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Books
read in 2005
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Reading
Books read in 2006:
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Books
read in 2005
last
update of this page: |
Reading
Books read in 2006:
This novel, originally written between the two World Wars, is the story of an occult experiment and a battle of good versus evil. While the story is rather simplistic and mainly only intended as a vehicle for teaching Crowley's occult philosophies, it is an entertaining read - even moreso for those familiar with Crowley's personal history and non-fiction writing.
I hadn't expected this book to be so slender, so right off the bat I felt a little cheated. Then I opened it up and saw lots of little cartoon drawings in the opening chapter and felt a little talked down to. Then I followed the instructions and it seemed to verify pretty clearly that I am INTJ, but I had gotten it to try to help me figure out what other people are and it is pretty useless (at least for me) for that purpose. I don't normally think of typology as mumbo-jumbo, but whenever I return to the book (which, so far, has been several times per week) out of questioning and doubt (because even now, after years of looking at this stuff, I don't really get that "aha!" feeling about type like other people describe) the type descriptions seem to run together and it's really difficult to see which one I would be because I can't see enough difference between the descriptions of INTJ and INTP and I can't see myself *not* being several of the other types once I start reading the descriptions, particularly the INFP that I was pegged as in a proctored MBTI twenty years ago. (update: I continued looking at the book off and on and things are slowly starting to coalesce. However, someone else described INTJ according to the order of the function preferences and I finally had an "aha" moment so I'm going to look at other typology books and not give up on the potential utility of this system for understanding self and others.)
I have never seen a Broadway production of Paint Your Wagon, but the novelization does stay very close to the story as presented in the movie with Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood. It was an entertaining read - not deep and literary or massively educational but definitely enjoyable.
I had a dim memory of the class reading this in second or third grade. I don't recall whether I refused to read it or whether only certain students read the book and I was not among them. But the book haunted me enough that I sought it out and paid rather a bit for a used copy. It's been out of print for decades, so it's not easy to find at a low price (though it appears to still be in print in French and very reasonable.) The story is beautiful and haunting and ever so pacifistic. Druon was a war correspondent and I suppose this was his response to all the killing and horror he saw through his work. He's apparently better known for a series of historical novels called Les Rois Maudits.
I am not customarily a reader of spy thrillers, but Shibumi is more than just a spy thriller. It is also a character study of a man of such excellence that one can scarely imagine his real-life counterpart. It is a book of political and spiritual philosophy, an observation on the oppression of the masses, the futility of struggle for excellence and the imperative to meet the struggle ... but in a non-struggling manner. This book is a call to the reader to take up the search for Shibumi in his own life. (selected quotes from Shibumi)
I have seen this movie several times and had somehow thought I had read the book, but apparently not as so much of it was completely unfamiliar to me. The book is very similar to the movie but at the same time significantly different. It is more complex and probably a little more respresentative of many of the issues pertaining to the time it was written than the movie is. While I recognize that this book is considered a "modern classic" in lesbian literature, I was still a little surprised to see such a sophisticated use of language. This is more than just a lesbian novel; it is a novel that has lesbian characters. That is to say, I believe this book stands on its own merits as a well-written novel as well as being an example of genre work.
This was a difficult but necessary book for me to read. The author experienced the same level of severe bullying from classmates that I did, including the physical battering and humiliation. The main difference between her and me was that her bullying began after she had been very popular for several years while my bullying began in first grade and grew in severity over the years. Some of the things she said were startling to me because they described my own situation so well, including moving to an entirely new school where no one knew her, only to have the bullying begin again in an entirely new setting. The author mentions how easy it is to blame the victim when this happens because she seems to have carried the problem along with her wherever she went. What saved the author from blaming herself were a combination of having a strong and supportive extended family and a trip to Greece where she met young people her own age who accepted her for who she was and did not bully or insult her. Unfortunately, I did not have such advantages as my extended family lived too far away to see on a regular basis and my parents were very quick to blame me for my victimization and eventually gave up on me altogether. The author went on to be a powerful and successful promoter and author, leaving me wondering how much of my "late blooming" would have been mitigated if I'd had the author's advantage of supportive family to remind me that I was a good person. In many ways, I feel that the way I was pathologized by parents and doctors over the bullying caused me to internalize the judgements and pathologize myself. It was only a small step from being labelled mad and bad to actually becoming mad and bad. By the time I left school, there were obvious instances where I was bringing my troubles on myself but the bullying from students and teachers did not start out that way so I think to point at my delinquent adolescence as the cause of my problems would be putting the cart far before the horse. Still, even with this great difference in Ms. Blanco's life and my own, I came away from reading this book with new hope and filled with inspiration that I can take the pain of my past and mold it into the success of my future. The author hits it on the head when she says that a bullied person has two choices - close in on themselves and become bitter and hate-filled the rest of their life, or build on the ashes and come forward stronger, more powerful, more loving, more successful.
