Monthly Archives: December 2009

My Reading List for 2010

Entertainment / Arts

I can hear the question now: “What kind of guy puts The Iliad and War and Peace on a list of things to read for fun?” Well, me. I think that reading things by authors I’ve never read before, people that take positions I haven’t heard of before or don’t agree with, or works that are challenging, will teach me something. And learning is fun.

My entire list for 2010 is at Goodreads. I’ve highlighted a few below. I don’t expect to read all 34 books on the Goodreads list necessarily, but there is the chance.

The Iliad by Homer [done 1/11], 750BC, trans. by Alexander Pope, 704 pages. A recent NPR story kindled my interest in this work. I’m looking forward to it.

The Oxford History of the Classical World by Boardman, Griffin, and Murray, 1986, 882 pages. It covers ancient Greece and Rome up through the fall of the Roman empire.

The Fires of Heaven (Wheel of Time #5) by Robert Jordan, 1994, 912 pages [done 9/2010]. I’ve read books 1 through 4 already, and would like to continue on the series.

War and Peace by Lev “Leo” Nikolayevich Tolstoy, 1869, 1392 pages. Been on my list for way too long. Time to get to it. Haven’t read anything by Tolstoy before.

The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder, 1972, 2nd ed., 270 pages. Aims to dispel the notion of Jesus as apolitical.

An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin, 1996, 496 pages. Picked this up at Powell’s in Portland on a whim, and it’s about time I get to it.

The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church by Gregory A. Boyd, 2007, 224 pages. An argument that the American evangelical church allowed itself to be co-opted by the political right (and some on the left) and argues this is harmful to the church. Also challenges the notion that America ever was “a Christian nation.”

Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire, by Jerome Carcopino, 2003, 368 pages. I’ve always been fascinated with how things were “on the ground” rather than at the perspective of generals and kings, and this promises to be interesting.

Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women: Case Issues in Biblical Interpretation (Conrad Grebel Lectures) by Willard M. Swartley, 1983, 368 pages. Looking at how people have argued from different Biblical perspectives about various issues over the years.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, 1927, 252 pages. I can’t believe I’ve never read Woolf before. Yet another one I’m really looking forward to.

Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1922, 319 pages. Per Goodreads: “This book of five confessional essays from the 1930s follows Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda from the height of their celebrity as the darlings of the 1920s to years of rapid decline leading to the self-proclaimed ‘Crack Up’ in 1936.”

Ulysses by James Joyce, 1922 (1961 unabridged version), 783 pages.

The Future of Faith by Harvey Cox, 2009, 256 pages. [done 3/2010] Per Goodreads, “Cox explains why Christian beliefs and dogma are giving way to new grassroots movements rooted in social justice and spiritual experience.” Heard about this one in an interview with Diane Rehm.

Being There by Jerzy Kosiński, 1970, 128 pages.

Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary by Marcus Borg, 2006, 352 pages. Whether or not you agree with Borg, this has got to be a thought-provoking title.

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, 1844, 640 pages.

The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura, 1906, 154 pages. Per Goodreads: “In 1906 in turn-of-the century Boston, a small, esoteric book about tea was written with the intention of being read aloud in the famous salon of Isabella Gardner. It was authored by Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese philosopher, art expert, and curator. Little known at the time, Kakuzo would emerge as one of the great thinkers of the early 20th century, a genius who was insightful, witty—and greatly responsible for bridging Western and Eastern cultures. Nearly a century later, Kakuzo’s The Book of Tea is still beloved the world over. Interwoven with a rich history of tea and its place in Japanese society is poignant commentary on Eastern culture and our ongoing fascination with it, as well as illuminating essays on art, spirituality, poetry, and more.”

More of my list is at Goodreads.

Tunnels and Slippers

Family

“Dad! Shall we play tunnels and slippers?”

If you spend much time in our house, chances are you’ll hear Jacob, our 3-year-old, ask me that question. It might sound a bit mysterious, but in 3-year-old logic, it totally works.

One day, Jacob and I accidentally invented “tunnels”. I would sit on the couch, the footstool a foot or two away, with my legs on it. Jacob started crawling underneath the resulting “tunnel”, then got excited about crawling on top of it, crashing down off of it, or slowly sliding down. Sometimes I would take one leg off, and he would “fix” the tunnel. Afterwards, he’d excitedly tell me, “Dad! I fixed the tunnel all by myself!”

This being winter, I usually wear slippers around the house to keep my feet warm. Jacob steadfastly refuses to wear anything but bare feet, maintaining his feet are warm when asked.

One day while we were playing tunnels, Jacob started trying to steal my slipper. I defended it by using my other foot to tickle him. He eventually got it, much to his delight. Then he’d try to get the other slipper. If you were to listen to a CD of this, you’d hear a frenzy of cackling, laughter from both of us, and eventual shrieks of delight as he steals the second slipper.

At this point, what’s a 3-year-old to do with two ill-gotten slippers? Why, put them on and try to run off with them, of course! So Jacob puts them on, and if I am too slow trying to recover them, will helpfully prompt me with “Shall you get the slippers back?” When I stand up, he’ll shriek, and waddle off at top speed — which isn’t that fast, considering he’s wearing slippers that won’t fit his feet for another 15 years.

Eventually I will make a big show of having very cold feet and wanting my slippers back. He will laugh in delight, and continue trying to escape. Eventually I’ll catch him, lift him up high, and shake his legs until the slippers fall off. Then it’s a mad dash to see which one of us will get them back on first. If I do, then it’s back to the couch for more tunnels and slippers.

So there you have it: tunnels and slippers.

Interestingly, I asked Jacob the other day if he wanted to wear HIS slippers. He predictably said no. I pointed out that if he wears his, he’d be just like me. He said, “Here they are. Shall you help me put them on?” I did. He walked around proudly. I asked him if his feet were warm. Yes, they were, he said. “So you won’t need to steal my slippers anymore?” A brief look of panic crept across his face! I felt bad, until he replied with, “No, my feet still VERY VERY cold, dad! Shall we play tunnels and slippers right now?”

Review: Those new-fangled paper books

Uncategorized

Everyone seems to be familiar with ebooks these days. I own a Kindle 2, and of course we’ve spent weeks hearing how great the Nook will be, then weeks hearing how terrible it turned out to be. But nobody seems to be casting an eye back towards paper, so I thought I’d rectify that here, especially since paper books have some serious stability issues that are often overlooked!

Before I begin, I feel it wise to offer this hint to the reader: this review should not be taken too literally. If you have an uncontrollable urge to heave a volume of the Oxford English Dictionary at me as if I am some European prime minister, please plant your tongue more firmly in your cheek and begin again.

Today I picked up a paper book to read just for fun — The Happiest Days of Our Lives by Wil Wheaton. Long-time (since this spring!) Kindle user that I am, I immediately noticed the dashing use of color on its front cover, but when I opened it, I was disappointed that I couldn’t scale the font size down from the default. It seems that paper books have only one font option — what are all these Kindle forum posters complaining about with its six sizes of a single font?

On the very first page, I encountered a word I wasn’t familiar with (Namaste). I thought I knew what it meant from the context clues, and even had the thought that on the Kindle, I could just highlight it and confirm my guess. But my paper dictionary was in the basement, so I didn’t bother looking it up until I wrote this post. (My hunch was reasonably correct.)

Interface-wise, the paper book is solid, and crashes, lockups, or other malfunctions are rare. I have, however, noted severe stability problems when attempting to read outdoors, especially when it’s windy (which, since I live in Kansas, is pretty much always). Pages start turning themselves, even without me making the “turn page” gesture. Sometimes the book will even lose its memory of my last page read. This is rather annoying, and might even involve a lengthy search for a suitable temporary replacement bookmark. Also, I haven’t tried it, but I suspect that the trick of putting a Kindle in a ziplock bag to read at the beach or in the tub without risk of getting it wet would be impractical with a paper book.

Paper does have its advantages. For one, it’s faster to flip rapidly through pages on paper than on an ebook reader. If you know roughly where in the book something was written, but not the precise wording, searching can be faster on paper. On the other had, if you are looking for a particular word or phrase, the ebook reader may win hands-down, especially if the paper book has no index.

Paper is so stable that some would argue that the extreme impracticality of making good backups isn’t really a problem at all. But on the other hand, paper books degrade slightly each time they are used, and this condition can be aggravated by placement in bags for transport. Eventually, they will wear out. If my Kindle wears out, I can always restore David Copperfield from my backup copy to a new one. If my printed edition (all two volumes) of it wear out, then I have to hope that the used bookstore will still sell me another one for $10. Otherwise I’d have to either drive 45 miles to find one for sale, attempt to deal with the DRM for paper books at a library, or wait a couple of days for Amazon to get it to my door. A fire or flood could be devastating.

Paper books also have some advantages for showing photos; no ebook reader is close to the size and resolution of glossy paper photos books in a reasonable price.

The contrast on most paper books is better than that of my Kindle, but some older ones are actually worse, smell dusty, and suffer from occasional display corruption as bits of them actually break off of the book device.

As to cost, it is a mixed bag. Out of copyright classics are free as ebooks from Project Gutenberg and the like, while still costing money on paper. I have found that the accuracy of some of these paper editions can be rather questionable — people have sometimes manually removed important bits of the story to save on printing costs, rather than let Google Books OCR mangle it for them automatically. On the other hand, used paper editions of more current works can be found for a fraction of the cost of the new ebook edition — though you are often limited in selection of these bargains. But you can usually browse a paper book for a few minutes before buying it, which is rarely available for an ebook.

What’s more, libraries might let you borrow paper books for free. But you often have to expel greenhouse gases to get to them, and then they enforce DRM on you — you only get to read it a certain amount of time before they start adding fees. You could easily wind up paying $2 if you keep it a week longer than you should have. With ebooks, of course, there is no free borrowing (and the Nook feature it too limited to count.) And you of course know that most libraries are run by the government, so they have your address. Trying to circumvent a library’s DRM could wind up involving the police, so you had best comply.

Making copies of a paper book is expensive and requires specialized equipment, even if you just want a copy for backup.

Compatibility problems with paper books are rare, and are usually found among readers with poor eyesight. A few works can be found in “large font editions,” but most can’t, so those readers are left needing expensive specialty magnifiers.

All in all, I prefer reading books on my Kindle, but still read on paper when that’s how I have a book.

Review: A Christmas Carol

Reviews,

I guess you can say that A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens has been a success. It was published in 1843 and has never been out of print since then. It’s spawned all manner of plays, films, adaptations, and spoofs. It’s been adapted at least twice by Disney, once featuring Mickey Mouse and another time featuring Jim Carey. We’re almost inundated with the story — I’m not sure how many ways I’ve seen it. Yet I had never read the original story by Dickens until just now.

And I must say, what a treat it was. Despite knowing the plot in advance, it was a very good read. The 19th century London setting was done well. It wasn’t some idealized London as is often portrayed in film adaptations. It had depth, as did the characters. Dickens’ Scrooge had a troubled childhood, the son of poor and apparently abusive parents. He turned to business, with which he was successful. Along the way, he lost sight of family, and really of his humanity in general, striving to be a richer and more successful businessman at the cost of all else.

How apropos this story is for us in the 21st century. Our large banks define success in terms of profits made for their shareholders, while adding more gotchas to the terms of the credit cards held by their customers. Our governments play geopolitical games over weapons, oil, and gas, while unwilling to sacrifice anything to prevent a climate disaster. Our politicians, even in the season of Christmas, turn a blind eye and a cold heart to the suffering of those that can’t afford health care for naught but political reasons, rather than trying their hardest to make a plan that will help them reality as soon as possible.

And what of us, the citizens of the 21st century? We consume ever flashier cars, houses, computers, and cellphones with data plans, while poverty intensifies across the globe in this economic downturn.

Well, count me among those many inspired and reminded by Dickens to be a more empathetic person, to remember how good even many of the poor in the West have it compared to other parts of the world, and to try to do more for others.

And that, perhaps, is part of the genius of Dickens. He inspired a complete change of how people looked at Christmas in his time. And his work is no less relevant today; perhaps it hits even closer to home these days. He invites us to carefully consider the question: what does it mean to achieve success in life? And he deftly illustrates that “wealth” is wrong answer. Here’s hoping that many others will also learn a small bit about life from Dickens.

How to find it:

A Christmas Carol is available for free from Project Gutenberg for reading online, printing, or reading on an ebook reader such as the Kindle.

Be careful when buying printed editions. Many have been abridged or “improved for a modern audience”, and thus lose a lot of the quality of the original. I found at least one edition that looks true to the original; I’m sure there are others.

[This review also posted to Goodreads]