Reading & Blogging about a book a week.
Animal Farm spotlight's the oppression of a Stallin-esque socialist dictatorship. A great read! I actually read this just before Cassandra and I read the author's larger work, 1984. In truth, it's easier to read Animal Farm--the whimsey of talking, self-governing, and/or scheming animals creating a gray, hopeless dystopia for themselves removes one from the more foreboding possibility of such an oppression unnervingly unraveled in the prophecy of 1984.
Must read for this election year...
Do I believer what is before me?? This might be the funniest thing I've ever "read"--quotes here because I listened to the book; you should too should you decide to try this out. The narrator for the audible edition hits the accents and timing of the narrative just right and really brings it to life.
The story focuses on a 30 year old post grad, reclusive slob living with his mother in New Orleans in the early 1970s named Ignatius Riley. Hopelessly out of touch with societal norms, preferring instead to force the events around him into his unique world view. When he is forced kicking and screaming to step outside his childhood home to find a job after his mother winds up in financial hardship, he winds up in a series of woefully fated misadventures. Bold but painfully hopeless, he thrusts himself onto the black civil rights movements (Ignatius's Crusade for Moorish Dignity) and, later, the local gay community thinking them an ideal platform from which to launch a movement for peace. A smattering of other's are woven into Ignatius's antics--Ignatius's exasperated mother, a bumbling patrolman, a disillusioned clothing manufacturer and his harpy of a wife, and a small but curious cast of others.
Highly recommend it. Huge laughs, wild story, and the whole mess is tied together brilliantly. Enjoy!
The book is a (and I use the term loosely and do not wish to imply there is a significant degree of accuracy contained therein) historical fiction narrative centered around Hitler's invasion of Russia during the WWII. The story asserts that Germany's divided efforts on two fronts (England and Russia) was strategic suicide and therefore a ruse to cover a deeper conspiracy to hibernate the Nazi scourge, planning to re-emerge once its agents have secretly aligned themselves in pivotal positions in key organizations around the world (various police forces, intelligence agencies, underground criminal org's...). In actuality, its much more likely that Hitler's decision to invade Russia was due to Stalin's brutal takeover; one of his first moves was to execute ALL of the country's top military leaders--classic genius of dictatorial paranoia--leaving its military in rudderless and in confusion. Neither here nor there however.
When this alleged conspiracy is threatened to be exposed in the looming reunification of GE in the late '80s, interested parties of all nations clash to keep the facts under wraps--either for nefarious purposes or for posterities sake. This struggle draws out across several fronts and makes for an epic spy vs spy story. And I mean EPIC! The story weaves several sets of "good guys" against several sets of "bad guys", ultimately converging in a mammoth battle.
Fun but LONG! This is actually typical of the author should you want to commit to one of his stories. Lots of action, twists, turns, assassins, soldiers, and thugs--all operating under the radar. One of a couple of such books yet to be reviewed on my 52 this year.
This is my second time reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, so I won't review it all over again. Here's my first impression of the book: Uncle Tom Review. I decided to re-read it, now that we're naming our first daughter after one of the most redeeming characters from the story--Evangeline. As a keepsake for our birth mom, we will be giving her a copy of the book with highlighted portions that exhibit what we love about Evangeline's personality. We will also be giving her a Jordy Nelson jersey, since that's another interesting aspect of our adoption story. We're hoping they will be a sweet reminder for her of the sacrifice she made for her daughter.
Whatever; future posts will show that I've read worse... Besides, it was better than The Scarlet Letter! Anyhoo, coming to a $4.99 DVD bin near you shortly, the epic yet little known exploits of America's 16th president into vampire extermination. This book asserts that slavery was the endeavor of vampires to keep a ready and stable supply of human feed at their disposal. Somehow, all these blood sucking tyrants were based in the rural south prior to the civil war (not the aristocratic, industrially dominated, northern united states with it's endless supply of migrant workers--who would later become conscripts) and this is why America went to war against herself in the early 1860's. Not an entire waste of time, there are some amusing parts such as when Abraham Lincoln, convinced by Gen. McClellan's ineptitude in the early part of the War Between the States is evidence he is in league with vampire conspiracy, accuses him of being a vampire and demands "show me your fangs!". Classic. The book is peppered with such incidents and is amusing in parts. These run alongside several violent encounters as the early president hacks his way through the vampire ranks. All these anecdotes, however, get drowned out in the rambling narrative that tries to tie them all together. Basically, you get sporadic moments of humor or violence that punctuate an otherwise dry, abysmally researched attempt at satire. It could be worse--you could wasted and equal amount of your life reading Hawthorne...
Everything D'souza left out of his documentary on Obama... I know that's a little harsh, but you only think that because it hasn't happened yet. This book is the about a dystopian, hopeless world collapsed into desperate and total socialism of the kind witnessed under Stalin (...and perhaps coming soon to a country near you...). Everything from the media to business to education is controlled by the government (known here as Big Brother) under the arm of a crushing secret police. Its people are lied to as matter of course, history is rewritten to suite the powers that be in the moment and there is NO perceptible resistance. ...save for a hopeless pair who work desperately from the inside to free the world from the grasp of big brother. Read alongside Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, After America, and D'souza's 2012.
