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Title: Einstein’s Cosmos
Author: Michio Kaku
ISBN #: 978-0-393-32700-7

This biography of Albert Einstein discusses both the scientific and personal aspects of Einstein’s life, but its main focus is on Einstein’s scientific achievements and explaining them in layman’s terms. The reading is not difficult though some of the concepts are complicated, particularly the later ones. Michio Kaku, himself a physicist, explains Einstein’s theories as Einstein himself thought of them. Kaku explained that Einstein used pictures to figure out his theories and also described how Einstein’s theories, especially the ones considered unimportant back when Einstein was alive, have become very important to physicists today who work on such things as string theory or try to come up with a unified theory of the universe.

It was an informative book and understandable as far as one can make these kinds of things understandable.

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One of my goals for this year is to revive my book review/reading blog and revamp it. I won’t be reviewing every book I read this year like I’ve tried before, but only books that I haven’t read before. If I tried reviewing every book that I read (which always includes books I’ve read before), I’d never keep up. So I’m sticking with stuff that is new to me. At the end of the year, I’ll put up a list of all the books I read during the year.

I am also going to take on the Show Me the Free Challenge since I recently got an e-reader with my graduation money. Basically, the challenge is to read at least twelve free and legally obtained e-books over the year and review them. I’ve picked up two books from Project Gutenberg: Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. I’m probably also going to pick up more books from different sources since I want to read more than classics. I chose classics because I also have the goal of reading at least five classic books this year.

So, there’s that. I probably won’t work on revamping the information on the blog or its layout until February at the earliest due to being busy, but I will start posting my book reviews this month.

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Title: The Portable Edgar Allan Poe
Editor: J. Gerald Kennedy
Read between: 01/01/09 - 01/09/09

Thoughts: This book is not only a collection of stories and poems by Edgar Allan Poe, but also is a collection of some of his personal letters and excepts of his critical writing and observations. Through these additional writings, I came to know Poe as more than a writer of macabre stories.

Most of the short stories in this anthology I had never read before or at least did not remember reading them. My favorite stories still remained favorites though I did discover a few new ones as well. My favorite stories seem to be the strange ones with somewhat unexpected endings. By far my favorite story has always been ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ because of the atmosphere that I always imagine as regards to the color themed decorations of the rooms and because of the sudden appearance of the personification of the Red Death itself. Two other old favorites were ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ and ‘The Black Cat’, while I discovered a new one in ‘William Wilson’.

As for the poems, I was not much for them because a theme common to many of them was the mourning of the loss of a beautiful woman, a theme I do not go looking for in poetry. Also some of the poems felt terribly personal to the point that I felt that reading them out loud was uncomfortable for me. I attribute this to the fact that I know that Poe’s poetry was often a reaction to the own events in his personal life, especially the poem ‘For Annie’. My favorite poem, of course, was ‘The Raven’.

In reading the letters and other writings of Poe’s, I became more aware of him as a man of his time and how his life and temperament influenced his works. They reminded me that his writings were not written in a vacuum as one might feel when just reading one of his stories by itself. However, he was clearly connected to the literary world of early 19th century America and was a man with his own views on what others wrote. He also seemed to have had some sort of mood disorder from some of his own descriptions of himself. What kind of mood disorder, I don’t know, but he probably had one. He also seemed to be quite vocal in his opinions and criticism. He was a very interesting man.

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Since I didn’t have enough spare time to write up my thoughts on the rest of the books I’ve read this year, I’m just going to present you a list of the last 29 books that I read this year, making my book total up to 100 books read this year, not counting graphic novels and text books (although some books for school were counted). I reached my goal, but I’m not going to try for it next year ’cause it was a pain and I’m going to have a rather full schedule this year as they will be my last two college semesters. I will continue to keep track of my books in this blog and I will try and keep up with my write ups, no matter how much they suck.

Here’s the list:

072) Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
073) Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-century New York by Kathy Peiss
074) The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
075) Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
076) The European Revolutions, 1848-1851 by Jonathan Sperber
077) The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
078) The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
079) Black Boy by Richard Wright
080) CodeSpell by Kelly McCullough
081) Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
082) The Continuities of German History by Helmut Walser Smith
083) Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
084) Nineteenth Century Europe by Michael Rapport
085) Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt by Rosalie David
086) Batman Begins by Dennis O’Neil
087) Seven Wild Sisters by Charles de Lint
088) The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West by Erik Hornung
089) The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera
090) City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende
091) The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint
092) Life is Ridiculous by Valerie Fausone
093) Tell Me What You See by Zoran Drvenkar
094) The Wizard Test by Hilari Bell
095) Luna by Julie Anne Peters
096) Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves
097) The Origins of the First World War by James Joll and Gordon Martel
098) Batman: Gotham Knight by Louise Simonson
099) Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft and others
100) The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

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Title: Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur
Author: Halima Bashir with Damien Lewis

Thoughts: This was a very moving and touching memoir that made me cry at several points. Prior to reading this novel, I knew little about what has been happening in Darfur, something I am ashamed to admit. This book certainly educated me a lot.

Also I found the traditions that Bashir grew up with interesting to read about and it was obvious how much she loved her family in her descriptions of her childhood and of when she returns to her home village.

There were a lot of disturbing events in the book, but they are there to inform, not to sensationalize them. The part that sticks out the most in my mind was the female circumcision that she had to go through. I had never read an account of it before and being female myself, I know how much of a violation that could be. I can’t begin to imagine the pain or the betrayal she felt, but I can understand.

