Book #21: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

I picked this book up off our shelves simply because it was a) super short and b) by Tolstoy, and decided I'd take a whack at it. It's a novella, less than 100 pages, which makes it decidedly easier to swallow than War and Peace, for example. I liked that this felt like serious reading but that it only took maybe an hour and a half to finish it, instead of three months' worth of work.

This book is Tolstoy's look at death--Ivan Ilyich Golovin falls ill with an obviously terminal disease and we get to look inside his mind and see what he thinks about as he comes to dealing with his impending doom and slowly coming to terms with it. (Although I wouldn't say he ever really "comes to terms" with death itself.) Ivan Ilyich expresses some probably universal feelings about the impossibility of death for him and wondering why he has to go through this, etc., and it caused some introspection as to how I would feel if I were in his same position.

Here's the part I liked the most, that seemed especially applicable to me (and probably everyone): "The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: 'Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,' had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius – man in the abstract – was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and will all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of?... 'Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it's altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible.' Such was his feeling" (78). Yes--don't we all think that way, until we've had enough experience with loved ones or health scares ourselves to believe otherwise?

For the record, I did think a bit about being in his same position--terminally ill, heading towards death. How would I feel? And I think probably a lot the same, at first, but the difference between Ivan Ilyich and me is that I am not isolated or alienated from my family or loved ones, and I believe in God and in a very happy afterlife. This is a very obvious statement, but that framing makes all the difference. That wouldn't take the bitterness of that experience away, but I think understanding the gospel would lessen it and help you to get past it quicker, and would put you in a place where you would be surrounded by people who really did care and want to help you (unlike Ivan Ilyich). Ivan Ilyich realizes right at the very end of his life that he had been living his life all wrong--there was no life for him to even stay alive for because he had been selfish and self-serving for most of his life. That's something I like about Tolstoy--he seems to come to conclusions through his characters' thoughts and self-seeking (like with Levin in Anna Karenina) that I believe in and agree with wholeheartedly, and he does it in the most sincere way.

Book #20: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell

First of all--I have to say: I've read 20 books so far this year and it's still February! Um, what? Last year it was MAY before I got to 20 books. Clearly I am on a roll right now. If I keep up this pace I could more than double the books I read last year--but I know I won't because this rate isn't totally sustainable. I've just had a bunch of books I've requested from the library that have been coming in on hold and I'm trying to work through them before I have to return them. So once I make it past that giant pile of books I'll probably slow down again. But it's been really fun reading so much the last few weeks.

I have read all four (?) of Gladwell's other books. I remember reading Blink and The Tipping Point back in 2010--I found them in the BYU bookstore as required textbooks for a class I wasn't even taking and I bought them because I wanted them, haha. And when I read those, I felt like my mind was blown--Gladwell presented these stories and then gave the exact opposite interpretation of what you'd expect but he backs it up so well that you have to believe him. He follows that exact same formula in David and Goliath too. His theory is that we are always pleasantly surprised when underdogs win, but it really shouldn't be a surprise, because it happens pretty regularly and it happens for a reason--because the underdogs know what they are doing and know how to work the system to defeat their giants. He tells these really fascinating stories about people who succeed from really dysfunctional or depressing backgrounds and junior basketball teams who go to the championships without any talent at all and small French towns who stand up to the Nazis and harbor Jews, and uses those stories as evidence to back up his theory. And really, what's not to like? Gladwell's style is just so readable and his stories are thought-provoking and compelling. The thing is, after having read his other books (even a while ago), this pattern just starts to feel gimmicky. He tells you something, and you just wait for the twist--You think that life is THIS way, but actually it's just the opposite... Be amazed! I don't disagree with his main premise here, and I think he does a good job of being moderate enough in his wordings (he doesn't say he's right all the time, just in certain circumstances), but I just don't even know how worthwhile this topic even is as a book. I kind of just skimmed to read the stories and read about the people who he was writing about because those were the most fascinating parts of the book.

Book #19: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

This book has literally been on my list of books to read for YEARS. I really can't believe I never came across it when I was younger! It definitely seems like something I would have enjoyed a lot when I was a tween. And also, I can't believe that I didn't even have a science fiction category here on this blog . . . I guess I don't really read science fiction that much (which I wouldn't have thought if you'd asked me!). But anyways, I FINALLY read Ender's Game, after meaning to forever, and I am proud of myself.

