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During a recent club meeting I noticed a pile of books on top of a table in front of the sociology department with a sign tapped to it saying “Free books!”. Being the book blogger I am, I couldn’t resist. Most of the books on the table were instructor’s editions of textbooks that are now out of date, but I did find three books on the Holocaust, three on sociology, and one about womanhood and poverty in the rural South.
- Hard Times Cotton Mill Girls: Personal Histories of Womanhood and Poverty in the South (Victoria Byerly)
- Who Rules America? (G. William Domhoff)
- Religion in Society: A Sociology of Religion (Ronald L. Johnstone)
- Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews (François Furet)
- My Germany: A Jewish Writer Returns to the World His Parents Escaped (Lev Raphael)
- How Dark the Heavens: 1400 Days in the Grip of Nazi Terror (Sidney Iwens)
- Witness to the Holocaust (Azriel Eisenberg)
- The Meaning of Sociology (Joel M. Charon)
I really only a few minutes to flip through the books as I grabbed them because the building was about to clothes, but those I decide not to read will probably make their way up on PaperBackSwap. One of my friends grabbed ten random books to post on PBS just so she could get her free credit for listing her first ten books.
I’m quite sure this book wins for longest title. Ironic considering how thin the book is with just under 130 pages. Written by a member of a Plain group — the Old Order River Brethren — the book covers a Lancaster Amish Wedding, Old Order Mennonite Weddings, baptism, selecting a minister in Plain groups, Sunday services, death and a funeral, and briefly discusses holiday celebrations amongst the Amish, Mennonites, and other Plain groups. Scott introduces each topic through fictional characters set in real locations as he explains the nonfictional organization, execution, and religious ideals of the Plain community at hand during special events.
Particularly of interest to me where what happens at an Amish wedding, how the Amish choose a minister, and the overall differences between the Amish, Mennonites, and other Plain groups during their special occasions. For example, I did not know that the Old Order Brethren do not require baptism in the church before marriage unlike the Amish and Mennonites nor that the Brethren immerse people in water during baptism rather than pouring water on their heads like other Plain groups. All the book is full of interesting information, one thing about this book that did bother me was that Scott insisted on restating everything that occurs during an Amish wedding, for example, and what’s missing/added when for each other Plain group rather than just stating what’s missing/added. (Kind of hard to explain here, but if you picked up the book you would quickly realize it.)
This book is perfect for those that are interested in the Plain groups, particularly wedding and other special occasion customs (no white wedding dresses!), but I found I knew most of the information pertaining to the Amish from my other readings. The Old Order Mennonites and Brethren were really what’s new to me.
Book Mentioned:
- Scott, Stephen. The Amish Wedding and Other Special Occasions of the Old Order Communities. Intercourse, PA: Good Books , 1988. Print. 128 pgs. ISBN: 0934672199. Source: PaperBackSwap.
Probably the class I’m most excited about this semester is U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East Since 1945. I’m really interested in the Middle East; so much so that this area of the world has its own category on my blog. And I think this class be interesting simply because it covers American interference in the region rather than trying to deny U.S. involvement in, for example, the Iranian coup. My professor has assigned several books for the class, but we’re using his book — American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945 by Douglas Little — as a primer throughout the whole course. In addition to Professor Little’s book, we’re also going to be reading:
- All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer
- The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
- The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace by Aaron David Miller
- The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam
I’m also going to be taking a class under the field of urban geography examining the historical role of cities and the present day migration of people to cities. More than half the world’s population now lives in a city so I think this is a really relevant class to take. We’re going to be using Urban Geography by Michael Pacione.
The third class I’m taking this semester studies the economics of the environment and natural resources. Rather than looking at the economic impact of environmental policy, this class examines environmental problems and how they can be solved by economics. For the class we’re going to be using The Economics of the Environment by Peter Berck and Gloria Helfand. My professor actually test drove a copy of this book before it was published, and she says she restructured the class around this book. Interesting.
One of my classes covering the transformation of the Earth by human action does not have an assigned textbook, but my professor recommended A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations by Clive Ponting for background information and those that are really interested in the topic at hand. I picked up a copy, but I’m not quite sure how much time I will have this coming semester to read it. I’m also taking intermediate Spanish and therefore will be reading Enfoques by Jose A. Blanco and Maria Colbert for this class, but this is not a Spanish literature class so I’m not planning on writing a review of the textbook.
I’m really excited about this semester as all my classes sound like they’ll be really interesting and thought-provoking. Classes started last Friday (with Monday’s schedule) so I’ve already been to two of my classes, although I like to think of school officially starting tomorrow with the first full week of classes. I’m still settling into my new dorm room and getting back into the swing of things, but I am enjoying being back with my friends and back at college.
The Sunday Salon:
The Sunday Salon encourages bloggers to get together –at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones– every Sunday and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another’s blogs. Salon participants are encouraged to blog about their time spent reading, pages read, information about current reading, discuss a reaction to a book, state what they plan to read the following week, or make suggestions for a group read.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a selection for Oprah’s Book Club, McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel has been herald as pure genius. The story of father and son journeying to the coast after the world ends has also been adapted into a movie, and judging by the list at the end of this post, has been a favorite of the book blogging community.
“Then they came upon it from a turn in the road and they stopped and stood with the salt wind blowing in their hair where they’d lowered the hoods of their coats to listen. Out there was the gray beach with the slow combers rolling dull and leaden and the distant sound of it. Like the desolation of some alien sea breaking on the shores of a world unheard of. Out on the tidal flats lay a tanker half careened. Beyond that the ocean vast and cold and shifting heavily like a slowly heaving vat of slag and then the gray squall line of ash. He looked at the boy. He could see the disappointment in his face. I’m sorry it’s not blue, he said. That’s okay, said the boy” (pg. 215).
I, on the other hand, could not get into McCarthy’s masterpiece. Maybe it was the writing structure — sparse prose — and the lack of quotation marks. Plus the father-son dynamic we’re supposed to be in awe of consists of the boy mostly saying “I’m scared” or “don’t leave me” and the man saying “don’t be scared” or “we have to keep going”. These serious of small, repetitive conversations just did not hold my attention or make me want to keep reading.
And at the end, which I had been told was moving and powerful, left me unaffected despite feeling that I ought to because of purely awful things that happened to this little boy. Nameless characters, lack of details; there is just too much distance put between myself (the reader) and the story at hand that it just didn’t work for me.
Others’ Thoughts:
- Becky’s Book Reviews
- Book Addiction
- Diary of an Eccentric
- DogEar Diary
- Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’?
- Leafing Through Life
- Library Queue
- The Mookse and the Gripes
- Passion for the Page
- Reading Matters
- Save Ophelia
- Things Mean a Lot
- Trish’s Reading Nook
Book Mentioned:
- McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage International, 2006. Print. 287 pgs. ISBN: 9780307387899. Source: PaperBackSwap.
I’ll admit it. I was scared away from Altman’s sequel to Pride and Prejudice by the blurb on the back of the book stating that “Bingley is shocked when Darcy gives him a copy of The Kama Sutra — but it does tell him everything he needs to know” and “Jane finds this remarkable volume and it utmost secrecy shows it to her dear sister Elizabeth, who goes searching for a copy in the Pemberley library”. I don’t mind a somewhat smutty sequel, but I didn’t really want to read an entire book where the Darcys and the Bingleys make their way through The Kama Sutra. Just not my cup of tea.
But I guess I should have read other book bloggers’ reviews more carefully because this sequel, subtitled “A Tale of Two Gentlemen’s Marriages to Two Most Devoted Sisters” is really nothing like the blurb on the back. The Darcys and the Bingleys do use The Kama Sutra (or Translations as it is referred to in the novel), but it’s more for comedic relief as the Darcys and the Bingleys navigate the first two years of their marriage.
Most of the novel concentrates on who’s having babies and what to name said babies, but towards the end the issue of the questionable engagement of Miss Caroline Bingley to a member of Scottish nobility. And then from there I began to lose interest in the story. There were a couple of instances where things didn’t quite make sense like Mr. Bennet not wanting the Bingleys to name their daughter Elizabeth because he’s worried he’ll become confused but he’s perfectly content with Jane and Charles naming their daughter Georgiana despite their being another Georgiana in the family. Darcy is also a total lush, which bothered me, and there were instances were Altman used phrases nonexistent during the Regency period (“barefoot and pregnant”, for example).
Despite its flaws, I did find myself chuckling as the story progressed and generally amused. Just not the best Pride and Prejudice sequel out there.
Others’ Thoughts:
Book Mentioned:
- Altman, Marsha. The Darcys and the Bingleys: A Tale of Two Gentlemen’s Marriages to Two Most Devoted Sisters. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2008. Print. 417 pgs. ISBN: 9781402213489. Source: PaperBackSwap.
