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Rob's Head
Current ReadingSystem of the World - Neal Stephenson Enduring Revolution: How the Contract with American Continues to Shape the Nation - Major Garrett Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom - Conrad Black
January 20, 2006 I'll have to catch up a little bit on what I've been working on since last I updated. I'm still chewing on the FDR bio, but as soon as I finish System of the World, I'm going to devote all my time to that. It's been a busy couple of months, and I've gotten sidetracked by a variety of library books. To sum up what I've read over the past month: Reading Lolita in Tehran - Excellent memoir of a woman trying to be a free intellectual in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not an easy thing to do. It's interesting reading such a personal story from someone who had to live by rules that seem entirely unreasonable to me. I'm sure it sucks bad for any woman living in Iran, but it's especially got to be tough on someone like Azar Nafisi, who was educated in America and was used to a certain amount of academic and just plain old freedom. It's hard for us to really empathize with people living in bad conditions all over the world because we think those people are very different from us, but Nafisi sounds like someone I could easily know. There's a great line in the book where she describes Humbert's treatment of Dolores and applies it to Iran's treatment of women after the revolution. She calls it, "The confiscation of one person's life by another." Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West - Greg Maguire. A lot of fun. It's a take-off on the movie, but I think he draws pretty heavily from the series of books by L. Frank Baum, which I'm not at all familiar with. Still, it's a good read, and I'm guessing that the vast majority of people who read and enjoy it have never read the books either. Churchill: A Life - Martin Gilbert. A pretty good biography, condensed from a multi-volume work of the author, who is Churchill's official biographer. Still, it's missing a few things. I knew I was in for a little whitewash when the author glossed right over Churchill's father's syphilis. I thought Churchill was known to be something of a drunk, but there was no hint of that in the book. Nevertheless, even if the author was a bit cagey with Churchill's faults, it's still a worthy biography. At some point I may pick up another, more balanced book, but in the meantime I'm pretty happy with the overview of Churchill's life that I got from Gilbert's book. The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis. I guess I just missed the boat by never reading these books when I was a kid. I'm too old not to see the Big Jesus Lion preaching at me in every book. Maybe when I have kids I'll read them these books, but I just wasn't feeling the magic and wonder. My favorite part of the series comes at the very end. By that time you realize that the last story is a metaphor for the end of days and the final judgment. They also keep dropping hints that something was different about this trip to Narnia by the kids. They were on a train and they felt a sudden jolt. When the Big Jesus Lion tells them that this time they can stay in Narnia forever, you can figure out what really happened. But I guess CS Lewis wanted to make sure that none of the children reading the story failed to read between the lines and miss the point, so the Big Jesus Lion finally spells it out for them, "You're dead. You got in a train crash and died." Way to beat the kids over the head there. One Market Under God - Frank, Thomas. What's the Matter with Kansas? was interesting. This was boring. 350 pages of Frank bitching about market capitalism and misplaced faith in it without every once offering any solutions of alternative viewpoints. The Money Pitch: Baseball Free Agency and Salary Arbitration - Roger Abrams. A little while ago Jeff and I discussed a little research project regarding free agency in baseball. I picked up this book as part of the research. Fairly interesting, though it didn't tell me too much I didn't already know. What was more interesting was that this guy Abrams has actually been an arbitrator for a number of years, and says that when evaluating a hitter, he thinks RBI is the most important stat. I wonder if he's ever been in an arbitration case where the player was using Bill James or someone like him to make a case. The Business of Sports Agents - Kenneth Shropshire and Timothy Davis. I knew that the world of agents was dirty, but I didn't really know how dirty it was. Some of the shit that goes on in recruiting college athletes is unbelievable. I'm just not sure I'd characterize it as agents preying on poor student athletes. These college kids seem more than happy to get money and cars from the agents, in a lot of cases playing them against each other. December 12, 2005 I finished the Charlemagne book yesterday. It was an interesting read. I haven't read much about him before, but it seems like Berbero had a slightly revisionist take on a lot of conventional wisdom about Charlemagne's empire, particularly its internal economics. I thought I was getting a biography of Charlemagne, but the book was more about his kingdom, which proved to be pretty interesting in its own right. Charlemagne's empire stretched from the border of Spain all the way up to Denmark and into the Slavic territories in Eastern Europe. He managed to impress the Popes enough to crown him emperor and proclaim him the defender of Christianity. Granted, a lot of that was just to piss of the Byzantines, but Charlemagne did manage unify/conquer most of Europe by the beginning of the ninth century, and