What did you just read?

Just read Gideon the Ninth. Wonderful book, one of the most fun and original novels I've read in years.

I've been reading a lot of Stephen King lately. I suppose because his books are getting adapted left and right. I just finished "The Stand," and have mixed feelings. I guess this was heady stuff 40 years ago, but it's fairly mundane for the post-apocalyptic genre by today's standards. The only thing that stood out were some fantastic characterizations. If you want to read a brick-sized post-apocalyptic novel with a strong spiritual allegory, read Justin Cronin's "The Passage" instead. It's a much better book.

I also read "Pet Sematary" recently, and it's goddamn creepy book. It strongly implies that the afterlife is a cold dark place, and that the gods that oversee it are capricious and malevolent.

I read Swan Song a couple of years ago. It's not bad, it isn't new and innovative or anything, standard good vs evil story. But in a lot of ways it compares favorably to The Stand.

I'm currently reading Children of Dune. Dune:Messiah was... different? It's a bit of a slog to get through, mostly involving scheming and political maneuvering, but I found it conceptually very strong. I loved the theme of the most powerful man in the galaxy(Paul), having almost no power at all, as a cabal of the Galaxy's mighty plot his downfall. It's a story about the prescient god-emperor, who can see all possible futures, but so trapped by them, that he can't escape his own doom. It's like some grand tragedy. It's not the classic Dune is, but I still liked it a lot.

Been reading a lot less since I got back to the States, but here it is as of January...

Azincourt, Sharpe's Battle, Enemy of God, Excalibur, Sharpe's Sword and Sharpe's Siege by Bernard Cornwell

So I went on a bit of a Bernard Cornwell kick. I have always enjoyed his books, but kind of in a guilty pleasure way. Now I feel like I have sort of outgrown them. They are technically good stories, to be sure, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of fire in them. No great beauty. They don't challenge you as a person. They are the book equivalent of Rambo, but set in the Napoleonic Era.

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

This is my third time finishing this book. The first time was when I was 13 or 14, and it had a great impact on me. I remember being somewhat disappointed in it. I read a lot for action and adventure back then, but I was still impressed with the politics of the book and thought them good ideas.

The second time I read it was when I was 20. Again I was somewhat disappointed, but still considered the politics to be true. Because of this book, I figured it was my duty to go off and join the military. No such luck in that department.

Now at 28 I have a different take on it. The politics are the interesting thing, not the space suits or the bug killing. Though they do provide a neat distraction between the college lectures.

Where once I found the politics sensible, I now see them as one step too far in the wrong direction. Their core is true; citizens have a duty to their country that if they do not exercise, the country becomes a place that isn't worth living in.

But Heinlein assumes two things that I find old fashioned. The first is that your country is always worth your sacrifice. I wonder how he would feel after the consolidation of the military industrial complex and the establishing of a political elite in the USA?

The second is that he seems to believe that math and logic solve all human problems. There is no spirit or traditional wisdom in this book. Such things seemed to have been abandoned in the "Federation of Earth." The troopers make time for the Padre, but Johnny Rico never touches on the subject. He seems to be an avatar of Heinlein, a man who doesn't need to believe in anything larger than himself except his country.

Fine for him, but I think he has just replaced God with the flag. And in 21st century America, I don't think that lesson holds up.

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich

There is an old idea in Academia that there are 'great books' from which we can learn important truths about the world. This idea, I feel, has come under attack in recent years. But if it was still widely accepted, this book might be considered the newest addition to 'the great books.'

Not only is it well written, but it is important. This book serves to dispel the utopian pipe dream that is communism. It also serves as a warning for anyone who would willfully give up more day-by-day control to the government. How could you trust a bureaucratic leviathan after reading about what happened during the Soviet Union?

It also serves as a mirror for America in the 21st century. The Soviet Union tied together Russians, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Tajiks and a dozen different ethnicities. As soon as that empire fell apart, they started killing each other. In this day and age, I hear a lot of people talking about how they are not proud to be American. In this country with so many different ethnicities and religions and political factions, what is tying us all together and stopping us from terrorizing each other? Just as the Soviet Union glued together all those different people, the idea of America glues us all together.

The only downside is the heavy nature of the content. I found it difficult to read more than a single chapter in any one sitting, as the ideas and stories presented within had a profound effect on me. I would find myself thinking about these stories and talking about them with people.

You should read this book. You should read it if you think communism is a good idea, if you think it is a bad idea, if you don't trust the government or if you do. You should read it if you love America, or hate it. It is a great book.

Ukerric said:

Going to stop you there - it was always, always intended as a satire and stuff, and absolutely not as a reflection of Heinlein's own politics. The man was more libertarian and stuff.

That, however, is relatively true of many of the smart authors of the era (or any era). "Let's assume that all humans are perfectly rational beings..."

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Didn't know it was satire. I had read that he wrote the book as a thought experiment of how right wing you could go without being obsessed with racial purity.

As for believing human beings are rational, it does seem to be the trend of mid 20th century writers. One that I don't believe left us with a great treasure house of literature.

Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven

A comet strikes the earth and civilization is destroyed. I liked it quite a bit. It takes a schlocky premise and treats everything very seriously. It's pretty long and takes a while for everything to come together but it's another in a long line of classic science fiction that has beaten my expectations. It's hard to top my surprise over Day of the Triffids being super good but this was solid.

Arbitrary said:

Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven

A comet strikes the earth and civilization is destroyed. I liked it quite a bit. It takes a schlocky premise and treats everything very seriously. It's pretty long and takes a while for everything to come together but it's another in a long line of classic science fiction that has beaten my expectations. It's hard to top my surprise over Day of the Triffids being super good but this was solid.

