Info on my next book report

Hi everyone!


I just wanted to give a quick update on my next book.  I am reading all of the Christmas Books by Charles Dickens.  We all know and love A Christmas Carol, however,  I wasn't aware that he wrote four more short Christmas Novels.   Each one is about seventy-five pages and I plan to write one book report for all of them together, and count them as single book for the project.  

The Christmas books:

• A Christmas Carol (1843)
• The Chimes (1844)
• The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)
• The Battle of Life (1846)
• The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848)

Jason

BOOK REPORT: The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

Title:         The Professor and the Madman

Author:      Simon Winchester

Original Copyright Date:          2005

My Rating:          3 out of 5 stars  ( good )


Backcover Description:
Part homage to the greatest reference work of all time, the Oxford English Dictionary, part mystery, part intellectual history of Victorian England, The Professor and the Madman tells the parallel stories of the dictionary's genius editor and one of his most prolific contributors, an insane American doctor committed to an asylum for murder.

My Thoughts:
The Professor and the Madman was an interesting look into a subject with which I was completely ignorant.  I always took dictionaries for granted and never really thought about how they were created.  I also thought that the Oxford English Dictionary was just another version of a dictionary similar to Webster's.  The OED as they call it across the pond is much more than a dictionary, it is an homage to every single word in the English language, its roots, it nuances of usage illustrated with sentences pulled from literature.  

Being non-fiction, there isn't much to say about symbolism or literary merit; although the author does a good job of developing the two main characters, James Murray the lexical geek editor of the OED and W.C. Minor, an Union army doctor in the Civil war; the madman who thought he was constantly being tormented in the night by little demons who would take him off to far off lands and make him do horrible things.

I did find sections of the book a bit dry as I don't seem to have a knack for philology or English lexicography.  While I did find the history of how the use of certain words outlined in the book interesting, the detailed discussions on roots and origin, etc  was lost on me. 

As a side note, fairly late in the book, another major contributer to the OED was mentioned who, by his own right was a kook.  Dr. Fitzedwald Hall, another American who ended up in India, falls in love with Sanskrit, moves to England, becomes a renowned professor of Sanskrit, and after a heated linguist argument with another Sanskrit scholar,  left in a huff to become a hermit.  It seems that, to be a major volunteer contributer to the OED, it seemed that you needed to be a little off and it would have been interesting to for this book to explore that further.

Overall, it was a fun read, full of sesquipedalian words (including sesquipedalian) that I had to look up in the dictionary... I guess James Murray would be proud!

BOOK REPORT: The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Title:                                           The Life of Pi

Author:                                        Yann Martel

Original Copyright Date:          2004

My Rating:                 3.5 out of 5 stars  ( good )

Backcover Description:

Pi Patel, a God-loving boy and the son of a zookeeper, has a fervent love of stories and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam.  When Pi is sixteen, his family and their zoo animals emigrate from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship.  Alas, the ship sinks-- and Pi finds himself in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and a 450-pound Bengel tiger.  Soon the tiger dispatched all by Pi. Can Pi and the tiger find their way to land? Can Pi's fear, knowledge, and cunning keep him alive until they do?

My Thoughts

I can see how it would be a great book-club book as it is full of discussions on religion, zoology and is full of symbolism.  Of course, most of that symbolism is lost on me.  I've never been one to follow or read deeply into a lot of that unless I am in an academic setting where someone can guide the conversation.  There are even book club discussion questions in the back, most of which seemed to me to apply to a different book... oh, well.  I still enjoyed the book. 

The book is divided into three main sections. Pi's religious life leading up to the ship sinking, the ark of a life boat, and the recovery.  Let's look at each one individually.

The first section follows "Pi" from a small child until sixteen when his family emigrates to Canada.  The bulk of this is detailing Pi's spiritual life as he becomes a full fledged Hindu, Catholic, and Muslim.  I really don't know what this adds to the story other than articulating that each of the major religions has beautiful elements in which Pi can take comfort.  The author even has the three spiritual leaders of each religion meet at one point to heatedly debate the pros and cons of each religion.   As he is growing spiritually, Pi is also living amongst the animals in a zoo; his father being the zookeeper.  Here the author outlines some of the basics of animal behavior and the human element imposed upon the animals. "Look behind the curtain to see the most dangerous animal in the zoo", only to have the patron see a mirror behind the curtain.  

The second section details the sinking cargo ship and the after deadly aftermath.  This was by far the most engaging part in the book and could have stood alone with just a brief introduction and conclusion as an excellent novella, ala Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor with a tiger added for more "ummph"  (Funny, I read that novella on my trip to India, the read this novel on my way to Oregon, which is closer to Canada than I currently am, which was Pi's destination.... wow....that's deep.. ;) )  The author does a good job keeping the story believable that a teenager and tiger could coexist without too much of a stretch of the imagination.  I do find it odd that the emphasis placed in the first section on religion/spirituality was basically absent in this part.  Every now and then, it would be mentioned that  Pi would pray or mix the major figures of each on in an amusing yet non-offensive exclamation.  

The third section wraps up the story, albeit a bit flatly.  Once on land again, Pi recounts the story to some Japanese representatives of the shipping company who are looking into the cause of the sinking ship.  Here, the main point seemed to be that the Japanese representatives don't believe such a fantastical story and the philosophical discussion which followed. 

I really did like this book; it was an entertaining quick read which was great on my flight to Portland.  I think a group discussion would have been helpful to get some of the deeper meanings from the book but it was still enjoyable from the level I read it.  
   

BOOK REPORT: Feed by M.T. Anderson

Title:                                            Feed

Author:                                        M.T. Anderson 

Original Copyright Date:          2002

My Rating:                       4 out of 5 stars  ( good )


Backcover Description:
For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon — a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson creates a not-so-brave new world — and a smart, savage satire ushering us into an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.


My Thoughts:
Wow. That was a literary transition from Robert Louis Stevenson.  I started Feed about 6 minutes after finishing the short story "Markheim" by the aforementioned Stevenson.  The first page of Feed seemed to have, like, every other word, as like, ",like" or something.  Of course that was on purpose.  Feed is a cautionary tale about a society where the computers are linked directly to the brain at a very young age.  Instead of being used for "good and betterment" it functions just like any computer does today.  It is a vehicle for advertisements and social interaction.   It is just like, you know, having Facebook(tm) in your head ALL THE TIME, you know...  

The book is in the "young adult" section of the book store and I initially took the dumbed down language of the eighteen year old main character to be just that, the inner monologue of an eighteen year old.  But, I quickly learned that everyone spoke, like you know, like that and tthat M.T. Anderson knew what he was doing..  Everyone spoke the same, you know language, from the president down to the janitor.  

As I progressed through the book, I realized that there is a very deep subject here, and that is the dumbing down of the individual in the face of all the social media out there.  It really struck close to home.  In the world M. T. Anderson creates, every time a School or Cloud is mentioned it has a trademark symbol around it.  In this world, schools are corporate subsidiaries and clouds are a product.  Considering that this book was written in 2002, well before most of the social media addictions started, it hit very close to home.   

The back cover description nailed it fairly well saying this follows in the footsteps of Orwell, Burgess and Vonnegut, but I would say the biggest shoe it is trying to fill is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. 

This was a really good book and I would recommend it to most anyone.