This Week at the Library (28/2)

Posted on February 28, 2008 by smellincoffee

The History of the S.S. (G.S. Grabel)
Washington’s Secret War (Thomas Fleming)
The Trial of Madame Caillaux (Edward Berenson)
Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. (Christopher Hitchens)
How Few Remain (Harry Turtledove)
Naturalist (E. O. Wilson)
The Great War: American Front (Harry Turtledove)

The first book I read this week I found purely by accident. During a blackout a week or so ago, I walked to the university library, hoping that they had power. They did have emergency lights, so I walked upstairs and began to roam the shelves. I found myself in German history, and picked up a book entitled The History of the S.S., by G.S. Graber. The book is short — 212 pages — but thoroughly enjoyable, given the subject matter. Graber explores the S.S. — its creation, the men who ran it, and its demise. The S.S. constituted Hitler’s real power base. The “Schutzstaffel” grew from a protection detail (protection from the S.A, or stormtroopers) to a major organization in Nazi Germany. They oversaw the Holocaust (Rudolf Höß, the commandant of Auschwitz, held a high rank in the S.S) and some of the fighting on the eastern front, through the Waffen S.S., or “armed SS”.

While I knew a lot of the general information presented in this book (courtesy of my German history course and a historical interest in both World War 2 and Germany), I was still surprised by much of the information within. Graber offers miniature biographies of men like Hendrich Himmler to illustrate the disturbing fact that the S.S. were not madmen twisted by wretched childhood — they were ordinarily people who managed to twist their own minds. Graber’s book covers the SS from its inception to its dominance over all other Nazi organizations (I’ve read elsewhere that Himmler intended for the S.S to be a state within a state, with sovereignty in the east) to its demise. Graber also mentions the fascination many people in the United States have with the S.S. (and posits that “It may mean nothing, of course, but perhaps it helps to illustrate how a previous generation could have been entranced by the paraphernalia of the SS, its mystic signs, its banners, and ultimately its special mission.” (Page 212.) Were I to write a paper on the S.S., I think that The History of the S.S. would serve well as a key source.

The next book I read, Washington’s Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge, is by Thomas Fleming. As I wrote this current paragraph on Presidents’ Day, I turned on C-Span to find the author moderating a panel of historians as they discussed the relationship between General Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. Timely! While I knew that Washington was not popular with some politicians (like John Adams), I was unaware of the extent of his unpopularity. In fact, it’s rather hard for me to grasp, still. Washington is one of those figures of American history who is treated with veneration, so much so that he becomes a legendary figure, disassociated with the faults of real people. Robert E. Lee is treated the same way in the American south. The result of this (in Washington’s case) is that it is hard to contemplate the fact that he had to put up with the same kind of politics that our current politicians have to deal with. This fact was demonstrated as I continued reading the book, and amused me for some reason. It was also encouraging in a strange way, I suppose. The political game, it seems, hasn’t degenerated. The feud between Senators Clinton and Obama is tame, in fact, compared to the feud between Presidents Adams and Jefferson — and petty defamations of character have apparently been a staple of American elections since there have been elections. Washington’s Secret War was a thoroughly informative read.

The third book I read was The Trial of Madame Caillaux, by Edward Berenson. The title trial happened in France, in 1914. The wife of a French politician grows weary of a newspaperman’s continual campaign against her husband and opts to shoot him. The murderer (Madame Caillaux) is put on trial for the murder, and thus the book begins. The book is divided into five chapters, each examining the role of a particular person in the trial and at the same time a part of French society that that person’s case exemplifies. For instance, the chapter on Gaston Calmette (the unfortunate newspaperman) focuses on the role of the French press played in shaping popular opinion while looking into Calmette’s motives for attacking Mr. Caillaux in the first place. In my opinion this was a splendid approach, and very well done. The book offered a look at life was like for Frenchmen in 1914, and I would recommend it heartily.

A few weeks ago I watched The Four Horsemen on Google Video, which is a conversation between the “Four Horsemen” of rational thought today (R. Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, all of whom have written books on rationality v. religion recently). I thought it would be funny if I were to write a library post where I read a book from each of the “horsemen”. I went to my university library’s website and found books for three of them, the exception being Mr. Harris — and that was no problem because I’ve already read both of his books. When I went to the library to fetch these tomes, my plans quickly changed. There is a reason I have never read one of Daniel Dennett’s books, and that reason is that his books are intimidating. Perhaps one day if I find myself stranded on a desert isle I’ll have the time it would take to read and comprehend one of his books, but not this week.

While looking for one of the Dennett books, though, I happened upon E.O. Wilson’s Naturalist. E.O. Wilson is a name I know from one of my skeptic podcasts; Point of Inquiry, perhaps. After poking around in the book, I decided to give it a go. The library had one of Dr. Dawkins’ books that I hadn’t read, Climbing Mount Improbable. I have watched him give an excellent lecture on the same title, though, so I hoped I would have a head start on this book. As much as I like reading Dawkins, I don’t have a head for biology and find it difficult to finish some of his works– like The Selfish Gene, which I’ve tried twice with no success. Christopher Hitchens is considering one of the “Horsemen” because of his work God is Not Great: How Religion Ruins Everything, but he has written on other subjects. The book I chose to read by him — and the first book I would read out of my “horsemen” selection — was Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.

Hitchens’ work focuses on President Jefferson’s role in shaping American history, particularly his influence on the Declaration of Independence and the Louisiana Purchase. While the subject matter was generally interesting, Hitchens’ tone is a bit stuffy. This is the first book I’ve read by him and I failed to read any reviews of the book before I read the book itself, so I don’t know if this is a common aspect of Hitchens’ work or if anyone else picked up it. My lack of historical enthusiasm for the Revolutionary War may also interfere with my enjoyment of the book — but then, I did enjoy George Washington’s Secret War. Read the book (if you are so inclined) and judge for yourself.

I then started on Naturalist but a friend of mine recommended I read Harry Turtledove’s How Few Remain. Dr. Turtledove writes historical fiction — alternative history, in fact. I have read a book by Turtledove before — Guns of the South. In Guns of the South, Turtledove depicts the Confederacy winning the Civil War after they are assisting by time-traveling white supremacists who equip the rebels with AK-47s. In How Few Remain, he again proposes an alternate history where the Confederacy wins — this time, by taking care of one of Lee’s mistakes. Lee’s orders for his 1862 invasion of Pennsylvania were intercepted by Federal troops, which allowed Gen. George McClellan to not lose the battle of Antietam. In How Few Remain, the intercepted orders are NOT intercepted, and Lee manages to deal the Army of the Potomac a fatal blow. England and France recognize the Confederacy as a legitimate nation, and the United States loses. This is a rather unfortunate turn of events for the slaves.

The above is actually the prelude to this book. The actual plot of this book concerns a second war between the states. The Confederacy, led by President James Longstreet, buys two of Mexico’s northern provinces. The United States objects by declaring war, and that is what the book is about. This book is actually the prelude to a series of books that build off of the premises established. The viewpoint characters are historical figures — Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and so on — whose characters have been shaped by this interesting new history. Lincoln is not offed by a disgruntled ex-Confederate, and survives to become a Marxist, universally despised in the United States for losing the war and half the country. Teddy Roosevelt doesn’t lead the Rough Riders up San Jan Hill — he instead invades Canada. Despite my distaste for the idea of the Confederacy winning the Civil War, I enjoyed the book. It is as I said the prologue to Turtledove’s alternative history series, and I’ve decided to read the series through.

