"A library is thought in cold storage"

Atlas shrugged and so did I

2006-07-10T15:54:00.000-04:00

I did exactly what I knew I would do. I didn't finish the book and then I waited almost 2 months to return it to the library.

$9.00 fine.

I liked what I read of it, so I'll probably just buy it the next time I dare to go into a bookstore.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - Chapter 1

2006-04-10T21:49:00.000-04:00

I'm reading this book in order to write an essay for a scholarship contest that has a deadline in September, so entries about this book will also function as notes to myself with regard to my essay. Chapter by chapter.

With over one-thousand pages, I hope I can manage to complete this book in a timely fashion. As of this post, I'm on page 14 and here are some of my favorite passages thus far:

pg. 13

"--and somewhere within him, a drop of pain moving briefly and vanishing, like a raindrop on the glass of a window, its course in the shape of a question mark."

"It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string. he felt safe in the oak tree's presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength. One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside--just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it."

This passage says to me that even the people who seem the strongest in the face of adversity have their weaknesses or, perhaps, their "strength" is nothing more than a façade.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour An Introduction by J.D. Salinger

2006-04-08T10:03:00.000-04:00

The first and only book I ever read by J. D. Salinger was The Catcher in the Rye, and for some reason I never expected to lay my eyes on another book that had his name on it. Imagine my surprise, while at the library perusing the classics section, when I saw this book. Instinctively, I knew that I must read it.

The first story in this book, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters is a recollection of a wedding day 13-years in the past (1942). It is the narrator's account of a what happens to the groom's brother, on a sweltering day in June, when the groom doesn't make it to the church on time or at all.

The groom's brother, for reasons unknown to even himself, hops into a limo with four relatives of the bride; quite a scary situation considering one of his fellow passengers is the intensely furious Matron of Honor. The limo ride eventually comes to an end when they are held up by a parade, so the groom's brother invites them to his nearby apartment where they can make phone calls and sip icy, cold drinks.

The dialogue between the unlikely passengers gives a hint to how shallow and unhappy people can be when faced with lives that are manipulated by psychoanalysts.

As I expected, this particular story is about nothing significant, but I still like it because it is the epitome of Salinger. I like to think that Salinger was the Sienfeld of his generation.

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As soon as I finish the other part of the book my review will go here, so keep your pants on :)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

2006-04-06T15:06:00.000-04:00

Dorian Gray had the perfect, tangible moral compass. One by which he could have led a virtuous life, but yet ignored. Instead he chose to place his trust in a manipulative man that encouraged him to live his life in filthy, evil sin. A delightfuly horrible story with a hint of homosexuality. Of course, what is to be expected from an author who fancied men more than his own wife?

I highly recommend this book, Wilde's only novel, due to its frequent quotes of brilliance and debauchery and its lesson of morality.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from chapters one and two...

"It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value."

"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for.. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion--these are the two things that govern us. And yet...I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream--I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievilism, and return to the Hellenic ideal--to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has is tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame--"

"Yes," continued Lord Henry, "that is one of the great secrets of life--to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know."

"For there is such a little time that your youth will last--such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purples stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had no the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!"

"Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer."

Pane Barrior by Brian McKillop

2006-03-11T15:54:00.000-05:00

A short story from the book Phoenix - Irish Short Stories 2001 edited by David Marcus

Pane Barrior is a humourous tale of a gentleman who espies a feminine shilouette from his window one evening. As he watches the motionless form, he becomes enamoured with the shape and posture of the womanly figure and believes that he is being eyed with mutual interest. The next day he sees the figure in the window again, but this time she is dancing with two gentleman from a moving company. Our voyeur develops a few theories until he is aprised of the surprising truth which causes him to seem as if he is a madman.

Truly a funny story and a great ending.

Time by Sean MacMathuna

2006-03-05T23:03:00.000-05:00

A short story from the book Phoenix - Irish Short Stories 2001 edited by David Marcus

Time is a story about an English teacher, Dan Crean, who works as an instructor at a prison. Crean, who is estranged from his wife and child, is dealing with issues of fatherhood. He questions his inmate-students about their fathers, but is rebuffed by their harsh characters and unwillingness to co-operate. A cryptic stranger finds his way into the story when he seeks shelter in the classroom from a storm.

I didn't really enjoy this story, but maybe that's because I read it while I was somewhere between sleep and awake. Moreover, I can't relate to the issue of fatherhood.

Nothing by Paul Morley

2006-02-14T00:08:00.000-05:00

I started reading this book a few days ago and somewhere in the midst of the first chapter I had to put it down.

The first chapter of this book is nothing more than the narrator waxing philosophically about a dead body; something I have done on many occasions. However, I was never standing three feet away from the corpse. This is going to be a difficult chapter for me to get through because in order to relate to the author, I think about my grandfather in his casket and all the technical procedures that put him there. I feel a bit hesitant about opening this book again, but I will.

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor

2006-01-15T15:10:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry to say that, so far, this book hasn't been a problem for me to put down. Needless to say, I haven't finished it yet.

This book is set in one neighborhood in the United Kingdom and revolves around each person in the neighborhood who is refered to in third person while the main character portion of the chapters is written in first person. I'm not sure I like this format. It took me like five chapters to figure out that the main character wasn't male and whenever that happens I have to put the book aside and refigure all of my mental images.

I'll report back when I've completed the book. Although, that might be a while.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

2005-12-28T21:00:00.000-05:00

Christopher John Francis Boone is an autistic boy who, at the beginning of the book, is 15-years old. The reader could assume that autistic people have a lack of the concept of time because there are only two clues in this book that give away the fact that the story took place over the span of almost two years. I didn't figure this out until the middle of the book.

Christopher often checks the time on his watch because he likes to know how long it takes to complete certain tasks. He is a very logical, observant, intelligent boy and he is a whiz with maths and physics and desires to one day become an astronaut, despite his social short-comings.

The story begins as a murder mystery. Christopher is intent on finding out who killed his neighbors dog, Wellington, so he searches for clues and questions the neighbors even though his father warns him to "stay out of other people's business". Once he finds out who the perpetrator is, the story transforms into a coming-of-age/adventure with a glimpse into the life of dysfunctional family.

All of the action in this book is from Christopher's point of view and the writing style is unlike any style I have seen so far. It is very straight-forward and sometimes lacking proper punctuation, which is, at times, confusing for the reader. It is essentially written in the way someone would verbally tell a story.

I think this is a book I will have to read again because I finished it only two days after I purchased it. Although it was a short read, at 226 pages, I didn't want to put it down. I found Christopher to be a very interesting character and I wanted to know more about him. I often thought that this story would make for a great movie, but only if the movie stayed true to the book.

I recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun, short read. Not only does it give the reader a peek inside the head of an autistic person, but it is also philosophically thought provoking at the same time. I enjoyed it and I'll keep it on my bookshelf.

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First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, May 2004

Copyright 2003 by Mark Haddon

226 pages