Books Read: 2011

[BoringSupreez]

I finished reading A Clockwork Orange yesterday. I'd heard it was supposed to be great for so long, I decided to try it. It was pretty good.

[brunoafh]

I finished reading A Clockwork Orange yesterday. I'd heard it was supposed to be great for so long, I decided to try it. It was pretty good.

Definitely a great one. Check out Burgess' other novels sometime if you liked it, they're all quite good.

Also, if you haven't already, you must watch Stanley Kubrick's film adaption.

[Limewater]

I finished reading A Clockwork Orange yesterday. I'd heard it was supposed to be great for so long, I decided to try it. It was pretty good.

Did you read the 20 Chapter version (American) or the 21 Chapter version (European and updated American)?

[BoringSupreez]

I finished reading A Clockwork Orange yesterday. I'd heard it was supposed to be great for so long, I decided to try it. It was pretty good.

Did you read the 20 Chapter version (American) or the 21 Chapter version (European and updated American)?

I read the 20 chapter version. Is the 21 chapter version better?

[Limewater]

I read the 20 chapter version. Is the 21 chapter version better?

It's the same, just with one more chapter on the end. Honestly, I thought the last chapter was a bit awkward and corny. I like it better ending with chapter 20. The movie was based on the American version of the novel.

[DobbyDobs123]

So I guess I'll get in on this thread especially since this year has been more of a reading year than a gaming one so far (I tend to alternate between the two hobbies.)

Books finished in 2011 so far...
1. Persuasion Jane Austen
2. Hart's Hope Orson Scott Card
3. Hard Times Charles Dickens
4. The Stranger Albert Camus
5. Brave New World Aldous Huxley
6. Running Dry Jonathan Waterman
7. Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
8. The Sunflower Simon Wiesenthal
9. A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
10. The Great Divorce C. S. Lewis
11. A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh
12. Ivanov Anton Chekhov
13. Light Boxes Shane Jones
14. The Sea Gull Anton Chekhov
15. Never Let Me Go Kazou Ishiguro
16. Uncle Vanya Anton Chekhov
17. The Cherry Orchard Anton Chekhov
18. The House of Tomorrow Peter Bognanni
19. Prince Caspian C. S. Lewis
20. The Body Artist Don Delillo

So for the sake of time I'll only hit the highlights of what I've read. The Stranger, A Clockwork Orange, and A Brave New World were probably the top three books I read this year. I have to admit, though, it took a long time to get through A Clockwork Orange. I read the book on and off for about a year before I finished it but I feel like that prolonged reading time made me enjoy and understand the book more than I would have if I had read through it in a weekend. Brave New World on the other hand really captured me. The portrayal of society in this book, especially taken in the context of the era this was written in, I found absolutely fascinating.

Light Boxes was another great one. I read about it in a magazine and egged on by an enthusiastic Barnes and Noble employee I decided to go for it. It's an odd little allegory for seasonal affective disorder and though it doesn't have a particularly strong narrative, the prose is absolutely beautiful.

Never Let Me Go was a bit of a disappointment. I had seen the trailer for the movie and decided to read the book before I saw the movie but now that I'm done with the book I have no desire to see the movie. It's one thing to have a sad ending but this book just crossed the line into depressing territory. This, combined with the frustrating ways characters handled the situation, makes me regret the time I spent reading it.

And just to touch on The Body Artist since I finished it only few hours ago, I have to say I liked it. Wait no I didn't... or maybe I did. All I know is this is one of the most confusing and complex books I've ever read. Though it's incredibly short and simply written absolutely nothing is straight forward. All in all it was an interesting read and maybe I'll decide whether or not I liked it once I have more time to think about it.

[Ack]

B is for Bad Poetry, by Pamela August Russell
The 13 Crimes of Science Fiction, Edited by Isaac Asimov
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, by Stephen King
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
Kull, Exile of Atlantis, by Robert E. Howard
The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty
The Great Train Robbery, by Michael Crichton
Von Ryan's Express, by David Westheimer
Sphere, by Michael Crichton
The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
Hondo, by Louis L'Amour
The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli
We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam, by Lt. Gen. Hal Moore (Ret.)
Mao Tse-Tung and China, by C.P. FitzGerald

TOTAL: 14

Whenever I read a biography, one of the first things I contemplate is whether the writer is sympathetic to the subject. C.P. FitzGerald's biography of Mao paints a very sympathetic portrait to the father of Communist China, one that focuses considerably more on his triumphs and though it acknowledges Mao's failures, it never truly gets into them, nor does FitzGerald ever really focus on his cult of personality and how it developed during Mao's lifetime. Some of this could be taking into account FitzGerald's own views on China, a nation he obviously dearly loved after having spent several years there before and after WWII while working for the British government. Some of it could also be the timeframe the book was written in, merely a few short months after Mao's death.

