Russian Revolution. It treats both the February and the October Revolutions as one extended social upheaval. It’s a fascinating story, and while it’s not exactly an easy book to read for the layperson, it’s quite worth it for anyone interested in the subject.
I went from the Russian Revolution to a horror story about the Titanic. Something’s Alive on the Titanic is a great book, in my opinion. However, I also enjoy bad ’80s horror films, so take this however you want.
America (The Book) by Jon Stewart is definitely funny. I found myself wishing he had written more on the specifics of American History and some of the deeper aspects of politics in America, instead of the more superficial, but that would probably have limited the audience that would have understood and appreciated it. My prof for Parties and Elections would have used it for an Intro to American Government class, except for the picture of the Supreme Court naked.
Anna Karenina is a classic of Russian literature. Definitely worth reading. (Hey, Oprah apparently reccomends it, and who am I to argue with the god of the aliens? — read closely.)
Ann Coulter amuses me. I don’t remember much about her book, but I do remember that it was very funny.
Boccaccio’s Decameron is an interesting book. 100 different stories, told by ten characters over ten days. There’s all kinds of stories in here, some of them quite raunchy, but most of them fairly good. It’s a bit long, and a bit old (hey, it was written by somebody who survived the plague), but definitely worth reading.
Well, I’ve subjected you to another eleven books now, so I’m going to stop and save more for later.

UPDATE 5/01/05 12.34AM: Fixed HTML error and jiggered with the content that fell out because of it.
UPDATE 12/03/05 2.42PM: Added Amazon links.

I have decided that in a (likely futile) attempt to recoup some of the money that I spend on the domain name and such for this site, that I will become an “Amazon.com Associate” and provide links to pages where you, dear reader, can buy the books. The more of them you buy, the more money I make. So get to work!