Category Archives: Literature

Book Review: The Crash Course

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“The next twenty years will be completely unlike the last twenty years.

The world is in economic crisis, and there are no easy fixes to our predicament. Unsustainable trends in the economy, energy, and the environment have finally caught up with us and are converging on a very narrow window of time—the “Twenty-Teens.” The Crash Course, by Chris Martenson (Phd),  presents our predicament and illuminates the path ahead, so you can face the coming disruptions and thrive–without fearing the future or retreating into denial. In this book you will find solid facts and grounded reasoning presented in a calm, positive, non-partisan manner.

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Book Review: Of Paradise and Power

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This week’s book review takes a look at Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order by Robert Kagan.

This book is both short, to the point, and very readable. What Kagan does is analyze the different viewpoints of both the United States of America and of the European Union.

Robert Kagan, a leading scholar of American foreign policy, forces both sides to see themselves through the eyes of the other. Europe, he argues, has moved beyond power into a self-contained world of laws, rules, and negotiation, while America operates in a “Hobbesian” world where rules and laws are unreliable and military force is often necessary.

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Book Review: Jackdaws

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It is 1944 and the Allies are preparing for the invasion of Europe. In the occupied town of Sainte-Cecile, the French Resistance is preparing to blow up the chateau that now houses the crucial telephone exchange connecting the French telephone system to that of Germany. Bombers have been unable to inflict enough damage on the chateau to disrupt communications for more than a few hours at a time, but the Allies need to make sure that communications is down for longer so that there will be as little warning of the invasion as possible.

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Book Review: The Defining Decade

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Our “thirty-is-the-new-twenty” culture tells us the twentysomething years don’t matter. Some say they are a second adolescence. Others call them an emerging adulthood. Dr. Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist, argues that twentysomethings have been caught in a swirl of hype and misinformation, much of which has trivialized what is actually the most defining decade of adulthood.

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Reading for Fun vs. Reading for School

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I definitely think reading for fun vs reading for school has something to do with the free will involved. People, especially when children, do not like doing what they are told to do. We like choices. For the classes I had that gave me a few choices of what to read, I actually enjoyed the books more than I did the books that the teacher picked out for us.

I also believe it may have something to do with maturity level and interests at a younger age. Some of the books we read, although very important, were not of much interest to us simply because we would rather read about dragons and wizards than Orwell, for example.

I just finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird and it got me thinking of my old high school days (all of three years ago).

I was remembering reading To Kill a Mockingbird my sophomore year as a class. I remember laughing at the obvious funny parts in the story but I didn’t really read the book. I read it just enough to write a paper but I didn’t really get into the novel.

I found that this time round with To Kill a Mockingbird, I actually read it… and thoroughly enjoyed it. It made me sad that I could have read this five years ago and felt the way I do now.

Then I got to thinking, this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened.

I ‘read’ Pride and Prejudice my senior year– I didn’t get past the first page. I just wasn’t interested in even…

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Short Story: The Orb

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The following is a short story I had to write for one of my summer classes. I ended up spending  a lot more time on it than I originally thought, and am proud of the finished product. That is why I am sharing it here! I may write a follow up to continue the story depending on reviews and how much time I have. Please enjoy and feel free to leave comments:

Part I(?)

The hooves pounded on the ground as the three horses raced to their destination. The riders pushed their horses to the limit to return to Androsia, capitol city of the island nation of Theras. These three men and their mounts were scouts, sent out to patrol the mountain passes and cliff overlooks. While out on their latest patrol they had spotted the sails of their enemy’s ships along the horizon of the Afasian Sea. The scouts of Androsia were expecting the attack. What they were not expecting was the magnitude; several thousand individual ships had been spotted, and there seemed to be a never ending tide of them. This was the burden placed upon the scouts as they raced back to Androsia, to warn of the oncoming tsunami that the enemy had mustered.

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Book Review: The Century Trilogy

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A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to come across The Century Trilogy while perusing the Barnes & Noble website.

The trilogy is written by Ken Follett and currently has 2 of the 3 books published. The second book, “Winter of the World” was released just last year and is available in hardcover.

Cover of “Fall of Giants”. Book 1 of 3

The first book of the trilogy, “Fall of Giants” is a #1 New York Times Bestseller and revolves around the happenings of five families in the early twentieth century.  The families represent different countries and socio-economic backgrounds; a Welsh mining family, Russian factory workers, upper class American family, and aristocratic English and German families. As the book progresses, you discover that all of these families become interrelated through the politics and events of the Great War.

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