After reading How Few Remained, I returned to my planned reading. Naturalist, by E.O. Wilson, is an autobiography of E. O. Wilson’s life and career as a zoologist. I didn’t realize that Dr. Wilson is from Alabama, but he grew up in the Mobile area during the depression. I haven’t read any accounts of growing up in Alabama during that time, and so enjoyed that first part of the book the most. There are some parts of the book that weren’t quite so interesting to a non-biologist like myself — but in general it was an enjoyable read. Wilson is a good writer, and even when I wasn’t sure what he was talking about I wanted to keep plowing through. Wilson has had a long and interesting life — traveling the world over while doing his research and meeting people like James Watson.

Naturalist took me longer to read than it should have, because I was distracted by the next book in that alternate history series I began this week — The Great War: American Front. The United States has managed to lose two separate wars against the Confederacy at this point, and has been abandoned by the two greatest powers of the world at that time — Britain and France. One of How Few Remain’s viewpoint characters was Alfred von Schlieffen, author of the German plan for fighting a two-front war. Turtledove is evidently a fan of Germany’s General Staff (the elite core of officers that determined military policy in Germany until Hitler and his goons arrived), as he has von Schlieffen elaborate on how careful Germany is when planning for war — as opposed to the United States’ and Confederacy’s prewar planning, which is negligible. The Great War: American Front picks up on a promise made by American (that is, northern) officers to go to Germany and learn their ways of conducting a war.

The book begins in 1914. The United States and Germany are bosom buddies, as the U.S. is a member of the Triple Alliance, along with Germany and Austria. The Confederacy is part of the British-French entente. Socialism is taking hold in the United States, and the two Americas despise one another. The Great War begins the same way in this book as it did in real life — with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The United States and the Confederacy declare war on the other’s alliance and thus begins the book. The viewpoint characters in this book are apparently going to be the staple core of characters used for the rest of the series, and they’re all new. None of them are historical figures, not that I’ve seen anyway. There are historical figures in the books — the U.S. President is Theodore Roosevelt, and the Confederate president is Woodrow Wilson — but the story is never told from their point of view.

The evolution of warfare is the same in this version of the Great War as it is in real life — US and German offensives lose steam and then settle into bloody trench warfare. Airplanes are used to gather intelligence, and then used as fighters — which fits the pattern I’ve observed while studying the rise of air forces in various countries during the Great War. While the book (and the entire series, I think) is dominated by warfare, both books have been about more than war. They’ve been about how these societies develop, their economies, how their very cultures are fashioned by the differing chain of events. While I do have a number of quibbles, overall the series has been enjoyable and I find the connections he makes to be generally plausible. I am not convinced that Britain and France would have sided with the Confederacy in the first place, though.

That concludes this week’s reading.

Pick of the Week: The History of the S.S. was extremely well-written and quite informative.

Next week, I will finish R. Dawkin’s Climbing Mount. Improbable, and will continue my reading of the Turtledove series. I think my next history paper will be about France’s role in forging the European Union, so I might read something along those lines.

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The Best of 2007:

Posted on February 2, 2008 by smellincoffee

While I do enjoy writing about the books I read (writing in general, really) and sharing my thoughts, the primary purpose I have for this blog is to keep track of my own reading. It occurred to me today that perhaps I should look at some of the books I’ve read this year; as I plan on maintaining this for myself for years to come, I can make it an annual tradition. This first year is a bit off, of course, and will be incomplete since I only started this series on my MySpace back in May. I have read my past entries and compiled a list of my favorite books from the year 2007. These are not the only books I enjoyed this year, of course, but they are the ones that stick out.

May:

The Know-It-All: Author A.J. Jacobs chronicles his attempt to read the entire Encylopaedia Britannica. The book is packed full of interesting trivia and humor. Jacob tries out for Who Wants to be a Millionaire and speaks with Alex Trebek.

June:

Universe on a T-Shirt: Dan Falk talks about science as a way of understanding the world around us, and tries to tie the history of science together and point out that all throughout civilized history, we have attempted to find the ultimate truth of why the universe is the way it is — and why it even “is” to begin with. He does this by providing a history of science, tying together various disciplines like biology, cosmology, and physics.

July:

Before the Dawn: This is an anthropological work by Nicholas Wade that focuses on humanity as we began populating the globe and began transitioning from hunter-gatherers into settled creatures. I commented at the time that it reminded me of Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

Phantoms in the Brain: This book by V.S. Ramachandran covers neurological abnormalities, like phantom limbs. While I had long since forgotten what I learned in psychology or anatomy classes, I understood the book and thought it was one of the most interesting things I had ever read.

The Stand: Given my distaste for supernaturalism, I do not make a habit of reading horror books. This book was highly recommended and I was in the mood for a end-of-the-world scenario, so I checked it out. The book is about a super virus that decimates western civilization (and through military officials, the Soviet Union and China). While I did enjoy much of the book, I wasn’t a fan of the religious overtones. Quite enjoyable overall, though.

August:

Theories for Everything: Theories is an overview and history science. I was quite taken by this book, and it is one book I want to have in my personal library. The book has several authors, each experts in their respective fields. All of them were able to convey the details of their disciplines in a manner easily understandable by someone with an average understanding of science like myself.

A Man Without a Country: Kurt Vonnegut’s final work expresses his thoughts on a number of subjects, and his humanistic idealism shines through in many the essays, particularly in the latter half of the book. I share some of my favorite quotations from it here.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: I gave in to the numerous friends who were badgering me to at least give the first book a chance and read the book. As it turns out, I really rather loved the book. In this book, Rowling introduces her world of wizardry and witchcraft and begins weaving the story that she will finish years later (or in my case, a month later) with The Deathly Hallows.

The Rising Tide: Jeff Shaara’s latest book is the first in a planned three-book trilogy on the European war. Shaara attempts to write the story of the second world war through the eyes of the men who fought in it, borrowing his father’s style that worked so well and achieved such acclaim in The Killer Angels. I enjoyed this book as I have others written by the Shaaras, although since he uses near-contemporary characters like Roosevelt and Hitler I felt it necessary to use fictional portrayals of those characters (like Roosevelt’s portrayal in Pearl Harbor) when picturing the book’s scenes in my head.

September:

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Second in Rowling’s Harry Potter series, this book introduces plot elements that will be revealed in The Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. The plot of this particular book, though, dealt with a monster in the bowels of Hogwarts School preying on the students. Harry, of course, triumphs.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban : Third in the series, and one of my two favorites in the series, Azkaban sees Harry learning more about his parents and introduces several main characters.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is sixth in the Harry Potter series, and the second of my two favorite books. Half-Blood Prince is in many ways a direct prolouge to The Deathly Hallows. Harry and Professor Dumbledore begin to attack Lord Voldemort by seeking out and destroying Horcruxes that contain bits and pieces of his soul.

Pale Blue Dot: I need only to reveal the author of this book (Carl Sagan) to indicate that I very much enjoyed this book. I enjoy pretty much anything by Carl Sagan. I daresay I would be enthralled by his doodles. Sagan writes about humanity’s future role in regards to space. The introduction to this book has been set to video, and remains my favorite YouTube video.

October:

The Darwin Awards: Darwin Awards are awarded to humans who remove themselves from the gene pool (before reproducing) in particularly stupid ways, thus improving the gene pool by removing genes prone to excessive stupidity. (I think family life and environment contributes more to stupidity than genes, but ignorant parents often breed ignorant children so I suppose it’ll work.)

November:

Great Tales from English History, parts one and two: both books are a collection of short chapters. Each chapter deals with a particular tale that deals with medieval English history — the influence of Joan of Arc, for instance, or the story of Queen Boudicca. I enjoyed both books very much and look forward to the day that they are added to my personal library.

The Hundred Years War: I checked this book because I was then in the process of writing a paper on Jeanne d’Arc. Desmond Seward’s book is an excellent review of the Hundred Years’ War, and helped me understand the background of Jeanne’s story. I found out in the course of writing my paper, though, that she is really overrated. England lost the hundred years’ war when they lost their alliance with Burgundy. Unfortunately for my paper, I figured this out too late to do a revision. I managed to get an A, but I could’ve done much better.

December:

The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operation Air War: This was my main source when writing my second term paper on the Luftwaffe. The book is well-written, and the author seems to have researched the topic for a number of years before writing the book. The book cleared up misconceptions I had. I enjoyed it quite well.

Meditations: Written by Marcus Aurelius, these musings reveal the mind of Emperor Aurelius. He was a tremendous Stoic and I found his thoughts to be personally inspiring.

That concludes my favorite books from the period of May to December ‘07.

Nonfiction to Fiction Ratio: 13:6. The bulk of my favorite fiction reading consisted of Harry Potter books, though.

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This Week (Month?) at the Library

Posted on February 2, 2008 by smellincoffee

It’s been well over a month since I last sat down to write about the books I’m reading, for whatever reasons. I have gone through a few books in that time, although not as many as I would’ve liked or as many as I would have ordinarily expected. While on Christmas break, I checked out a variety of books on Rome, Greece, France, and Germany. I would only end up reading one of those, being distracted by the holidays and a Civilization 3 game.

The book I did read was Greece and Rome: Builders of Our World by Paul Lachlan MacKendrick. The book itself was a beautiful thing, a sight to behold. The copy I had was a hardcover, dark green. A silk ribbon was sewn into the book’s binder as a bookmark. The pages themselves were amply decorated, with pictures often serving as the background of the page. The book is a collection of essays dealing with Rome and Greece, as you might have already reduced from the book. The most memorable essay saw the author retracing Odysseus’ footsteps (or…oar-beats?) , using etymology and geography to sort out what Homer’s colorful descriptions were actually about. Heretofore I had dismissed the vast majority of those tales as simple myth, but the author made some plausible connections to reality, even finding a way of giving the Cyclopes some shadow of truth — figuring out what the Cyclopes might be an exaggeration of. It’s been a month and a half since I read the book, though, so I can’t remember anything specific. The book itself was put out by the National Geographic Society, which would explain how impressively it was done.

The second book I read was France 1814 -1919: The Rise of a Liberal-Democratic Society. I checked this book out to help me prepare for my French History class, but was unable to understand it at first until the semester began and terms like “Ultras” were actually explained. In this case, the class helped me understand the book; quite the reverse of what I had intended! Persons less distracted than myself (once the holidays were over, I actually made good progress in reading this one) and interested in French history should find this book quite interesting. I wish I could elaborate more.

While my reading tends to be dominated by nonfiction, I did happen to read a work of fiction — The Confessions of Max Tivoli, by Andrew Sean Greer. I found this book through “Unshelved”, a comic strip set in a library. The strip is a daily strip, but every Sunday the strip is used for “The Unshelved Book Club” — where essentially they recommend a book. Here’s the “Book Club” strip for The Confessions of Max Tivoli.

http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20071125

That essentially explains the gist of the book. As you can see from the characters’ clothing in that advertisement, the book isn’t set in the present day. Max is born in 1871 and lives through the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco as well as both world wars. The book is principally about Max’s lifelong love for Alice, and his difficultly in living with his strange condition. The premise of the book is very interesting, and the book itself is in my opinion beautifully written. My only problem with this book was that it was rather tragic. It’s definitely one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read, though, so I’d recommend it. I returned the book yesterday without writing down some of the more beautiful bits of prose, but I did write down the following two weeks ago when it snowed here in Alabama — and appropriately enough, I read about a freak snowfall in San Francisco.

“The day that Father disappeared, long ago in San Francisco, I awoke from my unmade bed to find another, formed in snow outside my window. Like a health-crazed mother who feeds you on a steady diet of grains and crackers but one morning produces a sugared white cake just because she’s missed it for too long, the world had happily shrugged off all expectations and given me a snowy day. I had read about it, and heard my father’s recollections of the castles and dragons carved from the banks of creamy Danish snow, how he and the other boys would slide on wooden boards all the way to Prussia, but I was not prepared for the real thing. I thought it would be like a toy left in the yard; I was not prepared for snow to erase the world completely and leave a crisp, blank page. I stared out at the mansions that were not there, the horses, the surreys, the work-bound men I was so used to seeing. There was no sky; there was no city. I gasped as we always do at the unnatural. […] They say the most that fell that day was a foot of snow in Golden Gate. About three inches fell in the city itself. I have since learned in my travels, especially during a hip-high whopper in Colorado, that this is nothing; this is a mere extravagance of frost. But for us it was thick and bright as luck. ” – Andrew Sean Greer, The Confessions of Max Tivoli

The last book I read was Sinister Touches: The Secret War Against Hitler by Robert Goldston. The book focuses on American and British intelligence operations against the Axis powers — from attempts to steal Enigma (the Nazi military coding machine) to sabotage of infrastructure. I checked this book out in high school but never read it, so when I spotted this last week in the local library, I knew I had to check it out. It was most enjoyable.

Pick of the Week: The Confessions of Max Tivoli. Tragic, but beautifully written.

I’m currently reading two books. The first is Washington’s Secret War by Thomas Fleming, a book focusing on George Washington’s attempts to defend against attacks on his character and competence from Congress and some French allies. The second is a book about the formation of the SS in Nazi Germany, although I can’t remember the title offhand and can’t seem to find it in the University library’s system, even though that’s where I found itT

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This Week at the Library (13/12)

Posted on December 13, 2007 by smellincoffee
Current Music: “Downtown Train”, Rod Stewart

The past few weeks have been spent working on my term paper for German History class: my goal was to show how the German air force in the first world war shaped the role of the Luftwaffe. I was apparently successful in the attempt, as my paper received an A. I had been reading materials for this paper off and on throughout the course of the term, having decided at the beginning of it to cover a topic I with which I was already intimate. Aviation has always been a peculiar interest of mine. I have practically memorized Albert Marrin’s The Airman’s War, and that is the book that formed most of my knowledge about aerial power in the Second World War.

The first book I read in regard to this subject was The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, written by James S. Corum. Corum follows aviation in Germany from the early 1900s until 1940, focusing on the years between 1918 and 1939. Corum’s book was more or less my main source. Corum attempts to deal with some misconceptions about German aerial power — for instance, the idea that the Luftwaffe was developed solely as a tactical force to be used against enemy soldiers and tanks, and not as a strategic air force that would target enemy cities. The book is quite interesting, and for once that isn’t guaranteed: I didn’t choose my term paper research books because I knew they would interest me, I chose them because I needed the facts they contained.

Another book I read was David Irving’s The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe. My professor actually laughed when he saw the book: as it turns out, Irving is or was a Holocaust-denier. Reading a history book by a Holocaust-denier is like reading a science book by a Young-Earth Creationist. When I found out the author’s integrity had been compromised, I attempted to look for sources to verify that this particular book was worth reading. I found no such sources, but I ended up using the book for a few trifling facts about Erhard Milch, who played a role in the administration of the Luftwaffe. Irving’s tone is pretty readable. Despite the book’s title, it isn’t actually about the Luftwaffe. It’s about Milch, so it wasn’t very usable.

Another key source for me was The Influence of Air Power Upon History, written by Walter Boyne. The Influence of Air Power is a history of military aviation, and I used this primarily for context. Whatever Dr. Corum’s complaints are with the book, it’s pretty readable. I didn’t read the portions that Dr. Corum took issue with, but this wasn’t because of his opinion — I just didn’t need to read the whole book to get what I needed. I did read substantial portions of it, just not the entire thing.

After I finished my term paper, you would think that I was sick to death of reading about Germany. Well, think again. I think that my historical main interest is (finally) shifting. See, in ninth grade I was obsessed with the first world war. In tenth grade, I was obsessed with the second world war. In eleventh and twelfth grades, my obsession was the Civil War. From 2004 on until today, my interest has been 1930s America: this began with the Mafia and then broadened to the 1930s. Now I believe that my interest is shifting to Germany. This isn’t a new development: this interest has been slowly developing ever since my history professor at WCCS lectured on Bismarck. I then bought a book on German history and was even more interested. That let to me taking this class. I don’t know what it is about Germany that interests me so, though. The past couple of years have seen a growing interest in French and German history, so it’s not just Germany. My history professor recommend a movie called Downfall about the last days of the Third Reich. The clips I saw on YouTube look fantastic, although I fail to see how Hitler is seen as “sympathetic”. In the movie he seems like a screaming lunatic. I guess it’s the ex-Pentecostal in me, but I don’t respond well to screamers. One of the “related” videos on the side was the “Hitler Rap“, which I found hilarious.

Well, hi there peoples!
You know me!
I used to run a little joint called “Germany”.
I was number one! The people’s choice.
And everybody listened to my mighty voice.
My name is Adolf, I’m on the mike,
I’m gonna hip you to the story of the new third Reich!
It all started down in Munichtown, and pretty soon the word started getting around.
I said to Martin Boorman, I said “Hey Marty!”
“Why don’t we throw a little Nazi party?!”
So we had an election — well, kinda-sorta
And before you know it, hello, new order!
To all those mothers in the Fatherland, I said
Achtung, baby! I got me a plan!
They said “Whatchoo got, Adolf?”
“Whatchoo gonna do?”
I said, ‘how about this one:
World War 2!’

Mel Brooks as Adolf Hitler: so hilarious it should be illegal. My favorite part is the face he makes at 1:07- 1:08. I first thought that this clip was from The Producers, so I checked it out. As it turns out, this song is novelty song produced as part of a play about homosexuals in Nazi Germany, called “To Be or Not to Be”.

My last book dealing with Germany this week is a bit of pleasure reading, called Germans into Nazis, written by Peter Fritzsche. As you can imagine, Fritzsche is writing to explore how Germany was transformed into Nazi Germany. I realize I say this a lot, but the book is highly readable and very informative. Fritzsche expresses his aim is to do away with some misconceptions about Nazim’s rise in Germany. He divides the books into three parts: the Great War, the Weimar Years, and the Nazi rise to power. This is fairly straightforward. Along the way, he deals with misconceptions about Germany. I don’t want to repeat them all, but will mention one as an example. The Great Depression is often seen as Hitler’s opportunity to seize power, but Fitzsche doesn’t think so. Those most affected by unemployment were laborers — and laborers voted mostly for the Communist party, not the Nazis. The middle class was hardly affected, but their fear of being affected was enough to shape the political scene. The Nazis actually began to lose power right before Hindenburg declared Hitler chancellor. Had Hindenburg not done so, Fritzsche says, Nazism would have dwindled further and the world might not have witnessed the second global war. Again, the book is very readable.

During Thanksgiving, I read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Seeing as I quoted numerous parts of the book a couple of weeks ago, I see no real reason to comment on the book other than to express my enjoyment of it. While on the break, I also read The World of Rome, which I found to be quite fascinating. The book is by Michael Grant. The book was, as ever, enjoyable and informative. I’m picky about what books I take home with me: I read from them in the library to see if they’re interesting enough to merit my attention. This may be why I so rarely encounter a book that isn’t entertaining and informative.

Lastly, I read Montgomery: Biography of a City, by Wayne Greenshaw. This is obviously of personal interest to me, seeing as I grew up near Montgomery and visit it so often that I often refer to it as my hometown. The book was thin, and I thought this unusual. I was able to read the entire book in just thirty minutes, as a matter of fact. I’m a quick reader, but the book isn’t really an in-depth history of the city. It covers the first 175 years of Montgomery’s history, but each section is fairly short. WW1 and WW2 only merit a couple of pages each, for instance. The book was enjoyable enough, and I did learn something from it: namely, that the town is the result of two towns merging, and this is the reason the streets in the city center often don’t meet one another as they ought. One city’s streets were laid out in one direction and the other’s in another.

http://www.alabamabound.org/images/montgomery.jpg

I googled for this picture to show the streets, and strangely enough Montgomery: the River City is also written by Greenshaw. This may support my idea that Biography of a City is intended for younger readers (hence it being so short) and The River City is intended for adult readers like myself. The picture doesn’t show the street situation as clearly as I would like, but you can sort of see what I mean by looking at the left-center section of the book, between “The River” and “Wayne”.

I intended to read that book about evolution this week, but what can I say? Biology bores me and I had a term paper and finals to prepare for.

Pick of the Week: The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War

In two days, I will be forced to pack my things and go back to Selma for the winter holiday. I rather like living in quiet Montevallo, so I am not looking forward to the move. Selma is quite dull. The only thing for me to do there is visit the library, and that I will be doing — most assuredly. I am not sure what my reading will consist of during the Christmas break, but I know most assuredly that I will be reading some French history to prepare for my class, Christmas may be quiet enough that I might start updating weekly again, rather than once every two and a half weeks like I tend to do now.

Books I’ve checked out to read over the holiday:

  • France 1814 – 1919: The Rise of a Liberal-Democratic Society by John B. Wolf
  • The French Nation 1814 – 1940 by D.W. Brogan
  • Humanism and America, edited by Norman Foerster. (This one should be interesting, having been written in 1930.)
  • Greece and Rome: Builders of Our World
  • Roman Life

I rarely mention the movies I watch from my libraries, which perhaps I should.
– Moby Dick, by Patrick Stewart. I checked this movie out during Thanksgiving and watched it then. I’m a fan of Patrick Stewart (his version of A Christmas Carol is the only one I watch every Christmas), so I wanted to watch this.

– Walking with the Dinosaurs: this movie is produced by the BBC. It is excellent, as I’ve come to expect from the BBC. The movie examines the three great ages of the dinosaurs (the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous) and brings the dinosaurs to life with computer imaging. They presented the movie as an actual documentary, and inserted the strangest little bits of realism. For instance, a dinosaur tail accidentally hits the “camera” when it beaches. In another section, a mother carnivore (I can’t remember all of their names) had three hatchlings, and one of them was a mistfit for some reason. The narrator said that he probably would not last long. The film then cuts to other dinosaurs, but ten minutes later the view goes back to these carnivores. The narrator then says “Already there is no sign of the youngest”, as if this was an actual documentary where real things actually happened. I found these little touches to be amusing.

– Before the Dinosaurs is produced by the Discovery Channel and “records” the life of animals that lived before the dinosaurs — huge sea-dwelling scorpions, for instance, dragonflies with six-feet wingspans, and the first fish. The movie ends at the beginning of the Triassic Age, and I would bet that this movie was designed to be sort of a prequel to Walking with Dinosaurs because they show the same “first dinosaur” and say the same things about him, exactly.

– 1776: a musical about the Declaration of Independence. I had heard that William Daniels (Mr. Feeny in Boy Meets World)’s role as John Adams in this movie caused the high school that his Mr. Feeny character is principle of to be named John Adams High, but I had never seen the movie. Then a few weeks ago a friend of mine sent me a YouTube video of “But, Mr. Adams” and I was fairly hooked. I checked the movie out and liked it all the more. I like musicals, American history, and William Daniels, so I couldn’t help but like this.

– Good Morning, Vietnam: I’ve been a fan of Robin Williams ever since I watched Jack. What I love about Robin Williams’ acting is that his characters are so believably human. Other actors can be brilliant in some respects but “off” in others — but not Williams’. This is especially true of Patch Adams, which I think is some of his best work. He doesn’t disappoint in this movie; it’s hilarious and moving as well.

