Concise History of Modern India by Metcalf and Metcalf

Personal life has made it immediately very important for me to know about India.

I would say that I currently know very little about the history of that part of the world. I will admit that before reading this book I didn't even know that Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh were one big region under British rule and were separated according to religion, or that Bangladesh was originally part of Pakistan. Or that Mohandas Gandhi and Mahatma Gandhi were the same person, and the Gandhis that were major in politics in later years are not related to him.

Since this is my introduction to this area of history, it was a bit overwhelming at times, though overall I felt like it gave me a good foundation to begin my study. I'll be adding many of the "further reading" titles to my list.

On a side note, I'm finding that a lot of the books I find recommended for history of India are not available on Kindle. So sad.

Getting Things Done by Allen

I picked this book because I have been feeling useless and overwhelmed at work and saw a glowing review online.

I'm implementing his system and I really think it's going to make a huge difference in my stress and productivity levels. I plan to reread the book after running the system for a month to make adjustments and reassess my situation; if I remember I'll edit this entry with more details.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Brown

Native American/American Indian history is really interesting to me and one of my personal goals is to learn about what really happened and what is happening with these peoples. As part of a general push in my personal life to make some of my daydreams into reality, I've put a bunch of books about this topic into my reading list. This is the first for me to get to. It was published in 1970 and seems to have been widely acclaimed at the time.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee gives a history of the tribes of the “Indian Wars” of the American West from the American Indians' point of view. Personally, since my little previous reading had been about Eastern tribes,very little of this was previously known to me besides some of the famous names. (I have no idea how I knew the names of Sitting Bull, Geronimo, etc without knowing anything about the Indian Wars except that they occurred.) The bias is obvious, but the author made his intent clear – he wanted to give a side of the story that had not been told, not necessarily a fair and balanced account.

To read this book as an American, it's heartbreaking to see a dark side of my country – blatantly lying and breaking treaties to get at land, denying that the American Indians were people until forced by law, “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”, etc. Even more heartbreaking is the fact that from my modern point of view with greater acceptance of high population density, there was no reason to take most of that land – even today it's still pretty sparsely populated. Before reading this book, I had some idea that the worst of the atrocities happened in the very early days of America and earlier. But to be confronted with dates nearing 1900 and Civil War heroes (which were the heroes of Foote's massive Civil War history which I listened to last summer) acting like savages made me reassess some things I had in mind about my country.

To read this book as someone with significant American Indian blood yet no personal interaction with that part of my heritage, I felt both awed and frustrated by the picture of their cultures given in this book. On the one hand, in general the chiefs had more honor and nobility than any white character that comes into play. What the Americans at the time saw as butchery was fair and just within the internal logic of their culture, and was clearly provoked. On the other hand, they showed little ability to be flexible and play the new political game that the white men brought with them. Perhaps this is an unfair criticism, because in our modern time people have to deal with major changes at rates unprecedented in human history. And racism at the time was stronger than I can truly believe. But still I feel that the American Indians could have preserved much more of themselves if they had gone about things differently.

Another thing that surprised me, especially after the aforementioned education on the civil war, was the small numbers involved. Where thousands were dying in single days of battle in the South, out west the casualties rarely numbered more than 50 on either side. Yet these relatively small battles had such a huge major effect on our society.

Overall I am very glad I listened to this book. It gave me a great foundation to continue my study of this topic. I would say, if you have an interest in learning about American history then this one should make it to your bookshelf/mp3 player sometime.

Dune Messiah (Dune Saga #2) by Herbert

I read this book quickly and it didn't give me any reason to think deeply about anything.

I will say, though, that it was much better than I thought it would be.  It doesn't have the same depth as the first book, but it's still on OK read.  After reading Dune I saw a quote from Herbert: "The bottom line of the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes."  The second book makes a little more sense if you keep that in mind.

The Ghost in Love by Carroll

This is a weird novel.

I guess you could say it's two stories at the same time - the story of a breakup and the story of man's interactions with his own self and life cycle.

It's hard to describe much without spoilers, because it is one heck of a weird story.  There are ghosts, talking dogs, time travel, near-death experiences, and all manner of odd and cheesy-sounding characters and plots.  But, for the most part it works.

The best reason I can give to recommend this book is that this is the type of book I usually hate but I finished it in an evening and was quite moved by it.  The plot is kinda stupid, and the last 10% of the book feels utterly ridiculous while reading it.  However, the way Carroll describes small things about people, the way they choose to express sadness and the way they store and talk about their memories, was great.  I really felt like I could feel the heartbreak or joy of the characters.  For that reason alone it's worth a read, as long as one isn't expecting anything else.

Religious Literacy by Prothero

I really enjoyed this book because it had a significant effect on my understanding of US history.

This book is divided into three sections.  The first part, "The Problem" gives data and anecdotes to support the author's claim that Americans have no clue about religion.  It had a bit of a "preaching to the choir" feel to it.

The second part, "The Past", was the most interesting for me.  It lays out a brief history of how religion and religious education has changed in the US over time.  I had no idea about a lot of it, and it explained a lot of things about American Christianity that confused me.

The third part, "The Proposal", gives the author's plan for reversing the effect of history along with a short dictionary of religious terms that one should be familiar with as an American citizen.  I found the dictionary interesting to read through (this coming from a girl who used to read the encyclopedia for fun as a child), and I liked how Prothero explained why the term was important to American politics/society.

All in all I'm glad I read it, though I could have done without most of it.  Anyway, I plan on checking out some of the references for more in-depth explanations.

Dune by Herbert

I read this book before, maybe ten years ago, and have counted it among my favorites ever since.  Reading through a second time, I realized how many things I missed in my first reading and that this book is a lot more interesting than I thought.  In my younger years, my skills as a reader and a thinker were not as good, and rereading Dune reminds me of my desire to reread many of the books I read in my teen years.  Also, it supports my belief that young people shouldn't be urged to ingest literature before they are capable of getting something out of it. (Even better example: The Scarlet Letter.)

One thing that is done very well in this book is the balance between plot and description.  This is one of my personal pet peeves about so many writers, that they provide so many details to set a scene or establish a mood but I as a reader don't feel convinced that they are worth my time and energy to take in.  Also I feel that the reader should be given the freedom of a little wiggle room for the imagination; if the details are not relevant, then the author does the reader a disservice by fixing them.  In many books I skip/skim a paragraph if I realize that it's describing a character looking at a fence, or describing the room in which a meeting takes place, or some other stupid little thing.  In Dune, I really felt like I received a rich setting, and I could easily imagine in my mind the places and people in the novel, but I wasn't bogged down.  Somehow the writer earned my trust that each paragraph was worth reading, and I did very little skimming.

I also enjoyed the subtle politics and relationships that are a central part of this book.  What does it take to deceive someone?  What does it take to inspire perfect loyalty? When does logical reaction to the odds turn into treachery? When does a man stop being a son, lover, warrior and start being his own legend?

A couple negative things: the book is very heavy on its internal system of religion, legend, and prophecy, which can be a bit tedious at times.  The end was not satisfying, it seems clear that Herbert had the sequels in mind when he finished this book.  I haven't read the sequels before, but I will, even though I'm always a little afraid of reading sequels.  If I like the first book enough to want to read the second, I don't want to have my experience of it ruined by a crappy follow-up.

A small note: I noticed he took some things from real existing religions of course, but I wonder how my reaction to his using the word jihad for something in the book is different from the reaction he intended back in the 60s?