Rhino Ranch

I am bummed to finally see the Duane Moore novels come to an end. I first read Last Picture Show shortly after the movie came out, though I did not actually see the movie for years afterwards, and I even liked Texasville and When the Light Goes though they were both trashed in reviews. I've even visited Thalia, uh, Archer City, on more than one occasion, even before Booked Up opened its doors a few years back. In short, I've come to like and to identify with Duane as we have both grown older and I'm sorry to lose him as a friend.

OK, Rhino Ranch in pretty unrealistic in much of its plot and with many of its characters. Billionairesses and top notch chefs and porn stars hanging out in Archer City? I don't think so. And are there really that many meth heads cooking out in the open fields? I find that pretty hard to believe. The whole concept of the Rhino Ranch is pretty hard to believe, too, but there are enough game ranches and wildlife preserves dotting the Texas landscape now that maybe it isn't all that farfetched. And how about all those young things--at least two, anyway--that keep offering themselves to Duane? (Jimmy said that McMurtry really is a horny old man, a judgement seconded by Sara) Or that he didn't know that Annie was a meth freak while he was married to her?

And the final pages do read like McMurtry has gotten tired of the whole gig and is trying to bring the saga to a close. Of course, one of McMurtry's faults has been an inability to bring some of his books to a satisfactory close, but the ending of Rhino Ranch, where he covers 10 years in about two paragraphs or so, reminds me a lot of That Evening Star where Aurora's grandson remembers his final moments with her about thirty years later.

But I do think that McMurtry was spot on with many of his characterizations and puzzlements of old age. Duane, as always, is a pretty passive observer of life that continually surprises himself with his feelings and some of his impulses. He's also surprised at all of the changes happening to himself and to his friends and to Thalia as they all grow older, especially as he watches so many of his friends die. (Of course, nothing matches his surprise in having Karla suddenly die in an automobile acccident in Duane's Depressed--Sara reached over and slugged me when she read that part a few years back, "You didn't tell me that Karla dies!") And Duane's reverie where he considers that it would just be OK to go to sleep and not wake up seems to be a thought that I'm having more and more these days myself. It's just kind of a resignation that the best is over and the rest is just kinda sitting around watching it all come apart. So much of that comes from Duane's rudderlessness, his loss of sense of purpose, his feeling of pointlessness. These are feelings that I'm having to deal with more and more myself and it feels right on to have McMurtry give voice to them.

Author: McMurtry, Larry

Date Published: 2010

Length: 2010

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A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy

This is certainly a much different look at many figures of the Enlightenment than I've come across before. Israel maintains a major split amongst Enlightenment writers: the Moderate Enlightenment, as represented by Newton, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau among others, and the Radical Enlightenment of Spinoza, Bayle, Diderot, d'Holbach, Helvetius, Paine, et. al. 

"Radical Enlightenment is a set of basic principles that can be summed up concisely as: democracy; racial and sexual equality; individual liberty of lifestyle; full freedom of thought, expression, and the press; eradication of religious authority from the legislative process and education; and full separation of church and state. It sees the purpose of the state as being the wholly secular one of promoting the worldly interests of the majority and preventing vested minority interests from capturing control of the legislative process." (Preface)

Israel traces this split back to Spinoza's positing of one substance--pure materialism--as the metaphysics of the universe, without the corresponding split between mind and matter "Spinoza…forged the basic metaphysical groundplan, exclusively secular moral values, and culture of individual liberty, democratic politics, and freedom of thought and the press that embody today the defining core values of modern secular egalitarianism" (location 1955) In other words, Spinoza really underlies most modern thought.

The moderate enlightenment figures, especially Voltaire and Rousseau, really come off fairly badly in Israel's eyes. Whereas I've kind of thought of Voltaire as an Enlightenment hero, to be revered alongside Erasmus and Montaigne, Israel sees him as a major conservative figure, who attacked the church, it is true, but only to destroy the abuses of its power and to consolidate power with the aristocratic classes. Of course, Israel may be talking more about the later Voltaire, but he maintains that Voltaire "consistently opposed radical thought and its egalitarian aims" throughout his career. Voltaire almost comes off as a pitiable figure at the end of his career as he stops attacking the church and begins attacking la philosophie moderne and its deplorable tendencies toward evolution, among other ideas. He recognized that his own influence over the ideas of the day were waning.

That's because a flood of literature in the 1760s-1780s bought about the predominance of the ideas of the Radical Enlightenment, culminating in the French Revolution. Israel vents against the historicism of the revolution for failing to emphasize this role and concentrating almost exclusively on social and political forces at work. "One cannot begin to grasp the revolutionary position in 1789 rightly without acknowledging that philosophisme was seen to have engineered a vast "revolution of the mind." And this phenomenon is in turn inexplicable without looking at the long, and in part self-conscious, build-up to its climax in the 1770' and 178os of a radical tradition reaching all the way back to the 166os. (location 1861) And it was the thinking of Rousseau that directly influenced Robespierre and the Jacobins in the excesses of the Terror, not the supposed "coldly clinical, unfeeling machine of rational ideas" that many critics of the Enlightenment have pointed to.

The moderate enlightenment thought lost influence because, in the end, it could not effectively criticize the abuses and social grievances of the day. The radical enlightenment became the "mouthpiece" for social resentment, calling for radical equality, the redistribution of wealth and happiness, and the universal education of mankind. It seems to me that that is still the world that we strive for today.

Author: Israel, Jonathan

Date Published: 2009

Length: 296 pp & 7 hr 28 min

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Narrator: Adams, James

The Brothers Karamazov

I'm still trying to mull this over. This is obviously a "classic" and recognized as Dostoyevsky's culminating masterpiece, and it has sat on my bookshelf for, what, 40 years now, at least since I first read "The Grand Inquisitor" in LS 52 with Kay Bethune in 1970, if not before. But whereas Ivan comes off as the protagonist in telling his "poem" as he calls it, and hence, a heroic figure for me at the time, that is certainly not the direction of Dostoevsky's thinking at. In short, Brother K may be an important book but it just didn't turn out to be an enjoyable read.

The fact of the matter is that Fyodor Pavlovich and Dmitri Fyodorovich (Mitya) are buffoons--idiots, really--and I just didn't care for them at all. And it is the trial of Mitya for killing Fyodor that is the central plot structure of the book. Ivan and Alyosha are really the only major characters in the book (well, I should include Father Zosima, but he dies early on) worth caring for, and that includes the females Grushenka, Katarina and even Lise. Nobody seems to have a clue. The first half of the book with Fyodor and Mitya furiously quarreling with each other over Grushenka, while Mitya also dumps Katarina after spending large sums of her money, is really unpleasant, relieved only by "The Grand Inquisitor" and maybe by conversations between Zosima and Alyosha. Then so much of the rest of the book is taken up with Mitya's protestations of innocence "I am a scoundrel but not a thief or a murderer" that become so tiresome after a while. I guess my real reaction to his conviction in the trial, even though we know he is innocent, is "who cares." He and his father are so led around by their dicks--the sensualist Karamazov personality that is pointedly described again and again--that if Mitya didn't kill his father, he would have sooner or later killed someone else. And neither he nor Fyodor had a clue that Grushenka was playing them all along.