Bashir is a very brave and strong woman and I think she should be considered someone to look up to as she never stopped fighting in her own way with her care of the injured and speaking out.

(Written for LibraryThing)

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Title: Cybermancy
Author: Kelly McCullough

Thoughts: This is the book that follows directly after WebMage and I liked it, especially as it dealt with the concept of Chaos and the nature of it. It also explains a lot about who or what Necessity is.

Ravirn in this novel becomes a much more interesting character to me when he finally acknowledges the new nature that his new name, Raven, had given him. Now that he’s been disowned by the House of Fate that he was born to, he is no longer a force for Order, but for Chaos as the trickster nature of his new name would suggest. Not that he was all that orderly in the first place, especially compared to Cerice, Ravirn’s girlfriend.

It was a fun book to read and I can’t wait until I get around to reading the third book, Codespell.

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Title: Babylonne
Author: Catherine Jinks

Thoughts: This historical fiction novel was somewhat interesting as it covered a time period of history that I am not intimately familiar with. It made me curious about the Cathars and part way though reading the book I had to look them up out of curiosity. Anyway, I found part of the plot to be rather predictable as in that I closely divined the general gist of the end of the book just from blurb on the back. The writing is also a bit simplistic feeling, but it was written in first person from the point of view of a teenage girl. First person is a hard perspective to write in from my experience. More often than not I find that writing in first person can feel awkward and Jinks’s writing did not feel awkward despite the perspective. I enjoyed reading the book and I may read the books about Babylonne’s father someday when I have the time.

(Written for LibraryThing)

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Title: Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul
Editors: Mark D. White and Robert Arp

Thoughts: By applying philosophical concepts to a familiar piece of pop culture, this book helped me understand many concepts that had previously eluded me, such as Aristotle’s and Kant’s views on ethics. The essays were mostly based off of the comic books and they made very little mention of any of the other Batman related media. I don’t remember much in the way of my thoughts about the book as I’ve read it several weeks ago, but I do remember finding the first essay that asked about the continued living of the Joker. The only other thing I know is that I enjoyed reading this book very much and I found it very educational and enlightening.

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Title: Batman Unauthorized: Vigilantes, Jokers, and Heroes in Gotham City
Editor: Dennis O’Neil

Thoughts: This is a collection of essays written on the pop culture phenomenon of Batman. Some of the essays addressed the latest of the Batman movies, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. As this book was published before the release of The Dark Knight, one of the essays wondered if they could really capture who the Joker is and the movie did, in the end, proved up to the task in my opinion as well as in the opinion of many others.

Some essays were amusing (such as the one about the cost of being Batman) and sometimes not amusing despite the attempt to do so (I was sorely dissappointed by the “To the Batpole!” essay as there are probably fanfiction out there that does a better job). One of my favorite essays was about Arkham Asylum as I’m always quite interested in the exploits of the insane in Gotham.

There were also some essays that just weirded me out. One was the essay written by whom I refer to in my head as “the rabid Frank Miller fanboy” which gave me so many reasons not to read his newer Batman books despite the fact that the essay tried to argue for them. Sorry, I’m just not interested in ridiculous graphic novels that have Superman and Wonder Woman having sex in the sky and crashing an airplane in the process. Then there’s the essay that claims that the campy 60’s Batman is the real Batman, based on the idea that Batman is seen as a commercial symbol by most. I disagree, mostly because I grew up with a different Batman than the one he did. I grew up with the Batman of the more serious animated series from the early 90’s. I have yet to see why so many people from older generations even consider the 60’s campy TV show as good. Perhaps I just don’t have much of a sens of humor (nor does the Batman I grew up with). Another article that confused me was the article comparing Batman to George W. Bush. It confused me a lot until the end because it was not clear to me that the author did not like George W. Bush, but still liked Batman. Other than that, I found many of the essays to be fascinating and enlightening as I am still some what new to the comics canon and several of the essays discussed it.

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Title: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Author: Ishmael Beah

Thoughts: This book was recommended by an acquaintance of mine on his journal and since I had an interest in the plight of child soldiers, I got it to read. To be honest, I have thought about donating money to help these children, but I unfortunately have not done so. There really is no excuse, but I am not good at managing what little money I do have.

Anyways, onto the book. The writer of this book is six years older than me, which means that I was alive when Ishmael went through his ordeal. I wouldn’t have remembered much of back then as I still was very young and because of that, I have very little knowledge of the conflict in Sierra Leone. I really should read up on that as I believe that one should be aware of their world, past and present. This is also the conflict that is the background for the somewhat recent movie Blood Diamond.

There are so many different conflicts that have and are still going on in Africa. Most of them seem to be forgotten or only heard of unless someone cares enough to research the situation and make it heard. I’m one of those people who have only heard about things rather than doing anything about it and I feel guilty about that. Instead I’m too occupied with WWI and European Nationalism. Yet the idea of a nation-state with one common culture and language has spread to Africa and has been the cause of strife there. Yet, in the end, Africa seems to have become a forgotten continent.

Anyways, I digress. This memoir made me think and touched me deeply, especially the parts that described what combat was like that for him. I can never imagine what it would’ve been like for him. Also rather harrowing was when the capital had been taken over by a military coup after Ishmael had finally settled in with his uncle and family. Things had gotten so bad that he had to sneak out of Freetown and get out of the country. I find it just sad that things like that can happen in this world, where a person finds peace after going through so much strife and soon after finds that they have lost it again.

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