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Books read in 2007
Books read in 2006 Books read in 2005 Books read in 2004 All books read from 2004 on
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Reading
Books read in 2008:
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Books read in 2007
Books read in 2006 Books read in 2005 Books read in 2004 All books read from 2004 on
last
update of this page: |
Reading
Books read in 2008:
This book was a gift from my favorite professor. I enjoyed the novel greatly, finding it in turns biting, wistful, and absurd, but always honest. The story involves a group of Berkeley radicals who end up in the same nursing home in the year 2022, the year that Jimi Hendrix would have turned eighty years old, had he lived. Larry McMurtry wrote a dust jacket endorsement for this novel, appropriate since Sandlin has a similar tragi-comic style to his storytelling. I found Sandlin easier to read than McMurtry (though this is no indictment of McMurtry, whose writing I love.) Sandlin's tale shows that the Spirit of the Sixties will never die, so long as someone is willing to continue carrying the torch. He also shows just how destructive the flames in that torch can be.
I picked this book up at the dollar store because I liked the title and, as it turned out, was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The author found a record of a daughter of Albert Einstein, born out of wedlock and put up for adoption. No trace of the child's fate has survived. So McGrail invents a future for Liserl, who resents being sent away and devotes her life to a single-minded quest to shame her father. Mrs. Einstein is a fascinating tale of war, revenge, and physics. Ms. McGrail definitely did her homework in writing this novel.
A re-read (third time) of this book. It feels completely different to me, reading it as a Christian. I made a page of quotes from the book the last time I read it.
I re-read this book immediately before and during Great Lent this year. It is a story of a Russian peasant who hears a sermon quoting the Bible verse "pray without ceasing" and devotes the remainder of his life to learning how to do so. This book is a great introduction to the Orthodox Christian faith and a beginning instruction in prayer, specifically the Prayer of the Heart or Jesus Prayer. It is unknown whether this book was autobiographical non-fiction or serious fiction designed to teach. It appears to be set some time between 1853 and 1861 and the book was first published in 1884, base don a manuscript in possession of the abbot of St. Michael's Monastery at Kazan. This timeless classic is a valuable read for anyone interested in Christian prayer.
The lovely Canon of Saint Andrew, a traditional hymn in the Orthodox Church, is broken into forty parts, intended to be read during the forty days of Lent. This was, indeed, my Lenten reading this year, along with a re-reading of The Way of a Pilgrim. Should I choose to re-read this next Lent, I think I would like to keep a daily journal along with it as Khouria Frederica adds questions to consider at the end of each section (and the text of the Canon itself also stimulated many thoughts that I ought to have captured in a journal as well.) I would recommend this book to any Orthodox Christian as a Lenten reading askesis or, really, for any time of the year (though I found it especially powerful during the season of Lent.) Non-Orthodox Christians may or may not get a lot out of this reading, depending on their level of comfort with such things as prayers to the saints.
With my growing interest in propaganda and the political messages carried in movies and television, I thought I'd re-visit this book. It's been about a decade since I read it and I feel like I got a lot more out of it this time, possibly because of my studies in political science in the interim, possibly just because of increased age and life experience, possibly because I've been thinking more about these ideas lately. This book is a classic in the "kill your television" genre but the message is deeper and more complex than the simple post-punk "throw your television out the window and you shall be liberated" message. Postman points out that isolating ourselves from modern media is not a solution because we are still surrounded by the rest of the culture and the changes that the age of television has wrought are so far-reaching (and so invisibly ubiquitous) that turning off one's TV is of little use. Moreover, expecting the entire culture to turn off the TV and settle down with a god book is unrealistic. Postman points out many tragedies, pitfalls and flaws of the Age of Show Business but what are the cures? Are there any? Or is this the new path for mankind? . . . and to what dark nation does it lead? This book is especially fascinating reading today, with the option of applying Postman's wisdom to the Internet Age and speculating further down the road of instant electronic information. Do his theories still hold? Has the internet changed anything?
Midkiff's book belongs to the growing body of literature criticizing animal agriculture while not advocating a vegetarian or vegan diet. For those accustomed to reading critiques of animal agriculture, there will be little new material in Midkiff's book. For those new to the subject, The Meat You Eat will be eye-opening and sobering. Midkiff thoroughly explores the problems and suggests some solutions but does not evaluate his solutions or the repercussions of those solutions in depth. While Midkiff claims that he is not advocating a vegetarian diet, his solutions would create an economic climate in which meat would become a super-expensive luxury food rather than the staple it currently is in most American's diets. To his credit, however, Midkiff does not suggest making these changes by force or by government legislation but rather by the mechanism of the free market economy. Thus if meat did become a super-expensive luxury food as per Midkiff's solutions, it would only happen as a result of a mandate of consumers.
Like most schoolchildren, I was assigned this book (and actually read it - no small thing, considering how rarely I read the things that were assigned to read.) I don't know how much I will be able to write in review of this book because I found it very disturbing on this re-read. It was quite thought-provoking, however, and I can tell that the ideas it has stimulated will continue to resonate and evolve within me for quite some time. I re-read the novel in preparation for reading Brave New World Revisited, Huxley's 1958 book-length essay about Brave New World, Orwell's 1984, and the state of the world in the late Fifties. I expect to write an extensive review/essay about Brave New World Revisited because I have signed up for "Fathoming the Fifities," a class by the same professor who taught "Spirit of the Sixties" and anticipate a required book review, in which case mine will be of Huxley's 1958 essay.
Book review pending.
I picked this book up out of a free box in front of an apartment building on the day I was travelling there to pick up a set of kitchen knives a resident was giving away through Freecycle. So, although I'd heard of the book before, I hadn't sought it out; it fell into my lap, so to speak. It is not the sort of book I would have intentionally acquired, but I'm very glad I read it. Gilbert's style is very conversational, witty, and easy to read. This was one of the quickest books I've read since my last reading of Brautigan. But just because it's easy to read doesn't mean it's fluff. Gilbert documents an honest personal inventory and isn't afraid to show herself in a very human light. Along the way, she learns and re-learns lessons that are potentially valuable for the reader. I will especially carry away her very visual account of the idea, "I will not allow unhealthy thoughts to harbor in my mind." I also found the Balinese medicine man's explanation of the nature of heaven and hell to be quite compelling because it is so consonant with the Orthodox Christian teaching of the same (that both are pure love. In the case of Orthodoxy, there is no place that is separate from God's love which feels like a warm glow to those who love Him but a searing flame to those who have turned themselves away from Him.) I was thoroughly charmed by Gilbert's travelogue, more so because I came to the book with few expectations. If I'm contemplating a shelf of books to choose from and see Gilbert's name again, I will naturally gravitate toward her writing because I found it so enjoyable and refreshing.
Copyright © 2002, 2008 Sparrow Rose Jones. All Rights Reserved. Graphics courtesy of Medieval Woodcuts Clip Art.