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This Week at the Library (20/11)

Posted on November 20, 2007 by smellincoffee
The majority of my reading for the past week or so has been exclusively class-paper related. For my medieval history class, I chose to investigate Jeanne d’Arc’s influence on the Hundred Years War. I have been intrigued with her since the seventh grade, when I first read about her, and the eighth grade when I saw a movie based on her story. (The video is music from the movie set to excerpts from the movie. Leelee Sobieski shows at at :54) I went into the paper expecting to find that Joan’s victory at Orleans had united the French people and won the war, but as I read more and more about the war I realized that England it when they lost their alliance with Burgundy. The Duke of Burgundy and the Duke of Orleans began feuding at the start of Charles VI’s reign, and their feuding turned into what amounted to a civil war.

The first book I read was The Hundred Years War, by Desmond Seward. I read this book to obtain my background information. I wanted to understand the war so that I could sort out what Joan’s real influence was. The book is very interesting, telling the story of the Hundred Years War through a casual sort of narrative. It was easy to read and very informative. If you want to get a handle on what caused the war and what happened in it, I would reccommend this one. The next book I read was Joan of Arc: the Image of Female Heroism. This book was likewise interesting (if not as much as Seward’s book), and helped me to understand why the story of Joan has survived for so long despite the fact that her raising the siege at Orleans didn’t do much.

Those were the only two books I read straight through; others, like Joan’s trial transcript, I only used for specific information. I did read two other books not related to the term paper that I turned in today, though. The first was Great Tales from English History I. If you will recall, last week I read the sequel to this as part of my term paper research, and I was quite taken by the book and the author. This first book did not disapoint. The short chapters, each telling a story from English history, are immensely entertaining. I even found out why J. Rowlings chose King’s Cross station to be her magic train station — legend has it that a Celtic warrior queen, Boudicca, was buried there.

The last book I read was Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (and So Can You!). I was quite giddy to find out that the university library had received it, and I checked it out only yesterday — finishing it today. The book relates Colbert’s opinions on religion, family, immigrants, science, and so on. The book is as funny as the show, so if you enjoy the show you’ll probably enjoy the book.
The entire book is essentially like this. It’s a strange book: it has stickers and games and strange things like that in it. This coming week will see me exiled to Selma for the Thanksgiving holidays, during which, I’ll be doing research
, but I have some leisure reading planned:
– Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, reflections of a Stoic Roman emperor.
– The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism by Ardea Skybreak. The title is rather ambivalent, no? I’m reading this one to refresh my knowledge of biology. My brain despises biology and genetics, but in the interests of maintaining a balanced education, I have to set aside the history books for a few days and tackle biology.

The next term paper-related book I’ll be reading is The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War. Now to study Deutsch!

Oh, and Pick of the Week: Great Tales from English History

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This Week at the Library (6/11)

Posted on November 6, 2007 by smellincoffee

It’s been a couple of weeks since the last time I updated, and most of my reading has been focused around school. I’m taking three courses that require readings to prepare for each lecture, and to supplement that (and prepare myself more for tests) I read from other books. For German History, for instance, I’m reading through The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Nazi Germany, which is immensely helpful. For Geography, we had to skip a lecture on Israel, so I’ve been reading The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Middle East Conflict. (I own a lot of the The Complete Idiot’s Guide and …for Dummies books: they’re wonderful in providing a general overview of a given subject.)

Last week, I picked up Great Tales from English History 2 because it had a chapter on Joan of Arc, who is the subject of one of my term papers. The chapter on her was actually quite short, but I found the other stories in the book — short chapters about Azincourt, Oliver Cromwell, the feud between Elizabeth and Mary, the many wives of Henry VIII — to be immensely interesting and entertaining. I enjoyed it very much, and it became my breakfast reading for the week.

In more conventional reading, however, I have also read two books for my German History class. In addition to the “textbook” — a compilation of letters, memos, and such from various German political leaders, our class also had to buy Mephisto by Klauss Mann and Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany by Marion Kaplan.

We read and discussed Mephisto about a week and a half ago. The book concerns the career of a German actor named Hendrik Hofgen. All of the characters in the story with the exception of bigger names (Hitler and Goering) are based on actual people in real life, which is a little interesting.

Hendrik starts out as an actor in Hamburg — a very talented and a very career-driven one. He’s nominally involved with the far left, politically. His friends include Communists and Socialists. The book is set in the late 1920s and the early 1930s, a turbulent time for Germany. Germany had recovered from the hyperinflatation of the early 1920s and had begun to prosper — only to have all that recovery taken away by the Great Depression.

Hendrik’s determination to become a famous actor makes him immensely successful in Hamburg. He realizes, though, that to get to where he needs to be, he needs to make a name for himself in Berlin. He eventually moves to Berlin and uses friendships to advance his name. While filming in Spain, the Nazis come to power in 1933 — disaster for a socialist like Hendrik, since the Nazis despised the left.

Rather than giving into despair over the loss of his life in Weimar Germany — the deportation of his friends, the persecution for his political ideas — Hendrik sells himself out. He relies on his friendship to the Minister of Propaganda’s wife to insert himself into the new ruling circles. Hendrik is completely at home with the Nazi elite, given how much of their platform they began to ignore once they were actually in power. The Nazi ranks were full of political opportunists like Hendrik. Hendrik’s performance as Mephistoles in the play Faust is what really makes Hendrik’s name known. Mephistoles is one of the “Devil’s” familars. Mephistoles convinces Faust to sell his soul for gain, but that’s all I know.

Eventually, Hendrik has to face his inner demons — guilt at advancing while his friends live as exiles and deteriorate in concentration camps. The book ends as he realized that like Faust, he has sold his soul to the “devil”. For a “mandatory” read, I found the book to be quite enjoyable.

The third book, one which I finished over this past weekend, is Between Dignity and Despair. In high school I developed a morbid interest in the Holocaust. The very idea of shipping people off in cattle cars and exterminating them in gas chambers was (and is) so surreal that I was driven to read about it, in hopes of making sense of it.

Learning the German language and studying German history has made me somewhat sympathetic toward Germany, but this book angered me and made me sick. The author portrays the persecution against the Jews as increasing in stages. At first, Nazi rule is merely inconvienent: there are stores that won’t sell to Jews, and some Jewish men have to find other places to work. As the years drag on, Germany becomes more and more Nazified. The German people are exposed to more and more propaganda against the Jews and become absolutely hateful toward them.

I learned some things that I didn’t know — for instance, that there were tremendous barriers against Jewish people emigrating from Germany. You would think that the Nazis would make it as easy as possible to get their “undesirables” out of Germany, but that wasn’t the case. Jewish bank accounts were frozen and massive taxes levied against Jews trying to leave Germany for places like Japan . Eventually, Jewish emigration was completely banned.

It seems that the Nazis didn’t want to get the Jews out of Germany: they wanted to exterminate them.

Pick of the Week: Great Tales from English History 2

My reading for the next week will be dominated by readings for my research papers. I’m going to be writing about two pet subjects — Joan of Arc and the Luftwaffe — for my Medieval European and German history classes, respectively. I went to the libraries (today — 8/11) and checked out a number of books regarding my two papers. One was completely unrelated — Great Tales from English History. I’m quite looking forward to it.

Some of the books I’ll be perusing in the weeks to come:
– World War II in the Sky
– The Air War 1939-1945
– The Influence of Air Power upon History
– Hitler’s Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War
– To Command the Sky
– The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe
– The Trial of Joan of Arc
– Joan of Arc: Her Story
– Joan of Arc: Heretic, Mystic, Shaman

I think I have one more book about Joan, but I can’t remember the title at the moment. For reasons that escape me, I have had a strong interest in the story of Jeanne d’Arc since middle school. (Well, one of the reasons doesn’t escape me.) I suppose it’s because I’m a Francophile, but Joan fascinates me even though I’m a cynic about religion and she was purportedly being talked to by dead Catholics.

