Methuselah's Children

Methuselah's Children Robert Heinlein 160pp.

I’ll open this review with a brief confession that I feel I must make-I really, really love pulp fiction. There, I said it. In my mind it takes a tremendous amount of skill as a writer to create a good piece of pulp writing, even though it may seem otherwise. If the author falls back on conventions of the genre too heavily, then his narrative will look weak. But if the story is too narrative-focused, with the genre lurking in the background only as a means of understanding the text in relation to other books, then it isn’t pulp. It’s a problem, and a fascinating one.

Robert Heinlein’s Methuselah’s Children is a marvelous jaunt down the dusty reminisces of Golden Age Science Fiction. Through the course of the book we follow a set of families who, by virtue of selective breeding, have developed themselves to live for centuries. They are, in due course, imprisoned for the outside world’s want of their longevity, and through a marvelously executed plan, the families make their escape into the vast reaches of space.

One of the best choices made in the entire composition of this book was Heinlein’s decision to send his long-lived protagonists out into outer-space, where their only interactions would be with themselves or with utterly alien minds. On one level, I found this to be a little frustrating, the kind of knowledge, foresight, and nuance that a two-hundred year old man would bring to a discussion with someone who only has their threescore and ten would be amazing to read. However, Heinlein is not simply aware of this potential, he even lampshades it in some of Slayton Ford’s internal dialogue prior to just such a conversation. It is interesting, in the light of this, that Heinlein’s protagonist for the novel, the tough and gruff Lazarus Long rarely behaves in a way outside that of a ‘normal’ human. In the end, Heinlein makes the wiser choice as an author to avoid this interaction, as there is effectively no way he could produce it with the kind of clarity and narrative weight the occasion deserves.

Naturally, being Heinlein, Methuselah’s Children contains a section decrying the evils of collectivization and triumphing the immortal strength and power of the human spirit alone. Squarely in the middle of the book, one of the alien races who take the long-lived humans in initiate Slayton into their religious system. It turns out, spoilers incoming, that this initiation is a revelation of collective servitude to a higher, free-minded species. Slayton’s brain simply rejects the process lock, stock, and barrel, leaving him a shaken shell of a man for quite some time.

Later, when the long-lived humans meet this master race, they find the species to be even more communal than the one who worships them. Their lives are lived in a mutual community of spirit, sharing consciousness between multiple bodies. Sure enough, one of the long-lived humans casts their lot for immortality with this mutuality, and the rest of the humans lose themselves in mourning for her. Fortunately, however, Heinlein keeps his social polemic to the background of the text for the majority of the book, choosing instead to focus on the family’s own ways of relating to one another and the outside world through the lens of their extreme longevity.

Books like Methuselah’s Children are valuable, most of all as a short form dedicated to the working out and exploration of one single idea. While the narrative possibilities within Heinlein’s plot have a great deal of energy left in them for further writing (A voluminous backstory only hinted at within the novel and the wider consequences of the long-lived protagonists’ return to earth stand out as particularly interesting examples.) Yet despite all these possibilities left dangling in front of us like the appetizers you decide not to order, the novel wraps up to a satisfying and compelling conclusion. Heinlein was indisputably a master of the short novel as a form, and Methuselah’s Children is just one more piece of proof for that fact.

Would I recommend Methuselah’s Children? Yes.

Score: 3.6/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar

Paper Towns

Paper Towns John Green 320pp.

John Green’s Paper Towns is a wonderful, pithy exploration of the way we view our friends and the people we interact with. The novel tells the story of Quentin Jacobsen, a somewhat nerdy high school student, chasing after Margo Roth Spiegelman, the love of his life.

At the risk of calling too much attention to the way I am writing these reviews, the second sentence up there is exactly the issue that John Green is exploring in this novel. When I portrayed Quentin and Margo to you, I did so by epitomizing them in a very brief and one-dimensional description. While this is entirely understandable in the case of priming a review through a presentation of the characters, it becomes troublesome when we apply this in real life. Quentin spends the entire book understanding Margo through a variety of lenses, picturing her in a sequence of different, equally inaccurate simplifications.

This development of Quentin’s view of Margo is paralleled neatly as he follows after her disappearance through a series of clues and riddles. Every possible piece of information that Quentin can find which suggests a possible motive or destination for Margo’s disappearance shortly before the end of her high school career is analyzed, turned over, and twisted about. Dozens of paper Margos come and go through the course of the novel, none of which accurately portray the woman they so desperately desire to represent.

In some ways, this chase draws comparisons to novels like The DaVinci code, at the very least through a structural lens; but the essential nature of the novel causes it to stand apart. Paper Towns bears more resemblance to a philosophical tract than an action-mystery thriller. Green’s writing does lend itself to those comparisons with hints at suicide to raise the stakes, but not for a moment do those implications seem substantiated by the information in the text.

Paper Towns was a very enjoyable book to read, an excellent blurring of the lines between Young Adult fiction, which it is undoubtedly marketed as, and a “real” novel. The nuance of character development, and frankly even the specific aspect of human nature which Green chooses to explore push the novel out of the Young Adult category for me, and I think they problematize any easy definitions of either genre for any reader.

Would I recommend Paper Towns? Yes.

Score: 4.2/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Had I not checked it out from the library, absolutely.

-DFTBA, Mr. Cheddar.

Tristessa

Tristessa Jack Kerouac 96pp.

Jack Kerouac’s Tristessa, while not functioning very well as a novella, provides a tremendous insight into Kerouac’s spritual life. The  book is a lengthy mediation on his relationship with Tristessa, a morphine junky in Mexico City. With no subtlety or obfuscation, Kerouac wants to portray himself as a hero coming into Tristessa’s broken, hellish existence in Mexico city and lifting her up into his idealized life as a religious wanderer.Through this angle, Tristessa paints a perfect picture of his understanding of Buddhism and how he imagines himself acting through that. 

On its surface, Tristessa is an exploration of Tristessa’s life and the society she lives in in Mexico City. But this is not Kerouac’s interest. Rather, he uses this as a lens through which he can portray his own interest in Buddhism, combined with his upbringing in a staunchly Roman Catholic family. What this lens shows to the reader is Kerouac’s twist on Buddhism, into a salvific religion, by which he could bring his friends out of their sordid lives and into a world of perfect joy.

