From Sawdust to Stardust

2012.05 — From Sawdust to Stardust: The Biography of DeForest Kelley, Star Trek‘s Dr. McCoy, Terry Lee Rioux (2005)

I picked this book up on a whim. We were at the library for the first time in years, having for some reason let our cards lapse. I was walking the stacks looking for a different book, and the gently smiling face of Dr. McCoy caught my eye. In my excitement at rejoining the ranks of proud library users, combined with my fondness for the original Star Trek series and for the feisty Southern doctor in particular, I snatched it off the shelf. If I had been able to find the book I’d originally wanted, if I’d spent more time browsing for other things to read, maybe I wouldn’t have checked out From Sawdust to Stardust, which in the final accounting is a decent (but not great) book about a decent (but not great) actor who achieved stardom thanks to a decent (but, I must be objective here, not great) television show.

Sawdust is a linear account of the life of DeForest Kelley (1920-1999), and during the first handful of chapters, during which Rioux recounts his childhood as the son of a poor itinerant preacher in Georgia during the 1920s and 30s, I wondered if perhaps my Star Trek fandom had led me astray. He was poor, his family were conservative rural Southerners, he was well liked but somewhat shy. Things took a promising turn when he moved to Long Beach, California in the late 30s and eventually became interested in acting, but I remained somewhat bored. He was a stage actor, he had friends, he had pets, he liked to drink and dance. We’re still 25 years from “boldly going” anywhere.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

2012.03 — A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson (2003)

The title of this book by best-selling author and noted American-with-a-British-accent Bill Bryson might be amended to A Short History of Science. While Bryson does indeed investigate everything from the Big Bang down to the machinations of mitochondrial DNA and all stops in between, alongside everything are the stories of the men and women who have brought this knowledge to light. Primarily, in fact, what we have is a short history of modern science, with most of the science coming from no earlier than the mid-17th century.

In any event Bryson’s Short History is a very enjoyable book, wherein he presents his complex subjects in a manner readable to the lay person (i.e., me), without dumbing anything down. Early in the book he states that much of science deals with figures both infinitely large and infinitesimally small, and that his aim is to deliver it to the reader in a digestible way, spelling things out rather than using scientific notation whenever possible, and using analogies rather than bald numbers (Bryson thankfully never uses “football fields” as a unit of measurement, but he does tell you for example that if you wove all the DNA in a single cell out in one continuous thread it would stretch from the Earth to the Moon multiple times).

Triumph

2012.01 — Triumph: the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics, Jeremy Schaap (2007)

The title says it all, really, as our author the estimable Jeremy Schaap tells the story of Jesse Owens’ astounding victories at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

I was a little disappointed in the tone of the writing, at least through the first part of the book, which briefly recounts Owens’ childhood and in more detail his college track career. I’m familiar with Schaap as a good sports writer — one of the best in fact, and a fine successor to his widely respected father Dick Schaap — and perhaps my expectations were a little high. Perhaps I’m being overly harsh. In any case there is a definite rah-rah Hallmark Card feeling to the early parts of the book, emphasized by the sometimes corny dialogue Schaap puts into the mouths of his protagonists.

Beyond feeling like I was being urged by the author to root for Owens (and honestly, why would I need such urging? Owens is an iconic figure in American and world sports history, and anyone picking up this book surely does so at least partly out of sympathy with him and a distaste for the Nazis), I got exactly what I wanted from the book, which was a detailed account of Jesse Owens qualifying for and competing at Hitler’s Olympics.

Book Log 2012

1. Triumph: the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics — Jeremy Schaap (2007) [review here]

2. The Wapshot Chronicle — John Cheever (1957) [review here]

3. A Short History of Nearly Everything — Bill Bryson (2003) [review here]

4. Beyond the Blue Event Horizon — Frederik Pohl (1980) [review here]

5. From Sawdust to Stardust: The Biography of DeForest Kelley, Star Trek‘s Dr. McCoy — Terry Lee Rioux (2005) [review here]

6. Andersonville — MacKinlay Kantor (1955)

7. On Writing — Stephen King (2000)

8. Liberia: History of the First African Republic — Abayomi Cassell (1970)

9. The Bridge of San Luis Rey — Thornton Wilder (1927)

10. March — Geraldine Brooks (2005)

11. Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag — Kang Chol-Hwan & Pierre Rigoulot (2000)

