so, i just finished reading Wilson Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows, which i read for the first time. i will admit that i teared up at the end. i also found it to reflect the American ideal. a czech friend wants to read it and i think it might help illuminate the American mentality, even if it is a flawed perspective. the protagonist (and his family) are god-loving, noble and honest, friendly and sensitive - the stereotypical American. there is a little emphasis put on education/intelligence, an emphasis which i think we have lost sight of in recent years in exchange for increasing focus on spirituality and industrious. (of course, we're losing a lot of our industries, but what does that matter?!)
oh yeah, the protagonist cries too much.
it seems that i've spent a lot of time recently reading books that i should've read when i was younger. i finished reading C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia about a month ago. i started reading them because i heard that they were making a film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
the part of the post where i get SIDETRACKed:
i subsequently heard that they were endeavoring to remove the Christian elements of the story from the film version. this is a ludicrous idea to mean. i also don't know what credence i'd give to the rumor to begin with, but if it is true it would fundamentally damage the story. especially since i read today that if the film does well, they are planning to make the next three books in the series.
in my opinion, the series became increasingly symbollic in a Christian way as it progressed, so to remove the symbolism would be insane, if not impossible. i could see doing it successfully for one film, but the more films you make, the harder it will be to ignore. unless, of course, you fundamentally alter the story to the point that it's almost unrecognizable.
END of the SIDETRACK.
i moved on to read Arthur Miller's The Crucible after that. it's a play that i should've read long ago. it has relevance now because the Salem witch trials revolved around naivete and fear - which, of course, is where the general population of the U.S. stands at the moment. that may be changing, however, since i read in The N.Y. Times (Krugman, "The Oblivious Right") yesterday that Bush is currently the most unpopular second term president since the measure was first taken.
(i then read Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows.)
i have now moved onto the third book in the Ender Wiggin series (Xenocide) by Orson Scott Card. the series is surprisingly philosophical while being Sci-Fi.
of course, these are/were all "in transit" books - books i read while using the efficient public transport system of prague.
bedside, at the moment, is Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, which one a Pulitzer for best non-fiction. it explores the origin of human societies. it's incredibly interesting, as it combines the anthropology of human studies with the biology of genetics, evolution and ecology. it's fascinating, if slow, reading. unfortunately, i can also forsee this book being bedside for a long time (and not because i'm not reading it).
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on a different note, i came up with a name for my business (idea). a very practical name, unfortunately, but accurate.
Posted by iain at April 26, 2005 05:03 PM