I picked this book up because I had begun to realize that some of my personal issues might be related to being "gifted." Jacobsen's book claims that gifted people experience the world in ways that are qualitatively different as well as the quantitative differences we are led to expect. Much of what she said about the experiences of gifted people rang true for me but the talk of Mandated Missions and Advanced Development/Evolutionary Development were troubling to me. Jacobsen holds that gifted individuals have a sacred duty to "fix" the world and this concept of a sacred mission bothered me. I wasn't entirely sure what my sticking point was until I came across this passage in another book I am currently reading: [...] the true believer is identified by inner fire, "a burning conviction we have a holy duty to others." Lack of humor is one touchstone of true belief. The expression "true believer" is from a fifth-century book, The City of God, occurring in a passage where St. Augustine urges holy men and women to abandon fear and embrace their sacred work fervently. True Belief is a psychological frame you’ll find useful to explain individuals who relentlessly pursue a cause indifferent to personal discomfort, indifferent to the discomfort of others. All of us show a tiny element of true belief in our makeup, usually just enough to recognize the lunatic gleam in the eye of some purer zealot when we meet face to face. (from John Jay Gatto's Underground History of American Education.)
My apprehension at the notion that having a high I.Q. and the personality traits that tend to go along with it imply that I have a Great Destiny to Save the World seems justified in light of this passage. The last thing I want to become is a "true believer", eyes aflame, battling for the Just Cause. When I read Jacobsen's words about the high and mighty Gifted Ones benevolently assisting the Little People in their humdrum little lives, I could only picture a Righteous Activist -- typically a carpetbagger -- who decides that they know better than everyone else and is willing to trample over everything, especially the truth, in order to inflict their vision of perfection on the rest of the world. I'm sure Jacobsen meant nothing quite so frothing or extreme, but still I don't think that those with high intelligence and extreme emotional sensitivity need to be encouraged to go out and avenge the injustices of the world. It seems a recipe for fanaticism. I got so much benefit from reading other sections of Jacobsen's book that I wish she hadn't thrown all that bit about Evolutionary Development in. For me, it taints the very useful things I was able to glean from her book.
If you've only come to associate Stephen King's name with supernatural tales of horror, Roadwork will take you by surprise. There is nothing supernatural in it but there is a great deal of heavy angst, depression and seething anger. This is the story of a man whose world falls apart, mostly because he allows it to do so. The triggering event is a bypass being built through the land where both his home and his place of business are situated. He is handsomely rewarded by eminent domain lawyers but chooses to awkwardly resist instead of moving his home and business and getting on with his life. It appears that his reaction is due to a sense of helplessness in the face of his son's death from a brain tumor. I could relate to the main character's attitudes because I saw so many of the same attitudes in my own father after my brother died of leukemia. My father once confided to me that he was completely baffled. He had made all the proper choices in life - went to the school his father told him to and majored in the field his father suggested, graduated with good grades, found a good job, married, had children - did all the things he was supposed to do. Yet his efficiency in following cultural directions was not enough to ward off evil and his only son was taken from him anyway. King's/Bachman's story is set in 1974 and culminates in the month during which my own brother died in real life. The combination of the coincidence in dates and the very vivid and accurate depiction of the state of mind my own father went through were almost too much to read ... and almost too much to permit me to ever set the book down unfinished. This was a tense read, possibly more tense for me than many other readers due to the personal links. It is an excellent book, a grim book, a book with no sense of uplift or inspiration for the reader to take with them afterwards. If you enjoy darkly contemplative books that leave you with a sinking feeling, grab this one as quickly as you can.
I've read other books by Harris, but didn't expect much from this one after seeing the absolutely awful movie version of it a few years back. Boy, was I in for a surprise! Hannibal is possibly Harris' best book to date. If you've seen the atrocious movie, forget it and read the book. If you haven't seen the movie, count yourself fortunate and don't bother to track it down. I especially enjoyed the way Harris dealt with the twin themes of time and death and the characters' suggestion near the end about what we ought to do with our deceased loved ones. An extra thumbs up (Hannibal has a finger to spare, after all) for the references to Renaissance culture and Cicero's memory palace.
I hadn't ever heard of this book, it having come out when I was twenty-one years old, until someone who was born in 1984 mentioned it to me after hearing about my own childhood. Matilda is described as a genius and a prodigy because she taught herself to read at age three and can do multiplication in her head in first grade. I could not do multiplication in my head in first grade, but I did teach myself to read at age three. I wish I'd had someone in my life like Mrs. Phelps, the librarian who helped Matilda select classic books to read. I could only get to the library if my mother drove me and my library didn't allow children to read books from the adult sections at all. I kicked around the house, reading any book of my parents' that I could get away with (but many of them were taken away from me once it was noticed what I was reading.) Like Matilda, I think my parents resented my reading but their resentment was much more subtle and complex than Matilda's parents'. My parents were simultaneously proud that they had an early reader and distressed that I was so obsessive about reading. One day I found a box of books hidden in the garage - my parents had hidden books from me because I had developed the ability to read earlier than they wanted me to know about writers like Henry Miller. I think Matilda is a good book but I am not sure that it is truly a children's book. Children who are not as clever as Matilda might come to feel inferior in reading about her while children who are as clever as Matilda might come to feel bitter about her advantages and successes. But since I don't believe in shielding children from harsh emotions and realities, I do think that children *should* read this book, whether it's truly a "children's book" or not.
This book is available online in its entirety. While some of Gatto's history is inaccurate, and much of his prose is intentionally inflammatory, I enjoyed reading this book because it gave me pause for thought and fodder for further research and reading on my own. Gatto's thesis is that big business engineered compulsory/universal schooling as a form of mass indoctrination, based largely on methods acquired from Hegelian theories and Prussian governmental systems, in order to intentionally keep the masses dumbed-down and complacent while a hidden elite minority actually runs things. Yes, definitely the stuff from which great conspiracy theories are made, but there is still much of value to be found in Mr. Gatto's book if one reads with the truly critical opened eyes that Gatto would claim he wishes the reader to possess.
I found this more useful than Jacobsen's book, even though it has less information in it, because it didn't come dripping with frightening agenda like Jacobsen's. Streznewski interviewed gifted adults of all ages and living situations and used direct quotes from that work to highlight the fruits of her years of research on the topic. I found the section on "the dark side" of mental illness, criminality, etc. especially enlightening. I only wish there were more. I didn't want the book to end.
I believe this book would be useful for a wide variety of people because Laney covers a very diverse swath of ground. What I found most useful in her book were the descriptions of the biological differences (as discovered through many dozens of instances of experimental research) between extroverts and introverts. Many of the physical quirks that I had no answer for or had written off as symptoms of some yet-unnamed disorder turn out to be simple, normal, healthy manifestations of the introvert biology. Others might find Laney's encouragement to follow your own path more helpful. Laney notes that many introverts have spent their life being told that it's wrong to be the way they are and thus she expends a lot of energy in demonstrating the advantages to introverted behavior and showing that society needs both kinds of people, extroverting and introverting, in order to function well. Overall, I'd say this is an excellent book both for introverts to understand themselves better and for extraverts to make some sense of the introverts in their lives. Extraverts might feel a bit put-off, though, because Laney understandably focuses primarily on why it is good to be an introvert. Although she notes that it is equally good to be an extrovert and points out that the purpose of her book is to build up introverts and thus no room is left to cheer about extraverts, these brief mentions might be overlooked by the extrovert who interprets "introversion is good" to imply "extroversion is bad." As Laney mentions, this is not the case at all. It is simply that a world with a massive majority of extroverts has spent so much time celebrating the good points of extroversion that an introvert sometimes needs to have their good qualities pointed out to them so that they don't find themselves lost in the shuffle and pretending to possess qualities the introvert cannot aspire to without sacrificing his health and sanity.
