Read in 2015

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Read in 2015

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2fuzzy_patters
Feb 1, 2015, 11:20 am

The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams by Phyllis Lee Levin (1.5 stars)

This book was problematic for me. There were many sections that prattled on endlessly about incessant banalities without explanation as to why they were important. The cost was barely mentioning little, unimportant things such as Adams becoming president of the United States and influencing Abraham Lincoln as a senator. Furthermore, the author did a wonderful job of previewing direct quotes from Adams by implying that they would say things that they did not actually say.

3fuzzy_patters
Feb 1, 2015, 11:21 am

Monastery by Eduardo Halfon (4 stars)

I've read both Monastery and The Polish Boxer, and Halfon has become one of my favorite authors. Structurally, each chapter of two books is a separate short story that could stand alone, but taken together, they make a novel. This enables Halfon to explore various themes without losing the overall theme of identity and perhaps something else that is clearly there that I'm having difficulty naming. It's more of a general overall sense of how our interconnectedness and our backgrounds help to define us despite that our inner selves sometimes with the deny that based on who we would like to be rather than who we are. Halfon's ability to communicate this through his short story/novel/autobiography? is wonderful.

4fuzzy_patters
Editado: Feb 8, 2015, 1:17 pm

Tinkers by Paul Harding (5 stars)

What makes us who we are? What imprints have our ancestors had on us? What impact will we leave on those who come after us? These seem to be the fundamental questions at the heart of Harding's book about George Washington Crosby on his deathbed. Crosby, who fixes clocks, is dying as his own time winds down while he drifts in and out of consciousness. Harding brings the reader through time and through the divide between memory and reality and paints a beautiful picture of what it means to live and to die and the lasting impressions we leave on each other. It was wonderful.

5dchaikin
Feb 8, 2015, 5:57 pm

Interesting about Halfon.

I have good memories of Tinkers, although I think i liked it less while reading it. Some of the prose is tough.

6fuzzy_patters
Feb 8, 2015, 7:59 pm

I seem to be overusing the word "wonderful." It's either that have led to a lot of wonder, which has mostly come from being inspired towards introspection.

7fuzzy_patters
Mar 6, 2015, 9:24 pm

The Business of Naming Things by Michael Coffey (4 stars- because of one 5 star story)

I didn't think that I liked this collection much until I finished it. The first two stories were okay and reminded me a bit of Updike. The middle of the book lagged. The penultimate story was pretty good, and the last story, Finishing Ulysses, was fantastic. I thought that story saved the book, and it made me want to go reread Ulyssses, which is one of my favorites.

8fuzzy_patters
Jun 11, 2015, 10:42 pm

3 lives by Gertrude Stein (2.5 stars)

Stein writes about the lives of three women, hence the title. The first and third section worked for me. I thought that the use of repetition added emphasis and a certain cadence to the writing that worked. The middle life did not work as well for me. In addition to repetition of words and phrase, the middle story included quite a bit of recursiveness of plot. This became tedious after awhile. There comes a point where you know everything that you need to know to understand a character and what makes them who they are, and it is time at that point to move on and tell the reader some more. This didn't happen soon enough to make that section not be frustrating.

9fuzzy_patters
Editado: Jul 2, 2015, 8:36 pm

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya (4 stars)

Nectar in a Sieve takes place during the period of English colonization of India and is about a woman, Rukmani, and her attempt to make a life on the land with her family while India changes around her. I really liked this book, and there is a lot going on such as the effects that colonization has on those being colonized, the role of women in this society, the role of family in helping us through tough times, and the fact that change can create winners out of some and great losers out of others. It leads to the question whether progress is worth the destruction. I found myself becoming more and more sympathetic to the narrator, who is Rukmani, as she is very likable and also poignantly insightful. It reminds me of Achebe and even Rushdie for some obvious reason, but it also reminded me of Steinbeck in that it was about downtrodden underdogs, who you really want to root for, but you know they are doomed for unhappiness in an unfair world.

10fuzzy_patters
Jul 11, 2015, 12:27 pm

Our Man in Charleston by Christopher Dickey (3.5 stars)

Our Man in Charleston is about Robert Bunch, whom I knew nothing about before reading this book. This lesser known figure of the American Civil War was British Consul to Charleston, South Carolina, and endeared himself to the local through feigned indifference to the southern cause despite being anti-slavery and anti-slave trade in his private correspondence. This would cause problems for him.

Dickey's research comes from Bunch's private correspondence as well as from other sources, and the book enables the reader to gain a perspective on the war that was foreign to this American reader. I had not really considered all of the various opinions about the war from the British perspective. Questions about whom they should ally with are well known, but the underlying prejudices and assumptions that led to those opinions were not as well known to me. For example, I was unaware of how the brashness of William Seward affected various personalities in London and led some towards siding with the south. That was interesting for me.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. There were one of two things that were off-putting to me, such as referring to New york as the capital of the world, which I don't think was really accurate prior to World War I. New York owes its place as a center of world banking largely due to American neutrality in the first four years of that war, but that is a minor quibble with the book. I learned a lot from this book and enjoyed reading it.

