Reading Continues

During this pandemic of 2020, my reading has slowed down which confuses me since I thought I would have more time to read than before. But I started a new garden and I have been spending more time doing things around the house. But I am continuing my reading list. I started the list last August so I have completed one year of reading books, 26 of them from my list and 15 others not on the list. 

Well, that makes 26 books from my list in 52 weeks which comes out to one book every two weeks. You add the non-list books and I totaled 41 books for the year, not too shabby...

Here is my review of the last six books I have read:

The Last of the Mohicans

Written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826, it is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known. The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War, when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. The novel is set primarily in Lake George, New York, detailing the transport of the two daughters of Colonel Munro, Alice and Cora, to a safe destination at Fort William Henry. In the current world, there are Provonchas living on the North end of Lake George, and the fort was a favorite go-to spot of my dad Harold for miniature golf when I was a kid.

In the book, among the caravan guarding the daughter are the frontiersman Natty Bumppo (also known as Hawkeye), Major Duncan Heyward, and the Indians Chingachgook and Uncas, the latter two being the novel's title characters. The novel has been adapted numerous times and in many languages for films, TV movies, and cartoons. Daniel Day-Lewis was my favorite Hawkeye in a movie, and of course MASH's Alan Alda's character was a homage to the book.

I give the book my highest mark of 5.0 (Memorable). It was a wonderful read and I plan to read other books by this author. I am not sure why it was not on my original list.

The Stories of Ray Bradbury

Coming out in 1980, The Stories of Ray Bradbury is an anthology containing 100 short stories by American writer Ray Bradbury. The hundred stories, written from 1943 to 1980, were selected by the author himself. Bradbury's work had previously been collected in various compilations, such as The Martian Chronicles and The October Country, but never in such a large volume (912 pages) or spanning such a long period of time. Some of my favorites I have read multiple times but it took me almost 20 years to finish the whole book. It has sat on my bedside table and periodically I would read a story or two. I decided it was time to complete all 100 stories.

The story, A Sound of Thunder, is one of my favorites: the year is 2055 and time travel has become a practical reality, and the company Time Safari Inc. offers wealthy adventurers the chance to travel back in time to hunt extinct species such as dinosaurs. A movie was made from the story.

The story, I Sing the Body Electric, was episode 100 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. The 1962 script was written by Ray Bradbury, and became the basis for his 1969 short story of the same name, itself named after an 1855 Walt Whitman poem. Although Bradbury contributed several scripts to The Twilight Zone, this was the only one produced.

My all time favorite story, The Veldt, originally appearing as "The World the Children Made" in the September 23, 1950 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, and it was republished under its current name in the 1951 anthology The Illustrated Man.  In the story, a mother and father struggle with their technologically advanced home taking over their role as parents, and their children becoming uncooperative as a result of their lack of discipline. If you ever watched Star Trek TNG, the story reminds me of the Holodeck...

In 2003, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales was published, containing a further 100 stories from later in his career. The two anthologies have entirely different contents. I guess I will have to buy that for something to read over the next 20 years...

I give the book a 3.5 (Great to Excellent)

On A Pale Horse (#26 on list) 

On a Pale Horse is a fantasy novel by Piers Anthony, first published in 1983. It is the first of eight books in the Incarnations of Immortality series. The book focuses on Zane, a photographer about to commit suicide who instead kills Death and must assume his office.

The title is derived from the sixth chapter of Book of Revelation, in which one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death, rides upon a pale horse.

This book was added to my list (#26) on a recommendation from my niece Lori. I liked it and found it very entertaining. There are other books I added from other people's recommendations.

I give the book a 2.5 (Good to Great). It was a fast read but not sure if I will read more from the series.

In the Hurricane's Eye

In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown is a book by American writer Nathaniel Philbrick about the events leading to the defeat of the British at Yorktown with the aid of the French. The book was published in 2018. I never had an interest in history books when I was younger, but my dad was a history major in college, as well as my nephew Israel Provoncha. I guess it is in the blood. I know that as I get older, I find them much more interesting and most importantly, entertaining.

 Another book I read by this author is The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, published in 2010. I liked it too.

I give the book a 3.0 (Great).  Another book I may add to my list by Philbrick is In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. Supposedly, the story this book is based on inspired Melville to write Moby Dick, which happened to be the first book in my list.

Time's Arrows

The book Time's Arrows Scientific Attitudes Toward Time is by Richard Morris  and published in 1986.  I was lent the book by my friend Jim Austin. He figured I would like it and he was right.

This volume explores Western views on time from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages, going on to modern scientific concepts, including relativity, biological time, cosmic time, and whether there is a beginning (or an end) to time. It is written in pretty much layman's terms (read this as meaning not a lot of equations) and the author is a good writer. The problem is the book is kind of dated, being written over 30 years ago. A lot is currently happening in physics and this book inspired me to want to read more about the subject. Like a fool, I went and bought five more books, all written more recently on similar subjects.

I give the book 2.5 (Good to Great). I have his other book called Dismantling the Universe and I plan to read it too.

Camino Winds

Camino Winds is the latest book by John Grisham, published in 2020. It was an impulse buy at Barnes & Noble; I have read a few of his books and he is an easy read. This book is a departure from his normal legal thrillers. It is also a follow-up to the book Camino Island which came out in 2017. The main character owns a bookstore on Camino Island and he makes use of local authors to sell books. He also dabbles in rare books. The mystery in the second book is one of the authors is murdered during a hurricane that hits the island, which by the way is in Florida off of Jacksonville.

I give this book a 2.5. I did find that my local libraries have a copy of the first book which I now want to read...

Goodreads

At the start of the year I started to keep track of my reading on the website Goodreads. It allows you to rate books, make reading lists, research books and authors, make reviews and share these reviews with friends. Look me up: www.goodreads.com

The first 26:

Moby Dick	Herman	Melville
Heart of Darkness	Joseph	Conrad
Fahrenheit 451	Ray	Bradbury
I, Robot	Isaac	Asimov
Frankenstein	Mary	Shelley
Dracula	Bram	Stoker
The Kite Runner	Khaled	Hosseini
The Man in the High Castle	Philip K	Dick
Anna Karenina	Leo	Tolstoy
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep	Philip K	Dick
One Hundred Years of Solitude	Gabriel	Garcia Marquez
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Mark	Twain
Grapes of Wrath	John	Steinbeck
Slaughterhouse-Five	Kurt	Vonnegut
Pride and Prejudice	Jane	Austen
Cloud Atlas	David	Mitchell
The Secret History	Donna	Tartt
Count of Monte Cristo	Alexandre	Dumas
The Color Purple	Alice	Walker
Far From The Madding Crowd	Thomas	Hardy
Of Mice and Men	John	Steinbeck
The Remains of the Day	Kazuo	Ishiguro
The Return of Sherlock Holmes	Sir Arthur Conan	Doyle
Oliver Twist	Charles	Dickens
A Tale Of Two Cities	Charles	Dickens
On a Pale Horse	Piers	Anthony