Books and Ideas (19)

I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.

Tender Is the Night. F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Why read it? Novel. The theme is dependence. The weak person depends on the strong person. When the weak person becomes strong, the strong person becomes weak and dependent on the now strong person. Nicole is a wealthy mental patient who is desperately in love with and dependent on her young psychiatrist, Dick Diver, whom she marries. As she achieves mental stability and emotional independence, he deteriorates because he has become dependent on her. She leaves him for a man who will be her lover and her caretaker, and Dick begins an irreversible decline into alcoholism and dissolution. Portraits from the "Roaring 20's."

Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman. Thomas Hardy.
Why read it? Novel. Part of the charm of this novel, in spite of its tragic story of a good girl ruined, is Hardy’s description of the local villages, farms, nature in the changing seasons and customs.

This Side of Paradise. F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Why read it? The contrast between the superficial college kid whose main interest was flirting with girls as he attends Princeton and the world-weary, cynical, regretful, not-yet-thirty-year-old after serving as an officer in France during WWI. The novel is remarkable for its detailed descriptions of the early “Jazz age” and the “Lost Generation.”

A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Why read it? This book, together with Theodore Sorenson’s Kennedy tells the reader what JFK learned about being President. When one member of his staff said he had no training for the office to which JFK was appointing him, JFK replied that he too had no education in how to be a President. They would both have to learn on the job. Both books are long, but very readable.

Time Present, Time Past. Bill Bradley.
Why read it? Bradley wrote this book (and others) in order to become a Presidential candidate in the year 2000 election. He didn’t achieve his goal of becoming President, but his book offers a view of some of the issues the next President must consider: the need to renew people’s faith in the government, the problems of racism, uniting the many cultures in our society, urban education, the use of downsizing to increase corporate profits and the nature of politics in the 21st century. Bradley says he wants to use Presidential power to alter the national self-perception.

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. Eric Hoffer.
Why read it? Hoffer thinks “true believers” are frustrated people who seek to lose their personalities in a cause, any cause, for which they are willing to do anything, even give their lives. Hoffer has thought deeply about mass movements and seems to put those thoughts on paper in a random fashion. What’s missing is transitions from one paragraph to another. However, the ideas are connected. The reader has to make the connections. Hoffer explores the many implications of the “true believer” type of personality.

Twelve Moons of the Year. Hal Borland. Ed. by Barbara Dodge Borland.
Why read it? These essays are beautifully written, short gems with not a word wasted, describing the changing seasons in rural New England. Hal Borland first published these essays in the New York Times. Their subject was the seasons in Connecticut where he lived. He wanted to show New Yorkers that there was life outside of New York City. He expresses the spirit of the seasons using all of the senses. His essays, one for each day of the year, are “sheer celebrations of life.”