INCENDIARY GIRLS: STORIES by Kodi Scheer

 

Published in 2014 by Little A.

Kodi Scheer was the writer-in-residence at a cancer center when she wrote this collection of short stories. They all have two things in common: 1) a focus on female characters and 2) a medical tie-in.

This picture goes with the first story.

Normally, I struggle with short story collections - they don't develop the characters enough or they tell too little for the reader to get any sort of handle on what is going on until the story is practically over. 

This collection has a couple of weird stories that fit those characterizations, but it is mostly a set of strong stories that actually gets better as it goes along. 

As I mentioned, there is a medical theme throughout the stories, but there is also a strong dose of the supernatural throughout these stories as well.  

I rate this short story collection 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: INCENDIARY GIRLS: STORIES by Kodi Scheer.

INDIANA by Darryl Jones and Jared Carter

Published in 1984 by Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company.

This coffee table book is primarily a showcase of pictures highlighting beauty from all over the state of Indiana. The photographer is Darryl Jones and he has a good eye. Some of his pictures are truly great, most are solid and none are bad. There is not a single picture that could be construed as a negative one.

The book is introduced by a rather lengthy essay by Jared Carter. The best part of the essay is his recollections of the days when he sat in the infield to watch the Indy 500. I am interested because I have gone to the Indy 500 for 35+ years.

Scaffolding in the infield at the Indy 500.
Note: this is NOT a picture from the book.

Carter discusses how people would bring trucks to sit on in the infield so they could see the race better. Soon enough, people started sitting on the roofs of box trucks to get a better view. Not long after that, people would bring scaffolding and attach it to the truck and build a platform above the box truck. One level became two and that became three and so on. Eventually, one of the platforms collapsed and killed two people and the platforms were banned. 

Usually, I am a sucker for books like these, but this one just didn't do much for me. I rate it 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: INDIANA by Darryl Jones and Jared Carter. 

V for VENDETTA (graphic novel) by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

 

Originally published in 1982.

Originally published in completed form in 1988 by DC Vertigo.

This iconic graphic novel has been on my to-be-read list for a long while. I tried watching the movie, but it had been a long week and I soon fell asleep. I assumed that the movie missed some of the pizazz of the graphic novel. I decided to go ahead and read the book when I noticed it was on the list of some 850 books that a Republican Texas state legislator wanted to ban from all Texas schools. 

V for VENDETTA is the story of a masked vigilante who decides to stand up against the fascist government of an alternative history version of the United Kingdom. The masked character has become the single most recognizable feature of the book and the face of the "anonymous" movement that swept over social media a few years ago.

Many people assume that it was put on the censorship list because it features a character that fights back against a repressive government. They assume that Texas is afraid of people that fight back, but they forget that this is a state that loves its own history of fighting back. The story of the Alamo and the Texas Revolution is revered in Texas. Texas was also a member of the Confederacy in the Civil War and some people in the Texas Republican Party have openly discussed another attempt at secession.

Based on the other books on this list, I think that the book was added to the list because there are 4 or 5 little panels in the comic that show a naked woman. They are not particularly lurid drawings, but most of the books are on this list for some sort of sexual reason. What appears in this book is certainly not worth the fuss of banning the book, but if you are making a list of 850 books you don't care about not making a fuss.

On to my review:

I was very much looking forward to this book. I like dystopian novels and I am very sympathetic to the themes of this book. However, I must admit that my reaction to the movie pretty much matched my reaction to the graphic novel. It is stylish but very slow and boring. I had a hard time finishing it and probably wouldn't have if not for occasional bursts of interesting plot showing up from time to time. 

I rate this graphic novel 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: V for VENDETTA by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

CHINESE CIVIL WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (Chinese History) (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2022 by Hourly History.

Hourly History is a series of histories and biographies that a reader can read in about an hour. Sometimes, that works out quite well. Sometimes, the topic is just too big to cover in an hour.

The first half of the twentieth century was a time of great turmoil for China. There were multiple wars, political chaos, multiple governments. There was also 15 years of civil war in two distinct phases, interrupted by the Japanese invasion of China during World War II.

From 1927-1937, Chaing Kai-shek's Nationalist government and Mao Zedong's Communist government fought a civil war. When Japan invaded China, the civil war was suspended (sort of) and a united front was formed. Soon after the end of the war, the civil war resumed and the communist faction won, with the exception of the island of Taiwan.

Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) and
Mao Zedong (1893-1976)

This short history suffers from a couple of problems. There is simply too much to cover. The book attempts to describe Mao's politics, but never even tries to explain the Nationalist program, such as it was. 

The book also suffers from an abundance of clunky writing. For example, this is from a paragraph about 2/3 of the way through the book: "...the next stages of the Chinese Civil War would commence. This state of civil war would last for more than three years, sending China into a state of warfare once more."

In two sentences there are three references to the civil war starting up again that state nothing more than the fact that the civil war was starting up again. Space is tight in a book that is only supposed to last an hour and also tell the story of almost 20 years of warfare. Cleaning up this sort of writing would make more room for other important items, like an explanation of Chiang Kai-shek's policies. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found at Amazon.com here: CHINESE CIVIL WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END by Hourly History.

