Book Reviews

Takeaway: Society has a responsibility for its own maintenance.

Unlike most of the rest of the world, I did not read Fahrenheit 451 in high school.  (I didn’t read most books that people seem to have read in high school.)

The story is set in the near future (written in 1953, but still feels near future.)  Guy Montag is a fireman.  In a world where all the homes are fireproof, it is firemen’s jobs to set fires, not put them out.  When people are found to have illegal books, it is the firemen’s job to burn the houses including the books after the people have been arrested.

After Guy meets and begins a friendship with 17 year old free thinking Clarisse, he starts questioning his life. Eventually he steals some of the books he is supposed to be burning and reads them.  He starts questioning society and why no one reads or remembers.  (Part of the subtext is that there is always noise and video and pictures so that people no longer want to read.)

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The essay, in which a writer has ample space–but not too much–to meander across seemingly unrelated topics before eventually drawing them together with whatever connection initially struck him, is a wonderful medium full of rich opportunity for reflection. Alan Jacobs is one of my favorite writers, and he is at his best when writing essays. Jacobs is the kind of writer and thinker who always makes me feel smarter, more contemplative, and broader-minded than I was before I picked him up. He does this as a professional academic, but without sounding like one. His tastes range from the modern “penny dreadful” to the high forms of ancient literature–and, to his credit, unabashedly so. His thoughts are as profound as they are genuine and unpretentious. And this collection was glorious.

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In an alternate version of the sixteenth century the world is flat, its outer edges still unexplored. An ambitious alchemist, a boundary-pushing doctor and his daughter, a ship-load of Protestant refugees, and some stowaway mythical creatures set sail for the legendary island of Horizon on the outer rim of the earth. Some are looking for treasure, others for religious freedom, and still others for immortality. They are pursued by a Roman Catholic inquisitor (persecutor) and representatives from the British crown who want to ensure the treasure returns to England.

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Summary: A comparison of the difference in storyline between Ender’s Game and Ender’s Game Alive.

After I listened to Ender’s Game Alive last week (a radio-styled audio drama) I decided to re-read Ender’s Game in print.

Ender’s Game is a story that has had lots of versions.  It was originally a short story.  Then Card expanded it into a full length book.  Then Card revised it to the ‘Author’s Definitive Version’.  And now there is Ender’s Game Alive and the Ender’s Game movie.

In addition there have been a number of short stories that have expanded on scenes from the book or provided background.  There is a whole book that was falls between the last two chapters of Ender’s Game and a whole series that starts by telling this same story from a different character’s perspective.

So when I listened to Ender’s Game Alive and commented on my disappointment with the abridgement I got a little push back.  I was going to re-read Ender’s Game anyway.  But I read it with an eye to see the places that were handled differently.

Having read both within a couple days of each other, I agree, Ender’s Game Alive is really a different version of the story more than an abridgement.  But I stand by the fact that I think it does not give enough character development to Ender.  (Stop reading now if you don’t want any spoilers.)

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This book delivers on a fascinating concept: find real-world people who embody the virtues and vices of the protagonists and villains in Ayn Rand’s novels. It’s a creative angle to look at the lives of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Milton Friedman, Barney Frank, and others through the lens of Ayn Rand’s characters and philosophy. Some of the descriptions lack depth–for example, I understood that the U.S. Government went after Bill Gates for supposed antitrust issues, and the book is obviously defending Gates, but I never got a clear grasp of what the government’s argument was, specifically.

The stories of the Randian heroes (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Milton Friedman, TJ Rodgers, and John Allison) were interesting, but the villains really delivered the best reading. The chapter on Paul Krugman was the most emotional, as it involved Krugman’s personal demonization of the author. I worried that the account might be less than objective, but I know enough about Krugman from other sources that I don’t doubt he’s the dirtbag the book portrays him as.

The architects of the recent housing market meltdown (and subsequent wrecking ball into the general economy), Barney Frank on the government side and Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide) on the business side, are portrayed as arrogant and greedy collectivists that align perfectly with Rand’s worst villians. The authors trace in great detail how Frank’s pursuit of increased homeownership and the subsequent availability of billions in government-backed funds created a huge opportunity for Countrywide to exploit for massive profit, processing thousands of risky sub-prime mortgages and then selling them to the government.

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Short Review: I wanted to like it more than I did. But not nearly as bad as many of the reviews.

Allegiant is the highly anticipated third book in dystopian trilogy.  Starting with Insurgent and then Divergent, Allegiant tells the story of a post-apocalyptic Chicago.

Five factions (essentially small tribal groups) formerly to ruled the city.  But after Tris and Four released a video at the end of the last book, everyone realizes there is something outside the border, something that is influencing how the factions work.

Tris and Tobias leave the city as part of a larger group to find out what is outside the city.

Early reviews of Allegiant have not been good.  As I started writing this review on Friday the 25th, just 3 days after it was released there are already 746 reviews on Amazon, 300 of them are 1 star reviews. (Monday morning the 28th, 6 days after released there were 1311 reviews with only 502 of them being 4 or 5 stars.) The fans that have been waiting more than 18 months for this third installment are not happy.

I think some of the criticism is valid.  The beginning was a bit rough.  It took me a good quarter of the book to get into the real groove of the story and be invested in the characters again.

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