12. True Grit — Charles Portis (1968)

13. America’s War: Talking about the Civil War and Emancipation on their 150th anniversaries — edited by Edward L. Ayers (2011)

14. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas — Gertrude Stein (1933)

15. Under the Banner of Heaven: A story of violent faith — Jon Krakauer (2003)

16. Instant City: life and death in Karachi — Steve Inskeep (2011)

17. A Study in Scarlet — Arthur Conan Doyle (1887)

18. God Is Not Great: How religion poisons everything — Christopher Hitchens (2007)

19. Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam — James M. McPherson (2002)

20. The Day the Martians Came — Frederik Pohl (1988)

21. Lavinia — Ursula K. Le Guin (2008)

22. Drift: the unmooring of American military power — Rachel Maddow (2012)

23. Slouching Towards Bethlehem — Joan Didion (1968)

24. Hotel Du Lac — Anita Brookner (1984)

25. Paul Newman: a life — Shawn Levy (2009)

26. Every Third Thought: a novel in five seasons — John Barth (2011)

27. Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs) — Unknown (ca. AD 1200). Translated by Frank G. Ryder (1962)

28. Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War — Tony Horwitz (2011)

29. The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe — Peter Godwin (2010)

30. Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, & Power, of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civill — Thomas Hobbes (1651)

31. The Taqwacores — Michael Muhammad Knight (2004)

32. No Man Knows My History: the life of Joseph Smith — Fawn M. Brodie (1945)

33. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice — William Shakespeare (1603/04)

34. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness — Michelle Alexander (2010)

35. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln — Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)

36. Breakfast of Champions — Kurt Vonnegut (1973)

37. Danny, the Champion of the World — Roald Dahl (1975)

38. Last Orders — Graham Swift (1996)

39. Beowulf — Unknown (ca. AD 650-1000). Translated by Seamus Heaney (2000)

40. Grendel — John Gardner (1971)

41. Soccernomics: why England loses, why Spain, Germany, and Brazil win, and why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey—and even Iraq—are destined to become the kings of the world’s most popular sport — Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski (2009)

Book Log 2011

I didn’t open a book “with intent” this year until sometime in late August. I cannot explain why but I just did not feel like reading, which was sort of worrying since I’ve been a voracious reader all my life. I finished Trout Fishing In America right around the New Year, and since I did not include it in my log for 2010, I’ve included it here.

Once I did start reading, I managed to get some pretty good books in before the year’s end. The best book I read this year was the one I just finished last night, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s examination of Dust Bowl migrant farmers. If you have never read it, do. If you have read it, read it again. I hadn’t read it since college about 15 years ago, and it is much better than I remembered; in part because I think I’m a better reader now than I was then (more practiced in critical thought and close reading, and more appreciative of well-crafted writing), and in part because it speaks directly to a lot of the things that I have been thinking heavily about lately: suffering, economic equality, cruelty, generosity, etc. It has been called communist propaganda but I think it would be more accurately described as Humanist propaganda. On top of the grand themes, Steinbeck is a master of prose, able to both construct a large and intensely believable plot and cast of characters, and stick the emotional knife into the reader and twist it to maximum effect. Most classics are classics for a reason and The Grapes of Wrath is a perfect example of this.

I am making an effort to consume more non-fiction, and while I didn’t get the 1-to-1 ratio of fiction-to-non that I’d aimed for, five of the 14 books I read were non-fic, all of which were edifying if not always entertaining. Eating Animals made me continue to look hard at what I put in my body (which currently constitutes a vegetarian diet and may ultimately end up closer to vegan…did I just write that?); 1491 and Mornings on Horseback broadened my deficient knowledge of New World/American history (I know more about the Peloponnesian War than the American Civil War, sadly); and Fear and Loathing: Campaign ’72 and Consider the Lobster helped me realize that there are great authors writing non-fiction (I knew about Hunter S. Thompson, but Lobster is the first David Foster Wallace book I’ve read, and he is a simply brilliant, gifted writer).

