Book 19: Dust

Dust by Hugh Howey

 

I'm just going to refer to this as a novel even though I know it's a bit more complicated than that.  The concluding volume in Howey's Wool series, Dust starts up where both Wool and Silo left off, focusing on the dual narrative of Silos 1 and 18 with a few appearances from 17.  Juliet's the mayor but coming back has not exactly won her everyone's support.  There is religious unrest, and basically a lot of people are not sure what to expect since Juliet's return has very much stood their beliefs and lives on end.  Despite all this, Juliet is determined to dig to Silo 17 and connect the two spaces.  Donald, meanwhile, is dying and trying to find a way to protect his sister and Silo 18 once he is gone.  Once the siblings are discovered, things get a bit hairy in Silo 1.

 

I think Howey's choices make a lot of sense, even if I don't like all of them.  Instead of embracing Juliet and her revelations, the truth makes people uneasy.  Unfortunately that rings rather true of humanity - some people are angry at new truths, and others hide from them, embracing their old systems even if they are proven wrong.  In fact, Plato talked about this as far back as his Allegory of the Cave.  The person that leaves the cave, sees the light and returns to bring the light to others will be greeted with anger or seen as insane.  As a result, the parts of the narrative I disliked were simply reflections of human nature, and realistic.  Of course, I want the heroes to band together and overcome but unfortunately that's not how things work, and there are still some heartbreaking moments in this novel.

 

I enjoyed this and thought it was a fitting conclusion to the series, though Wool remains the best as far as tension and the characters developed.  There are a few more misunderstandings than I liked between characters here, though once again understandable, especially in relation to communications between Silo 18 and sympathetic supporters in Silo 1.  While I would love to know what happens next, this last book does a good job of wrapping up the big questions without too definitely solving everything.

Book 18: Winter's Tale

Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

 

I bought this book over four years ago based purely on this review.  I didn't actually get around to reading it till last week, when I decided that the movie preview looked intriguing, and that I should read the book before seeing the film.  Having read the book, I definitely still plan on seeing the movie, if only to see how they turned this mess into a coherent, focused story line.

 

That isn't to say the novel is all bad; it's just it kind of meanders off into nothingness by the end.  I also wonder if I may have had higher hopes or more patience for this book than I normally would have due to the movie preview.  For example, after spending the first two hundred pages on one main character, the novel flashes forward into the future and deals with completely different characters and their adventures.  While I wanted to get back to the other character(s), I was more than willing to go with the story and see where it was going - after all, based on the trailer, it was leading to something and was going to come together (see, patience).

 

And other books have done this as well - for example The Passage also moves its narrative forward in time and introduces a whole new cast of characters before finally tying its two story lines together.  As a result, I was willing to be patient.  I also like stories that go off on tangents and move in a leisurely manner if it makes for an enjoyable ride.  Not everything has to have a point - I feel like I've said that exact same thing in another recent review.  However, the character is barely reintroduced after more than three hundred pages of meandering, and even then, he barely seems to be the point of the story anymore.  Basically, stuff happens but it doesn't really end up having much importance or impact.  I will admit the language is descriptive but 700 pages of descriptive language with a bare bones plot is overwhelming, not magical.  I wonder if I would have appreciated this novel more if I was more familiar with New York than just one weekend trip since the previous linked Pajiba review definitely seems to focus on that part of the novel.

 

Now the novel was a bit wordy even from the beginning, and I realize in retrospect that the author was a bit jumpy with the narrative.  However, what works as a narrative device in the beginning of the story becomes very annoying a few hundred pages in.  For example, after introducing a majestic white horse (probably the best character in the whole novel), the story jumps back a bit to explain Peter Lake's background, the man that the horse saved when he was being pursued by the Short Tails.  It turns out Peter Lake used to be a part of that gang, but after making the boss, Pearly Soames, angry, he is their number 1 most wanted man.  This made sense to me.  A bit later, Peter meets Beverly, a young woman dying of tuberculosis, and falls in love with her.  After a chapter where the two of them meet as he is robbing her house, the next chapter picks up at some later point, leaving the reader hanging for half the chapter about the relationship.  As I said, these are things that work for creating tension in the beginning of the novel but I found this same jumpiness and unwillingness to give information to the readers very annoying later in the novel.

