A Year in the South: 1865

A Year in the South: 1865: The True Story of Four Ordinary People Who Lived Through the Most Tumultuous Twelve Months in American History by Stephen V. Ash


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Taken from diaries and memoirs, this is the account of four ordinary people on the home front of the Confederacy, and how they suffered and survived through the last year of the Civil War. Especially touching were the tales of Cornelia McDonald, a nearly destitute war widow, and Louis Hughes, a resourceful slave, who rescues his family from a grasping slave holder.

Start-up Nation

Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle by Dan Senor


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
In the last two decades Israel, the Biblical land of miracles, has experienced an economic miracle of a sort. It is now the site of thousands of high-tech start-ups, what authors Senor and Si9nger call "the highest density of start-ups in the world."

So, what is Israel's secret sauce? How can this nation of 7 million people have more companies listed on NASDAQ than does the entire continent of Europe?

In part it's a matter of culture (chutzpah and drive), and in part it's the story of how Israel's military has become the training ground for entrepreneurs. That's the short answer, but it's well worth reading the book for the long answer.

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The Sabbath World

The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time by Judith Shulevitz


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This beautiful book is an extended meditation on the Sabbath, as a day of rest, as a social institution and as a personal challenge. As she regales us with Sabbath history and Sabbath trivia,Shulevitz also ponders her own often troubled relationship with Judaism and Sabbath observance.

I especially enjoyed her chapter on Anabaptist Sabbatarian heresies of the 1500s and 1600s which resulted when the common people of Europe read the Bible in their own vernaculars and resolved to follow the biblical laws forbidding work on the Sabbath.

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The Writer's Journey

The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book is a handy fix-it kit for anyone who has ever struggled to invent a plot for a short story or other work of fiction. Based on Joseph Campbell's classic The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Vogler lays out the template for the classic adventure plot. It starts with the hero's "Ordinary World" (think Kansas in the Wizard of Oz), and progresses through the "Call to Adventure," and subsequent stages like "Approach to the Inmost Cave," and "The Ordeal."

This template works well with some stories (such as The Wizard of Oz or the Star Wars trilogy) and not so well with others, although Vogler, a Hollywood script consultant, tries to make lots of other film plots fit his model. I don't agree with a lot of his choices. Despite some long exposition, it's hard to see how movie Titanic really exemplifies his scheme.

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Under Heaven

Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I'm a long-time Guy Gavriel Kay fan because I enjoy his fantasy-historical worlds, which he bases on detailed historical research. Under Heaven takes place in the fictional Kitai, based on the Chinese Empire under the Tang Dynasty (8th Century).

The main character, Shen Tai, is caught up against his will in the conspiracies and treachery of the Emperor's court. There is lots of romance and random mayhem, along with ghosts and powerful shamans. It's a historical thriller, with some fantasy thrown in.

It's a fun read, although I almost didn't make it through. The first 100 or so pages were not very compelling, and I found it hard to care about what was happening to the main character. Still, I'm glad I kept going because I finally got swept up in the story and read until late into the night.

I do have one pet peeve about GG Kay. He likes to enhance the suspense by taking you to the climax of a scene, and then leaving you hanging. For example, a character could be reading a letter, and you are told that with this letter his life will never be the same. Yet you don't find out why for another 5 or 10 pages. Aargh!

It's annoying, but I'm willing to forgive him, because hit books are such fun.

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Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This sprightly romantic comedy is a sequel to Rigler's Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. In a variation of the time traveler theme, Regency era gentlewoman Jane Mansfield wakes up in the body of 21st century Courtney Stone. Much confusion ensues as she makes sense of this strange new world, and learns to make her way. Rigler carries it all off with a sure comic touch. All in all a light, fun read.

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Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Heroine Courtney Stone, a diehard Jane Austen fan, wakes up one morning in a strange bed, in a strange body and in a different century. She's a wisecracking survivor of the 21st-century romance scene, suddenly transported to the early 19th century.

It's great fun to follow her gaffes, her disgust and her delight as she discovers this new world and as she struggles to regain what she has lost.

The good: witty dialogue, evocative historical detail.

The bad: formulaic Chick Lit plot.

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Portrait of an Unknown Woman

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The good: Intriguing portrait of Sir Thomas More, seen through the eyes of his foster daughter Meg Giggs.
The bad: stiff dialogue, melodramatic plot, complete with revealed secret identities and unsuspected parentage of main characters.
I stopped reading about 1/3 of the way through and skimmed the rest to see how the plot turned out.

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One Amazing Thing

One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This homage to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is a collection of tales told by a group of would-be-travelers-to-India who are trapped by an earthquake in the Indian Consulate of San Francisco, and who are trying to stave off despair as they wait for rescue.
Each tale is a story of love found and love lost: sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes slyly funny. Divakaruni is a master of beautiful language, and is deft in her characterizations.
Spoiler alert: I do have one complaint. I was disappointed by the novel's ambiguous ending. I had come to care for all the characters and I ended up not knowing if they would be rescued or not.

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The Happiness Hypothesis

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Jonathan Haidt, associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia,read the ancient and classical philosophers in light of the modern psychology.And what a great job he does!

For example, in his chapter “The Uses of Adversity,” he starts out with this famous quote from Nietzsche, “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” But is this really true? Haidt reviews the psychological literature, and concludes that it’s only true if a person learns to cope with adversity the right way. A trauma or tragedy can lead to growth if a person works to make sense of the event in terms of his or her own personal narrative.

There’s lots more wisdom in this book about relationships, meaningful work and the sources of human happiness. Not only that, but the writing is lively and intelligent, and not at all contaminated by the deadly dull style that too often makes psychology inaccessible to lay people.

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Cordelia's Honor

Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Bujold's Vorkosigan saga is great entertainment, and I reread it from time to time when I need an escape from reality. The dialogue is witty, and the characters grow and change and Bujold even attacks challenging themes, like the nature of parenthood. This is the first novel in the series, and a great read.

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Another blog?

"What?" you say. "You don't have enough to do?  You already have a perfectly serviceable blog The Do It Yourself Scholar, not to mention an off-line life that takes up most of your time."

Well, my other blog is really devoted to academic podcasts and life-long learning.  This one is more self-indulgent, a place to play with ideas and talk about the books I've read.  I've made a resolution to  write at least a sentence or two about each book I read this year, and I've been posting over at GoodReads.  Here's my opportunity to see what they look like in blog form, and to play around with the blogger platform.  So, ándale pues.