a great musically oriented techie book

Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer by Trevor Pinch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My daughter recently attended Moogfest and chatting with her sparked an interest in learning more about Robert Moog and his synthesizer. I love music and am an electrical engineer by training, so my interest is both musical and technical. This is a great overview and history of not only Moog and his company's devices, but also other analog music devices leading up to and following the hay days of Moog modular and Minimoog synthesizers. I enjoyed the story and the facts, and the especially the account of the interplay between musicians, engineers, and sales people in the development of these devices. I also found very interesting the popular and famous artists who used the various synthesizers in their recorded and performance music. This is a great read for a musically oriented techie like me. I highly recommend it!

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one of the best authors I've ever read

What are People for?: Essays by Wendell Berry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was recently introduced to Wendell Berry by my son-in-law, who has read several of his books. I borrowed this collection of essays from him and am blown away by the excellent writing and thinking that are expressed in "What are People for? Essays". Mr. Berry is one of the best authors I've ever read, and his wisdom and carefully reasoned thoughts are in the high league of C.S. Lewis and others. While one may not agree with all his positions or conclusions, the wisdom, thought, and reason expressed are superb, with the quality of the writing to match. I am looking forward to reading many more books by Wendell Berry as i can find them.

I also would like to watch this excellent documentary on Mr. Berry again:
LOOK & SEE: A PORTRAIT OF WENDELL BERRY
http://lookandseefilm.com/

For an excellent example of his excellent thought and work, a more recent example is found at:
"Caught in the middle: On abortion and homosexuality"
https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2013-03/caught-middle

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we have been there before

Pocket History of the United States by Henry Steele Commager
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is one the best reading choices i've made in a long while. I had not read any American history since i was in high school, and i could not have cared less about it then (sorry H.S. teachers, it was not your fault). Re-reading history as a grown adult is a whole different experience. The relevance of persons, events and policies is much clearer after living the majority of your adult life interacting with the results and consequences of them. I have come up with a list of presidents i want to read more about: Jefferson, Wilson, FDR. And as dysfunctional as things seem at this moment of our history, i have learned that we have been there before and somehow survived. Therefore, i come away with a sense of hope that somehow, once again, the American spirit that created this amalgamation of peoples will show the path out of this, yet another, dark chapter in our history. Moving on from this book, i'll read Howard Zinn's classic "A People's History of the United States" next, then some books related to my favorite president list. Here's hoping we are not too far gone to survive.



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not my imagination...

So, as you probably know from Goodreads, I'm reading a book on US History.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215448.Pocket_History_of_the_United_States

I am nearly done with the book (my best reading choice in a good while), and am reading the section on Nixon. As i'm reading about Nixon's shenanigans, i'm thinking "this is so much like what Trump is doing, we have been through this before!". And just now, i see this on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/ChadHGriffin/status/862069572282839040

so i guess it was NOT my imagination!

what a shitstorm we are in (again)

the plot thickens...

I am really loving Season 2 of "The Man in the High Castle"! I have not had time to binge it yet, but just finished episode 5 of S2 and wow, Wow, WOW! Loving all the angles and dimensions to this alternative history story! And i love the strong and realistic characters! Excellent.

season_2.0

Last night, we finally made it though the last episode of Season 2 of Mr. Robot! (that doesn't count rewatching it to try to put all the pieces together). We are loving this show, and looking forward to season_3.0.

another dystopian tale

After reading, in quick succession, three classic dystopian novels, (Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451) i decided that i am way overdue to re-read another dystopian tale, one that is rooted in historical fact - the History of the United States. It may seem odd that i would group the history of our nation with these other three obviously dysfunctional novels. Isn't our nation the great lighthouse for freedom, justice, equality, opportunity, and peace? Well, the U.S. has certainly been kind to me and my family. But how has our nation treated the "others"? People of color, women, our native people, immigrants from all over the world (my grandparents included), people of other religious traditions, people without religion, people of different sexual and gender identities, people without economic means... the list goes on and on. As i revisit the story of our nation, i expect to find answers regarding these and other questions about our nation, and how we compare to these other dystopian stories in relation to ALL of our people. I'm looking forward to rediscovering the history of the U.S. all over again.

a fun read

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found the concept of this story compelling; a "new" person waking up in someone else's body and life situation. The modeling of amnesia in this way was pretty cool. But to me, the telling of the story felt contrived and shallow. There were a few times it almost grabbed me - the reunion with a family member for example. And there was no shortage of plot turns, action, and suspense. I did not expect it to wrap up in the way it did. But in the end, it felt two dimensional, and oddly enough, familiar. The message and method of the story seemed to me like a combination of a bunch of stories i already knew: X-Men, Harry Potter, The Hitchhikers Guide, Clue, Ghostbusters, MIB - as if they were all thrown together into a big box and shaken vigorously. In the end, the story felt too familiar to grab me afresh, although it must have been great fun to write. I really wanted to love this book, two of my Goodreads friends loved it, but i just couldn't pull it off. It's a fun read.

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excellent Amazon series!

So glad i went back and started over on this excellent Amazon series The Man in the High Castle! Looking forward to a Season 2 binge soon!

delightfully written travelogue

A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"A Russian Journal" is a delightfully written travelogue chronicling John Steinbeck's two month visit to Stalin's Russia during 1947. He hoped to capture the Russian people and lifestyle as it was. And to supplement his writing, he took along Robert Capa, the famous wartime photographer to add photos. The book is full of Steinbeck's wit and charm, and feels very human. The stories and experiences are not relayed as cold dry facts, but rather are told in a warm and at times humorous way. Steinbeck lends his wonderful prose style to the account, and includes not only what he and Capa see and hear, but also comments on their experience traveling and lodging in a Russia still rebuilding after the vast Nazi destruction. This is not an academic work, nor is it a complete reference or guide on the subject of Russia or the Russian people in 1947. And it is not at all political. Rather, it is a enjoyable and fun account of two fellows on a quest to see Russia and met her people. I loved reading this, Steinbeck is one of the master storytellers.

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brilliant!

brilliant!

one crazy-ass story

On the Road by Jack Kerouac
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

How very serendipitous that i should finish this book on the author's 95th birthday! RIP Mr. Jack Kerouac. This is one crazy-ass story. I don't know how much of it actually happened, but i believe it is based on real events. It has been referred to as the "Huckleberry Finn" for the author's generation. This story is one (no, actually, MANY) wild ride(s)! It is said to define a generation, or at least a sub-culture of a generation. I just realized that Jack Kerouac and my father were born in the same year - 1922. I am pretty sure that my dad experienced this period of history differently than Sal and Dean in the story, but even with the differences, i see some similarities. Sal's background was different than that of my dad. I do know however that my dad loved to travel. Dad, rather than taking the bus or a travel bureau car, preferred his motorcycle. I do not know how widely he traveled before settling down with my mom, but he never lost the love of traveling across the US and eventually around the world. We made many trips between southern California and the Ozarks of Missouri in my childhood, and dad continued to travel after us kids were grown and gone. I wonder if that love of travel and the open road was truly a part of his generation.

As i said earlier, this story is a series of wild journeys taken in a very different time, but they do capture a freedom and inquisitiveness that continues to be a part of our culture. This was probably the last days an adventure of this type could be undertaken, with the Interstate highway system just around the corner. Although William Least Heat-Moon was able to experience the same flavor of adventure in his excellent Blue Highways journey, with decidedly less flamboyance. Maybe the blue highways are a part of all of us. I certainly like to unplug and hit the road to see where it leads, and hope to do it again soon.

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ps. Oh boy, a movie version http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337692/

pps. The movie did NOT do justice to the book and missed major themes. Don't waste 2 hours watching it.

too close to home for comfort

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow, this was a great book to follow up Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"! The central message of this classic story was not what i expected, but the close resemblance to our American culture and society today was downright creepy and scary. We are literally watching this unfold in so many aspects of our culture. This is really happening. I got the creeps when i heard the upcoming season of DWTS mentioned with anticipation and excitement. This is too close to home for comfort. Wow!

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what it means to be human

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 6 by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

this is a really nicely done graphic novel presentation of the entire text of Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", which is the novel on which he film Blade Runner was based. This is my first reading of the novel, but i plan to return to it in its non-graphic format later this year. A great story which gives the reader much to think about related to what it means to be human. This is a beautifully done series.