 

The novel is definitely not tied to reality and is this weird mix of fantasy/magical realism with other elements, so there is a magical fog that surrounds the city sometimes and disrupts timelines.  After Peter Lake disappears into the fog, the reader knows that he will reappear at some point and isn't actually dead.  It is at this point that the novel introduces the other whimsical characters, who themselves engage in random journeys.  I'm still not sure why we needed the midget that Hardesty met - he literally had nothing to do with the rest of the novel in an already convoluted and packed story.

 

Once Peter finally makes his reappearance in the novel's present, Helprin ignores him for large parts of the narrative, focusing on the rivalry between two newspapers (one of them belonging to Beverly's family), and a bridge.  Given the first two hundred pages (and the movie trailer), I was expecting a love story, but that's really not what this novel was.  I'm still not entirely sure what it was.  The horse was cool, though.  And the first two hundred pages weren't bad.  Even the first four hundred before it became clear that this wasn't really going anywhere.

 

The movie on the other hand has a fair shot of being better than the book since it could tighten the story, cut extraneous pieces and really show the city.  Then again, it is a February release, so who knows.

 

 

 

Book 17: The Second Treatise of Government

The Second Treatise of Government by John Locke

 

I read this as part of my masters class on "Social Contract, Class and Wealth."  While it was shorter than some of our other selections so far, I am not entirely made up about my feelings on Locke.  He has become such an important corner stone of what founded our government that it is hard to see things through the appropriate lens.  Instead of being awed and shocked by his view of things, I had more of a "yep, that's how we do things" reaction.  I know I'm being a bit blase.  Actually, he quoted a philosopher named Hooker quite a bit so I'm surprised we don't hear about the guy that influenced Locke more often.

 

Before this we read Hobbes, and though Leviathan is longer and denser, something about Hobbes just appeals to me more.  Hobbes has a pessimistic view of society, and thinks we need someone strong in control.  Locke has a much more positive view of the people and their ability maintain the peace and do the right thing.  However, it is hard to buy Locke's view of human nature when history tends to be on the side of Hobbes.  If we were as good as Locke thinks, wouldn't we already be doing them the way he thinks we should?  Obviously, someone had no issues grabbing power and oppressing people.

 

There were a few other chapters where I couldn't help but look at it from a modern perspective.  He discusses property and how working the land is what gave individuals ownership originally.  I'm okay with these theories and ideas - however, he then basically says that the tribes in America are basically still in this precultivated state and thus don't really own the land.  First of all, it completely ignores the diversity of the Americas and what they were doing, and shows a view biased in favor of Western ideas.  To me, parts of that chapter read as reasons it would be okay to colonize the Americas - "it's not like the Natives are using the land or anything."

 

Still, I am glad I read it since it's such a cornerstone of American believes and views.  And parts of it were certainly enlightening.  In fact, I probably will scan through it again in the next few weeks of class as I finalize my paper topic, and make sure I didn't ignore anything important.  One could definitely see how important the idea of property was to him, and in some ways he had very progressive views, arguing that a son shouldn't be punished for his father's actions.  Basically, if a man rebelled against his ruler unjustly, Locke didn't deem it fair to seize the man's lands and prevent his children from inheriting them.  Only the man himself should be punished.

Book 16: Paris 1919

Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan

 

As part of my personal goals to read more nonfiction and to read more about World War I, I decided to finally tackle this book which has been catching my eye for months only to be put aside for shiny new fiction.  MacMillan has a new book out that is about the events leading up to World War I so before I committed to that, I wanted to see how I felt about her writing style in this one.