despite being considered practically a barbarian by the Eastern empire, he was the major player After I finished the Charlemagne, I picked up Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi. I flew through about half of it yesterday. It's a pretty good book, all about the shit she and her students had to deal with as an educated woman in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It's especially hard on her, an English literature professor. Everything American was condemned as decadent, and fiction in general was frowned upon. November 30, 2005 I hit quite a snag with my reading list for a few months while I bought a house, packed, painted, moved, and unpacked. On top of all that, I had a lot to do for school and work, so I slowed down quite a bit. Things have picked up a bit for me in the past month though, and I was able to finally finish Dreadnought. It was really good, and I think at some point I'll pick up his other book on World War I, Castles of Steel. But not just yet. First of all, in Dreadnought, I was a lot more interested in the politics and personalities of the ruling parties of Great Britain and Germany leading up to Word War I than I was in all the naval history, and I believe Castles of Steel is a lot more intensive with that. And second, I'm a little burnt out on World War I for the time being. I've also just finish The First World War by John Keegan. I made my way through it, but it got awfully boring. I feel bad calling the stories of battles where hundreds of thousands of people died boring, but there are only so many troop movements and counterattacks you can read about until it all starts to blend together. I was looking for more of a political history of the war, but this was pure military history. I hate reading something when I know I have no chance of remembering what I'm reading. I just finished the book last week, and I couldn't tell you what the French 10th Rifle Corps or whoever did at the Battle of the Somme. I'm happy I even remember who fought it. I did end up finishing Literary Theory: A Very Short Introdution pretty quickly. I got through most of it while I was still riding the train in the morning. It wasn't particularly remarkable, but it was worth reading. Culler shows you how to examine literature without referring to any specific school of criticism (he saves a brief discussion of notable movements until the appendix). I finished a few other books between then and now: -Mind Game, by the people at Baseball Prospectus. This is a book about how the Red Sox used sabremetrical analysis to shape their 2004 World Series winning team. The book was a fun read, but it seems like they were seeing what they wanted to see there. I know that the Red Sox are famous for going beyond tools and employing statistical analysis, but I seriously doubt Theo Epstein was thinking about Orlando Cabrera's VORP or Keith Foulke's PECOTA projections when making roster decisions. -The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad. I've read most of Joseph Conrad's major novels, and this one was probably my least favorite. It wasn't bad, but it's not the same. It was a little overly gloomy for my tastes. Even if his novels are usually tragic, there's always an element of nobility in his main characters. Not here. The protagonist is a double agent for an unnamed Eastern European power infiltrating anarchist organizations in London. Lot of fun. - The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien. Not bad, but I wasn't bowled over. Like a lot of other people, I got turned onto this book because of Lost, but I think I'd have to read it again to really get the connection, other than the inspiration for the Dharma Initiative's bunkers. The main character is dead and doesn't know it, and is lost in time, but I'm not sure that those are clues as to what's going in in Lost. In any event, it was a good read.
I have a few books going right now. Charlemagne: Father of a Continent (Allessandro Barbero) is due back at the library next week, so I have to get through that quick. I just started a biography of FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (Conrad Black). After I started the FDR book, I impulsively bought biographies of Churchill and Stalin. I figure, why not do all the Allies? I have my Churchill book, Churchill: A Life (Martin Gilbert) at work, and I read it when I can. And I'm still working through the Chronicles of Narnia. I have to admit, I'm not loving it. I think that I would've liked it better if I read it for the first time as a child. Too late for that though. September 5, 2005 Done with Culture Jam, and I don't know that I got too much out of it. Oh well. I got busy this weekend, so I didn't do too much reading, but I did start Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. It is short, so I'll should be able to finish it between starting classes and moving this month. August 31, 2005 Finished God's Politics last night. It's an interesting read, though there was a lot more blathering on about Jebus than I typically like to hear. But I guess that's to be expected, he is a minister, or reverend, or something like that. I can get behind a lot of what he was saying about poverty and social justice. Actually, I already was behind him on that, but it's interesting to hear that from a Biblical perspective. I always knew that the Bible had a lot more to say about helping the poor than promoting anti-gay marriage ballot referendums, but Jim Wallis is very active in putting that into effect. He does puss out in the book when it comes to social issues. He's pro-life, though he barely mentions abortion. I think the point he'd make is that there are bigger problems in the world than the abortion