This frankly demeaning view of the world works well with Tristessa, and we see Kerouac jaunting around Mexico city with her, idealizing this woman into a perfect archon of beauty and joy. The comparison goes so far as to imply that Tristessa herself is a type of the Virgin Mary, reborn in the filth of Mexico City. Kerouac honestly believes that through her experience and living with her, he could attain to enlightenment and lift her up at the same time.

We see this syncretism of Catholicism and Buddhism at its finest when Kerouac and Tristessa are in front of an altar to the Virgin, at which, after lighting a cigarette from an altar candle, Kerouac makes a prayer to the Virgin “‘Excuse mué ma ‘Dame’”-making special emphasis on Dame because of the Mother of Buddhas.” This combination of religious imagery pops up all throughout the text, as Kerouac constantly equivocates Tristessa and the Virgin/Damema, fusing the two in his mind into an idealized angelic figure perfectly pure amidst the squalor of morphine in Mexico City.

In the course of the novella, Kerouac goes so far as to decide that Tristessa “doesn’t need saving,” he eventually comes back to Mexico City a year later, and sees her living in the same state he left her. After a week or so of bumming around the city and realizing that he is playing second fiddle to the morphine in her life, he packs up and moves on with his life, leaving Tristessa as a perfect icon in his mind.

While the gender politics in Tristessa are very problematic: Kerouac has to be the big hero coming in to Mexico to either lift up and save or abase himself and worship at the feet of this idealized woman; the novella remains a wonderful crystallization of his jazz prose. The sentences roll together in a carefully metered casual rhythm, painting the city in rich pictures. On the whole, the novella provides an enjoyable evening’s read.

Would I recommend Tristessa? Yes.

Score: 3.8/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

Essentials of Christian Theology

Essentials of Christian Theology William C. Placher, ed. 422pp.

William C. Placher has put together a marvelous collection of essays in Essentials of Christian Theology. The book is organized as an exploration of Christian thought from a variety of angles. Curiously, the text’s strongest aspect also calls attention to its great weakness. 

Essentials of Christian Theology lacks a strong central viewpoint to organize the text. By selecting his sources from such a wide variety of theological traditions, Placher has put together a phenomenal introduction to the breadth of thought in the discipline. As such, it is easy to finish Essentials and feel ready to dive into more focused, single point-of-view texts. I appreciated this greatly, being given an understanding of the language used in Theological discourse, as well as a smattering of some of the issues currently being tossed around by theologians was a wonderful entry into the field. This does come up a touch weak for me at the end of the book, when I was given a wide series of differing views, all presented equally and in constant dialogue with each other. I felt that I had more questions to answer and resolve than a greater understanding and answer on any single issue, though perhaps that is the point.

At this point, I’m going to end the review for this book, I’ve tossed around about a dozen different ways of discussing some of the chapters, but I really don’t feel that I can do them justice. So, Essentials of Christian Theology is a great introduction to the field, but a little hard to walk away from feeling confident in any one viewpoint.

Would I recommend Essentials of Christian Theology? Yes.

Score: 3.7/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar

A New Model of the Universe

A New Model of the Universe P.D. Ouspensky 554pp.

Throwing this review back to 1913, P.D. Ouspensky presents a very enjoyable reaction to, among a wide variety of other topics, Darwin’s theories of evolution. But I’m getting ahead of myself slightly. A New Model of the Universe is a precursor to some of the late 20^th and early 21^st century literature on magic. Ouspensky presents his view of understanding the universe as a vast and mystical system, true meaning hiding behind the veil of the widely known sciences in a similar manner to the ancient Pythagoreans’ understanding of reality through mysticism masked in the guise of bland mathematics.

Ouspensky discusses this view of reality through a wide variety of instantiations in common culture at the time, ranging from mathematics, with an utter fascination with four-dimensional space. This thought is, frankly, really just amusing to read. Rather than spoiling the joy of his prose, I’ll let Ouspensky speak for himself,

If the fourth dimension exists, one of two things is possible. Either we ourselves possess the fourth dimension, I.e. are beings of four dimensions, or we possess only three dimensions and in that case do not exist at all.

If the fourth dimension exists while we possess only three, it means that we have no real existence, that we exist only in somebody’s imagination, and that all our thoughts, feelings and experiences take place in the mind of some other higher being, who visualises us. We are but products of his mind and the whole of our universe is but an artificial world created by his fantasy.

If we do not want to agree with this, we must recognise ourselves as beings of four dimensions.

But the mathematical fancy in which Ouspensky indulges is not nearly the greatest part of the book. No, that comes from his reading of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Ouspensky holds that Darwin was utterly correct to understand the development of organisms over time, but that he was subtly off the mark. Or, in a more charitable reading of Ouspensky’s criticism, Darwin consciously masked a mystical truth in the guise of science.

Rather than biological development through time, Ouspensky believes in a mystical development of mankind through a progressively deeper understanding of reality. It is through throwing back the veils of reality that a mind grows into a wider and wider understanding and a greater purpose and truth in his life. This philosophy is expounded at length through the course of the entire book, applying a certain form of hermeneutics best likened to literary criticism to every text and symbolic object Ouspensky can lay his narrative gaze on.

A New Model of the Universe comes dustily forward from the cusp of modernity. Just as new genres of purely scientific writing were beginning to be widely published and disseminated, there was a corresponding intellectual restlessness. Notions of humanity’s place in the universe were being shifted about and questioned, a trend whose effects we are still feeling to this day. Reacting to the weirdness of, at the time, modern science (and it is important to remember how utterly weird and unsettling evolution was to people in the late nineteenth century), by reading it in the manner of secret knowledge gained through mystical cults has a resemblance to the modern phenomenon of conspiracy theories. There is an exhilaration and a distinction to being one of the enlightened few who have pierced the mystery and see the world for what it is, unlike the unsuspecting sheep who look at contrails as merely airplane exhaust. Ultimately, however, this line of thought is at best unreliable, though mostly benign. Ouspensky clings tenaciously to a method of literary criticism and textual interaction best understood from the  late renaissance into the early Enlightenment era, twisting about the convulutions and upheavals in the wake of new science.

