BOOK REPORT: God Bless You, Dr Kavorkian by Kurt Vonnegut

Title: God Bless You, Dr Kavorkian 
Author:  Kurt Vonnegut
Copyright Date:  2011

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars ( short )


Back-Cover Description
In twenty-one trips down the "the blue tunnel to the pearly gates" strapped to a gurney, Vonnegut interviews Sir Isaac Newton, Clarence Darrow, James Earl Ray, Eugene Debs, John Brown, Adolf Hitler, William Shakespeare, and Kilgore Trout, among others. What began as a series of ninety-second interludes for WNYC public radio evolved into this provocative collection of questions and answers about who and what we live for, and how much it all matters in the end.

My Thoughts
God Bless You was a very short read.  Each account of a "visit" with a deceased person at the pearly gates was approximately three pages. Some were amusing, others were inspiring, others left me wanting.   

I found the interviews with people I was not familiar more enjoyable that the ones from people I knew about.  I think this is partly due to my expectations going into the story.  It was easy for me to simply read the interview and enjoy Vonnegut's unique take on this individual's contribution to mankind if I didn't have an preconcieved notions going into the story.  For the interviews for people I knew about, I had questions I wanted for Vonnegut to ask and discuss and he rarely came close to those topics.

Overall this was an entertaining read.  At times it was a bit predicable in its themes, but Vonnegut's witty writing makes up for any lack of depth in several of the interviews.

BOOK REPORT: Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett

Title:            Waiting for Godot 
Author:        Samuel Beckett
Copyright Date:  1953

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars ( ok )

Back-Cover Description
A seminal work of twentieth-century drama, Waiting for Godot was Samuel Beckett's first professionally produced play. It opened in Paris in 1953 at the tiny Left Back Theatre de Babylone, and has since become a cornerstone of twentieth-century theater.

The story line evolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone --or something-- named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a drama spun from their own consciousness.  The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as a somber summation of mankind's inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett's language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existentialism of post-World War II Europe. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of out time. 

My Thoughts
If you want an example of a play in the 'Theater of the Absurd' style, look no further than Waiting for Godot.  It is a very simple play; just two guys hanging around a tree waiting for Godot to arrive.  Their conversations are playful, light, sometimes funny. But within the playfulness you can see the social commentary in between the lines.  The biggest problem I had with this play is that the characters were SO absurd that I couldn't care for them.  These men had absolutely no short term memory and their dialog was based on this instantaneous ignorance. They just kept going around in circles.  Every now and then, a few other characters would enter the scene to break the circle in their own weird way but even they don't remember events that occurred the previous day.  I couldn't take the absurdity and apply it to humanity and therefore the social commentary was lost on me.  

This isn't to say I wasn't entertained by the dialog, I just couldn't get everything Samuel Beckett wanted me to get out of it.  I saw it more as a literary Abbott and Costello routine.

It is obviously better to see a play acted out on stage with good actors; but if the play is good, reading it can be a somewhat adequate substitute. Shakespeare comes to mind.  I think Waiting for Godot needs to be seen to be truly appreciated.

BOOK REPORT: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Title:            The Things They Carried 
Author:         Tim O'Brien
Copyright Date:  1990

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars ( good read)

Back-Cover Description
They carried malaria tablets, love letters, 28-pound mine detectors, dope, illustrated Bibles, each other. And, if they made it home alive, they carried unrelenting images of a nightmarish war that history is only beginning to absorb. Since its first publication, The Things They Carried has become an unparalleled Vietnam testament, a classic work of American literature, and a profound study of men at war that illuminates the capacity, and the limits, of the human heart and soul.

My Thoughts
The Things They Carried is a collection of short stories that tell of the author's time in Vietnam.  The odd thing about them is that they are fictional, but told as a direct memoir. Throughout the book, Tim O'Brien addresses the reader directly to talk about why he writes fictional stories about his experience during the war. He says that sometimes fiction is more truthful than the real thing. 

While this was a good book, The Things They Carried lacked the cohesion of the other war books I've read.  As I mentioned above, the author jumps back and forth between addressing the reader directly and addressing his memories.  Jumping back and forth between the two breaks up the flow of the book at times and seems redundant in certain occasions.  While most of the stories have a common thread that follows the natural passage of time in the war, you can tell that some of the stories were composed as separate entities, probably for different periodicals where one can't assume that the other ones have already been read. 

Like all good war stories, the reader is closely tied to the horrors, tension, boredom, solitude and camaraderie of war.  The stories revolve around the friendships formed and lost, and the soul searching which takes place everyday in a war zone.  The stories also touch on how a soldiers life is affected when returning from active combat; how you are never the same when you experience those horrors first hand. 

One of the more powerful stories for me actually takes place before Vietnam. It is about the author as a young man in a small Wisconsin town when he gets the dreaded draft letter.  He is forced to choose between possibly dying in a war that he didn't believe in and disappointing his family and community by running away across the Canadian border.  I honestly don't know what I would have done in his situation and I am glad I didn't have to make that choice. I also hope that Sims doesn't have to make it either when he gets to be draft age.

 I think I would have enjoyed it more not reading it cover to cover but by treating The Things They Carried as a magazine and spaced the readings out over a few months.  Each story is well written and deserves to be read in its own time.

BOOK REPORT: Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Title:                          Cat's Cradle

Author:                       Kurt Vonnegut

Original Copyright :  1963

My Rating:     3.5 out of 5 stars  ( clever )

Back-Cover Description

Cat's Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness.  An apocolyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.  A book that left an indelible mark on the entire generation of readers, Cat's Cradle is one of the twentieth century's most important works -- and Vonnegut at his very best.

My Thoughts

Cat's Cradle is a story about the interesting ways people may naively affect the viability of their species long term existence told with the comic absurdity for which Vonnegut is known.

The story revolves around a free-lance writer who is researching the life of a scientist involved with the Manhattan project for a book he was writing about nuclear war.   Unbeknownst to all but a few members of his family, the scientist, before he died worked on one last, seemingly innocuous invention.  It was never intended as a weapon; the military just wanted a way to keep the marines from getting muddy in the field.  The project was never formally pursued, but the scientist, in his curiosity, worked on it during his spare time. This small insignificant invention it turned out, if mishandled, has the ability to destroy the world.  

When Cat's Cradle was published in 1963, the cold war was on everyone's mind.  It was all but certain that humans would destroy themselves at the hand of a large weapon (read: the Atomic bomb) which was developed solely for the intent of intimidation and destruction.  But Cat's Cradle puts forward the idea that the end could be brought on, not by a large explosion, but by something as small as a grain of sand which was developed more out of curiosity than malicious intent.  Adding to this plot line, Vonnegut weaves in a new religion called Bokonism which openly states that its canon is based in lies and a small banana republic in the Caribbean which changes governments more often than most people change their socks.  All of these layers complement each other very well and they build upon themselves in more and more outlandish ways throughout the book.

Cat's Cradle is a quick read that was extremely clever and  funny.  I didn't give it 4 stars just because it was such a short read and there were just a few ideas he could have expanded upon. On the whole, my  expectations were met and I would recommend this book to most anyone.

On a side note, I need to relay a story which happened whilst reading this book on a flight from Atlanta to San Francisco.  First, I read a chapter in Cat's Cradle  which chronicled the long twisting path a character follows to the small Caribbean island.  One step in his journey, during World War II, he was captured at sea by the Germans and forced to go fight the Partisans in Yugoslavia.  This was really weird in that I just finished reading  about the Partisan fighters in Yugoslavia in The Forgotten 500.  I wouldn't have known who the Partisans were unless I read that book.  I thought to myself, "This is neat, two books I've read are connected."  Then, about ten minutes later, I decided to take a break from reading and played the in-flight trivia game.  One of the questions was, "Which Author invented the religion 'Bokonism'."  Then I thought to myself, "Creepy..."

BOOK REPORT: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Title:                                          Never Let Me Go

Author:                                      Kazuo Ishiguro

Original Copyright Date:        2006

My Rating:      3.5 out of 5 stars  
             ( Not what I was expecting, but good )

Backcover Description
     From Booker Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro comes a devastating new novel of innocence, knowledge, and loss.
     As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Halisham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules -- and teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.
    Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life, and for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them so special -- and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.  Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is another classic by the author of The Remains of the Day.

My Thoughts

If you read the above description you don't get the feeling that you'll step into an alternate version of England where things just aren't quite the same, a world which allows for places like Halisham.  The veil is slowly lifted as the story progresses as to the reasons Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth were "special" growing up and how being "special" will ultimately affect them. It was interesting being this ignorant of the general plot line going in, and I don't know if I would have enjoyed it as much if I was on top of everything from page one.  If you do want a slight hint as to the setting and tone, the summary on the Time Magazines writeup in the
100 best novels I really don't want to say too much more about the story line, because, if someone reading this decides to read the book, I don't want to ruin the experience.

Expectations aside, this is a very well written story.  I told Maggie during the early chapters that I could see my self trying to write like this. A first person narrative where the lines of yesteryear and today are blurred and subtle.  Similar to listening to a close friend look back to a pivotal time in their lives when you were not a part of it. How they spend just a bit of time explaining who or what something was after they've realized you may not know, jumping around a bit as they go to follow where the memories take them.  A clarification: I have no notions of be successful at it, i could just see myself attempting it.  

Kazuo Ishiguro crafted Never Let Me Go; everything about it was deliberate and the perfect words were chosen for the sublte but powerful drama that plays out in this interesting world. The further I step away from this book, the more I admire what Ishiguro did with it. 

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: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson

Title:       The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories

Author:                      Robert Louis Stevenson 

Original Copyright Date:             various

Original Publishing Date:  2009 (for this collection)

My Rating:             3.5 out of 5 stars  ( good )


Back Cover Description:
Idealistic young scientist Henry Jekyll struggles to unlock the secrets of the soul. Testing chemicals in his lab, he drinks a mixture he hopes will isolate—and eliminate—human evil. Instead it unleashes the dark forces within him, transforming him into the hideous and murderous Mr. Hyde.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dramatically brings to life a science-fiction case study of the nature of good and evil and the duality that can exist within one person. Resonant with psychological perception and ethical insight, the book has literary roots in Dostoevsky’s “The Double” and Crime and Punishment. Today Stevenson’s novella is recognized as an incisive study of Victorian morality and sexual repression, as well as a great thriller.

This collection also includes some of the author’s grimmest short fiction: “Lodging for the Night,” “The Suicide Club,” “Thrawn Janet,” “The Body Snatcher,” and “Markheim.”

My Thoughts

This was an interesting collection of stories by Robert Louis Stevenson.  I should have read this before Halloween as all of them are macabre tales. 

"Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is a novella which I've heard about all my life, but had never read.  I guess a topic so well known  can easily lead to hyped expectations.  It was a good story, although, not as good as Stevenson's other works.  I can see the parallels to Crime and Punishment alluded to in the back cover descriptions, and Stevenson even makes reference to Dostoevsky's works in the work. 

"Lodging for the Night"  tells the story of a cold night turned bad in a small hut where a game of cards leads to a stabbing and the main character venturing out into the night to get away from the scene and tries to find shelter.

"The Suicide Club" is actually three related short stories which follows Prince Florizel of Bohemia and his adventures infiltrating a suicide club.  a place, where for 40 pounds, you play russian roulette. but instead of a bullet, you pull cards.  Whomever pulls the ace of spades is the target, if you pull the ace of clubs, you must be one who kills.  I thought these stories were great.  According to the preface, Robert Louis Stevenson wanted to recreate the "Thousand and One Arabian Nights" and created a collection of short stories in that vein. The Suicide Club is part of that collection.

"Thrawn Janet" was a difficult story to read.  It is essentially a campfire horror story told by a drunk scotsman in the 1700's in his native dialect.  I never had to look so many words up, including "Thrawn" which means crooked or twisted. 

"The Body Snatcher" is a story of a young doctor's apprentice who's main task is to collect bodies for the anatomist.  Most of the bodies brought to him are in the middle of the night in suspicious circumstances.  This story did lead to a new personal goal.  Not only do I need "Gentleman Adventurer and Philanthropist" on my future business cards, but "Bon Vivant" needs to be added.  It means, "A person with refined taste, especially one who enjoys superb food and drink."

"Markheim" is a short story about a man who kills a pawn shop owner on Christmas morning to rob him and his personal crisis which comes thereafter.  This story is very similar to Crime and Punishment, on 400 pages shorter. 

All in all, it was a good set of stories, but it took me longer to read than expected.  

Now, in the style of Robert Louis Stevenson, " Let me profit my idleness, and make haste on my next verse"