Books and Ideas (3)

Books and Ideas (03)

I read for ideas. What follows is my attempt to summarize the main ideas of books I have read.

A Collection of Essays. George Orwell.
In one of his most famous essays, Orwell rails against the misuse of the English language. Pointing out these mistakes is useful, but he makes the same mistakes in his own writing—and admits it. In another essay, “Shooting an Elephant,” he learns that the conquering British Empire is at the mercy of the people it has conquered.

A Country Doctor. Sarah Orne Jewett.
Novel. Nan decides to become a doctor instead of marrying for which she is severely criticized by friends and relatives, but not by her father, a doctor. In Jewett’s day, Nan could not do both.

The Country of the Pointed Firs. Sarah Orne Jewett.
Novel. A series of stories about the people of the rural seacoast of Maine, whose lives are both rich and lonely. After reading this novel, I learned why rural people are in the habit of just “dropping in” unannounced.

Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. Howard Gardner.
Distinguishes between creative thinking which is diverse and convergent thinking that looks only for right answers.

Criticism: The Major Texts. Walter Jackson Bate, ed.
This book is a textbook that contains the original statements on literary and artistic criticism from Plato to Edmund Wilson.

Crossing the Threshold of Hope. Pope John Paul II.
The Pope confronts the most persistent questions about religion. Example: Why does God permit suffering?

The Da Vinci Code: A Novel. Dan Brown.
Novel. Contains all the ingredients of a best-seller, but one of its ideas makes serious assertions about Jesus Christ.

Day One: Before Hiroshima and After. Peter Wyden.
Account of the problems in communication that occurred on America’s way to developing the atomic bomb. Disturbing retelling of the sufferings of the Japanese people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Balanced account of the reasons for dropping the atomic bomb—the fanatical defense of the homeland by the Japanese military that would have cost at least 500,000 American lives.

Bonfire of the Vanities. Tom Wolfe.
Novel. Goal of the American Justice System: Don’t do what’s right; do what is going to make you look good in the media. Affluent lawyer winds up on the other side of the law, although he has not caused the death of a black teenager who was attempting to rob him. Innocence is proved guilty.

Decline and Fall. Evelyn Waugh.
A wacky novel with wacky characters. Send-up of public schools and prisons in England.

Deephaven. Sarah Orne Jewett.
Novel. Two young women spend an idyllic summer vacation in Deephaven, once a thriving Maine seaport town. Will remind readers of their own idyllic summer vacations.