worth

Beloved

Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 22:40 on 18 January 2018, kitt created this:

I picked up the book from the library after reading the Book Riot article , "Why Do You Always Assign Books with Ghost Babies?". I had originally placed the short story books on hold, and checked out Beloved, but pushed the short stories out to "maybe someday" and started in on Beloved.

This is the first Toni Morrison book I have read.

It was a punch in the gut.

It was a punch in the gut in ways that I wasn't expecting. The dominant theme of slavery was the expected punch in the gut. Except my expectations weren't strong enough.

People can be horrible to each other, outright physically and more subtly mentally and emotionally. It is easy in the day-to-day flow of life not to understand the scale of these horrors, both culturally but also individually. That I understood the why of Sethe's actions after her 28th day of freedom was another punch, her story being fiction or not.

With most books, I like to highlight the quotes that are meaningful to me. I quickly realized that I might have to quote 40% of the book if I did it with this one. Which, without the story, seemed... wrong. So, I didn't except for a few that seemed good advice to me in my current state of anxiety.

The book is, of course worth reading. It won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It is an incredible book. It is a sad book. It is a punch in the gut book (and if it doesn't punch you in the gut, you're an asshat). I don't recommend reading it when depressed, however. Or when suffering a recent loss. Read it when you're balanced, or surrounded by classmates, or loved ones who will discuss the book with you. Or maybe watch the movie. I'll add it to my movies-to-watch list now.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 11:41 on 9 January 2018

This book wasn't originally on my loose, more-than-a-little-disorganized-not-really-a-true-list, to-read list. I have a number of books that I'm actively looking forward to reading, and while I lurve me a Heinlein, I'm more likely to read a new book these days than one I've already read.

That said, after Rob read Artemis, he started in on The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and suggested I read the Heinlein lunar revolution book before reading Artemis, there being some similarities (I haven't read his review of Artemis yet). Easy enough to do. So I did.

And remembered why I love Heinlein so much. Yes, he has opinions I find offensive. Yes, he has ideas about humans that fundamentally could absolutely never work. But, yes, he has a way with words, a way that draws you in and makes you wish that people were more than our natures, that we could be his idealized version of ourselves.

I love the idea of people being rational. We are not.

I love the idea of a small government that respects the rights of its people. Its people are fragile, irrational beings, capable of incredible cruelty to each other. One cannot respect all the rights of a person when said person cannot respect the rights of another; cannot be rational when irrational acts creates a "might makes right" belief; cannot be fair when a victim cannot speak up or out for fear of retaliation, banishment, exile, or death.

His ideas are lovely on paper, and impossible in life.

Beartown

Book Notes kitt decided around 11:30 on 1 January 2018 to publish this:

When I started reading this book, I became very excited at its potential to teach me about the passions for hockey that The Art of Fielding taught me about baseball. The beginning of the book was about the passion for the sport, how it can overwhelm you, how great players are obsessive and can never really leave. The book whispers about strength and weakness of the athletes, about coaches and how their decisions can make or break a player, about how a team is more than the sum of its players.

While the book is heavy-handedly, overwhelmingly full of quotable parts, beautiful commentaries about human nature and becoming a better person, I was all-in, enthusiastically looking forward to recommending this book to everyone.

And then the act of violence that is the narrative conflict of the book happens.

Suddenly, the book becomes difficult to read. I didn't read it more slowly, I did read it less enthusiastically. And that's fine. The book isn't REALLY about hockey, it is about human nature. It is about who we believe, about being a better person, about becoming more than we were by our actions.

It's a good book, worth reading.

“Never trust people who don’t have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”
Page 3

He was the one who saw the makings of a brilliant coach when everyone else saw a failed player.
Page 33

There are two things that are particularly good at reminding us how old we are: children and sports.
Page 37

The Light Between Oceans

Book Notes Posted by kitt at 11:26 on 28 December 2017

I commented to Mom not long ago that I read too many happy ending books. Said happy ending books do not prepare one for real life. Real life rarely has happy endings. Sure, sometimes things work out and work out very well, but bad things happen to good people, and the universe is truly random. Bad things happen, through no fault of anyone sometimes, through active hostility and assholery other times.

Mom responded by suggesting this book. "This one doesn't have a happy ending," she said. She was correct. This book doesn't have a happy ending. It does, however, have the right ending.

If you want the short version, I'm told there is a movie. I haven't seen it.

This book reminded me of Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), which describes the real-world phenomenom of good people doing horribly wrong things, and how they rationalize the wrong to themselves. They do it one small decision at a time. No decision seems bad, each is close to the previous decision, but in total a very wrong action occurs.

This is pretty much what happens in this book. And then it all comes crumbling down.

Couple all of this with a woman's desire for motherhood, and yeah, you don't get a happy ending.

I started and finished this book in less than a day. I read this one so fast from start to finish, I didn't have time to set up an in-progress page. I'll admit to being sick, and sitting for hours to read it instead of sleeping, but it was still an engaging read. The writing is really close to being great, but tried too hard and is "only" good. The book itself is worth reading.

American War

Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 18:30 on 21 December 2017, kitt created this:

In the Susan Slack, Kristin asked for dystopian book recommendations. Rob immediately responded, "American War." He responded emphatically, "American War." I added it to my library hold list, not expecting it to drop into my borrowed list until next year. Well, it dropped, and I read it, and wow. This book is good.

The book tells the tale of Serat growing up through the end of the second American Civil War. The war triggered on the ban of gasoline and oil, with the South saying, "Nope." We see, as in most dystopian novels, how people can be awful to each other. What makes this book particularly difficult to read is that we can see our current culture, political environment, and temperament, what we have right now, become this world. We are in the declining years of the American Empire. Other empires will rise after its fail. This book gives the tale of a fictional and completely plausible version.

This book is worth reading, even if you don't really like dystopian fictions. Be in a place where death is bearable, though, it's a rough read.

"Bury me in the same grave because I can’t go on alone. Life’s not worth living alone."
Location 499

This was in the days before — before Julia Templestowe became the rebel South’s first martyr, its first killer, the patron saint of its war.

It is often forgotten: There’s always a before.
Location 579

If you lived in the South during that war, maybe you were never forced from your home at gunpoint, but you knew someone who was. Maybe you didn’t lose a loved one when the Birds came and rained down death with no rhyme or reason, but you knew someone who had.

Countdown to Zero Day

Book Notes Instead of being asleep at 19:29 on 22 October 2017, kitt created this:

Whoa. Another non-fiction book. It's like my goal to finish all my started books is demonstrating I'm not a big fan of non-fiction books, post-school.

Or something.

This book describes the exposure and investigation of the Stuxnet computer virus. Because the book is describing the virus, and its subsequent children, parents, and cousins, it has to give some background of the world as it existed when the virus was released. This particular form of story-telling, the form of chronological progression, makes the first part of this book slooooooooooooow. Rob warned me when he handed me the book, told me to keep going, it'll get better. The fact that I started this book in December of 2015, and am only now finishing it, testifies somewhat to how slow I found the beginning of the book.

The middle of the book, however, and the end, those went much faster. Around chapter eight or so, the story line picks up and becomes interesting and engaging.

If you have a good library and interest in this book, I recommend starting out with the audiobook version, to get through the first part, then switch to reading. The whole story is politically and technically fascinating.

That there are people who believe in making the computing world safe for the rest of us, despite some of the bad guys being on our own team, helps me sleep better at night. Not well, but better. That the world described in the book still exists and that we have Cheetoh instead of Obama is a terrifying prospect.

Pages