What I'm Reading Now:

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

On the Road


Title: On the Road

Author: Jack Kerouac

Pages: 9 discs

Genre: Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: This novel takes place in post-war America, in the late 1940's and early 1950's.  It is the story of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty who crisscross the country hitchhiking, in borrowed cars, on buses or in less-than-legally obtained cars of their own. They go from New York to San Francisco, Los Angeles to Chicago, Virginia to Colorado and New York to Mexico, among other trips.  All along their way them make friends, meet up with old friends and pick up the ladies.

My Review: This book is known as one of the most popular books of the beat generation or similarly, a quintessential American novel.  I didn't really know what to expect when I picked it up (it had been on my list of books to read for probably 6 or 7 years), but I really enjoyed it. It's a bit like a travelogue, but most enjoyable was Kerouac's prose and descriptions. I found that I could really lose myself in the story.

A Confederacy of Dunces


Title: A Confederacy of Dunces

Author: John Kennedy Toole

Pages: 13 discs

Genre: Humor, Fiction

Grade: A

Synopsis: This book is a Picaresque novel (I had no idea what that was) that was published 11 years after the author's suicide.  The protagonist is Ignatius J. Reilly, an overweight, eccentric, clever and lazy 30-year-old man who lives with his mother Irene Reilly who is an alcoholic that has coddled Ignatius for years.  After an accident where Irene damages a building with her car, Ignatius is forced to get a job, first at Levy pants, then as a hot dog vendor in New Orleans, where he lived.

My Review: This book was awarded the 1981 Pulitzer Prize and a statue of Ignatius J. Reilly stands in the French Quarter in New Orleans.  It took me a while to get into this book, but once I had a feel for the author's style of humor, then I really, really started enjoying it.  The book is a bit irreverent and frankly quite hilarious at parts.

Disclaimer: There is some swearing, and discussions that are sexual in nature, although not vulgar.  As wikipedia puts it: "his masturbatory fantasies lead in strange directions. His mockery of obscene images is portrayed as a defensive posture to hide their titillating effect on him."

Quotes:
"I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip."
--Ignatius J. Reilly

For Whom the Bell Tolls


Title: For Whom the Bell Tolls

Author: Ernest Hemingway

Pages: 16 discs

Genre: Classic

Grade: A-

Synopsis: Robert Jordan is an American in the International Brigades and is in the mountains of Spain working with an antifascist guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930's. Robert Jordan is an explosives technician and needs to put together a team of guerrilla fighters that he can trust to help him blow up a critical bridge at the start of a battle. While entrenched in the mountains, Jordan falls in love with the beautiful Maria, a young Spanish girl.

My Review: I love to be pleasantly surprised by a classic novel that I end up really enjoying. I love Hemingway's honest writing that seems to expose the characters. In this book, I really liked the Spanish phrases interspersed with the English writing, even though I don't speak Spanish.  It helped to remind me about where this book what set.

The Girl Who Played With Fire


Title: The Girl Who Played With Fire (Millennium #2)

Author: Stieg Larsson

Pages: 630

Genre: Thriller

Grade: A

Synopsis: Mikael Blomkvist, the publisher of the Swedish magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story about sex trafficking in Sweden and through the Baltics which will expose a number of high-profile individuals involved. Just before the story and an accompanying book are to be published the two reporters writing the stories are murdered in their apartment. The murder weapon is found in the building with Lisbeth Salander's fingerprints on it, who is Blomkvist's genius hacker friend. Blomkvist embarks on a journey to try and prove Salander's innocence.

My Review: I really enjoyed this book. It was certainly one that I couldn't put down or get out of my mind while I was reading it. Larsson's books are typically more complicated and deeper than many other books in this same genre, which I find to be quite satisfying.

Disclaimer: There is a lot of hard language and violence in this book. Not really and sex, but it is referred to often.

Blackmoore


Title: Blackmoore

Author: Julianne Donaldson

Pages: 320

Genre: Romance

Grade: A-

Synopsis: Kate Worthington has told her closest friends for years that she will never marry. Her best friend Henry Delafield is a very eligible bachelor, but he has his sights set on somebody else, of whom his mother approves.  Kate's mother is pushing her to accept a marriage proposal that she has helped to obtain, but Kate consistently refuses.  When Kate asks her mother if she can visit Blackmoore, a large estate on the edge of the moors, they strike a deal where Kate must obtain and reject three marriage proposals from the  men at Blackmoore or else she will be bound to follow her mother's wishes.

My Review: I really enjoyed this book.  I found myself sitting in my car a little longer when I arrived at my destination and looking forward to my drives in the anticipation of the book.  There were parts that were funny, sad and frustrating and I enjoyed the picture the book painted in my mind.

The Dark Frigate


Title: The Dark Frigate

Author: Charles Boardman Hawes

Pages: 246

Genre: Historical Fiction, Newbery Medal

Grade: C

Synopsis: A terrible accident in a pub forces young Philip Marsham to run away afraid for his life. More than anything he wants to be on the sea, and ends up signing on with the Rose of Devon, a dark frigate sailing for Newfoundland. After a terrible storm, the Rose of Devon is "Captured by a band of murderous pirates!" as the cover suggests.

My Review: A few things stood out to me about this book. It is an early Newbery Award Medal winner, but I have a hard time believing that children in the 1920's were able to understand this book. It is written in seventeenth century sailor's English and the book was quite difficult for me to understand, which made it a challenge for me to make it through. Of the Newbery Award winners that I've read so far, this one is at the bottom.

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Getting Things Done


Title: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Author: David Allen

Pages: 6 discs?

Genre: Self-help

Grade: C+

Synopsis: This book is a productivity manual, with instructions and ideas of ways to help increase your productivity.  Setting goals, email strategies, prioritizing are all topics that are addressed.

My Review: I've heard so much about this book over the years (it was published in 2002), that I was excited to read this book.  However, it didn't really sit well with me for a few reasons: I didn't feel like many of the ideas would work or be beneficial in my situation, The book is outdated. The email organization strategies were great circa 2002, but a lot has changed since then. The author actually read the audiobook version that I listened to and I felt that he often came across as condescending. I'm not sure if it was because of his tone, or the tone of the book, or if I'm just too hard-headed to put my heart into his suggestions.  Either way, I was disappointed with this one.

Olive Kitteridge


Title: Olive Kitteridge

Author: Elizabeth Strout

Pages: 270

Genre: Fiction, Pulitzer Prize

Grade: F

Synopsis: Olive Kitteridge is a retired schoolteacher in a small town in Maine.  She deplores the changes that she observes in the town without noticing the changes taking place in herself.

My Review: Full disclosure: I only completed about 25% of this book.  My life is too short for me to spend more time reading books that I don't enjoy.  I just couldn't get into this one.  It was dry, boring and completely uninteresting.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

The Johnstown Flood


Title: The Johnstown Flood

Author: David McCullough

Pages: 304

Genre: Non-fiction

Grade: A-

Synopsis: In May of 1889, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania a wall of water came rushing down the mountain and wiped out most of the town and killed more than 2,000 people (exact death tolls are difficult to nail down). The flood came during a fierce storm that overwhelmed a dam upriver from the town.  The scandal of the tragedy was that the dam was part of a luxury resort frequented by magnates such as Andrrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Mellon and they had been warned of deficiencies in the earth dam.  The book covers the engineering and design of the dam and subsequent modifications and the importance of the railway in these areas and how both impacted the mortality rate.

My Review: This was another fantastic McCullough book.  When I picked up the book, I was surprised that I was not familiar with this tragedy, especially considering the scope and death toll from the flood.  There is a National Memorial at the site now that I would love to visit someday.

Friday, December 26, 2014

Nothing to Envy


Title: Nothing to Envy

Author: Barbara Demick

Pages: 316

Genre: Non-Fiction

Grade: A

Synopsis: Barbara Demick attempts to uncover and describe the living situation in North Korea through the stories of 6 North Koreans who were able to make it out of North Korea.  The book covers a period of about 15 years, including the death of Kim Il-sung and the rise of Kim Jong-il and a huge famine in the late 90's that wiped out around 1/5 of the population.

