Category: Book Reviews

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An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

To be blunt, I am not quite sure I liked this novel.  It took me two checkouts from the library separated by a few weeks to get through the book.  I did get sucked into the narrative at the latter half of the book.  Having said that, this is also a novel that if you can get through it, it sticks in your mind.

The best way I can come up with to describe this book is Theodore Dreiser riffing on Dostoyevsky’s psychological drama in Crime and Punishment with the second half of the book a courtroom drama.

My problem with the book is threefold. Continue reading “An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser”

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Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father by Stephen Fried

I’ve been fascinated by Benjamin Rush ever since as a grade schooler, I realized that there was a signature on the Declaration of Independence with the same last name as mine, Rush.   Rush is not the commonest of last names. Of course, I fantasized that he might be a direct ancestor or other relation. At that time there had not been a lot of genealogy done on my family.  Since then I have discovered that we are related, not closely, but related.  We are 3rd cousins 6 generations removed. We share a common ancestor, Capt. John “Old Trooper” Rush.  What is interesting about John Rush is that he was a captain in Oliver Cromwell’s army.  If you remember your English history, Cromwell briefly established a republic in Great Britain in the 1650s.   Capt. Rush later immigrated to the Pennsylvania colony.

There are several reasons that Benjamin Rush has been assigned to the second tier of founding fathers.  Continue reading “Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father by Stephen Fried”

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The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy

Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” ~ 1st Corinthians 7:1

 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. ~ ~ 1st Corinthians 7:8-9

I sometimes think that I must have been a Russian living in the 1800s before being reincarnated during the Eisenhower administration.  For some reason, Russian literature of that period talks to me.  Tolstoy is one of my favorite authors, and I thoroughly enjoyed this novella of his.

The reviews I read on this book declared that Tolstoy wrote it to advocate abstinence as Continue reading “The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy”

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The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

JohnSteinbeck_TheGrapesOfWrathJust some rambling thoughts about The Grapes of Wrath, which I just recently read for the first time.

My first ramble is why did it take me so long to get around to reading this book?

If you read much you know that certain books stay with you more than others.  For me, such books are Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee,  several of Jack London’s books and  Shelby Foote’s Civil War trilogy to just name a few.  This book will join that list.  It is a powerful novel not easily forgotten. Continue reading “The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck”

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The Little Blue Book by George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling

The Little Blue BookThe main point of this book is that words matter. And the words that we debate with have been chosen by the conservatives to the detriment of progressive causes.

Someone recently posted on Facebook a quote by Robert A. Heinlein that sums up our current political situation nicely:

“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.”

The authors phrased it thusly: Continue reading “The Little Blue Book by George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling”

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Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Lady Chatterly's Lover This book was first self-published by D. H. Lawrence in Florence, Italy in 1928. It was banned from publication in Great Britain until 1960. It was not published in its original form in this country until 1959. It was considered much too pornographic, however it is pornographic the way Playboy is. You have a mass of text, and then there will be a racy passage. I say racy as by today’s standards it is all rather mild. Lawrence spends more time dealing with the emotionally altered state that good sex brings on than a physical description of sex. Most of such passages are relatively mild. Continue reading “Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence”

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Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence

women_in_loveThis book could have been very easily retitled Men in Love, but that would have gotten Lawrence more grief than he was already experiencing. It is a continuation of The Rainbow focusing on two of the Brangwen sisters Ursula and Gudrun. Ursula, of course, was the focus of the later part of the first book. This is a novel more driven by character than plot. It is also a book in which Lawrence spends a good deal of time expressing his views on class, materialism, industrialism, marriage, love and not so obliquely, homosexuality. Continue reading “Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence”

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The God Virus by Darrel W. Ray

God virusWhen folks ask me about my religion I have a tendency to tell them that I was raised Southern Baptist, but I am much better now. If I am in an even more playful mood I might tell them I am a Born Again Agnostic. If I am really feeling like a stinker I tell them I belong to the Church of Later Day Hedonist, and we meet every Friday down at Joe’s Bar and Grill, please join us for evening services.   Depending on the person it is either a conversational stopper or elicits a laugh and may lead to more conversation. If I am being a bit more serious I describe myself as agnostic. I choose this appellation mainly because militant atheists bother me as much as evangelic Christians or jihadists Muslims. I would like to think that what I believe is most likely true, but ultimately the answer to the god question is unknowable. I have a B.S., but no matter how much science you throw at it, the mere existence of the universe blows my mind.

It is not original with me, but I have been saying for years that religion was a form of mass psychosis. Psychosis being defined as a mental illness whereby the sufferer loses touch with reality.

Along came Dawkins, Blackmore and others Continue reading “The God Virus by Darrel W. Ray”

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The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence

the_rainbow_1504This is a book of poetry masquerading as prose. It is a book short on dialogue and long on imagery, both external and of the characters’ internal emotion-scape. The book came out in 1915 and was banned shortly thereafter in Britain for 11 years.

The novel covers three women from the same family over a period of 65 years starting in 1840 and ending in 1905. This is roughly the Victorian era. This is a period of great change just after the Industrial Revolution in which England was changing from a mostly rural based culture to an urban based society. Along with technological advances and migrating populations, it was a time of changing social mores, including sexuality and of the relationship between men and women. It was Lawrence’s graphic depiction of sexuality (for the times) that resulted in its banning.

It struck me that Lawrence saw the relationship between a man and woman as more of a contest than any sort of synergistic union.  A passage from the middle of the book really brought home this concept to me. Continue reading “The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence”