Recent Books
Nov. 21st, 2002 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sdelmonteLet's look at the book list, shall we? We'll find an eclectic assortment, and here are some highlights...
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate by Robert Caro. The third in a massive four-volume set, this work is both a biography of LBJ during his 12 years in the US Senate (1949-1961)and an examination of the history and procedures of the Senate. Caro looks closely as how it went from a center of enlightened debate before the Civil War to a den of racism before and after World War II, and how LBJ reinvented the Senate and the position of majority leader to advance himself, his party, and his nation. Caro calls it as he sees it, showing us LBJ as both a self-involved, conniving self-promoter and as a voice of the people who rammed through a voting rights bill when such bills were always debated into oblivion by the segregationists. Caro also offers profiles of many forgotten senators, and reminds the reader of what Congress can do when it wants to. This should be required reading for anyone elected to the Senate, and for anyone who wishes to understand how it works.
On Writing by Stephen King - 1/4 memoir and 3/4 immensely practical guide to writing fiction better. Lots of advice here, most of it down to earth and doable. Along the way, King uses examples of what he likes and what he doesn't to create a lively monologue that almost feels like a dialogue. He even picks on himself. Reading it, I felt guilty for forgetting what it means to want to be a writer. Maybe I'll get started again.
The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke - This award-winning SF novel by one of our age's great thinkers revolves around one man's dream to build a space elevator, as the man struggles against all obstacles from a Buddhist temple standing in the only place on Earth he can build to monsoons to his own getting old. Clarke creates a rather interesting future, although the nearly religion-free world he envisions - the result of an encounter with an alien probe that proves religion is bunk - seems kind of strange. (I can't see any fundamentalist giving up his or her faith just because an alien computer says it's false.) The technical aspects are generally strong, though, and still ring true given where technology has gone in the past twenty years. Alas, the book lacks any heart. Clarke's characters are almost perfect, with no romance, and no passion for anything but their work. No one here feels real. I suppose it's a nice change to not have badly written romance clutter the way, but these characters are a bit too abstract to be real without such things as love or hate or folly. Still, Clarke's status as visionary is affirmed throughout as the hero pursues his dream, one science has been discussing for 40 years.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate by Robert Caro. The third in a massive four-volume set, this work is both a biography of LBJ during his 12 years in the US Senate (1949-1961)and an examination of the history and procedures of the Senate. Caro looks closely as how it went from a center of enlightened debate before the Civil War to a den of racism before and after World War II, and how LBJ reinvented the Senate and the position of majority leader to advance himself, his party, and his nation. Caro calls it as he sees it, showing us LBJ as both a self-involved, conniving self-promoter and as a voice of the people who rammed through a voting rights bill when such bills were always debated into oblivion by the segregationists. Caro also offers profiles of many forgotten senators, and reminds the reader of what Congress can do when it wants to. This should be required reading for anyone elected to the Senate, and for anyone who wishes to understand how it works.
On Writing by Stephen King - 1/4 memoir and 3/4 immensely practical guide to writing fiction better. Lots of advice here, most of it down to earth and doable. Along the way, King uses examples of what he likes and what he doesn't to create a lively monologue that almost feels like a dialogue. He even picks on himself. Reading it, I felt guilty for forgetting what it means to want to be a writer. Maybe I'll get started again.
The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke - This award-winning SF novel by one of our age's great thinkers revolves around one man's dream to build a space elevator, as the man struggles against all obstacles from a Buddhist temple standing in the only place on Earth he can build to monsoons to his own getting old. Clarke creates a rather interesting future, although the nearly religion-free world he envisions - the result of an encounter with an alien probe that proves religion is bunk - seems kind of strange. (I can't see any fundamentalist giving up his or her faith just because an alien computer says it's false.) The technical aspects are generally strong, though, and still ring true given where technology has gone in the past twenty years. Alas, the book lacks any heart. Clarke's characters are almost perfect, with no romance, and no passion for anything but their work. No one here feels real. I suppose it's a nice change to not have badly written romance clutter the way, but these characters are a bit too abstract to be real without such things as love or hate or folly. Still, Clarke's status as visionary is affirmed throughout as the hero pursues his dream, one science has been discussing for 40 years.