Would I recommend A New Model of the Universe? To read? Yes. To take seriously? Not so much.

Score: 3.2/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Difficult to say, on the one hand I really enjoyed reading it, but on the other, I don’t think I will come back to it.

-Mr. Cheddar

A Delay

Sorry about the break in posts, NaNoWriMo is kicking me in the behind. The good news is that I have ~16,000 words to go and should be done by Thanksgiving. You can look forward to more reviews after Thanksgiving. 

-Mr. Cheddar

The Town and the City

The Town and the City Jack Kerouac 499pp.

Jack Kerouac’s first published novel, The Town and the City is a marvelous entry into Kerouac’s work. It provides a great vehicle for understanding how Kerouac’s novels work both from a critical perspective and from just the point-of-view of just simply reading them. In brief, The Town and the City follows the varied lives of the Martin family in the years leading up to and shortly after World War 2. Every book Kerouac wrote is a fictionalized account of his life, and with the right key, one can translate almost every character in the book into a real person from his life.

The Town and the City has a few problems, mostly in that none of the female characters get a reasonable amount of narrative space. Ruth, Liz, and Rose, as well as a spate of girlfriends pass through the pages, interacting with the Martin sons, and then drifting off into deeper recesses of the narrative. Marguerite Martin gets a slight reprieve from this, Kerouac loved his mother and features her extremely prominently in his novel. Kerouac gives his mother a vastly more central role in the book, as a substantial part of the pair around whom the family revolved, though I must admit that she is still confined almost exclusively to domesticity.

I can, however, set aside these faults in the novel largely on the grounds that, while on the surface it is a rambling book about the entire Martin family’s lives, in reality it is a book about Jack Kerouac’s adolescence reflected through a prism of three men. Joe Martin is the working Kerouac, the traveling, wild image he projects of himself at times as a working-class hero. Francis Martin is, at some level, the Kerouac of soft intellectual ruminations, brooding in the garret. In truth, however, the real stand-in for Kerouac is Peter Martin.

Everything in Peter Martin’s life, from the football, to the Merchant Marine, to the experiences in New York City are directly culled from Kerouac’s own life. I think that this is a really important understanding to go into this book with, understanding that Kerouac was not simply a refined, effete writer standing on his soapbox writing his novels about the world. He was an athlete, however much or little that actually says about his character. He was able to go to Columbia and study how to be a writer because he got a full-ride scholarship to play football. It’s easy to lose sight of this in studying Kerouac’s work, but I think that going into his novels with an early understanding of who the man was in reality is important before studying who he portrayed himself to be in fiction.

In The Town and the City, Kerouac writes with breathtaking grandeur, sweeping across the plains and forests of New England with Russian magnificence. Reminiscent of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Galsworthy, Kerouac drifts through the the lives of his fictionalized family growing up, growing old, and growing apart in the malaise of the 1940’s.

Would I recommend The Town and the City? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Score: 4.6/5

Would I keep this on my shelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar

Deliberate Prose

Deliberate Prose Allen Ginsberg 536pp.

Allen Ginsberg, while most well-known as a poet, was phenomenally talented as an essayist as well. Ginsberg’s poetry, which teemed through every line with its intensely charged political rhetoric is very easily understood in light of these essays. The book can be understood in three sections: first, Ginsberg’s political beliefs, criticism of American military actions, and espousal of the use of marijuana and psychadelics; second, a discussion of his religious beliefs and experiences; and third, the majority of the book, a long series of essays about his friends and other writers he knew or studied.

This last section is by far the most useful collection of writing I have ever read for understanding Allen Ginsberg. Reading his own writing and explanation of other poets helps tremendously to place him in the context of the writers he loved so much. The lengthy explication of Whitman’s poetry provides more than a little bit of understanding into the work of that great master of American poetry. At the same time, however, it gives much more insight into Allen Ginsberg’s own theory of poetry.

Ginsberg was, in no small way, a 20^th century Whitman. His verse evolved as he became more established as a poet, working in the same long-form lines as Whitman. For now small period of time, I thought that this was where the similarity between the two poets was at its strongest. What I have realized, largely through this essay, is that Ginsberg does his most similar work through his choice of focus. Working in the same way as Carl Sandburg, Ginsberg focused on a thousand little images around the country, putting them together with a brutal sense of honesty to form a legendary corpus of poems.

These essays are marvelous. Allen Ginsberg’s writing pops with unexpected images and a constant freshness of language. Never does Ginsberg begin to develop any sense of detachment from his enjoyment of the things he writes about, but rather he enthusiastically discusses the things he loves. This enthusiasm carries over into the reader and creates a greatly enjoyable collection of writing.

Would I recommend Deliberate Prose? Yes.

Score: 4.2/5

Would I keep this on my shelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos H.P. Lovecraft and Others 461pp.

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos is an excellent collection of short stories sampled from the long history of Cthulhu. The stories in this volume vary tremendously in terms of quality, most are very enjoyable, but a few are just embarrassing. I think that it is interesting that Lovecraft’s contributions to the volume are actually some of the weaker writing in the book. Lovecraft, in my mind, is a writer much more of ideas than of words. By contrast, August Derleth and Robert Howard wrote some of the best stories this book has to offer.

What makes for a good Cthulhu story?

While Cthulhu is, of course, very much a character in the context of the mythos, I contend that it is just as much a question of atmosphere. In a good Cthulhu story, much like any horror story, we do not see the dread creature from the depths of our fear until the very end, though I do not consider it necessary to ever explicitly see or interact with otherworldly creatures in the story itself. The conflict, the dark horrors must be progressing outside of the characters’ actions. If the protagonists can succeed, it should only be in small ways, against the human agents of eldritch horrors.

One of my favorite aspects of the Cthulhu mythos is that while Cthulhu is most certainly the creation of H.P. Lovecraft-the atmosphere, the characters, the manner of storytelling, everything was established by Lovecraft. However, the mythos has been developed by an ever-increasing community of writers all working together to create an atmosphere of horror and tension. This idea of crowd-sourcing fiction is very interesting to me. Normally, I am not very supportive of fanfiction, but I think that adding to the Cthulhu myth is a very different enterprise.