I have harbored a fondness for propeller-driven airplanes since high school. I don’t know where or when (the clothes you’re wearing are the clothes you wore, the smile you are smiling, you were smiling then…), but I developed a strong interest in the second world war and especially the air war. In ninth or tenth grade, I picked up a book called The Airman’s War by Albert Marrin, and I loved it. Marrin is a fanstatic writer in my opinion. In tenth grade English, we were told to write a paper on anything that interested us.

I wrote twenty-two pages on the air war. It was an awful paper, really — a glut of information that wasn’t really focused — and I only receved a C. I was going to do my German History paper on Nazi building projects during WW2, but I was unable to find a lot of information on that other than Albert Speer’s memoirs. I decided to go with a pet subject. I hope to do the subject justice with this paper.

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This Week at the Library (12/10)

Posted on October 12, 2007 by smellincoffee

Life at college tends to cut into my reading time. I’m not particularly caught up in doing any one thing, but there are a multitude of little affairs — going to classes, working, practicing German, studying, club meetings — that add up. Consequently, I’m not able to read through a given list as quickly as I used to be able to. My most recent reading:

– Broca’s Brain by Carl Sagan
– The Assault on Reason by Al Gore, Nobel Laureate
– The End of Faith by Sam Harris
– And The Darwin Awards, edited by Wendy Nortcutt.

When I visited the campus library to obtain Broca’s Brain, I had to go upstairs. The layout is very dense up there, and I was momentarily confounded by the Library of Congress system. While I looked around for the Sagan book, my eyes fell upon The Darwin Awards. The Darwin Awards, for those of you who don’t know, are given to people to remove themselves from the human gene pool in incredibly stupid ways. The awards (given posthumously, of course) are so named because the removal of these genes are said to aide the human race in evolving. I visit the website on a regular basis, and I was delighted to discover this book, which is a compilation of submitted stories. The stories contained therein are hilarious.

After I finished The Darwin Awards, I was very eager to begin former Vice President Gore’s book The Assault on Reason. Gore begins by explaining how the culture of television has negatively impacted the democratic process, leaving Americans entertained but uninformed. Then begins the book proper. Some of the topics Gore addresses are “The Politics of Fear”, “The Politics of Wealth”, “Blinding the Faithful”, and “The Assault on the Individual”. You can probably figure out what these chapters are about. “The Assault on the Individual” deals with the abuses the Constitution has endured in the past six years under the reign of You-Know-Who*. “Blinding the Faithful” concerns how those in the right wing have used Christians in America to come to power. Of course, there’s no way I’m going to feel sorry for fundamentalist Christians who continue to be duped by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. I used to be one of `em. I say if you find a supporter of the current president, ask them about the Military Commissions Act and the Patriot Act. Their faces will go blank. They’ll have no idea what you’re talking about. The same is true of Executive Order 9066.

After finishing The Assault on Reason (which I would recommend), I read Sam Harris’ The End of Faith. This book was one of the first to be written when rationalism and atheism started coming into vouge a few years ago. The book doesn’t just attack fundamentalism (Christian and Islamic) and promote rationalism and compassion-based ethics; it contains a good deal of philosophy. I enjoyed the book, although it wasn’t quite what I expected. My favorite part of the book was when Harris compares faith to a rhinoceros. In Harris’ words, a rhinoceros won’t do any real work for you, but up close it demands your attention.

Finally, I read Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. This book was written by Carl Sagan, so as you can imagine I enjoyed it. The book strikes me as a collection of individual essays rather than one tightly-focused book. In one chapter, Sagan gives the biography of Albert Einstein. In another, he muses on the role science fiction plays in affecting people’s ideas about science. The subjects are varied, and most are interesting. Given how different each chapter is from the other, I think it’s safe to skip a chapter that focuses on something the reader isn’t personally interested in.

Pick of the Week: The Assault on Reason. The Darwin Awards was a hilarious book, but I prefer substance over amusement.

This week’s reading: unknown. I haven’t really determined what all I want to read this week. I know I’ll be reading Mephisto by Klaus Mann for my German History class, and I’ll also be reading England in the Time of Chaucer by Roger Hart. I may also do some reading in the direction of my research papers.

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This Week at the Library (21/9)

Posted on September 21, 2007 by smellincoffee

Current Music: “Rock and Roll All Night”, KISS

The first book I read last week was River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins. The river is a “river of information” — genetic information. The book doesn’t have the focus of The Ancestor’s Tale; it strikes me as almost being a collection of essays dealing with questions of biology. From the book’s dust cover:

Filled with absorbing, at times alarming, stories about the world of bees and orchids, “designed” eyes and human ancestors, River Out of Eden answers tantalizing questions: Why are forest trees tall — wouldn’t each survive more economically if all were short? Why is the sex ration fifty-fifty when relatively few males are needed to impregnate many females? Why do we inherit genes for fatal illnesses?

The book answers those questions and adequately. The only chapter where my attention began to drift was the chapter on Mitochondrial Eve — the ancestor of the human race. That was completely about how genes are transferred through sexual reproduction, so I was a little bored. I did find Dawkins’ suggestion that our true universal ancestor was an Adam to be intriguing, though. He bases his argument based partially on the fact that male animals often rule over harems of females — one animal sharing his genes with a larger number of females, and thus increasing his contribution to the gene pool exponentially. Female contribution in humans is still limited to one pregnancy every year, and so an individual female’s contribution is negligible compared to the male who rules over the harem — even considering pregnancies that produce multiple offspring. My favorite chapter was “God’s Utility Function” where Dawkins explains why there are so many inefficiencies in living systems — problems that make no sense if everything was designed by an all-knowing Creator, but that make perfect sense when seen through the eye of gene-driven evolution. “Do Good By Stealth” was also quite interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

The second book I read was Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s by F.L. Allen. The book’s title is spot-on; the book is very informal. It’s not written with the historical objectivity that I would like; the author assumes that his reader is an American, and so speaks of “us” and “we”. The book was written in 1931, and the language of the book — the usage of ‘Negro”, for instance — dates it. Despite the informality, I did enjoy the book. The 20s and 30s are of particular interest to me; I’ve been reading about that era for almost four years now. Before, my main area of historical interest shifted year to year; in ninth grade, for instance, I was stuck on the Great War. In tenth grade, I moved on to the Second World War. In eleventh and twelfth grades, I was engrossed in Civil War history. Then in 2004 I began to research the Mafia and here I am years later still reading books about the 1920s and 1930s — the Prohibition Era. The book increased my appreciation for living in the here and now; I wouldn’t want to live in the time of the Red Riots the KKK, and the birth of Christian fundamentalism.

The last book I read was Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali was born in Somalia and raised as a Muslim. Her family moved around a bit because of her father’s political activities (resisting the communists), and so she experiences life in different parts of the “Islamic” world. Ali writes of the clan blood feuds and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. She tells of how she threw herself into the religion even while questioning it. The systemic flaws of Islam do not go away with time, and eventually she finds herself in western Europe, having fled there to avoid an arranged marriage. In Germany and Holland, Ali discoverers what humanity is capable of when freed from the fetters of dogma — civilization. The values of Europe were completely against the values Ali had been handed by her upbringing. Ali writes of her puzzling over the fact that Europe paid no attention to Allah or the Quran, yet was still prosperous and civilized. She enrolled in a university to better understand how such a society could have formed, and was immediately challenged by the western ideas being presented at her through her classes.

“Sometimes I could almost sense a little shutter clicking shut in my brain, so that I could keep reading my textbooks without struggling to align their content with my belief in Islam. Sometimes it seemed as if almost every page I read challenged me as a Muslim. Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.”