 

Overall, I really liked it, but some of the information is overwhelming.  Now honestly, I don't think there is much she could have done about this because the goals that the Allies set themselves for this Peace Conference were so large that it would have been hard to include everything and not be overwhelmed.  Almost every country that could sent representatives and some of the delegations numbered in the hundreds.  This conference was a big deal, many smaller, oppressed nations taking hope from the stated goals of the conference, thinking that they may finally get recognition and help.  There was no way this could be anything but dense and information packed.  Having said that, I think she did a very good job of breaking down the topics and presenting them in a digestible manner, even if she sometimes had to reference things that wouldn't be addressed until later chapters such as when discussing the creations of borders for various states.  MacMillan chose to break the book down by areas, focusing on one area at at time, such as the Balkans, Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.  As a result, there were quite a few times that I had to remind myself that certain discussion were going on simultaneously but having the book organized by time would have been impossible.  Still, the three leaders that were making the decisions (originally Italy was included as part of the Four) were dealing with so many things at the same time it's hard to imagine they had a grasp on anything.

 

Before diving into the details, MacMillan sets the scene, and introduces the main players and drivers.  Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau were the leaders of the US, UK and France respectively, and they would be the major forces in creating the peace treaties.  Wilson had published his Fourteen Points before the conference so that terms like "self determination" were in everyone's mouths.  As the conference progressed, it turned out that these types of ideas and concepts were much harder to put in practice and define than originally thought.  Of course, Wilson's big project for this conference was the establishment of a League of Nations to prevent future wars, and to get rid of secret diplomacy and treaties that he believed led to the Great War to begin with.  MacMillan argues that Europeans were actually very receptive to the idea of the League even if they were not nearly as idealistic about it.

 

One of the things that MacMillan addresses is the accusation or idea that the Treaty of Versailles led to Hitler's rise and World War II.  Personally, I think she does a very good job of arguing that the terms were not nearly as harsh as is commonly believed.  For example, Germany was asked to pay reparations but at this point in time, this was the normal response to warfare.  For example, when France and Germany had been at war in the 19th century, when Germany (or Prussia) emerged victorious, France paid reparations.  As a result, the idea of reparations wasn't nearly as harsh as one would believe.  Additionally, she demonstrates that the numbers could have been much higher, and the terms were actually rather lenient since the peace makers realized they had to keep them low enough that they could get paid and wouldn't topple the economy.  She argues that one of the main problems is that Germany, or at least the common German, didn't realize just how defeated Germany truly was.  Even though the country was facing starvation and citizens were striking on the streets, only the top leaders knew that Germany was done.  However, since the regular German citizen never saw their country occupied, it was easy to believe that they hadn't actually lost the war in the normal sense, and that the Treaty was thus unfair.

 

As far as the rest of the conference is concerned, and the borders it created, there were definitely things that were done wrong.  For example, certain leaders or representatives were particularly eloquent and won concessions for their countries that may not have been in their best interests or the worlds, and resulted in other countries losing territory.  I think Hungary specifically lost a large amount of its land because its borders were handled by three different committees that were all focused on separate countries.  While it certainly seems that some countries were put together piece meal, thus leading to unrest even today, in the case of the Balkans, those countries were actually asking to be put together (though Croatia saw themselves as equals to Serbia in a type of confederacy while Serbia viewed it as adding territory to their country).  For the most part, I'm not sure what better solutions there would have been.  Certainly, the three allies didn't always take their experts into account, but it is hard to imagine any solution that wouldn't have led to problems down the road, especially with countries or disputed areas with very mixed populations.  Other countries were basically left with defenseless borders and quickly swallowed up by others.

 

The main mistakes were definitely made with regard to Asia and the Middle East as MacMillan demonstrates.  Since countries like the US were unwilling to support the racial equality clause that the Japanese demanded, they compromised on other fronts, allowing Japan to maintain control of Chinese territory.  The Middle East especially was just a mess as countries were created arbitrarily and promises made and broken. 

 

In addition to all the intricacies of the treaties, I learned a few other facts I had not been aware of.  For example, I always thought the Austro-Hungarian Empire was called that because the land of Hungary made up such a large part of the territory, but that it was basically controlled by Austria.  As this book shows, by the beginning of World War I, Hungary was basically an equal or partner to Austria.  Additionally, while all the other new countries that emerged after the collapse of the empire were not seen as culpable for the empire's role in the war, Hungary also had to pay reparations and was treated as one of the antagonists along with Germany and Austria.

 

There is so much more in this book as it goes into quite a bit of detail for all the countries (I thought that France was actually rather fair and reasonable in its desired treatment for Germany, and made lots of concessions to maintain their relationships with the US and England) that I haven't even come close to capturing all the topics.  It's definitely a good place to learn about the aftermath of World War I, and how this affects even the present day.

 

Book 15: The Golden Hour

The Golden Hour by Margaret Wurtele

I stumbled upon this a while back in one of the bookstore's bargain bins but since it concerned a time period I'm usually interested in, I figured I'd give it a shot. It was only $3.99 after all. Given that I hadn't heard anything about it, I wasn't expecting much, and I know that sometimes people have a tendency to set their novels in World War II because it's one of those topics that adds immediate gravitas. This one was set in Italy, an area I haven't read too many war novels on, though A Thread of Grace is absolutely amazing and wonderful and sad. This novel, on the other hand? Well, I am sure that Wurtele is a great person, she seems nice from the novel and all, but I really, really didn't like this book. About half way through I actually thought to myself, "why am I still reading this crap? I should quit. Giovanna's an idiot and I hate her, and this is so unrealistic." Now, I admit I don't finish every book I ever start but usually I don't actually contemplate quitting them. It's more that I decide maybe I should take a break and read something else or alternate between a book I'm struggling with and something else, and then somehow don't make it back to the original book until I just admit that I'm no longer reading it. I actively thought about putting this down and never picking it back up.

The main problem is the narrator and main character, Giovanna. While early in the book, Giovanna tries to convince the reader that she is brave and courageous because of that one time she carried a hawk, at no point do her actions in 1943-45 ever make her seem any of those things. Instead she comes off as spoiled, self-centered, stupid, unrealistic, dumb and flighty. Now some of those things could be okay in a main character, especially since Wurtele uses Giovanna as a character that had no idea of what was truly going on with the Germans, and discovers more about the dark side of the Fascist regimes as the novel progreses. So even though she was annoyingly naive, that could have been okay because the novel shows her growing up. The same could be said about spoiled - it would be okay for her to be spoiled and slightly self-centered if the novel truly charted her becoming aware of the world around her and growing up from there. I believe it attempts to do that, but not very convincingly since all of Giovanna's "war work" seems over exaggerated by her, hence making her sound whiny and spoiled even when she's "helping" everyone. The biggest problem is that this girl is dumb.
 

 

Giovanna is a seventeen year old in Nazi occupied Italy, and around the same time she both starts helping the nuns teach the local children and assisting her brother who is in the resistance. The nuns' school is partially occupied by German soldiers and since there are no young Italian men around, Giovanna starts feeling some attraction for a married German officer. The Soldier's Wife did an interesting and pleasant job of exploring a woman's attraction to the occupiers, though not entirely memorable. This novel did not. Basically, Klaus is hot and Giovanna is horny. But you know, youthful stupidity, I'll let it pass. However, why the hell Giorgio would ask for Giovanna's help in anything is beyond me. She's basically incompetent. I mean, yes, she finds food to help supply the partisans but it basically involves her asking half the characters in the novel, and climbing into vegetable gardens. Why, oh why, Giorgio would you ask an indiscreete teen to help you find food? Not only does she tell half the people she knows what she is doing, but some of the others figure it out because she's just so covert. I just kept wanting to ask her if she knew the meaning of the word "secret."

Anyway, as the description of the novel reveals, later in the novel she will end up helping a Jewish man named Marco that her brother brings to her. Once again, I couldn't get beyond her stupidity. She tells more people than she should that she's helping a Jew, and now she's not only revealing her secrets, but those of other people, such as when she tells her best friend that the nuns are helping her shelter him. Dumbass, you do realize there are such things as collaborators? And that even if they aren't collaborators, they could still be tortured for information if anything ever happens? It is at this point that she whines about how busy she is, what with stealing food from vegetable gardens, and helping at the clinic (she is in charge of the supply closet - she got banned from the school after the nuns discovered her little dalliance and had to find something else to do) and hiding Marco (someone else is hiding him, you're just visiting because you're still a horny teen).

