Book review: ‘Blood Meridian’

Note: This review contains a small spoiler, in that I hint at the ending, but don’t spell out precisely what happens to the protagonist. Neither does McCarthy.

***

The New York Times Book Review once said, “(Cormac) McCarthy puts most other American writers to shame.”

I would say that’s pretty much true with exceptions made for William Faulkner, Thomas Woolfe, John Steinbeck, Phillip Roth and a handful of others, but it’s most certainly true for contemporary American authors.

Credit: “Blood Meridian” book cover artwork by Fish-man at DeviantArt.com.

Credit: “Blood Meridian” book cover artwork by ECTmonster at DeviantArt.com.

Cormac McCarthy’s command of the English language, his flow, word choice and ability to craft excellent sentences that pull you along, almost in waves, until you feel their full force by the end, is impressive. Readers can turn to nearly any page in “Blood Meridian” and can find these nuggets in all their stark clarity and emotive power — passages like:

They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise and where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them.

The difference between literature and rote fiction, in my view, is that literature doesn’t just tell a story; it has an elusive quality that demands second and third and fourth reads. It’s contemplative, philosophical and timeless. Although this is my first foray into McCarthy, I’d be willing to bet that “Blood Meridian” will stand the test of time.

This novel, which has been described as a kind of anti-Western, follows the trail of a character named “the kid” as he leaves his Tennessee home, heads out west and gets involved with a crew known historically as the Glanton gang, a sundry band of outlaws who initially collect Native American scalps for money and later, apparently just for the hell of it.

Also afoot is an erudite, brutal, perverse, prophesying and borderline supernatural character named Judge Holden, who concludes ultimately that human existence, much like the blood-soaked plains in the novel, is awash with violence from start to finish, and if untold numbers of massacres and scalpings didn’t drive this point home, the fate of the kid certainly does.

Here is the judge laying out the main points of his thesis:

This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.

And here:

The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day.

I’m not so sure that war is god anymore than god is god, but is the second part of this really that far off base? I don’t think so. We humans typically come to the height of our influence on the world somewhere between our 20s and 50s, if we are lucky, and then begin the slow wriggling crawl down the other side of the mountain where we at last meet inevitability, such that the primary symbol in “Blood Meridian” is the dying of the sun, smoldering out on the horizon in orange and red and cooling off the wasted earth.

This is “Blood Meridian’s” contribution to the literary canon. Fatalistic and hedonistic though it may be in parts, particularly embodied in the person of the judge, it offers an honest look at humanity’s capacity for violence and our ultimate frailness and mortality, as if being forced to stare into the sun, even if we want nothing more than to turn away.

[Rating: 4.0]

[Cover artwork from this piece by Fish-man at DeviantArt.com. The full artwork is embedded above.]

Completed reading list: 2011-2015

Since at least 2011, I have, along with a former co-worker, kept a list of books completed each year, along with dates, the number of pages per book and the number of pages per year. My cohort has since changed jobs and moved to a different state (as have I), so we haven’t really continued what I previously dubbed as our friendly office read-off between the two of us, but I have continued my own list. Here’s a brief recap: In 2012, I read about 5,000 pages, and in 2013, the total came to 7,616. Last year, I managed 7,925 pages.

This year, since I haven’t had the influence of Blake in my ear five days a week in quite awhile — he seemed to inspire me to read more nonfiction — I have reverted, if “reverted” is the right word, to my old ways of reading more fiction than history, but I still mixed in several substantive nonfiction works. My favorite nonfiction book for 2015 was “Ratification” by Pauline Maier (my second reading), and in fiction, my pick is “O Lost” by Thomas Wolfe, which is the unabridged version of “Look Homeward, Angel,” the epic semiautobiographical work set in a fictionalized Asheville, N.C.

The reason I have continued keeping a detailed list of books, including dates and page counts is because it challenges me to try to read more each year, and I can track how specific interests have changed over time. Following is my list for this year — I just finished my last book today — and for posterity’s sake, I’ll go ahead and post lists for the previous four years, with page totals, completion dates, etc.