Ali moves further and further away from the values of her upbringing and begins to become “secularized”. She becomes a Dutch citizen, and Dutch values become her values. After 9/11, she decides to examine her faith. It falls apart the minute it is exposed to scrutiny. The last chapters of the book deal with the controversy she involved herself in when she wrote about the instability fundamentalist Muslims were bringing to Holland. The same problems are being caused in the United Kingdom and Canada. Ali summed the conflict up in a brilliant way, but I can’t remember the exact wording and can’t seemed to find it now. The gist of her statement was that the western European nations were overly tolerant of their Muslim populations in the hope that understanding and reconciliation would be reached — but there would be no such toleration or understanding from the Muslims toward the unbelievers who were giving them a safe harbor.

I found similarities in the author’s departure from religion and my own, although of course her situation is a lot more difficult than mine. I enjoyed the book, and that ends the week’s reading.

Pick of the Week: Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

This week, I’m going to be reading Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science by Carl Sagan. I discovered this one a week or so ago in a card catalouge and realized that here was a book by Sagan that I hadn’t read. Well, I have to rectify that. After that, I’ll be reading The Assault on Reason by Al Gore. I’m not sure what it’s about, but I’m going to guess that Gore will be mentioning a “Republican war on science”. Lastly, I’ll read The End of Faith by Sam Harris. I’ve read Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation and enjoyed it. The summaries of the book that I’ve read say that it is a book aimed at fundamentalist Islam and Christianity. I’m looking forward to it. Next week my reading will probably drift into history and stay there for a bit as I ready myself for a couple of term papers.

  • Broca’s Brain by Carl Sagan
  • The Assault on Reason by Al Gore
  • The End of Faith by Sam Harris
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This Week at the Library (11/9)

Posted on September 11, 2007 by smellincoffee

This Week at the Library (11/9)

Currently Listening To: “Waking Up in the Universe“, Richard Dawkins


” It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it. ” – Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

Last week I checked out Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Shelters of Stone by Jean M. Auel. I had only half-finished Shelters the week before, and aimed to finish it — which I did. I also finished The Deathly Hallows, which finishes the Harry Potter series. I had to wait almost an entire week to get it after I finished Half-Blood Prince. (I have been informed by friends who had to wait years between books that I “suck”.) If you’ve not read Half-Blood Prince and plan to do so, kindly close your eyes and scroll down for a few seconds so that your reading experienced is ruined.

I kept thinking of the book as The Deathly Hollows; I thought that one of Harry’s friends were going to be killed as he and the rest of Dumbledore’s Army fought the forces of Lord Voldemort in some wooded area. As it turns out, the “Deathly Hallows” are three artifacts/relics that all have something to do with death. Actually, only two of them can be sensibly tied to death; associating the Invisibility Cloak with death is a bit of a stretch. In The Deathly Hallows, Harry and friends are supposed to be hunting for Hocruxes that contain bits of Voldemort’s soul so that they can kill him off for good. I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot, but every thing ties together. I was not particularly surprised by the ending, but I enjoyed it.

As mentioned, I also finished Shelters of Stone. I predicted that Jondolar would have to choose between his community and the woman he loves; well, he doesn’t. In The Shelters of Stone, Ayla and Jondolar settle into life among the Zelandonii. Ayla tells the story of her life (the one she told several times in book three and the one she told too many times to count in book four). The reaction among Jondolar’s people is pretty much the same as with everyone else; everyone is impressed with the exception of one or two jealous or tradition-bound people. Ayla once again draws some flak when she announces that she was raised by the Clan (the Clan being “primitive” Neanderthals and the Zelandonii being the “intelligent” Cro-Magnons). She makes a few petty enemies, gets mated to Jondolar, and has a baby. That’s it. This book’s lack of a real plot would be baffling if I didn’t know that it’s the fifth part of a sixth series. While the rest of the books can stand alone by themselves, though, I don’t think this one can. I wouldn’t read it without reading some of the others, just so that it makes some sense. It’s nice to learn about the customs of these people, but there’s no plot-driven story that is developed through the book. Auel simply tells what happens to Ayla once she and Jondolar arrive back at his home; the months recorded here are as uneventful as a few months in an average person’s life. I am hoping that Ayla’s petty enemies were being introduced in this book to serve some more dramatic purpose in the sixth, final, and yet to be released book.

Finally, I read Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. I have now officially read every one of his books with the exception of the one on the nuclear winter. While I am morbidly interested in the effects of nuclear winter, I think the only nuclear attacks we’ll ever really worry about are those that take place at the hands of Islamists with their addled minds set on dreams of Heaven. I may read it later on, though, just to say that I’ve read everything written by Carl Sagan. I recently watched an “old” interview (1989) between himself and Ted Turner. The entire interview is on YouTube, and you can begin watching it by clicking here. In the second clip, Turner brings up nuclear winter. While the interview is now nearly twenty years old, ridiculously enough we’re still facing the same problems — global warming, inadequate health care, and a woefully uneducated populace. Sagan even mentions that a sizeable percentage of U.S. students couldn’t locate their own country on a map; deja vu, anyone?

I enjoyed Pale Blue Dot enormously. That goes without saying; the book is by Carl Sagan. I think the book might dethrone Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors as my favorite Sagan book; we’ll see as time goes by. The book is primarily concerned with humanity’s role among the stars. A few weeks ago (before I checked the book out) I added a video onto my MySpace profile. Sagan’s words in the video feature in the beginning of the book. Toward the end of the video, he says that astronomy is a “humbling experience”. This is how he begins the book, by illustrating through a history of astronomy the various ways that humanity’s arrogance has been checked by further knowledge of our cosmic insignificance. Sagan moves on to explain how we started to explore the solar systems and goes into detail on how particular parts of the solar system formed; he talks about the natural history of Venus that can be deduced through the available evidence, for instance. The book covers all manner of subjects, all of them tied in some way to astronomy. While I think the book could be enjoyed by anyone, I would especially recommend it to people interested in astronomy like myself. I also want to recommend another video.

A couple of months back, I somehow encountered Prometheus Music, which produces songs dealing with humanity’s adventures in space flight. “Surprise!” is about Sputnik, for instance. My favorite song is “Fire in the Sky“. I happened to find a visual history of space flight set to the song — I hope you enjoy.

Pick of the Week: Despite the fight Deathly Hallows put up, I have to say that my favorite reading for this week was Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot.

I also began reading Only Yesterday. I’m not reading it in book form, but online. I can’t find a copy of the book in any of the nearby libraries, and I’ve been wanting to read the book for two years. Because of this, I have overcome my aversion to e-books and started to dig in. So far it’s fantastic.

This week, I plan to read Richard Dawkins’ The River Out of Eden. Despite my enormous affection for Dawkins, I have actually only read three of his books — Unweaving the Rainbow, The Ancestor’s Tale, and The God Delusion. I’ve tried twice to read The Selfish Gene, but genetics bores me. With that in mind, it seems ridiculous that I am reading another of his books about genetics. I plan to read the book largely because of the fact that I’m familiar with and enjoy reading Dawkins’ works. I love watching interviews with the man, and I’m hoping that this book is as engaging as he is in interviews.

Dawkins was featured in a panel of interviewees that I watched a few days ago. Another of the panelists was Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote about her experiences as an ex-Muslim emigrant to Europe in the book Infidel. I’m interested in her story, so I’ll be reading the book this week.

So, this week:
– Only Yesterday, Frederick Lewis Allen
– The River Out of Eden, Richard Dawkins
– Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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This Week at the Library (1/9)

Posted on September 1, 2007 by smellincoffee

Current Music: “Never There“, Cake

I had hoped to delay this week’s update until I was able to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but getting my hands on a copy of the final book has been harder than I thought it would be. Most of this week’s reading — well, last week since I’m late — was Harry Potter-related, but not all of it. There were two non-Harry books I checked out last week — Storms from the Sun and The Germans. I didn’t finish The Germans because I was caught up with the Potter books. Shelters of Stone suffered a similar fate; I was halfway done with it, but Harry interfered.

