The Courts of the Morning

courts of the morning buchan houghton mifflin 1929The Courts of the Morning by John Buchan, 3/5

This charming novel can, broadly speaking, be included in Buchan’s Richard Hannay series since its prologue is narrated by the eponymous character; however, it mainly features the familiar faces of Archie and Janet Roylance, Sandy Arbuthnot and John Blenkiron.  These few find themselves embroiled in a revolution against a megalomaniac mining tycoon who plans to overthrow democracy around the world from his seat of power in the fictional South American country of Olifa.  Despite enjoying the book greatly, my initial enthusiasm has worn down somewhat as I consider its many faults in retrospect.  Moments of suspense and adventure are countered by sections of very dry, geographical descriptions of war tactics.  Psychological and guerrilla warfare are portrayed with a stubbornly naive romanticism that must be taken lightly or it becomes ridiculous.  Add to this that the plot isn’t the strongest and you have a book that is fun to read but ultimately not very satisfying.

[Why I read it: I think I saw it advertised in the end pages of the last Buchan book I read.  My library didn’t have it, but managed to order in a beautiful first edition from a different library.]

The Pilgrim’s Regress

pilgrim's regress c s lewis william b eerdmans 2000The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism by C.S. Lewis, 4/5

Motivated by a mysterious Desire, John leaves behind the lifeless religion of his hometown, Puritania, and explores both the stern, unrelenting wastes of the cerebral North and the swamps of untrammeled self-gratification in the animal South.  This journey from “‘popular realism’ to Philosophical Idealism; from Idealism to Pantheism; from Pantheism to Theism; and from Theism to Christianity” will be recognizable to those familiar with C.S. Lewis’s more biographical works (200).  Admittedly obscure, this tale is similar to George MacDonald’s Phantastes in that its value may be more in the recognition than the revelation–I suspect that if I reread it every 10 years or so, my appreciation of the truths it tells will grow in proportion with my own life-experience.

[Why I read it: a fortunate thrift store find!]

Verbal Judo

verbal judo thompson quill 1993Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion by George J. Thompson, Ph.D., and Jerry B. Jenkins, 4/5

This book contains some helpful, commonsense advice about communicating that I think would be especially useful for parents and other people in leadership roles.  Of course, the author is a bit full of it and there are endless acronyms and 5-steps to this and 9-stages of that, but the big emphasis is on the concept of empathy and its related technique–paraphrasing.  There is also a helpful list of “Eleven Things Never to Say to Anyone (And How to Respond If Some Idiot Says Them to You),” which includes my personal favourites: “Come here!” (usually shouted threateningly) and “Calm down!” (“BUT I AM CALM!!!”).

[Why I read it: Came across it while sorting through some of my Dad’s books.]

 

Fermat’s Last Theorem

fermats last theorem aczel four walls eight windows 1996Fermat’s Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem by Amir D. Aczel, 2/5

In around 1637, Fermat hinted that he had “discovered a truly marvelous proof” that an + bn = cn cannot be true for n>2.  Proving this deceptively simple theory required the contributions of dozens of mathematicians over a span of some 350 years.  Unfortunately, while biographical aspects of the story are competently told, the author is unable or unwilling to explain important mathematical concepts in layman’s terms.  If the following paragraph makes sense to you, then you probably fit the target audience of this little book:

Here, a periodic function could be conceived as having a periodicity both along the real axis and along the imaginary axis.  Poincaré went even further and posited the existence of functions with a wider array of symmetries.  These were functions that remained unchanged when the complex variable z was changed according to f(z)——>f(az+b/cz+d).  Here the elements a, b, c, d, arranged as a matrix, formed an algebraic group.  This means that there are infinitely many possible variations.  They all commute with each other and the function f is invariant under this group of transformations.  Poincaré called such weird functions automorphic forms (82).

If, like me, you were completely nonplussed by that description, then the only thing of value you will likely get from this book is a deeper understanding of the fact that concise ≠ comprehensible.

[Why I read it: I came across it while sorting through some of my Dad’s books.]

American Shaolin

american shaolin polly gotham books 2007American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China by Matthew Polly, 3/5

This memoir of an American college dropout who transforms from bullied to badass by studying kung fu with Shaolin monks in China is a fun read, if a little bit less interesting, less believable and dirtier than the author’s later book Tapped Out.

[Why I read it: I enjoyed the author’s other book a lot.]

Better Than Before

better than before rubin crown publishing 2015Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin, 3/5

They say that opposites attract, in which case I suspect that I may be very similar to the author, who I found to be thoroughly grating.  Perhaps it’s her approach to the topic, which is somehow both overly analytical and overly anecdotal, or perhaps it’s because studying how to make habits seems pointless to me (surely the hard part is deciding what habits to have, not how to keep them up?).  I knew I was in trouble when Rubin’s first attempt (of many) to organize her readers into overly-tidy categories failed to resonate with me–am I an Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel?  Does it even matter?  At any rate, I felt so little interest in this book that I had a difficult time finishing it and remember practically nothing about it now.  It has joined the growing ranks of faceless self-help books that have made the New York Times Best Seller list but not an impression on me.