FRANCIS of ASSISI (The Great Courses)(audiobook) by William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman

 

Published in 2013 by The Great Courses.
Lectures by William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman.

Duration: 6 hours, 10 minutes.
Unabridged.

The idea behind The Great Courses is a simple one - take a college lecture course given by an expert that knows how to give an interesting lecture and package it up as an audiobook that anyone can listen to.

In the case of this audiobook, there are two college professors that have a great chemistry together and really enjoy a discussion of St. Francis.

Before this audiobook, I knew only the barest of details of St. Francis so I found the entire discussion interesting and informative.

I do have a rather big complaint about the way the information was presented, however. They start with a biography of St. Francis up until the moment when he becomes recognized by the Pope and his movement is up and going. From that moment, they move to a thematic presentation and the listener hears about moments in his life that are not tied to any sort of biography. 

For example, they mention more than once that he participated in a crusade as a bystander and as a person that wanted to reach out to the Muslims that were defending, but there is no coherent narrative to that story that makes it more than just a few random snatches of extremely interesting information and teachings. I do not like the fact that I listened to a six hour audiobook about the life of a person and I do not have a grasp of many of the basics about the life of that person. As a fellow teacher of history, I cannot imagine the thought process that went into that decision.

Fortunately, they provided an interesting list of books or presentations written by other, well-known authors such as W.E.B DuBois and G.K. Chesterton.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found here: FRANCIS of ASSISI (The Great Courses)(audiobook) by William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman.

THE FLAG, the CROSS, and the STATION WAGON: A GRAYING AMERICAN LOOKS BACK at HIS SUBURBAN BOYHOOD and WONDERS WHAT the HELL HAPPENED (audiobook) by Bill McKibben

 

Published in 2022 by Macmillan Audio.
Read by Eric Jason Martin.
Duration: 6 hours, 39 minutes.
Unabridged.

McKibben looks back at his life in the suburbs in the 1960s and the 1970s and modern America and compares the two.

In certain circles this is an invitation to complain about the modern world with comments like, "When I was a kid, we didn't have all of this blah, blah, blah foolishness."

This is not that sort of book.

McKibben looks at three general areas:

1) The way that history was taught and the ways that he perceived that his country acted ("The Flag"). He grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts and was a tour guide as a young man for tourists who came to celebrate the bicentennial in 1976. The more he has learned, the more he knows that he was taught a simplistic, feel-good version of American history in school;

2) The things that his church taught him and how churches have fared over the intervening years ("The Cross"). He grew up and was very active in his church. He is really quite complimentary of his church upbringing. But, all denominations of churches have been shedding members. He even describes how one of the churches he attended had to consolidate with another congregation.

His thesis is not that the church in America was doing bad things, necessarily. His thesis is that the church gave up its best role - the role of speaking truth to power (for example, of the Old Testament story of when the prophet Nathan went to King David to tell him that he was wrong for sleeping with Bathsheba, the wife of one his trusted soldiers and then having that soldier killed so he could keep her).

Instead, the church became a part of the power structure. It worked with the government with the best of intentions. It seemed like a good idea to put these two institutions to work on social issues, but it neutered the church when it came to calling out the government on areas where it fell/falls short because the church owes certain things to the government or it is just too tied in to see the problems. McKibben uses the example of an attempt to build low income apartments in Lexington that was nixed because "those people" would come out of Boston and live with them in the suburbs. 

Bill McKibben in 2016
(photo by Gage Skidmore)

3) The situation of the American family and how it has changed over the years, including the wealth gap, how it relates generational wealth and policies that have exacerbated the wealth gap, especially among minority groups. He also throws in a healthy serving of environmental concerns - an area that he was worked in for a long time ("The Station Wagon"). This ties in well with the low income apartments in the previous paragraph.

I found this book to be a well-written and surprisingly tight set of arguments, considering that this book could have meandered all over the place with the topics of American history, the church in America and the American family. At the end, McKibben tosses in too much environmental discussion. It is the only part of the story that is not very tight, very focused and very integrated with the rest of the book. I'm not saying he didn't have a point, I am saying that it may not have been the best place to insert that point.

Still, I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE FLAG, the CROSS, and the STATION WAGON: A GRAYING AMERICAN LOOKS BACK at HIS SUBURBAN BOYHOOD and WONDERS WHAT the HELL HAPPENED (audiobook) by Bill McKibben.

PABLO PICASSO: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of Painters #5) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2020 by Hourly History.

Despite me having talked extensively about Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) in my recent review of an e-book about Francisco Franco, I am not an expert on Picasso, but I know way more than the average person. He has some paintings that I really like, but I am mostly not a fan. 

This short biography hit the spot in that it covered the details of his life without focusing too much on one particular part. This covered his 70+ year career in an even manner and included his personal life well.

Pablo Picasso in 1962

The real weakness of this e-book was the fact that they couldn't license his paintings and insert them into the book. But, since I read this on my cell phone it was pretty easy to switch to the browser and search the piece of art that was being discussed and take a look at it.

I wasn't much of a fan of Picasso as a person before I read this book and my impression was not changed one bit.

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: PABLO PICASSO: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of Painters #5) by Hourly History.