2015

1. “Game of Thrones” Book II by George R.R. Martin; started November 2014; did not finish by Dec. 31; 194 pages in 2015.
2. “Demons” by Fyodor Dostoevsky; started Jan. 10, 2014; finished Jan. 25; 681 pages.
3. “Dark Bargains: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution” by Lawrence Goldstein; started Jan. 21; finished Jan. 31; 195 pages.
4. “Ratification” by Pauline Maier; started Jan. 31; finished Feb. 25; 768 pages.
5. “The Ghost Writer” by Phillip Roth; started Feb. Feb. 21; finished Feb. 24 (?); 131 pages.
6. “Giants” by John Stauffer; started Feb. 28; finished March 14; 314 pages.
7. “Dreams from My Father” by Barack Obama; started March; finished early April; 442 pages.
8. “The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P. Lovecraft; started April 18; finished April 29; 360 pages.
9. “Blindness” by Jose Saramago; started about April 30; finished May 4; 326 pages.
10. “American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers and the Making of a Nation; started May 5; finished May 10; 250 pages.
11. “Underworld” by Don DeLillo; started May 10; June 6; 830 pages.
12. “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates; started Aug. 15; finished Aug. 16; 98 pages.
13. “Game of Thrones: A Storm of Swords” (Book III) by George R.R. Martin; started June 6; finished Aug. 30; 1,261 pages.
14. “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins; started Aug. 23; finished Sept. 13; 368 pages.
15. “O Lost” by Thomas Wolfe; started Sept. 6; finished Oct. 22; 662 pages.
16. “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt; started late October; finished Dec. 6; 559 pages.
17. “Flags in the Dust” by William Faulkner; started Dec. 20; finished Dec. 31; 433 pages.

Total: 7,872; average per book: 463.

2014

1. “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells; started Jan. 1; finished Jan. 9; 160 pages.
2. “House of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski; started Jan. 3; finished Jan. 29; 662 pages.
3. “All On Fire” by Henry Mayer; started Jan. 30; finished March 9; 632 pages.
4. “The Planets” by Dava Sobel; started March 10; finished March 17; 231 pages.
5. “Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson” by Darren Staloff; started March 17; finished April 6; 361 pages.
7. “The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier” by Scott Zesch; started April 9; finished April 20; 300 pages.
8. “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follet; started March 16; finished May 25; 973 pages.
9. “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris; started May 25; finished May 26; 114 pages.
10. “A Manuel for Creating Atheists” by Peter Boghossian; started (?); finished in April; 280 pages.
11. “Beyond the River” by Ann Hagedorn; started late April; finished May 27; 279 pages.
12. “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski; started June 1 (?); finished July 22; 640 pages.
13. “Novus Ordo Seclorum” by Forrest McDonald; started July 23; finished summer 2014; 293 pages.
14. “Possession” by A.S. Byatt; started September; finished Sept. 27; 555 pages.
15. “Needful Things” by Stephen King; started summer 2014; finished Oct. 5; 736 pages.
16. “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov; started October 2014; finished October 2014; 309 pages.
17. “Game of Thrones” Book I by George R.R. Martin; started November 2014; finished Dec. 11; 862 pages.
18. “Intruders in the Dust” by William Faulkner; 227 pages.
19. “Game of Thrones” Book II by George R.R. Marti; started November 2014; did not finish by Dec. 20; 611 pages.

Total: 7,925; average per book: 417.

2013

1. “Cleopatra: A Life” by Stacy Schiff; started Jan. 1; finished Jan. 20; 324 pages.
2. “Reconstruction” by Eric Foner; started Jan. 21 (?); finished March 31; 612 pages.
3. “The Oedipus Cycle” by Sophocles; finished April 7; 251 pages.
4. “Why I Am Not A Christian” by Bertrand Russell; started March; finished April 7; 259 pages.
5. “The Portable Nietzsche,” edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann; started April 6; finished May 6; 687 pages.
6. “Absalom, Absalom!” by William Faulkner; started May 7; finished June 5; 303 pages.
7. “The History of White People” by Nell Irvin Painter; started May 7; finished June 29; 396 pages.
8. “Judgment Days” by Nick Kotz; started July 20; 434 pages.
9. “Big Chief Elizabeth” by Giles Milton; started July 20; finished Aug. 16; 344 pages.
10. “The Fiery Trial” by Eric Foner; started Aug. 14; finished Sept. 8; 336 pages.
11. “The Negro Classics” by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois and James Weldon Johnson; started Sept. 28; finished Oct. 4; 511 pages.
12. “V.” by Thomas Pynchon; started Sept. 8; finished Sept. 28; 533 pages.
13. “Half Slave and Half Free” by Bruce Levin; started Oct. 4; finished 6; 255 pages.
14. “The Dante Club” by Matthew Pearl; started Oct. 5; finished Oct. 10; 380 pages.
15. “Six Women of Salem” by Marilynne K. Roach; started Oct. 13; finished Oct. 26; 400 pages.
16. “God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World” by Walter Russell Mead; started Oct. 27; finished Nov. 13; 413 pages.
17. “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon.; started Nov. 15; finished Dec. 1; 385 pages.
18. “Go Down, Moses” by William Faulkner; started Dec. 1; finished Dec. 11; 383 pages.
19. “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells; started Dec. 9; finished Dec. 13; 104 pages.
20. “Morgan: American Financier” by Jean Strouse; started Dec. 14; finished Dec. 31; 689 pages.