The notion of Cthulhu stories as myth is a very important element of this distinction. The threads which tie the various Cthulhu stories together are mostly done through a hinted-at presence of otherworldly horror. Rather than taking Francis Thurston from The Call of Cthulhu and telling us a new adventure tracking down the cult around the world, the authors in the shared world of the mythos take the distantly discussed Cthulhu and other Old Gods and places them as the antagonists of new horror. Additionally, writers in the Cthulhu mythos are very conscious of the body of work they are participating in. Almost every story in the volume makes passing reference to books or events from earlier stories.

This volume was a very interesting diversion, a relaxing few afternoons spent delving outside of my normal taste in fiction. One of the nice things about Cthulhu fiction is that it is typically so short that you can read a few stories in one sitting, leading to a wide variety of experience. Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos was a quick, enjoyable read, well worth the price. I would highly recommend picking it up for a bit of light reading on a cold, windy day.

Would I recommend Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos? Yes.

Score: 4.5/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar

Necronomicon

Necronomicon Simon 221pp.

Simon’s Necronomicon is a wonderful example of missing the point. After going back and reading it again for the first time since I bought it, I’m honestly a little embarrassed that I own it. This volume purports to be a translation of the original, totally real, Necronomicon referenced so often in Lovecraft’s writing. Of course, any requests to view the original manuscript must, as a matter of policy, be refused.

The text itself is, well, it’s uninspired. Simon manufactures a weak imitation of Sumerian ritual formulae in a poetry which feels like it is desperately trying to achieve a sense of musty, ancient, foreboding drama, but really just feels dull. Interspersed with the translations of the spells into English are a variety of charms in what is claimed to be ancient Sumerian. Not being a scholar, I can’t speak to their authenticity, but they feel real enough, kind of.

Setting aside the flaws in the writing itself, this book fails in a very critical way; I’ll let Lovecraft himself explain, “if anyone were to try to write the Necronomicon, it would disappoint all those who have shuddered at cryptic references to it.” This alleged Necronomicon falls into this exact problem. While some of Lovecraft’s otherworldly, shuddering horror pokes its head through the lines in the text, at no point does this book send the shivers down one’s spine in the way that the vague, fleeting references scattered throughout the Cthulhu mythos are able to do.

I’ll keep this review brief, because I don’t want to harp on about the book more and more. It wasn’t good. I won’t be keeping it. Go read the original Cthulhu stories.

Would I recommend Necronomicon? No.

Score: 1.3/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? No.

-Mr. Cheddar

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau Joseph Wood Krutch 298pp.

Joseph Wood Krutch’s Henry David Thoreau is a tight, well-written biography of one of my heroes. Krutch follows Thoreau’s life in a carefully considered way, providing biographical information to fill out the author’s own autobiographical oeuvre. At times, Krutch’s writing gets a little bogged down in considering small details from Thoreau’s life and speculating on them to an unreasonable degree, but he salvages his text into an informative and eminently readable volume.

One of the difficult aspects of writing about Thoreau’s life is that his own books are such up-front biographies. Krutch doesn’t do much to overcome this, in essence this book is simply a volume explaining the little bits of Thoreau’s life not discussed in his own writing. We learn meager bits of his childhood, the vaguest hints of a love life, and most interestingly, Thoreau’s pseudo-career as a businessman after Walden pond.

A businessman?

Yes, I was shocked to learn, and this is possibly the aspect in which I am most indebted to Krutch; that after leaving Walden pond, Thoreau made his living somewhat less by working as a surveyor, but rather became increasingly entangled in the family’s pencil-manufacturing business.

Thoreau still managed to keep his own naturalist concerns in play during the later years of his life, working on filling his notebooks with observations about the world around him, but Krutch makes his finest point of analysis on the manner of Thoreau’s writing in the book’s final chapter. Walden was more or less written six years before Thoreau began working on publishing it. All of Thoreau’s great writing took a very long time to filter through his life and experience before he could talk about it and make it into the treasure it became. By the end of his life, it is not unreasonable to look at much of Thoreau’s work in his journals and loose paper and speculate on the great pieces lying dormant, ready to spring forth if only he’d had just a few more years.

Would I recommend Henry David Thoreau? To the lover of Thoreau, yes. Otherwise, no.

Score: 3.8/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? No.

-Mr. Cheddar

The Essential Emerson

The Essential Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson 847pp.

Reading Ralph Waldo Emerson is a joy, his work is carefully considered and comes roaring out of history with a vengeance. The Essential Emerson is a mammoth book, compiling the entirety of Emerson’s writing into one massive volume. (N.B. It is possible that there are other essays by Emerson outside of this collection, but for the life of me, I cannot find them.) The collection begins with Emerson’s collections of essays and addresses in which he explains the Transcendentalist approach to life. From there he moves into a series of essays about the English and poems. The book wraps up with a small collection of biographical addresses about people Emerson knew and respected. Because this volume contains such a wide variety of Emerson’s work, I’ll divide this review into three sections, then talk about the book as a whole.

Emerson is at his strongest when he talks about philosophy and its role in the lives of individual men, be they real men-Plato or Napolean-or the vague philosophical man at the core of his essays. Nature, in this vein, is one of the strongest sections of the entire collection. It is refreshing to read the exuberance in Emerson’s writing. Much of life feels like drudgery, it is easy to become trapped in the day-to-day reality of living and working. The Transcendentalists, Emerson especially, shift their focus entirely and look beyond this world to a meaning and purpose lurking just behind the experiences in this life.

The poetry in this volume is, at best, uninspired. Emerson’s verse feels like an attempt to bridge out from the essays he is so talented at writing into a form he has not studied, but I know this isn’t the case. Rather, Emerson wrote his poetry in the closing years of the Romantic era, and the style has not aged well.

The low point of the volume, however, is when Emerson broadens his scope from writing about an individual in his essays to discussing the traits of the English. This essay is a long, dry, zest-less generalization of a population that Emerson only knew from reading and a season-long visit to the country. I understand how, in the context of the times, this long essay-delivered as a series of lectures-could have been very worthwhile to his audience. Thinking about it nicely, I’ll leave my discussion of this section with: it didn’t end well.

