Our Book Club
Saturday, January 24, 2004
Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee
I thought this book was interesting but I'd have rather watched a documentary about it. It was educational but not fun to read. Each chapter told a different true story about how the Indians were massacred. It was like reading a book of short stories that are all on the same subject & all depressing. By the end of the book I had had enough demonstrations of how poorly the whites treated them. Do I think the Indians were treated unfairly? Sure I do. But then I also feel that that is apart of life. Were serfs treated fairly? No. So my final thoughts on this book... It is a very informative history. I believe it got the author's point across which is the main point. But it is definitely not a leisure read.
Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition -- published in both hardcover and paperback -- Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.
Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Dealing with Dragons
This is simply a good story. There is humor abound and it's different. Did you know that a bucket of soapy water with a squeeze of lemon could melt a wizard? You do now! Keep in mind that this is a story for "young adults" but I think everyone should read it at least once to taste what The Enchanted Forest Chronicles have to offer. Enjoy!
Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
Take one bored princess. Make her the seventh daughter in a very proper royal family. Have her run away. Add one powerful, fascinating, dangerous dragon. The Princess Cimerone has never met anyone (or anything) like the dragon Kazul. But then, she's never met a witch, a jinn, a death-dealing talking bird, or a stone prince either. Princess Cimerone ran away to find some excitement. She's about to...
Rendezvous with Rama
I loved it! I did not expect to because I am not usually a fan of Sci-Fi but this was really outstanding. The only complaint I have is that I needed a dictionary to understand a lot of it, but that is not the fault of the book but of my own lack of intelligence. (ha ha) This was a very fast-paced & engrossing story. It really made me think about some things. And the pictures it made my mind conjure were awesome! I really wish the rest of the Rama series was as good as this.
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge. It weighs more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredibly, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence. It will kindle their wildest dreams...and fan their darkest fears. For no one knows who the Ramans are or why they have come. And now the moment of rendezvous awaits -- just behind a Raman airlock door.
A Single Light by Maia Wojciechowska
"Her Child. Slowly the girl began to realize how much she had come to depend on the Child as an object of her love. She knew now that to live she had to give love. But love, like a gift, must be accepted. She had tried giving love to people, to her father and grandfather, to Carmen and to the priest, but they did not want it. She had given love to the sick baby, but the baby had died. She had now the one thing that would not refuse her love, her marble Child."
Down the River
It took me a while to get into this book. Not because it was bad, just because my mind just was not absorbing what I was reading. Once I started getting it, I really enjoyed reading the essays. I love Abbey's sarcasm. I don't understand though what the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had to do with going down the river. I felt like it was just thrown in because it had no place else to go. I think it would have been better with out that particular essay. But otherwise I found this book a very interesting read and a book to make you think.
Down the River by Edward Abbey
Down the River is a collection of essays both timeless & timely. It is an exploration of the abiding beauty of some of the last great stretches of American wilderness on voyages down rivers where the body & mind float free, and the grandeur of nature gives rise to meditations on everything from the life of Henry David Thoreau to the militarization of the open range. At the same time, it is an impassioned condemnation of what is being done to our natural heritage in the name of progress, profit and security. Filled with fiery dawns, wild and shining rivers, and radiant sandstone canyons, it is charged as well with heartfelt, rampageous rage at human greed, blindness, and folly. It is, in short, Edward Abbey at his best, where and when we need him most.
A Single Light
I love this story because it is different from any story I have read before. And I think the ending had a very unusual & exciting twist.
