Recent Books

Before I get to the books ... Tonight my wife said something she thought she'd never say: "Please do a blog post." What prompted this? The hideous photo of me dressed up for Halloween. I must admit, while it seemed funny at the time, post-Halloween it's disturbing. My chubby, pasty, hairy gut is an affront to all that is good and decent. (I can't believe I didn't get razzed in the comments for it.) The purpose of this post is to push the Halloween post down where it won't be seen.

Now to the books. I've read a few recently. Here are my reviews:

Founding Brothers - First a story. Last Fall I yearned for something new to read, so at lunch I stopped by a bookstore and asked a 50-something guy there what he recommended. Those of you who are more literary will probably view this as a rookie mistake. He showed me several books and I selected Founding Brothers. I immediately discovered this is not a light read. It's dense and precise. It's obvious the author knows this subject deeply and he works hard to craft each long sentence to convey the exact meaning and tone he intends. But this level of exactness is tiring and I put this book aside 4 times for other books. A less stubborn person would have dumped the book, but this book was my choice, and I paid money for it - not like some library loaner. So my pride compelled me to finish it. Well last week I finished it and I felt pleased I'd stuck with it. No, that's not true, I felt relieved to be done with it.
My twisted motivations aside, I'll try to give an impartial review. The author is obvious an expert in Revolutionary history. His ample command of language allows him to accurately convey his assembled picture of the scenes and the people involved. His insights into the events, motives, and personalities is fascinating. Consequently I gained a deeper understanding of a handful of key Revolutionary events. But the reading is slow going with long sentences filled with big words. Often I got to the end of a sentence only to realize I'd read the words but not soaked in the meaning, so I'd read it again. A good book, but it made me work and sometimes I resented that. Dug listened to the audiobook - that's the way to go as it would be a stimulating lecture.

Big Bang - From the title you'd expect this book to be a long, dry explanation of the big bang theory. But it's really a fascinating history of astronomy, cosmology, physics and other sciences that led to the theory of the big bang. I thoroughly enjoyed this book (disclaimer: I dig science), although the epilogue was a bit too philosophical. Also, some of the examples were not needed as the explanation was enough (but they are easy to skip).



The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Good writing, good story - I liked this book for what it is. Tough to do this kind of story without it being too sappy, sentimental, preachy - he mostly pulls it off. Some good ideas and food for thought.

We watched the made-for-TV movie based on this book with Jon Voight and it was pretty good.




The Book Thief - I liked the staccato writing style, the Nazi Germany setting and the unconventional 3rd person storytelling. Is kindness all that really matters in life? Possibly.

It was a freezer book for dug, and I agree with that.






Now I'm reading Angels And Demons. Everyone I asked liked it. So far it's a roller coaster ride like The Da Vinci Code. I'll finish it in a month - yeah, I'm a slow reader. I need to try some audiobooks for the commute, as dug and Mark have recommended.