The whole plot of the book is fascinating, let's be honest. Ender and a bunch of other kids taken to this far-away school to teach them battle strategies in a zero-gravity environment for the purposes of training them to be the future leaders of the world space military. I can see why, for kids, this would be a fun read. (Not saying this is just a kids' book, but it's kind of like Harry Potter--you get plucked away to do this prestigious other school.) It was pretty neat to read about how Ender develops into becoming the best at everything and how his brain works faster at figuring out the solutions to all the problems thrown at him.

But okay, here's the thing. I think I would have liked this book better if I hadn't seen the movie first, a few months ago! I feel like it kind of ruined it for me, to know exactly what was coming. After having seen the movie first, I just kind of read haphazardly, looking for something interesting and new, but it seemed like they really followed the plot of the book very closely for the movie. As a result, I honestly can't say I loved this book. And I'm not dying to read any more Ender's books. One thing that kind of bugged me (and Card even addresses this in his introduction to the book) is that all the children in the book (Ender and all the other kids at Battle School) are not children. They don't talk like them or think like them or do anything childlike at all--and the book starts when Ender is six! In the movie, he's 11 or 12 ish the whole time, which is still unbelievable enough for the responsibility they put on him, but plucking him up when he's 6? I'm so confused by why the story has to happen that way. And I was never really convinced as to why they gave all the controls and the future of the world over to a bunch of kids. Sure, he may have been a prodigy, but why would that idea have come up in the first place? I don't think the reasoning there was strong enough to be believable. Additionally, I am pretty disturbed by how Ender killed the two boys who were trying to beat him up. I mean, it was an accident, sure. But why is he allowed to just get away with these things without anyone getting him in trouble? Because he's the universe's last hope, so we can't bust up his peace of mind, so we won't even let him know that those kids died or get him in trouble for it. But that's not really how the world works, and I don't think that's how it should work at all--nobody should be exempt from certain rules, like: don't kill people. But I'm sure these annoyances are pretty common in critiques of Ender's Game so I don't have anything too original to say.

Book #18: Insurgent by Veronica Roth

This book's obviously book 2 in the Divergent trilogy. After finishing book 1, I saw that this one was waiting for me at the library, so I ended up picking it up and basically inhaling it in one fell swoop late last night before I fell asleep (so that's why I didn't go to sleep until 1:30!). It kept my interest the whole time, that's for sure. I feel like it's a pretty common belief that the second book in a trilogy is kind of the boring one--the first has to catch your attention but the second is just a bridge to the climax in the third. But I didn't necessarily think that felt true in this one. I almost liked this book better than the first one, possibly because a lot of the things I didn't like/understand about the plot in the first were taken out (necessarily, because of the plot twists of the first). I still feel like there is a lot of explaining to do about the civilization and why the heck everyone cares so much about Divergents anyways, so I'm still interested to see what happens in the third book and how the author wraps this whole story up.

Here's something that bothers me about this story though: Tris being a Divergent is supposed to be this crazy rarity that makes her test instructor freak out, that makes the test freak out and everyone hears about how her scores had to be entered manually, right? So why, in this book, does it suddenly appear that there are Divergents all over the place? There's even another Divergent right in her group of initiates into the Dauntless group, who would have been taking the test at the same time, right? Come on. I don't think this makes much sense now. The other thing that was annoying was how much of the story was about Tris and Four (her boyfriend of the first book) fighting with each other and keeping secrets and blah blah blah. Well, I couldn't even get myself to care, not once, that they weren't getting along. I wasn't at all worried that they might not get back together, because I knew they would in the end. All their fighting did was make the rest of the plot drag. I know that every romantic storyline HAS to have some stumbles to make it interesting, but I do not think that Roth did it very well because I was completely unfazed by it as the reader and wasn't really convinced by their romance ever in the first place.