Because of its close focus on Mao, the book also pays considerable attention on the policies of China during the 20th century, giving a general idea of how the Communists rose to power and managed to overcome the forces of Chiang Kai-shek, of its dealings with the United States and internal issues while the US was involved in Vietnam, and perhaps most importantly, its political struggles with the Soviet Union. The Communists were generally painted as a monolith to the Americans, a large red empire bent on subjugating the world to its will via violent revolutions which deprived the workers of their rights to succeed. The truth of the matter is that this monolith was crumbling almost from the beginning, and FitzGerald points out the causes easily, down to Mao's difference in the interpretation of Karl Marx's writings.

The book is unfortunately lacking in information the closer it comes to the ending, as FitzGerald notes more than once that the Communist Chinese government is considerably less than forthcoming when it comes to information about its internal goings on. While the plot and death of Lin Piao receives an entire chapter, much information had yet not been released on how far he had at times split with Mao.

Still, I liked the book. It gives a close detail of Mao that is excellent for those of us unfamiliar with the man beyond what little we learned about in school and serves as a perfect springboard for more modern Chinese history.

[brunoafh]

I finished reading A Clockwork Orange yesterday. I'd heard it was supposed to be great for so long, I decided to try it. It was pretty good.

Did you read the 20 Chapter version (American) or the 21 Chapter version (European and updated American)?

I've read the both, but actually kind of prefer the "cut" version.

[saturnfan]

1. Disquisition of Government - John C. Calhoun
2. Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
3. Breaking the Backcountry: Seven Year's War in Virgina and Pennsylvania, 1754-1765 -Matthew C. Ward
4. Christianity in Latin America: A History - Ondina and Justo Gonzalez
5. The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America - Walter R. Borneman
6. Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570
7. John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union - John Niven
8. Hall of Mirrors - Laura A. Lewis
9. Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ - Carolyn Dean (half read)
10. Texas Revolution - William C. Binkley
11. Wild Yankees - Paul B. Moyer
12. Fries's Rebellion: The Enduring Struggle for the American Revolution - Paul Douglas Newman
13. Taming Democracy - Terry Bouton
14. Dimity Convictions - Barbara Welter
15. The Faces of the Gods - Leslie G. Desmangles
16. The Presidency of James K. Polk - Paul H. Bergeron
17. Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement - Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page (new)

This is a rare book that is bound to cause some controversy in the academic community. Printed by the University of Missouri, Magness and Page, through painstaking research have uncovered new evidence that definitively proves that Lincoln was actively pursuing colonization projects after the issuing of the emancipation proclamation. One of which was highly developed (British Honduras), and two others which are only know to have been in their infancy stage (Suriname and Guiana).

It is a well documented fact that Lincoln pursued colonization in his first two years. $600,000 had been set aside to fund such projects, Lincoln made speeches about it, he encouraged prominent black men to get on board with colonization and even convinced some to go to Île à Vache (which ended up in disaster). But after Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation, all colonization speech abruptly ended.

To explain this, historians have agreed on two arguments concerning Lincoln's views on race and colonization. The "lullaby thesis" and the "change of heart thesis." The lullaby thesis primarily argues that Lincoln was a supporter of colonization only as a means to trick slave states into adopting emancipation and then never seriously go through with colonization, so in other words to "lull" them. This of course ignores the fact that Lincoln was an active advocate of the America Colonization Society for most of his adult life, but some very distinguished historians subscribe to this.

The other explanation is that Lincoln had a sudden change of heart. The Île à Vache colony failed, the Republican party was mostly against colonization, Lincoln had trouble convincing free blacks to resettle and he saw that blacks could make good soldiers.

Therefor this book essentially argues against those two points. I don't want to write about every fact of the book, but in light of the new discoveries that Magness and Page made, it is much more plausible that Lincoln was still struggling with his beliefs on race and the future of blacks. Since the war was fought to reunite the country and not over black civil rights, Lincoln wrestled with how to repair the nation after the war. And if colonization could help that goal, he was a supporter of it. The book is in no way a screed or a condemnation about Lincoln, but it is a more accurate reflection on how he intellectualized race, one that is not as pretty or progressive as the Lincoln we learn about in school.

[BoringSupreez]

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