NoahLutz

The Pompey book was crazy in that there is so much that I thought about him which comes directly from Plutarch. There’s also a recreation of the scene in the Lord of the Rings where the Ringwraiths (or the enemies of Pompey) stab an empty bed. Did Peter Jackson get this from Plutarch? I don’t know, but I like to believe it is true.

Over half way through Parallel Lives and I am loving it. It’s almost like a encyclopedia of the greatest men of Greece and Rome. Also, I’ve just started the huge book on Pompey, who I already know a lot about, so I’m interested to see how what I know lines up with what Plutarch presents.

Romeo and Juliet is far better than I remember. Truth bombs left and right, jammed into some of the most beautiful language possible. I think I liked it less in my youth where I focused on the plot or characters’ motivation rather than the ideas and art of the play. I’ve decided to go after one of my whales: Plutarch: Parallel Lives. It’s about twice as long as War and Peace. Only Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is longer on my list. I’ve read Theseus, Romulus, and Lycurgus. It’s interesting to read something most consider myth as history. But, then again, much truth lies in myth, and people are often best understood by their myths - what they decide to venerate, to despise, how they define themselves as a group.

As You Like It was fun: Shakespeare was the king of wit and humor, and that’s the real highlight of this play. The story is nothing new, and the redemptions are fast and unearned, but it’s a comedy, so who really cares. Now for Romeo and Juliet, which will be at least my third time reading it.

Project Hail Mary was exciting and interesting. It’s basically the Martian 2, this time with weirder and more science and less believable situations. I wish the book were about 25% shorter: sometimes in the “science out the problems” section I grew bored, just wanting to get to the explanation, especially in the last third of the book. I enjoyed the structure of the narrative, and there were a few twists which caught me off guard. I do wonder how people knowledgeable about science would react to this as there were several times where I would figure out an answer before the main character, and the main character starts the book solving problems faster than the best minds on earth. Also, I had a hardcover of the book, and I always take off the jacket before reading. When I put it back on after reading it, the inside jacket had about 9 words in 3 phrases in huge letters on the top, and those would have ruined 2 huge surprises for me, so I am really lucky I didn’t read it. Generally, I try to avoid spoilers in everything: when I go to the movies I sometimes leave the theater until trailers are finished. That instinct really saved me for this book. I will tackle a Shakespeare play or two before getting back into longer, more difficult texts. First up, As You Like It, which I don’t believe I’ve ever read.

I will start Project Hail Mary tonight, I think.

Marlowe was really uneven. The narrative didn’t really make a lot of sense, though the writing and perspectives could be beautiful and compelling. I’m almost through Hillbilly Elegy. It is a fascinating book on a part of American culture that I read about in the news but never really have learned about. The narrative itself is compelling, but I find the emotional, social, and anthropological insights the most interesting. None of it is revelatory, but it is a good reminder with a different perspective.

I reread Much Ado About Nothing. I need to go over some of the Shakespeare plays because they are so short I don’t spend enough time thinking about them. Similarly, I started the Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. I’m not sure how many tropes this play started, or whether they were already so by the time it was written, but the play is packed with imagery, characters, and situations which have been played upon since in almost every medium. It is interesting to see the much earlier version.

I enjoyed Sir Gawain and the Green Knight a lot more than the last time I read it. Tolkien’s translation was really fun and playful, which I felt played into the poem a lot better. I went on and finished his translation of Pearl, which I had never heard of before but it was interesting. It’s like a mini Dante’s Paradiso except with a man who lost his 2-year old daughter. I don’t have the comparison for the translation, but it really worked as a mini-epic poem. I also finished his translation of Sir Orfeo, another medieval long form poem. I didn’t enjoy that story quite as much. I was familiar with the Greek myth regarding Orpheus, and this is a play on that but made more English (and more French). Still, I’m glad I was exposed to this as I haven’t read much medieval work outside of Dante, Chaucer, Beowulf, and Gawain. Though I do have Le Morte d’Arthur in my backlog. Next up will probably be Project Hail Mary, Hillbilly Elegy, or Much Ado About Nothing. We’ll see how I feel tonight.

Letters from Father Christmas was amazing. If you decide to read it, I highly recommend getting a copy with the illustrations. His handwriting, different languages, and different voices are brilliant. What a joy. It was also interesting to see how his kids getting older, the Great Depression, WWII, and writing the Hobbit/LOTR all affected his letters from Father Christmas. It is a short read and well worth the time. I’ve started Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Tolkien’s translation is great. He is trying to mimic the original writing style (which emphasizes alliteration as opposed to rhyme) so it is more of an artistic translation than a literal one. The story is great and he hasn’t messed with that, so it really can’t go wrong.

