Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is known by many to be an American classic. The novel, which takes place during the American Civil War, is about a family of a mother and four sisters. Because their family has fallen on hard times and their father is off fighting in the war, the story is about these young girls coping with poverty and the hardships of life with only each other and their mother there to guide them. Beloved by many, the novel can be seen as a comedy, romance, tragedy, and drama because the story contains aspects of a number of different genres and is based on real life.
All Old Users
Hobbit Lessons: A Map for Life’s Unexpected Journeys by Devin Brown
There is a lot of hidden wisdom in Tolkien’s writings, seldom explicit (he hated allegory) but usually simple and always profound. His stories are famous for being “Catholic” without being religious, per se. The worlds and plots he crafted are simply soaked in his worldview; they grew out of it organically. This is a good thing.
“Hobbit Lessons” attempts to mine and condense Tolkien’s wisdom found in The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings. Unfortunately, most of the insights and lessons seemed strained, forced and trite–even banal at times. I felt like one could easily extrapolate the same ideas from many other works of fiction with little editing. Obviously, that is impossible to avoid entirely (Solomon was right that there is nothing new under the sun), but this book did so to the point where the insights hardly felt uniquely tied to the source material. In the places where the analysis and application were the strongest, I had encountered them elsewhere. Methinks publishing the book made good business sense due to the concurrent films, but I found it underwhelming.
Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work by Melissa Gira Grant
Summary: A jungle of confused polemics.
I’m not exactly sure who the author is trying to convince in this short book. She claims to want to argue that sex work (a broad category that covers prostitution, stripping, pornography, and anything else in the skin trade) is a perfectly legitimate moral activity. Unfortunately, most of the time she simply assumes what she’s trying to prove and then moves on to secondary arguments that simply aren’t controversial if the reader grants her premises.
Of course the solution to social discrimination and inconsistent enforcement of the laws against prostitutes would be legalization–that is, assuming sex work is truly just like any other banal activity, economic or otherwise, such as nursing nanny work, hair braiding or babysitting. She makes these comparisons often, yet there’s little content here to actually explain why sex work isn’t immoral, let alone why it shouldn’t be treated like any other economic act–apart from pragmatic soundbites unlikely to gain a hearing with any but those who already share her worldview.
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (Book & Movie Review)
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden is a fictional account of the life of a successful geisha in Gion, Japan during the early to mid 1950s. Golden wrote this novel after interviewing Mineko Iwasaki, who is said to be the most famous geisha in Japan until her early retirement at the age of 29. The story tells of how a girl named Chiyo, who began with very humble beginnings as a poor fisherman’s daughter, became an honored and successful geisha in Japan. Not too many years after the girl became a geisha and acquired her geisha name, Sayuri, World War II broke out and the geisha district of Gion was closed down only to be opened again after the war ended. More importantly, the novel tells of the romantic feelings that motivated every of Chiyo’s moves from the moment that she met the Chairman to her death.
The story of this geisha is a very compelling one and left me with the feeling that when entering a geisha district of Japan that one is transported into the past or at the very least into a different world that follows a different set of rules. Men could leave their wives and come enjoy a guilt-free night in the company of another woman, which could occasionally lead to more. A geisha is not a prostitute but seen as an artist. Her skills include conversation, joke telling, game playing, dancing, instrument playing, singing and all while being a master of seduction. Similar to perhaps a cruise ship director or a hibachi chef, when in their company you may play games or receive a meal all while being entertained by your host (That’s the best comparison I can think of. Please leave a comment if you can think of a better one).
Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue
Reposting this review because Room is the Kindle Daily Deal on Jan 5 and on sale for $2.99 for kindle. (Only on sale on Jan 5).
Rating: 4 Stars
Imagine your mother was kidnapped before you were born and was forced to live as a prisoner in an 11 x 11 ft shed (the “Room”). Imagine that you were born in the Room and had never seen the world beyond its four walls. Finally, imagine at the age of 5 you are asked to explain what life is like living in the Room. That is what this book is about.
