The Martian (Andy Weir, 2011)

Not to dogpile on the whole "2016 was the worst year ever", but 2016 was, in fact, the worst year ever (since I started keeping track) for reading. Other than losing two relatives, it was probably one of the worst parts of the entire year, so I'm glowing with determination to make 2017 great. Not, again, mind you. That was another part of 2016 best forgotten, but will probably be in our collective face for the next four years. I'll save the politics for the political blog, though.

The first post here for 2017 will celebrate the final book of a horrific reading year. Perhaps I was too ambitious in my reading selections in 2016, but this book was definitely not part of the problem. The Martian is a pretty smooth read all-in-all. The science and math glide by even the most hardened liberal arts major. Compared to the movie (which is very good) there are a lot more numbers tossed around, but it never got overwhelming. For the uninitiated, the flow of the book is survival against enormous odds, and every time it seems like all is solved, another, bigger problem gets in the way. It isn't original, but it makes for exciting reading, and it's a no-brainer that they'd make a movie out of it.

Way back when I used to read science fiction magazines. For a while it was interesting, but the magazine I read was really bent toward hard science fiction, a genre that is often guilty of sacrificing plot and characters for the sake of accurate science. Frequently they would publish stories that were very dull and/or simplistic in the hope that the science would blind readers to the limitations. By a certain point (and with the help of reading other magazines) I had checked out of it and moved on to other fields. As is evident here, I still read science fiction, but it tends to be the kind that doesn't wave science around to distract from a thoughtful story.

Given my background, The Martian seemed like a step backward. Granted, the characters are pretty flat in the book. Main character Mark Watney's narrative sounds exactly like the author in an interview. On the other hand, this is the author's life work and it took years to fall into place. The plot is still solid and the pacing of the action is all done very well. Overall it's the writing that probably got me into science fiction in the first place. It proudly shows the power of human ingenuity over adversity. Whereas, I started with Asimov and the other SF greats, this wouldn't be a bad place for younger readers to start. A word of caution: there is a lot of profanity in the book. For the most part it was used as an accelerant for the humor that infuses the book, but may be too much for some. If you're on the fence, read the first page. If that's too much, then maybe stick to the movie, which sanitizes it down comfortably to PG-13 levels.

While the copy I read was the same copy my wife bought and read a few months ago, this isn't a hard book to locate at any public library.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)

Once again, in the glow of completing another "classic", I must reflect back on my high school English curriculum. I went to a super-high-achieving public school, but I think all of the emphasis was on math and science. At least that would explain the disparity in my SAT scores. I don't remember a whole lot about my English classes. The last year I can recall doing grammar and vocabulary work was ninth grade, and the literature assigned was all over the map. I believe it was at the tender age of fourteen that Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles was dropped in my lap with little context, so it is no wonder I hated it and ignored it (except for the movie) for the next 26 years.

What I really needed to appreciate it, assuming there was any hope for me at that age, was an historical and a literary context. We didn't learn a thing about the Victorian era in Britain or anything about the role of Wessex in the course of British history. Maybe they were expecting another class to field that one. Secondly, there should have been a more cohesive order to the selection of books to be read. For me, it wasn't until much later that I thought of putting authors like Austen, Dickens, and Hardy on a chronology. What trends were they establishing or working against? How did they approach the writing process?

With Tess 2.0, I had a better sense of these things, plus no problem reading the endnotes and supplements when I needed a little extra understanding. For this, I came out of the experience much better. Even though it was well over a hundred years ago, and in a foreign country, many of the themes of life's experiences shone through. Hardy was a bit of a rebel for being so frank about talking about the kind of things everyone knew was happening, but just didn't write about. Of course without this context, Hardy seems pretty darn prudish. So it's no wonder while so many students choose to revile the book. But all these years later, now I'm wondering if they have tours of the area. I guess that makes me a boring adult now.

