A Book I Just Read

Hard to put down.  If you have seen the excellent film Patton, you'll love the book.  It seems to me to follow the structure of the film (though I have no idea whether that was the intention) and expand upon it, though it treats Montgomery and Rommel equally with Patton.

A Book I Just Finished: Silence

I just finished listening to this book.  The Audible version has an excellent narrator.  For anyone who enjoys listening to books, I'd certainly recommend the audio version.   It gives nothing away to say that it's a very powerful and interesting book on the silence of God, apostasy, and the figure of Judas (strong foreshadowing of all this at the beginning of the novel as well as in the forward by Martin Scorsese.)  But I'm not sure what to make of it and intend to read some reviews about it and talk to others who have read it.  Spoilers below the fold.

"Men Are Now Dwarfs"

In the past men were handsome and great (now they are children and dwarfs), but this is merely one of the many facts that demonstrate the disaster of an aging world.  The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in decline, the whole world walks on its head, blind men lead others equally blind and cause them to plunge into the abyss, birds leave the next before they can fly, the jackass plays the lyre, oxen dance.  Mary no longer loves the contemplative life and Martha no longer loves the active life, Leah is sterile, Rachel has a carnal eye, Cato visits brothels.  Everything is diverted from its proper course.          --Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose, p. 15

A Book I Just Read

Very well written and researched

Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much passion, controversy, and curiosity as Leon Trotsky. Trotsky was that rare combination of the man of ideas and the man of action. His role in history—his epic rise and fall, his fiery persona, his violent end in Mexico in August 1940—holds a fascination that transcends the history of the Russian Revolution. Based on extensive firsthand research, this groundbreaking biography examines Trotsky's remarkable life from the perspective of his last exile in Mexico.

Bertrand M. Patenaude masterfully interweaves the story of Trotsky's final years in Mexico with flashbacks to pivotal episodes in his career as a young Marxist, revolutionary hero, Red Army chief, Bolshevik leader, outcast from Stalin's USSR, and ultimately heretic of the Kremlin, targeted for assassination by its secret police. He vividly recounts the contentious Dewey Commission hearings and the passionate debates among liberals and Communists in the United States and Europe over the Moscow Trials and the charges made against Trotsky.

Drawing on Trotsky's private correspondence and diaries, as well as the testimonies of his American bodyguards and secretaries, Patenaude sheds new light on Trotsky's tumultuous friendship with painter Diego Rivera; his affair with Rivera's wife, Frida Kahlo; and his torment as his family and comrades became victims of the Great Terror. Patenaude also turns to KGB files to document Stalin's efforts to eliminate the man he considered his nemesis—including a failed commando raid on Trotsky's home three months before his death.

Gripping and tragic, Trotsky brilliantly illuminates the fateful and dramatic life of one of history's most captivating and important figures.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

I just finished this short novel by John le Carre, the one that put him on the spy novelist map.  le Carre was himself a British spy during the Cold War.  Most of the novel takes place in Germany and in England.  le Carre has deep insight into the human condition and moral psychology, though his view seems rather bleak.  There is also a bit of social commentary on the U.S.S.R as well.

Excerpt (no spoilers):

   "Why don't you eat?" the [communist] woman asked again.  "It's all over now."  She said this without compassion, as if the girl were a fool not to eat when the food was there.
   "I'm not hungry."
The wardress shrugged: "You may have a long journey," she observed, "and not much the other end."
   "What do you mean?"
   "The workers are starving in England," she declared complacently. "The capitalists let them starve."
   Liz thought of saying something but there seemed no point.  Besides, she wanted to know; she had to know, and this woman could tell her.
   "What is this place?"
   "Don't you know?" the wardress laughed. "You should ask them over there," she nodded towards the window.  "They can tell you what it is."
   "Who are they?"
   "Prisoners."
   "What kind of prisoners?"
   "Enemies of the state," she replied promptly. "Spies, agitators."
   "How do you know they are spies?"
   "The Party knows.  The Party knows more about people than they know themselves.  Haven't you been told that?"  The wardress looked at her, shook her head and observed, "The English!  The rich have eaten your future and your poor have given them the food--that's what's happened to the English."
   "Who told you that?"
   The woman smiled and said nothing.  She seemed pleased with herself.
   "And this prison is for spies?" Liz persisted.
   "It is a prison for those who fail to recognise Socialist reality; for those who think they have the right to err; for those who slow down the march.  Traitors," she concluded briefly.
   "But what have they done?"
   "We cannot build Communism without doing away with individualism.  You cannot plan a great building if some swine builds his sty on your site."
Liz [herself a communist in England] looked at her in astonishment.
   "Who told you this?"
   "I am Commissar here," she said proudly, "I work in the prison."
   "You are very clever," Liz observed, approaching her.
   "I am a worker," the woman replied acidly. "The concept of brain workers as a higher category must be destroyed.  There are no categories, only workers; no antithesis between physical and mental labour.  Haven't you read Lenin?"