It sometimes takes a shovel to beat an idea into my head, and the cover of the Norton critical edition has the "troika" of the prosecutor's speech emerging from the heads of the bothers, implying that the story of the bothers is the story of Russia: the out-of-control sensualist Dmitri, the intellectual and skeptical Ivan, and the saint Alyosha. Many commentators claim that Ivan and Alyosha represent the fight for the Russian soul. Of course, it is Ivan who says that without God, all things are possible, and hence leads directly to the murder of Fyodor Pavlovich, and so Ivan is instantly discredited. Alyosha is almost goodness itself, if quite naive and simplistic in his thinking. And since the book ends with the exclamation "Hurrah for Karamazov" I guess that means he wins in the end, especially with the exhortation of love and remembrance to the boys at Ilyusha's funeral.

This leaves out the fourth brother, Smerdyakov, and it is he who is misled by Ivan's Enlightenment philosophy and actually kills Fyodor since all things are possible. But then he ends up killing himself while Ivan goes mad (of brain fever?) after his "interview with the devil." Evil really does permeate the book and makes any kind of optimistic view of human nature impossible without the saving power of the orthodox church.

I really need to ponder and read about Brothers K some more.

Author: Dostoevsky, Fyodor

Date Published: 1880

Length: 735 pp & 34 hr 50 min

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Narrator: Davidson, Frederick

The Great American Novel

I don't know that I have anything to say about this novel. It's an early Roth and it makes me think that maybe I've kind of had my fill of Roth for a while. None of his other books have even come close to American Pastoral. Great American Novel is a total farce, but it's a joke that just went on far too long for me. Some of it was laugh out loud funny, but maybe I was expecting something else. Judging by other people's reaction to the book, I suspect that's the case. It's a book about a major league that was totally expunged from the historical record during World War II. One of the teams, the Port Rupert Mundys, set a record for ineptness and losing after they were kicked out of their home stadium for the duration of the war. Then when their beloved manager dies, a former player, Gil Gamesh, takes over the team as they begin spouting Marxist doctrine, hence the banishment of the league. Other players have similar mythological names, including the one armed right fielder, Bud Purusha, the pitcher Spit Baal, Smokey Woden, Mike Mazda, Chico Mecoatl, etc. And of course, the narrator of the story is the venerable sports writer, Word Smith. To be sure, there are good moments in the book, such as the famed outfielder who admits to his lover that he enjoys hitting triples more than making love to her, but it was just so over the top that I didn't find it all that enjoyable.

Author: Roth, Phillip

Date Published: 1973

Length: 14 hr 37 min

Narrator: Daniels, James

The Evolution of God

Wright tackles much of the same ground that Karen Armstrong covered in History of God, mainly the conception of god as it expands and grows--evolves--from the earliest hunter gatherer tribes through the three Abrahamic religions. And it pretty much comes down to this: "Cultural evolution was all along pushing divinity, and hence humanity, toward moral enlightenment." Man's conception of god has grown to include more and  more peoples and ideas  as he has come into "non zero sum relationships" with them. A win-win philosophy underlies our developing sense of humanity and the extension of our moral compass and compassion.

"the births of all three Abrahamic religions were exercises in large-scale social engineering. With ancient Israel, once-autonomous tribes drew together, first into a confederacy and then into a state. The birth of Christianity saw a second kind of social consolidation, not of tribes but of whole ethnicities.…With the birth of Islam both of these thresholds—the conglomeration of tribes and of national ethnicities—would be crossed in short order"

While Wright begins with chapters on hunter-gatherers, kingships, and early middle eastern states, the heart of the book really focuses on the development of god and moral compassion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Perhaps the best part of the book for me was the growth of Yahweh from a small-time Canaanite deity in the court of El (There is no evidence for the whole exodus story and the conquest of Canaan by Joshua et. al--The Israelites seemed to have coalesced as a people in the late Bronze age) and taking on more characteristics of the other gods in the court--especially Baal--as he grew in importance and influence. Josiah and his main man Hilkiah--he who miraculously found the Deuteronomic  Code in the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem--enforced monolatry on the people of Judah, forcibly destroying the temples and the priests of the other gods in the region, as reflected in the famous showdown between Elijah and the priests of Baal. This allowed Josiah to consolidate power in Jerusalem and consolidate the ethnic identity of the ancient Israelites. This monolatry was eventually pushed into monotheism by the time of the second Isaiah. Eventually, Philo pushed the idea of god to the intellectual conception of the logos, or as the creation and design of the universe.

Wright picks up with the story of Paul, here. He really doesn't have a lot to say about Jesus, for he maintains that there really isn't much to say. Jesus burst upon the scene proclaiming that the kingdom of god was coming very, very soon, but it was really up to his followers to establish a religion. Paul was the winner here,  bringing the message to the gentiles and hence transcending ethnic boundaries and enlarging the conception of god again. Wright does a good job of deconstructing Paul's message, especially his message of brotherly love that appears in his letters to some of the churches he founded, primarily as a means of consolidating his control over those churches after he moves on. It is a message of how church members should treat one another, not for mankind in general. But the gospel of John picks up on this and extends the idea with Philo's logos.

Wright is less convincing in his treatment of Islam. He maintains that Mohammed pushed the idea of god further than Paul and John as his worship of Allah grew beyond a small sect worshipped in Medina into a multinational empire controlled by religion. Mohammed's treatment of non-believers then also vacillated between intolerance and tolerance depending on how much he needed alliances with other peoples.

Finally, Wright seems to speculate this this growth in the conception of god might even present a good argument of the existence of god. "The existence of a moral order, I’ve said, makes it reasonable to suspect that humankind in some sense has a “higher purpose.” And maybe the source of this higher purpose, the source of the moral order, is something that qualifies for the label “god” in at least some sense of that word." It seems a bit far fetched to me to jump from talking about win-win strategies between people based on "non zero sum" relationships to assuming some kind of moral order and higher order to the universe.

Author: Wright, Robert

Date Published: 2009

Length: 567 pp & 18hr 27 min

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Narrator: Morey, Author

The Breast

What a bizarre book. Try to explain to anybody that the narrator has been turned into a 155 pound breast and then tries to tell what it feels like. He pays homage to Kafka, obviously, and Gogol, but beyond that, what to say. The narrator is David Kapeesh, however, whom I last saw as the narrator in the Dying Animal, so that lends more meaning to it. At least I know that he does not remain a 155 pound breast forever. Funny that he did not mention this episode in Dying Animal, though. The most touching parts of the narration come when David is trying to deny what has become of him and convince the doctors that it is nothing more than a psychotic episode that he will eventually snap out of. He's also concerned about keeping hold of his old life, especially as a professor of comparative literature and ponders the departmental politics of his predicament. He also dwells at length on the sexual feelings aroused in him by touch and the fact that he can only be aroused and not climax. It is outrageous and funny enough, but somehow it just never got around to making a point. It's a great exercise in style and narration, but little else that I can see.

Author: Roth, Phillip

Date Published: 1972

Length: 1 hr 50 min

Narrator: Colacci, David

Big Rock Candy Mountain

I really wanted to put this book down and abandon it in the first half of the story. I first tried listening to it with Sara, and it went nowhere with either of us. It was primarily about Elsa's leaving home and hooking up with Bo, up to the point after they got married and tried to make a go of it in Washington with a small cafe. Elsa seemed too much of a self conscious cypher and Bo was just Joe Jock who wanted to make a bundle of money. Neither of them seemed all that interesting and the plot was going nowhere.

Then I tried to finish listening to it by myself, while Bo and Elsa separated--or should I say after Bo ran away after abusing Elsa--and then Bo reached the point of bankruptcy with the farm in Canada after he persuaded Elsa to come back. I just found Bo intolerable. I couldn't feel anything for him and his travails as he convinced himself of one get rich quick scheme after another and dragged Elsa--and now the boys Chet and Bruce--along with him. I couldn't understand why Elsa allowed herself to go back to him, although her only options were to settle into a quiet life of conventionality and boredom in Minnesota. Especially in the audio format, I just found Bo suffocating, much as Elsa found herself smothered by him, especially as he began to bully his way around people, whether at the old Swede's farmhouse or with the bartender's family in North Dakota during his first bootlegging run during the flu epidemic. His character really began to deteriorate under the pressures of making money, showing itself with the mocking attitude toward the old British couple in Canada and then shooting the bird in front of Bruce and Elsa who were shocked by the brutality of the act.

I thought I'd give the book another try as a print novel, and that seemed to make all the difference. Also, Chet and Bruce were beginning to make a difference with the narration of the novel and the tensions in the family, rather than Elsa worries and sorrows and Bo's scheming, and the book became akin to Look Homeward Angel. I can't imagine that Stegner didn't have Wolfe in mind when he wrote the book for the parallels are too great--dysfunctional family trying to make it in the early 20th century, told from various points of view in the family, finally settling on the youngest son to have the final say in the book. It is Bruce that has some of the more interesting thoughts and experiments in narration (as in the car ride back to Nevada after his first semester in law school) and it's hard not to wonder whether great stretches of the book are autobiographical.

In short, I grew from loathing the book--or maybe more particularly, loathing Bo--to thinking that it was a very good, if not great, novel of American life. Having seen it through to the end and looking back on it as the history of a family, especially the family of a bootlegger during prohibition, and ending up in Salt Lake City, no less, gives the book a perspective that borders on insight into the human condition, what great literature is supposed to do. The final parts of the book, with Elsa dying and Bruce taking care of her--then reflecting on her and the rest of his family--contain great writing, even in the scenes where Bo reflects on his own situation and becomes desperate for money. He is even less likable than earlier in the book, as his needs and wants become even more hardened and self-centered. But as Bruce reflects, Bo had been very capable and even showed tenderness at times. It's almost as if Stegner asks: How does a bootlegger become as he is? What drives him? What becomes of him? And make no mistake, it is Bo's book. He is the center of its universe, and when he shoots himself finally, it brings a fitting end to his story and gives the book a finality and impact that was unexpected. 

Author: Stegner, Wallace

Date Published: 1943

Length: 563 pp & 25 hr 38 min

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Narrator: Bramhall, Mark

Of Mice and Men

You would think that I'd have been all over this given my enthusiasm for Steinbeck a few years ago, but this was my first real encounter with the book since I was a sophomore in high school, and Andy Bernea and I did a cutting for our Drama 1 class. I was George and he was Lenny, and he got a standing ovation from the class for his performance. I was along for the ride.

The book is so fucking bleak. As Sara said, you know it's going to turn out badly, but it makes Grapes of Wrath seem like a comedy. And there is a lot that seems unrealistic about the story, even though it is considered a story of realism. Mainly, Lenny. Given his behavior around the puppy and the ease with which he crushed Curley's hand and killed Curley's wife, it's hard to imagine that he would have made it as far as his did without being locked up. Sara pegged him as psychotic, especially when he threw the dead puppy around, and it just doesn't seem real that he had not been incarcerated or killed before then. Interesting that Steinbeck says that he worked with Lennie and watched the real "Lennie" kill the ranch foreman with a pitchfork.

Curley and his wife don't seem all that plausible to me, but maybe that's a product of the times that I grew up in. For Curley to go around trying to pick a fight with the ranch hands, or then to insist that he was going to gut-shot Lenny when he found him just doesn't ring true with me. The code of the west comes to the Depression?

Candy and Crooks provide enough pathos throughout the book to keep it depressing. Both of them are in dead ends with their lives with nothing to look forward to after being essentially destroyed by their jobs. Candy seems as simple as Lennie much of the time, and his hopes are of course shattered when Lennie dies. Crooks almost buys into the dream of a house and a farm, but pulls back in refusing to hope for something better.

I find it hard to believe that this has been taught in American lit for so many years. I wouldn't even begin to know how to approach it with kids who have so little background knowledge. Maybe it's a fit with depression era literature, but it seems that there must be better stuff out there. And if I were going to teach a short Steinbeck novel, I'd go for Cannery Row over Mice and Men.

Author: Steinbeck, John

Date Published: 1937

Length: 4 hr

Narrator: Hammer, Mark

Star Island

OK. Hiaasen is a lot of fun--and Star Island is fun--but the last couple of books are running thin. I enjoyed his earlier books--especially Skin Tight, Double Whammy, Stormy Weather, and Skinny Dip--a lot more. There's ust too much name dropping and brand name dropping in Star Island for my tastes. Yes, it is a book about modern notions of fame, stardom, and the paparazzi, and the inherent absurdity of it all, but it does leave me kind of cold.

Two of Hiaasen's previous characters return in Star Island--Skink and Chemo--but outside of Skink's tying a sea urchin onto the balls of the condo developer, or his taking a shit in the washing machine of his former lieutenant governor, he seems out of place. And, Hiaasen keeps reiterating the absurdity of Skink's appearance, almost as if her were padding the book. Chemo comes off a lot less creepy than his previous appearance in Skin Tight, and even achieves a certain amount of compassion in his refusal to kill Bang Abbott, the paparazzo, or Ann DeLusia, the double for Cherry Pye. Ann is really the only sensible character in the book, and it's her story that drives the novel. Cherry Pye is a complete caricature of stardom--think Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton--although it is hard to think caricature with the likes of them on the loose. Cherry's parents and her agent are the real culprits, in a sense, as they lead blood sucking lives leeching on their daughter's stardom. And she has no talent to begin with. Keeping her straight and sober, and cleaning up the messes when she doesn't, forms the major part of the book, and it's all doomed to failure until the end of the book when Ann steps in and forces sobriety on Cherry. Of course, it was hard to keep a straight face when Linday Lohan's father announced that he was opening an addiction facility this past week--he could have stepped straight out of this novel.

So Star Island turned out to be a pretty forgettable book. It started off with some promise, but then it started to lose direction and ended up tying up a lot of loose ends when the rest of the story didn't coalesce. Maybe Hiaasen should write about novelist who can no longer bring their A game to the table with the distractions of living up to their own fame.

Author: Hiaasen, Carl

Date Published: 2010

Length: 11hr 31min

Narrator: Hoye, Stephen

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

I don't know if I can say that I was really blown away by McCulloch's Reformation two years ago, but it made reading Durant's books seem very dated and almost simplistic. I had high expectations for Christianity this summer, making it my major reading project of the summer. And reading it screen by screen on an ipod touch added significantly to the feeling of major task. The ability to highlight and review through the Kindle website, really added to the feeling of accomplishment, however, and made the summer's major read feel like something special. It certainly took enough time.

McCulloch captures the main theme of the book in the introduction: "I live with the puzzle of wondering how something so apparently crazy can be so captivating to millions of other members of m species" but also "I still appreciate the seriousness which a religious mentality brings to the mystery and misery of human existence." And that's where we part company, too, as I am just more taken by the craziness of it. Let's begin with the fact that both Jesus, the main character (kinda, sorta), and Paul, who really founded the religion--and who essentially paid no attention to Jesus's life or to what he said--were both flat wrong. They both spoke with great urgency about the imminent end of the world, and the following believers were left in the tough position of explaining to themselves why the world didn't end, after all.

Of course, politics underlies the whole story--going back to David, at least, with the establishment of the temple in Jerusalem to consolidate his power and his rule after usurping the kingship of Israel. Bring it through Josiah whose priest "discovers" the Deuteronomic code in 640 BCE after ursurping the throne from Amon of Judah, and Constantine's vision on the Malvern Bridge and his use of Christianity in consolidating his power, and Clovis adopting Martin of Tours as his personal saint because of the power that it give him when he begins to unite northern Europe under Frankish rule.

Central to understanding the history of Christianity is the compromise reached at Chalcedon, based first on the homousion controversy, inadvertently spurred by Constantine at Nicea in 325 CD, with a major battle between the miaphysites (monophysites), who argued that the three persons of the Trinity (which is probably never mentioned in any part of the books that make up the modern Bible) share one nature, while the dyophysites insist that Jesus had two natures--one human as the person Jesus and the other divine as the Logos. And add the Tome of Leo that declares Jesus as perfect in divine nature and perfect in human nature as well. It al seems to technical and even irrelevant to make these distinctions, and yet they underlie centuries of schism and violence.

Another main argument runs through the area of authority--does it come from the line of apostolic succession, from scripture, from faith, from personal revelation. One conclusion is that the Reformation represents Augustine's doctrine of salvation over his doctrine of the church. Luther, following Augustine--and Paul before him, emphasizes the complete depravity and worthlessness of man--original sin--and the inability of man to do anything about it except through grace. This, of course, stems from Paul's vision on the road to Damascus and his developing a whole Christ centered theology without having much reference to Jesus's life or teachings.

Even though Paul lays the foundation of the religion, it is Peter who becomes the center of a crazy "mana" centered practices that leads to the formation of the papacy, which finally declared in 1870 (in the midst of being attacked by the Italian army and most of the delegates to the conference had left) that it could be infallible, even though the office had passed through innumerable schisms and moral lapses.

It's important to realize, too, that religion as a personal choice is a relatively recent phenomenon, becoming embraced primarily in England and Holland before becoming institutionalized in the America in the early 18th century. The story of Christianity, especially after Constantine's conversion, is a story of "territorial communality" leading to condemnation, execution, and wholesale war.

In the end, though, there is just too much to cover, even in a thousand pages, to do real justice to the topic. It was a good read and very informative, but so many areas had to be glossed over or superficially described. My own final thought echo Kant when he said that the "Enlightenment is mankind's exit from self-incurred immaturity." This is a book about a particular kind of self-imposed immaturity that helped shape the culture and society that I live in. How crazy is that?

Author: MacCulloch, Diarmaid

Date Published: 2010

Length: 1015 pp

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Rapt: Attention the Focused Life

"Those who learn to control their inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy."

That pretty much explains the book in one sentence. The rest of the book elaborates on the theme over and over, coming back to it in different ways. It's the "Power of Positive Thinking" for the first decade of the Twenty first century. That doesn't make what Gallagher say any less true, but's its really just re-covering ground that been covered over and over before. It's one in a spate of new books that combines positive thinking with neuroscience and meditation, like The Happyness Hypothesis or Mindfulness or Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience. As Grayling writes in his review of Wisdom: "polysyllabic confirmation of what common sense and received wisdom knew long ago." While I want to believe in this literature and its insights, it leaves me unsatisfied and unconvinced in the long run. I've spent a lot of time working at meditation and visualization, thought stoppage, and mind control, and somehow it just doesn't really lead to a better life. I've tried reframing my negative emotions and replacing them with positive thoughts, but I'm still the same old putz that I always was--quick to anger, slow to forgive, slovenly in habit. Sometimes I've been able to direct my attention to goals over a relatively long period of time--like a couple of years ago when I had a really satisfying season riding brevets--but most of the time I stew that I'm not getting any closer to any of them.

That being said, Gallagher does have good advice about how we should lead our lives even if we can't follow it. "Optimal human experience" kicks in when we're completely focused on doing something that's both enjoyable and that's also challenging enough to be "just manageable."

Again, much of her advice brings on the "duh" response: "The first step toward any relationship is focusing on someone who returns the favor. If the bond is to become intimate, both parties must commit not only to paying rapt attention to each other, but also to the effort of seeing that person's often very different world which entails lots of communication."  "The antidote to leisure time ennui is to pay as much attention to scheduling a productive evening or weekend as you do to your workday." "Nothing is as important as I think it is when I'm focusing on it." "Aware of our limited focusing capacity, I take pains to ensure that electronic media and machines aren't in control of mine."

If nothing else, the book has pointed me back to William James where a lot of Gallagher's thinking is grounded. I want to go back to find out what he has to say. I do seem to go back to James, Emerson, and Thoreau a lot. That doesn't make me a shallow person, does it? Or does it?

Author: Galagher, Winifred

Date Published: 2009

Length: 244 pp & 7hr 45min

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Narrator: Merlington, Laurel

The Little Ice Age

Fagan argues that many of the important movements and events of modern Europe --and probably the rest of the world as well--can be traced back to changes in the climate that left the world colder and wetter than it had been in the late medieval ages or than it is today. The late medieval ages, known as the monde plein and called the "Medieval Warm Period" by Fagan, lasting from about 800 to 1300 CE, were fairly warm and conducive to cereal crops throughout Europe. This enabled the age of Viking exploration and raiding and population increases all around Europe, encourage mass migrations of peoples and the great cathedral construction going on. Around 1300--more specifically the winters of 1315 and 1316--the climate turned much colder, leading to massive crop failures. Since the vast majority of peasants lived on a subsistence level, starvation, disease and death remained the norm for quite some time. This marked the beginning of what Fagan calls "The Little Ice Age," a period of extreme fluctuation and climactic extremes that lasted until about 1850. While a few good harvest years might occur, many or most years had lower crop yields. Fagan explains a number of mechanisms for these variations, especially the NAO index or positioning of the normal high pressure/low pressure gradients, the movement of the Gulf Stream which normally warms Europe, and volcanic eruptions reducing the amount of sunlight striking the earth.

Fagan explores a number of historical trends and events that happened in reaction to the little Ice Age. Britain and the Netherlands adopted more efficient agricultural practices  that helped ease the burden of famine, if not poverty, in later times. He also traces the development of the Black Death during this time which may have reduced the population of Europe by a half to two-thirds. The British developed a large fishing fleet after the Pope approved the eating of fish during Lent. Consequently, the British gained widespread control of the seas and the Hanseatic League declined precipitously in economic importance. He also discusses the weather underlying the French Revolution and the Irish potato famine in a particularly bitter denunciation of the failure of the British government to relieve the suffering of the Irish. The final chapters close with the possibilities of global warming: "We can only imagine the potential death toll in an era when climactic swings may be faster, more extreme, and completely unpredictable because of human interference."

I really wanted to like this book since it had a lot of important things to say and it presented a lot of information in a new light. But I got the feeling that a lot of it was history channel lite. It covered a lot of information for a long period of time in a short amount of space. The narrative ties together a number of widely disparate events hence reducing the unity of the arguments and explanations. A lot of the narrative is also fairly recursive, repeating information that had been give earlier. So while the book did cover a lot of information, somehow it just wasn't all that satisfying.

Author: Fagan, Brian

Date Published: 2000

Length: 217 pp

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Look Homeward, Angel

Be very careful about revisiting the classics of your youth. I tore through Thomas Wolfe when I was 20-21 years old and thought that Look Homeward Angel was the Great American Novel. Now I am greatly disappointed with it and not quite sure why.

Maybe since I read this together with Time and the River and You can't Go Home Again and The Web and the Rock, I thought that it was about Eugene Gant and I identified with the writer's life back then. I even took up smoking a tobacco pipe after seeing Gregory Peck as F. Scott. But while Eugene dominates the last half of the book, it's really about the family, which is a lot more dysfunctional than I remember. Or maybe I saw Gant, the father, as an overblown George Robert. His rants about "Mountain Grills, Mountain Grills!" has the flavor of some of dad's put downs of the Panhandle, although he never really denigrated granddad in the manner of Gant excoriating the Pentlands.

As an interesting aside, one article that I came across derives the "Mountain Grill" epithet from Edmund Spencer, for whom a grill was a porcine fellow who ate all the time, who seemed to derive that from Homer. Is this another instance where Wolfe throws in subtle literary allusions, taking delight in his own comparative language? And so could a comparison be made to T. S. Eliot shoring up the ruins of his life with literary allusions in the Waste Land? I was certain struck with the similarities at some points with The Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man when the book hyper-jumps into stream of consciousness, as when Eugene and his father are walking to the movie theatre.

Perhaps part of my disappointment comes from the narration of the audiobook. Much of the book's jumping back and forth between characters and thoughts is signaled in print by paragraph breaks which is missing in the audio version, making it needlessly confusing at times--a pause, a change in voice and/or inflection might help here. It's just a book that does not do well in a audio version.

Ultimately, all the characters in the book, including or especially Eugene--are buffoons. In that regard, it's a comic novel. The brunt of the comedy often comes with Gant's heaping of abuse and invective on Eliza and here family that is at once humorous but also selfish, mean spirited, and cruel. It's a love less marriage, almost complete devoid of any tenderness, and this is reflected in the way the children end up. Only Daisy seems to escape. Grover dies young; Ben becomes hateful and cynical until he, too, dies. Helen verges on hysteria, and Luke has a load of anger lying just become the surface that occasionally explodes on other members of the family. Eugene also comes off as both hateful and naive. His explosion against the family when he gets drunk for the first time is probably even the most hateful and selfish episode in the book, and he becomes so taken up with himself and his sense of self-entitlement. So is "Look Homeward, Angel" really about adolescent angst and is that why I was so taken with it?

Finally, what to make of the "O Lost" passages? Are they literary and overblown flourishes? They just seem a bit silly now.

Interestingly, as I pick up the book and read the print version, the voices speak more naturally to me, the characters seem more familiar, the asides more realistic. I should really go at it again, this time solely as print, and see how it strikes me.

Author: Wolfe, Thomas

Date Published: 1929

Length: 22hr 22min

Narrator: Sowers, Scott

In Search of the Dark Ages

This book was written to accompany Michael Woods' first history special for the BBC back in the late 80's, and it has all the virtues and vices of a television script. It is written in a breezy style and is very readable, but it is pretty shallow in depth. However, I did learn about about the rulers of Britain from the Roman conquest until the coming of William the Conqueror, and I have a better idea why the British think of themselves as Anglo Saxon, even though the latest genetic evidence shows that the majority of the people have genes that predate even the coming of the Celts.

Woods begins with Boudica's revolt, showing how Roman many of the major cities in Britain had become. Even when the Roman government fell--after Constantine (the Brit, not the Great) took off to the mainland to try and claim the Roman empire as his own--the British still saw themselves as heirs to the Roman government and way of life, at least until the conquest by the Danes later in the first millennium. England fell into a number of small kingdoms and chiefdoms, with the Angles, the Saxons, and later the Jutes invited to serve as mercenaries for some of the warlords and kings. This was also the period that produced the Arthurian legends, but Woods can find no concrete evidence for Arthur's existence, considering the legends really more the product of a later myth making and story telling time. The Angles and the Saxons slowly gain power as Britain coalesces around three major areas: West Saxons, East Angles, and Mercia, with Northumbria kind of a wild card.

The book is really speculation on some of the major personalities of British history during this time: Aethelstan, who was really the first king to be recognized as such by the majority of the smaller kingdom, Alfred, who ran a successful guerilla campaign after the Danes invaded the island and threatened to completely overrun it, and Ethelred the Unready, who appeared to vacillate during the last invasions of the Danes until Britain fell to Canute in 1013. But Northumbria was already pretty much under Danelaw at that point, being part of the Norse trading kingdom that extended from Denmark/Norway through England and Dublin to Greenland, fueled mainly by the slave trade.

But that Danish overlordship comes to an end in 1066 when William, himself just two generations removed from being Viking invaders in France, defeats Harold Godwinson at Hastings. Godwinson had just marched the length of England after beating off another invasion force led by Harold Hadrada. But somehow Godwinson was seen as the last of the Anglo Saxon kings that had ruled Britain since Offa's reign in the 780's. The Norman invasion represents a real turning point in power and redistribution of wealth as the thegns, former petty rulers and "nobility," become second class citizen. The people really saw themselves as Anglo-Saxons in language and culture, by then, an identity forged by Aethelstand and Alfred and fostered greatly by Bede's Ecclesiastical History. The Normans were seen then primarily as invaders and interlopers from the continent ruling a foreign peoples.

Author: Woods, Michael

Date Published: 1987

Length: 250 pp

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Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

I dunno. I found Hadrian boring. Maybe I find Roman life boring--but I did enjoy the Claudius books. I do have a much better handle on the history of the early empire now, although I'm still a bit fuzzy on the civil wars that preceded Domitian's rise to emperor. The reign of Hadrian marks the zenith of the Roman empire at its greatest power and influence. It was Hadrian, also, however, that set the limits to Roman growth after Trajan found that he could hold Parthia after he had defeated its army.

There are only two points of interest for me in Hadrian's life--his fondness for Grecian culture and his relationship with Antinous. Hadrian was something of an intellectual dilettante, and in some way the height of his intellectual curiosity came when he was given the chance to participate in the Elusinian mysteries. He also studied Stoicism, which gained greater status with Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, in addition to being a great patron of the arts, temple building, and great public works all over the empire. Everit makes it clear that Hadrian had a loveless marriage, and, following Trajan, much preferred the boys. There is some indication that he may have scored political points early in his career with his choice of bed fellows. At the same time, he had a complex relationship with Trajan's wife, who could have been his adoptive mother. She may have fabricated the story of Trajan's choice of Hadrian to succeed him as emperor.

Hadrian may have fallen in love with Antinous when Antinous was about 13, and they were inseparable in the last few years of Antinous' life. Everitt suggests that Hadrian may have had Antinous sacrificed, however, when they were in Egypt, as part of a magical cure for erypsalis. Also, there is some hint that Antinous may have resisted getting buggered by Hadrian. Hadrian was following the classical Greek model of eronimous--the elder man who takes a young boy as a student and a lover--pedagogy and pederasty. Everitt includes an interesting discussion towards sex and same sex relationships in Rome--it was OK to be the penetrator but not the penetratee.

Antinous' death signals Hadrian's going over the edge. He had Antinous deified by the Senate and then put into a mausoleum near his villa on the estate that he built just outside Rome.Yet, it seems that Hadrian spent most of his time away from Rome, whether in the Danube region or the Rhine or Egypt or Britain, or especially Greece. There is a lot of insight into how the empire was governed as Hadrian's corp of administrators and functionaries followed him on his journeys.

The signal event in his career was the brutal suppression of the Jews. He passed a number of laws trying to eradicate Judaism, including building a statue to Jupiter over the temple mount, and eventually completed the diaspora by forbidding any Jews to come near to Jerusalem. In the process the Legions took heavy casualties and lost a full legion in one season of campaigning.

Finally, Hadrian had some of his closest advisors put to death near the end of his reign. By then, he was out of control, perhaps caused by the constant pain that dogged him for a number of years. Hadrian was not a popular ruler, haughty and overbearing at times, full of himself and his sense of entitlement. He had had four senators put to death at the beginning of his reign, and the senate never forgot nor forgave. Everitt makes it clear that the Roman empire went downhill after Hadrian, probably through Marcus Aurelius' campaigns for expansion on the Rhine.

Author: Everitt, Anthony

Date Published: 2009

Length: 14hr 25min

Narrator: Curless, John

The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age

Sometimes I should know when to stop. I was really taken up with Dame Yates' exposition of Giordano Bruno and the whole development of Renaissance Neo-Platonism as developed through Ficino and Pico. I was a little less impressed by the Arts of Memory, but I really dug into the Rosicrucian Enlightenment.

This book occupies a place between Bruno and the Rosicrucians, a fascinating period, especially for some of the implications of the influences. But overall, this book as a real disappointment. Yates repeats herself over and over and uses some pretty tenuous connections between images to bolster her arguments. This book could have been much shorter and I suspect that it would not withstand serious scrutiny by someone really familiar with the sources.

In any case, she begins her exposition with Pico and his cabalistic theses. Pico sought to Christianize Cabala, combining it with neo-platonism and hermeticism to come up with the new renaissance philosophy of man--made famous in his oration on the dignity of man. He was a magus who felt that it was safe to call down daemons and astral influences since the Cabala would guard from any evil influences. These ideas was taken up by the Franciscan monk Giorgi but really developed by Agrippa who also dabbled in alchemy. John Dee picked up on Agrippa's ideas and used them to further the cult of Elizabeth as the purifier of religion and the leader of a new world order. His ideas were influential on Raleigh, Sydney, and Spencer, but his star fell after his mission to Bohemia, where his ideas crystallized into Rosicrucianism, and Elizabeth pulled back from some of her foreign adventures.

When James took the throne, believing in the reality of evil and witchcraft, Dee's ideas became suspect. The witch hunts of the counterreformation really took off about this time, and Dee's influence on the continent waned with the crushing of Rudolf and the beginning of the Thirty Years War. The heart of the book then develops influences on Spencer’s Faerie Queen, reaction by Marlowe who ridiculed Dee and Agrippa in Faustus and stirred up strong antisemitism in the Jew of Malta, and Shakespeare's play with the ideas of the magus and Rosicrucianism in the Tempest. Yates also points to parallels with Bacon's New Atlantis, and Milton's use of the ideas of inspired melancholy in his poetry. Also interesting connections to the reintroduction of the Jews in England after Cromwell and the Puritan emphasis on the Old Testament, perhaps inspired by sympathy with Cabalism. A lot of interesting connections and influences, but certainly not in the league with her other books.

Author: Yates, Francis

Date Published: 1979

Length: 222 pp

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The Philosophy of the Enlightenment

This is supposed to be a classic, but like all classics, I eventually ran out of steam. I did OK until the last chapter on aesthetic problems and then the reading seemed to take forever. Cassirer is at pains to show that the enlightenment of 18th century thought is quite a bit different, although heir to, seventeenth century thought, which culminated, really, with Newton. Newton was the culmination of thought begun with Bacon, Kepler, Galileo and Spinoza. Newton formulates the observations of others into mathematical laws wholly devoid of authority and revelation.

But in discovering the natural world, the new empiricism really discovers the mind, and in so doing, begins to criticize itself. If there is no guarantee of the uniformity of nature and experience, then how do we know what we know? It leads thence to Hume and to Kant. "What we call objectivity or truth or necessity has no absolute but merely a relative meaning." (p. 115)

In essence, the Enlightenment was about attitude, or as the essay once said, freeing man from the horse latitudes of faith. And yet it runs into it's own issues of epistemology even while seeing "from the advancement of knowledge a new moral order and a new orientation of the political and social history of man." (p. 214) Quite a tall order, but the foundation of all of our thinking. Diderot was characteristic in rejecting all conceptual schemes and seeking a dynamic view of the world in which present knowledge is but a transitory view or a "resting point" to be overturned as new knowledge becomes available.

Author: Cassier, Ernst

Date Published: 1932

Length: 360 pp

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Comanche Moon

A much better book than Dead Man's Walk, it's McMurtry telling a good story. Second only to Lonesome Dove in the series, and better than the Berrybender series, I think. It's filling in the gaps with Gus and Call, but with some memorable characters in their own right, especially Buffalo Hump, Ahuamado, Inish and Inez Scull, Famous Shoes, Kicking Wolf. Gus and Call develop into the characters we know and love in Lonesome Dove, and the rest of the major cast is set for the book: Dietz, Pea-eye, Clara, of course, although not as prominently here as Dead Man's Walk, Jake Spoon, and Newt. Call's life with Maggie is outlined here, and presages his relationship with Newt in Lonesome Dove. Inish Scull is an interesting character that reminds me faintly, of the Judge (Holden) in Blood Meridian, without the evil. The scenes hanging in the cage and carving Greek hexameters from Homer into the stone wall to pass the time are very good, although his ability to catch doves and to survive in the situation is pretty far fetched. Overall, a very enjoyable experience for me.

Author: McMurtry, Larry

Date Published: 1997

Length: 23hr 57min

Narrator: Muller, Frank

Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors

Bringing human evolution up to date with what have been the most recent findings of DNA evidence, beginning with the split of primates from apes through early hominid species, including the diaspora of homo erectus and Neanderthals perhaps 200,000 years ago, but then focusing on behaviorally modern humans.

Wade looks at evidence that behaviorally modern humans did not arise until about 50,000 years ago and probably left Africa shortly thereafter via the Red Sea, spread across the southern Arabian peninsula and into India, before splitting into different groupings on the Eurasian landmass. The breeding population for this diaspora may have come from as few as 150 females, according to DNA evidence.

Wade looks at the the beginning of speech, and makes quite a few inferences on early human culture as hunter gatherers living in small bands compared  not only to known hunter gatherer troops, but also on Chimp society. Wade follows up with human populations in Europe during and after the ice ages, discussing the population pressures brought about during environmental extremes, especially in the short interglacial freezing known as the lesser dryas, and the efflorescence of humans with the retreating ice. He repeats much of Sykes evidence for the "seven daughters" theory. Also discusses the settling of human populations, before the advent of agriculture, and the genetic pressure brought about by that shift, including the gracialization of the human skull in more recent times.

Wade is at pains to point out that evolution is still very active and evident today, but some of his conclusions in this regard, especially in terms of race, seem a bit far fetched. He also shows the light that DNA evidence can cast on historical trends and questions, including Sally Hemmings, the mongolization of much of east Europe, the aboriginal ancestry of the British isles, and perhaps the genetic pressure for greater intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews who were forced into intellectually demanding roles in the late medieval ages.

Author: Wade, Nicholas

Date Published: 2006

Length: 320 pp & 12hr 50min

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Narrator: Sklar, Alan

When the Light Goes

A short little book, short little chapters, a slight read. The book got savaged in reviews when it came out, but I enjoyed it. I identify with Duane and his late life crisis. He comes back from a trip to Egypt to find a new young secretary in his office, and the book revolves around his involvement with her and with his psychiatrist. A lot of raunchy sex--although that's not quite right since he has a lot of trouble with his arousal. It is an old man's fantasy, I guess, and it really leaves Duane disoriented. On top of it, he has heart problems and ends with open heart surgery. And he's still depressed, but there's something appealing about the dysfunction that is his life, his family, his friendships, and his towns. Probably Roth does a lot better in this territory, but then he's not nearly as funny as McMurtry. Parts of the book, even or especially when Ruth Popper dies, made me laugh out loud. Honor hits the nail on the head when she tells him that he never let anyone, including Karla, come close to him in his life, and maybe that's what makes him all the more appealing to me. In any case, I had to finish the book before I could move on to Rhino Ranch, which the reviews say brings the whole Thalia saga to a close.

Author: McMurtry, Larry

Date Published: 2007

Length: 195 pp

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A History of the Medieval World

It was an interesting listen, but in the end there was just too much information to digest in one book: from Constantine's conversion to the First Crusade. By the time we got to the first crusade, it seemed as though Bauer was racing through the material. But by coming on the back of Bury's book, I do feel that I have a better feel for the movement of the Germanic tribes, first out of the Baltic region to the Danube basin and the Black Sea, for those peoples that we have come to recognize as Gothic, and also for the northern people who moved across the Rhine--the Franks, the Lombards, the Alan, Allemany, Vandals, Suebi and the Saxons.

The material on China, Japan, Korea, India, and the Americas, while making the book comprehensive in scope, really seemed extraneous to the telling of the story, which really centered around Europe and the Mediterranean. And really, what it came down to, was one king following another king, trying to establish some kind of dynastic succession, whether in Byzantium or somewhere in Europe. The Germans seemed more resistant to the idea, dividing their lands among the sons to see who would come out stronger.

The whole idea of papal supremacy, developed during this time, was total bullshit, of course, made very clear when Otto came down from the Eastern German lands and established his own popes on the apostolic see in 964. I had thought of the Huns as sweeping out of the Asian steppes, but really they were a part of the whole political intriguing and scheming going on at the time. And as the Turks and the Mongols demonstrated, they were just one of many peoples to cross the steppes and appear on Europe's doorstep. But overall, it comes down as good story telling.

Author: Bauer, Susan Wise

Date Published: 2010

Length: 22hr 44min

Narrator: Lee, John

Paul: The Mind of the Apostle

Art Cunningham gave this to me years ago, and it's been gathering dust on my shelf, but I decided to give it a whirl after reading Karen Armstrong's book on the Bible.

Paul made Christianity into a mystery religion, similar to Mithraism and the salvation found through Hercules, where salvation comes though faith in the cross. It was a much different movement from that of the Way, the church in Jerusalem, or from that of Jesus, a devout and fervent Jew and faith healer in the backwater ports of Galilee. Paul was an urban citizen of the empire who claimed to know Jesus better than Paul  or James, because he had had visions and prophecies of the "true" word of god. This led to his break with the church in Jerusalem as well as from Judaism.

Paul also made it clear that man is utter depraved and unable to do good by himself, for himself. It is only through the love of god through the crucifixion that man can be saved. For Paul, that meant the imminent coming of Jesus where the saved would escape the wrath of God when the kingdom is re-established in Israel and all the gentile worship the one true god. This leads to a poignant scene when Paul is whisked away from Jerusalem and taken to Caesarea without the end having come. 

Wilson makes it clear that Christianity would probably not have lasted without Paul's stamp, although it was not a religion or a movement that Jesus would have recognized or endorsed. It was a fascinating book that read much like a novel.

Author: Wilson, A. N.

Date Published: 1994

Length: 258 pp

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The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians

This turned out to be an old set of lectures that Bury made when he assumed the chair at Cambridge. It has all the makings of the sage on the stage but was still enjoyable.

I really did begin to consolidate some knowledge about the movements of the Germanic peoples during the later stages of the Roman Empire, from the movement of the Eastern Germans into the transRhine and transDanube region. Then it appears that the Visigoths moved into the empire first, in the 370's or so, followed roughly by movements of the Vandals across the middle part of Europe, through Spain, and thence to Africa. Turns out that a much of the "Germanic invasion" comes through the miscalculation of Stilicho as he removes legions from the Rhine to meet the advance of the Visigoths under Alaric. The Ostrogoths followed roughly a hundred years later, and essentially brought the empire to an end, although Bury is quick to point out that they just saw themselves as federati and protectors of the western empire under the dominion of the Emperor in Constantinople. 

I was surprised that Bury did not cover the reconquest of the west and the extinction of the Vandals and the Ostrogoths under Justinian. But he does clarify the movement of the Burgundians, the Franks, and finally the Lombardi into Germany, France, and Italy, with the growing ascendancy of the Franks, especially after Clovis made close deals with the Roman Catholic Church. The abrupt ending and the gaps, especially the lack of material on Justinian's recapture of the Western empire, make me wonder if not all the material was made into this book.

Author: Bury, J. B.

Date Published: 1928

Length: 8hr 3min

Narrator: Griffin, Charlton

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Another rereading of a classic from my early 20's. It's hard to realize that the novel is really Chief Bromden's book, whereas the play belongs almost solely to Randall P. McMurphy. It's easy to picture Kesey himself in McMurphy's role.

One of the highlights, I think, is Bromden coming out of electro-shock. It has imagery that could come straight out of Kesey's drug experiences. Also, the Chief stops hearing voices and the noises of the combine pretty much when McMurphy gets him to talk. Nurse Ratchid also comes off as much colder and more calculating in the book than she does in the play.

Using the Chief really changes the tenor of the book, and I think it may be one of the great narrators of literature, especially as he is able to spy on the Nurse's meetings with the staff and give so much more background to the book. The chief goes back to Addy Brundren or even to Sound and Fury. (Brudren = Bromden???) And Mc Murphy comes off as a Christ figure in the book. Although he may seem a selfish pigface, it's clear that he sticks around for Billy's soiree. And it's clear that that's why he attacks the nurse. The chief says that it was inevitable, even if McMurphy had left. It is a great anti-establishment novel as well as a great novel of drug stream of consciousness.

Author: Kesey, Ken

Date Published: 1962

Length: 13hr 26min

Narrator: Hammer, Mark

The Bible, A Biography

Karen Armstrong lite, again. She tries to cover too much ground, too much time, in such a short book. The heart of the book is showing how the different writings became the book that we know as the Bible and then how different times and people have read and interpreted the Bible.

The best part of the book, I think, is her take on how the religion of the temple became the religion of the book, first in Josiah's remodeling of the temple when Hilkiah suddenly "found" the lost books of Moses, then in the Babylonian captivity, finally with the destruction of the temple by the Romans.

Armstrong carefully maintains that the different strands really represent a rewriting and a reinterpretation of the religion that wasn't really codified until much, much later. The same is true of the Jesus movement that gained momentum when the temple was destroyed and then was codified as part of the state religion after Constantine's conversion.

The rest of the book is about the different ways that the Bible has been read and interpreted, and Armstrong is at pains to show that literalism and "inerrancy" is really a huge mistake that misunderstands what the Bible and historical context is all about. She returns to her long standing thesis that when the mythos side of man's psyche is undervalued or ignored, it will often crop back up in grotesque and strident forms, as has happened since the Enlightenment.

Author: Armstrong, Karen

Date Published: 2007

Length: 212 pp

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Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton is probably the least favorite of the "founding fathers/brothers," but probably the most influential in establishing the American government and the American economy. If Chernow is to be believed, Hamilton almost single-handedly established the executive branch of the government, and then fought like crazy to keep Adams and Jefferson from dismantling what he had accomplished.

Chernow also makes clear that Hamilton's greatness came because Washington was able to keep him in check. When the two went their separate ways, Hamilton became a curmudgeon and really kind of lost a lot of his perspective. He also became a bundle of contradictions, as seen in his increasing religiosity, his affair with Mariah Reynolds, and even his duel with Aaron Burr--he refused to shoot to kill--all the while condemning dueling, especially after his eldest son was killed in a duel. 

A fairly poignant story about his wife Eliza, who was faced with his debts and with raising the family alone after Hamilton was killed. Chernow really does turn Hamilton's critics, especially Jefferson, Madison, and Adams, into buffoons and hypocrites, and at times I felt like he had become Hamilton's publicist and apologist over 200 years after the fact.

Author: Chernow, Ron

Date Published: 2004

Length: 36hr 58min

Narrator: Brick, Scott

The Hobbit

This was a delightful listen on the way to Durango and back, but I'm not really sure why it seemed so important in 1968. Maybe that will come when I reread or listen to the Trilogy as well. Was it Bilbo's growth--the newfound confidence and competence when pressed to it--that he found greatness of soul. And yet he was also such an everyman, preferring the ordinariness and the orderliness and the familiarity of his home life. And while luck and magic certainly played such a large part of his success, he was also able to discover and parlay his own talents into a heroic adventure. It's the classic hero's journey a la Joseph Campbell. And maybe that's what I needed to hear on my own quest for adventure and greatness at age 19.

Author: Tolkien, J. R. R.

Date Published: 1937

Length: 11hr 4min

Narrator: Inglis, Rob

To The Lighthouse

I have to confess that I have been afraid of Virginia Woolf. I have put off re-reading her for a long time now as I feared getting bogged down in stream of consciousness and never getting through it, kind of like Ulysses. But after listening to the first half of the book, to the point where Mrs. Ramsey begins to climb the stairs after the dinner party, casting her glance back down upon the dining room, knowing that it is the past and behind her, I wondered if perhaps it is the greatest novel of all time.

Woolf does such a marvelous job of capturing our minds, moving easily from one character to another, and does it in complete, understandable sentences. Even though the whole tradition of dressing and preparing for a formal dinner every night is such a foreign concept to me, I feel like Woolf has essentially captured the way we think, moving from thought to impression to feeling, quickly and easily, maintaining ironic distance to the events for each of the characters. Mrs. Ramsey is certainly the center of the universe, and it is she that pulls everything together as the psychic center of the novel, but even she has such an ironic distance to her role that it shadows every thing else in the book.

The second half of the book doesn't work quite so well for me, but with Mrs. Ramsey gone, perhaps that's as it should be. The book does come to a satisfying conclusion as Ramsey, Cam and James finally do reach the lighthouse--with all the wonderful symbolism of the sea and the light--as Lily Briscoe finishes the last stroke of her painting: "There, I've had my vision." Perhaps it's all about life persevering in spite of it all, the resurgence of all those feelings and ideas over a span of so many years, like re-infusing the house with life to ward off the eventual decay and destruction that beset it during years of neglect and absence. And yet, "No happiness lasts" is Mrs. Ramsey's verdict. In any case, the book is a tour de force that demands and will reward rereading and reflection.

Author: Woolf, Virginia

Date Published: 1927

Length: 7hr 45min

Narrator: Leishman, Virginia