Book Reports - Monochromatic Outlook

Sing it, sister!

*(Because I feel that I didn’t have much to say about this novel, it has singlehandedly stalled all the reports for the books I’ve read since. So please forgive the cursory glance. There are other books I actually want to say something about.)*

Ayn Rand’s novella *Anthem* is a quick read. By my estimate the book comes in around 26,000 words.

Don’t expect character development. Not really. Although the story is about a person discovering his own personhood in … Read the rest

Guilty pleasure

Thanks to [Deirdre Saoirse Moen](http://deirdre.net) for recommending this book. It’s not my usual fare but I was looking for material for structuring a romance plot. I asked Deirdre to point me toward some good examples from the genre. Looking to a romance novel seemed like a good place to get a start on the tropes of the form — both the ones to use and the ones to avoid.

Writing a romance plot into a science fiction novel isn’t the same … Read the rest

Make your escape from the savage old world

I vaguely recall reading Brave New World in my late teens or early twenties. I was a bit disappointed by it at the time and I suspect I may merely have skimmed the book. It didn’t leave a big impression the first time.

But Brave New World has had a huge impact on our culture. Quite recently I was speaking with a young woman at a coffeeshop here in Alameda, and failed to understand a reference she made. She saw by … Read the rest

The big question

Many years ago in the midst of the results of some very poor choices, a friend exposed me to the *Tao Te Ching*. I read it in an evening, pondered over parts of it, and purchased my own copy the next afternoon. I purchased the Gia-fu Feng/Jane English translation at a store on Polk Street in San Francisco called Rooks and Becords, which sadly does not exist any longer. I recommend the coffeetable edition of this particular translation for its … Read the rest

Revisiting the Sea of Fertility

It’s been probably 25 years since I first read Yukio Mishima’s *Sea of Fertility* tetralogy, the first book of which is *Spring Snow*.

I’m quite pleased to have picked up Mishima again. Other than rereading some of his short stories (and *The Sound of Waves* which I read aloud with a woman I dated several years ago) I don’t think I’ve read any Mishima since my late teens or early twenties. In the last ten years or more I’ve read … Read the rest

Finding the Internet’s inner human

No review as yet; I have not finished reading this book.… Read the rest

What gets stuck in the eye of the beholder?

It’s been a while since there has been a book report on Monochromatic Outlook. It’s bad enough that I haven’t written the book reports; what is worse is that I’ve read so many fewer books. It’s not even that I’ve started books that I haven’t finished, but reading itself has fallen away dramatically.

I have been reading again — not just for work and not just for fun. Perhaps like many things one must step away to renew one’s interest … Read the rest

Tangled Webs

Just started… Read the rest

Absolution Gap

Still reading… Read the rest

What is fair?

I have to hand it to Mr Boortz and Congressman Linder: whether you like their proposal or not, they are actually thinking about how to improve our current hideous taxation system. In fact, their proposal replaces the entire Internal Revenue Service so unless you’re a big fan of the devil you know, right off the bat their proposal almost has to be a good one.

The FairTax is a proposal to scrap the income tax in America and establish a consumption-based … Read the rest