en-US Tue, 05 Apr 2022 18:39:02 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 4953 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read for decades to come.]]> 530 Dave Eggers 0375725784 Mason 4 3.70 2000
author: Dave Eggers
name: Mason
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2022/04/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 6493208
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored�� ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia �� a land of wooden quarters for enslaved people, faith healings, and voodoo �� to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality�� until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family �� past and present �� is inextricably connected to the history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.]]> 370 Rebecca Skloot 1400052173 Mason 0 to-read 4.12 2010
author: Rebecca Skloot
name: Mason
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 292055
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, third edition, includes:

* Getting your home brewery together: the basics -- malt, hops, yeast, and water
* Ten easy lessons for making your first batch of beer
* Creating world-class styles of beer (IPA, Belgian wheat, German Kölsch and Bock, barley wine, American lagers, to name a few)
* Using fruit, honey, and herbs for a spicier, more festive brew
* Brewing with malt extracts for an unlimited range of strengths and flavors
* Advanced brewing techniques using specialty hops or the all-grain method or mash extracts
* A complete homebrewer's glossary, troubleshooting tips, and an up-to-date resource section
* And much, much more

Be sure to check out Charlie's The Homebrewer's Companion for over 60 additional recipes and more detailed charts and tables, techniques, and equipment information for the advanced brewer.]]> 432 Charles Papazian 0060531053 Mason 0 4.29 1980
author: Charles Papazian
name: Mason
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at: 2022/04/05
date added: 2022/04/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 7572
Featuring Bonanza Jellybean and the smooth-riding cowgirls of Rubber Rose Ranch. Chink, lascivious guru of yams and yang. Julian, Mohawk by birth; asthmatic esthete and husband by disposition. Dr. Robbins, preventive psychiatrist and reality instructor...

Follow Sissy's amazing odyssey from Virginia to chic Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, where FBI agents, cowgirls, and ecstatic whooping cranes explode in a deliciously drawn-out climax...

"This is one of those special novels--a piece of working magic, warm, funny, and san--that you just want to ride off into the sunset with."--Thomas Pynchon

"The best fiction, so far, to come out of the American counterculture."-- "Chicago Tribune Book World"]]> 366 Tom Robbins 1842430246 Mason 4 3.79 1976
author: Tom Robbins
name: Mason
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1976
rating: 4
read at: 2022/04/05
date added: 2022/04/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 629 Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an examination of how we live, a meditation on how to live better set around the narration of a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest, undertaken by a father & his young son.]]> 540 Robert M. Pirsig 0060589469 Mason 5 Interlaced with stories from an across-the-west motorcycle trip with his son and some friends, Pirsig tells the story of his past in an almost former life before being admitted to a mental institution after going crazy in his pursuit of Quality. He often uses the motorcycle as an analogy, as well as climbing mountains. With what many would see as too much depth and detail (but not me), he dissects the ideas of rhetoric, quality, the scientific method, technology and many ideas of the ancient Greek philosophers and tries to take down an entire academic department in the search of a unifying truth/god/connecting force.
I don’t really feel that there is a lot that I can say to do this book justice in a short review form like this. I’ll just write up a bunch of underlined quotes instead.

“…physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn’t mean much.��

“Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.��

“That’s the first normal thing I’ve said in weeks. The rest of the time I’m feigning twentieth-century lunacy just like you are. So as to not draw attention to myself.��

“Nobody is concerned anymore about tidily conserving space. The land isn’t valuable anymore. We are in a Western town.��

“But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government , but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.��

“If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge.��

“Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive.��

“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.��

“But what’s happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating widespread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result we’re getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought �� occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like �� because they feel the inadequacy of classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences.��

“The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isn’t the way it ever is. People should see that it’s never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance. It’s never been anything else, ever, but you can’t get that across in an essay.��

“The allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make. Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there’s no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls.��

“He was just stopped. Waiting. For that missing seed crystal of thought that would suddenly solidify everything.��

“Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster�� When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do it’s a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out. That’s never the way.��

“The holiness of the mountain infused into their own spirits enabled them to endure far more than anything he, with his greater physical strength, could take.��

“Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who’s bound to have some characteristic of quality.��

“They have patience, care and attentiveness to what they’re doing, but more than this �� there’s a kind of inner peace of mind that isn’t contrived but results from a kind of harmony with the work in which there’s no leader and no follower. The material and the craftsman’s thoughts change together in a progression of smooth, even changes until his mind is at rest at the exact instant the material is right.��

“Or if he takes whatever dull job he’s stuck with �� and they are all, sooner or later, dull �� and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he’s likely to discover he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him because his Quality decisions change him too. And not only the job and him, but others, too, because the Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he didn’t think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep on going.
My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that’s all.God, I don’t want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. There’s a place for them but they’ve got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved. We’ve had that individual quality in the past, exploited as a natural resource without knowing it, and now it’s just about depleted. Everyone’s just about out if gumption. And I think it’s about time to return the rebuilding of this American resource �� individual worth. There are political reactionaries who’ve been saying something close to this for years. I’m not one of them, but to the extent they’re talking about real individual worth and not just an excuse for giving more money to the rich, they’re right. We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption. We really do.��

“What is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good �� need we ask anyone to tell us these things?��
]]> 3.78 1974
author: Robert M. Pirsig
name: Mason
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1974
rating: 5
read at: 2007/12/01
date added: 2014/01/05
shelves:
review:
I must start by saying that this is one of my favorite books ever. Although it is deep and complicated and takes a lot of focus to read, I feel that there are a lot of great messages here in the author’s search for Quality. This was my second time reading this book, and I liked it more this time.
Interlaced with stories from an across-the-west motorcycle trip with his son and some friends, Pirsig tells the story of his past in an almost former life before being admitted to a mental institution after going crazy in his pursuit of Quality. He often uses the motorcycle as an analogy, as well as climbing mountains. With what many would see as too much depth and detail (but not me), he dissects the ideas of rhetoric, quality, the scientific method, technology and many ideas of the ancient Greek philosophers and tries to take down an entire academic department in the search of a unifying truth/god/connecting force.
I don’t really feel that there is a lot that I can say to do this book justice in a short review form like this. I’ll just write up a bunch of underlined quotes instead.

“…physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn’t mean much.��

“Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.��

“That’s the first normal thing I’ve said in weeks. The rest of the time I’m feigning twentieth-century lunacy just like you are. So as to not draw attention to myself.��

“Nobody is concerned anymore about tidily conserving space. The land isn’t valuable anymore. We are in a Western town.��

“But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government , but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.��

“If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge.��

“Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive.��

“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.��

“But what’s happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating widespread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result we’re getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought �� occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like �� because they feel the inadequacy of classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences.��

“The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isn’t the way it ever is. People should see that it’s never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance. It’s never been anything else, ever, but you can’t get that across in an essay.��

“The allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make. Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there’s no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls.��

“He was just stopped. Waiting. For that missing seed crystal of thought that would suddenly solidify everything.��

“Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster�� When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do it’s a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out. That’s never the way.��

“The holiness of the mountain infused into their own spirits enabled them to endure far more than anything he, with his greater physical strength, could take.��

“Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who’s bound to have some characteristic of quality.��

“They have patience, care and attentiveness to what they’re doing, but more than this �� there’s a kind of inner peace of mind that isn’t contrived but results from a kind of harmony with the work in which there’s no leader and no follower. The material and the craftsman’s thoughts change together in a progression of smooth, even changes until his mind is at rest at the exact instant the material is right.��

“Or if he takes whatever dull job he’s stuck with �� and they are all, sooner or later, dull �� and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he’s likely to discover he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him because his Quality decisions change him too. And not only the job and him, but others, too, because the Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he didn’t think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep on going.
My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that’s all.God, I don’t want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. There’s a place for them but they’ve got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved. We’ve had that individual quality in the past, exploited as a natural resource without knowing it, and now it’s just about depleted. Everyone’s just about out if gumption. And I think it’s about time to return the rebuilding of this American resource �� individual worth. There are political reactionaries who’ve been saying something close to this for years. I’m not one of them, but to the extent they’re talking about real individual worth and not just an excuse for giving more money to the rich, they’re right. We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption. We really do.��

“What is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good �� need we ask anyone to tell us these things?��

]]> 22155
From his youth as the son of a French Canadian blacksmith to the thrilling, ambitious climbing expeditions that inspired his innovative designs for the sport's equipment, Let My People Go Surfing is the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business life-a book that will deeply affect entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts alike.

A newly revised edition of Let My People Go Surfing ��is available now.��]]> 272 Yvon Chouinard 0143037838 Mason 4 Quotes I liked:
Doing risk sport had taught me another important lesson: never exceed your limits. You push the envelope and you live for those moments when you’re right on the edge, but you don’t go over. You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your strengths and limitations and live within your means. -Yvon Chouinard

The more you know, the less you need. -Yvon Chouinard

Everything we personally own that’s made, sold, shipped, stored, cleaned, and ultimately thrown away does some environmental harm every step of the way, harm that we’re either directly responsible for or is done on our behalf. -Yvon Chouinard

How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.
-Yvon Chouinard

The goal of climbing big, dangerous mountains should be to attain some sort of spiritual and personal growth, but this won’t happen if you compromise away the entire process.
-Yvon Chouinard

…the worst thing said about him is that he was “uncurious.��
-Yvon Chouinard

…most of the damage we cause to the planet is the result of our own ignorance.
-Yvon Chouinard
]]> 4.16 2006
author: Yvon Chouinard
name: Mason
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2007/06/01
date added: 2013/12/24
shelves:
review:
Chouinard’s story of his values and what led him to start Patagonia. The principles that drive his company are really his own and he is a reluctant businessman. Big focus on quality, durability and doing more with less. He is a committed environmentalist and believes businesses should be responsible for the damage they do to the Earth. Refreshing.
Quotes I liked:
Doing risk sport had taught me another important lesson: never exceed your limits. You push the envelope and you live for those moments when you’re right on the edge, but you don’t go over. You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your strengths and limitations and live within your means. -Yvon Chouinard

The more you know, the less you need. -Yvon Chouinard

Everything we personally own that’s made, sold, shipped, stored, cleaned, and ultimately thrown away does some environmental harm every step of the way, harm that we’re either directly responsible for or is done on our behalf. -Yvon Chouinard

How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.
-Yvon Chouinard

The goal of climbing big, dangerous mountains should be to attain some sort of spiritual and personal growth, but this won’t happen if you compromise away the entire process.
-Yvon Chouinard

…the worst thing said about him is that he was “uncurious.��
-Yvon Chouinard

…most of the damage we cause to the planet is the result of our own ignorance.
-Yvon Chouinard

]]> 14836 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,�� all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.

This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight�� s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.]]> 647 Salman Rushdie 0099578514 Mason 5 3.98 1981
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Mason
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1981
rating: 5
read at: 2010/07/01
date added: 2010/11/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 173677
Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team, as well as their family members and supporters, to an exhibition game in Chile had crashed somewhere deep in the Andes. He soon learned that many were dead or dying—among them his own mother and sister. Those who remained were stranded on a lifeless glacier at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level, with no supplies and no means of summoning help. They struggled to endure freezing temperatures, deadly avalanches, and then the devastating news that the search for them had been called off.

As time passed and Nando’s thoughts turned increasingly to his father, who he knew must be consumed with grief, Nando resolved that he must get home or die trying. He would challenge the Andes, even though he was certain the effort would kill him, telling himself that even if he failed he would die that much closer to his father. It was a desperate decision, but it was also his only chance. So Nando, an ordinary young man with no disposition for leadership or heroism, led an expedition up the treacherous slopes of a snow-capped mountain and across forty-five miles of frozen wilderness in an attempt to find help.

Thirty years after the disaster Nando tells his story with remarkable candor and depth of feeling. Miracle in the Andes —a first person account of the crash and its aftermath—is more than a riveting tale of true-life it is a revealing look at life at the edge of death and a meditation on the limitless redemptive power of love.]]> 304 Nando Parrado 1400097673 Mason 4 4.30 2006
author: Nando Parrado
name: Mason
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2009/07/01
date added: 2010/11/13
shelves:
review:
Good first-hand account of the amazing and often-told story of the Uruguayan rugby team's ordeals in the Andes.
]]> 1002404
The cover shows a detail from "Mechanical Elements" by F. Léger at the Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne, Paris (Snark International)

For copyright reasons this edition is not for sale in the U.S.A.

]]> 201 Aldous Huxley 0140010521 Mason 3 3.90 1932
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Mason
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1932
rating: 3
read at: 2009/10/01
date added: 2009/11/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 2657 "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

"To Kill A Mockingbird" became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film.]]> 323 Harper Lee 0060935464 Mason 5 4.25 1960
author: Harper Lee
name: Mason
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1960
rating: 5
read at: 2009/06/01
date added: 2009/07/11
shelves:
review:
I had to re-read this because I loved it the first time (about 15 years ago). Even better now.
]]> 332613 9780451163967

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy �� the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.]]> 325 Ken Kesey Mason 3 4.20 1962
author: Ken Kesey
name: Mason
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at: 2009/07/11
date added: 2009/07/11
shelves:
review:

]]> 3116338 ��
Renowned Stanford scientists Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich believe that intelligently addressing those questions depends on a clear understanding of how we evolved and how and why we’re changing the planet in ways that darken our descendants�� future. The Dominant Animal arms readers with that knowledge, tracing the interplay between environmental change and genetic and cultural evolution since the dawn of humanity. In lucid and engaging prose, they describe how Homo sapiens adapted to their surroundings, eventually developing the vibrant cultures, vast scientific knowledge, and technological wizardry we know today.
��
But the Ehrlichs also explore the flip side of this triumphant story of innovation and conquest. As we clear forests to raise crops and build cities, lace the continents with highways, and create chemicals never before seen in nature, we may be undermining our own supremacy. The threats of environmental damage are clear from the daily headlines, but the outcome is far from destined. Humanity can again adapt—if we learn from our evolutionary past.
��
Those lessons are crystallized in The Dominant Animal. Tackling the fundamental challenge of the human predicament, Paul and Anne Ehrlich offer a vivid and unique exploration of our origins, our evolution, and our future.]]> 440 Paul R. Ehrlich 1597260967 Mason 4 3.55 2008
author: Paul R. Ehrlich
name: Mason
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2009/02/18
date added: 2009/02/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 477812 416 Philip Weiss 006009687X Mason 0 to-read 3.56 2004
author: Philip Weiss
name: Mason
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 3109 What should we have for dinner? For omnivore like ourselves, this simple question has always posed a dilemma. When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods on offer might shorten your life. Today, buffered by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is groundbreaking book, in which one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves?
To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.
The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Ultimately, this is a book as much about visionary solutions as it is about problems, and Pollan contends that, when it comes to food, doing the right thing often turns out to be the tastiest thing an eater can do. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.]]> 450 Michael Pollan 1594200823 Mason 4 4.18 2006
author: Michael Pollan
name: Mason
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2008/11/18
date added: 2008/11/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 9566 277 Tom Robbins 184243022X Mason 3 4.05 1980
author: Tom Robbins
name: Mason
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at: 2008/07/31
date added: 2008/08/02
shelves:
review:
Typical Robbins. Fun read. Check it out if you like his other books.
]]> 1590057
As Callum M. Roberts reveals in The Unnatural History of the S ea, the oceans�� bounty didn’t disappear overnight. While today’s fishing industry is ruthlessly efficient, intense exploitation began not in the modern era, or even with the dawn of industrialization, but in the eleventh century in medieval Europe. Roberts explores this long and colorful history of commercial fishing, taking readers around the world and through the centuries to witness the transformation of the seas.

Drawing on firsthand accounts of early explorers, pirates, merchants, fishers, and travelers, the book recreates the oceans of the waters teeming with whales, sea lions, sea otters, turtles, and giant fish. The abundance of marine life described by fifteenth century seafarers is almost unimaginable today, but Roberts both brings it alive and artfully traces its depletion. Collapsing fisheries, he shows, are simply the latest chapter in a long history of unfettered commercialization of the seas.

The story does not end with an empty ocean. Instead, Roberts describes how we might restore the splendor and prosperity of the seas through smarter management of our resources and some simple restraint. From the coasts of Florida to New Zealand, marine reserves have fostered spectacular recovery of plants and animals to levels not seen in a century. They prove that history need not repeat we can leave the oceans richer than we found them.]]> 456 Callum Roberts 1597261025 Mason 0 to-read 4.32 2007
author: Callum Roberts
name: Mason
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 4373
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.

Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.]]> 238 Loung Ung 0060856262 Mason 4 The author was 5 when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and forced her and her family out of Phnom Pehn. She describes in detail their lives over the following years in painful detail. The killings were indiscriminate and barbarous. Obviously, she survived to tell the tale, but the things she lived through are horrific.
Definitely not a happy, upbeat read, but it is well worth it to check this book out.]]> 4.33 2000
author: Loung Ung
name: Mason
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2008/07/13
date added: 2008/07/21
shelves:
review:
The first-hand account of growing up in Cambodia during Pol Pot's reign of genocide.
The author was 5 when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and forced her and her family out of Phnom Pehn. She describes in detail their lives over the following years in painful detail. The killings were indiscriminate and barbarous. Obviously, she survived to tell the tale, but the things she lived through are horrific.
Definitely not a happy, upbeat read, but it is well worth it to check this book out.
]]> 5907 Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent. The text in this 372-page paperback edition is based on that first published in Great Britain by Collins Modern Classics (1998), and includes a note on the text by Douglas A. Anderson (2001).]]> 366 J.R.R. Tolkien Mason 3 the Lord of the Rings books that follow. Having seen the movies of those books, I thought it was interesting that the movies are sort of known for their battle scenes, but in this book (and I am assuming the others. Again I haven't read them) the battles are not described in great detail and were generally only a page or two long. I guess they make for good movie filler though.
A fun, fast read.]]> 4.29 1937
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Mason
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1937
rating: 3
read at: 2008/07/09
date added: 2008/07/21
shelves:
review:
I read this on our trip to Guatemala, mostly on buses. I found it an enjoyable story of adventure with some good general life lessons. I am not, however, intrigued enough to read any of the Lord of the Rings books that follow. Having seen the movies of those books, I thought it was interesting that the movies are sort of known for their battle scenes, but in this book (and I am assuming the others. Again I haven't read them) the battles are not described in great detail and were generally only a page or two long. I guess they make for good movie filler though.
A fun, fast read.
]]> 2686533 Sustaining Life is the first book to examine the full range of potential threats that diminishing biodiversity poses to human health.

Edited and written by Harvard Medical School physicians Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, along with more than 100 leading scientists who contributed to writing and reviewing the book, Sustaining Life presents a comprehensive--and sobering--view of how human medicines, biomedical research, the emergence and spread of infectious diseases, and the production of food, both on land and in the oceans, depend on biodiversity. The book's ten chapters cover everything from what biodiversity is and how human activity threatens it to how we as individuals can help conserve the world's richly varied biota. Seven groups of organisms, some of the most endangered on Earth, provide detailed case studies to illustrate the contributions they have already made to human medicine, and those they are expected to make if we do not drive them to extinction. Drawing on the latest research, but written in language a general reader can easily follow, Sustaining Life argues that we can no longer see ourselves as separate from the natural world, nor assume that we will not be harmed by its alteration. Our health, as the authors so vividly show, depends on the health of other species and on the vitality of natural ecosystems.

With a foreword by E.O. Wilson and a prologue by Kofi Annan, and more than 200 poignant color illustrations, Sustaining Life contributes essential perspective to the debate over how humans affect biodiversity and a compelling demonstration of the human health costs. It is the winner of the Gerald L. Young Book Award in Human Ecology Best Sci-Tech Books of 2008 for Biology by Gregg Sapp of Library Journal
]]> 568 Eric Chivian 0195175093 Mason 0 to-read 4.75 2008
author: Eric Chivian
name: Mason
average rating: 4.75
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/07/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 30868 232 Barbara Kingsolver 0812474945 Mason 3 Its good and a fast read, but I think it is more recommendable for women than for men.
]]> 4.00 1988
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Mason
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at: 2008/07/03
date added: 2008/07/04
shelves:
review:
I’ve read two of Kingsolver’s books (Prodigal Summer and The Poisonwood Bible) down here and really liked them both. So when I saw this I picked it up. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think it compares to either of the other two. Part of it may be that I am not a woman and this book is all about women. There is only one male character and he is relatively minor. The book is about a young woman from Kentucky who has only two goals, not to get pregnant and to get away from Kentucky. A few years after High School, she saves up enough to buy a car and drive away. Along her journey, she is given a small child. It just sort of happens like that. So now she has this kid to decide what to do with. She eventually makes it to Tuscon and decides to settle down there with the little one. The story follows her ups and downs and relationships with friends and neighbors. She encounters a few memorable characters and makes a couple of huge decisions that change her life and the lives of others around her.
Its good and a fast read, but I think it is more recommendable for women than for men.

]]> 4395 The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.

First published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath summed up its era in the way that Uncle Tom's Cabin summed up the years of slavery before the Civil War. Sensitive to fascist and communist criticism, Steinbeck insisted that "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" be printed in its entirety in the first edition of the book—which takes its title from the first verse: "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored." At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s fictional chronicle of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s is perhaps the most American of American Classics.]]> 455 John Steinbeck Mason 5 The book follows the Joads, a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers who have been forced off of their land and decided to move to California to the promise of plentiful jobs and a better future. They are plagued with hardships along the journey and once they get there as they realize that not everything they have heard is true. Like so many others, they are forced to desperately search for work for ever-declining wages. Throughout it all, they stay positive (mostly) more out of necessity than of choice.
The way the characters are developed is great and the reader comes to know them well. Steinbeck injects plenty of his own opinions and life lessons and, I thought, used each character and each situation faced as a metaphor for life’s challenges. Like the Joads, we all have to keep moving beyond what life throws at us, always looking toward a better future.
]]> 3.88 1939
author: John Steinbeck
name: Mason
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1939
rating: 5
read at: 2008/06/13
date added: 2008/07/04
shelves:
review:
Somehow, I never read this in school. I think it may be good that I was never assigned it because I rarely read the books assigned in school. I am really glad I read this now. Steinbeck is obviously a great writer and I have come to enjoy his books a lot, although the only other one I have read is East of Eden.
The book follows the Joads, a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers who have been forced off of their land and decided to move to California to the promise of plentiful jobs and a better future. They are plagued with hardships along the journey and once they get there as they realize that not everything they have heard is true. Like so many others, they are forced to desperately search for work for ever-declining wages. Throughout it all, they stay positive (mostly) more out of necessity than of choice.
The way the characters are developed is great and the reader comes to know them well. Steinbeck injects plenty of his own opinions and life lessons and, I thought, used each character and each situation faced as a metaphor for life’s challenges. Like the Joads, we all have to keep moving beyond what life throws at us, always looking toward a better future.

]]> 683 360 Paul Hawken 0316353000 Mason 4 Although this is definitely not a light, fun read, I would still recommend it to those interested in efficiency, “green�� issues or economics/business practices. It reads almost like a textbook, only more interesting and a bit more light-hearted at times.
It is interesting to me to read it now with $4 gas prices, knowing that when it was written (��99), gas was about ¼ that and the technologies and changes mentioned were even profitable back then. It really makes me wonder what has happened that we have not moved forward as much as this book suggests we can (or could have).
Look into it.

“If a company knew that nothing that came into its factory could be thrown away, and that everything it produced would eventually return, how would it design its components and products? The question is more than a theoretical construct, because the Earth works under precisely these strictures.��
]]> 3.99 1999
author: Paul Hawken
name: Mason
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2008/07/02
date added: 2008/07/04
shelves:
review:
Written in 1999, this book maps out a plan for greatly increasing the efficiency and economic opportunities of our current capitalistic system, all while taking environmental harm, waste and degradation out of the picture. The authors argue that the knowledge and technology are there to achieve a waste-free, non-polluting, money and job generating society. This book is meticulously researched and written to appeal to more business minded people than myself, which is a good thing, as most environmental activism is usually preaching to the choir and lacking in economic ideology. All sectors of the economy, from transportation to industry to water to energy to construction to agriculture to government are discussed. Each sector is examined for inefficiencies and waste also ground-breaking revolutions are brought to light. Most are simple and just involve a different way of thinking.
Although this is definitely not a light, fun read, I would still recommend it to those interested in efficiency, “green�� issues or economics/business practices. It reads almost like a textbook, only more interesting and a bit more light-hearted at times.
It is interesting to me to read it now with $4 gas prices, knowing that when it was written (��99), gas was about ¼ that and the technologies and changes mentioned were even profitable back then. It really makes me wonder what has happened that we have not moved forward as much as this book suggests we can (or could have).
Look into it.

“If a company knew that nothing that came into its factory could be thrown away, and that everything it produced would eventually return, how would it design its components and products? The question is more than a theoretical construct, because the Earth works under precisely these strictures.��

]]> 168668
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.]]> 453 Joseph Heller 0684833395 Mason 0 to-read 3.99 1961
author: Joseph Heller
name: Mason
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/06/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 14743
With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament, to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion, and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence.

The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong, but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.]]> 374 Richard Dawkins 0618680004 Mason 0 to-read 3.89 2006
author: Richard Dawkins
name: Mason
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/06/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 664895 400 Jeffrey D. Sachs 1594201277 Mason 0 to-read I really like what he says about balancing global economics with the environment. I think he and E.O. Wilson would get along.]]> 3.66 2008
author: Jeffrey D. Sachs
name: Mason
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/05/22
shelves: to-read
review:
I've heard this guy on the Diane Rehm show and on Talk of the Nation.
I really like what he says about balancing global economics with the environment. I think he and E.O. Wilson would get along.
]]> 39242 Joe Mondragon, a feisty hustler with a talent for trouble, slammed his battered pickup to a stop, tugged on his gumboots, and marched into the arid patch of ground. Carefully (and also illegally), he tapped into the main irrigation channel. And so began-though few knew it at the time-the Milagro beanfield war. But like everything else in the dirt-poor town of Milagro, it would be a patchwork war, fought more by tactical retreats than by battlefield victories. Gradually, the small farmers and sheepmen begin to rally to Joe's beanfield as the symbol of their lost rights and their lost lands. And downstate in the capital, the Anglo water barons and power brokers huddle in urgent conference, intent on destroying that symbol before it destroys their multimillion-dollar land-development schemes. The tale of Milagro's rising is wildly comic and lovingly ter, a vivid portrayal of a town that, half-stumbling and partly prodded, gropes its way toward its own stubborn salvation.
]]> 456 John Nichols 0805063749 Mason 4 It all takes place in the small town of Milagro in the northern New Mexico mountains. This is a typical small mountain town, full of characters, pick-up trucks and anger toward the government. The two main differences between this small mountain town and the ones I’m used to in Colorado are that in this one almost everyone speaks Spanish, and the town is not a tourist trap. Everybody has their own story and everybody knows everybody else’s story. It takes place in the early 70’s and is basically the story of the townspeople vs. a wealthy landowner. The “war�� is centered on water, farming, money and development. Pretty typical Southwest U.S. struggles.
I really liked the way Nichols took the time to develop all of the many characters and how he lets the reader feel like they really know the majority of the town. It kind of reminds me of that TV show “Northern Exposure�� from the 90’s, at least in the small town aspect.
I really enjoyed this book. It is quite funny and the way the story is told, it is very engaging. It also shows that the same struggles the West is having today have been going on for decades, if not centuries, and we still don’t know how to handle them.
I’d recommend this to fans of the SW, fans of small mtn. towns, fans of Ed Abbey, fans of little people vs. the man, or just fans of good books.
]]> 4.09 1974
author: John Nichols
name: Mason
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1974
rating: 4
read at: 2008/05/22
date added: 2008/05/22
shelves:
review:
Before I started this, all I knew about this book was that it had something to do with the Southwest and that Nichols’s name often comes up in the Mountain Gazette and in the same circles as people like Mary Sojourner and Ed Abbey. Apparently it was made into a movie in ��88.
It all takes place in the small town of Milagro in the northern New Mexico mountains. This is a typical small mountain town, full of characters, pick-up trucks and anger toward the government. The two main differences between this small mountain town and the ones I’m used to in Colorado are that in this one almost everyone speaks Spanish, and the town is not a tourist trap. Everybody has their own story and everybody knows everybody else’s story. It takes place in the early 70’s and is basically the story of the townspeople vs. a wealthy landowner. The “war�� is centered on water, farming, money and development. Pretty typical Southwest U.S. struggles.
I really liked the way Nichols took the time to develop all of the many characters and how he lets the reader feel like they really know the majority of the town. It kind of reminds me of that TV show “Northern Exposure�� from the 90’s, at least in the small town aspect.
I really enjoyed this book. It is quite funny and the way the story is told, it is very engaging. It also shows that the same struggles the West is having today have been going on for decades, if not centuries, and we still don’t know how to handle them.
I’d recommend this to fans of the SW, fans of small mtn. towns, fans of Ed Abbey, fans of little people vs. the man, or just fans of good books.

]]> 183829 A magisterial accomplishment: both a moving description of our biosphere and a guidebook for the protection of all its species, including humankind.

From one of the world's most influential scientists (and two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning author) comes his most timely and important book yet: an impassioned call for quick and decisive action to save Earth's biological heritage, and a plan to achieve that rescue.

Today we understand that our world is infinitely richer than was ever previously guessed. Yet it is so ravaged by human activity that half its species could be gone by the end of the present century. These two contrasting truths—unexpected magnificence and underestimated peril—have become compellingly clear during the past two decades of research on biological diversity.

In this dazzlingly intelligent and ultimately hopeful book, Wilson describes what treasures of the natural world we are about to lose forever—in many cases animals, insects, and plants we have only just discovered, and whose potential to nourish us, protect us, and cure our illnesses is immeasurable—and what we can do to save them. In the process, he explores the ethical and religious bases of the conservation movement and deflates the myth that environmental policy is antithetical to economic growth by illustrating how new methods of conservation can ensure long-term economic well-being.

The Future of Life is a magisterial accomplishment: both a moving description of our biosphere and a guidebook for the protection of all its species, including humankind.]]> 220 Edward O. Wilson 0349115796 Mason 4 This book was a bit like taking an ecology class at university, but one that focuses on the societal effects and how we can help save the world.
He explains the basics of biodiversity, why it is necessary and how we have screwed it up. It is not a negative book, rather it is quite hopeful with a plan for the future.
Give it a read. You'll like it.
]]> 4.17 2002
author: Edward O. Wilson
name: Mason
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2008/05/13
date added: 2008/05/15
shelves:
review:
E.O. Wilson is great.
This book was a bit like taking an ecology class at university, but one that focuses on the societal effects and how we can help save the world.
He explains the basics of biodiversity, why it is necessary and how we have screwed it up. It is not a negative book, rather it is quite hopeful with a plan for the future.
Give it a read. You'll like it.

]]> 4214 460 Yann Martel 0770430074 Mason 3 In the first third of the book, he shares his thoughts on religion and offers a lot of insight in to the inner workings of a zoo. He shares numerous stories of animal behavior and escapes and does his best to defend the worth and existence of zoos.
One day, Pi’s father announces that the whole family is moving to Canada and will be taking some of the animals along with them on the ship to sell along the way, or once they arrive in Canada. This is where the story gets more interesting.
The ship wrecks and Pi finds himself on a lifeboat with a few animals, including a 450 lb Bengal tiger. The story that follows is of his time on the boat, drifting at sea and dealing with the tiger. It makes for an interesting, fairly quick read. The ending is a bit surprising and caught me off guard. I’m still thinking about that part.
In the beginning, the book was more philosophical and then turned to a story once they left India. That made for the faster reading, although there was a fair bit of philosophizing on the lifeboat too.
Many people loved this book, but I didn’t. I liked it, but don’t think it is anything exceptional.
]]> 3.94 2001
author: Yann Martel
name: Mason
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2008/05/01
date added: 2008/05/12
shelves:
review:
Pi is an Indian boy whose father runs a zoo in a small Indian town. He is very religious, not discriminating between Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism. He loves all three and doesn’t see why he should have to choose between them. He also loves animals and the study of zoology.
In the first third of the book, he shares his thoughts on religion and offers a lot of insight in to the inner workings of a zoo. He shares numerous stories of animal behavior and escapes and does his best to defend the worth and existence of zoos.
One day, Pi’s father announces that the whole family is moving to Canada and will be taking some of the animals along with them on the ship to sell along the way, or once they arrive in Canada. This is where the story gets more interesting.
The ship wrecks and Pi finds himself on a lifeboat with a few animals, including a 450 lb Bengal tiger. The story that follows is of his time on the boat, drifting at sea and dealing with the tiger. It makes for an interesting, fairly quick read. The ending is a bit surprising and caught me off guard. I’m still thinking about that part.
In the beginning, the book was more philosophical and then turned to a story once they left India. That made for the faster reading, although there was a fair bit of philosophizing on the lifeboat too.
Many people loved this book, but I didn’t. I liked it, but don’t think it is anything exceptional.

]]> 48467 This is an alternate-cover edition for ISBN 9780374530631)

The American short story master Flannery O'Connor's haunting first novel of faith, false prophets, and redemptive wisdom.

Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his inborn, desperate fate. He falls under the spell of a "blind" street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Sabbath Lily. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Motes founds the Church Without Christ, but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with "wise blood," who leads him to a mummified holy child and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Motes's existential struggles.

This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.]]> 256 Flannery O'Connor 0374530637 Mason 3 Again, I’m not sure why I liked this because it was very weird and seemed to lack a plot. But, I did enjoy it and also it was very fast. I read it in 2 days, but could have done it on one if I wouldn’t have been busy.
I chose to read this because someone once told me this is their favorite book. I don’t remember who, and I don’t see how this could be anyone’s favorite. But who knows. Give it a shot.
]]> 3.84 1952
author: Flannery O'Connor
name: Mason
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1952
rating: 3
read at: 2008/04/03
date added: 2008/05/02
shelves:
review:
This is quite a strange story. I liked it, but I’m still not sure why. The story follows Hazel Motes through a few weeks of his life, as he heads to a new town and decides to start preaching on the streets. He preaches about how he believes in nothing and that there is no salvation or redemption and the only thing even capable of being believed in is nothing. He forms the Church without Christ. He is troubled by something and runs into a host of other strange characters.
Again, I’m not sure why I liked this because it was very weird and seemed to lack a plot. But, I did enjoy it and also it was very fast. I read it in 2 days, but could have done it on one if I wouldn’t have been busy.
I chose to read this because someone once told me this is their favorite book. I don’t remember who, and I don’t see how this could be anyone’s favorite. But who knows. Give it a shot.

]]> 1202
These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing -- and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.

What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and -- if the right questions are asked -- is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.
(front flap)]]> 268 Steven D. Levitt 0061234001 Mason 3 This book looks at a lot of random questions and tries to explain them in innovative ways. There is no unifying theme here, just a guy asking a few questions and then explaining them with all sorts of data and studies that were usually not conducted to answer any questions like the ones he is asking. It reminded me of The Tipping Point or Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.
Levitt shares his thoughts about how and why teachers and sumo wrestlers cheat, what parents can do (or more correctly, be) to bring up more successful children, how Roe v Wade led to a dramatic drop in crime a generation later, why crack dealers are poor, the power of information, and how a child’s name can affect his or her future. He looks beyond conventional wisdom to try to tease out details that may help explain seemingly complex questions.
It’s an interesting read, and pretty fast too. If you liked the previously mentioned books, you’ll like this one.
]]> 4.01 2005
author: Steven D. Levitt
name: Mason
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2008/04/25
date added: 2008/05/02
shelves:
review:
Levitt is, apparently, one of the brightest economists of our time. Also, he’s around my age. What the hell have I been doing?
This book looks at a lot of random questions and tries to explain them in innovative ways. There is no unifying theme here, just a guy asking a few questions and then explaining them with all sorts of data and studies that were usually not conducted to answer any questions like the ones he is asking. It reminded me of The Tipping Point or Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.
Levitt shares his thoughts about how and why teachers and sumo wrestlers cheat, what parents can do (or more correctly, be) to bring up more successful children, how Roe v Wade led to a dramatic drop in crime a generation later, why crack dealers are poor, the power of information, and how a child’s name can affect his or her future. He looks beyond conventional wisdom to try to tease out details that may help explain seemingly complex questions.
It’s an interesting read, and pretty fast too. If you liked the previously mentioned books, you’ll like this one.

]]> 31093 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, takes us on a poignant and passionate journey as mysterious and compelling as his first life-changing work.

Instead of a motorcycle, a sailboat carries his philosopher-narrator Phaedrus down the Hudson River as winter closes in. Along the way he picks up a most unlikely traveling companion: a woman named Lila who in her desperate sexuality, hostility, and oncoming madness threatens to disrupt his life.

In Lila Robert M. Pirsig has crafted a unique work of adventure and ideas that examines the essential issues of the nineties as his previous classic did the seventies.]]> 480 Robert M. Pirsig 0553299611 Mason 4 He begins by looking at the study of Anthropology and proceeds to discount it completely because of the objective-subjective struggle. Science can only be objective, which he says anthropology tries to do, but anthropology will only work if it is subjective. He tells the story of a former colleague who did many studies on Indians (Native Americans) but had no credit with anthropologists because he got in with the culture and really became a part of it. According to Pirsig’s view of anthropology, this doesn’t work, but is really how anthropology should be. He also dives into Native American culture and explains that it is more a part of current American culture than we think. He draws parallels to old westerns in which the traits that the cowboys we so adore showed all came from the Native Americans. He then talks a lot about metaphysics and how in his first book he only started the examination of Quality. In the time between the two books he tried to define the Metaphysics of Quality and essentially broke down Quality into 4 different realms which sometimes complement each other, but more often cause struggles, or misplaced values. Different cultures and times in our history have put different levels of importance on different realms of Quality and he wants to look at where the emphasis should be. That’s as far as I’ll go into that, but I’ll say that he also has a lot of interesting things to say about Manhattan, celebrities, American culture, Victorianism, Insanity (he spent time in an insane asylum and has a very unique perspective on it, saying that it is all cultural and societal. For example, if there is only one person living alone in this world, could they possibly be insane? By what measure?) and Science/Evolution/Intellectualism. He is obviously a very smart person who spends almost all of his time thinking and very little of his time interacting with others. He admits that he hates small talk and generally struggles to carry on a conversation with people.
Although this book, like his other one, has many long, deep, slow sections that you may choose to re-read because you find that you have no idea what he is talking about, I recommend it. I think he has a lot of good things to say and he is very thought-provoking. I did prefer his first book, but I definitely liked this one too. One thing I like is that he openly talks about his first book in this one and also about becoming famous (kinda) and meeting Robert Redford (to sell the movie rights to his other book) and answering fan mail and so on. If you liked his other book, or if you are a fan of philosophical books, give this a shot.
Quotes to follow:
“…it’s better to know a lot and say little, I think, than to know little and say a lot��

“But Phaedrus never learned to make small-talk like that and as soon as he got into it his mind always drifted off into his own private world of abstractions and the conversation died.��

“Science superseded old religious forms, not because what is says is more true in any absolute sense (whatever that is), but because what it says is more Dynamic.��

“A society that tries to restrain the truth for its own purposes is a lower form of evolution than a truth that restrains society for its own purposes.��

“It is better for an idea to destroy a society than it is for a society to destroy an idea.��

“The defect is that subject-object science has no provision for morals. Subject-object science is only concerned with facts. Morals have no objective reality. You can look through a microscope or telescope or oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you will never find a single moral. There aren’t any there. They are all in your head. They exist only in your imagination.
From the perspective of subject-object science, the world is a completely purposeless, valueless place. There is no point in anything. Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Everything just functions, like machinery. There is nothing morally wrong with being lazy, nothing morally wrong with lying, with theft, with suicide, with murder, with genocide. There is nothing morally wrong because there are no morals, just functions.��

“There is no scientific evidence that little children are born into sin, they said. The whole idea of sin has no objective reality. Sin is simply a violation of a set of arbitrary social rules which little children can hardly be expected to be aware of, let alone obey. A far more objective explanation of “sin�� is that a collection of social patterns, grown old and corrupt and decadent, tries to justify its own existence by proclaiming that all who fail to conform to it are evil rather than admit any evil of its own.
There are two ways to get rid of this “sin,�� said the intellectuals. One is to force all children to conform to the ancient rules without ever questioning whether these rules are right or wrong. The other is to study the social patterns that have led to this condemnation and see how they can be altered to allow the natural inclinations of an innocent child to fulfill his needs without this charge of sinfulness arising. If the child is behaving naturally, then it is the society that calls him sinful that needs correction. If children are shown kindness and affection and given freedom to think and explore for themselves, children can arrive rationally at what is best for themselves and for the world. Why should they want to go in any other direction?��

“The intellect’s purpose has never been to discover the ultimate meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent fad. Its historical purpose has been to help a society find food, detect danger, and defeat enemies. It can do this well or poorly, depending on the concepts it invents for this purpose.��
]]> 3.83 1991
author: Robert M. Pirsig
name: Mason
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2008/04/05
date added: 2008/05/02
shelves:
review:
Like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, this book has a lot of deep philosophical discussion interlaced with stories of a journey of some sort that Phaedrus (the author in his earlier life) is on. In this one, Pirsig is on a trip to sail down the Hudson River into the Atlantic and then down to Florida. The story begins just outside of Manhattan where he encounters a mysterious woman named Lila who spends a few days on his boat with him. She is somewhat of an unsavory character, and later goes completely crazy. Throughout the 2 or 3 days that pass in his story on the boat with her, Pirsig gets in to all sorts of discussion.
He begins by looking at the study of Anthropology and proceeds to discount it completely because of the objective-subjective struggle. Science can only be objective, which he says anthropology tries to do, but anthropology will only work if it is subjective. He tells the story of a former colleague who did many studies on Indians (Native Americans) but had no credit with anthropologists because he got in with the culture and really became a part of it. According to Pirsig’s view of anthropology, this doesn’t work, but is really how anthropology should be. He also dives into Native American culture and explains that it is more a part of current American culture than we think. He draws parallels to old westerns in which the traits that the cowboys we so adore showed all came from the Native Americans. He then talks a lot about metaphysics and how in his first book he only started the examination of Quality. In the time between the two books he tried to define the Metaphysics of Quality and essentially broke down Quality into 4 different realms which sometimes complement each other, but more often cause struggles, or misplaced values. Different cultures and times in our history have put different levels of importance on different realms of Quality and he wants to look at where the emphasis should be. That’s as far as I’ll go into that, but I’ll say that he also has a lot of interesting things to say about Manhattan, celebrities, American culture, Victorianism, Insanity (he spent time in an insane asylum and has a very unique perspective on it, saying that it is all cultural and societal. For example, if there is only one person living alone in this world, could they possibly be insane? By what measure?) and Science/Evolution/Intellectualism. He is obviously a very smart person who spends almost all of his time thinking and very little of his time interacting with others. He admits that he hates small talk and generally struggles to carry on a conversation with people.
Although this book, like his other one, has many long, deep, slow sections that you may choose to re-read because you find that you have no idea what he is talking about, I recommend it. I think he has a lot of good things to say and he is very thought-provoking. I did prefer his first book, but I definitely liked this one too. One thing I like is that he openly talks about his first book in this one and also about becoming famous (kinda) and meeting Robert Redford (to sell the movie rights to his other book) and answering fan mail and so on. If you liked his other book, or if you are a fan of philosophical books, give this a shot.
Quotes to follow:
“…it’s better to know a lot and say little, I think, than to know little and say a lot��

“But Phaedrus never learned to make small-talk like that and as soon as he got into it his mind always drifted off into his own private world of abstractions and the conversation died.��

“Science superseded old religious forms, not because what is says is more true in any absolute sense (whatever that is), but because what it says is more Dynamic.��

“A society that tries to restrain the truth for its own purposes is a lower form of evolution than a truth that restrains society for its own purposes.��

“It is better for an idea to destroy a society than it is for a society to destroy an idea.��

“The defect is that subject-object science has no provision for morals. Subject-object science is only concerned with facts. Morals have no objective reality. You can look through a microscope or telescope or oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you will never find a single moral. There aren’t any there. They are all in your head. They exist only in your imagination.
From the perspective of subject-object science, the world is a completely purposeless, valueless place. There is no point in anything. Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Everything just functions, like machinery. There is nothing morally wrong with being lazy, nothing morally wrong with lying, with theft, with suicide, with murder, with genocide. There is nothing morally wrong because there are no morals, just functions.��

“There is no scientific evidence that little children are born into sin, they said. The whole idea of sin has no objective reality. Sin is simply a violation of a set of arbitrary social rules which little children can hardly be expected to be aware of, let alone obey. A far more objective explanation of “sin�� is that a collection of social patterns, grown old and corrupt and decadent, tries to justify its own existence by proclaiming that all who fail to conform to it are evil rather than admit any evil of its own.
There are two ways to get rid of this “sin,�� said the intellectuals. One is to force all children to conform to the ancient rules without ever questioning whether these rules are right or wrong. The other is to study the social patterns that have led to this condemnation and see how they can be altered to allow the natural inclinations of an innocent child to fulfill his needs without this charge of sinfulness arising. If the child is behaving naturally, then it is the society that calls him sinful that needs correction. If children are shown kindness and affection and given freedom to think and explore for themselves, children can arrive rationally at what is best for themselves and for the world. Why should they want to go in any other direction?��

“The intellect’s purpose has never been to discover the ultimate meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent fad. Its historical purpose has been to help a society find food, detect danger, and defeat enemies. It can do this well or poorly, depending on the concepts it invents for this purpose.��

]]> 1883137
Chef Ann Cooper has emerged as one of the nation's most influential and most respected advocates for changing how our kids eat. In fact, she is something of a renegade lunch lady, minus the hairnet and scooper of mashed potatoes. Ann has worked to transform cafeterias into culinary classrooms. In Lunch Lessons, she and Lisa Holmes spell out how parents and school employees can help instill healthy habits in children.

They explain the basics of good childhood nutrition and suggest dozens of tasty, home-tested recipes for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. The pages are also packed with recommendations on how to eliminate potential hazards from the home, bring gardening and composting into daily life, and how to support businesses that provide local, organic food.

Yet learning about nutrition and changing the way you run your home will not cure the plague of obesity and poor health for this generation of children. Only parental activism can spark widespread change. With inspirational examples and analysis, Lunch Lessons is more than just a recipe bookâ it gives readers the tools to transform the way children everywhere interact with food.]]> 288 Ann Cooper 0060783702 Mason 0 to-read looks interesting... 3.38 2006
author: Ann Cooper
name: Mason
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/04/12
shelves: to-read
review:
looks interesting...
]]> 2956 327 Mark Twain 0142437174 Mason 0 Maybe it is just the wrong time, but I thought this book was horrible. I never got into it. I hated it. I actually stopped reading for a long time because of this book.
I know it's an American classic, but I just don't like it.
Sorry.]]> 3.82 1884
author: Mark Twain
name: Mason
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1884
rating: 0
read at: 2008/03/05
date added: 2008/04/06
shelves:
review:
I am not rating this book because I didn't finish it.
Maybe it is just the wrong time, but I thought this book was horrible. I never got into it. I hated it. I actually stopped reading for a long time because of this book.
I know it's an American classic, but I just don't like it.
Sorry.
]]> 14249 Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia.

From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected.

Over the course of one humid summer, these characters find their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they share a place. Prodigal Summer demonstrates a balance of narrative, drama and ideas that is characteristic of Barbara Kingsolver's finest work.]]> 444 Barbara Kingsolver 0060959037 Mason 5 4.03 2000
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Mason
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2007/06/03
date added: 2008/03/21
shelves:
review:
Lots of outdoor wilderness-y sex in this one, be it people or moths or coyotes or chestnut trees. Small town farmland Appalachia is the setting for this tale of man and wilderness. There is a lot of good ecology in this book as Deanna, a Forest Service ranger, tries to explain the virtues of the coyote (and predators in general) to the overall wellbeing of the natural world. At the same time we have Lusa, a former entomologist relocated to a farm and suddenly part of a typical large farming family from those parts. She struggles with being an outsider in so many ways. And then there is old man Walker who adds an element of “Grumpy Old Men�� to this tale with his antics involving his neighbor, organic apple farmer Nannie Rawley. As the tale evolves we see how all of these characters are connected in so many ways, visibly and invisibly, just as all life, from the hyphae of a mushroom to us complex humans, is connected in so many more ways than we know.
]]> 690227 208 David Brower 0865714118 Mason 0 to-read 4.12 1995
author: David Brower
name: Mason
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 122 544 Bryce Courtenay 034541005X Mason 5
“Always listen to yourself. It is better to be wrong than to simply follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you will grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step towards a fulfilling life.��

“…God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with such rubbish. Only man wants always God should be there to condemn this one and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business�� In Mexico there is a cactus that even sometimes you would think God forgets. But no, my friend, this is not so. On a full moon in the desert every one hundred years he remembers and he opens up a single flower to bloom. And if you should be there and you see this beautiful cactus blossom painted silver by the moon and laughing up at the stars, this is heaven…This is the faith in God the cactus has�� It is better just to get on with the business of living and minding your own business and maybe, if God likes the way you do things, he may just let you flower for a day or a night. But don’t go pestering and begging and telling him all your stupid little sins, that way you will spoil his day.��

“…in this world are very few things made from logic alone. It is illogical for a man to be too logical. Some things we must just let stand. The mystery is more important than any possible explanation. The searcher after truth must search with humanity. Ruthless logic is the sign of a limited mind. The truth can only add to the sum of what you know, while a harmless mystery left unexplored often adds to the meaning of life. When a truth is not so important, it is better left as a mystery.��

“The mind is the athlete; the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better. “First with the head and then with the heart�� was more than simply mixing brains with guts. It meant thinking well beyond the powers of normal concentration and then daring your courage to follow your thoughts.��
]]> 4.35 1989
author: Bryce Courtenay
name: Mason
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2008/03/02
date added: 2008/03/21
shelves:
review:
At least 3 people I know have told me that this is their favorite book, so I just had to give it a read. It is really, really good. The book follows a young man, Peekay, as he grows up in South Africa in the 30s and 40s. He meets a series of very influential adults and is constantly being shaped by them and also by his many differing experiences growing up. The one theme that stays true throughout is his desire to become the welterweight boxing champion of the world. This is the kind of book that you find yourself not wanting to put down and you miss it when you aren’t reading it. I definitely recommend this book to anyone at all. While I won’t list it as my favorite, it is definitely one of my favorites.

“Always listen to yourself. It is better to be wrong than to simply follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you will grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step towards a fulfilling life.��

“…God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with such rubbish. Only man wants always God should be there to condemn this one and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business�� In Mexico there is a cactus that even sometimes you would think God forgets. But no, my friend, this is not so. On a full moon in the desert every one hundred years he remembers and he opens up a single flower to bloom. And if you should be there and you see this beautiful cactus blossom painted silver by the moon and laughing up at the stars, this is heaven…This is the faith in God the cactus has�� It is better just to get on with the business of living and minding your own business and maybe, if God likes the way you do things, he may just let you flower for a day or a night. But don’t go pestering and begging and telling him all your stupid little sins, that way you will spoil his day.��

“…in this world are very few things made from logic alone. It is illogical for a man to be too logical. Some things we must just let stand. The mystery is more important than any possible explanation. The searcher after truth must search with humanity. Ruthless logic is the sign of a limited mind. The truth can only add to the sum of what you know, while a harmless mystery left unexplored often adds to the meaning of life. When a truth is not so important, it is better left as a mystery.��

“The mind is the athlete; the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better. “First with the head and then with the heart�� was more than simply mixing brains with guts. It meant thinking well beyond the powers of normal concentration and then daring your courage to follow your thoughts.��

]]> 668 Ayn Rand's first published novel, a timeless story that explores the struggles of the individual against the state in Soviet Russia.

First published in 1936, 'We the Living' portrays the impact of the Russian Revolution on three human beings who demand the right to live their own lives and pursue their own happiness. It tells of a young woman’s passionate love, held like a fortress against the corrupting evil of a totalitarian state.

'We the Living' is not a story of politics, but of the men and women who have to struggle for existence behind the Red banners and slogans. It is a picture of what those slogans do to human beings. What happens to the defiant ones? What happens to those who succumb?

Against a vivid panorama of political revolution and personal revolt, Ayn Rand shows what the theory of socialism means in practice.

Ayn Rand (1905��1982) was born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg to a prosperous Jewish family as Alisa Rosenbaum. When the Bolsheviks requisitioned her family's business, they fled to the Crimea, and she later moved to America as soon as she was offered the chance. After beginning her writing career with screenplays, she published the novel 'We the Living' in 1936. Her status was later established with 'The Fountainhead' (1943) and her magnus opus, 'Atlas Shrugged' (1957). Also a prolific non-fiction writer, as well as the founder of the philosophical school of Objectivism, she has had an unequivocal impact on both literature and culture, regardless of one's perspective of her works.]]> 464 Ayn Rand 0451187849 Mason 4 This is the story of man against state, not just Kira against Russia. I think the themes and lifestyles and oppression written about here are similar in many different regions and governments (and at the time of the writing of this book, we’re very popular among many Americans) and are the result of the spirit being taken out of life. The whole idea of living for the sole reason of bettering the state sounds good, but has yet to be accomplished and when the reality of the most important aspects of life (emotion, love, dreams, ambition, independence��) being taken away and devalued is examined, as it is in this book, it is clear that the socialist state is highly unlikely to ever exist in the idealistic fashion that many believe it can achieve.
As for the story of the book, it follows Kira through her family’s return to post revolutionary Russia and their struggles to try to survive while still remaining true to themselves. Kira never sees the need to keep her anti-communist ideals to herself and because of this is constantly treading water, doing what she can to remain on the surface of life. The book follows her through a few different love affairs and ultimately to her personal escape of the domination and oppression faced by her countrymen.
I really enjoyed this book and the underlying themes of individuality vs. the collective. Looking back, though, I feel like this book would have had much more of an impact on someone from a generation older than mine or a different culture. Maybe in my parents�� generation. Although, this is more than just the struggle of individuals vs. communism, I felt like because I have always lived in a fairly stable capitalistic society and have never felt the things that came out in this book, maybe I appreciated the story less. Who knows? It was really good regardless, and I sort of wish I would have read it in a Literature class because I think there were so many underlying themes and ideas in the book that could have lead to lengthy discussions. If you haven’t read this yet, give it a shot. Or try Anthem (much shorter and simpler and very different, although still very anti-state) for an intro to Ayn Rand.

“Ah these people here! I know so many of them. We meet, we talk, we shake hands. What does it mean? Nothing. Nothing but an empty physical gesture. Who among them knows the deeper significance of the spirit or the real meaning of our lives?��
]]> 3.93 1936
author: Ayn Rand
name: Mason
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1936
rating: 4
read at: 2008/02/06
date added: 2008/03/21
shelves:
review:
This was Rand’s first novel, and it was likely the first novel to share firsthand knowledge of post-revolutionary USSR with the rest of the world. Although she lived through this period before re-locating to the US, this is a work of fiction. It is based around the actual living conditions and social attitudes of the time and follows a young woman who was formerly from a privileged family, but was now just a citizen like anyone else. Actually she was looked down upon by most other citizens and the government precisely because she was from a privileged family before the revolution. Unlike most (then and now) she was a thinker, and refused to just go along with convention or the popular attitudes solely because they were the prevailing attitudes. She held on to her independence and never lost her will to be a person, rather than just a citizen of a state.
This is the story of man against state, not just Kira against Russia. I think the themes and lifestyles and oppression written about here are similar in many different regions and governments (and at the time of the writing of this book, we’re very popular among many Americans) and are the result of the spirit being taken out of life. The whole idea of living for the sole reason of bettering the state sounds good, but has yet to be accomplished and when the reality of the most important aspects of life (emotion, love, dreams, ambition, independence��) being taken away and devalued is examined, as it is in this book, it is clear that the socialist state is highly unlikely to ever exist in the idealistic fashion that many believe it can achieve.
As for the story of the book, it follows Kira through her family’s return to post revolutionary Russia and their struggles to try to survive while still remaining true to themselves. Kira never sees the need to keep her anti-communist ideals to herself and because of this is constantly treading water, doing what she can to remain on the surface of life. The book follows her through a few different love affairs and ultimately to her personal escape of the domination and oppression faced by her countrymen.
I really enjoyed this book and the underlying themes of individuality vs. the collective. Looking back, though, I feel like this book would have had much more of an impact on someone from a generation older than mine or a different culture. Maybe in my parents�� generation. Although, this is more than just the struggle of individuals vs. communism, I felt like because I have always lived in a fairly stable capitalistic society and have never felt the things that came out in this book, maybe I appreciated the story less. Who knows? It was really good regardless, and I sort of wish I would have read it in a Literature class because I think there were so many underlying themes and ideas in the book that could have lead to lengthy discussions. If you haven’t read this yet, give it a shot. Or try Anthem (much shorter and simpler and very different, although still very anti-state) for an intro to Ayn Rand.

“Ah these people here! I know so many of them. We meet, we talk, we shake hands. What does it mean? Nothing. Nothing but an empty physical gesture. Who among them knows the deeper significance of the spirit or the real meaning of our lives?��

]]> 742637
Twenty-five years ago David Petersen and his wife, Caroline, pulled up stakes, trading Laguna Beach, California, for a snug hand-built cabin in the wilderness. Today he knows that mountain land as intimately as anyone can know his home.
Petersen conflates a quarter century into the adventures of four high-country seasons, tracking the rigors of survival from the snowmelt that announces the arrival of spring to the decline and death of autumn and winter that will establish the fertile ground needed for next year's rebirth.
In the past we listened to Henry David Thoreau or Aldo Leopold; today it is Petersen's turn. His observations are lyrical, scientific, and from the heart. He reinforces Thoreau's "in wildness is the preservation of the earth." In prose rich with mystery and soul, his words are a plea for the survival of the remnant wilderness.

"Many of us would like to live a life of greater intention and simplicity, but few can and even fewer do. David Petersen is one of those rare human beings among us who lives a wild life with a cultured mind . . . [He] has created a map all of us can follow."―Terry Tempest Williams, author of The Open Space of Democracy]]> 272 David Petersen 0805080031 Mason 5 Reading this book, for the first time I saw in print many things I have thought in the past, so it really struck a chord with me. I could write all day about this I like it so much, so I’ll stop now before I get long-winded. Lots of quotes to follow:

“What we are, and are not, is largely a product of the choices we make. We only live once, and most of us don’t even do that.��

“To reduce wealth to money and possessions is an incredible underestimation of our emotional life.�� -Arne Naess

“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.�� -Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“Adventure is mostly a drag when it’s happening.��

“Nature isn’t always pretty, but she darn sure always works.��

“Never take more than not quite enough.��

“Intelligence, it seems to me, is what works best to satisfy a particular creature’s needs in the particular circumstance it must adapt to.��

“Thoughtfulness, in this warped and thoughtless world, too often leads to disappointment, discontent, anger, rage and even psychosis.��

“When I thought about it, it hurt too much. So I quit thinking about it.�� -Ed Abbey

“Evolutionary fitness is measured by how well a species, plant or animal, adapts itself to fit, not fight, its environment. In the end, long-term survival and prosperity �� for humanity as well as for all species �� are products not of force but of finesse.��

“Certainly and tragically, we are well along the doomsday path to collective cultural insanity as a result of divorcing ourselves from the wild world that shaped and continues to nourish and sustain us.��

“To focus and obsess on the negative, emulating the nightly news, is a sinful waste of our demigod intellect and heretical to the blessing of life itself.��

“While we have little control over personal longevity, we have huge control over what we think, say and do while here, and thus how much we enjoy doing it.��
]]> 3.97 2005
author: David Petersen
name: Mason
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2007/09/02
date added: 2008/02/26
shelves:
review:
This is one of my new favorite books. It is a lot like Desert Solitaire but about a cabin in the Colorado mountains. Specifically, the San Juans. Peterson writes fluidly and eloquently about wildlife, flora, chopping wood, society, shoveling snow, dogs, hunting and the decision to separate himself from the majority of popular society (with his wife and a series of dogs). He has a deep connection with the land around him that only comes from living within it, as a part of it, and studying it extensively. He is also (maybe primarily) a passionate elk hunter. His hunting style is primitive, with a longbow and wooden arrows and no sort of artificial aid, other than camouflage clothing. I’m not anti-hunting, especially as a food source, but if I were, the way he writes about it may change my mind.
Reading this book, for the first time I saw in print many things I have thought in the past, so it really struck a chord with me. I could write all day about this I like it so much, so I’ll stop now before I get long-winded. Lots of quotes to follow:

“What we are, and are not, is largely a product of the choices we make. We only live once, and most of us don’t even do that.��

“To reduce wealth to money and possessions is an incredible underestimation of our emotional life.�� -Arne Naess

“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.�� -Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“Adventure is mostly a drag when it’s happening.��

“Nature isn’t always pretty, but she darn sure always works.��

“Never take more than not quite enough.��

“Intelligence, it seems to me, is what works best to satisfy a particular creature’s needs in the particular circumstance it must adapt to.��

“Thoughtfulness, in this warped and thoughtless world, too often leads to disappointment, discontent, anger, rage and even psychosis.��

“When I thought about it, it hurt too much. So I quit thinking about it.�� -Ed Abbey

“Evolutionary fitness is measured by how well a species, plant or animal, adapts itself to fit, not fight, its environment. In the end, long-term survival and prosperity �� for humanity as well as for all species �� are products not of force but of finesse.��

“Certainly and tragically, we are well along the doomsday path to collective cultural insanity as a result of divorcing ourselves from the wild world that shaped and continues to nourish and sustain us.��

“To focus and obsess on the negative, emulating the nightly news, is a sinful waste of our demigod intellect and heretical to the blessing of life itself.��

“While we have little control over personal longevity, we have huge control over what we think, say and do while here, and thus how much we enjoy doing it.��

]]> 1130946
Opening with a dazzling new 20,000-word essay on walking from London to New York, Psychogeography is a collection of 50 short pieces written over the last four years, together with 50 four-color illustrations by Ralph Steadman. In Psychogeography Self and Steadman explore the relationship between psyche and place in the contemporary world. Self thinks most people have a "wind-screen-based virtuality" on long- and short-distance travel. We drive, take buses and trains, fly. To combat this compromised reality, Will Self walks, relating intimately to place, as pedestrians do. Ranging in subject from swimming the Ganges to motorcycling across the Australian outback, shopping in an Iowa mall to surfing a tsunami, Psychogeography is at once a map of our world and the psychoanalysis of the way we inhabit it. The pieces are serious, humorous, facetious, and rambunctious. Psychogeography, the study of the effects of geographical environment on the emotions and behavior of individuals, has captivated other writers including W. G. Sebald and Peter Ackroyd, but Self and Steadman have their own unique spin on how place shapes people and vice versa.]]> 256 Will Self 1596914661 Mason 0 to-read 3.55 2007
author: Will Self
name: Mason
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/02/13
shelves: to-read
review:
I heard an interview with the author on NPR's Living On Earth. Sounds pretty interesting.
]]> 25460
"As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain.

"Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel..."

Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."]]> 370 Barbara Kingsolver 0060852550 Mason 0 to-read 4.03 2007
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Mason
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/02/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 315425 The Omnivore's Dilemma, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating; now In Defense of Food shows us how to change it, one meal at a time. Pollan proposes a new answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.,,,]]> 205 Michael Pollan 1594201455 Mason 0 to-read 4.07 2008
author: Michael Pollan
name: Mason
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/02/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 11048 The Boys of Everest tells the story of a band of climbers who reinvented mountaineering during the three decades after Everest's first ascent. It is a story of tremendous courage, astonishing achievement and heart-breaking loss. Their leader was the boyish, fanatically driven Chris Bonington. His inner circle �� which came to be know as Bonington's Boys �� included a dozen who became climbing's greatest generation.

Bonington's Boys gave birth to a new brand of climbing. They took increasingly terrible risks on now-legendary expeditions to the world's most fearsome peaks. And they paid an enormous price for their achievements. Most of Bonington's Boys died in the mountains, leaving behind the hardest question of all: Was it worth it?

The Boys of Everest, based on interviews with surviving climbers and other individuals, as well as five decades of journals, expedition accounts, and letters, provides the closest thing to an answer that we'll ever have. It offers riveting descriptions of what Bonington's Boys found in the mountains, as well as an understanding of what they lost there.]]> 536 Clint Willis 0786715790 Mason 0 to-read 3.84 2006
author: Clint Willis
name: Mason
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2008/02/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 49436 349 Greg Mortenson 0143038257 Mason 3 Great story, not great writing.]]> 3.66 2006
author: Greg Mortenson
name: Mason
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2008/01/30
date added: 2008/02/10
shelves:
review:
Greg Mortenson stumbled into a small Pakistani village after a failed attempt at summiting K2. He was nursed back to health by members of the village and after seeing the empty field that the students used as a school �� with a teacher only one or two days a week �� vowed to return to the town and build them a school. This book chronicles his quest to make that promise a reality, from writing donation letters to random famous people to actually securing funds and building the school. That experience brought him such pleasure and he saw so much more need that he decided his life’s quest would be to continue building schools for Pakistani, and later Afghanistani, children. It is an inspiring tale about how much change one dedicated person can achieve. While he had no intention of “fighting terror�� when he started his work, Mortenson says that the best way we can rebuild our image in that part of the world is to educate these children and offer them an alternative to the madrassas which generally breed fundamentalism. Mortenson continues his work and his built over 50 schools, clinics and women’s centers since he began.
Great story, not great writing.
]]> 4519 199 Ruby K. Payne 1929229488 Mason 3 I think that all teachers and anyone who works with people living in poverty should read this book. It offers practical solutions to many problems commonly encountered when, for example, a middle-class teacher continually has behavior problems with her/his students who live in poverty. I like that it doesn’t advocate teaching children from poverty that their way of life is bad or wrong, just that if they hope to survive in the middle-class world, they need to learn about the rules of that culture.
]]> 3.88 2001
author: Ruby K. Payne
name: Mason
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2008/02/01
date added: 2008/02/06
shelves:
review:
During Grad school, I skimmed this book and remembered that it had a lot of good info about the cultural differences between classes (poverty, middle-class, wealthy), so when I saw that a friend was reading it down here, I decided to give it a second look. It is written with educators in mind, so it was only slightly applicable to what I am doing at this point in my life, and it is written about poverty in the US. What I found very interesting is that so many of the things we see here that we think are just a part of the Nicaraguan culture are actually part of the poverty culture. A lot of what was discussed in the book really made me look at a few things differently down here. I would have liked her to elaborate a bit more on the reasons behind the behaviors that she says are related to poverty. Instead she included a lengthy reference section and appendix (almost half of the book!).
I think that all teachers and anyone who works with people living in poverty should read this book. It offers practical solutions to many problems commonly encountered when, for example, a middle-class teacher continually has behavior problems with her/his students who live in poverty. I like that it doesn’t advocate teaching children from poverty that their way of life is bad or wrong, just that if they hope to survive in the middle-class world, they need to learn about the rules of that culture.

]]> 723969 * Uses overseas sweatshop labor to manufacture its corporate brand clothing
* Sells knock-off and counterfeit merchandise that misleads and confuses its customers
* Destroys acres of environmentally sensitive lands to build new Wal-Marts, close to existing Wal-Marts that will be closed
* Has eliminated all competition in many towns across the U.S. by illegally lowering prices below wholesale
* Has forced the movement of thousands of manufacturing jobs out of the U.S.
* Calls "full-time" 28 hours per week and pays wages so low that many of its employees qualify �� and accept �� welfare payments
* Demands millions of dollars in tax breaks to locate in communities all over the U.S., while it earns billions of dollars in profits. Written by Al Norman, the world’s foremost expert on and leader of the anti-sprawl movement, The Case Against Wal-Mart calls on consumers to go on a "Wal-Mart diet." Norman says that only a consumer boycott of Wal-Mart will show the company that U.S. citizens disapprove of its business tactics. This is a book every American shopper should read before making another trip to Wal-Mart. As Al Norman says, "Friends don't let friends shop at Wal-Mart."]]> 160 Al Norman 0971154236 Mason 1 3.82 2004
author: Al Norman
name: Mason
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2004
rating: 1
read at: 2007/07/01
date added: 2008/02/04
shelves:
review:
Boring, simplistic and he assumes the reader is stupid. Very anecdotal. Although I agree that Wal-Mart and other corporations like it are evil on so many levels, I found myself really not liking this book. Maybe I was expecting too much, but this just was not interesting. It was almost like he just googled "Wal-Mart" and "law suit" and cut and pasted it all together without doing any further research.
]]> 61264 91 Alessandro Baricco 0375703829 Mason 3 3.91 1996
author: Alessandro Baricco
name: Mason
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2007/04/02
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
Very short, interestingly written story of travel, adventure, love and death. Set in France in the 1800’s it is the story of a man who travels by land to the mysterious nation of Japan to buy silkworms. He becomes infatuated with a particular Japanese woman and longs for her when he is home in France. What he doesn’t realize until it is too late is how much shared love there is between him and his wife. A very fast read (3 hrs).
]]> 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 Mason 5 4.41 1952
author: John Steinbeck
name: Mason
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 5
read at: 2007/05/03
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
One of my favorite books ever. I’d never read Steinbeck before, and you can just tell right away that he is a master. This is a story of farmers and families in the Salinas Valley in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The character development is amazing. I really felt like I knew those people. A couple of generations worth of Cane and Abel type brotherly relationships and the people that influenced and are influenced by them. His writing is slow and deliberate and if you can stick with it you will be truly rewarded.
]]> 11077 The Sex Lives of Cannibals tells the hilarious story of what happens when Troost discovers that Tarawa is not the island paradise he dreamed of.

Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles through relentless, stifling heat, a variety of deadly bacteria, polluted seas, toxic fish, and worst of all, no television or coffee. And that's just the first day. Sunburned, emaciated, and stinging with sea lice, Troost spends the next two years battling incompetent government officials, alarmingly large critters, erratic electricity, and a paucity of food options. He contends with a cast of bizarre local characters, including "Half-Dead Fred" and the self-proclaimed Poet Laureate of Tarawa (a British drunkard who's never written a poem in his life), and eventually settles into the ebb and flow of island life, just before his return to the culture shock of civilization.

With the rollicking wit of Bill Bryson, the brilliant travel exposition of Paul Theroux, and a hipster edge that is entirely Troost's own, The Sex Lives of Cannibals is the ultimate vicarious adventure. Readers may never long to set foot on Tarawa, but they'll want to travel with Troost time and time again.]]> 272 J. Maarten Troost 0767915305 Mason 5 3.87 2003
author: J. Maarten Troost
name: Mason
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2007/05/02
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
Hilarious tale of the author’s 2 years spent living on the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. His wife directed a non-profit and he pretty much just hung out and observed the culture and lifestyles. His accounts are very funny and the way he describes the daily life there makes me think of daily life here.
]]> 9569 256 Tom Robbins 1842431021 Mason 3 Good Quotes:

“Trees are a damn sight more useful than people, and everything in the world knows that except people.��
Maybe he had a point. Trees do generate oxygen; men just breathe it up, stink it up, and generally misuse it. Trees hold the soil in place; men are constantly displacing it. Trees provide shelter and protection to countless species; men threaten the existence of those species. When in sufficient number, trees regulate atmospheric temperatures; men endanger the planet by knocking those regulations askew. You can’t rest in the shade of a human, not even a roly-poly one; and isn’t it refreshing that trees can undergo periodic change without having a nervous breakdown over it? And which has more dignity - the calmer spiritual presence �� a tree or a typical Homo sapiens? Best of all, perhaps, what maple or cypress ever tried to sell you something you didn’t want?

“Men live by embedding themselves in ongoing systems of illusion. Religion, patriotism, economics, fashion. That sort of thing.��

“…for curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.��

“Do only human beings have souls, or is that a narcissistic, chauvinistic piece of self-flattery? I mean, can’t we look at that great old teak tree over there or at this gulch, and see as much of the divine as in some ’ol anthropomorphic Sunday school boom daddy with imaginary long gray whiskers and a platinum bathrobe?��

“…every individual has to assume responsibility for his or her own actions, even the poor and the young. A social system that decrees otherwise is inviting intellectual atrophy and spiritual stagnation.��

“We only rise above mediocrity when there’s something at stake, and I mean something more consequential than money or reputation.��

“Ambiguities and contradictions, that’s what biblical guidance is made of.��

“In the life of an individual, an aesthetic sensibility is both more authentic and more commendable than a political or religious one.��
]]> 3.70 2003
author: Tom Robbins
name: Mason
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2007/06/02
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
His newest book (I think) takes place mostly in SE Asia (Laos and Thailand) and is centered around 3 former Vietnam POWs and the international opium ring they run. It is, however, written by Tom Robbins so there is plenty of sarcasm, beastiality, spiritual dialogue, biblical badmouthing, circuses and tanukis. As always he is fun to read, but this wasn’t as good as Skinny Legs and All. I did enjoy it though and would recommend it.
Good Quotes:

“Trees are a damn sight more useful than people, and everything in the world knows that except people.��
Maybe he had a point. Trees do generate oxygen; men just breathe it up, stink it up, and generally misuse it. Trees hold the soil in place; men are constantly displacing it. Trees provide shelter and protection to countless species; men threaten the existence of those species. When in sufficient number, trees regulate atmospheric temperatures; men endanger the planet by knocking those regulations askew. You can’t rest in the shade of a human, not even a roly-poly one; and isn’t it refreshing that trees can undergo periodic change without having a nervous breakdown over it? And which has more dignity - the calmer spiritual presence �� a tree or a typical Homo sapiens? Best of all, perhaps, what maple or cypress ever tried to sell you something you didn’t want?

“Men live by embedding themselves in ongoing systems of illusion. Religion, patriotism, economics, fashion. That sort of thing.��

“…for curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.��

“Do only human beings have souls, or is that a narcissistic, chauvinistic piece of self-flattery? I mean, can’t we look at that great old teak tree over there or at this gulch, and see as much of the divine as in some ’ol anthropomorphic Sunday school boom daddy with imaginary long gray whiskers and a platinum bathrobe?��

“…every individual has to assume responsibility for his or her own actions, even the poor and the young. A social system that decrees otherwise is inviting intellectual atrophy and spiritual stagnation.��

“We only rise above mediocrity when there’s something at stake, and I mean something more consequential than money or reputation.��

“Ambiguities and contradictions, that’s what biblical guidance is made of.��

“In the life of an individual, an aesthetic sensibility is both more authentic and more commendable than a political or religious one.��

]]> 42697 Exodus is an international publishing phenomenon--the towering novel of the twentieth century's most dramatic geopolitical event. Leon Uris magnificently portrays the birth of a new nation in the midst of enemies--the beginning of an earthshaking struggle for power. Here is the tale that swept the world with its fury: the story of an American nurse, an Israeli freedom fighter caught up in a glorious, heartbreaking, triumphant era.]]> 599 Leon Uris 0553258478 Mason 5 4.34 1960
author: Leon Uris
name: Mason
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1960
rating: 5
read at: 2007/07/02
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
Tells the story of the beginning of the State of Israel with lots of interesting historical facts. Although it is full of true history this book is a work of fiction as it follows many different Zionists through their work as soldiers, farmers, diplomats and Jews. They work in concentration camps, displaced prisoners camps that aren’t much better, kibbutzes, hospitals, battlefields, ghettos and farms. They paid much too much for land in Palistine that the Arabs didn’t want and transformed it from desert and swamp into fertile cropland. This is a great book full of great characters that I’d recommend to anyone.
]]> 5113 ‘Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.��

First published in The New Yorker as two sequential stories, ‘Franny�� and ‘Zooey�� offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger’s fictional Glass family.

Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, ‘Zooey��, plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny’s emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her older brother Zooey, a misanthropic former child genius, offers her consolation and brotherly advice.

Written in Salinger’s typically irreverent style, these two stories offer a touching snapshot of the distraught mindset of early adulthood and are full of the insightful emotional observations and witty turns of phrase that have helped make Salinger’s reputation what it is today.]]> 201 J.D. Salinger 0316769029 Mason 4 3.97 1957
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Mason
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1957
rating: 4
read at: 2007/08/03
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
Basically a series of long conversations revolving around life, religion and whatnot. Full of metaphor and other deep thought catalysts. The writing is amazing and the description of the relationships between the characters was phenomenal. I really felt like I was there in the room with them. Zooey and his relationship with his mom remind me in some ways of me and mine. A fun read. Fast.
]]> 70401 307 Jack Kerouac 0140042598 Mason 3 “Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there.��
“Where we going man?��
“I don’t know but we gotta go.��
]]> 3.63 1957
author: Jack Kerouac
name: Mason
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1957
rating: 3
read at: 2007/08/02
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
The classic “bible�� of the beat generation tells of Kerouak’s tales of travel, attempting to live the vagabond life and “dig�� places like Denver and San Francisco and eventually Mexico. It all seemed to be taking place with his buddy Neal Cassady, who Jack (Sal Paradise) greatly admired. I enjoyed this (especially the Mexico part) but found myself getting bored at times too. The writing style made me laugh some times too. I think I would have liked it much more if I were younger and less experienced.
“Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there.��
“Where we going man?��
“I don’t know but we gotta go.��

]]> 7445 THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.]]> 288 Jeannette Walls 074324754X Mason 4 4.32 2005
author: Jeannette Walls
name: Mason
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2007/10/02
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
A memoir of growing up in a crazy family. Dad a genius alcoholic risk-taker, mom a hippy-ish artist who believed that rules only stifled children. The family is always moving, never has money, getting in fights�� Surprisingly the kids learn a lot of valuable lessons throughout all of this. On the surface, I slightly agree with this parenting style, but not to this extreme. It’s a fun, wild page-turner and at times I couldn’t believe it was true.
]]> 9601 318 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 038533351X Mason 4 4.06
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Mason
average rating: 4.06
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2007/10/01
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
Fun fast read. I really like Vonnegut. This book is the “autobiography�� of Rabo Karabekian who was a major (or something like that) in WWII then became a major player in the abstract expressionist movement. He had always been a talented drawer, but it caused him struggles as well. Here he retells his life, moving between present and past often. Very fun.
]]> 1842
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: the global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.

In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized religion—as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war—and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal]]> 498 Jared Diamond 0739467352 Mason 3 4.04 1997
author: Jared Diamond
name: Mason
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2007/09/01
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
Really interesting topic, but overall it was mostly really boring. It was like a scientific paper with lots of over-explaining and refuting of potential arguments or previously held theories. It is about the rise and fall of civilizations and why some have been more successful than others. Many people told me I should just read the intro and the conclusion and after reading the book, I agree with them. At times it was like reading a college textbook, which I’m just not in the mood for right now.
]]> 976 A conspiracy of staggering brilliance.
A thriller unlike any you've ever read....

When a new NASA satellite spots evidence of an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory�� a victory that has profound implications for U.S. space policy and the impending presidential election.

With the Oval Office in the balance, the President dispatches White House Intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton to the Milne Ice Shelf to verify the authenticity of the find. Accompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic academic Michael Tolland, Rachel uncovers the unthinkable—evidence of scientific trickery—a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy.

But before Rachel can contact the President, she and Michael are attacked by a deadly task force…a private team of assassins controlled by a mysterious powerbroker who will stop at nothing to hide the truth. Fleeing for their lives in an environment as desolate as it is lethal, they possess only one hope, to find out who is behind this masterful ploy. The truth, they will learn, is the most shocking deception of all…]]> 556 Dan Brown 0671027387 Mason 3 3.76 2001
author: Dan Brown
name: Mason
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2007/09/01
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
Typical Dan Brown book. This one involves NASA, a presidential election and a world-changing scientific discovery. Full of action, science, secrets and unbelievable turns of event. A good bus (or plane) read.
]]> 4009
The stories are:

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"
"Just Before the War with the Eskimos"
"The Laughing Man"
"Down at the Dinghy"
"For Esmé �� with Love and Squalor"
"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes"
"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period"
"Teddy"]]> 302 J.D. Salinger 0316767727 Mason 3 4.20 1953
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Mason
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1953
rating: 3
read at: 2007/09/01
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
Just as the title says, this is a collection of 9 short stories, about a half hour or less each. Salinger is a great writer, but I just didn’t really care about any of these stories, although I did appreciate the writing.
]]> 17780
In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life the incredible story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex - an event as mythic in its own century as the Titanic disaster in ours, and the inspiration for the climax of Moby-Dick. In a harrowing page-turner, Nathaniel Philbrick restores this epic story to its rightful place in American history.

In 1820, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk by an eighty-ton bull sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, made for the 3,000-mile-distant coast of South America in three tiny boats. During ninety days at sea under horrendous conditions, the survivors clung to life as one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.

Philbrick interweaves his account of this extraordinary ordeal of ordinary men with a wealth of whale lore and with a brilliantly detailed portrait of the lost, unique community of Nantucket whalers. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, the book delivers the ultimate portrait of man against nature, drawing on a remarkable range of archival and modern sources, including a long-lost account by the ship's cabin boy.

At once a literary companion and a page-turner that speaks to the same issues of class, race, and man's relationship to nature that permeate the works of Melville, In the Heart of the Sea will endure as a vital work of American history.]]> 302 Nathaniel Philbrick 0141001828 Mason 3 4.16 2000
author: Nathaniel Philbrick
name: Mason
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2007/08/01
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
Story of the Nantucket whaling ship Essex that was rammed by a whale and sunk. This occurrence served as the inspiration for Moby Dick. This amazing tale of survival paints a picture of desperation and suffering as the crew members made their way toward South America’s west coast with little to guide them. Death, luck, cannibalism, tortoises and the desire to keep surviving characterize their long, lonely voyage. A fun, interesting read that is pretty quick too.
]]> 3636 208 Lois Lowry 0385732554 Mason 3 4.12 1993
author: Lois Lowry
name: Mason
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2007/05/01
date added: 2008/02/03
shelves:
review:
An individual in a world of utter conformity (some sort of futuristic socialism reminiscent of Ayn Rand’s Anthem) has his world opened to other ways of life when he is chosen to have a career as the “Keeper of Past Knowledge,�� or something like that. I can see this as a good, thought-provoking book for HS students to read, but I found it sort of boring and predictable. Maybe because I’ve read a lot of books like that.
]]> 33917 Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.

In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail �� the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase �� that opens whole worlds of emotion.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.

Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.]]> 304 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618485228 Mason 3 4.02 2003
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Mason
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2007/04/01
date added: 2008/01/30
shelves:
review:
Story of an Indian man growing up in the US. His family moved when he was very young to the States and he is struggling with the world of two very different cultures. He really hates his name, but doesn’t understand what it means to his father until it is too late. To me this was a story about growing up, rejecting your past, rebelling by being different, and then coming around to realize that there was some goodness in the past and it makes up a lot of who you are. Also the story of two different cultural worlds. I enjoyed this book as I was reading it (2 days) but as soon as I closed it I didn’t miss it at all.
]]> 7244 The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.]]> 546 Barbara Kingsolver 0060786507 Mason 4 4.10 1998
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Mason
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2007/03/01
date added: 2008/01/30
shelves:
review:
The story of a southern missionary and his family as they work in the Congo in the late 50’s and beyond. Told from the point of view of the 4 daughters and the wife. Full of family dynamics, clash of cultures, clash of religions, stubbornness, and powerful nature scenes that Kingsolver is a master of. It was very interesting to read this book as a PCV because her depictions of 3rd world countries were dead on and her writing about cultural differences and how we deal with them and process them really hit home with me. Another thing that really struck a chord with me was how organized religion/closed-mindedness/intolerance for others�� beliefs has caused so much damage in this world. A very enjoyable book.
]]> 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Mason 5 A story of childhood friends from different classes in Afghanistan during the Russian invasion/occupation and later takeover by the Taliban. At times it was hard and painful to read and at times I found myself smiling. What a great book!
]]> 4.34 2003
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Mason
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2007/03/01
date added: 2008/01/30
shelves:
review:
Wow, what an amazing book! The kind that once you start, you don’t want to put it down until it is finished, and once it is finished you are sad to not have it anymore.
A story of childhood friends from different classes in Afghanistan during the Russian invasion/occupation and later takeover by the Taliban. At times it was hard and painful to read and at times I found myself smiling. What a great book!

]]> 9370 422 Tom Robbins 1842430343 Mason 4 4.07 1990
author: Tom Robbins
name: Mason
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2007/02/01
date added: 2008/01/30
shelves:
review:
The story of artist/waitress Ellen Cherry Charles and her husband, redneck/welder/accidental artist, Boomer Petway. Also, we hear from Buddy Winkler, Ellen’s uncle, a southern preacher who is cooking up some sort of scheme for the end of the world. And then there is the crew of inanimate objects: Painted Stick, Conch Shell, Dirty Sock, Spoon and Can ‘o Beans who are on a spiritual quest of their own. Add to that Spike and Abu, a Jew and a Muslim, who have opened “Isaac and Ismael’s,�� a middle-eastern restaurant promoting peace, directly across from the UN offices in NYC. Every character seems to be on their own personal quest for glory or salvation and Robbins, true to form, weaves in his own social commentary, sarcasm and spiritual beliefs through anecdotes, metaphors, sidebars and tangents. Lots of interesting religious history concerning the formation of Judaism and Islam. It all comes to a head as a 16 year old belly dancer dances the sacred dance of the seven veils, uncovering the seven illusions of humanity. A really fun book to read!
]]> 832913 Called “one of the greatest men alive�� by The Times of London, E. O. Wilson proposes an historic partnership between scientists and religious leaders to preserve Earth’s rapidly vanishing biodiversity.]]> 192 Edward O. Wilson 0393330486 Mason 4 Wilson, raised as a southern Baptist in Alabama, hopes to take advantage of the common goals of religion and science (stewardship, humanity) to reverse damages to the Earth. He clearly outlines what he thinks needs to be done and how it can be accomplished. His writing is easily understood and he has a gift for simplifying scientific ideas for the comprehension of those not familiar with them.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone. Anyone interested in the ‘teaching of evolution vs. intelligent design�� debate should particularly read the last chapter (165-168). I wish I were smart enough to share my thoughts on the topic that clearly. I also love that he always capitalizes the word Nature. My only complaint, which is both personal and petty, is that for me, someone who has studied and taught these topics, I wished he would have gone deeper, although I realize that would be self-defeating in this book. Great read that left me feeling very positive and excited to get back all of our childhood roots of finding endless joy and wonder in Nature.
QUOTES: “Do you agree, Pastor, that the depth and complexity of living Nature still exceed human imagination? If god seems unknowable, so too does the rest of the biosphere.��
“It is not the nature of human beings to be cattle in glorified feed lots. Every person deserves the option to travel easily in and out of the complex and primal world that gave us birth.��
“…While most people around the world care about the natural environment, they don’t know why they care, or why they should feel responsible for it. By and large they have been unable to articulate what the stewardship of Nature means to them personally.��
]]> 3.90 2006
author: Edward O. Wilson
name: Mason
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2008/01/30
shelves:
review:
Written by one of the most respected and accomplished biologists of our time (one of Time magazine’s most important people of the 20th century), The Creation is written as a letter from Wilson to a fictional member of the clergy, Pastor. It is an appeal for science and religion to put aside differences and work together to save The Creation (Earth, life, the biosphere��). There are lots of facts relating to biodiversity and the rapid loss of it since the agricultural revolution. His main argument / talking point is that humanity should be ascending toward nature instead of away from it as the majority of humanity has been doing.
Wilson, raised as a southern Baptist in Alabama, hopes to take advantage of the common goals of religion and science (stewardship, humanity) to reverse damages to the Earth. He clearly outlines what he thinks needs to be done and how it can be accomplished. His writing is easily understood and he has a gift for simplifying scientific ideas for the comprehension of those not familiar with them.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone. Anyone interested in the ‘teaching of evolution vs. intelligent design�� debate should particularly read the last chapter (165-168). I wish I were smart enough to share my thoughts on the topic that clearly. I also love that he always capitalizes the word Nature. My only complaint, which is both personal and petty, is that for me, someone who has studied and taught these topics, I wished he would have gone deeper, although I realize that would be self-defeating in this book. Great read that left me feeling very positive and excited to get back all of our childhood roots of finding endless joy and wonder in Nature.
QUOTES: “Do you agree, Pastor, that the depth and complexity of living Nature still exceed human imagination? If god seems unknowable, so too does the rest of the biosphere.��
“It is not the nature of human beings to be cattle in glorified feed lots. Every person deserves the option to travel easily in and out of the complex and primal world that gave us birth.��
“…While most people around the world care about the natural environment, they don’t know why they care, or why they should feel responsible for it. By and large they have been unable to articulate what the stewardship of Nature means to them personally.��

]]> 13839 297 Michael Pollan 0375760393 Mason 3 Even though this book wasn’t as interesting as I’d hoped it would be, it was still good. I think I just got my hopes up and thought it would be something it wasn’t. It is a very interesting plants-eye view of our world, showing that plants have manipulated us just as much as we’ve manipulated them. Plants that have satisfied our desires have greatly increased their numbers and their habitats. And after all, increasing numbers and habitats seems to be the evolutionary goal of all life.
After reading this, I am really excited to start gardening.
Although i rated it 3/5, I'd give the marijuana and potato chapters almost 5/5.]]> 4.06 2001
author: Michael Pollan
name: Mason
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2006/12/01
date added: 2008/01/30
shelves:
review:
Pollan, a professor of writing and avid gardener, looks at how plants have used humans as an evolutionary tool, playing to our desires in order to be more successful species or to increase their “fitness.�� Specifically, Pollan examines four human desires: sweetness (apple), beauty (tulip), intoxication (marijuana) and control (potato). The intro is really good, but the excitement it generated didn’t really pan out. There is a lot of history in this book, including a lot about Johnny Appleseed, and the tulip’s role in the economy of the Netherlands. I often found myself getting bored in those first two chapters although they were quite interesting overall. The following sections on intoxication and control (through genetic engineering) I found fascinating.
Even though this book wasn’t as interesting as I’d hoped it would be, it was still good. I think I just got my hopes up and thought it would be something it wasn’t. It is a very interesting plants-eye view of our world, showing that plants have manipulated us just as much as we’ve manipulated them. Plants that have satisfied our desires have greatly increased their numbers and their habitats. And after all, increasing numbers and habitats seems to be the evolutionary goal of all life.
After reading this, I am really excited to start gardening.
Although i rated it 3/5, I'd give the marijuana and potato chapters almost 5/5.
]]> 10235 Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most.

Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity"—a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners in Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.’s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb "Beyond mountains there are mountains": as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.]]> 333 Tracy Kidder 0812973011 Mason 3 He is a truly humble and massively intelligent person who is fighting the good fight seemingly with no regard for his own life and well-being. He travels constantly, is always working, doesn’t sleep or rest enough and has no personal time. But at the same time, he gets results. He started the non-profit Partners in Health and is causing the public health community to rethink its strategies and methods.
Farmer is very driven and should be admired for his hard work and dedication. I think the author did a good job of showing that and also a good job of showing that maybe Farmer is a little too dedicated. This is a great read and is very inspiring. It’s a great thing to read during Peace Corps service, although the sustainability of his work (one of our primary goals) is questionable. Reading this will show you just how much difference one person can make in the world.
QUOTES: “We should all be criticizing the excesses of the powerful, if we can so readily demonstrate that these excesses hurt the poor and vulnerable.��
]]> 4.19 2003
author: Tracy Kidder
name: Mason
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2006/12/01
date added: 2008/01/28
shelves:
review:
The story of Dr. Paul Farmer and his quest to rid the world’s poor of unjust suffering because of a lack of access to health care. Farmer started his quest as a medical student at Harvard where he spent most of his time in Haiti working with Tuberculosis. He only returned to campus to take exams and ended up setting up a clinic in Haiti. Throughout the years, he has transformed the area surrounding his clinic and has gone on to shake up the world of public health policy, especially in the area of TB treatment. This book chronicles his success in Haiti, Peru, Soviet prisons and other areas of the world.
He is a truly humble and massively intelligent person who is fighting the good fight seemingly with no regard for his own life and well-being. He travels constantly, is always working, doesn’t sleep or rest enough and has no personal time. But at the same time, he gets results. He started the non-profit Partners in Health and is causing the public health community to rethink its strategies and methods.
Farmer is very driven and should be admired for his hard work and dedication. I think the author did a good job of showing that and also a good job of showing that maybe Farmer is a little too dedicated. This is a great read and is very inspiring. It’s a great thing to read during Peace Corps service, although the sustainability of his work (one of our primary goals) is questionable. Reading this will show you just how much difference one person can make in the world.
QUOTES: “We should all be criticizing the excesses of the powerful, if we can so readily demonstrate that these excesses hurt the poor and vulnerable.��

]]> 45891 An adventure story and a love story set in the heart of the Amazonian jungle.

In the early years of the 18th century, a band of French scientists set off on a daring, decade-long expedition to South America in a race to measure the precise shape of the earth. Like Lewis and Clark's exploration of the American West, their incredible mission revealed the mysteries of a little-known continent to a world hungry for discovery. Scaling 16,000-foot mountains in the Peruvian Andes, and braving jaguars, pumas, insects, and vampire bats in the jungle, the scientists barely completed their mission. One was murdered, another perished from fever, and a third -- Jean Godin -- nearly died of heartbreak.

At the expedition's end, Jean and his Peruvian wife, Isabel Grandmaison, became stranded at opposite ends of the Amazon, victims of a tangled web of international politics. Isabel's solo journey to reunite with Jean after their calamitous twenty-year separation was so dramatic that it left all of 18th-century Europe spellbound. Her survival -- unprecedented in the annals of Amazon exploration -- was a testament to human endurance, female resourcefulness, and the power of devotion.

Drawing on the original writings of the French mapmakers, as well as his own experience retracing Isabel's journey, acclaimed writer Robert Whitaker weaves a riveting tale rich in adventure, intrigue, and scientific achievement. Never before told, The Mapmaker's Wife is an epic love story that unfolds against the backdrop of "the greatest expedition the world has ever known."]]> 448 Robert Whitaker 0553815393 Mason 4 This expedition was a massive undertaking and was really the first scientific work ever done (at least by us educated white folks) in the Americas. The list of discoveries and scientific firsts that were accomplished by this team could fill the page and honestly I don’t remember them all. Nevertheless the amount of the things these men accomplished is breathtaking. I do remember that this team “discovered�� both cinnamon and rubber and introduced them to Europe (and therefore civilization).
Their work took them something like 6 years, many more than they were planning, and when they were finished they all went their separate ways. One of the scientists fell in love with a local Peruvian woman (hence the title of the book) and lived with her for a few years, but always dreamed of taking his family back to his homeland and living out his life there. He decided that he would head down the Amazon, from Peru/Ecuador �� a voyage that had only been attempted by 4 or 5 people in all of history �� just to see if it was do-able and then return for his wife and head back down the Amazon. He planned on being away for a year and a half. He miraculously made it to the Amazon delta and sought out refuge in French Guyana (I think) where he had to wait for some trans-Atlantic paperwork from his homeland in order to pass back through Portuguese and Spanish land. After something like 9 years (and 20 years after leaving France) he was still waiting (they had government bureaucracy / ineffiency back then too) and had started a new life in some sort of business that I can’t recall right now.
His wife, on the other side of the continent decided that she would make the unprecedented trek to her husband, and so she went for it. Along the way she encountered outrageous obstacles and the death or abandonment of everyone in her party. After losing her boat, she was forced to walk through the wild Amazonian jungle where she was exposed to all sorts of flora, fauna and insects that crawled and chewed on her constantly for weeks and even months on end. At one point she laid down to die, but then somehow found the strength to get back up and continue for another six weeks! Her journey was amazing.
The scientific and cultural history in this book fascinated me. It is very well written and you will learn a lot from it and at the same time become captivated by the hardships endured by everyone in the book. I thoroughly enjoyed this book both as a scientist and an adventurer. Read it.
]]> 3.71 2004
author: Robert Whitaker
name: Mason
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2006/09/01
date added: 2008/01/28
shelves:
review:
So, I read this book right when I got here (Sept.) and I am writing this now in the middle of January so forgive my lack of detail and possible errors�� This book is about the scientific voyage of a team of Frenchmen to Ecuador (formerly Peru and a French colony) to measure a line of longitude (or is it latitude?) at the equator in the 1600’s. This was huge scientifically as there was still debate as to the shape of the Earth. Some thought that this young Newton fellow was crazy with his suggestions of gravity and a resultant spheroid Earth with a slight bulge at the equator. Some argued that if gravity worked the way Newton suggested, then the earth was actually indented at the equator, which may sound crazy now, but this is the way Science works. These Frenchmen set out to settle the debate once and for all, and to achieve long-lasting glory.
This expedition was a massive undertaking and was really the first scientific work ever done (at least by us educated white folks) in the Americas. The list of discoveries and scientific firsts that were accomplished by this team could fill the page and honestly I don’t remember them all. Nevertheless the amount of the things these men accomplished is breathtaking. I do remember that this team “discovered�� both cinnamon and rubber and introduced them to Europe (and therefore civilization).
Their work took them something like 6 years, many more than they were planning, and when they were finished they all went their separate ways. One of the scientists fell in love with a local Peruvian woman (hence the title of the book) and lived with her for a few years, but always dreamed of taking his family back to his homeland and living out his life there. He decided that he would head down the Amazon, from Peru/Ecuador �� a voyage that had only been attempted by 4 or 5 people in all of history �� just to see if it was do-able and then return for his wife and head back down the Amazon. He planned on being away for a year and a half. He miraculously made it to the Amazon delta and sought out refuge in French Guyana (I think) where he had to wait for some trans-Atlantic paperwork from his homeland in order to pass back through Portuguese and Spanish land. After something like 9 years (and 20 years after leaving France) he was still waiting (they had government bureaucracy / ineffiency back then too) and had started a new life in some sort of business that I can’t recall right now.
His wife, on the other side of the continent decided that she would make the unprecedented trek to her husband, and so she went for it. Along the way she encountered outrageous obstacles and the death or abandonment of everyone in her party. After losing her boat, she was forced to walk through the wild Amazonian jungle where she was exposed to all sorts of flora, fauna and insects that crawled and chewed on her constantly for weeks and even months on end. At one point she laid down to die, but then somehow found the strength to get back up and continue for another six weeks! Her journey was amazing.
The scientific and cultural history in this book fascinated me. It is very well written and you will learn a lot from it and at the same time become captivated by the hardships endured by everyone in the book. I thoroughly enjoyed this book both as a scientist and an adventurer. Read it.

]]> 41681
When it was published in serial form in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored, commercial edition published in book form the following year. That expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the meat-packing industry and much of Sinclair's most pointed social and political commentary.

The text of this new edition is as it appeared in the original uncensored edition of 1905.
It contains the full 36 chapters as originally published, rather than the 31 of the expurgated edition.

A new foreword describes the discovery in the 1980s of the original edition and its subsequent suppression, and a new introduction places the novel in historical context by explaining the pattern of censorship in the shorter commercial edition.]]> 335 Upton Sinclair 1884365302 Mason 4 Based around one family of Polish immigrants, this book exposed the impossibly hard lives these people lead (and many still lead today) because of the system into which they tried to make their lives. Reminds me at times of the current situation in Nicaragua or for those who try to make a new life in the U.S.��
The innerworkings of the entire industry are uncovered, from the stockyards and the killing floors to the canning rooms and political corruption. This work of fiction provoked political change almost immediately upon its release, although after also reading the aforementioned Fast Food Nation, I'm not sure how much we have really progressed.
If you haven’t already, you should read this.
]]> 3.77 1906
author: Upton Sinclair
name: Mason
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1906
rating: 4
read at: 2006/11/01
date added: 2008/01/28
shelves:
review:
The classic novel about the horrible injustices on all levels of the Chicago meatpacking scene in the early part of the 20th century. Many people read this in High School or University history classes, but for some reason I never did. This book is the predecessor of books like Fast Food Nation and that one about the pride of Arkansas, Wal-Mart (I can’t remember the name). Although it is a work of fiction, it is based on the actual working conditions of the meatyards and the lives of the immigrants who made them run.
Based around one family of Polish immigrants, this book exposed the impossibly hard lives these people lead (and many still lead today) because of the system into which they tried to make their lives. Reminds me at times of the current situation in Nicaragua or for those who try to make a new life in the U.S.��
The innerworkings of the entire industry are uncovered, from the stockyards and the killing floors to the canning rooms and political corruption. This work of fiction provoked political change almost immediately upon its release, although after also reading the aforementioned Fast Food Nation, I'm not sure how much we have really progressed.
If you haven’t already, you should read this.

]]> 128029
With the passing of time comes Taliban rule over Afghanistan, the streets of Kabul loud with the sound of gunfire and bombs, life a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, the women's endurance tested beyond their worst imaginings. Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways, lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism. In the end it is love that triumphs over death and destruction.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a portrait of a wounded country and a story of family and friendship, of an unforgiving time, an unlikely bond, and an indestructible love.]]> 372 Khaled Hosseini 1594489505 Mason 4 Kiterunner, but more depressing. From the point of view of women in Afghanistan, so I guess it makes sense that it is depressing to me from my American culture. ]]> 4.44 2007
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Mason
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2008/01/22
date added: 2008/01/28
shelves:
review:
Really good, like Kiterunner, but more depressing. From the point of view of women in Afghanistan, so I guess it makes sense that it is depressing to me from my American culture.
]]>