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Mention of this just reminded me of "The Mote in God's Eye" by Niven/Pournelle.
It's been many many years since I read it, but thanks for reminding me. Time to pick it up again.

The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by C.G. Jung

I am very glad I picked up this book. I feel as though I found some secret information on life. Cheat codes, if you will.

In this book Jung talks about the importance of ritual and symbols in religion, how they inform people about the world. Religion, he believes, is the vehicle of pyschic development. And pyschic development is incredibly important to the Individuation of a person (the process by which you become a Whole Person).

But somewhere along the way we seem to have picked up the belief that we are past religion. We don't need religion anymore. Jung outlines why that might not be so...

He believes (roughly) that inside our minds are two things; the Ego and the Collective Unconscious. In order to become a Whole Person, you have to marry the two things together. For many people this is a difficult thing to do, as the Collective Unconscious is a deep pool of water in which lies all sorts of things that we have forgotten, or would like to forgot. But there are also great riches down there. As with many things in life, the greater the risk the greater the reward.

This is where religion swings back into the picture. Jung makes a point that in olden times, religion was the vehicle that supplied the pyschic journey. It would lead you down into the pool and bring forth things that you had to face. Once you had faced down the monsters of your Unconscious, it would also supply you with role models (the Archetypes) on how to act.

Without the trappings of religion (rituals and symbols), you lose out on being guided through the pyschic process of Individuation. You remain stunted, in one way or another. Towards the beginning of the book, he talks about how non-religious, modern men have a problem remaining in marriages because they don't have a maternal archetype (like the goddesses of ancient days, or Mother Mary) and they expect their wives to be perfect.

A very interesting point; Jung writes that religious symbols and ritual are the bulwarks that keep the Unconscious from dominating our Egos, and turning us into mindless beasts. This is what happens when a Mob develops. People stop being themselves and become a part of a Collective Consciousness.

He also writes that people have religious like beliefs, even if they claim not to be religious. People simply swap out one belief structure for another. But the thing is, in our modern world, a lot of people have abandoned religious beliefs and hold the State up in the position of God. That is the essential cornerstone of Communism. People want the State to be Father and Mother, and right all the wrongs in the world.

Jung was probably the greatest Western shaman on the 20th century, and nothing I write in this review is going to do him justice. It is a book that must be read and studied on your own, a tome of brain-wrecking content. But it is worth it.

Boone: A Biography by Robert Morgan. A history book on the life of the early American frontiersman Daniel Boone, who played an important role in kickstarting American settlement west of the Appalachians, and who had colorful enough life to essentially become the archetype for the 'frontier hero' for fiction authors (Last of the Mohicans probably being the best known example of such fiction nowadays). The author for this one is usually a novelist rather than a historian, and it kinda shows. The guy obviously did his research, but he does have a major tendency to wax poetic, and probably romanticizes some things. Even so, a good read overall, worth picking up if you're interested in the history of the American frontier.

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony.

First and foremost, this is a book on Linguistics and Archaeology. It is not a book on history, and there is no story here.

It would be unfair of me to trash this book, because I went into it thinking it would be a history. And when I read history I love to relate to some great king or warrior. None here, unfortunately, as 80% of the book is descriptions of grave-sites.

The first couple chapters, which cover the etymology of modern languages, is absolutely fascinating. It is a concise and straight-forward evolution of the Indo-European mothertongue into the modern 'daughter' languages today.

I can't speak to the Archaeology, but the tidbits about ancient life were certainly interesting.

Some examples;

Foreigners had to live in special trading enclaves outside the cities they were visiting.

Copper Age Smiths were buried with their tools, and possibly considered sorcerers for their ability to fashion metal.

The Indo-Europeans didn't 'invade' in the fashion of Atilla the Hun. They were more like a Bronze Age mafia that moved into a new region and demanded tribute in return for protection. Their language and rituals, necessary trappings in order to join their tribe, were attractive to locals who had no chance to move up in their own social hierarchies, so they 'converted.'

Lastly, the Aryans were not a race or a tribe. They were a mentality. All you had to do to be an Aryan was to worship certain gods with certain rituals, and you were in the club.

I would recommend it to anyone who is a dedicated student of the Copper or Bronze Age developments in Eurasia.

Twilight of the Idols and Anti-Christ by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Nietzsche is, in my opinion, an immature man filled with hate. Hate for Christianity. Hate for Women. Possibly hate for himself. Nietzsche is a true modern person who values reason over all else. He saw no need for the spirit.

I don't see how he could outright reject Christianity. I think that this dissonance comes from the fact he was a man of the 1800s and I live in the 21st century. The only conclusion I can draw is that he is referring to the organized religion that led to Europe stagnating. I feel like he is only really telling half the story. He only sees the negative side of Christianity. Only sees the negative side of women (possibly because of his upbringing/home life?).

There are little pieces of gold in this book, such as the idea that human beings can 'rise above' being normal and become something else. It is an idea that Jung explored and filled out. Go read Jung.

Nietzsche only looks at the negative side of things, complains about them, and alludes to an abstract concept in order to solve them. He seems like the sort of guy that is so smart he tried to talk to girls about how stupid they are, and then they didn't want anything to do with him so he got angry and blamed Christianity. I bet if this guy had developed a shred of humility, gotten married and had a couple of kids he never would have written this mess of nihilism and hatred.

The best thing to be said about him; I can see the foundations where Jung sprung off into his own work (which is much more mature).

The worst thing; he influenced Foucault and Derrida, who took his fantasies and ran with them to the extreme.

Not recommended. Don't waste your time.