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Vi :)

another must-read

Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a collection of two classic works by Aldous Huxley. I have heard about "Brave New World" nearly all my adult life, but had never read it. Written in 1931, "Brave New World" is a brilliant, chillingly prophetic story of what life could be like in a controlled utopian world 700+ years in our future. Huxley's keen foresight, wisdom, and conceptual depth and breadth are amazing. Some of the details of the tale may seem a little dated or "weird", but the concepts are dead on target. A picture of a future society designed for peace, happiness, abundance, and efficiency is painted with enough detail to portray both the perceived advantages, but also the dark dangers to the individual. The reader cannot help but connect the events and concepts in this story to what we have seen unfold in our world over the past 80+ years since it was written. This tale serves as a serious warning of what happens when individual freedom and humanity are traded wholesale for the well being of the group or society, and what is lost in the process.

"Brave New World Revisited" is a collection of essays written by Huxley in 1958 to address and update many of the concepts and predictions laid out in the 1931 tale. One by one he lays out the various aspects of "Brave New World" that have taken shape in merely 27 years since the original work was written. Reading each of these essays which connect the dots between the 1931 predictions and the 1958 reality, it is far too easy to extrapolate them to today, 2017. The catalysts which accelerated these predictions toward the 1958 period are even stronger today; technology, overpopulation, over-organization, instant communication via the internet, mass media controlled by corporations and the top 1%, etc. Again, the reader cannot help but connect major aspects in warped utopia of "Brave New World" to specifically what has unfolded and continues to unfold TODAY! The warning is urgent and frightening. I especially loved the last 2-3 essays in which Huxley puts forth some potential ways to avert his predictions, and to win back the humanity and community of our species. Sadly, in spite of his 1958 proposals of ways to turn things around, the past 59 years have not seen any perceivable reversal, but rather an acceleration toward the bizarre utopia portrayed in 1931. Humanity is not winning. Rather, we are happily along for the ride down the drain, in our soma induced bliss. It is very scary. This is a must-read. (see also https://www.huxley.net/ )

A side note: Aldous Huxley died on Nov 22, 1963, the same day as C.S. Lewis, and most notably, President John F. Kennedy. Because of JFK, both the Lewis and Huxley deaths were a footnote in the media. Having read nearly all of the C.S. Lewis works, and now some of Huxley, i feel that i should find something by JFK to read - just to be complete. :)

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Beware

1984 by George Orwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had not read 1984 since i was a high school student, under the ominous cloud of my fundamentalist evangelical brainwashing. I had planned to re-read it recently, in light of the nature of politics in the U.S. this year, but did not have a copy. After hearing that Amazon SOLD OUT of the title around the time of the Trump inauguration, i had the luck of running across a copy in the Little Free Library box in our neighborhood!!! (https://littlefreelibrary.org/)
WOW! This book is amazing. I can't imagine being able to absorb the message and depth of this book at high school age. The warnings and prophecy conveyed through this superbly told tale are not only brilliant, but have deep implications in the society in which we live in today's world. It is equally relevant in the U.S. as it is in other "modern" nations and governments. It is unnerving to see so many of the dystopian concepts and techniques used by Big Brother being used by the U.S. government today, especially in this neo-GOP regime that took control of the White House and Congress in January. This book deserves its status as a classic, and should be read and discussed by every literate citizen while it is still permitted. The warnings conveyed are real dangers that threaten us all today. Beware.

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Reminder: Book Sale this weekend!

Reminder: Book Sale this weekend!
With the closing of Main Library for a two-year renovation, the Friends of the Durham Library book sales will be moving to Northgate Mall. There will be a final book sale at Main Library on Saturday, February 11, 2017, from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. and Sunday, February 12, 2017 from 1 – 4 p.m.
https://durhamcountylibrary.org/friends/

well researched and articulated manifesto

Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In by Bernie Sanders
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I arrived a little late to the Bernie Sanders party, but i'm glad i got to read his latest book. If our political landscape had more people with values and ethics like his, we indeed could have "A Future to Believe In". In the first 1/3 of the book Senator Sanders tells this story of his political life, up through the end of the primary. The last 2/3 of the book is a well researched and articulated manifesto to save our nation and our people. It is loaded with statistics and data, and explanations of how things political and governing work (actually, DON'T work). Lots of good information to put to use as we reaffirm our fight to reclaim our nation for our people - ALL our people. Great read that i highly recommend!

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a choice collection

The Long Valley by John Steinbeck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a choice collection of Steinbeck's short stories. I enjoyed them very much, both in the stories and in the telling. This collection also includes The Red Pony stories, which i had already read. Reading them a second time helped reveal to me their special nature, parts i missed the first time through. I definitely recommend this collection!

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