fight, which I'd agree with, but if you're pro-life, doesn't protecting the lives of the unborn take a very high priority? And he's real nebulous about his stance on gay marriage. He's for civil unions, but against marriage. But he doens't get into it. Again, it's not the most important issue in the world, though if I were gay, I might have a different opinion. I started Culture Jam, which is written by the founder of Adbusters. I like their mission, and especially lately when I've been worrying about what new things to buy for my new home, I've felt a little like disengaging from the consumer culture. I hate having to feel like I need nice, shiny new things to be happy. Like our house won't be nice if we don't put a new bedroom and living room set in it. The furniture we have right now works perfectly well, but you see the new things, and you start to crave them. The problem I'm having with this book so far, and it's the same problem I have with a lot of books like this, is that this guy is really, really whiny. He raises great points, but his tone is very annoying. Why do counter-culturalists have to be such little bitches? August 29, 2005 I read A Tale of Two Cities over the weekend. Not the Dickens novel, but Tony Massaroti and John Harper's book about the 2004 Red Sox and Yankees. It was right there at the library, so I thought I'd grab it. It wasn't terrible, certainly better than the other book with the same premise and topic, Faithful. It was kind of interesting to read the little tidbits on how a lot of Red Sox didn't particularly like Curt Schilling and a few Yankees didn't really care for A-Rod. Not exactly Earth-shattering news, but it's still fun to read. I do have my doubts about whether the two of them really did decide to write this book before the season started. If they did, they got really, really lucky with how everything worked out. August 25, 2005 I'm done with Herbert Hoover: A Public Life. It was all right. I probably should've read a longer bio of Hoover. This one didn't spend very much time on his election campaign, even less on his re-election campaign, as ill-fated as it was, and only a few chapters on the presidency. I guess that's because Hoover was actually a little more interesting before he took office. Maybe some day I'll read a more in depth study of Hoover, but that's down the road. After I get through a few other things, I'm going to start Conrad Black's, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom. Started God's Politics this morning. As soon as I finish that, I can wipe my hands clean of the Thomas Crane Library in Quincy forever. Actually, I'm kind of sad about that. It's a pretty good library. We checked out the library in Danvers last week, and I wasn't that impressed. My wife says that Danvers is supposed to be the big library up there, but it's not as big as the Crane library. I'll have to check out Salem and Peabody too, see what they look like. August 19, 2005 I finished As I Lay Dying the other night. I love Faulkner. He's one of those guys I'm in awe of. I see him almost like a sculptor or a painter. He can do thing with his words, see things on a blank piece of paper that 99.99% of people in the world could never begin to imagine for themselves. I started up The Chronicles of Narnia. Somehow I never read that when I was a little kid. Now that the movie, which looks pretty cool, is coming out, I want to read the books before I see the films. I have a volume with all the books collected, but they're in the book in order of chronology in the story, not the order in which they were published. I guess CS Lewis himself recommended reading them in that order, but something doesn't feel right about not reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first. So, I'm going to do that and then double back and read everything else in order. I'm staring to cruise along on Dreadnought, but unfortunately, I think I need to take a break from them and try to finish Herbert Hoover: A Public Life and God's Politics and return them to the Quincy library before I move to Salem. I'm actually going to miss that library. But my wife assures me that ther's a great library in nearby Danvers. In fact, I'm going to insist on visiting it when we're up that way tomorrow. I took advantage of my brother's 35% discount at Barnes & Noble yesterday to get the most out of a $25 gift certificate I had. I bought The Secret Agent, one of the few Joseph Conrad novels I haven't read, and Mimesis and Literary Theory: An Introduction to bolster my literary theory collection. It's an area of study that I'm actually pretty deficient in, but I've been taking steps to remedy that. I also picked up Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction at the BPL today. I figure I should read a couple of shorter introductory level works before I get too ambitious with the bigger stuff. August 17, 2005 I didn't like Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince very much. That's actually very disappointing, because I liked the other books in the series. John and I will be doing a recap of the novel soon, so you can check out what I thought of it there. Still ploughing through Dreadnought. No Red Sox game tonight, so I should be able to finish As I Lay Dying and then get cracking on Dreadnought. I want to get some stuff done before I start classes again in September, because I'll have a lot less time for reading then. August 10, 2005 I finished Why Not Us? last night. Pretty much a waste of time. But it was short, so not that much time, and thus I'm not too angry at it. It was a fair enough book if you're interested in reading stories about long-suffering Red Sox fans and how happy they all were last year. I think it's