Plowing through the entirety of Emerson’s works is not an experience I would recommend. Emerson’s writing is enjoyable and refreshing, but it is at its best in small doses. I think that it is not accidental that Emerson reaches his peak in the form of the essay. When you read a single essay of his at a time, there is enough space and time to let the thought sink in and really enjoy it. By contrast, when you soak up 800 pages of Emerson in preparation for a trip to Concord, Massachusetts; the result is less than pleasurable.

Would I recommend The Essential Emerson? Yes, but in doses not to exceed three essays per day.

Score: 4.3/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar

The Last Temptation of Christ

The Last Temptation of Christ Nikos Kazantzakis 506pp.

Nikos Kazantzakis’ marvelous novel, The Last Temptation of Christ is a lengthy exploration of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Rather than portraying the life of Jesus with slavish accuracy to the gospels, Kazantzakis decides to explore Jesus’ life through a more realist, personal perspective, focusing to such an extreme extent on Jesus’ humanity that he makes the gospels seem solely focused on the divine nature of the man.

The Last Temptation of Christ was a treat to read. This book makes other novels look like races to the finish line by comparison. Every scene in this novel is drawn out and just feels like it is taking its time in a way that no other book I’ve read recently has done. Even books like 1Q84, which certainly took their time in resolving the story feel rushed in comparison to this. Despite this creakingly slow pace, The Last Temptation of Christ manages to keep the reader engaged in the story, truly pulling you into the suffering of Jesus.

Kazantzakis’ focus on Jesus’ suffering is, beyond a doubt, the strongest aspect of The Last Temptation of Christ. At no point do we see Jesus portrayed as a single-minded, fired-up preacher bent on following his course to save the world. Rather, Kazantzakis shows Jesus as a human, constantly plagued by doubts and false starts. Every time he begins to know which path he is to take, rather that of the zealot reformer, advocating military revolution against the Romans, or that of the peaceful preacher, showing the way to the kingdom of heaven through teaching, Jesus is uncertain which way to go, questioning himself through a book-length exploration of mortal agony.

Interestingly, the disciples are portrayed completely differently than in the gospels. Judas is the closest disciple, traveling with Jesus from the beginning of his ministry. On the other hand, Matthew and the other disciples are portrayed as, at best, being at cross purposes with Jesus during his ministry. Kazantzakis gives an origin story to the gospels, as an angel whispers into Matthew’s ear every night, compelling him to write down the gospels according to a story which does not quite match the facts of Jesus’ life. In one of my favorite scenes from the novel, Jesus confronts Matthew about the contents of the books, and Matthew can only blubber excuses about the angel’s instructions.

I enjoyed The Last Temptation of Christ quite a lot, it is a wonderful chance to see an author taking a daring risk retelling a story so dear to so many people in a manner so different than any done before it. Furthermore, by focusing on the internal moral struggle of Jesus, rather than treating him as a settled question from the beginning, Kazantzakis is able to portray the life of Christ as having a very direct relevance to the life of any reader of the novel.

Would I recommend The Last Temptation of Christ? Yes

Score: 4.5/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar

Site News

Hello, everyone.

We're about three months into this project and a little more than 10% finished with the reading, which is honestly really exciting to me. So far, I've knocked off the Harry Potter series, as well as sundry other books scattered around the library. The number of books I'm still looking at is a little daunting at times, but I know that I'm going to be able to make it through them.

A little site news:
Last week I took a trip to Rhode Island and spent one day tracking down Lovecraft sites in Providence, as well as a day trip up to Concord to see Thoreau and Emerson sites. In the near future, I'll post an essay about each trip, the sites I saw, and the feeling of standing at the grave of one of the writers who has had a greater influence on me than possibly any other person in human history.

Halloween is coming up! October 31st will be a spooky Halloween review binge, I'm looking at at least three reviews for that day, possibly more.

Finally, November is going to be a very exciting month for Mr. Cheddar reviews. I'll be doing the first of two planned Beat Generation marathons. More details to follow.

-Mr. Cheddar

A Gringo Like Me

A Gringo Like Me Jennifer L. Knox 79pp.

Jennifer L. Knox’s first book of poetry, A Gringo Like Me is a hot, hot, hot-ass book. As I went through this collection it immediately became clear to me the humor and surrealism which so entranced me in The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway has been a part of Knox’s writing from the beginning. Knox will throw you for a loop sometimes, her poetry is always shocking, even after reading it several times, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a better poet writing today.

The poetry in A Gringo Like Me is surprising, not just in imagery, but in tone and language. Knox has no interest for the lofty mountain peaks and brightly colored flower blossoms. Hers is a world of chicken buckets and battery operated Shih Tzus. But when Knox turns her poetic eye to these visions, the language she plays with is breathtaking. This breathtaking skill with language isn’t all that Knox has to bring to the table-Knox’s poetry is bursting with little lines that underscore a joking sexual tension.

“Plus, they’re the only race/ able to sex baby chickens.”

Much like The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway, Knox works through multiple modes of poetry in this collection. Most notable among her deviations from her usual form of verse are the short scripts. The absurdist plays shout out Knox’s trademark humor to perfection. These plays further some of the deconstructive work Knox is doing with her poems, taking apart the notion of a play and subjecting an imaginary audience to watching these productions. This shifting of focus was possibly my favorite aspect of the book. At first, I read the plays simply as scripts themselves, giving a little thought what a production might look like. On returning to them, I began to envision how an audience would react to seeing these plays performed. That shift of focus, that surprising image, that immediate placement in the experience of another human being, that is poetry and was the high point of A Gringo Like Me.

A Gringo Like Me is a very good book of poetry, Knox’s work has been one of the high points for me in doing these reviews. Her verse is well-done, clearly the product of a talented writer. If I were trying to introduce someone to contemporary poetry, Knox’s work, and especially A Gringo Like Me is one of the first places I would turn.

Would I recommend A Gringo Like Me? Yes.

Score: 4.3/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar

Paul VI

Paul VI Alden Hatch 279pp.

