Reviews About Employment

‘The belief that life- work included- is essentially miserable was for centuries one of mankind’s primary bulwarks against bitterness, a way to avoid dashed hopes.‘ de Botton.

Tony Dokoupil made a very good review of 2 books— ‘The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work’ (Alain de Botton) and ‘Shop Class as Soulcraft’. He wrote: ‘…with the creation of meritocratic America, toil was transformed into… a way for people to measure themselves and others.’
In his book ‘Shop Class as Soulcraft’, Matthew Crawford advices that ‘…more people should consider manual labor, which offers the comfort of objective results and… ‘quiet and easy”. Dokoupil concludes excellently:

‘In the future, the difference between the haves and have-nots won’t be who wheedled their way to an A-minus in art history so much as whose work cannot be outsourced overseas’.

Book Review: <em>The Prince</em> by Niccolò Machiavelli

Author: Niccolò Machiavelli
Title: The Prince
Publication Info: New York : Knopf, c1992. (1532)  (read on DailyLit)
ISBN: 0679410449

Summary/Review:

This is a book I never wanted to read mainly due to my preconceptions about what it meant to be Machiavellian.  But I figured it would be worth reading over 54 installments on DailyLit. Shortly after beginning reading I came across this Britannica article about reconsidering The Prince as well.  A short summary of The Prince is that it is a guidebook on how to be a successful monarch.  He basically sets out standards for a Prince to balance kindness and cruelty, avoiding being hated but also avoiding being seen as a patsy, and appear to be virtuous without always being virtuous.  Machiavelli’s directness often comes across as comical and according to some commentarties I’ve read may have been intended to be satire.  In toto, The Prince is not quite what I expected although it is also not necessarily a book I’ll love.  But it’s worth reading a book I don’t want to read every once in a while.

Favorite Passages:

And he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget.

Because men, when they receive good from him of whom they were expecting evil, are bound more closely to their benefactor; thus the people quickly become more devoted to him than if he had been raised to the principality by their favours

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you.
And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.

Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.

And this question can be reasoned thus: the prince who has more to fear from the people than from foreigners ought to build fortresses, but he who has more to fear from foreigners than from the people ought to leave them alone. … For this reason the best possible fortress is:not to be hated by the people, because, although you may hold the fortresses, yet they will not save you if the people hate you, for there will never be wanting foreigners to assist a people who have taken arms against you.

Recommended books: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel by Salman Rushdie
Rating: **

Review: The Monsters of Templeton

The Monsters of Templeton.  Lauren Groff.  Fiction.

The only real problem with Lauren Groff’s lovely debut novel is that I read her short fiction collection Delicate Edible Birds first and gave it 5 Stars (a rarity on this blog) – and so she had set the bar incredibly high in my mind.  She didn’t quite clear the bar of Delicate but I was thoroughly engrossed, enchanted, and enthralled by Groff’s Templeton world.

The Good: Groff sets the stage beautifully as Willie Upton returns to her childhood home in infamous Templeton (loosely based on James Fenimore Cooper’s Cooperstown) with her tail between her legs after an affair gone awry with her professor and a pregnancy to show for it.

The book opens with a Loch Ness type monster long believed to exist in the town’s nearly bottomless lake to be found dead.  It’s a great entry into the book – a book of myth, history, legend, and the loss of innocence that comes with development both in a town and in a person.  It sets a perfect stage for everything that Willie learns and the evolution that must come with those lessons.

Without a doubt however, the most fascinating aspect of Groff’s book – is her sublime blending of the contemporary story of Willie, with the history of Templeton as she searches for clues from the town’s past to find her real father.  It’s a rich tapestry that must have been quite an undertaking to weave so perfectly.  There were areas that dragged for me a little personally, but only I think because I was sometimes anxious to get back to Willie and her more present (and pressing) woes.  Overall, and especially as a framework to hang Willie’s story on, it worked tremendously.

The Bad: There is nothing really bad to report in this book.  The ending overall, is the only part that didn’t work for me as well as I would have liked.  I found myself disappointed in the final arc, particularly in how Groff handles the pregnancy, which toyed with my emotions unnecessarily and for me personally didn’t resolve as authentically as I had come to expect in the pages prior.

Additionally (and I won’t ruin the ending by getting too detailed) but I felt the resolution with Willie finding her father was a bit neat and phoned in considering it was the arc that held the entire book together.

Clarissa’s arc also faltered a bit at the end.  She’s a character I loved, but like the arc of Willie’s father, the end of Clarissa’s arc is a bit abrupt and too easy…it didn’t feel earned the way the rest of the book did.

So I suppose I did feel let down by the ending of Monsters in general, as I liked all of these arcs (the pregnancy, the father search, and Clarissa) but I didn’t feel they concluded with the same levels of excellence I had come to expect based on the rest of the book.  As complaints go, not so bad.

The Ugly. Nothing.  This book is stunningly written.  Groff’s prose is absolutely pitch perfect, with not a word out of place.

4.0 Stars

Gettysburg: The Film, The Books, The Battle

Little Round Top Union Breastworks (Source: The National Archives) Brady

Each July we bring out the film Gettysburg and watch it in a couple of sittings. (My husband can’t wait for the four plus hour epic to come out in Blu-ray.)

I’ll be the first to admit that it’s more than a bit hokey here and there but the scene of the defense of Little Round Top by the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment is always a highlight.

My current reading for class discusses the legacy of bayonet charges from the Mexican War and the debate over the frequency of their use during the American Civil War still goes on. Undebatable is the inspired use of a downhill bayonet charge by Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and its standing on the list of well-known actions at Gettysburg.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

I’ve been enjoying the perspectives of several ACW bloggers on their top ten books on Gettysburg which Brett over a TOCWOC has nicely organized for us here.

Check them out. Very much worth perusing.

Book Review: A Gathering of Finches *WIN COPY*

Title: A Gathering of Finches

Author: Jane Kirkpatrick

Publisher’s Synopsis: Based on historical characters and events, A Gathering of Finches tells the story of a turn-of-the-century Oregon coastal couple and the consequences of their choices, as seen through the eyes of the wife, her sister, and her Indian maid. Along the way, the reader will discover reasons to trust that money and possessions can’t buy happiness or forgiveness, nor permit us to escape the consequences of our choices. The story emphasizes the message that real meaning is found in the relationships we nurture and in living our lives in obedience to God.

Wow.  Where do I begin.  I didn’t know how I’d like the book when it arrived.  It looked interesting, but because of the unusual beginning, I expected to love or hate it.  Instead, I developed a love/hate relationship with the main character Cassie.  She has all of the spunk and vivacity of an amazing main character, and yet she’s stubborn, irascible, and so very lost– seeking that which will never fulfil her.  I found myself wanting to scream at her in nearly every chapter, “You’re making your own misery, woman!”

The most amazing part of this story is that it is a fictionalized true story.  Cassie Stearns Simpson was a real woman.  This larger-than-life character was real and did many of the very things written about in this book.  I found it difficult to read the story and I’ll give away the book if I’m not careful.  Suffice it to say, she made many terrible and selfish choices that affected her life until the day she died.  Her life was dedicated to “doing her own thing” and without the help or sanction of the Lord.

The author leaves us with the impression that near the end of her life she finally surrendered to the Lord (the book is kind of a fictionalized biography so it starts at the birth of her adulthood and carries you through to her death).  I like how the author was careful to leave it as an impression and a hope rather than tell the reader what they might want to hear or leave us with the despair of a life wasted. She balanced Christian hope with probability and left us trusting that the Lord alone knows and He cares far more than we ever could.

It wasn’t an easy read.  It wasn’t a happy story, and yet it wasn’t morose.  It was real.  In this age of an almost insatiable thirst for realness… reality… this book gives it all with a healthy reminder that just because something is real, doesn’t mean it is right.

I never thought I’d read a book that so thoroughly dealt with the topics depicted in this story and not feel sullied or tainted by them, but Mrs. Kirkpatrick managed to do it with a sincerity that only an excellent writer can manage.  Five stars on this one.  I can’t recommend it enough, however,  if you’re looking for fluff… keep on looking.

