review - Jason’s Feed

Book Review: The Red Badge of Courage

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This is one of those books that you get to and your like “Why haven’t I read this before”. I should have probably read it in high school, but I have not gotten to it until now. This is another classic that surprised me. I really enjoyed this far more than I thought I would. My average rating was 3 in 2016 and this book was a 4, which I think says a lot. It is not my all time favorite book but I would read it again. The book is about a young man’s experience joining the war effort. Very good. I really recommend.

Book Review: An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life

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This book reads as a little instruction book on how to be compassionate. It was a good book to read after the depressing David Sedaris book Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary. If that book said everyone is awful, this book said, maybe but you can still be compassionate. Don’t be evil, be a nice person. I always like the stories told in the books with the Dalai Lama as the author. Not that he writes much of the book himself mind you. He has a writer do the work and they kinda get a feel for what he wants to say from the Dalai Lama’s speeches and interviews. I have two notes from this book that I think are worth sharing with you:

It is difficult to hold back from anger when provoked unless we have trained our mind to first recollect the unpleasant effects such thoughts will cause us. It is therefore essential that we begin our training in patience calmly, not while experiencing anger. We must recall in detail how, when angry, we lose our peace of mind, how we are unable to concentrate on our work, and how unpleasant we become to those around us. It is by thinking long and hard in this manner that we eventually become able to refrain from anger

Compassion is the wish that others be free of suffering.

Book Review: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary

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This book wins the strangest book of 2016 award from me. It is a bunch of short stories where the main characters are animals. I get what Sedaris is trying to say here, but the book is still strange and the stories can be violent and disturbing. I feel like the main idea here was people are animals and they suck. In my humble opinion, there are other things I’d rather read that don’t have this message. Can’t recommend.

Book Review: Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man: A Biography

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I thought this would be Thomas Paine’s work, but instead, it was a commentary on that work by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is a staple on talk shows and lecture circuits. It seems that what he has to say resonates with a lot of people. I’m not one of them. I wanted to read Paine’s original work so that is my mistake that I picked up the wrong work, but being the stubborn oaf that I am, once I started it I wanted to finish it. I don’t like leaving things half done. I had to slog through this book and didn’t really enjoy any of it. I can’t recommend this work to anyone, but it won’t stop me from trying Hitchens other works like God is Not Great.

Book Review: On the Road

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The American masterpiece that is often credited with launching Kerouac’s career. A book that most people like and others love. I just didn’t care for the book at all. That may make me wrong, but my blog, so my opinion. I listened to this fiction classic of a young man’s hitchhiking journey across America. Maybe if I would have read the print book things would have been different. It just seemed to be a rambling work floating from one place to another with no idea of what was happening or where it was heading. That just didn’t appeal to me.

Book Review: The Sense of an Ending

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This was my first Julian Barnes novel. I’ve never read any of his work and I can’t tell you how I came by this book. Probably a blog recommendation or something, but I’m glad I read it.

I read this book in a day and was just sucked into the story. A man who thinks he has left his past life behind him is pulled back into it again. It was a good read and one of the few books that I read in 2016 that was from an author in another country, so yea me for boarding my reading. It has several awards:

Man Booker Prize (2011)
Warwick Prize for Writing Nominee for Longlist (2013)
Costa Book Award Nominee for Novel (2011)
Europe Literatuurprijs (2012)

Book Review: A Man Without a Country

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This was an extremely entertaining book. Kurt Vonnegut is a talented author! This is one of the few books I gave a 5/5 rating to in 2016. The man is brilliant and witty. I breezed through this 146-page book in very little time. It was a pleasure to read and when I had to put it down I looked forward to picking it up again at my first opportunity. I recommend getting started with his works as soon as you can, and this particular novel is definitely worth your time. Give it a chance I think you will be happy you did.

Book Review: The Bridge of San Luis Rey

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This book caught me by surprise. It was not at all what I was expecting and I enjoyed it despite myself. Many users of Goodreads categorize this Thorton Wilder novel as a Classic. I think my criteria for a classic may be higher than most and I’m not sure I would include this, but it was a great book. It won the Pulitzer in 1928. As I said, I enjoyed this book and I didn’t think it was going to be a page-turner, but I did burn through it. The fact that it was only 138 pages definitely helped in that aspect.

Book Review: The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

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This is a very hard review as the author’s story is so very heart-wrenching. Marina Keegan was an extremely bright young woman with a great future in writing ahead of her and her life was cut short. The book is a collection of short stories. It was the Goodreads Choice Award for Nonfiction in 2014 and a Waterstones Book of the year nominee in the same year. The book is good. It is well written. I think Ms. Keegan had a very promising future as an author. I enjoyed all the short stories, but in my humble opinion it was not more than a 3/5 star book.

Book Review: The Old Man and the Sea

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Who would have thought that a book about a man gone fishing would be so interesting? I found myself completely sucked in with the Hemingway’s writing. Of course, this is what is expected for a writer of his caliber. I mean the guy won the Nobel prize in literature! I knew the name before I had read any of his work and I knew that his writings are considered classics. I flew through this short story with only 132 pages. Now that I have had an introduction to Hemingway’s work, I can’t wait to read more.