Columbine

In finishing Dave Cullen's very well written, "Columbine," I am reminded of something that seems to me true: there are no complete explanations for actions which are evil.  One chooses an evil action if and only if one chooses a lesser good over a greater and there can be no complete explanation for why one would do such a thing.  In the end, the will wills because it wills.

From the "basement tapes":

Dylan: "Hey mom. Gotta go. It's about a half an hour before our little judgment day. I just wanted to apologize to you guys for any crap this might instigate as far as (inaudible) or something. Just know I'm going to a better place. I didn't like life too much and I know I'll be happy wherever the fuck I go. So I'm gone. Good-bye. Reb..."
Eric: "Yea... Everyone I love, I'm really sorry about all this. I know my mom and dad will be just like.. just fucking shocked beyond belief. I'm sorry, all right. I can't help it."
Dylan: (interrupts) "We did what we had to do."
Eric: "Morris, Nate, if you guys live, I want you guys to have whatever you want from my room and the computer room."

Eccentric Art

Simon and Garfunkel's Garfunkel has a spot on his website that records every book he's read in the last 44 years.  Not a bad list.  He claims in this interview, "Notice it's heavy sh*t.  It's not fluff."  I'll let you be the judge of that.
I also never realized that he does math in his spare time.

A Book I Just Read

Very entertaining and well written.  Josh recounts his year preparing for the U.S. memory competition, his interviews with competitors and scientists having to do with memory, and gives the reader a brief history of memorization in education.  If you want to learn how to profoundly increase your memory, this is a good book with which to start.  It should be required reading for people in the profession of educating children, even better, the classics he mentions which lay out the fascinating memory techniques almost all of us have forgotten.

A Book I Just Finished

This is the third volume in Churchill's six volume series on WWII.  After slugging my way through 1700 pages or so of the series, I had put this one down a couple years ago.  I got it back out this past week and finished it today.  I hope to read volume IV before the end of summer.

A Book I Just Finished

I generally like Peter Kreeft. I think very well of him.  This book was...meh.  If I would've read it 20 years ago I think I would have been a lot more enthused.  It's a work of Christian apologetics and it's not bad in that regard.  It's probably geared towards an undergraduate or lay audience, so there wasn't much there for me to chew on.  In fact, I skimmed through parts as soon as I saw where it was heading.  I should add, also, that the title is misleading: It should have been called "Socrates meets liberal Christians who think they know more than they really do and he shows them why they are stupid."

Baptists Might Be Alright

From the book I mentioned in the previous post, I was amused by the following:

Busy as were Shukhov's hands, the frost nipped his fingers through the shabby mittens.  And it was piercing his left boot too.  His stamped his foot.  Thud, thud.  By now he needn't stoop to the wall, but he still had to bend his aching back for each block and each stoop of mortar.  "Hey, boys!" he pestered the men handling the blocks. "You'd better put them on the wall for me.  Heave 'em up here."  The captain would gladly have obliged but lacked the strength.  He wasn't used to the work.  But Alyosha [the Baptist] said, "All right, Ivan Denisovich.  Show me where to put them." You could count on Alyosha.  Did whatever was asked of him.  If everybody in the world was like that, Shukhov would have done likewise.  If a man asks for help, why not help him?  Those Baptists had something there.

A Book I Just Finished

It's about a single day in the life of a gulag prisoner in the Soviet era--just like the title suggests. Simple and short.  I enjoyed it.  What makes it powerful is Solzhenitsyn's way of making the utterly ordinary into the sublime and almost supernatural.  I have never before experienced the emotions associated with realizing the worth of a tiny crust of bread.

 

A Book I Just Finished

Fantastic true story of a trouble-maker turned Olympic athlete, WWII veteran, who is Unbroken.  Heroism, defeat, forgiveness, salvation, and horror on land and at sea.  It's all there.  Read it.

If you aren't going to read it, read this article on the man and the film to be.

My 10 (or 11) Most Formative Books

There's a 10 Most Influential Books meme going around in social media.  Thought I'd play along.  I'll narrow the selection down to the 10 that I have read cover to cover (as opposed, for instance, to books that were read to me as as kid).  There will also be many books that I think are objectively more important which I have read that do not make the list, books which, if I would have read them at a different time or in different circumstances would have made the list (Plato's Republic, for instance).

The order here is more or less chronological.  I'm sure I will leave books out that should be in the list.  Nonetheless, here goes: