Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (Scholastic 2007) Audio CD. 4 stars out of five.
The best way to experience a Harry Potter story is not to watch one of the movies, or even to read one of the books. It is to listen to one of the books being read and performed by an actor with a versatile voice range and a warm and gemuetlich voice. Jim Dale and other gifted narrators of audible books have taught me to understand why the ancient Greeks preferred the oral tradition, in which the first works of Western literature were rendered, over the written.
American Ulysses, A Life of Ulysses S. Grant, by Ronald C. White (Random House 2016) Hardcover. 5 Stars out of 5.
I absolutely loved this Book! No surprise, as I also loved Ronald C. White's A. Lincoln. My full review is found here: http://www.mytakesonthat.com/2017/04/on-new-biography-of-ulysses-s-grant.html
Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles (Penguin Random House 2011) Audible 2.5 Stars out of 5.
Not sure what possessed me to listen to this Gatsbyesque book, as I have always despised The Great Gatsby. Must have been a review from someone whose opinions I normally agree with. The author's style is skillful and engaging, with a few similes, scenes, or passages that are moving, memorable, and even quietly truthful or important. The main character/narrator's love of reading allowed for some enjoyable short digressions on the value of literature and the merits of certain authors' works. But for all of that: I didn't really like it. Though set in 1938, nine years after the stock market crash and great depression brought the roaring twenties to an ignominious end, and 25 years before the dawn of the sexual revolution, the characters all seemed to be living in a world of moral apathy, with attitudes and behaviors more appropriate to a novel set in the 1970s. Maybe that's not an anachronism given the world of inherited wealth in which the novel is set (maybe aristocratic New Yorkers, and the social climbers who finagle their way into their lives, really have always acted this way, how would I know--but it does seem likely that this is yet another example of pop entertainment rewriting history to make it seem as though Americans of prior eras all had the same basic mindset and values as the 21st century author). In any event, I soon found that I had little desire to visit this setting or be with these people. I admired the male author's ability to convincingly write in the voice of a female narrator (or maybe the audible performance by a female performer just covered up any flaws), but I didn't really enjoy that character, despite her voracious reading, which is usually the easiest way to make me like someone in either the real or the fictional world. In the end, one character's decision to give up the most amoral aspect of his life provided a somewhat hopeful ending, but it wasn't quite enough to redeem the otherwise pointless plot.
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (Trade Paperback [original publication date 1959]). 3.5 Stars out of 5.
One of those Sci-Fi classics I always meant to read but never got around to in my Sci-Fi loving teenage years. The Bad: Like most such polemical twilight zone morality tales, the plot's destination is boringly obvious from the outset, and the story hasn't aged all that well. If it is possible to write an engaging page-turner set in a monastery (which I highly doubt), this author hasn't pulled it off. The Good: The author demonstrates that he's well versed in some of the inevitable patterns and recurrent themes of history. (It was an interesting experience in mental synthesis to be reading this book at the same time I was listening, during my commutes, to the beginning chapters of Will Durant's, The Age of Faith, on audible, describing the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of a Medieval Christianity which would preserve and eventually seek to restore the lost texts and scientific knowledge of the classical world.) And there are a few eery symbolic touches that work well, as well as a couple of scenes that will resonate with me for a long time.
Grace Is not God's Back-Up Plan. Adam Miller. Paperback. 4 stars out of 5.
We know that Greek was not Paul's primary language, and historians inform us that he did not write all that well in that tongue. (His parents, devoted Jews, would have given him enough Hellenic learning to get on in the world, but would have been primarily interested in his instruction in Judaism and the Law.) That may be one explanation for why Paul's epistles, on theologically difficult and sophisticated issues which he was trying to express in a second language, which were then translated from that not-very-fluent Greek, into the Latin Vulgate and then into modern European languages, remain difficult for most readers to follow, and have led to so much theological confusion over the centuries.
Or maybe it's just us.
In this book, the author paraphrases Paul's epistle to the Romans into a modern English. It's a paraphrase, and not a translation. He's not claiming that the original Greek supports his revisions. That would be an exercise in linguistics, where the point of this book is for one Latter-day Saint, speaking personally and without authority, to give us his own subjective understanding of certain doctrinal truths as he feels they are being expressed by Paul. Miller wants us to better understand the central role of grace in Christ's plan for our happiness. It's a fine effort, and there are some gems of wisdom to be found here. I was especially moved by his take on Romans 14: "When you meet together for worship, welcome those weak in faith. Welcome those with worries and doubts and questions. But don't argue with them. Don't welcome them in as a chance to prove --again-- that you're right about something. . . . God welcomes everyone, insiders and outsiders both. Who are you to judge what people wear or eat? Who are you to judge how people think or vote? Let God sort it out. . . . Judge no more. If you're desperate to use your keen sense of judgment, use it on yourself."
The Age of Faith (The Story of Civilization Book IV), by Will Durant. (Simon and Schuster 1950). Audible. 5 stars out of 5.
James Madison argued, in his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (one of the most important but long forgotten tracts of the American founding), that Christianity had lost its way and soiled its purity when it had been joined with the secular government:
[e]xperience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest lustre; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy.
This fourth volume in the Durants' amazing work of popular history can be read as a 10,000 page treatise in support of Madison's claim.
Covering roughly a millennium, beginning with Constantine's embrace of Christianity and the final decades of the western half of the Roman Empire, and concluding shortly before the beginning of the Renaissance, the book tells us everything we could want to know about the apostasy and silliness which infected the Christian Church, and the society it was built on, during this period. But it is not a diatribe, and the achievements of the Christian faith, and of its most important and enlightened adherents and advocates, in at least preventing the post-Roman world from falling into total anarchy, and in reforming and humanizing the world, are also highlighted. The achievements and the failings of Islam and Judaism during this time period are also covered, respectfully and at length.
Stefan Rudnicki's narration is excellent, and, as with the other books in the series, the most engaging information is not the copious history, but the author's wry asides and wise commentaries on human nature and the inevitable patterns of life and history which emerge from the same. ("Transmission is to civilization what reproduction is to life." "War does one good. It teaches people geography.")
There is an attitude in these books which, if widely emulated, would go a long way towards making the world a better place. That attitude, for lack of a better phrase, is non-polemical. This is scholarship largely devoid of ideological intent, without any particular bones to pick or premises to prosecute. We are told the story, and its effects. The follies of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, are offered up plainly and without sensationalizing. But the strengths of each movement, and its advances and gains, are also plainly acknowledged and credited. In discussing the lives of hypocrites and sinners, due regard is provided to their evils but also to their contributions. In discussing the lives of the saintly and devout, their goodness is acknowledged unashamedly, but without hagiography. We meet scholars whose works advanced our understanding of the world, despite being punctuated by superstition and falsehood, and men and women of faith and valor, who sometimes acted in ways we would find horrifying. There were advances during these so called dark-ages, as well as retreats, in science, art, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy. Much of the wisdom and learning of the classical world was lost, but much of it was also preserved and transmitted, to eventually play its own role in the development of thought and science. Each of the three great Abrahamic religions of the day had their own important roles in that process. And none are short shrifted.
If we could be as non-partisan and temperamentally mild, about the ideological struggles of our own time, as the Durants are about history, the world would be a gentler place. Then again, history doesn't advance that way when it's moving forward.
The best expression of the author's attitude is perhaps that taken from his own words, on scholarship, from pages 343-344 of the hardcover, following his praise of the achievements of Islam: "As men are members of one another, and generations are moments in a family line, so civilizations are units in a larger whole whose name is history; they are stages in the life of man. Civilization is polygenetic--it is the cooperative product of many peoples, ranks, and faiths; and no one who studies its history can be a bigot of race or creed. Therefore the scholar, though he belongs to his country through affectionate kinship, feels himself also a citizen of that Country of the Mind which knows no hatreds and no prejudices, or racial discriminations, or religious animosities; and he accords his grateful homage to any people that has borne the torch and enriched his heritage."