Hall's novel is part mystery, part history, part romance, thoroughly wonderful. The story takes place in San Francisco where journalist Ambrose Bierce (an actual historical figure, probably best known for his Devil's Dictionary) and his assistant (the narrator of the book) are attempting to unravel a murder that appears to be related to the "Trey of Pearls," three beautiful suffragettes. One of the Pearls is second cousin to the narrator who falls in love with her and tries to woo her. The young lady is uninterested in marriage, however, being a proponent of the new-fangled philosophy of "Free Love" which states that marriage is slavery and a woman can only truly love someone when she enters the sexual relationship free of artificial social, religious, and legal bonds. Will Bierce find the murderer? Will the lovely suffragette relent and marry her enamored cousin? The tension level in this book is just right - not cranked up to thriller-levels of anxiety but satisfyingly present enough to keep the reader turning pages. The glimpse of historical San Francisco and the delightful close view of Bierce are icing on the cake. A lovely, light read. Apparently, the author has written a series of Ambrose Bierce mysteries. I definitely enjoyed this one enough to want to seek out the others.
I thought I had read this book already, sometime in the early 1990s, when a friend of mine who wasn't particularly impresed with it but sensed it was something I might enjoy loaned me her copy. I was captivated by Helprin's use of language and by the mysterious, almost metaphysical fairy tale of fin de siècle New York City. Remembering how much I had enjoyed the book, and how mysterious and philosophical it seemed to me at first, I decided to read it again. But this is not a listing of a re-read! I ordered a used copy of Winter's Tale from Amazon and when it arrived, I marvelled at the size of the book. The story that I remembered as a pocket-size paperback filled a two-inch thick trade paperback. What I had read before, believing it to be the entire novel, turns out to have been only part one of five parts. The first part was just as beautiful and haunting as I remembered -- and then I dug into the remaining four parts which take place in a second fin de siècle of New York City, this one the end of the 20th century rather than the end of the 19th. But the main character of the first section still inhabited the remaining four! I don't know how to begin to describe this book other than to say that it is about time -- in both an experiential and Kierkegaardian sense -- and love and power and the search for the Truly Just City and the quest to bring the dead back to life and . . . it is a passionate, exploration of morals and beauty and truth. The book is filled with entertaining, amusing, tragic, fantastical, mesmerizing scenes and situations and it swept me along on a wintry blast of swirling snow like an ice boat with sails full of wind, skating across an endless Lake of the Coheeries.
Stephen King is aging well. This collection of short stories shows a maturity missing from earlier collections such as Night Shift, excellent though those stories were. I suspect the author's maturity, with its inevitable accompaniment of ever increasing awareness of death as a personal end rather than an abstract horror, has contributed to the pathos of this collection. King has moved beyond the boogeymen of his youth and now presents us with tales not only morbid but melancholy as well. Dark, yes, the subtitle captures the feeling with that one, short, overused word. These are truly dark tales filled with the mingled horror and wistfulness of the doom which eventually visits us all.
Meyer was a wheel-man for Al Capone. From that auspicious beginning, his life spiralled ever downward into crime and iniquity until he found himself in prison. This book is his story of crime and, ultimately, repentance. He gave his life over to Jesus Christ at the age of sixty-nine and went on to live the rest of his life in witness to young people, in hopes of helping them to avoid the pitfalls he did not. The book is an easy and entertaining read and the author comes across as very sincere and convincing. The biggest lesson I, personally, took away with me from reading this book was Meyer's teaching that even the greatest sinner of all is not beyond the reach of God's redemption. Meyer illustrates this teaching both with his own life and salvation and with the lives of Biblical figures such as Paul who also had a complete turn around from darkness to light. Anyone who is looking for a book that will witness to those in prison or those who find gangsters and crime fascinating should check out this book. It was published by International Prison Ministry and appears to be out of print now but there are inexpensive used copies available on Amazon. While I cannot say that this book "turned my life around" (though I gained great wisdom and isnpiration from it) I am sure that it is very good medicine to put many people on a path of spiritual healing.