My first and greatest love remains fiction, specifically novels. Whether pulpy sci-fi or big meaty lit-class stuff, I love a novel, and I read some good ones this year. It turned out to be one of the first books I ever read, The Hobbit, that helped me get back into the rhythm of reading this year after that inexplicable eight-month hiatus. I normally read quite a bit of sci-fi, but this year the only thing I read from that genre was Man Plus, well-written 1970s psychedelia with a sense of humor and a sense of horror. All the Pretty Horses is top notch (though the best thing I’ve read by Cormac McCarthy is still Blood Meridian), and J.G. Ballard’s Crash is disturbing on both a psychological and a visceral level (but still worth reading!). I got a few lulz out of the Tarzan book I read (review linked below). The most disappointing books I read this year were The Thin Man and The Nigger Factory, in both cases because I expected them to be so much better.

So here’s the list for 2011. As I said I finished The Grapes of Wrath last night, and this morning I began reading Triumph, Jeremy Schaap’s book about Jesse Owens at Hitler’s Olympics, which will be the first book on my log for 2012.

1. Trout Fishing In America — Richard Brautigan (1967)

2. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again — J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)

3. Consider the Lobster and Other Essays — David Foster Wallace (2005)

4. Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 — Hunter S. Thompson (1973)

5. Crash — J.G. Ballard (1973)

6. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus — Charles G. Mann (2005)

7. All the Pretty Horses — Cormac McCarthy (1992)

8. The Nigger Factory — Gil Scott-Heron (1972)

9. Man Plus — Frederik Pohl (1976)

10. The Thin Man — Dashiell Hammett (1934) [review here]

11. Eating Animals — Jonathan Safran Foer (2009)

12. Jungle Tales of Tarzan — Edgar Rice Burroughs (1919) [review here]

13. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt — David McCullough (1981)

14. The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck (1939)

Common Sense

2010.08 – Common Sense – Thomas Paine (1776)

If I’ve ever read Paine’s famous pamphlet before now, I don’t remember it. Likely it was assigned to me in high school, and like most rational high school students faced with such a notion, I ignored the fuck out of it. Nowadays I like to read all kinds of grown up stuff like, so I figured I’d give ol Tom Paine a whirl. Also it was my book club’s selection (which is how I’ve been introduced to most of the new authors I’ve read in the past 8 years, for better or worse [mostly better]), and it’s only 70 odd pages so what the hell.

What I discovered were 70 densely packed pages of political philosophy, not at all unpleasant to read, outlining bold ideas about democracy and society; at the time these ideas may have been astounding in their novelty, but now, to me, Mr 21 Century Schizoid Man of the Future, they read like…well, like the radical concepts our country was founded upon. Obviously hereditary monarchy is bad, and obviously a representative republican government is the way to go. Checks and balances: no duh! Am I right? Apparently to most of the sot-weed farmers and other moneyed bigwigs of late 18th century America, this stuff wasn’t so obvious, which makes the success of this book all the more impressive (it proved quite effective in galvanizing support for revolution in lieu of mere “reconciliation,” which word Paine pronounces throughout as though it were laced with arsenic).

Near the midway point Paine’s tone shifts, and becomes less that of a rational professor expounding on political history, and more that of a shit-stirring preacher, passionate in urging a dangerous but necessary course of action. While I myself am certainly no political philosopher, I found the earlier portions of the book more persuasive in their reasoned tone; by the end Paine is basically saying “OMG OMG you guys we have to revolt but it’s gotta be right now! SRSLY GUYS!”

One of the most interesting things about this world-shattering little essay, is that its author Mr. Thomas Paine was an Englishman, having been in America for something like 14 months at the time of its publication. And he really gives the King of England a hard time, too!

My overall impression of Common Sense, without having any deep knowledge of the history of the era, or the circumstances of the pamphlet’s publication or distribution, literacy rates among the colonies, etc. (I’m a bad citizen, I know); is that Paine knew exactly what message he wanted to get across, and wrote it in a very forthright and engaging manner. Was he preaching to a choir of like-minded people, who just needed a nudge to be brought to action? Did Common Sense really change enough minds to induce revolt, or was the revolution inevitable (which inevitability Paine himself asserts was the case)? The answer is: I don’t know; but I bet there have been at least a dozen real academic type papers written about it in the past 230 years, so maybe if my curiosity gets piqued I’ll read one of those for S&Gs.

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