Total: 7,616; average per book: 381.

2012

1. “Grant” by Jean Edward Smith; finished late January; 428 pages (628 total, 200 pages read in 2011).
2. “The Killer Angels” by Michael Shaara; finished Feb. 12; 374 pages.
3. “General Lee’s Army: From Victory To Collapse” by Joseph Glatthaar; 475 pages.
4. “This Mighty Scourge” by James McPherson; 272 pages.
5. “State of Denial” by Bob Woodward; finished April 2; 491 pages.
6. “The Greatest Show On Earth” by Richard Dawkins; started late March; finished May 13; 437 pages.
7. “Madison and Jefferson” by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg; started May 16; finished July 21; 644 pages.
8. “From the Temple to the Castle” by Lee Morrissey; started May 13; finished July 22; 144 pages.
9. “Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism” by Bruce Scheulman; started mid-July; finished Aug. 19; 245 pages.
10. “You Can’t Go Home Again” by Thomas Wolfe; started Aug. 19; finished Oct. 10; 743 pages.
11. “Grant and Sherman” by Charles Flood; started Oct. 10; finished Nov. 7; 402 pages.
12. “The American Civil War” by John Keegan; started Aug. 19; finished Dec. 31.

Total: 5020; average per book: 418.

2011

1. “Positivist Republic: Auguste Comte and the Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1920” by Gillis Harp; 264 pages.
2. “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris (reread); 114 pages.
3. “John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights” by David S. Reynolds; 592 pages.
4. “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho; 165 pages.
5. “Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life” by George Eliot; 794 pages.
6. “1491;” 403 pages.
7. “Thomas Jefferson Vs. Religious Oppression;” 150 pages.
8. “Night” by Elie Weisel; 120 pages.
9. “1421: The Year China Discovered America” by Gaven Menzies; finished in the spring; 491 pages.
10. “From Sea to Shining Sea: From the War of 1812 to the Mexican War, the Saga of America’s Expansion” by Robert Leckie; finished in late spring; 623 pages.
11. “The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson” by Charles B. Sanford; finished in summer; 179 pages.
12. “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief” by James McPherson; finished in summer; 384 pages.
13. “Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South” by Albert Raboteau; finished in summer; 321 pages.
14. “Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society” by John Andrew III; finished in August; 199 pages.
15. “Union 1812: The Americans who Fought the Second War of Independence” by A.J. Langguth; finished Sept. 7; 409 pages.
16. “Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788” by Pauline Maier; finished Oct. 2; 489 pages.
17. “The Federalist Papers” by Madison, Hamilton and Jay; finished Oct. 30; 527 pages.
18. “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism” by Susan Jacoby; 370 pages.
19. “The Theory of the Leisure Class” by Thorstein Veblen; 400 pages.
20. “Erewhon” by Samuel Butler; 260 pages.
21. “The Anti-Federalists: Critics of the Constitution 1781-1788” by Jackson Turner Main; 286 pages.
22. “Grant” by Jean Edward Smith; 200 pages, (628 total, 428 in 2012).

Total: 7,740; average per book: 352.

Total since 2011: 36,173.

A first read of Stephen King

I did feel, however, that I demanded something different (something more?) from a novel than I guessed most of the readers of Stephen King did. (Not that this made me morally superior, just more demanding, a high-maintenance reader.) – Dwight Allen

***

As I am 240 pages into my first – and probably last – Stephen King novel, “Needful Things,” I find myself agreeing with every sentiment in this column about what separates fiction from literature, and why King simply doesn’t measure up, and as far as I’m concerned, he can’t hold Thomas Pynchon’s literary jockstrap.

I’m actually not looking forward to reading more in this book because A) it is needlessly long and B) it is endlessly dull and formulaic. A small town in Maine. A creepy new business owner comes to town. Stupified locals buy his trinkets that just so happen to fulfill their most base desires. Creepy guy gets creepier. And I can only assume, the shit gets weirder, and I don’t care. I’m sure some zany stuff is afoot, but King hasn’t made me invested in the characters, so I also don’t care what happens to them. I could put the novel down right now and happily move on with no desire to know what happens next. That’s a bad sign for an author of King’s calibre.