With a bit of a push I finished War and Peace before the New Year. I thought it was brilliant in many ways, but there were at least 6 essays arguing against the important man of history argument and for the predetermination theory. Many of his arguments against the big man of history argument in the case of Napoleon are persuasive, but I think he over argues it to the nth degree. I’m guessing that his theory was a bit novel at the time and as such he over argues it, but it obviously goes way too far. Also, every time he inserts another essay into the narrative, it takes you out of the story. Other than that, I found the story incredibly insightful and engaging, especially for such a long book. After that I read a book I bought for my kid a while ago: Shiloh. It is meant for the 8-12 ages, I think, and it was interesting enough for what it was (basically an Old Yeller but happy). It read like the first third of a 3-act play, but that’s probably because the author intended it to be a multi-book series. After that I read a brief overview on Egyptian History. It was intended as an overview, but I’m not sure that it was much better than reading Wikipedia. Now I am reading Tolkien’s Letters from Father Christmas, which is charming so far. I’ll finish this before Christmastide ends and then move on to Marlowe’s Faustus or Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I read a different translation in the last two years and enjoyed it, so I’m looking forward to a different perspective from a writer and linguist who I already respect.

Yes, we read Old Yeller and chased it with Where the Red Fern Grows. He said no more dog stories after that! He enjoyed them both but wanted something that didn’t make him cry. Perhaps Call of the Wild will be a good “classic” for us to tackle next. I read it when I was his age, but I actually don’t remember the ending (no spoilers!). As Ivan Drago almost says: If he cries, he cries.

Thrawn is the next choice. Our 7th book about Thrawn in the last 18 months or so. Anyone have a suggestion for a classic book for a boy?

I should have loved A Wrinkle in Time. It is a sci-fi story with a simple good vs evil premise, in which smart people are portrayed positively, and it is overtly pro-Christianity, which I haven’t found in YA or kids books much at all in anything written in the last half century. Still, it was just ok for me. The protagonist is particularly hatable, which makes the book a bit more of a chore than it needs to be. Also, the book seems like a poor man’s rip-off of CS Lewis’ space trilogy. The characters aren’t really developed deeply, and there isn’t too much to sink your teeth into. There is some gently musing about the nature of free will, and the primary conflict seems to be one of conformity against Christianity: not too compelling. Also, it is written quite sloppily. I read the entire book out loud, and I found myself flubbing a lot of sentences because of how poorly they were constructed. Anyway, I didn’t hate it. It was just ok. I gave my son the choice of whether to continue with the series or to go with a new direction, so we’ll see what he thought about it soon enough.

It seems that his critics were directionally right as Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists was misused to unconstitutionally remove the Bible from schools, even if it took 150 years to get there.

Some travel and more time involved in consuming news seriously slowed down my reading. The book is insanely long, and I’m only on page 277 of 1350. Still, I can see why it’s a classic already.

How was it? And, more importantly, what percentage of it was about Star Wars?

It seems the movie was remarkably faithful to the book. As I loved the movie, I loved the book. It is not particularly well written, nor are the characters other than Watney particularly memorable, but it is exciting to see how each challenge is overcome with knowledge, ingenuity, and resilience that I’ll never have. Now for something a little weightier: War and Peace. I’ve never read Tolstoy before, and this and Anna Karenina have been on my list for so long that I feel I can’t just keep putting it off because it is monstrously long. I chose different translations for an audiobook and book, so I can compare as I go along. So far, so good, but there are a lot of characters and I haven’t really figured out who is who yet.

The Annals was overall well worth it, and I’m glad my false deadline pushed me to read it. So much of what we take for granted about history is recorded there, whether it was Boadica’s revolt in Britain, the early flourishing of the Christian Church in Rome, or Nero performing Greek tragedies as Rome burned. It also gave insights into the economics of the day, the impetus for law giving, and the mores of the elite. It was very interesting. I moved onto “An Inspector Calls”, which was atrociously bad. It seemed like the type of thing that someone wrote to make fun of people who were socialists. It constantly tells you what to think rather than allowing you to learn from the characters’ actions. It was so heavy-handed that I actually laughed out loud a few times. I can’t imagine how the education system was convinced to force this down so many students’ throats. I think I’ve earned a more enjoyable read, and started The Martian. So far, so good.

