Wool by Hugh Howey

This is the first in a series.  The protagonist, Holston, a sheriff in an underground world, is about to kill himself.  He doesn't think he's killing himself, but society sure does.  Nobody can go above ground because of the toxic air, but condemned criminals go up as their death sentence and must clean the device that monitors the outside world before they die.  Holston's wife three years ago begged to be let out because she said that she had discovered a secret, and Holston trusts that she found something worth him following her.

I loved Wool from the start to the finish.  It seemed to be going one way through the whole book, but the last few sentences changed everything.  My only question is exactly what the wife discovered that made her want out so badly.  Read it and you'll see why that's a valid concern.

Skellig by David Almond

Michael has just moved to a new house with a garage full of junk.  On his new street is a home-schooled girl named Mina who knows much more than he does.  In his garage is a creature called Skellig, who asks for Chinese food and painkillers, and might just have wings.  Meanwhile, Michael's baby sister is sick.

It's nowhere near as good as Kit's Wilderness by the same author, but it's still a decent book.  Skellig seems too short, as if it could easily encompass twice as many pages.  The plot has a bit of a rushed feeling, especially near the end.

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

Shuya, star of the baseball team, is part of a middle school class that gets chosen for the Program.  In the Program, they are all pitted against each other on a small island in a fight to the death.  Shuya almost instantly teams up with Shogo, who seems to know an awful lot about everything, and the injured Noriko. 

Every single death is shown.  There are dozens of students, and I don't think it would be a spoiler to say that due to the nature of the Program, almost all of them die.  You get to read about each one, and except for a couple of them at the very beginning, each one becomes a well-developed character.

If you have enough spare time to read through 600 pages, Battle Royale is an excellent choice.  There are moments to make you laugh, but they are few and far between.  There are moments to make you cry.  These are a bit more common, but not so much as you would think.  Most of the moments, however, are there to make you marvel at the incredible depth of this incredible book.

Lunch-Box Dream by Tony Abbott

Bobby, who has anger issues and is obsessed, and I mean crazy obsessed, with death, is on a family trip.  He has to head south to drop off his grandmother and is stuck the entire time with his brother, Ricky, who is crazy about the Civil War.  Meanwhile, Jacob is going off to live with a different family for a while, but he's desperate to return home to his older sister.   The book is set in the South in 1959, with the Jim Crow laws everywhere.  Bobby's family is white, and Jacob's family is black.

I absolutely loved the part where Bobby described what it must have been like for the people so long ago to all wait for the train that carried Lincoln's body.  For that image alone, Lunch-Box Dream should belong with some of the classics of literature.

I wasn't expecting much from this book because I had read Firegirl, by the same author, and found that it followed a standard literary formula.  Lunch-Box Dream was much better.  I will have Bobby's imagined image of the people standing at the tracks at night waiting in me forever.

A Country Doctor: Short Prose for my Father by Franz Kafka

 A Country Doctor is a little-known collection of short stories by the incredible Kafka.  Each word compels you to read the next.  These short stories are the book form of an Escher painting.

Unlike Kafka's other story collections, I could not find an interpretation for what all of the stories meant on the internet.  I'm just not smart enough to figure it out for more than a couple of them, and if you know the meaning behind the one about jackals and Arabs, please comment.

Stand by Alex McFarland

Stand is about several of the core truths that define the Christian faith.  The author attempts very badly to assure people of the facts and reasoning behind these core truths.  He also mentions all of the debates with atheists that he's had.  These atheists have the incredible quality of being even worse at arguing theology than he is.

Stand makes being a Christian look bad.  I'd be surprised if nobody converted to atheism after reading it.  Alex McFarland talks many times in the book about all of the atheists that he has debated with, and each one of them probably needs to be checked in to the nearest mental hospital after going for his false arguments and logical fallacies.  A couple of his "proofs" for why the Bible is true could also be used to prove that Homer's Odyssey is true!  Worse yet is that he indicates that he has actually read authors such as C. S. Lewis who present decent, logical arguments.  Alex McFarlane basically takes a bunch of facts he's researched and personal experiences of his and puts them together in ways that MAKE NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.

If you are an atheist who likes to laugh at Christians, get a Chick Tract.  This book is filled with too much other stuff for that.  If you are a Christian looking for the core truths of Christianity, avoid Stand like the plague if you don't want to cringe at Alex McFarland's stupidity every couple of pages.  If, however, you are looking for some good toilet paper, kindling material, or paper to line the bottom of your bird cage, and you want to pay a fair amount of money for it, you might just be in luck with Stand.

Quidditch Through the Ages by J. K. Rowling

It's a comprehensive guide to everything about Quidditch.  This is the other book written by J. K. Rowling to go along with the Harry Potter books.  Most of the book is about the history and origins of the game.  For example, Quidditch got its name because it originated in a place called Queerditch, and the golden snitch used to be a bird called the snidget.

On the back of the book, it says that some Quidditch fans look in the book every day.  The book is a little over fifty pages.  It seems like within a couple of months, these fans would be able to recite the entire thing word for word.

When I bought this one and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, I thought that the latter would be far more interesting, but Quidditch Through the Ages was fascinating.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J. K. Rowling

This and another book, Quidditch Through the Ages, are little-known (relative to the main series, of course) companion books to the Harry Potter universe.  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a bestiary that describes in detail all of the beasts mentioned, and some of the ones not mentioned, in the Harry Potter universe.  This is also apparently a reproduction of Harry's own textbook, so it has graffiti in it from both Harry and Ron.  There is a forward by Albus Dumbledore as well.

One of the interesting things in the book is that the Acromantula, a giant spider, can achieve leg-spans of up to fifteen feet.  Now, most spiders have a small body compared to their legs, and the Acromantula in the movie was no exception.  However, no mention of magic was used to explain how a female can have up to 100 eggs in her body, and have each one the size of a beach ball without her exploding.  To say that she just stretches to accommodate the eggs would make her stretchier than a female termite.  Beach balls are big.  That many of them would make a female Acromantula far too large to do anything like, say, move.

Otherwise, I enjoyed the book.  I would have preferred a few more illustrations, but, like anything J. K. Rowling writes, it was fun for me to read.  Only read it if you've read the Harry Potter series, though.  Otherwise I would imagine it could get quite confusing.

The Lost Princess by George MacDonald

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

Words here later.

The Girl in the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman

Tess Monaghan has been a private investigator for years, and the ultimate calamity has just hit: pregnancy!  She can't stand being cooped up due to the conditions of her pregnancy when she could be working on a case.  Then one of the dog-walkers she sees out her window every day goes missing.  The dog is found, but not the walker.  Also, it turns out that the dog-walker's husband has had numerous dead wives and girlfriends before.  Though it's mainly to humor a pregnant woman, her friends help her to figure out all of the facts before the man can strike again.

Daisy Miller by Henry James

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Playing for Pizza by John Grisham

Rick Dockery just got fired from his last NFL team by losing the entire game in eleven minutes.  The book starts with him in a hospital.  Outside the hospital, fans of the Browns, the team he had just lost the game for, are holding a riot.  His agent, Arnie, can't get any team to touch him.  That is, until Arnie starts looking in some very far-away places.  Rick is soon on a flight to, of all places, Italy, where American Football is a little-known sport with poorly financed teams and only a small cult following.

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

The Communist Manifesto details the viewpoint of the Communist Party of 1848.  Many people at the time had misconceptions about both the standpoint and the reasons behind it.  There were also a lot of common arguments that the manifesto tried to dispel. 

I personally love to read about other people's philosophies, so this was a fun read for me.  Even though the philosophy in question has caused so much trouble in our world, it was still fun to read about.  If you're looking for books with the most historical significance, this would probably also make the top ten.

Trouble at Fort La Pointe by Kathleen Ernst

Suzette/A'wajac lives near a fur trading post at Lake Superior in 1732.  Her mother is an Ojibwe Indian and her father is a Frenchman.  Her father, Philippe, wants to stay with her and her mother, but the trapping company he works for demands that he returns to France for most of the year.  If he can pay off a year of debt, however, he can stay with his family year-round.  He has entered into a contest to see who can catch the most furs in a season to pay off the debt.  Unfortunately, some furs have recently been stolen, which calls off the entire contest!  Even worse, Philippe is the number one suspect!

It seemed like the kind of plot you could copy and paste into any setting.  There was nothing new about the story besides the time period.  It reminds me of pretty much every single other children's mystery book I've read.  The setting did add some interest to it, and it was by no means a bad read, but if you read this book, don't expect to think about it for hours afterwards. 

Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram once made a famous experiment that changed the way we think about authority.  Obedience to Authority explains in detail the experiment and the conclusions that can be drawn from it.

Kill Me If You Can by James Patterson

It all starts with Matthew Bannon, who I will from now on refer to as Matty Sue, finding some diamonds.  Several millions of dollars worth of diamonds are in a locker next to a dead Russian man.  The struggling (but still incredibly talented) artist immediately picks them up and tricks the police with a deception on the spot.  Matty Sue returns to his drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend and surprises her with a trip to Paris with his newfound millions.  There appear to be two competing hit-men going after Matty Sue and the gorgeous Katherine as they move from country to country.  They make love everywhere they go.  Katherine quite rightly tells Matty Sue that he is the best lover ever.  Not to mention incredibly handsome and pretty much invincible from his time in the navy.  He also has another, secret skill that he is also the best in the world at.  The Russians have many contacts and many resources, so Matty Sue has to keep on his toes to evade them!  The woman hit-man chasing him is, of course, very beautiful.  In fact, I am beginning to suspect that this book is set in an post-apocalyptic world where any woman who is not drop-dead gorgeous has been ruthlessly eliminated.

Matthew Bannon is the kind of person who thinks that when you have flaws, it means that you have the white string that the dentists tell you to use.  His time in the navy has enabled him to lift hundreds of pounds and still make "funny" remarks.  He stays under the aforementioned weight for hours and only gets a few cracked ribs.  Matty Sue is apparently incredibly handsome, as evidenced by the random waitress who can't wait to get romantic with him.  His art cannot be criticized.  Bad things happen to those in the book who tell him that his art is anything but brilliant.  They are obviously pathetic, repugnant people for having different tastes than him.  Besides, there's no need to change even if he's doing horribly.  After all, his girlfriend is the art teacher, ensuring him a perfect score on everything.  All who see Matty Sue's marvelous drawings are blown away by their sheer awesomeness.  Another fun trait of Matty Sue is that he speaks all of the languages in the world except for Russian.  Italian and Dutch spring easily to mind.  Matty Sue has the best kind of friends: those who he never even thinks about for most of the book, but who randomly pop up whenever he has n other way out.  Trapped on a boat, Matty Sue?  Get your never-before-mentioned buddy Kino to help!  One of his other friends is one of the best snipers in the world, because Matty Sue can't have everything for himself.  The only thing that was flawed about Matty Sue was his penchant for making the worst jokes known to man throughout the book.

This also must be taking place in a world where demons and angels are fighting, and not humans, because the bad guys have zero redeeming qualities, and the good guys have zero flaws.  Really?  Incest?  Is everybody who isn't on the protagonist's side in a league with Satan or what?  Not to mention the guy who doesn't like Matty Sue's art.  What a horrible crime.

If you need eye exercise, read this.  You will roll your eyes after every chapter, and sometimes in the middles of chapters as well.  You might even get a better view of the ceiling than the pages.  Otherwise, Kill Me If You Can is a book to stay away from if you can.

Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature tells of one man's philosophy, which is centered around, well, nature.  Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that through observing nature as a child does, somebody could find happiness and meaning in their life.  The book centers around the untouched qualities of nature and the unimaginable qualities of God.  Understanding the first one is the only way to get a glimpse of the second.

This is the work that inspired transcendentalism.  Thoreau and others all got their inspiration from Nature.  Whether you agree or disagree with its philosophy, Nature is an important read, historically.

Sorry

No post today.  I recently started the new semester of school.  Also, my favorite websites have beckoned me away from my books.  I apologize.

Kneller's Happy Campers by Etgar Keret

Mordy is a teenage boy who has killed himself.  He lives in a place with the rest of the suicides.  They all show signs of how they died: people who hanged themselves have broken necks and people who shot themselves have bullet wounds.  Mordy is a Juliet, or somebody who was offed by poison.  He and his friend Uzi soon find out that Mordy's girlfriend, Desiree, has offed herself as well.  They set off on a quest to find Desiree, but on the way, they come across a "camp" run by a man named Kneller.  Miracles happen all the time at this camp, but only miracles that don't matter.  They hear of the "King Messiah" (quite obviously Jesus, as his name is Joshua and he can perform miracles that are planned and not insignificant) and go to find him and hopefully Desiree.

Suicides are put into a strange world that seems a bit worse, but has many redeeming qualities: who wouldn't want their water to randomly come out as soda?  Every character except for Uzi and Mordy seems to be in the periphery, but you put down the book knowing a lot about everybody.  The chapters are short and a lot of them end on a punchline.  Even though apparently there has been a movie made after it, Kneller's Happy Campers is a pretty obscure book, which is a shame, because it's also pretty good.