There's also this whole plot about her parents don't understand her and treat her like a child. For example, she is very upset when her father makes a joke about her fainting after she tells him she's going to work at the clinic because he just constantly underestimates her. Guess what she did exactly two hours earlier in the book at the clinic? Fainted at the sight of blood! Given her sheltered upbringing, Giovanna has managed to avoid noticing what's been going on with the Jews but after meeting Marco, she becomes aware. After that, there are about 20 pages of her asking everyone she knows if they knew about what was happening with the Jews - obvious much? This is also when she decides that it is now her mission to help the Jews ...

I will say that the novel picked up in the last 80-100 pages, but that's mostly because Giovanna somehow mellowed out a bit and went from being intolerably annoying to eyerollingly annoying. I think it may have also helped that there were some journal entries from Marco's perspective which actually made me want to yell at him because he was putting down exact names of everyone helping him - I just kept thinking, "don't use names, if you are discovered, you are incriminating other people." So basically, the novel went from annoying to bland for the last 100 pages but not enough to justify this novel or turn it around for me.

In other words, I don't recommend this novel, and even the Italy setting couldn't save it. I didn't have high expectations but apparently even those were aiming too high.

Book 14: The Consolation of Philosophy

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

 

This is one of the first reading assignments in my "Antiquities" class (the first one was actually selections of The Dead Sea Scrolls, but those included less than half of the book).  Honestly, for a somewhat religious text written in the 6th century, I was pleasantly surprised by the readibility and the message behind the book.  Naturally, I didn't agree with everything the author had to say, but the first half especially appealed to me.

 

Boethius, a prominent statesmen in Italy (after the fall of the western part of the Roman Empire), wrote The Consolation of Philosophy while imprisoned for treason after having been one of the most important advisors to the king of Italy.  He declares himself innocent of the charges, and as this piece begins, he is in despair, under arrest.  It is at this time that his old muse, Philosophy, comes to him, to console him and remind him of himself and the actual path to happiness.

 

The piece is broken down into 5 books, with varying chapters per part, and is a mix of prose and poetry.  The first part basically addresses the author's despair at his false imprisonment and the changes of fortune he has experienced.  In book 2, Philosophy chastises Boethius for cursing fortune since as she points out, everything he had before this was the result of fortune.  He cannot curse her for her reversal given that he was more than happy to accept her gifts.  This part as well as the first half of the third book involve Philosophy taking down the things people pursue in hopes of happiness even though they bring only false happiness.  Power brings its own obligations, and people that pursue money find themselves needing more and more to protect what they have.

 

The next half of the text deals more with God and religion, and as a result, the arguments didn't speak to me as much.  The rest of Book 3 argues that true happiness comes only from God, while the fourth book examine the idea of wickedness and why it is that bad things happen to good people and vice versa.  The argument is that the wicked suffer by their wickedness and inability to attain good, but I can't say that argument had me entirely convinced - certainly it may be true, but it's still nice to see some come-uppance.  Also, I would argue that there are people who are evil or wicked and don't know it.  Philosophy also states that wickedness made people less than human.  Finally, the fifth book addresses the idea of free will vs foreknowledge.  The character Boethius has a hard time believing that any actions can be the result of free choice if God already knows everything that will happen and therefore the events must happen.  Personally, this concept doesn't bother me because if I personally don't know the future I will make my choices freely even if someone else has already foreseen them.  Philosophy's final argument for free will is that human perception is different from God's, and that God being eternal, is in all times at once - basically, the future is his present as is the present, so therefore he knows everything because he sees it as it is happening even if it hasn't happened yet.  I know this was written 14 centuries before Slaughterhouse-Five but that concept totally made me think of Tralfamadore.

