Archives: Book Reports

One, such as myself, who is from time to time con­fused about right and wrong, should turn to the teach­ings of oth­ers. This seems self-evi­dent. How strange then it is that I tend to go about it indi­rect­ly, read­ing of the lives of oth­ers hop­ing to be inspired, or read­ing self-help kinds of books that gain my trust by pathol­o­giz­ing and explain­ing behav­ior while falling short of clear direction.

Being Upright has nei­ther of these short­com­ings. Reb Ander­son starts from … Read the rest

I’d heard so many good things about this book that I was excit­ed to read it. I was hop­ing for an insight­ful the­o­ry book that would inspire new ways of think­ing about the use of type and typography.

Instead, what I got was a pret­ty good begin­ner’s primer. This is a very prac­ti­cal book and cov­ers a lot of ground, but with­out much depth. There’s a lot of good stuff here for avoid­ing com­mon design mis­takes and for acquir­ing a … Read the rest

Yes, a bit more of the S/M lit­er­a­ture. While it’s a genre that holds a cer­tain inter­est, this was nowhere near as com­pelling as Car­rie’s Sto­ry.

A few things both­ered me about it. First, I felt that Ms Corum crossed the line between dom­i­nance and bru­tal­i­ty. So sure, maybe that’s the point of fic­tion, to go beyond what we’d be com­fort­able with in real life, but it was more than just dis­com­fort, it was dis­taste I experienced.

Ms Corum’s … Read the rest

Read­ing Free­dom and Uni­ty took a long time and a lot of effort. At times I won­dered if it were real­ly worth it. Thank­ful­ly, the far­ther along I went, the more inter­est­ing it got. Most­ly I attribute that to the chrono­log­i­cal pro­gres­sion of most his­to­ry books, includ­ing this one. The more recent events were ones which I have more con­text with which to relate. I have hazy mem­o­ries of grade-school Social Stud­ies lessons about the migra­tions of Native Amer­i­can tribes … Read the rest

A clear and engag­ing mem­oir, Dreams From My Father reads noth­ing at all like the writ­ing of a man run­ning for the Pres­i­den­cy. Oba­ma has a tal­ent for being simul­ta­ne­ous­ly plain-spo­ken and eru­dite; this comes through his prose as well as his ora­tion. I con­fess I’ve become a bit of a fan of his pod­cast because I enjoy lis­ten­ing to him. He unrav­els con­tro­ver­sy with­out didac­ti­cism and whether speak­ing from the heart or the mind he dis­plays uncom­mon sense. Right … Read the rest

Noth­ing like some good smart smut. It’s nice to know that there are some authors out there writ­ing sexy books that don’t insult our intel­li­gence. What can I say? This book was refresh­ing like a cool drink of water. While explic­it, it was nev­er cheap and nev­er stupid.

Car­rie’s Sto­ry is billed as “An Erot­ic S/M Nov­el” and as such there was a lot that I got to read that I have no desire to try. The whole pony-train­ing thing? … Read the rest

It’s not coin­ci­den­tal that I’m read­ing the books writ­ten by pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates. I’m grow­ing inter­est­ed in what the peo­ple who may become our lead­ers have to say as I grow more weary of what the pun­dits and the crit­ics do.

In Pro­files in Courage, John F. Kennedy wrote about the courage of Sen­a­tors mak­ing impor­tant choic­es in their polit­i­cal careers. I remem­ber feel­ing a sliv­er of dis­ap­point­ment that there was not any atten­tion paid to oth­er vari­eties of courage or … Read the rest

It par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turbs me to read what Shir­er writes about Ger­many both before and after the Sec­ond World War. Where I expect­ed to read insights that would deep­en a super­fi­cial under­stand­ing of events gleaned from eighth-grade His­to­ry class­es, I’m pre­sent­ed with an account­ing in direct con­tra­dic­tion to many of the points that were pre­sent­ed as fact when I was in school.

My teach­ers can per­haps be for­giv­en for down­play­ing Cham­ber­lain’s role. His sin being opti­mism and a blind­ness to his … Read the rest

Robin Sham­burg’s Mis­tress Ruby Ties It Togeth­er: A Dom­i­na­trix Takes on Sex, Pow­er, and the Secret Lives of Upstand­ing Cit­i­zens is a mem­oir that tells more about Ms Sham­burg than it does about sex, BDSM, or soci­ety. While it offers up some tasty anec­dotes, large­ly at the expense of her for­mer clients, this read was sur­pris­ing­ly light on insight about the world she tried to expose to the reader.

At the very end we’re treat­ed to a bit of phi­los­o­phy … Read the rest