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August 01
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John
gave
 
to:
The Night Manager (Paperback)
by John le Carré
bookshelves:
popular-fiction
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in July, 2008
John said:
"Very good LeCarre -- not in the same class as the Smiley trilogy, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, or A Perfect Spy, but very good nevertheless. Jonathan Pine is the night manager of a venerable and exclusive Swiss hotel; in a past p...more
Very good LeCarre -- not in the same class as the Smiley trilogy, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, or A Perfect Spy, but very good nevertheless. Jonathan Pine is the night manager of a venerable and exclusive Swiss hotel; in a past position in Cairo, he was also a sometimes-source for British intelligence. Cairo led to tragedy, and when the billionaire at the center of that tragedy -- an arms dealer and "the worst man in the world" -- walks into his hotel in Switzerland, Pine allows himself to be recruited as a British agent again. Pine's story plays out against the political infighting among US and British security agencies, all trying to find their way in a post-Cold War world. It's all classic LeCarre, with rich dollops of cynicism, compromise, and despair; very satisfying read....less
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John
gave
to:
American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (Hardcover)
by Pauline Maier
bookshelves:
united-states-history,
us-revolution-and-early-republic
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in July, 2008
John said:
"A bit of thematic reading for July. Maier tells two stories, both well. The first of these debunks the myth that the Declaration of Independence was largely the product of Thomas Jefferson's singular genius -- a myth Jefferson had a habit of encoura...more
A bit of thematic reading for July. Maier tells two stories, both well. The first of these debunks the myth that the Declaration of Independence was largely the product of Thomas Jefferson's singular genius -- a myth Jefferson had a habit of encouraging later in life. Against this she lays out the history of the many "Declarations of Independence" put forth by various colonial governments in the months between the beginning of the Revolution at Lexington and Concord and the Second Continental Congress' declaration on July 4, 1776 (which was only one date in a fluid process; John Adams was certain the US would forever celebrate July 2). Through this history, Maier shows that the ideas, and even sometimes the phrases, that made it into Jefferson's Declaration were already in circulation by the time he put pen to paper; Jefferson's Declaration was more synthetic than original, and Jefferson more draftsman than author.
The second story Maier tells is of how the Declaration itself was largely forgotten nearly as soon as it was signed, and only later became, as her title would have it, American Scripture. This story traces the Declaration's revived cultural presence starting with its partisan use in early 19th-century politics and culminating in its evocation in the Gettysburg Address. This was to me the far more interesting story, and I wish she had devoted more time to it. All in all, though, a very interesting read, with excellent and useful appendices....less
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July 17
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John
took the never-ending book quiz.
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July 11
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John
gave
to:
The Yiddish Policemen's Union (Hardcover)
by Michael Chabon
bookshelves:
contemporary-literature
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in July, 2008
John said:
"Here's my favorite small detail from The Yiddish Policemen's Union, a detail that has no bearing on the plot whatsoever: the main character's favorite film is Orson Welles' Heart of Darkness. What I love about that touch is not that W...more
Here's my favorite small detail from The Yiddish Policemen's Union, a detail that has no bearing on the plot whatsoever: the main character's favorite film is Orson Welles' Heart of Darkness. What I love about that touch is not that Welles never made Heart of Darkness, but (and I'm in film geek mode now, not that I'm ever really out of it) that he almost made it; it was the first project he proposed to Hollywood, a couple of years before settling on Citizen Kane.
Which is to say, what I love about that touch it the extent to which Chabon goes to render this alternative history/reality plausible. The world of the novel -- a world in which a Jewish homeland in Alaska, created by FDR's administration at the outset of World War II, is about to revert to US control, sending the Jews wandering again -- is marvelously realized in spite of its wild implausibility (although, given that the Brits once sought to create a Jewish homeland in Uganda, maybe "implausibility" overstates the case). Onto that world Chabon grafts a page-turning mystery that owes a great deal to Raymond Chandler and perhaps even more to Chinatown, yet still seems fresh and original. The Yiddish Policemen's Union doesn't soar to the heights of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but as follow-ups to masterpieces go, it's very good indeed.
An aside: while I was still reading the book, Val asked what I thought it meant that two alternative histories of the Jews in America had been published recently by two major American novelists not known for slumming it in the world of genre fiction (the other is Roth's The Plot Against America). I didn't know then and, now that I've finished Chabon, I still don't know. Good question, though, isn't it? ...less
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June 21
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John
gave
to:
The March: A Novel (Paperback)
by E.L. Doctorow
bookshelves:
contemporary-literature
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in June, 2008
John said:
"I'm a big fan of Doctorow, and we go way back; he's probably the first serious contemporary novelist I read, thanks to a copy of Ragtime acquired when I attended Ragtime Night at Comiskey Park sometime in the late 1970s (I find the notion that...more
I'm a big fan of Doctorow, and we go way back; he's probably the first serious contemporary novelist I read, thanks to a copy of Ragtime acquired when I attended Ragtime Night at Comiskey Park sometime in the late 1970s (I find the notion that copies of a Doctorow novel were given away by the thousands at a White Sox game only slightly more mystifying than the fact that I was attending a White Sox game to begin with). This, however, is not his strongest work. Doctorow used Sherman's March to the Sea as a backdrop for a big, sprawling, multi-focused narrative in the Ragtime vein; he even nods to that earlier work at one point through a minor character, Coalhouse Walker, Sr. -- presumably the father of Ragtime's protagonist. But it doesn't work as well as Ragtime, I think because there's no central conflict tying all the narrative threads together. I suppose you could argue that the Civil War itself is that conflict, but Doctorow seems to have little new to say about that, and placing the emphasis on such a familiar historical narrative detracts from fully developing his characters. I think Doctorw's at his best when he manages to balance imagined social/popular histories with rich, fully-developed characters; Ragtime may be his masterpiece, but I'm even fonder of World's Fair and Billy Bathgate because they do that so well. Here, the history is too canonical, and the characters seem to disappear into it. Still well-written and diverting, but ultimately a bit disappointing for this fan....less
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June 18
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John
gave
to:
The Problems of Philosophy (Paperback)
by Bertrand Russell
bookshelves:
philosophy
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in June, 2008
John said:
"Re-read this recently after recommending it last year to my daughter, who thought even less of Sophie's World than I did and was looking for a better introduction to philosophy. I think this one's hard to beat: it's clear without ever being ...more
Re-read this recently after recommending it last year to my daughter, who thought even less of Sophie's World than I did and was looking for a better introduction to philosophy. I think this one's hard to beat: it's clear without ever being facile, glib, or dumbed-down; and it manages to provide an excellent overview of what philosphy is and why it matters, along with a good introduction to the thought of several major figures (Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Berkeley, among others) in a scant 120 pages. A great place to start for anyone who hasn't yet taken, or can't quite remember, Philosophy 101....less
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John
gave
to:
Singapore: The air-conditioned nation : essays on the politics of comfort and control, 1990-2000 (Unknown Binding)
by Cherian George
bookshelves:
essays
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
John said:
"Friends have been urging this book on me ever since I moved to Singapore, but I'm glad I waited a while before reading it; I don't think it would have made as much sense to me earlier on, and it was good to have an independent sense of the place agai...more
Friends have been urging this book on me ever since I moved to Singapore, but I'm glad I waited a while before reading it; I don't think it would have made as much sense to me earlier on, and it was good to have an independent sense of the place against which to measure George's. Having that, though, I must say I think his analysis is spot-on; he does a great job of outlining the many ways in which Singapore's paternalistic government wins democratic assent for its one-party rule both through intensely paternalistic policies and through vigorous use of the legal and political system to shut down opposition without the usual trappings of a repressive state (were this a more academic work, it could easily use Singapore to explore Gramscian notions of hegemony; I'm hard-pressed to think of a country that better exemplifies his ideas). You don't have to be in Singapore long to come to the conclusion that the country's best features and its most troubling spring from the exact same top-down command-and-control orietation the government brings to everything it does. George does a very nice job of exploring those in a detailed, clear-eyed, and balanced fashion....less
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John
gave
to:
Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories (Library of Yiddish Classics)
by Sholem Aleichem
bookshelves:
classics,
short-stories
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
John said:
"Sholem Aleichem is best-known in the US -- if he's known at all -- as the author of a handful of stories that formed the basis of the musical Fiddler on the Roof. Those stories are just a few of the Tevye the Dairyman stories-- well-crafted, ...more
Sholem Aleichem is best-known in the US -- if he's known at all -- as the author of a handful of stories that formed the basis of the musical Fiddler on the Roof. Those stories are just a few of the Tevye the Dairyman stories-- well-crafted, humorous and occasionally hilarious stories with a wonderful narrative voice that also provide rich cultural detail about provincial Jewish life in turn-of-the-century Tsarist Russia. (Aleichem is sometimes referred to as the Yiddish Mark Twain, and these stories bear out the comparison). The stories are collected here with the "Railroad Stories," a series of sketches told in the first person (as are the Tevye stories) by various passengers in 3rd-class railway carriages. These are less successful that the Tevye stories, in my opinion, because they lack the Tevye stories' overall coherence; still, they're quite diverting and well worth reading....less
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May 10
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John
gave
to:
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (Paperback)
by Karen Armstrong
bookshelves:
history-of-religion
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
John said:
"The Great Transformation argues that the core religious/philosophical traditions of several major civilizations -- China, India, Greece, and Israel -- emerged at about the same time, for the same reasons, and were preoccupied with the same ide...more
The Great Transformation argues that the core religious/philosophical traditions of several major civilizations -- China, India, Greece, and Israel -- emerged at about the same time, for the same reasons, and were preoccupied with the same ideas. The time is what philosopher Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age, the period from approximately 700-200 B.C. when these civilizations all developed philosophical or religious tenets that emphasized what we might now call inner spiritual development rather than abasement before omnipotent deities. The reason, Armstrong suggests, is that each of these societies was seeking a way beyond the incessent violence that marked their existence. As for the ideas, they have become cliches but are no less powerful for that: first, do unto others as you would have them do unto you; and second, be the change you wish to see in the world. Armstrong concludes that from these concepts, explored in different places and for somewhat different reasons, emerged Confusianism, Buddhism, classical Greek philosophy, and rabbinical Judaism (she considers the core precepts of both Christianity and Islam to be mere latter-day variations on rabbinical Jewish thought, with few innovations to contribute to that philosophical tradition).
Much as I enjoy reading early religious history, I'll confess that I don't have the background to evaluate Armstrong's argument on its merits. It's certainly compelling -- and given my own leanings (which are pretty vague, but could be said to be triagulated by agnosticism, unitarianism, and secular humanism), the argument that religion is at its best when it emphasizes personal growth rather than proper worship of the correct Sky God is one I'm inclined to favor. I did find myself wondering whether Armstrong was overstating the extent to which these complex philosophies had an impact on their own societies, as well as the extent to which they displaced, even temporarily, traditional religious emphasis on pleasing and/or appeasing an external deity. In addition, her final chapter -- aimed at today's fundamentalists of all faiths -- spends more time celebrating Christianity's and Islam's connections to Axial Age tradition than exploring why those connections seem, more and more, a minor part of both faiths (at least as professed by their loudest adherents).
Still, this was a thought-provoking read and, while slow going at times, one I found rewarding. A final word of praise: the book contains many useful maps and an excellent glossary, both of which are essential to a work like this but, I find, are too rarely included. Bravo to Armstrong and her publisher for providing them; they really help.
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April 29
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John
gave
to:
Kafka on the Shore (Paperback)
by Haruki Murakami
bookshelves:
contemporary-literature
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in April, 2008
John said:
"It's odd to admit, but there are works I like -- love, even -- that I neverless must confess I don't really understand; certain T.S. Eliot poems, some Elvis Costello lyrics, and the movie Eraserhead are just a few examples. Now I'm adding to ...more
It's odd to admit, but there are works I like -- love, even -- that I neverless must confess I don't really understand; certain T.S. Eliot poems, some Elvis Costello lyrics, and the movie Eraserhead are just a few examples. Now I'm adding to that list the novels of Haruki Murakami. I read Dance, Dance, Dance a couple of years ago and found it compelling, beautifully written, and bewidering. Kafka on the Shore is all that, but even more so. Telling two parallel stories -- one of a 15-year-old Tokyo runaway trying to escape an Oedipal prophesy, the other of a sixty-ish simpleton who lost the ability to read, write, and remember as the result of an unexplained accident during World War II -- the novel offers a variety of memorable characters (including some cats, a couple of ghosts, and two advertising icons come to life), a decidedly strange story (as that character list should imply), and some terrific writing. But what it all adds up to is a bit beyond me -- not that that's a bad thing. It was a weird and wonderful ride, and I'll happily take it again; I imagine I'll be picking up Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in the near future....less
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