Dan
Read this after seeing the previews for the new Amazon Prime TV version. The show looked like it might be fun.
The book is fun too, but it's pretty derivative stuff and I doubt I'll follow through with the rest of the series.
I would recommend it as a good choice to get someone in the YA category interested in reading as a pastime.
Masterful.
There is a wonderful moment in this book where the secret of what makes us unique and distinguishable as humans is revealed.
Sometimes when I finish a book, the experience of reading it is so special that I feel reluctant to put it away. As if setting it back on the shelf is some sort of betrayal.
Recommend.
My father once made a gift of this book to me, and I still remember being transformed by the beauty of it.
I lost the original copy he gave me, but I was able to replace it today.
Last week I re-read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It fits in with a recent inclination to read personal accounts by gifted observers of the natural world. Writing by Thoreau, Annie Dillard, John McPhee (Encounters With the Archdruid is a wonderful book) has gotten me through another lonely winter.
For those with limited reading time, another short but wonderful book about cultural identity and living ‘closer to the bone,' is Margaret Craven's I Heard the Owl Call My Name (1967.)
I read it a couple of weeks ago on the plane returning from California. The more I read, the tinier the plane's cabin became. British Columbia here I come.
On Goodreads this book seems to have elicited a somewhat ambivalent response in a number of readers, a common criticism being that it was boring or tedious.
I did not find it so. It was for me, a read that required a number of pauses for contemplation, but I found it thoroughly enjoyable. I especially enjoyed Chapter Six, At the Identity Spa. I took some time to investigate a number of the artistic works that Busch references and found that process enjoyable as well.
Archiving the memories of a society that has decided real human experience is too dangerous is an interesting concept. I understand this is a book for younger folks but I would have liked to see the premise unpacked a bit more.
The idea that it's possible to ramp down or suppress human nature and still maintain the sophisticated interactions necessary for a society to survive is not a given. It's unlikely that depth of experience can be managed on a simple linear scale.
However our continuing singular reliance on rule of law does suggest that we haven't stopped trying.
As a friend pointed out in a previous review. David McCullough is a treasure we can all enjoy.
To read these addresses at a time of anger and division in our country is both a balm and a call to action. It is calming to be reminded of the strength that lies within our national character. To remember our country was created by flawed men and women striving to be great. More importantly, McCullough would have us take action upon ourselves. To learn, to contribute, and to critically examine the quality of our own character.
In an address to Hillsdale College in 2005, McCullough read part of a letter from Abigail Adams to her son John Quincy. She was in France and had gotten word that upon his return to America to enter Harvard, J. Q. had become rather full of himself.
“If you are conscious to yourself that you possess more knowledge upon some subjects than others of your standing, reflect that you have had greater opportunities of seeing the world and obtaining knowledge of mankind than any of your contemporaries. That you have never wanted a book, but it has been supplied to you. That your whole time has been spent in the company of men of literature and science. How unpardonable would it have been in you to have turned out a blockhead.”