Giving this book away.  I have drawings to do and ship for already so I’m making this one short.  You’ve got until 9:00 p.m. PST Sunday so that I can ship everything waiting to go out on Monday.

Review of Martin Millar's "Milk, Sulphate, and Alby Starvation"

Bookforum, July 3, 2009

An air of comical amphetamine dependence pervades Martin Millar’s debut novel, Milk, Sulphate, and Alby Starvation. The protagonist, Alby, is a twenty-six-year-old paranoiac and small-time sulphate (i.e., speed) dealer convinced that both Chinese gangsters and the Milk Marketing Board have contracts out on his life. The book’s plot is chopped into raucous little sections that seem to reflect the characters’ short attention spans, while its sentences, in their haste to catalog the chaos, often forgo punctuation entirely. Indeed, one comes to feel thoroughly under the influence of Millar’s lively, hurtling prose.

Milk was first published in 1987, when Millar was thirty and living in Brixton, in South London. A center of urban decay, gang violence, and ethnic conflict, the area was nonetheless an exciting place to be. The narrator describes the streets as rife with “punks and rastas and communists and any other filthy degenerate you care to name, all of them wearing appalling old ripped up second-hand clothing with their hair in bizarre cuts and colours.” Alby is almost willfully destitute, as any display of ambition risks upsetting the slacker equilibrium, wherein spending one’s unemployment checks at the pub is de rigueur, and he retreats at the least sign of pretension: “She puts on the Gymslips who are a sort of female punk band well not exactly punk but sort of well fuck it I’m not a music critic she puts on the Gymslips.”

Millar paints Alby as a kind of punk-rock Bertie Wooster, who, abandoned by Jeeves, has been left to fend off the assault of daily life on his own. He finds such tasks as drying lettuce overwhelming—further evidence of life’s impossibilities. Mirrors, he thinks, are “malicious objects that are out to make me feel bad.” To deal with the stress of it all, he and his only friends, a pair of anarchic lesbians named Fran and Julie, routinely take “enough sulphate to levitate a rhinoceros.” The novel’s humor stems both from the copious drug consumption and from the reader’s suspicion that Alby’s troubles are self-inflicted. Yet his ostensibly speed-induced paranoia turns out to be well founded: A Brazilian-trained, female assassin is trying to kill him, and a Chinese drug financier is tracking him down. Brixton, we’re reminded, is a legitimately, though often hilariously, dangerous place to live.

Millar has written many novels since Milk’s original publication, including Lux the Poet (1988) and Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me (2002). He is frequently labeled a cult author and would be unlikely to claim Milk as a work of high literature. Yet the story consistently impresses. It is told alternately in the first and third persons—the former reserved for Alby, the better to explore his strange, afflicted consciousness; we see him both as a fully developed human and as a comic-book caricature of young, urban degeneracy. The novel is similarly fractured: Blunt portrayals of squalor and loneliness coexist with fanciful depictions of psychic nurses, magic crowns, and Zen-master video-gamers. A low-life fairy tale, Milk preserves a strong sense of hard-earned realism, excusing the reader for any guilty pleasure he or she might take in reading it.

Writing Book Reviews for Publishing Company

I’ve been hired by Atlantic Publishing Company to read and review three books for publication on several sites.  The books I received in .pdf form to review are:

1. The Secret Power of Blogging
2. Painting the Body Beautiful
3. eBay Income Advanced

I started with Painting the Body Beautiful first to get it out of the way.  It was only 122 pages with very little to read.  It included the steps taken and materials used to, as it says, paint bodies.  A few of the results were stunning, but many weren’t that interesting to me.  There were a few bodies that I think should not have been used as examples for the book, too!  Some bodies are better behind real clothes rather than clothes that have been painted on.  (The same is true for real clothes that look as if they’ve been painted on.)

I’m now reading The Secret Power of Blogging, which had a slow start with information about the definition and history of blogging.  By the fourth chapter, things get a little more interesting – at least for my personal use of blogs.  I have two blogs right now, both on WordPress.  In addition to the blog you are now reading, I have a blog attached to my business website, Sheila Karner Photography.

I will post my reviews of these books as separate entries on this blog before sending them to the publisher.