Alden Hatch’s biography of the late pope, Paul VI is a nice tracing of the course of a man’s journey through the Catholic Church, up through his role as pope. The biography begins, conventionally enough, with Giovanni Battista’s birth and boyhood in the Italian Alps. From there, Hatch follows the young priest through his career and life working in and around the Vatican. Interestingly, the biography does not hit its high point in or around Battista’s election to the papacy, personally, that section felt rather dull (On further reflection, perhaps this shouldn’t surprise me, since the event itself is shrouded in a veil of extreme secrecy.) Rather, Paul VI is at its most interesting by far when it discusses Pope Paul VI’s management of the second Vatican Council. Hatch uses this as the final scene with which to end his biography.

Hatch’s writing is conversational to a fault, every element from Paul’s life feels like you’re listening to someone describing the life of a very close friend. It would have been easy, in this manner of book, to slip into a sort of bland devotional writing, but Hatch tactfully avoids this pitfall. Additionally, while I personally would have liked Hatch to at least dip his toes into the turbulent theological waters of the discussions at the council, I think that by taking a route around them, his book worked much more effectively.

Paul VI was a good book. Hatch’s style was relaxed and comfortable, lending itself to a very skillfully executed biography. The only complaint that I could make against it, and I’m stretching a bit here, is that it felt a little too easy and simple; but I enjoyed the book tremendously anyway. 

Would I recommend Paul VI? I’m not certain on this one. It was a good book, to be certain, but I think that its appeal is going to be limited to a somewhat niche audience. I suppose that if you’re interested in the history of the papacy, this is the book for you.

Score: 3.7/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? No.

-Mr. Cheddar

A River Runs Through It

A River Runs Through It Norman Maclean 219pp.

Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It is a touching collection of short stories, all wrapped entirely around relationships between people and nature. These three stories all come from Maclean’s experiences in Montana during the first part of the 20^th century, reaffirming over and over again the clear virtue of closeness to the land. Maclean’s style is reminiscent of Thoreau, though it is much more heavily fictionalized. Happily, Maclean lets much of his philosophizing sit in the background of the text, choosing instead to extol the glories of actions, imperfections of life, and beauty of nature through his characters actions.

In the title story,  Maclean explores the relationship between himself and his brother during the last summer before his brother died. This story opens with a lengthy description of the pseudo-religious nature of fishing which he and his family practiced, then wanders through the season’s fishing shared between the Maclean brothers and the narrator’s brother-in-law. Fishing is explored as a symbol alongside the moral nature of each of the characters. The Maclean brothers, while not entirely upright men, are good and devoted fishermen who work by the incredibly demanding skill of fly-fishing. The brother-in-law, by contrast, is a layabout, portrayed without any manly virtues and fishes by the despicable technique of bait-fishing.

As the story progresses, Maclean attempts to help his brother straighten out the rougher parts of his life, but his attempts are rebuffed in a stiff, cold way. By the end of the story, which follows obsessively lengthy fishing trips, the two brothers have drawn closer together than they were as children and it seems as though this fishing therapy could straighten things out. But in a beautiful use of understatement, on the last page of the story Maclean simply reveals the brother’s death.

Maclean’s writing is beautiful, there’s honestly no other way to talk about it. Rarely, if ever, have I read an author who so well works the love of nature into his prose that the reader is fully transported into the stream and forest alongside the woodsmen and fishermen. I must make a brief acknowledgement that this over-pouring of love leads to one of the weaker aspects of the book. At points in the stories, Maclean makes such wide deviations from his narrative into lengthy passages about the landscape his characters inhabit and their history with the land that it makes the stories difficult to follow. This is shoddy worldbuilding, and it is surprising to find in the work of such an obviously talented writer.

At any rate, the stories in this volume are entertaining and touching, well-written to the point of excellence. I enjoyed A River Runs Through It tremendously and think that any reader would do the same. Perhaps the stories could have used a little tightening up in places, but their deviations and wandering, meandering pace lend an undeniable weight to the emotional punch at the end of the stories.

Would I recommend A River Runs Through It? Yes.

Score: 4.0/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? No.

-Mr. Cheddar

Harvest Poems

Harvest Poems Carl Sandburg 125pp.

Harvest Poems is a collection of Carl Sandburg’s poetry from the entirety of his career. It is a remarkable “best-of” series, highlighting the greatest poems and verses from his life’s work. Carl Sandburg is a remarkable poet, in his verse he captures the broad sweep and grandeur of life in America through intimate portrayals of men and women throughout the country.

Sandburg’s style not only works wonders through its close focus, but also through a devastating sense of humor. Little lines, the twisted faces of gargoyles poking out from behind a more serious image.

These poems can paint their broad and sweeping pictures, especially in the selections from longer works. But the short poems are wonderful as well. Sandburg can take just a single little image and paint it in a longing, beautiful way. There is an almost Chinese feel to some of the pieces, when Sandburg will use the sparsest, smallest imagery, but fill a short poem with the entirety of a moment. “Fog,” one of my favorite poems from the whole volume, is an example of this technique par excellence.

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Harvest Poems leads me to discuss one of the wonderful aspects of doing this project-sometimes I re-read a book and find myself welcomed into the arms of an old friend. Good books only get better when you come back to them. Sometimes, however, I end up reading an author I’d never come to. When this happens, I find myself reacting in two ways. Sometimes I understand why I’d never read their work and don’t get very upset. But with authors like Carl Sandburg, I read them and get absolutely furious that I hadn’t read them yet. At the same time, it is a rare treat to read a poet with such tremendous skill.

Would I recommend Harvest Poems? Yes.

Score: 4.7/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Most certainly yes.

-Mr. Cheddar

Islam

Islam Richard C. Martin 178pp.

Richard C. Martin’s Islam is a fantastic introduction to the study of Islam. Over the course of the book, he discusses the historical context in which Islam arose, the historical tradition through which the religion has developed, and the interplay of Islam and secular culture throughout the world. Martin chooses to place short biographies throughout the text, giving excellent examples of how individuals have acted through and in response to their faith throughout history.

Islam’s greatest success is in giving the new reader a ground from which to study and think about Islam. Martin traces the course of Islam over the centuries, as theological debates and political changes have shaped the way that this religion works in society. In doing so, Martin strives to correct a failing in much western discourse about Islam. The least educated about Islam will refer to the religion as one massive, undifferentiated whole. The somewhat more educated tend to discuss the religion from a Sunni standpoint with Shi’a as outsiders and, at best, a strange sect within the religion. Not so with Martin. Each tradition within Islam is given a fair and comprehensive treatment, allowing the reader to step into the stream of discourse without hesitation.