The Alps, a Human History from Hannibal to Heidi and Beyond by Stephen O'Shea (Norton 2017) Hardback. 2.5 stars out of 5. Enjoyable anecdotes I can use when I follow my dream and to start a new profession and become a tourist guide in Switzerland.
Lincoln at Gettysburg by Gary Wills, Trade Paperback. (Simon and Schuster 1992) . 5 Stars out of Five. An absolutely amazing little book, about an absolutely amazing little speech. Especially helpful, in these days of resurgent Southern revanchism, and Calexit, as an introduction to some of the Constitutional and political arguments in favor of the inviolability of the Union, which were key to Lincoln's understanding of his role.
The Once and Future Liberal, After Identity Politics by Mark Lilla, Hardcover (Harper Collins 2017). Two stars out of 5. It would be heartening to see a liberal take on the evils of identity politics, and be willing to say that anti-white racism is still racism, and that anti-male sexism is still sexism. At times, Lilla almost seems to be doing that. But alas, his true concern, like those of the identity-advocates he seemingly chastises, is purely cosmetic. His criticism of identity politics isn't that it is wrong, which it is, but that it doesn't sell well. (Also, somehow, its Reagan's fault.) He provides his own best analogy of his true problem with identity politics: He believes the 92 Democratic Convention should have let a pro-life speaker, whose liberal credentials were otherwise flawless, speak. It was stupid and counterproductive to prevent him from doing so. Not because Lilla is, himself, pro-life, but because he passionately wants pro-choice politicians to win. And pretending to ideological diversity will help achieve that goal. His criticisms of identity politics is ultimately the same: He's fine with the substance of liberal racism, and considers the violations of the 14th Amendment to which white and Asian males are regularly subjected to be among the Democratic party's greatest achievements. He just doesn't think these points of view should be advertised.
Best Remembered Poems, by Martin Gardner (Dover 1992) Trade Paperback. 2 Stars out of 5. A collection of poems which were famous and beloved in their day, many of which the editor doesn't particularly like. Thus, more an interesting historical reference than something worth reading for its own sake.
Metaphors be With You by Dr. Mardy Grothe (Harper 2016) Hardback. I love great quotations, and this book had some excellent ones. 2,500 to be exact: 10 each on 250 different subjects. The organizing theme, allegedly, is that each quotation is either a metaphor, a simile, or an example of personification. But I'm guessing that theme was introduced after the fact, for marketing purposes, and that an earlier edition of this book exists out there somewhere with a different title and subtitle, as every list of ten quotations almost invariably contains at least one, if not two or three, quotations which are not metaphorical or figurative in any but the broadest possible sense (in that all language is etymologically symbolic). Here for example is Goethe on laughter: "There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at." A great quote to be sure. But not really figurative, unless the word betray is a metaphor for reveal. But that's pushing it. And here's another thought on character, from Stendahl: "One can acquire everything in solitude except character." Not sure I agree, but in any event, not really metaphorical. And Thoreau's famous statement on reading: "How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book." What exactly is being compared to what, figuratively, in this statement? Unless the word "era" is only typically allowed to be applied to historical epochs, and not to the seasons of an individual's life (a dubious proposition), there is nothing metaphorical about this statement at all. This trend bothered me enough that finding the quotes which broke the alleged reason for the collection soon became more interesting to me than finding the really good or resonant quotes. Still, a great collection, worth having and using. Or just a good book for toilet reading.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Broadway Books 2011) Trade Paperback. 3 stars out of 5. A fun page-turner, especially for people who, like me, grew up in the 80s. Adheres a little too closely to the plot which is laid out at the beginning, without any unexpected deviations which might have made it a better read. Still, should be a great 2 hour movie. Very much looking forward to it.
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