Naked in the Woods by Jim Motavelli

One day around the turn of the century (not this century, the last one,) Joseph Knowles stripped naked and lived for a month in the woods of Maine.  Well, maybe.  Probably not.  It's widely agreed today that Knowles pulled off an enormous hoax.  Afterwards, he slowly warmed up to being a public figure.  As soon as the newspapers started calling him a fraud, Knowles staged a second trip to the woods, but this trip was moved to the background of the minds of the public because of the first World War.  He tried several times after that to become famous again, and even proposed another trip, this time with a woman who was an actress to boot, but nothing worked.  The rest of his life was spent in a driftwood cabin on the beach, making art. 

Naked in the Woods does not only tell the story of Joseph Knowles.  It also talks about everyone and everything related to him.  It goes off on tangents in every chapter, but the tangents are fun to read and give a wonderful cultural picture of the era.  It's clear throughout that Jim Motavelli worked hard to research for Naked in the Woods, contacting everybody who would have known anything about Joseph Knowles or those close to him.  Reading about him, I find it sad that Knowles is no longer well-known. 

Contemplation by Franz Kafka

Contemplation is a collection of short stories.  I almost wouldn't even call them short stories.  If they were short stories, they would at least last a few pages.  The majority are under a page and a few are even a single paragraph.  "The Trees" in particular is only four short sentences that are loaded with repetition.  Naturally, even the tiny ones are soaked in symbolism.

The stories are consistently written in the same tone as the one in the Beatles' song "A Day in the Life".  The mundane and the surreal are mixed, often at the last sentence.  Sometimes, the story makes no sense without the symbolism, as in "The Wish to be and Indian", where a Native American is portrayed riding a horse that slowly disappears.  Others are fun and the symbolism is easy to miss, like in "Children on a Country Road", which might not actually represent anything. 

In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka

A traveler is visiting a foreign island, and has been invited to an execution.  The officer who runs the execution machine is extremely enthusiastic about it.  He tells the traveler all about how the machine operates: strapped and unable to scream, a harrow-like device scratches words into their back that designate the crime.  The gashes get gradually deeper until the person gets stuck through the back and dies.  Around six hours in, the experience becomes religious for the prisoner.  The officer decides who gets executed without any trial, and the general feeling is that anybody who is accused gets put on the machine.  He is following the ways of the old commandant, who everybody loved in his time, but who the officer is now the sole supporter of.  The new commandant is against the machine's use.  The officer is ashamed about how the machine, once gleaming, is now falling apart, and it is getting harder and harder to find replacement parts for things that wear out.  The traveler has to decide whether to keep the machine and perhaps return it to its former glory or to do away with the machine entirely.  It's a no-brainer, of course: get rid of the monstrous torture device.  In the hopes of getting a religious epiphany, the officer puts himself on the machine for its last run, with the message "be just" and the help of the former condemned man.  The machine breaks down and kills him before he can have the religious experience.  The traveler then goes to a tea house to visit the grave of the old commandant.  It says on the tombstone that the old commandant will someday return, which makes the others in the tea house smile and laugh.  The traveler leaves, and the soldier and the condemned man desperately try to follow him.

Let's start with the message of "Be Just".  The old commandant is quite obviously is representation of the God of the old testament.  The officer bases his policies of being able to just pick who is guilty from the old commandant, and the number of followers the old commandant had in his day and the number of people that used to show up to the executions hints that the old commandant was always right when he chose the guilty.  The officer, lacking the wisdom or omniscience of the old commandant, picks those who have committed only minor crimes just to see the machine in action.  "Be Just" was the final command.  As the officer went longer and longer under the new commandant's rule, fewer and fewer people showed up and the machine was seen by the public as more and more barbaric, which suggests that the officer's aim has been steadily growing wayward.  The final command of "Be Just" was, as far as I can see, put there by an old commandant who knew that it would be eventually used on the officer.  The machine was designed to collapse at "Be Just".

The other thing that intrigued me was how the condemned man and the soldier tried to follow the traveler off the island.  It's interesting how he insists to see the grave and then leaves shortly after he sees the people smile and laugh at it.  Then the officer and the condemned man try desperately to follow him off the island.  The condemned man might have had a good reason, as the traveler saved his life, but the officer really didn't have that strong of a case.  The traveler might just have some relationship to the old commandant, though he is obviously not the old commandant's new form because he was ignorant of the workings of the torture machine.