#30 The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

326 pages.

This is one of the books I purchased from the closing Borders in Fremont, CA.  The good thing is I got it for 70% off.  I did not like this book.  I think the poor relationship started with one of the opening paragraphs. I don't usually like to quote at length, but here is the opening paragraph which I found frustrating to read.  Maybe I was imagining an annoying patronizing tone as I read it, maybe I was just angry that day I opened Alain de Botton's book, or maybe his book made me angry.  Well, here is the opening paragraph in all its impotent glory.

"Imagine a journey across one of the great cities of the modern world.  Take London on a particularly grey Monday at the end of October.  Fly over its distribution centres, reserviors, parks and mortuaries.  Consider its criminals and South Korean tourists.  See the sandwich-making plant at Park Royal, the airline contract-catering facility in Hounslow, the DHL delivery depot in Battersea, the Gulfstreams at City airport and the cleaning trolleys in the Holiday Inn Express on Smuggler's Way.  Listen to the screaming in the refectory of Southwark Park primary school and the silenced guns at the Imperial War Museum.  Think of driving nstructors, meter readers and hesitant adulterers.  Stand in the maternity ward of St. Mary's Hospital.  Watch Aashritha, three and a half months too early for existence, enemshed in tubes, sleeping in a plastic box manufactured in the Swiss Canton of Obwalden.  Look into the State Room on the west side of Buckingham Palace.  Admire the Queen, having lunch with two hundred disabled athletes, then over coffee, making a speech in praise of determination.  In Parliament, follow the government minister introducing a bill regulating the height of elctrical sockets in public buildings.  Consider the trustees of the National Gallery voting to acquire a painting by the eighteenth-century Italian artist Giovanni Panini.  Scan the faces of the prospective Father Christmasas being interviewed in the basement of Selfridges in Oxford Street and wonder at the diction of the Hungarian psychoanalyst delivering a lecture on paranoia and breastfeeding at the Freud Museum in Hampstead."

It pained me to copy that paragraph, which is a good example of literary masturbation, and it annoyed me to no ends.  This is how his "philosophy" book started, and I have to say the remainder of the book was not nearly as annoying as the beginning.  I don't understand the reason for writing this book.  If was watered down philosophies that even the most unread person has grasped by the time they are 20.  Here let me sum up his intent, as I saw his intent.   I will here try and sound as Botton.

Consider that carpet you are standing on.  Someone made that tightly-knit carpet.  In some corner of Bristol a man has developed the principles to create that carpet.  In offices he has sat with clients negotiating deals while drinking black coffee until late in the evening.  Some man...

I can't write more, but that is the intent of the book.  To let the reader know that people make stuff and spend their whole working lives making stuff.  Maybe my thinking is so infantile I didn't grasp his finer points.  Maybe I found it too hard to concentrate on a text whose author I wouldn't mind slapping.  It pained me to keep coming back to this book, but I will let no book beat me, no matter how simpering it is.  I think I can safely I will not be reading any more of Botton's popular philosophy books in the near future, or any future.  I hope this is the last bad book I read all summer.

#29 Richard II

I don't know if counting a Shakespeare play as a book is legit in my quest to 100 books this year...I don't care.  I'm counting it and any other Shakespeare play I happen to read, which will be quite a few now that I have the Riverside Shakespeare in Yellowstone.  After about ten years I have finally re-read Richard II, not because I heard it was a good play, but because of a historical interest in the time period.  I cannot remember one line, or even one part of this play from my first reading so many years ago, which is a truth that holds for the majority of Shakespeare's Histories, the exceptions being Henry V and Richard III.

It wasn't an exceptional play, but it wasn't bad either.  King Richard may be the whiniest Shakespeare character of all the plays.  He is a simpering, do-nothing, loser who laments that he is unpopular and no one likes him.  He is pretty pathetic, and to be regarded as some person who is King, but not in any way to regarded as a divinely ordained king, which brings into question the whole idea the divine right of kings.  He is more a laughing stock than a personage of awe.  And the audience does not feel sympathy for the king since he also does idiotic acts and brings about his own downfall through stupidity, greed, and the base desire to be flattered.  As a character, I liked that he was a fumbling loser, it was interesting.  As if King Richard wasn't the only flawed personage, this play makes it difficult at times to really believe some of the things any of the other people say.  You believe Richard's crying, which he does a lot of, but I felt that the protagonist, Henry Bullingbrook, at times was lying through his teeth.  There really isn't a very honorable character in this play.  The nearest is the Duke of York who is willing to send his own son to the gallows in the name of some over-weaning honor and honesty.  The players in this tragedy are a pathetic collection of whiners, liars, and idiots.  That being the case, I enjoyed it, and the next time I play a role-playing game I think I shall be King Richard for the laughs of it.

MY Yellowstone Education

So my first full month of Yellowstone has come to a close.  I've noticed the books I have read this month and am somewhat upset.  I realize I am not reading the "copious amount of books" that I was in 2008.  Not even close.  I hope that June will allow much more reading time and that my job will become less about work and more about reading.  I can't wait to see what June will bring.  Right now I only have somewhere between 3-4 hours nightly to read at work, which is a sharp drop from 2008s 5-6 hours.  Hopefully this will change and the tourons will let me be.

#28 Children of Dune

Children of Dune, Frank Herbert 408 pages.

I have read few science fiction books that are as complicated and at times confusing as this book.  I think Herbert has amazing ideas and at times strange plots.  I haven't really sat down and thought about the motivations of the characters, but while reading this they were unpredictable.  I'm not even sure if this book works, but couldn't tell you why I felt that way.  How do you understand a book when the two main characters are children who were born with the life experiences of millions of people already in their mind?  I think Herbert wrote the two "children" convincingly, but not sure.  His approach would have been different than mine.  Having all that life experience I would have the children walk away from the world and leave it all behind.  But he had them become integral parts of the active world.  So a little confused with what was going on, but at least I could never guess the next plot point.  Who could've guessed if you let a bunch of sand trout crawl all over you and eat you that you will not only become superhuman strong, but will live for 4000 years.  I think he just makes this shit up as he writes.  Sometimes its hard to believe.

Maybe I will be able to better follow the next novel: God Emperor of Dune.

#27 Malory: The Knight Who Became King Arthur's Chronicler

I read this biography hoping to learn something about Malory not discussed in the brief bios at the beginning of most versions of Le Morte Darthur.  There isn't really much to be known about this man.  Hardyment was very ambitious with this work, hoping to illuminate something about Malory, but there is really nothing more to learn about him unless someone finds a cache of letters written by him.  But short of that miracle the best we can do is make literary connections to the man through his main surviving work.  Hardyment places Malory throughout the time in armies, places, jails, and battles.  But his mere presence alone in France during Henry V's famous offensive does not really tell us who Malory is as a person.  He is assumed to be Knightly, and to follow the rules of being a knight, but still this is only a code of ethics.  What he was as a person is only through conjecture and assumptions.

As a biography this work has limitations due to records of Malory being scant.  But as a historical overview of Malory's age it is very useful.  malory lived during the beginning of the War of the Roses, between the Lancastrians and Plantagenets.  This biography is better at explicating the times than the writer.  I would recommend this as a history book that dwells too much on a writer, than as a biography that almost only covers history.

#26 1215: The Year of the Magna Carta

by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham.  290 pages.

I tore through this popular history.  Immensely informative and enjoyable.  Though there were times when it just seemed like review.  That at some point popular histories begin to overlap.  This one, like other histories showed what medieval life was like back then. Covering the politics, religion, economics, and also relations within the European world.  Each history will have new information depending on the inclinations of its authors, but the overlap is always going to be there.  The charm of medieval history are the anecdotes.  Here is one of my favorites from this book:

"Since the fifth century leprosy had often been interpreted as the reward for sexual excess.  One of the early Norman bishops of London, Hugh d'Orival, chose to be castrated in the hope of obtaining a cure but, according to William of Malmesbury, the only result was that he spent the rest of his life a eunuch as well as a leper" (206).

At first this was a delightful little anecdote of a man doing something ludicrous.  I laughed heartily at his error, knowing full well that castration is never a cure for leprosy.  After I caught my breath I felt sorry for the bishop.  He used his faith and failed, and had the rest of his tragic life to meditate on that fact.  This is one of those times that it is and it isn't funny.

#25 The Dying Animal

The Dying Animal, Philip Roth, 156 pages.

I just finished this book no more than a minute ago, so my reactions are fresh and lack any serious thought. having said that, his writing is smooth and read really well.  There is not much in there to confuse or confound.  It was an engaging book to read, and at times enjoyable.  This is my first Philip Roth experience, and I wonder if all of his books are as such.

To begin with I'm not sure what age group or demographic this book is aimed at.  It is a confessional of a 70 year old male pervert.  Maybe pervert is wrong--maybe an older gentleman that sleeps with his students who are about a third his age on a regular basis.  I guess this book is meant to challenge the readers idea of what is acceptable.   The narrator is a semi-known aesthetician and criticism teacher who narrates as though he is writing a treatise on love/marriage/freedom.  All three go together for him.  This does not read as a traditional novel, nor do I think it is supposed to.  I feel the narrator is speaking for dual purposes.  It is part cathartic and part argument for his lifestyle.  It is both persuasive and apologetic.  I have very little sympathy for the narrator, but I don't hate him, I just disagree on some points.

I'm not sure I was the age group the book was destined for.  Maybe if I was twenty years older I would have found more of myself in the narrator, or not.  The sexual exploits of a 70 year old are not things I often ruminate on.  I don't regret the book, though I'm not sure it was a useful book for me.

These are my initial reactions.  This book also marks a milestone for this year.  I am exactly 25% of the way to reading 100 books.  Though I am roughly a month behind.