Some Recent Books Worth a Read
Trudy W. Schuett
Like so many others right now, I’m wobbling thru what my boss at the library has come to call “The Crud.” Haven’t been able to do much but read and sleep. I’ve been fortunate that I had some good books in the house, and I thought I’d share them.
This isn’t nearly as negative as it seems like it’s going to be. In no way is it a hatchet job! I found it had a lot of insight into the way things were in the 1960s, and picked up some odd bits of trivia. For example, did you know there are boarding schools in Switzerland that take children as young as three months?
The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink by Dr. Robert D. Morris
There’s a lot of history here about the evolution of public water systems, which seems like it would be about as interesting as watching lettuce leave, but to my surprise, I got into it right away. Dr. Morris is clearly not just writing for other academics. It’s not all handwringing and woe, either, as he gives some reasonable suggestions for what can be done.
Hope’s Boy – a Memoir by Andrew Bridge
What’s remarkable about this book is that, a someone who spent most of his childhood in foster care, he’s got plenty of opportunities for placing blame and embracing victimhood. He doesn’t do that, though, and the book is a quite matter-of-fact narrative of his early days and how he managed to go to college and make a success of his life. I came away from this book with a lot of respect for this man.
What I’m reading next: Women: Theory and Practice by Bernard Chapin
Bernard is an old buddy from my early days in the men’s movement, and his book has had some good press. I know he can write, so…
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan
I saw this guy last week on BookTV, and if he’s half as good a writer as he is a speaker, this should be a good one!
I wanted really badly to go outside and throw discus this morning, since I couldn't go to church. I feel up to throwing but it's cold and wet outside and that both sucks and isn't too great a routine for recovering form pneumonia. so like you I've been forced to sit around and read a lot and just do not a whole lotta nothing.
I've read Blue Death by the way. I like subject matter like that because of the history of it, the technology involved, and because I often Vad old utility and waterway systems. If you like period history tied to specific events and systems by the way you might like The Dynamite Fiend or Thunderstruck or the Devil in the White City.
Here are some of the more interesting books I've read lately:
Non-fiction:
God's Gold
Jules Verne: an Exploratory Biography
The victory of Reason: How Christianity led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the American West
Beowulf - got a new translation and it's good.
I've got a buddy still in Iraq and he has sent me some of his fictionalized short stories based on his work there. I've now had the chance to catch up on reading a few and they tend to be very good. Damned good. I'm trying to encourage him to submit them for publication. I also read The Killers last night, by Hemingway. the older I get the more technical errors I see in Hemingway's style but the older I get the more I also realize that some idiosyncrasies aside, in his manner of expression and the way he expressed his writing Hemingway was almost as good as Shakespeare, just in reverse. That is Hemingway is the obverse image of Shakespeare in the way he expressed himself technically as a writer, and yet as to what they wrote about and how, they are almost identical. I can see the two men as being buddies if they had lived at the same time and both very much understanding the writings of the other.
Fiction:
An Absolute Gentleman
Fatal Revenant
Lectures:
A Way with Words II - by Mike Drout
A History of the English Language - also by Mike Drout, Wheaton
I like that you consider beowulf 'nonfiction' ;).
Just the poem, not the movie.
The movie didn't do much for the reputation of the poem, that's for sure.
But I've never met a real man who didn't care much for Beowulf. I reckon it's possible, theoretically speaking, I've just never seen it myself.
By the by, Zach was right. I should have put Beowulf and that paragraph about Hemingway and Shakespeare under the fiction category but I wrote that as I thought of it and I reckon the medicine hasn't got me thinking straight right now. Least ways I can say that and have a fair to middlin excuse.
Truth is that for some reason in my mind I always consider real Literature (as opposed to just commercial stuff) as non-fiction, even though technically I know it ain't, and won't ever be. Even though I know Shakespeare's Henry the Fifth didn't bear much real resemblance to the real Henry in my mind, when I read Shakespeare his Henry is equally as real a man as the real Henry to me. If that figures for ya. I reckon in my mind that's what separates real literature from just any ole fiction. With literature not only do you say that person could have existed, or that thing might have happened, you say to yourself if it didn't happen like that then it sure should have. And if a fella like that never walked or breathed then he sure could have, or should have.
And in a way I sometimes wonder if that's not one of the purposes of real literature.
To give folks a sort of model of heroism and accomplishment that they could achieve if they really tried.
Don't wanna go too far with that since a lot of characters in literature are real bastards and sonsabitches, and like in real life, none are perfect.
But every now and again you run across a Beowulf, or a little touch of Harry in the night, or a Natty Bumppo, and in their own way, or at least in some ways, they are every bit as admirable as real people.
And so sometimes I mix em up that way without thinking much about it.
"Eat food."
I understood instantly what he meant. I didn't even need to read the rest. That's making your opening line work for you!
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.