Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I reread this as part of my "Bannon-Trump-resist" reading list. I only read it before it in middle school and I'm not sure what I got from it at the time except maybe that tyranny, and tyranny of ideas, is dangerous.

It has a peculiar effect on me this time around. I've been reading fast and furiously for about a year, trying to make up for lost time (all the time I spent not reading very much while I was working a lot). The more I read, the more I become aware of all the books that are necessary to read; the books I have yet to read. And in this frame of mind, the single scariest sentence in the book is: "Remember the firemen are rarely necessary. The public stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze, but it's a small sideshow indeed, and hardly necessary to keep things in line."

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March: Book Two by John Lewis

March: Book Two by John Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Better than March 1. It's an extremely powerful account of the Freedom Rides and goes all the way to the March on Washington. It works well as a stand-alone book. It should definitely be required reading in American History classes.

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My Escape from Slavery by Frederick Douglass

My Escape from Slavery by Frederick Douglass
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a follow-up to Douglass's autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and fills in the missing information about how he escaped from slavery.

Frederick Douglass is one of the best writers of all time. His subject matter is captivating, but his skill as a writer is both technically perfect and extremely moving.

Some favorite sentences:
"This contest was now ended; my chains were broken, and the victory brought me unspeakable joy."
"I was without home, without acquaintance, without money, without credit, without work, and without any definite knowledge as to what course to take, or where to look for succor."

And this! I love this: "While in this situation I had little time for mental improvement. Hard work, night and day, over a furnace hot enough to keep the metal running like water, was more favorable to action than thought; yet here I often nailed a newspaper to the post near my bellows, and read while I was performing the up and down motion of the heavy beam by which the bellows was inflated and discharged."

Available free here: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/doug...

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The Ballad Of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

The Ballad Of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Some good writing, some bad writing, but too much sympathy for the murderer and not enough for the victim in my opinion.

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Salome by Oscar Wilde

Salome by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It was a disturbing reimagining of the Bible story. It was fine.

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Lady Windmere's Fan by Oscar Wilde

Lady Windmere's Fan by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this play. Like An Ideal Husband it examines ethics and the error of judging others. Wilde's writing is always fabulous.

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An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A hilarious comedy of errors full of thoughtfulness about ethics, politics, love, and marriage. I recommend it.

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A very fun short read. It's a bit spoiled by the fact that everyone knows the surprise before reading the book, but I still enjoyed the story. My other issues are that we never get to hear the juicy bad fun Mr. Hyde is up to and that Mr. Hyde seems to help Dr. Jekyll suppress him which makes no sense since Mr. Hyde is pure evil.

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Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This has everything: moral conscience, adventure, family, romance, feminism, politics, and religion. It's literary fiction and it has an element of fantasy. Some of it reads like a poetry. Worth reading.

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Human Acts by Han Kang

Human Acts by Han Kang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is heavy. It doesn't sneak up on you as the novel opens on a room full of corpses, but it does grow steadily more emotional.

This is a reminder to people who grow lazy and ignorant in comfortable democracies what the loss of democracy is really like. The right to peaceably assemble- protesting- is a right in free countries because when it is not, nothing else is free.

But this novel is also a general condemnation of humanity, and it stings.

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The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is not like Taleb's other three "Incerto" books. This is a book of aphorisms. Initially, I had a negative reaction to this because I was expecting a book like Taleb's other books about predictions and random events. I think I also had a negative reaction because I'm mostly familiar with Buddhist aphorisms (and not with the classical Greek ones Taleb cites), and Taleb's attempt to write a book of aphorisms seemed arrogant.

But then I actually read them, and they're pretty good, and they fill the need for aphorisms for the modern increasingly complex world. It's a really short book so you can read it quickly, but more likely you need to think about most of the sentences for longer than you otherwise would. This might even require a rereading.

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Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some parts of this are very good and reminded me of guided meditations about mindfulness. However, there are a lot of parts about politics and about not traveling that I just can't get behind.

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The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is more of a split score. I think I would have given it 4 stars if I'd read it when I was in highschool, and it's more of 3, maybe 3.5 for me now. The main character is a freshman in high school dealing with a lot of pain while trying not to be super awkward.

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The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There are so many things wrong with this third book in the series. The racism everyone knows about. Though I continue to think that it's also generalized misanthropy because while the author's language is racist, the human characters are mostly all the same regardless of race. The animals are the noblest and most moral characters. Unfortunately, the animals might also be the most interesting character as all the other characters appear to be extremely one-dimensional. Also, the story dragged on so much. It could have ended several chapters before it did, but instead, the author created additional one-dimensional bad guys to oppose.

So what did I like? I liked the crazy troupe of animals. This is probably the book in the series that most inspired the cartoon Disney version of Tarzan (along with book #1). I liked that Jane gets the opportunity to be kind of bad ass in this one. I liked that there were additional good guys in this story, and I enjoyed their contributions. As for the action has everything- fighting, animals, ships, explosions.

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