On a housekeeping note, I'm tallying up my stats and it has been an embarrassingly bad reading year for me. I'm going to be mature and blame the marathon training, plus much of my reading energy being devoted to studying philosophy. There's a lot of good books on the horizon, so I'm looking forward to stepping up my game in 2017.

The Shining (Stephen King, 1977)

Partly because of marathon training and partly because I've been enrolled in another course this semester, the free reading (and by association this blog) has been on the light side. The post on The Shining can be found on my other blog project, Under the Tome. Go check it out!

What Is Ancient Philosophy? (Pierre Hadot, 1995)

Pierre Hadot's thesis is fairly simple. Ancient philosophy was not just a discourse, but a way of life. While the discourse aspect has stayed with philosophy, the way of life aspect has fallen away and only returns intermittently through history. One could say (as Hadot does) that Christianity, poised as another type of philosophy (a "revealed" one), absorbed the way of life part. This would in turn lead to some of the periodic estrangements between philosophy and religion.

This one was for class, but, as was the case with the other class, I'm glad for having read it. I'm a history person. Philosophy has always proved challenging for me to wrap my brain around. Even though the introduction was a bit daunting, I found the layout of the book to be straightforward and the direction was clear. It served well as our "textbook" for the first half of the course. In fact, I feel a little more lost with a secondary resource accompanying our further path into medieval philosophy. As for those primary resources, we covered them a little spottily, so I'll be going through and catching up on the missing bits and reporting back here soon.

Although I just called it a textbook, this is actually very accessible to readers of all interests, not just philosophy nuts. Therefore, it's a staple at most decent public libraries, not just academic ones, in spite of being published by Harvard University Press.

Driven to Distraction at Work (Edward M. Hallowell, 2014)

Maybe this is some kind of Harvard Business Review thing, but the e-book was published a couple months before the print version, so even though my book was published in 2015, the original publication date ends up being 2014. Details only a librarian could love!

Anyway, Driven to Distraction promises some big things, but, perhaps due to a serious oversell in the first chapter, I was left underwhelmed. In fact, I feel even more distracted than ever at work, but that probably isn't the direct fault of the book. Let's start with the book's problems. The structure of the book breaks distracted people down into six groups, with the sixth having confirmed Adult ADHD. As each (I presume) fictional/composite character is introduced, it is quickly shown that they have some kind of deep-seated family issues. So each vignette started off with me thinking "hey, I'm completely like that!" or "I know somebody just like that!" but then the backstory kicks in and broke those connections. Also, the folks portrayed all seemed very upper-crust and, even though they didn't say so directly, fairly white-washed. I could easily see this being a turn-off for more diverse readers. Also, the author is pretty strongly pro-medication. While I'm no anti-vaxxer nutjob (though I've been known to vote for them on rare occasion), it seems like drugs were the answer for Dr. Hallowell is almost all of the situations. The similarly-titled Driven to Distraction by the same author is a more general look at matter of Adult ADHD is many (not just work) aspects of life, so it's good to keep in mind he's coming from a more clinical rather than human resources perspective, which may be influencing his more open attitude toward medicating the problems.

On the other hand, it wasn't a totally useless reading experience. I think the matter of distraction at work is a very real thing. We can't just unplug the Internet, which is generally the beast in the room, even for the other types not called "screen suckers". Trust me, you do that and it just makes everyone slow and stupid. On the other hand the Age of Information has no filters and it's pretty easy to go from the programs you need to get your job done to TMZ, online games, and God knows what else. In the end I'll thank Dr. Hallowell for raising the issue, but I think much more work needs to be done and we need to think beyond pill popping to cope with the new reality.

The Restoration of Rome (Peter Heather, 2013)

I had no idea what a cut-up Peter Heather could be. The last time I read a book with such a wry tone, it was James O'Donnell's Ruin of the Roman Empire, which covered a part of the same time period this book did. Maybe there is just something inherently funny about the Ostrogothic kingdom? This book takes a more expansive view than O'Donnell's, not only considering Theoderic's kingdom, but also Justinian's Byzantine East Roman Empire, Charlemagne's "Holy" "Roman" "Empire", and the papacy as attempts to "restore" the Roman Empire.