As such I really don’t get King’s mass appeal. Is everyone’s lives so boring and depressing that they can be fulfilled by even the most basic escapist fiction? I mean, this novel, so far, has no heart, it doesn’t examine any higher truths about humanity or the human condition, it is written in language most middle schoolers could follow and the plot itself plods along at an uninteresting snail’s pace. If the majority of people read novels simply for a compelling plot, boy are they missing out on the truly enriching and soul-fulfilling experience of actual literature, which this is not.

As Dwight Allen put it:

King may be an adequate enough escape from life, if that’s all you require from a book of fiction, but his work (or what I’ve read of it) is a far cry from literature, which, at its best, is, sentence by sentence, a revelation about life.

A “sentence by sentence … revelation about life” is what I require from literature, and this is not literature.

Book review: ‘The Story of Edgar Sawtelle’

Note: This review contains some spoilers.

I initially rated this book three stars, but after giving it some thought and when comparing it to literary classics — the standard by which I judge all novels — I downgraded it to two stars.

sawtelle

This highly ambitious work, a loose retelling of Hamlet in rural Wisconsin, didn’t quite the deliver, both on the quality of the writing and the plot. At times, the writing approached the exceptional, particularly when we got to see the point of view of Edgar’s dog, Almondine, or when Edgar saw his dead father, but those moments were fleeting. More times than not, the plot seemed to drag a bit, especially during Edgar’s time away from home in the forest with the dogs. Other than Edgar and perhaps Gar, the father, the characters seemed a bit flat. Claude, Gar’s brother, could have been a complex character as the scheming deviant, but his motivations aren’t fleshed out very well. How does a guy go from a blacksheep-type figure in the family, who has some arguments with his brother, to a calculating killer? Why is Claude so caught up with Trudy? Was he motivated by jealousy or lust or was he just a sociopath? After the incident with Gar, why is Trudy so resigned to stay with her dead husband’s brother, especially at the expense of her own son’s sanity? Are there no available males back in town?

In 640 pages, these questions could have been more fully explored, but they weren’t, and these are the nuances that separate classic literature from some works of modern fiction that, thanks to low expectations from the public, somehow make it on the best seller list.

While Wroblewski did a good job developing the deep relationships between Edgar, Trudy, his father and Almondine, I don’t think we saw enough of that between Trudy and Claude, which is a pairing that was central in the novel’s conclusion. As for the rest of the plot, the logistics at the end were difficult to visualize. Are we to believe that a blinded policeman, Glen, would or even could pin down a caring mother, while her son risked his life trying to reclaim documents from inside a burning barn? While Claude clearly had evil intentions, we get the impression that Glen wanted to kidnap Edgar for questioning, not be complicit in a murder, so once Glen realized that he had become tangled up with Trudy on the ground, even if he was in immense pain, why did he not just release her?

All that said, the imagery and the descriptive language at the end was stellar — a high point in the writing — and I liked how Wroblewski wraps up the novel from the viewpoint of the remaining Sawtelle dogs. Unlike some reviewers, I don’t knock the book simply for being a tragedy because life, one way or the other, almost always ends in tragedy. But for all its high ambition in summoning the muse of Shakespeare, the book fell a few degrees short in my estimation.

Grasping for straws

I’m constantly amazed at Christians’ attempts to validate extra-New Testament sources which they say support their claims about Christ by using every rhetorical trick in the book. Take this guy:

Yes, you saw that correctly. He is actually making a case that an obscure passage from Josephus’ “War of the Jews” actually supports the case for the historicity of Christ, without actually mentioning the name Jesus. He builds his case on certain buzz words and phrases in the Josephus text, including “husbandman,” “three woes,” the “bride and groom” and “stone rolled away,” which oddly never appears in the passage from Josephus.

How many husbandmen does he suppose there were in ancient Palestine at the time of Jesus? Pretty much everyone, except priests, women, government officials and vagabonds. Further, the word “husbandman” doesn’t imply that the person was good, just that he was a farmer. Try tying Revelation to any work of literature that vaguely references something in the Bible. I bet it’s not that hard. Here I’ll try: Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” is really just one big allegory for the bride and bridegroom in Revelation.