11fuzzy_patters
Jul 27, 2015, 11:12 am

American Meteor by Norman Lock (5 stars)

This book is sublime. Stephen Moran lives his life as a meteor that shoots across the American west as America reaches it's manifest destiny. His life is woven with contact with Lincoln, Whitman, Grant, Durant, and Crazy Horse. He is a Civil War bugler and later a photographer. Through the lens of his eye, we see the fragility of the American dream and that all things must pass. This is a wonderful book!

12fuzzy_patters
Jul 27, 2015, 7:54 pm

Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt (5 stars)

As a high school economics teachers, I loved this book. It lays out how to think like an economics with a lot of fascinating stories and examples about everything from self-driving cars to David Lee Roth. I marked several passages as examples to share with my students. It makes the dismal science much less dismal.

13dchaikin
Jul 28, 2015, 10:03 pm

American Meteor? Norman Lock? The books sounds terrific, but it's the first I've heard of it or its author.

14fuzzy_patters
Ago 9, 2015, 7:13 pm

dchaikin, when I read a previous book of his, A Boy in His Winter, I thought it was very mediocre. It was a similar attempt at linking American and literature through a different character, a time-travelling Huckleberry Finn. I liked American Meteor much better.

15Polaris-
Ago 10, 2015, 4:18 pm

Hi. Just wanted to say I'm enjoying your thread. I wishlisted Norman Lock's American Meteor - it sounds great - but I've just read (and thumbed) your review of A Boy In His Winter and even though you had your reservations that sounds too good a setup to ignore!

16fuzzy_patters
Ago 27, 2015, 11:48 pm

I'm glad I could help, Polaris.

17fuzzy_patters
Editado: Ago 27, 2015, 11:49 pm

Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut (5 AMAZING stars)

I have read a ton of Vonnegut. In fact, there isn't much of his that I haven't read. I'm not sure why I was so late reading this one, but it immediately became one of my favorites. It has all of the whimsy and satire of Vonnegut along with the biting social commentary that makes him great. It even includes a Tralfamadorian, which harkens to Slaughterhouse Five, perhaps his best work. Unfortunately, Kilgore Trout doesn't make an appearance, but I can forgive Vonnegut for that. Overall, I loved it!

18fuzzy_patters
Ago 31, 2015, 8:37 pm

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut (5 stars)

Mother Night is about Howard Campbell, Jr, a man who delivers Nazi propaganda as a US spy. It is about that, and it is about so much more than that. Vonnegut gives us a few morals in the introduction. He says, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." He also offers, "When you're dead you're dead, and "Make love when you can. It's good for you." I think an even clearer moral for this story, unstated by Vonnegut, is this, "Don't try to make sense or look for a purpose in the world. It is absurd." Sounds uplifting!

To be honest, I did like it. I could not help but feel for these characters, and Vonnegut really put them through the ringer. Every time the story would start to feel stable, Vonnegut would uproot them with another plot twist, and I was left to think about what he was trying to say about he randomness of the world.

Another thought that I had while reading this book was, "Are we responsible for our actions, or are we all capable of anything depending on circumstances?" This leads to another question, "Can man be good or evil?" I don't have any clear answer to either question, and I don't think this book attempts to answer either one. The questions are merely posed, and I think that is one of the things that makes this a great book.

19dchaikin
Sep 1, 2015, 11:06 am

Enjoyed your thoughts on and inspired by Vonnegut.

20fuzzy_patters
Sep 23, 2015, 10:56 pm

Thanks, Dan.

21fuzzy_patters
Sep 23, 2015, 10:58 pm

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock (5 stars)

I was one-hundred percent, absolutely blown away by this book. I think it is because it contained so many truths that I, a a project-based learning facilitator in a public high school, preach to my students. Students have to be able to accurately forecast whether their project will be successful and make changes if it won't be. How do they do that? They need to know what is known and unknown. They also need grit, determination, and a growth mindset. They also need to be able to work together without succumbing to group think. What does that have to do with this book?

Tetlock held a forecasting contest among 2800 different forecasters over several years in order to determine whether forecasting success is based on pure luck or if their is also a skill to it, and if it is skill-based, what are those skills? He found that you can become a good forecaster through developing a certain set of skills, and some of them are the ones that I mentioned above.

22dchaikin
Sep 23, 2015, 11:25 pm

Very interesting. I hope I can keep that in mind once my kids start encountering projects.

23fuzzy_patters
Sep 30, 2015, 10:54 pm

Thanks!