pretty old, even before the World Series, but I'm sure plenty of people liked it. I haven't had the time to whip through Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I've been lugging it to work on the train, but with all this home-buying stuff I've been doing, I haven't had a chance to really concentrate on it. But we got our mortgage set today, the home inspection isn't until Monday, and I'm all alone in the office Friday, so I should have plenty of time to finish it off by the end of the week. August 6, 2005 I kept two library books out from Thomas Crane Library in Quincy two days past their due date. I hate doing that. But the woman in line in front of me was arguing about $25 worth of fines, so my forty cents didn't seem too bad in comparison. At the BPL the other day, I picked up a Herbert Hoover biography titled An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover. That's an awfully strident title, so I wasn't too comfortable I was going to get a balanced view of Hoover from reading that. So I picked up Herbert Hoover: A Public Life at the Quincy library, and after doing a little research on the resepctive books, I think I'm going to go with the latter. I could read them both, but I think one Herbert Hoover biography will be enough for me. I finally finished Confusion. It's weird that it took me as long as it did. I knew it was coming out in paperback on June 1st, and I really wanted to take it with me on my honeymoon. Unfortunately, we were leaving for Mexico on the 1st, and my combing the bookstores at Logan didn't help me out. I bought it as soon as I got back, but I just go around to reading it recently. At any rate, it was fucking great, even better than the first volume in the Baroque Trilogy. My mission in life right now is to get as many people to read this series as I can. I've already got one friend of my to read the first two, one girl at work to check Quicksilver out of the library, and I have my brother intrigued. It's a start. While I was at the BPL, I also picked up Bat Boy, written by former Yankee bat boy Matt McGough. It's a quick read, I finished it yesterday, but it was pretty amusing. I like hearing clubhouse stories, especially when told from a different perspective. At the Quincy library, in addition to the other Hoover biography,
I picked up Why
Not Us?, one of the roughly 9,000 books written about
the Red Sox 2004 season. It's supposed to be pretty good, though,
and it should be another quick read. I also picked up God's
Politics, despite the fact that I should be concentrating
on finishing off Dreadnought. One of these days. August 4, 2005 Finished On Literature this morning. I've pretty much exclusively read it on the T and at work. Not bad, but some of the essay were more interesting than others. I like Eco though. He's a funny guy, even if I don't understand all the finer points of semiotics. I whipped through a lot of Confusion this weekend. I would have liked to finish it over the weekend, but it's a long book and there just wasn't enough time. The Red Sox game is a day game today though, so I should have time to finish it up tonight. I'm going to head to the library after work today to pick up a Herbert Hoover biography, but I think I might hold off on starting it until I finish Dreadnought. Dreadnought is not a bad book, and it really does deserve to get finished. July 28, 2005 I had to skip a chapter in On Literature. It was all about a novel I haven't read and likely never will. I wasn't going to get much out of it, but I really hate skipping chapters, even in an anthology of essays. It makes me feel like I haven't really read the whole book. I'm going to try to re-read Hamlet before I see it on the Common Saturday. If I don't get to it, no big deal, but it would be nice. I'll probably do a lot of it on the computer screen at work tomorrow. July 27, 2005 I finished the Coolidge biography this morning. My favorite line in the book came in the last chapter. The author evaluates Coolidge in relation to his contemporaries: "Italy's Mussolini and Soviet Russia's Lenin towered over all other chiefs of state, but it must be said of Coolidge that if he did not have their flair for leadership, neither did he possess their megalomania or their instinct for terror." There's a ringing endorsement. He wasn't great, but he wasn't a tyrannical dictator either. I'm going to start up Umberto Eco's On Literature this afternoon. As soon as I get through that, I can take that and hte Coolidge bio back to the library. July 26, 2005 I'm just about done with the Coolidge biography, Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President byDonald R. McCoy. It's not bad, a pretty quick read. Which is good, because I don't think I'd be terribly interested in an in-depth study of Calvin Coolidge. I'm in the middle of a project where I've decided to read biographies of every 20th century American president. I started with McKinley, just to cover my bases. Then I read Edmund Morris's two books about Theodore Roosevelt, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex. Next came an uninspiring recount of Taft's presidency, which unfortunately left out anything about his stint on the Supreme Court after his presidency. Then I got through Wilson and now I'm onto Coolidge. I'm looking forward to plowing through Hoover, because I have a couple of good biographies of FDR and Truman at home, Conrad Black's Champion of Freedom and McCullough's Truman. Dreadnought
is going real slow. It's not that I don't like it, I do. It's just
that I tend to be more in the mood for fiction at home, non-fiction
at work and on the T. And Dreadnought is too big to really
handle on the T. |
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