A Book a Week

Finished August 30, 2022 This is a favorite book from my childhood. As with many books, I enjoyed it so much better as an adult. I wept openly in the car as I listened to it, both from the poignant story and from missing the time in my life when I first met the characters in this book. The actor they chose to do the reading did a wonderful job. He sounds like the best grandpa ever, and makes the listener want to settle in against one's granddad to hear a good yarn about a time and place in the past. So glad I went across the channel with the Assateague islanders on Pony Penning Day again, as I did when I was 10.   

Finished August 23, 2022 This out-of-print book is one of my most prized possessions. I got it because I realized that I fully understand Marxism, yet I opposed it. I knew I had to learn what Marx thought, what he proposed.  I did not want to read one of the many books about Marxism in which the author softens or modernizes parts of it, overlays modern interpretations, and ignores the historical outworking of Marx's ideas which have resulted in famine, terror, and death. So I decided to read a book written by a conservative, the great economist Thomas Sowell, who used to be a Marxist. He, I thought, would have a clear understanding of Marx's work as a former devotee. He would also have a reality-based assessment of the workability of Marxist ideas. I was not interested in books written about Marxism that attempt to gloss over or "fix" his philosophy in light of the realities of history whenever and wherever Marx's ideas have been tried. These books tinker with his...

Finished July 28, 2022 This is a tight, fast-paced book that combines historical narrative and supreme story telling. Somehow, Crichton manages to weave an accurate mystery from a story to which every reader knows the ending. Nevertheless, it's an edge-of-your seat telling of this robbery of gold from a train in 19th Century London. Crichton also paints a vivid picture of life in Victorian England at various socio-economic levels. This is an intriguing, tragic, lively story, told at a pace and in a depth of scene-setting that shows a level of skill few writers achieve.