24fuzzy_patters
Sep 30, 2015, 10:55 pm

Providential by Colin Channer (4 stars)

As with many collections of literature by the same author, this is up and down. The highs, though, are very high. I can't, however, say that I was moved very often, but I did feel compelled to keep reading. Channer writes about the history of Jamaica through poems about the history of his family, and ends with a bit from his time living in the US. As far as the subject matter goes, post-colonial literature is my cup of tea. I thought this book was very good even though I wouldn't quite call it great.

25fuzzy_patters
Oct 20, 2015, 12:18 am

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (4 stars)

Conrad's Heart of Darkness explores the dark heart that lies within each of us and the extraordinary lengths of depravity we are willing to go to. This is mirrored in the "dark continent" of Africa in which Marlowe, our narrator for most of the story, travels as well as in the darkness within Kurtz and, to an extent, all of us. The story also left me pondering the darkness that lies within each of us and whether showing that was the purpose of opening and closing the story in London with Marlowe telling shipmates about his trip to Africa. Are any of us really better than Kurtz?

26fuzzy_patters
Nov 18, 2015, 6:53 pm

Without You There Is No Us by Suki Kim (4 stars)

Suki Kim, who is of Korean ancestry, took a job teaching at a missionary school in North Korea in order to learn more about life in North Korea so that she could write this book. I'm glad she did. She starts out telling about the history of the north and the south and how families were separated and how the two Koreas grew apart. This added humanity to the history and allowed me to get a better understanding of the issues facing the Korean people today. Then she got around to talking about life in North Korea as she saw it.

I don't know that I can explain life in North Korea in the format of a short review, and one should really read the book to get an appreciation of it. It is a world where the leader really is everything and must be thanked for everything. Free and even critical thought are not only discouraged but have been almost eradicated from the people, at least openly. Their entire lives are lies perpetrated by institutions of the state, and they have been taught a warped view of the outside world. It is harrowing. I highly recommend this memoir for a better picture of it, at least as experienced by the children of the elite. It's hard to imagine how bad life must be for everyone else.

27ursula
Nov 19, 2015, 1:12 am

>26 fuzzy_patters: I just finished that one recently as well. I thought it was a very educational but also very human look at North Korea.

28fuzzy_patters
Nov 20, 2015, 12:12 am

I agree, Ursula.

29fuzzy_patters
Editado: Dic 21, 2015, 2:01 pm

(Oryx and Crake) by Margaret Atwood (5 stars)

Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake is an interesting book because it is two dystopias in one. Atwood first introduces the reader to Snowman, who lives in a post-apocalyptic world where he might be the only human left. Through a series of flashbacks, she takes us to an earlier dystopia where Snowman, whose real name is Jimmy, lives in a post-climate change world filled with science run-amok. Through it all, she shows us ourselves, our world, and the world that we could one day live in through the mirror of her narrative.

One aspect of the novel that is worth mentioning is the effects of climate change on the earlier dystopia. The elites, who are mainly scientists and other people who have the ability to help in a science-for-profit venture, such as advertising and public relations experts, live in compounds, which are sort of like fortified city centers, and these are surrounded by pleeblands, where everyone else lives, which reminded me a little bit of some of our decayed urban cities, such as Detroit. Additionally, there is a trade in child pornography coming from third world countries where resources are scarce. The first world society has restructured itself into an extreme case of the haves and the have-nots, and the developing world gets preyed upon by the first world. I guess it isn't that much different from today, but it is taken to its extreme.

At the height of this hierarchy are the scientists, and they have become almost God-like. They live in a world of science for profit where individual compounds, which are corporate entities as well as city structures, are constantly trying to come up with the latest invention, which typically consists of splicing the genetics of different organisms together to create a new organism such as the rakunk, which is half-raccoon and half-skunk. This creates ethical questions as well as the problem of what to do about those with scientific knowledge who choose to work against the system, such as saboteurs, for example.

Then we have the later dystopia, where Snowman lives alone in a tree. This part of the book highlights our need for human interaction and what makes us human in general. As readers, we are privy to Snowman's internal monologue, which is the voices of his past. It is maddening to live alone, and Snowman also must deal with his realization that he is slowly losing vocabulary with no one to talk to. While reading this, I wondered if he would have been better off dead.

Alas, Snowman is alive to carry on the existence of the human race, and I think that our humanity is the overall theme of the novel. We have great capacity to create and destroy. We need each other to survive, and yet, Snowman is surviving alone. Rejection of science could lead to global catastrophe, and yet, science for science's sake without regard to our fellow man could lead to the end of our existence. Atwood shows us that our human nature is full paradoxes, and as such, we are very complex creatures.

Overall, I loved this book. I found that I could not put it down. It was my second Atwood. I had previously read The Handmaid's Tale, which is also excellent. I highly recommend this and can't wait to read more Atwood.

30dchaikin
Dic 21, 2015, 6:04 pm

Very nice review fuzzy.

31fuzzy_patters
Dic 30, 2015, 6:04 pm

Thanks, Dan.