Given the rough and tumble nature of politics at the time and that they were political rivals, that isn’t surprising. Plus, if you think media now is bad, it was astounding what the papers would write back then.

The biography of Edmund Burke was also a mixed bag. The first half of the book is a breezy biography. As I didn’t know much about him, it was interesting. It was well-written and engaging. The second half of the book looked to connect Burke to modern conservatism. While the argument is overall persuasive, sometime the specific connections were tenuous or so attenuated that it seemed like an argument in search of an example and not pure analysis. Still it was interesting. I checked out a translation of Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great (Cyropaedia) by Larry Hedrick and was really unsure of what to think. On the one hand it was interesting and easy to follow. On the other hand, it was clearly not a translation, but an interpretation with an eye to use the source material as a way to teach leadership qualities to modern people. I may come back to it after reading an actual translation, or immediately before I do. My last assignment, before it leaves on November 4, is to finish The Annals by Tacitus. It jumps between fascinating insights, boring minutiae, epic retellings of history, and hilarious or biting criticism. This one is taking me longer as I’m going through two translations. In reality, the deadline is false because I already own one of the translations and I think I will buy the other even if I don’t finish before it is removed. And the translation I own is usually the better: more accurate to my eye, and more vividly expressed.

I’m now 40% through a biography of Edmund Burke by Jesse Norman. I just got to the part on the French Revolution, and it is an interesting, if not great, read. Unfortunately, I have to finish it before October 31, so I’m on a deadline. I don’t want to buy this one, I don’t think, so I really want to finish it. Reflections on the Revolution in France was really a mixed bag for me. It was often hilarious, insightful, and beautiful, but it was also often meandering and repetitive. I find Burke’s core philosophy a little difficult to understand, and even reading his biography is not clearing it up for me. Still, many of his predictions turned out to be 100% true, so I have to give it up for him for that. Add the eloquent prose and often persuasive hyperbole and humor, and it was definitely worth the time.

Grendel was funnier than I thought and took a bit longer than I thought, but I’m glad that I read it. I can’t tell if the book is endorsing an existentialist view or lampooning it (I read that the author envisioned Sartre as Grendel), but either way it reminded me how vapid, pompous, and simple-minded existentialism and nihilism are, and it gave me a few laughs on the way, so it was worth the price of admission. I’ve decided to move on to Reflections on the Revolution in France and am about 40% through it. I figured that I would be buying Anabasis anyway, so I just need to see if I like the translation and then move on. Burke is a strange cat, and the book (an adaption of letters he wrote) is a bit of a mess. He is moving between defenses of the monarchy and tradition, condemnation of the philosophy (or lack thereof) of the French Revolution, and interesting concepts on liberty, government, and morality. He jumps from impassioned and hilarious emotional appeals, to calculated and empirically driven proofs. It forces me to stop reading for a while and reflect on what he is actually saying and why. I will note, however, that people made fun of his criticisms when he wrote this (1790), and virtually everything he wrote came true in 1793. I will also note that his constant use of “Jewry” as an insult is weird and off-putting.

I spoke too loosely. The books are still available, I just need to pay to see them after they are removed from some free-list that we get as one of our perks for being a member of something. I’m not sure if it related to Kindle Unlimited or whatever the Audible membership is, but the books are no longer free. After reading or listening to them, I am deciding whether or not to buy them, which I usually have done. So their plan is working. Dirty capitalists!

How the West Won was fascinating. There are so many things accepted as conventional wisdom that it challenged. It gets some details a bit off, but the extensive notes allow you to check everything. Because the topic is so broad, it can jump around a bit, and the author obviously has a point of view, but it is always interesting and it is always backed up with evidence. I’m still trying to read as much as I can before it leaves Kindle, so I went through Brainwashed (not good and not worth it) and will finish an interesting translation of Gilgamesh today (Stephen Mitchell - not accurate, but an engaging and understandable rendition). Then I will try and finish John Gardener’s Grendel tomorrow or the next day and then either Xenophon’s Anabasis (inspiration for the movie and Lin-Manual Miranda album “The Warriors”) or Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. I’m going to lose at least 3 books because they are all leaving Kindle at the same time, which annoys me. Couldn’t they have warned me a little earlier so I wouldn’t spend two weeks cramming like I was in college again?