This is one of three books given to me when I started participating in the Crossroads Christian group on campus. The other two were a New Testament and McDowell's More Than a Carpenter, the latter of which I have read a bit here and there but not finished yet. Palau is a strong writer and a great storyteller. I don't know how convincing his words would be to a staunch atheist, but he is very good and being a "tipping point" for those hovering near to being Christians but still on the fence.
Coniaris is very clear and easy to read even though this book is incredibly dense with information. Coniaris has the talent of telling little stories that bring the reader into the material and filling those stories with a great amount of detail without at all appearing to over-write. This was one of three books my priest gave to me when I began coming to church and it has helped me immensely in my journey toward Orthodoxy.
Carlton's book is written in a more formal style than Coniaris', but it is equally readable and it is a little easier to find information in Carlton's format. This was another of the books my priest gave to me (the third was a prayer book) and while these two catechisms understandably overlap, they most definitely do not duplicate their information. An added bonus of Carlton's book is that each chapter ends with questions for reflection. Many times I ended a chapter and felt I had absorbed and understood the information, only to look at the questions and realize I couldn't yet answer them fully off the top of my head. So in some ways I got more out of Carlton's book because the layout helped me to see right away what I was learning and what was slipping through and needed to be looked at again before moving on.
This book caught my eye because I had been listening to the Our Life in Christ radio show's episodes about rapture and Protestant end-times teaching. I figured I'd absorbed enough Orthodox theology by this point to be able to discern which parts of Thigpen's books did and did not apply to me as an Orthodox catechumen. My opinion is that, other than when the author refers to Catholic magisterium and a couple of small doctrinal points, this book is reasonably applicable to the Orthodox reader as well. Thigpen makes a strong case that Protestant rapture theology is strongly anti-Catholic and I'd agree and add that it's poison to Orthodox as well and the only reason the theology isn't anti-Orthodox is that most Protestants havne't even heard of us and those who have tend to assume we're "just like the Catholics." This is an enlightening book if you were curious about where Protestant end-times theology comes from, why it is wrong, and how to counter those who try to persuade you otherwise.
Mitchell has put together an amazing book. It is well-referenced and deeply researched. Feminists will absolutely hate this book! I would not recommend this book to someone new on the path to Orthodoxy, especially someone who has not yet attended Divine Liturgy, read introductory catechisms (like the two I list above, books 20 and 21 on this list), and spent some time experiencing actual life in an Orthodox parish for themselves. I say this because there are some elements of patristics and canon law that are not followed in day-to-day life in many jurisdictions, especially in the United States. Many parishes have female chanters and choirs with women in them. Many parishes no longer urge their female parishioners to cover their head for prayer and communion. There are many practices that can be argued from the Fathers and the law that are not always followed in all places. That said, I really enjoyed this book. I am one who covers in church and am the only woman in my parish who covers (which led people to ask me when I first started coming if I am Russian) and it was good to read the reasons why I am told to cover. If a woman did not cover and her parish did not instruct her to, I wouldn't say that she should feel compelled to start doing so just because of Mitchell's book, but for a woman who already covers and sometimes wonders if she ought to stop doing it even though she has a strong inner conviction that it is the right thing to do, Mitchell's research is a soothing balm to anxiety.
This book is very short (63 pages) but it is one of the best books I have read all year. Eastern Orthodox theology of salvation (soteriology) is very different from Western soteriology, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic. The question of "by works or by faith?" is meaningless in Orthodoxy as we view salvation as a cooperative effort between God and man, thus both faith and works are necessary. Orthodoxy also does not adhere to the notion that salvation is an event that can be pinpointed to a single moment in time. God exists outside of time and salvation is a process rather than an event. This small book is one I will be re-reading many times as I seek to fully incorporate the beautiful mysticism of Orthodox salvation into my mind and heart.
A fascinating book. Levitt is probably best known for his theory that Roe v. Wade led to less crime in the 1990s as those who would have been most likely to become criminals had been aborted. The rest of this book is equally surprising and often equally controversial. Levitt and Dubner examine sumo wrestling, cheating, crack marketing and many other topics the layman might not expect an economist to study. This book left me thinking about some of its topics for weeks after I finished reading.
Copyright © 2002, 2006 Sparrow Rose Jones. All Rights Reserved. Graphics courtesy of Medieval Woodcuts Clip Art.