I enjoyed Islam quite a bit, Martin’s writing was clear and concise, weaving together sources and disparate traditions into a cohesive whole. The only aspect of Islam which I found lacking was the notable exception of any mention of Wahabbism. In the final section of the book, there is a discussion of modern trends within Islam, even to the point of acknowledging the fundamentalist response to modernization. For a book which makes nods to gaining an understanding of the relationship between Islam and the west, I thought that this lacking was sorely felt. However, the book’s strengths are powerful enough to make up for this, creating an informative and worthwhile text.

Would I recommend Islam? Yes, most certainly.

Score: 4.3/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? No. While this was a remarkably useful introductory text, I don’t see myself coming back to it.

-Mr. Cheddar

Returning Home

Returning Home Tao Chi, Wen Fong tr. 91pp.

Wen Fong’s collection of Tao Chi’s poems, entitled Returning Home is a beautiful collection of poetry from the early Ch’ing dynasty of China. Fong’s translation is excellent, presenting the text in a careful and moderated tone. Again, I can unfortunately not comment on the reliability of the translation from the Chinese, but I can comment on Fong’s greatest achievement in the book. Returning Home opens with a long essay about Tao Chi’s poetry, placing it in context within the tremendous scope of the Chinese poetic tradition. Fong highlights how the high points of Chinese poetry tend to coincide with the foundation of new dynasties. At these points in history, the literati from the capitol are forced into the countryside, to live their lives away from the hectic politics of the new dynasty. Longing for home, these poets turn their eyes back and create a melancholy air with their poetry, setting their words down plaintively, returning home in writing-if not physically.

It is precisely this longing that Tao Chi’s poetry excels in portraying, through a combination of painting and calligraphy, Tao Chi’s poems drag the reader in through short, terse verses. Each poem accompanies a painting, six of them paintings of flowers and six landscapes. Fong’s commentary on the pieces is immensely instructive, in each case, he explains the style used in the painting and the calligraphy. Unfortunately, I am very uneducated in the distinctions between these styles. Happily, Fong’s commentary is remarkably useful for gaining, at the very least, a surface-level understanding of Tao Chi’s expression.

Onto the poems themselves, then. Tao Chi’s poetry is brief and poignant. Each poem paints a scene in itself, highlighted by accompanying painting. The landscape poems tend to be stronger than the flower poems, and I’ll use one of them as an example:

High on the mountain

the beautiful colors are cold,

Where flying white clouds

cease to look white.

In two leaves, Tao Chi’s poem is presented in a beautiful sparse style. The calligraphy is lovely, but I am not experienced enough with Chinese calligraphy to speak to its quality on the level it deserves. This painting, however, is beautiful. Sharp brushstrokes cut into the paper, fading into white spaces which block out sections of mountain and the lonely stand of trees clinging to the side of the outcropping. 

Tao Chi’s poetry is phenomenal, presented in a careful and scholarly tone by Wen Fong. The essays and exegesis on each poem are remarkably helpful for getting deeper into the poetry, even for someone with a relatively shallow experience in Chinese poetry. In other books of Chinese poetry I’ve read, there will be a frequent mention of the paintings which accompany many poems, but never actual reproductions of the paintings. The paintings do lose a little bit in being reduced to fit in a comfortably sized volume, but their presence is incredibly helpful.

Would I recommend Returning Home? Yes, very much so.

Score: 4.9/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar

Primitive Mythology

Primitive Mythology Joseph Campbell 503pp.

Joseph Campbell’s Primitive Mythology is the first volume in Campbell’s masterwork series, The Masks of God. In this book, Campbell traces the mythogenetic impulse from biological precursors in non-human species up through the stone age, leaving off at the emergence of literate cultures. Campbell focuses on myths and stories, but also brings in archaeological evidence about the earliest humans, discussing the mass interring of kings and their courts, the bear-cult which was predominant in our earliest ancestors, but survives to this day in some regions of the world, and the early distinction in myth and understanding of the world between hunting and planting cultures.

Campbell’s work is fascinating, synthesizing myths and ritual practices from cultures around the globe, he presents the reader with a vivid picture of how humanity developed and used stories to cope with life in our early history. Focusing largely on the myths of American Indians, Africans, and Australian Aborigines, the reader is given an excellent picture of the myths and stories that shaped our earliest understanding of the world. Campbell steps outside of the realm of myth occasionally, largely so that he can talk about the rituals surrounding an individual’s (mostly men’s) transition into adulthood. This exploration of ritual is focused almost exclusively on circumcision. 

It is a shame that The Hero with a Thousand Faces is more present in public familiarity with Campbell’s work than The Masks of God, but this fact opens up to an important caveat. The Hero with a Thousand Faces never steps outside of Campbell’s expertise, it remains strictly focused on aspects of narrative. In The Masks of God, Campbell makes diversions from his analysis of the origin and development of myth into a discussion of religious life in general. It is crucial that, when reading campbell, one maintains a steady focus on myth and only reads Campbell’s elaborations on religious life through the lens of myth. Attempting to understand the wide scope of religious life through the limited information one can glean through texts and stories is a fool’s errand.

Every time I have gone back to read Primitive Mythology, I have enjoyed it more and more. It is a book who’s appeal can only broaden as the reader gains a progressively wider familiarity with stories and texts from around the world. Campbell’s writing is clear and concise, rarely wasting a phrase, but simply pulling the reader happily along as he takes a meandering path through the history of human myth.

Would I recommend Primitive Mythology? Yes, absolutely.

Score: 4.8/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar

Manhattan Project

Manhattan Project Stephane Groueff 429pp.

Stephane Groueff’s Manhattan Project is a wonderful history of the Manhattan Project, the United State’s four year project to create, test, and deliver an atomic bomb. Groueff’s prose is so engaging that you almost forget you’re reading about the creation of the worst weapon of mass murder ever developed. The book is pervaded by the tension surrounding every experiment, every attempt in the process of enriching uranium as well as the looming and largely unspoken danger of an enemy power beating the United States to the bomb.