He is willing to concede that Josephus’ famous passage about Jesus is an extrapolation, but points to another more obscure passage that doesn’t even mention a name and the only concrete identifying characteristic was that he was a sorrowful husbandman, although Jesus was supposedly a carpenter and only figuratively a shepherd, a reverential analogy within Christian circles for which Josephus, as a Jewish historian, would surely not have cared to advertise.

Glad he could clear that up for us.

House of Leaves book review

I purchased “House of Leaves” by Mark Danielewski more or less on a whim during a visit this past fall to New York City. The book was displayed prominently on a shelf at the Strand, and I guess because of some good marketing work, I was intrigued enough by the cover and a quick flip through the interior that I decided to pick it up. I purchased the full color paperback edition.

leaves

The book is a type of book within a book as the fictional author Zampanò, an old blind man, pens the portion of the narrative dealing with the mysterious house on Ash Tree Lane that is larger inside than it is on the outside. The protagonist, Will Navidson, a photojournalist, has apparently made a film documenting the strange happenings within the house, including neverending passageways, receding stairways and stairs that protrude seemingly from nothingness, a crypt-like coldness inside the house and a unexplained growl. The film is supposedly called The Navidson Record, and it details the unknown horrors Navidson and his crew face when they venture into the bowels of the house. The side story follows the life of Johnny Truant who, along with his friend, Lude, discovered Zampanò’s papers about the house after the old man kicked the bucket. We learn that The Navidson Record apparently never existed.

The two narratives, Truant’s personal struggles with anxiety, drugs, his clinically insane mother and general listlessness, along with Zampanò’s story about the house, are separated by different fonts so readers can tell who is saying what. But the different fonts are among the least confounding aspects of the novel. Fairly early in the book, readers will notice strange typography, unusual textual arrangements on the page, black boxes, mirrored text, nearly blank pages with only a word or two and a relentless barrage of footnotes, and during parts of the book, readers are met with the tedious task of turning the book to and fro in all directions to read the words on the page.

Critics have criticized some of these elements as needlessly obtuse, and I agree to an extent, but they are not without purpose. The intricate network of destination-less passageways and stairways to nowhere Navidson and his friends encounter are mirrored by the text in the book itself and the black boxes on the page and the mirrored text illustrates elements in the plot. In music, this is called word painting. For instance, if the character is going down a staircase that seems to be receding endlessly downward, the text will appear at the very bottom of the page. For spiraling staircases in the house, the text is all over the page. While these elements do illustrate elements in the main plots — and I appreciate the symbolism — I do agree with some critics that this approach makes reading the book a rather disjointed and tedious affair, not to mention all the footnotes citing fictional sources.

All that said, I was surprised by the number of people who said they thought this was a challenging work even surpassing the obscure writing of Thomas Pynchon. Pynchon is far more challenging in my view. Sure, “House of Leaves” is, perhaps, more abstract in some ways than Pynchon with all the footnotes and seemingly random typography, along with multiple narrators and different languages, but Pynchon mainly relies on English and his novels are among the most difficult to decipher in all of literature. I found “House of Leaves” relatively straightforward, at least for those who have the ability to follow a complicated plot line. Although I will say that, at times, it was needlessly tedious and at times, disjointed. Still, I think it should and will go down as a literary classic.

[rating:80/100]

Office read-off 2013

Below are the results of the 2013 office read-off between Blake and myself. Blake’s details are listed as page count, publication year and date completed. Details for my list are shown by the start and finish date and page count. I have provided links for the works we thought were the strongest.

Blake

  1. “George Washington’s War” — Robert Leckie, 660, 1992, 1/19
  2. Beyond the River” — Ann Hagedorn, 279, 2002, 3/17
  3. “The Man Who Would Be King” — Ben Macintyre, 291, 2004, 4/13
  4. The Captured” — Scott Zesch, 300, 2004, 4/20
  5. “Selling the President, 1920: Lasker & Harding” — John A. Morello, 102, 2001, 4/23
  6. Nellie Taft: Unconventional First Lady” — Carl Sferrazza Anthony, 411, 2005, 5/8
  7. “Eisenhower” — Alan Wykes, 157, 1982, 5/11
  8. Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding” — Darren Staloff, 361, 2005, 5/26
  9. “Means of Ascent” — Robert A. Caro, 412, 1990, 6/4
  10. “Words from the White House” — Paul Dickson, 179, 2013l, 6/6
  11. “Grover Cleveland: Study in Character” — Alyn Brodsky, 456, 2000, 6/17
  12. “Renegade: The Making of a President” — Richard Wolffe, 334, 2009, 

    6/28

  13. The Hunting of the President” — Conason and Lyons, 373, 2000, 7/11
  14. “Rothstein” — David Pietrusza, 387, 2003, 7/18
  15.  “A Good Life” — Ben Bradlee, 499, 1995, 7/26
  16. “Dominion of Memories” — Susan Dunn, 224, 2007, 8/3
  17. “Old Hickory” — Burke Davis, 386, 1977, 8/11
  18. “Presidency of James Earl Carter” — Burton I. Kaufman, 214, 1993, 8/18
  19. “The Kennedy Brothers” — Richard D. Mahoney, 377, 1999, 8/24
  20. “Founding Myths” — Ray Raphael, 277, 2004, 8/31
  21. “Island of Vice” — Richard Zacks, 366, 2012, 9/12
  22. “Last of His Kind” — Charles Robbins, 153, 1979, 9/19
  23. “Fraud of the Century” — Roy G. Morris Jr., 256, 2003, 10/1
  24. “The Devil in the White City” — Erik Larson, 390, 2002, 12/29

Jeremy

  1. Cleopatra: A Life” by Stacy Schiff, started Jan. 1, finished Jan. 20. – 324
  2. “Reconstruction” by Eric Foner, started Jan. 21 – 612, finished March 31
  3. “The Oedipus Cycle” by Sophocles, finished April 7. – 251
  4. “Why I Am Not A Christian” by Bertrand Russell, started March, finished April 7 – 259
  5. “The Portable Nietzsche,” edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann, started April 6, finished May 6 – 687
  6. “Absalom, Absalom!” by William Faulkner, started May 7, June 5 – 303
  7. “The History of White People” by Nell Irvin Painter, started May 7, finished June 29 – 396
  8. Judgment Days” by Nick Kotz, started July 20 – 434
  9. “Big Chief Elizabeth” by Giles Milton. Started July 20, finished Aug. 16 – 344
  10. The Fiery Trial” by Eric Foner – Started Aug. 14, finished Sept. 8 – 336
  11. “The Negro Classics” by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois and James Weldon Johnson. Started Sept. 28, finished Oct. 4 – 511
  12. “V.” by Thomas Pynchon. – Started Sept. 8, finished Sept. 28 – 533
  13. “Half Slave and Half Free” by Bruce Levin – Started Oct. 4, finished 6 – 255
  14. “The Dante Club” by Matthew Pearl – Started Oct. 5, finished Oct. 10 – 380
  15. “Six Women of Salem” by Marilynne K. Roach – Started Oct. 13, finished Oct. 26 – 400
  16. “God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World” by Walter Russell Mead – Started Oct. 27, finished Nov. 13 – 413
  17. “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon – Started Nov. 15, finished Dec. 1 – 385
  18. “Go Down, Moses” by William Faulkner – Started Dec. 1, finished Dec. 11 – 383
  19. “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells, Started Dec. 9, finished Dec. 13 – 104
  20. Morgan: American Financier” by Jean Strouse, Started Dec. 14, finished Dec. 31

Total page count — Blake: 7,844, Jeremy: 7,616.

We are stardust

Here are some fantastic images from a new children’s book titled, “You Are Stardust,” by Elin Kelsey:

© Soyeon Kim, from the book You Are Stardust by Elin Kelsey & Soyeon Kim, OwlKids Press

© Soyeon Kim, from the book You Are Stardust by Elin Kelsey & Soyeon Kim, OwlKids Press

© Soyeon Kim, from the book You Are Stardust by Elin Kelsey & Soyeon Kim, OwlKids Press

© Soyeon Kim, from the book You Are Stardust by Elin Kelsey & Soyeon Kim, OwlKids Press

© Soyeon Kim, from the book You Are Stardust by Elin Kelsey & Soyeon Kim, OwlKids Press

© Soyeon Kim, from the book You Are Stardust by Elin Kelsey & Soyeon Kim, OwlKids Press

I’m encouraged that there are children’s books being produced that actually embrace the truths of science on our origins. This book also has an online supplement that provides more details on why we are made from the stuff of stars.

Here is an eloquent and inspiring explanation from Neil de Grasse Tyson:

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Recent book buys

As if I needed more books that I may never get around to reading:

The literature anthology at the top and “Perspective on Culture” were in the free bin. The others were no more than $4 apiece. Thank you, McKay Used Books, CDs, Movies, & More, and of course, my obscure reading tastes.