My Review: What was most surprising was that nearly everything that I imagined about North Korea turned out to either be true or not as bad as reality.  This was a fascinating look at how regular people live their lives, how people are deathly afraid to voice their feelings (even within their own marriage or family) and how difficult it can be to survive if your family is not on the good side of the government (even if you're being punished for indiscretions that happened generations ago).  One of the surprising things is that it seemed that most people in North Korea are not unhappy, which can mainly be attributed to the fact that very few people have any idea how things are outside their own country.  They do not believe that other people have greater freedom than they do nor do they know about the economic strengths of South Korea or other nations.

From the Book: "(p. 79) At least initially, the relationship took on a nineteenth-century epistolatory quality. The only way they could stay in touch was by letter. In 1991, while South Korea was becoming the world's largest exporter of mobile telephones, few North Koreans had ever used a telephone. You had to go to a post office to make a phone call. But even writing a letter was not a simple undertaking. Writing paper was scarce. People would write in the margins of newspapers. The paper in the state stores was made of corn husk and would crumble easily if you scratched too hard. Mi-ran had to beg her mother for the money to buy a few sheets of imported paper. Rough drafts were out of the question; paper was too precious. The distance from Pyongyang to Chongjin was only 250 miles, but letters took up to a month to be delivered."

"(p. 86) When she first arrived, Mi-ran was impressed. The dormitories were modern and each of the four girls who would share one room had her own bed rather than use the Korean bed mats laid out on a heated floor, the traditional way of keeping warm at night while expending little fuel. But as winter temperatures plunged Chongjin into a deep freeze, she realized why it was that the school had been able to give her a place in its freshman class. The dormitories had no heating. Mi-ran went to sleep each night in her coat, heavy socks, and mitten with a towel draped over her head. When she woke up, the towel would be crusted with frost from the moisture of her breath. In the bathroom, where the girls washed their menstrual rags (nobody had sanitary napkins, so the more affluent girls used gauze bandages while the poor girls used cheap synthetic cloths), it was so cold that the rags would freeze solid within minutes of being hung up to dry. Mi-ran hated the mornings. Just as in Jun-sang's school, they were roused by a military-style roll call at 6:00 A.M., but instead of marching off like proud soldiers, they shivered into the bathroom and splashed icy water on their faces, under a grotesque canopy of frozen menstrual rags."

Sunday, December 7, 2014

How Doctors Think


Title: How Doctors Think

Author: Jerome Groopman, M.D.

Pages: 6 discs?

Genre: Non-Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis: Dr. Groopman describes the training that doctors receive that helps them diagnose a problem and prescribe treatment. The key is for the patient (and doctor) to keep in mind that the doctor is not infallible and that the patient sometimes needs to ensure that the doctor is considering all symptoms when making decisions.  The book also explores errors that doctors had made and the decisions that led to them.

My Review: This was a pretty interesting book.  I'm glad that it didn't come across with the feeling that doctors rarely make mistakes and that we (the patients) just need to sit back and let the doctor perform their work. On the contrary, the book stressed the importance of the patient staying involved in the treatment and decisions that are made as they may spot a mistake or be able to help head off a mis-diagnosis.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

The Fish Can Sing


Title: The Fish Can Sing

Author: Halldor Laxness

Pages: 246

Genre: Fiction (Icelandic)

Grade: B+

Synopsis: A mid-twentieth century novel from Iceland, the story is about an orphan, Alfgrimur who grows up in the home of a generous and eccentric older couple.  Alfgrimur dreams of becoming a fisherman, like his adopted grandfather, until he chances to meet Iceland's biggest celebrity, Gardar Holm, who is a world renowned opera singer and national hero.  Alfrgrimur tries to cultivate his love of singing, all the while trying to track down the famous singer.

My Review: I enjoyed the flowing prose of the book (which is indicative of a great translation).  The author, Halldor Laxness won the  Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955. I think this book was written just after.  I had a hard time tracking the book down, but once I found it, I did enjoy it.