Book #17: Divergent by Veronica Roth

I finally decided to get around to reading this book after seeing it everywhere. Bethany got it for Christmas and I thought I'd read them too to see what she likes about them. I started this one last night and then read the rest of it this afternoon--it is over 450 pages long but the spacing between the lines are so big that it really goes pretty fast. I feel like I probably skimmed a lot too, but that was because I was itching to figure out what happened in the plot. (I tend to do that when I get involved in a story--I stop reading every word and just look for new developments in the plot. It takes conscious effort for me to slow down.) Anyways, I did get involved in the plot, maybe about halfway through the book. I feel like I liked the book enough to race through it and probably check out the sequels, but I had a number of problems with the fundamental premise of the book though.

The book is set in a dystopian future society (in Chicago) where the entire society is divided into five factions, determined by what each faction thinks is the premiere character quality is most important: Dauntless (bravery), Abnegation (selflessness), Erudite (knowledge), Amity (kindness), and Candor (honesty). At the age of 16, students have to take a test that pronounces toward which quality their natural inclination lies, and after that test, they make a choice of which faction they will join. The story follows Beatrice Prior, who, for some reason, does not fall neatly into one of the categories and is therefore labeled as Divergent.

I just don't really understand or believe the story as it is. First off, why would a future society decide to divide up based on five randomly chosen qualities? And why are they so strict about it? If you fail the initiation into your faction, you become "factionless" and aren't allowed in anywhere. Why not just let them join a different faction? Why can't you switch factions? Also, Beatrice (or Tris, as she chooses to be called), chooses the Dauntless faction, and much of the book shows her going through training and initiation activities, which involves things like jumping on and off moving trains (repeatedly), jumping off buildings, going through mental simulations of your fear, etc. It just seems like those activities are ridiculous and not actually aimed toward instilling bravery in the initiates. All of these fundamental plot points bothered me as I read and didn't seem believable enough to me. Many people compared this book to Hunger Games to me, but I felt like Panem seemed like a much more believable tyranny established instead of this quasi-democratic society established on such thin tenets. Additionally, I didn't love the author's writing style, but that's pretty normal for these YA novels, I feel like (I'm not crazy about Suzanne Collins' writing in HG either).

Like I said, I am still planning on reading the sequels, and I'm interested to see how they turn out.

Book #16: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

Obviously, I love The Office, like just about everyone else my age, and I've always liked Kelly Kapoor. That's the main reason I even remembered hearing about this book, because I knew that Mindy Kaling was a writer and director for a number of Office episodes and that she therefore must be a pretty hilarious person. And this book is pretty hilarious--it seems like it's just a bunch of semi-unrelated essays about her life, her career, and her random musings about things she does, and she often has really funny things to say. I definitely laughed out loud a good number of times. It was very interesting hearing about how she got to where she "made it," as a writer on The Office staff, how her career started and what steps she took to get to where she wanted to be. I liked reading her funny stories about her childhood as well, but I wasn't as equally interested by the random essays on random things she was thinking about (like "marriage" or Irish exits, etc.). I finished this book in probably 2.5 hours yesterday, while Tommy was finishing up packing for his trip to Utah, and I think that's a reasonable amount of time to have dedicated to this book. It was just a fun piece of fluff--the book equivalent to cotton candy--something I enjoyed quickly and feel no need to revisit or get back into.

Book #15: Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

This book was hidden on my "to-read" shelf on my goodreads and I thought I'd try to knock it out. I don't know where I heard about it, but maybe in a list of books about reading from another book I'd read--not sure. This book itself was fine--like I've mentioned before, I like the genre of writing about books and reading. I love hearing other people (who are far better read than me) writing about their love for certain books and how those books and their reading experiences have shaped them; it gets me thinking about the books and reading that shaped me as a child and as an adult. This entire book is basically one long essay where Schwartz reminisces on the importance of reading and reviews certain books that were critical to her. However, I think I read this book too close to a few other books about reading and I'm maybe just tired of it right now, and I have a lot of other books checked out from the library right now that I am itching to get to in reading, so this one felt a little like an imposition to try and get through. I would have probably just stopped reading it except that it was really short--less than 120 pages--so I felt like I might as well power through it once I was already halfway through! I enjoyed this book but it might have been better suited for a more leisurely stroll through instead of the recent frenetic pace I've been keeping with books lately.