Theoderic, being the most local, had the first stab at achieving this. Although we think of the Goths as hardcore barbarians (or kids who wear black clothes and heavy makeup) they weren't totally uncouth, and just as it wasn't built in a day, Rome (and the Romans) didn't wink out of existence in 476. Therefore, the Goths, particularly the Ostrogoths (or "eastern" Goths) who settled in Italy, absorbed a good deal of Roman culture simply by virtue of geography. O'Donnell, in particular, asserts that Theoderic had a good thing going (while Heather is less certain), until Justinian came out of the East and effectively squashed the Ostrogothic Kingdom in the sixth century. However, the Byzantines were spreading themselves awfully thin trying to tamp down the Vandals and Ostrogoths, leaving their eastern front vulnerable. Ultimately, as Heather puts it so well, Justinian's grand plans to restore the Roman Empire transformed the Byzantine Empire from a world power to a regional power, losing well over half its territory within a century of the initial Italian conquests. In the aftermath of these two failed attempts, the Franks, whose stock continued to rise, finally rose to the notion of playing the role of restorers. Unfortunately, the Franks' success probably wasn't destiny, but rather the good fortune of successive uncontested heirs, from Pippin through Louis the Pious. Unfortunately the return of big royal families and health children turned the whole project into a bit of a mess, rendering the Holy Roman Empire rather inert just a century after Charlemange's coronation. So what is left but the papacy, to be the heroic restorer of the Roman Empire?

Perhaps because I'm still fresh off a church history course, but I'm not sure I completely buy into Heather's claims that the papacy (by the 12th century) represented a restored Roman Empire. Sure, there were some good times, especially around the time of Innocent III, but let us not forget that in the time period following this book would include famous low points like the near-execution of Pope Boniface VIII at the hands of the king of France and the Avignon papacy that followed. This doesn't exactly scream Roman Empire except at perhaps its lowest points. So, perhaps Rome was "restored", but that moment didn't last. However, as the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines, and the Holy Roman Empire have all since faded away, while the papacy now maintains a global presence, perhaps it isn't entirely incorrect to speak of a restoration of a sort.

My copy of this book was a gift, and it was the British edition, no less. As Heather is British and it isn't written for children, I don't think the American edition is much more different than its cover. As it targets a general readership, the book is readily available at most public libraries, and since it does have a good measure of academic value, some college libraries have wisely acquired it as well.

Pope Francis: Life and Revolution (Elisabetta Piqué, 2014)

We're about three and a half years into the Pope Francis era and there is no shortage of literature on His Holiness. I recall back in March 2013 clearing off the Benedict XVI display, heavily laden with the voluminous Ratzinger bibliography, and replacing it with the single book I could find by the former Jorge Bergoglio, and trying to beef it up with whatever magazine covers I could track down. Nowadays the display is about as heavy as it was in 2012 and I don't even need the magazines anymore.

This particular book came out about two years ago, and it's already starting to show its age. When it was recommended to me, it was considerably more fresh, but have a gigantic prioritized reading list doesn't exactly help with keeping up with current events. So that's on me. However, the writing style, perhaps due to the author being a journalist, is a little crazy for narrating historical events. The chronology is quite jumpy, with the first half shifting between Francis's earlier career and the 2013 conclave. Furthermore, almost everything is told in present tense, which is a pet peeve of mine.

On the other hand, the author's credentials are impeccable (Argentinian and Italian - perfecto!). If you really want to dig into Pope Francis's first 18 months, you could do worse than this book. I will agree that it really capture's the character of Pope Francis and that an understanding of his pre-papal career makes his actions as Pope no surprise at all.

Perhaps due to the limited coverage of Francis's papacy and the somewhat minor publishing house (Loyola Press), this book may not be readily available from the nearest public library. It would make a good fit in a parish library (even a non-Catholic one), and I got my copy from my own library.