I found Storms from the Sun to be both informing and entertaining. While I usually enjoy the books I check out, this week was no guarantee given that I picked the book up because of its cover. In effect, I judged the book by its cover. Take that, conventional wisdom. As you can imagine, the book is about how the activity of the Sun affects those of us on Earth. At the beginning of the book, in the second chapter, the author tells a story about Columbus. Columbus’ men were relying on the natives for food and supplies, but they soon wore out their welcome by treating the natives in an obnoxious fashion. Being a deeply religious man, Columbus knew just what to do — sic God on them.

By consulting astronomical tables, Columbus was able to threaten them with a lunar eclipse. He told his hosts that God wasn’t very happy that the natives were no longer allowing the Spaniards to treat them like doormats. They would either continue to feed his men and tolerate their boorish behavior, or God would take the moon away. The eclipse showed up as predicted and the Spaniards were able to obtain more free food. I thought this story was funny; it pretty much sums up the best use humanity has found for religion — exploitation. Most of the book is about solar activity’s effect on Earth’s electromagnetic field. I found it interesting, but then I like astronomy.

So, two weeks ago when I checked out Storms from the Sun, Shelters of Stone, and The Germans, I planned to return to the library whenever the second and third books of the Harry Potter series were returned. A week later, they were not returned. I had watched the first movie by this point and was quite anxious to resume my reading of the series, so this annoyed me greatly. That Saturday, I came to Montevallo for Spruce-Up day. While I was here, I picked up the second and third books and the third movie. I then drove home and “settled in for a Hogwarts’ weekend”.

On Saturday, I read Chamber of Secrets and on Sunday I read The Prisoner of Azkaban. The Chamber of Secrets is about Harry’s second year at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I have actually read some of this book before, in tenth grade. A friend from school was reading the book and asked me if I had read them. I said no, and she was surprised. She let me read some of the book during class, and I did enjoy what I did read. I read the first two chapters, I think. I remember Dobby quite well. Dobby is this little house-elf, and he shows up to tell Harry not to go back to Hogwart’s, because trouble is brewing there. Harry doesn’t heed his advice, of course, and goes anyway. As Dobby predicted, trouble starts. The students start showing up “petrified”; they’re alive, but not living. They’re frozen.

Harry, of course, having his name on the cover, sets out to solve the mystery. I halfway expected Hermione to say “Doesn’t it strike you a bit odd that during our second year here, we’ve encountered a second mystery?”. The Boxcar Children did this; every so often they’d say ‘You know, mysteries seem to pop up wherever we go!”. If you aren’t familiar with The Boxcar Children series, you should be. Anyway, back to Harry and his mystery. It seems that one of the founding members of Hogwarts’, a fellow named Slytherin, was quite the snob; he only wanted pure-blood wizards to attend the school. The other members (Gryffendor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw) were against this, so Slytherin left the school. Before he did, thought, he built a secret chamber in the school, the “Chamber of Secrets”. He said it would unsealed once his heir showed up. When the second year at Hogwarts’ starts, a blood-painted message appears on the school walls that says the Chamber has been opened and that the enemies of the Heir should beware. The book is about Harry trying to figure out who the Heir is, where the Chamber is, and who is petrifying the students of Hogwarts’. I was surprised by the answers to the last two questions.

After this, I watched the second movie and started on the third book. If I had any doubts about finishing the series, the third book would have completely done away with them. I love the third book; it was a fantastic read. It had all the elements that make for good fiction. It is called The Prisoner of Azkaban. Azkaban is a wizardry prison where bad wizards go. It’s an island prison, which doesn’t help people who might confuse the title and read it as The Prisoner of Alcatraz. I figured out the basics of the ending well before I got to it, although I didn’t anticipate all of the endgame plot developments. One thing that puzzled me was that Ron and Harry were clueless about how Hermione was taking multiple classes during the same hours and apparently missing none of them. During the book, Hermione “pops” into the classroom, surprising people. She insists she’s been there the entire time, but Ron and Harry puzzle over her behavior the entire book. Clearly, neither of them has ever watched an episode of Star Trek.

On Monday I checked out Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I would be leaving for Montevallo in a few days, but I was quite looking forward to continuing the series. Goblet of Fire is when the series’ overreaching arc really begins to unfold, and it is the first “big” novel in the series. I liked Goblet of Fire, but not as much as The Prisoner of Azkaban. In Goblet, Harry is chosen by the Goblet of Fire (a talking goblet) to serve as a “champion” in the Triwizard Tournament, this competition between the three largest European magic schools. Each school is represented by a champion, and they compete in three trials that involve magic. The Goblet picks two champions from Hogwarts — Harry and a young man from Hufflepuff by the name of Cedric Diggory. Harry’s inclusion in the championship results in Harry being isolated from almost everyone in the school, who think he is an attention-seeking brat. The book ends with a newly-alive Lord Voldemort attempting to kill Harry, who (obviously) survives.

The next book is The Order of the Phoenix. By this point, the war between the forces of good and evil has already started. The Order of the Phoenix is an order of wizards and witches who are fighting against Voldemort. They’re the only ones fighting, because the Ministry of Magic refuses to see that there is a problem. Harry — who narrowly escaped death in Goblet — is seen again as a brat who cooks up wild stories to catch everyone’s attention. Dumbledore backs Harry, and this results in his being ousted from the school. A new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher (Dolores Umbridge, who I dislike even more than Draco Malfoy) is named Headmistress, and she attempts to undermine all of Dumbledore’s and Harry’s plans to defeat Lord Voldemort. She’s quite wretched. Voldemort in this book is seen as trying to find a prophecy about him and Harry, and he tricks Harry into going to the Department of Secrets at the Ministry of Magic to fetch it. Voldemort’s forces then attack Harry. While they do lose, they claim the life of Harry’s godfather, Sirus. I thought Order of the Phoenix a good read, but I disliked the parts that included Umbridge.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth book in the series, and the last one I’ve read at the moment. I think this book’s purpose is mainly to prolouge the final book, as there’s really not that much conflict. The main characters grow in magical ability and personality and Dumbledore begins training Harry for the inevitable final battle against Voldemort. To kill him, they must locate and destroy four Hocruxes, which are objects that contain some of Voldemort’s soul. The book ends with an attack by Voldemort’s supporters on the castle. I enjoyed this book quite a bit, more so than I have any book since Prisoner of Azkaban.

Pick of the Week: Prisoner of Azkaban

So that ends last week. This week, I’m reading Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot and plan to pick up the final Harry Potter book tomorrow. I’ll read it over the weekend and hopefully be done on Monday or Tuesday. School studies will probably limit my weekly reading to one or two books a week, depending on how busy I am kept.

I am now a convert to Pottermania — like C.S. Lewis, “England’s most reluctant convert”. My conversion started with the first movie and was cemented by the third book. One of my friends is a severe Potterhead, and she has seen fit to introduce me to some elements of Potterfandom — like Wizard Rock and the Potter Puppet Pals. (I especially enjoy “The Mysterious Ticking Noise”.) My conversion to Pottermania was helped by the fact that I’m given to geeky fan behavior anyway. There’s no limit to the amount of things I can associate with Star Trek, and when I approach an automatic door I make a “Force Open” gesture a la Obi-Wan Kenobi out of habit. I think maybe that I knew I would be sucked into this and wanted to stave it off for as long as I could.

And so I end. Tomorrow I’ll pick up the last book (assuming the library is open, anyway). I’m also interested in reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel, which is about her experiences growing up in various Muslim countries and leaving them for Holland, eventually becoming an atheist and a critic of Islam. I’m going to figure out a way to obtain the DVD of The Goblet of Fire, and then await Order of the Phoenix‘s release on DVD. Pity my friends didn’t convince me to start the series a week earlier; I could’ve caught Phoenix in theatres!

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