[Why I read it: my friend Joy recommended it to me.]

Man’s Search for Meaning

mans search for meaning frankl pocket books 1985Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, 5/5

When a psychiatrist who endured the German concentration camps of WWII has something to say about happiness and the meaning of life, you can bet it’s something worth paying attention to.  Frankl’s thoughts on the bigger questions in life are woven into the first part of this short book–an account of the author’s experiences and observations in Auschwitz and other concentration camps.  An introduction to the foundations of logotherapy (the author’s approach to psychotherapy) comprise the second part of the book, in which Frankl’s ideas really come into focus.

Frankl’s refreshing premise is that “man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life” (121) and that “A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease” (125).  The author’s theory of the meaning of life encompasses the complexities of human existence with startling simplicity:

As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed.  Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.  In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible (131).

I have seldom been moved as this book moved me, right from the preface, which contains this bit of wisdom that alone would make the book worth reading:

Don’t aim at success–the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.  For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.  Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.  I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge.  Then you will live to see that in the long run–in the long run, I say!–success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it (17).

[Why I read it: it was mentioned in Your Money or Your Life and the title sounded interesting.]

Tapped Out

tapped out polly gotham books 2011Tapped Out: Rear Naked Chokes, the Octagon, and the Last Emperor: An Odyssey in Mixed Martial Arts by Matthew Polly, 5/5

This entertaining account of a middle-aged writer’s transformation from overweight fixer-upper with a distant background in kung fu to competent mixed martial artist is impossible to put down–I started it at 2am last night, meaning to read just a little before falling asleep, and the next thing I knew it was 2.5 hours later and I was on the last page.  Polly is a good writer with a great sense of humour and seems to know how to embellish a story without exaggerating it all out of proportion.  Famous figures in MMA appear throughout and I’ll admit to a few fan-girl squeals along the way.  Probably the fact that I’ve been doing a lot of kickboxing, grappling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu this year made the book even more enjoyable–a lot of Polly’s experiences as a beginner were hilariously relatable.  I enjoyed the book so much that I’ve already ordered Polly’s American Shaolin from the library.

[Why I read it: I came across it while looking for BJJ books in the library database.]

Niccolò Rising

niccolo rising dunnett vintage books 1999Niccolò Rising by Dorothy Dunnett, 2/5

This dense historical fiction starts with a barrage of names and characters reminiscent of the panic-inducing first chapter of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.  Unfortunately, the barrage doesn’t seem to let up and I spent most of the book feeling both unable and unwilling to follow all the subtle intrigues and sift through previous pages for hints about who that one guy is and what on earth his cryptic comments mean.  At first, I blamed myself for reading too quickly or not being smart enough to understand the intricacies of the story.  Then, I started to suspect that the author was responsible for the frustrating obscurity with which the book tangled along and purposefully used inscrutable characters to half-hint at important aspects of the plot through scenes and conversations that would only make sense in retrospect (if then).

In addition, I didn’t feel that the author did a very good job of integrating the story with its historical setting in 15th-century Bruges.  The characters didn’t feel real, the dialogues all felt very modern and there were those dreaded episodes where “history” happens, G. A. Henty style–the story is paused so that a dry list of historical events can take place, consisting of stuff like Duke So and So having a battle with ex-King What’s His Name over some historical province that I can’t be bothered to take out an atlas to locate.  For a story that hinges on character development (this is only the first of eight books in the series about Niccolò, a bastard dyer’s apprentice who makes his way to the top of the food chain), there wasn’t much development.  Yes, some of the characters were complicated, but mostly because they acted unpredictably and inconsistently.  Dunnett seems to think that it’s deep to make a character act out of character, but if the action is not a result of believable motives and growth, then the effect is off-putting, not illuminating.  I didn’t really like or understand many of the characters in the book and certainly can’t face reading the second book in the series.

Now, I am no fan of historical fiction in general, so I can understand that Dunnett has many loyal admirers and I can even imagine a reader who might adore this book: someone with a long attention span, lots of free time and an unhealthy interest in the prosaic details of historical economics and politics (or at least, a willingness to be bribed into tolerance of these details by the promise of a sex scene or two).

[Why I read it: it was passed on to me in defeat by Tom from choir (whose reference in conversation to Tom Jones happily inspired me to read that classic), who in turn received it from fellow choir member Paula.]

Back Home

back home mauldin bantam 1948Back Home by Bill Mauldin, 2/5

Tedious political ramblings accompany this collection of aged cartoons by celebrated WWII cartoonist Bill Mauldin, who obviously had a rough transition back to a civilian career after the war.  I’ve always been put off by political cartoons in general because they tend to over-simplify complicated issues, mindlessly ridicule opposing viewpoints and, crucially, are usually not even funny.  The cartoons in this book are no exception and, I think, would appeal to few readers besides fans of Mauldin and those who are interested in an inside view of one person’s perspective of the political climate in post-WWII United States.

[Why I read it: I recognized Mauldin’s name and liked what I had previously seen of his army cartoons.]