 

One reason I was pleasantly surprised by this was due to all the references to Greek and Roman philosophy and mythology.  Only knowing beforehand that it was a Christian text, I thought I could easily be bored with this, but given the time it was written, this was when the ancient texts still were very much a part of the thoughts and culture of the time, and hadn't already been lost or avoided as pagan and inappropriate for a Christian audience.  I am always nervous about philosophy, but I actually enjoyed this - it was broken down into small, easily digestible chunks, and the argument was easy to follow.  It's still philosophy so I doubt I'll be pressing this into people's hands, but for anyone interested in expanding their horizons and braving philosophical texts, this is certainly not a bad starting point.

Book 13: The Secret History

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

 

I've heard about this novel quite a few times, and have had it on my "I should get around to that" list for a while but somehow, while I knew the novel existed, my idea of what it was about was completely off.  Maybe it was the title but I think I was expecting something along the lines of secret societies meet National Treasure and that the characters would use old literature and culture to discover some deep conspiracy and secret - but in a very literary and thought provoking way rather than pure popcorn fiction.  I would have rather read that book than the one I read.

 

This wasn't a bad book but it would have been better trimmed by at least one hundred pages.  The novel reveals a key part of the narrative in the first chapter, and from there flashes back to show how it all developed before chronicling the aftermath.  Basically, five students murder a classmate, Bunny, by pushing him off a cliff, and the question is why did they do it and will they get away with it?  Richard is one of the five killers but he is also the newest member of this odd and tight knit group, all of whom fascinate him.

 

The twins, Camilla and Charles, Henry, Francis and Bunny are the five students in Julian's Greek class, majoring in the classics.  All of them are from privileged, well off families, and they are the only ones that Julian, an eccentric professor, has accepted into his classics program.  Richard, though coming from a working to middle class background, is fascinated by this world, and with the right clothes and presentation is able to join this group even if it takes him a while to get accepted.

 

The thing is that none of these characters are likable.  The closest might be Francis and Charles because they seem the least developed.  While the students admire Julian and see him as a friend, he is blind to his students' real situation and his teaching methods encourage them to see themselves as different and better.  After all, he thinks the poor that accept their role and status should be praised.  Given their backgrounds, the students are obviously already used to being treated as better but they certainly didn't need this professor boosting their egos anymore.

 

Richard is just as bad if not worse because he wants so much to belong and is blinded by these people's obvious faults.  He simply shrugs off murder, and keeps emphasizing how great all these people are despite obvious hindsight, writing this narrative a few years after the occurrences.  Though this was originally published in 1992, the time period of the narrative can feel difficult to narrow down, and it is only in the second half that I felt the novel started having cultural references that truly tied it down to a time period - basically, it almost feels like it could have been the '60s or '70s until a few references to presidents, Mel Gibson movies and Sarah Jesse Rafael's talk show.

 

The characters are pretentious, elitist snobs, but more than that they are tedious.  While Richard tries to explain that they are brilliant and special, they mostly come off as self involved.  It's basically five hundred pages of drinking.  The first two hundred pages especially seemed to drag at which point the murder of the first chapter occurs.  While the next three hundred pages also could have been trimmed, at least I could understand how Tartt was trying to show everyone's reactions and the pressure they were feeling.  In fact, it feels very Crime and Punishment, and the characters even make a joke about that - while they may be ironic about the connection, it is certainly appropriate: a man who thinks he's exceptional commits a crime and discovers he's just as average as everyone else, and these characters certainly think they are exceptional and that the rules don't apply to them.  While I can certainly see why Tartt made the choices she did in the novel, I wonder if it would have been more interesting when it was first published.  After all, I've read quite a few novels with unlikable characters but none of them left me quite so blah.  For example, I hated the characters in The Dinner but I would still love to see other people's reactions and talk about it.  Maybe The Secret History raised more discussion in 1992, but at this point, I don't think it really stands out.  This novel didn't really make me want to discuss it.  I couldn't see myself recommending this to anyone because like the characters, the novel is too tedious at times.  The main reason I read this now is because I've been seeing Tartt's new novel, The Goldfinch, everywhere, and having read this, I can safely say that I can avoid The Goldfinch, and not feel like I'm missing something.