During World War II the United States faced the unimaginable threat of Nazi Germany creating an atomic weapon and using it to wipe out the allies. In response to this, President Roosevelt created the Manhattan Engineering District-a massive project to understand the science behind nuclear fission and achieve the incredibly difficult industrial tasks standing in the way of creating a usable atomic weapon. It is that latter aspect that dominates Groueff’s text.

Groueff writes his history in a very effective manner. Rather than adopting the stance of a distant, third-person narrator, he chooses to follow the leader of the Manhattan Engineering District, Brigadier General Leslie Groves. Every piece of information, every bit of knowledge we gain about the progress of the Manhattan Project is fed to us as Groves travels around the country, leading the project to its ultimate conclusion. Manhattan Project does not, however, slip into great man history. Rather, Groueff focuses on the uncounted contributions of thousands of scientists and industrialists around the country, all collaborating to create the atomic bomb. Interestingly, only about a dozen people knew what they were working towards. A few hundred knew that they were working on the enrichment of uranium. The rest, numbering in the thousands, had absolutely no notion what they were working towards creating.

Manhattan Project was fascinating, impossible to put down. For as long as I can remember, I have had a vague understanding of the scientific work undertaken to develop the atomic weapon. However, until I read Manhattan Project I had never given a consideration to the tremendous industrial challenge that pursuing such a weapon required. To give an example: the creation of an atomic bomb requires several kilograms of either uranium-235 or plutonium. Prior to the Manhattan Project, plutonium was simply a theoretical element, no one had ever observed it. Uranium-235 composes roughly .7% of the natural state of that element. The question then, is how to separate the necessary uranium-235 from the overwhelming prevalence of uranium-238.

At the outset of the project, there were five separate methods placed on the table: centrifuges, electromagnetic separation, gaseous diffusion, and two methods of plutonium production. No one knew which technique would prove to be the best method, so Groves pursued the simplest solution available to him: full steam ahead on all five methods. As the project wore on, different methods ran into difficulties and were cancelled, until finally the gaseous diffusion technique was settled on.

If you enjoy reading about history and are interested in the tremendous challenges that the United States overcame in the Manhattan Project, or simply want to gain a layman’s understanding of the processes a country goes through to become a nuclear power, a recurring theme in world politics, Manhattan Project is a book well worth your time.

Would I recommend Manhattan Project? Yes.

Score: 4.3/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? I haven’t quite decided. It was riveting, a tour de force of history, but I don’t yet know if I will come back to it.

-Mr. Cheddar

Cosmos

Cosmos Carl Sagan 365pp.

Carl Sagan’s Cosmos is a well-written companion book to his phenomenal television series of the same name. In thirteen chapters, Sagan gives an overview of the beauty of science and the scientific view of the world. Cosmos is one of the best books I have ever read as an introduction to a scientific worldview and the beauty of understanding the world empirically.

It is a testament to Sagan’s immense skill as an author that in thirteen chapters he is able to shift his focus from the origination of life on this or any other planet to scales as large as the observable universe without losing the reader’s interest. Not the least of Sagan’s best writing in the book takes place when he lets himself simply sit back and imagine what life could look like on another planet. Without a doubt, Sagan is passionate about the science he discusses through the whole book, but when he begins to speculate freely, his excitement is infectious.

While I enjoyed his writing and understand that Sagan was working towards establishing the difference between a scientific view (self-correcting and self-questioning) and his understanding of a religious view (authoritative and uncompromising), I found Sagan’s treatment of religion to be a little offputting. It was frustrating to be enraptured by his loving descriptions of intellectual giants such as Copernicus and Gallileo, then be derailed by a paragraph-long diatribe against the Church not immediately cleaving to their discoveries.

Cosmos is an enjoyable book, a treat to any reader interested in viewing the world through the lens of scientific inquiry. For the reader new to science writing, Cosmos will inspire them to further reading and learning. For the veteran lover of science, Cosmos feels like an old friend, welcoming you to walk down the path of humanity’s ever-increasing knowledge of our world and our universe.

Would I recommend Cosmos? Yes.

Score: 3.8/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Surprisingly, no. While Sagan’s writing is brilliant and informative, his treatment is a touch too broad and therefore deals with its subjects a little too simply. When the desire to hear Sagan’s thought strikes me again, I think I will simply stick with his television series.

-Mr. Cheddar

Bringing Wine Home

Bringing Wine Home Jesse Frost 79pp.

Jesse Frost’s autobiography, Bringing Wine Home is the story of one man’s love affair with real food. The book switches between three periods in Jesse’s life: his time visiting organic wineries in France, his work in a kitchen in New York, and his first experiences working on a farm in Kentucky. Bringing Wine Home is the first volume in Frost’s autobiography, covering in detail the years leading up to his decision to operate his own farm producing food for his own community.

Frost’s prose is carefully crafted, pulling the reader along with an enthusiastic let’s go throughout the whole volume. The passages in New York City sometimes feel aimless, but this was intentional. Frost had not yet found his passion and was going through the motions of supporting himself and making a living with no joie de vivre in the experience. From the moment he steps foot on Vouette et Sourbée; however, Frost finds himself sucked into the world where he belongs-working with the land and creating real food.

My first thoughts on reading Bringing Wine Home was to compare it to Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain or St. Augustine’s Confessions, and on further reflection, this comparison holds up well. In all three of these autobiographies, we follow the writer’s progression from a past into their new life, which they lead with an unshakeable enthusiasm. It may be going a little far to liken Frost’s love affair with real food to the religious fervor of Augustine and Merton, but I feel the comparison holds up. If growing and providing real food to people you meet face-to-face and know is not a religious experience to Frost, it is deceptively close. After finding this comparison between these books, I was pleased to note that Frost does not indulge in the self-flagellation which dominates the early stages of Merton and Augustine’s books. He is willing to call himself out on his shortcomings, but does not wallow in them in the way that Augustine and Merton do.

Bringing Wine Home was a very enjoyable evening for me, and the joy in reading this book was complemented nicely with dining on Mrs. Cheddar and my CSA provided from Frost’s farm. It was truly a pleasure to read the beginnings of the life of the people who put the food on our table. I tremendously look forward to the release of further volumes of Frost’s autobiography.

Would I recommend Bringing Wine Home? Yes.

Score: 4.5/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar