Review of Book Reviews from 2007 by RayS

Directions: The date at the beginning of each book is the date on which my review was published in this blog. Each review consists of three parts: 1. “Why read it?” 2. Sample ideas from the book, either paraphrased or quoted, and 3. Final, thought-provoking quotes. To locate the review, look at the “Blog Archive” at the right of the blog. Click on the year 2007. Find the month in which the review was published, click on it and go to the date of the review.

Monday, October 29, 2007. Seabiscuit: An American Legend. Laura Hillenbrand. You will have a hard time putting this book down. My first impression is that the people who know horses treat them as individuals. Treating horses as individuals was important to the success of Seabiscuit, who would have resisted working for anyone who did not recognize his personal traits, his toughness, his heart, his rebelliousness, his determination and the absolute need never to use the whip. Tom Smith was a horse training genius who studied his horses, notably Seabiscuit, to learn what he could about them as individuals.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007. Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients. Ray Monihan and Alan Cassels. Ordinary people with common complaints are being turned into patients by pharmaceutical companies who market drugs through doctors and directly to consumers. “Awareness campaigns” make people concerned about conditions that are part of the fluctuations of normal living. Little known conditions are emphasized; old diseases are redefined and renamed; new dysfunctions are created. Drug companies market fear in order to sell medications.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007. Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen. Novel. Two sisters with dramatically different personalities. Elinor is cool in crisis, objective, keeps emotion in check, sees and accepts the world as it is. Marianne is emotional, uncontrolled, blows apart in crisis. The two are jilted. How do they handle this disappointing turn in their lives?

Thursday, November 1, 2007. Sketches by Boz [Rhymes with “nose’]. Charles Dickens. A collection of brief scenes of English life that are wonderfully entertaining and moving. Dickens paints pictures with words.

Friday, November 2, 2007. Silas Marner. George Eliot. Novel. Silas Marner is a wholesome novel that was characterized by a writer in the 1960’s craze for “relevance” as “that Silas Marner crap.” I never read the novel until after I had completed graduate school, expecting something in the nature of “Goody Two-Shoes,” and I was surprised by the delightful scenes of village life. I should have known from having previously read Middlemarch that George Eliot would never write “crap.” To read Silas Marner is to experience a time when people knew only their villages and the surrounding countryside. No one living today can appreciate how provincial and limited was their outlook on life.

Monday, November 5, 2007. Solitude: A Return to Self. Anthony Storr. An in-depth analysis of the nature and uses of solitude. Interesting anecdotes. However, the author concludes that happiness comes from both personal interrelationships and solitude. Took a whole book to arrive at what appears to be plain common sense. Except that in today’s world, solitude is hard to come by. If you have never tried solitude, this book could cause you to try enjoying its advantages.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007. Some Good in the World: A Life of Purpose. Edward J. Piszek with Jake Morgan. I once told an English teacher colleague that I thought Our Town was the great American literary classic. She turned to me and said witheringly, “You would think that.” Well, this book, little known, perhaps outside of the Philadelphia, PA, area and possibly in Poland, is the great American success story. James Michener: “This is a story that imparts exactly what makes America unique among nations, where any man or woman may start life with few advantages and then—through courage, brilliance, endurance, and hard work—achieve not only great material wealth but also turn that life into the greatest treasure of them all: a life filled with purpose.” Piszek made his wealth from selling frozen fish.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007. The Spectator, Volume One. Addison, Steele and Others. Ed. Gregory Smith. The Spectator essays were not sermons. They amused. They were short. They made fun of anything that was not common sense. They recommended good manners by making fun of awkward and clumsy manners. Everyone recognized the targets of their humor. The essays also commented thoughtfully on life.

Thursday, November 8, 2007. The Spectator, Volume 2. Addison, Steele and Others. Ed. Gregory Smith. In a way, the Spectator papers/essays fulfilled the need for a “Dear Abby” of the 18th century. Unlike Abby’s plain statements, short sentences and familiar vocabulary, the sentences in the Spectator papers are sometimes convoluted and lengthy, and the vocabulary stretches the reader, but the purpose of the Spectator is similar to Abby’s, to resolve problems using common sense. The Spectator papers do a remarkable job of presenting that consistent point of view although Addison and Steele and several other authors originated the papers individually. Take away the name of the author, and the reader will be hard pressed to discern a different style. Addison is more intellectual and Steele is more humorous and the others more prosaic and less imaginative, but the point of view--common sense--remains consistent.

Friday, November 9, 2007. The Star Thrower. Loren Eiseley. Loren Eiseley is a remarkable essayist. A professional scientist, he was an artist with words. Unlike scientists who analyze and dissect to kill, Eiseley retained his understanding of the mystery of life. His essays usually begin with a brief anecdote and then extend to its implications for science and for humanity. He is of the school that sees people as a part of nature and nature as one with people, not as people who dominate nature. And he sees evolution as promising that human beings will one day improve themselves, that human personality will match the wonders of scientific findings. This book collects some of Eiseley’s thought-provoking, memorable essays. When you finish an essay by Loren Eiseley, you will not be finished because you cannot stop thinking about what he has said.