It is written from the perspective of a 5 year old, which makes the storytelling so compelling. Kids already have a difficult time understanding certain nuances and details in life that we adults take for granted. But even more so for Jack, who only knows the outside world from what he sees on TV and what Old Nick, his mother’s captor, brings to them for “Sundaytreat.” Here’s the first line from the book:
Empire of Bones by ND Wilson (Ashtown Burials #3)
Empire of Bones is the third and final book in the Ashtown Burials series, and it’s best one. Wilson does a superb job of sourcing his villains and protagonists from classic literature and poetry, ancient history and mythology. It lends an immediacy and real-world feel the novel, like it all could be true and we common folk simply haven’t had visibility to the supernatural undercurrents swirling through our world history.
Teenager Cyrus Smith is an Explorer and card-carrying member of the ancient Order of Brendan. The Order is under threat from various forces (contemporary traitors and ancient evil powers alike), and the centuries-old battle threatens to spill over decisively into the broader geopolitical theater. With book 3, a lot of questions are finally answered and plot lines resolved, making it the fastest-paced and most emotionally satisfying of the series.
Slumdog Millionaire By Vikas Swarup (Book and Movie Review)
The book, Slumdog Millionaire, written by Vikas Swarup was previously published as Q and A. With the success of the movie, the book was re-published under the title that was used for the movie. The book is about an Indian boy who has grown up on the streets of India. This boy goes on to a quiz show where, to the astonishment of most everyone around him, he is able to answer the questions correctly based on his life experiences.
We find Ram in jail because he has been arrested for cheating on the game show. It is assumed that he cheated because how could a boy from the streets possibly know anything. Ram states that as children growing up on the streets that “œthe brain is not something we are permitted to use.” Ram is saved from torture by his lawyer to whom he then spends the rest of the book explaining how he knew all of the answers to the questions.
Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson (Reconers #1)
Summary: Good, but not quite up to par with the rest of Sanderson’s impressive body of work.
It’s the near future. The United States is fractured into mini city-states run by competing Epics–people who 10 years ago mysteriously gained super-human powers (in the vein of the X-Men comics). Nobody knows how or why this happened. The Epics have taken control over modern civilization and dominate the rest of the population. Steelheart is one of the most powerful Epics in the world, and he rules Newcago (Chicago) with an iron fist. He is seemingly invincible to all attacks, but every Epic has a weakness. Naturally they guard their secrets very closely.
Buried Alive: The Startling, Untold Story About Neanderthal Man by Jack Cuozzo
The mainstream narrative of evolutionary science is that man developed slowly, progressively, linearly””over hundreds of thousands of years, ever advancing in health, intelligence, life expectancy, etc. Thus, compared to the advanced modern specimens, Neanderthal man had a shorter life span, a more primitive mind and body, and a lower capacity for culture and civilization. He was altogether inferior to modern man.
In the late 70s and 80s, Dr. Jack Cuozzo was granted unprecedented access to the world-famous Neanderthal skulls in a few European museums, where he took comprehensive scans using new x-ray technology developed by a fellow scientist. With the eye of an experienced dentist, Cuozzo began analyzing the physical evidence for ancient man. As a creationist and a Christian, Cuozzo was not committed to the ideological biases and philosophical blind spots that plague most of modern science. He began to notice indicators in the scientific record that appeared to conflict with the evolutionary paradigm. Many anthropologists and dental experts simply ignored pieces of evidence that contradicted mainstream thought””and in some cases, Cuozzo charges, they actually falsified data and bone layouts.
Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons by Walter Lord
During World War II, the unexpected heroes of the Pacific front were the Coastwatchers in the Solomon Islands, located off the northeast coast of Australia. These non-military volunteers–“government officials, plantation managers, gold miners, a department store buyer, a pub keeper, an accountant, a rancher”–were tasked with monitoring Japanese activity and reporting useful data to the Allies. They lived discreetly behind enemy lines, dealing with natives of ever-changing loyalties, constantly moving their cumbersome radio equipment around the islands to stay one step ahead of the Japanese, rescuing and caring for downed Allied pilots, and providing a steady stream of valuable geographic data about the islands to the commanders.