Reading Freely

From the Broke and the Bookish:

May 24: Top Ten Books You Lied About (lied about reading, lied about NOT reading, lied about liking/disliking, etc….dish your dirty secrets!!)

1. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel DeFoe and 2. Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne.

Crusoe? Read it? Sure! You bet! I even got in trouble with my father because I read it while walking down the street. ..only it was a Great Illustrated Classics version, for children, with lots of pictures. I checked it out in high school to read it proper, but I never got around to it. I will, though.

3. Peasants, Rebels, Women, and Outcastes: the Underside of Modern Japan, Mikiso Hane;  4 The Peoples of the British Isles: from Prehistoric Times to 1688, Standford E. Lehmberg; 5. A Modern History of Japan; Andrew Gordon; and 6. Victorian America, Thomas J. Schlereth.


These were all books which I was supposed to have read in class, but didn’t…mostly. That is, I’d do the assigned readings for the first few weeks of the semester, then start missing every other one, and by the end of the semester not realize how incredibly behind I am.  I never endured any penalties for this because I listened attentively in lectures. I passed my English History Since Elizabeth and Renaissance and Reformation classes without even buying the books, because I had to save costs those semesters.

7. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Yes, I read it. And I made complimentary noises at it, because it’s a Classic and it’s hard to make hissy noises at Classics unless they really deserve it. But truth be told…


…I didn’t really enjoy it. 

8. The Ascent of Science, Brian Silver
This is an excellent book. The first part of it changed the way I viewed the world. I’ve never finished it, but I think I’ve commented on it here twice.  I keep meaning to go back and finish climbing the mountain, but it hasn’t quite happened yet.

9. Something by Faulker
My English composition instructor favored southern literature and relished the idea of springing Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner on we naive youths fresh from high school. Faulker’s stream-of-consciousness approach, and the general weirdness of southern gothic novels in general,  did not strike a chord with me — and so I forgot or didn’t bother to read one of his works for our final exam,  one which involved a creepy house and a dead person. I was excused from taking the exam, though, by my instructor: she said that based on the term’s coursework, I was in excellent shape.

You’d better believe that was a gift horse I didn’t look in the mouth!

10. Something Related to Martin Guerre
My favorite professor’s approach to Historical Methodology involved class debates. Near the middle of term we were to watch a movie based on The Return of Martin Guerre over a course of two weeks, during which time we were to read articles defending or attacking the book’s scholarship. We were sorted into teams and would debate the merits of the work following the movie. I thought he meant the class following the movie sessions. I didn’t realize we were having the debate immediately after the movie,  so I came to class with nothing more than a bottle of water and some pretzels to enjoy during the movie. I hadn’t even read the articles my side was supposed to cover,  and to this day I have no idea what position we were to have taken.  Normally active in class discussion, I retreated into the background like a snake, murmuring assent and nodding gravely during our discussion but contributing nothing.   I felt like such a creep!   At the end of term we did a similar project, a debate about the merits of the United States’ decision to attack Japan with nuclear bombs,  and there I applied myself properly and even steered our group’s discussion. I hope that makes up for my previous parasitism.

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Despite what this post may lead you to believe, I really am a serious student!

This week, the Broke and the Bookish are covering…Top Ten Miner Characters!

1. Des, Darth Bane: Path of Destruction (Drew Karpyshyn)

It’s a hard life being an abused miner’s son, forever trying to work off your father’s debt  and getting nowhere. But when he kills a man in self-defense and joins the armies of the Sith to escape, Des’ path changes completely, and —

…oh. Whoops!

*cough*

1. Athena (Percy Jackson series, Rick Riordian)

Although the mother of one of the series’ lead characters, Athena doesn’t make many appearances beyond glowering at Percy because he’s getting her daughter into trouble. She intimates that foul things will befall him if Annabeth is hurt.  But I like the goddess Athena in general, so I looked forward to her every (marginal) scene. She stands for wisdom, justice, and civilization in general, so she’s hard not to appreciate that. Add the influence of her patron city Athens upon history, and the fact that she’s a lady-of-war, and you’ve got a deity worth reading about.

2. Young Mister Leach, The Sea Wolf. Jack London.

I haven’t actually finished The Sea Wolf, but barring supernatural intervention I’m sure Mr. Leach’s time has passed. Mr. Leach is a boy, perhaps one on the cusp of adolescence. He signs on the sealing schooner Ghost as a cabin boy, not realizing what a tyrannous and brutal monster its captain is. While all the grown men he ships with cower in fear of the ship’s master, Leach stands trembling in anger and defiance, refusing to submit — displaying the manly courage that the narrator, despite his age and size, yet lacks.

3. Fred, A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens.

Fred is Ebeneezer Scrooge’s nephew, the only child of his beloved sister Fran. Fred — Scrooge grudgingly admits — reminds him much of Fran, in kindly temperament and cheerful disposition. Fred cajoles his uncle to find the meaning in the season, and refuses to regard his grumpy uncle with anything less than affection…even though Scrooge is often insulting toward him.

4. Professor Binns, Harry Potter series.
As a student of history, the all-too-brief mentions of Harry’s history classes always intrigued me, as did the idea of a professor who was a ghost. Pity he made the subject dull for his listeners, though.

5. Mr. Bush, Horatio Hornblower. C.S. Forester

In the first three Captain Hornblower stories, Bush serves as Hornblower’s faithful first lieutenant, though later stories indicated that the two gentlemen had a storied earlier career when they were both lieutenants. The books’ version of Mr. Bush and the movies’ vary a bit in personality (the movies are all set during their earlier days), but I like them both the same. Every time Lieutenant, then Captain Bush appeared by Hornblower’s side I smiled with inexplicable pleasure.

6.Two-Bit, The Outsiders. S.E. Hinton
Two-Bit is one of the most memorable characters in Hinton’s novels for me, though I don’t know if my mental impression of him fits with that which she put forth in fiction. I see a man with luxurious, frizzy red sideburns and a purple-flannel shirt.  Two-Bit is notable for his charm and theatric talents: at the novel’s midpoint, he breaks the tension by going into an act that reminds me of “Gee, Officer Krupke” from West Side Story.

7. The Turtle, The Grapes of Wrath. John Steinbeck.
Remember reading The Grapes of Wrath and witnessing Steinbeck cut away from the action every chapter or so to follow a turtle walking up the highway?   There aren’t many scenes I remember from the book, but that’s one of them.

8.Polly Espey, “Love is a Fallacy”. Max Shulman
This short story is one of my favorites from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Essentially, Dobie teaches her to think logically, in hopes of turning her into an intellectual giant worthy of his romantic affection, and she turns it against him.

9. Lucien Wilbanks, multiple John Grisham novels. (A Time to Kill, The Last Juror)
Wilbanks is an interesting character. If I recall correctly, he served as an iconoclastic mentor in Grisham’s original work, but in The Last Juror — set in the seventies — cast him in a more despicable, almost villainous light.

10. Nova Stihl, Death Star. Michael Reaves.

Death Star is the story of A New Hope from the viewpoint of soldiers and civilians aboard the Death Star, and Stihl is one of the more interesting characters in the varied cast. He’s a student of philosophy — the kind who would be studying Stoicism or Zen Buddhism were this novel set in our universe. He’s such an interesting character that I’d like to see more of him.