The 306 Greatest Books #41 - The Call of the Wild

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Call of the Wild by Jack London. This book can be found on the Sybervision, Observer, and My Book Lists. 

When you think about one of Jack London's Alaskan dog books, you would likely think about White Fang, I assume due to the popularity of the movie a few years ago. However, before White Fang was published, London published the much shorter The Call of the Wild. To start off I must say that this book was fantastic and I highly recommend it to anyone, especially dog lovers. It is gripping and intense, so much so that it makes you want to read more. And to top it all off, its short, only about 80 pages. I was able to read it in about 2 days without trying very hard. It is about a dog, Buck, who was kidnapped from California and taken to Alaska to be a sled dog. The book is entirely through the dogs perspective but it does not have any of the cheesy "dog voices". Not once do you hear what they are saying but you get how he is feeling, especially among his interactions with other dogs and humans. Again I highly recommend, you won't be disappointed.

Dogs - Our new dog, Twix

Note - This was originally published on my other site "The Geology P.A.G.E." but due to the content I have moved it here and backdated the post.

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Introducing our new dog: Twix.

We got her from the SPCA and she already had that name so we didn't want to change it. Although she doesn't really respond to it she is getting better. We have had her a week and two days now and when we first got her she seemed really sad and terribly thin. She really didn't like to be left alone at all and she was over-joyous whenever we came home. But now she is starting to get used to us and whenever we go out she is getting better. We had to use short breaks to teach her that we would always come back. She loves to play, more and more each day. She plays fetch and tug of war with a rope and a squeaky football attached to a rope. She it so very energetic, she absolutely loves to be chased around the yard and she will always vie for our attention. If I stop petting her she will run over to Veronica and then back to me when she is done. It's rather humorous.

The 306 Greatest Books #40 - The Time Machine

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List. 

Similar to Frankenstein and Dracula, The Time Machine represents one of the world's earliest cases of science-fiction. Starting in a time when Jules Verne and other H.G. Wells classics were pushing the bounds of conventional fiction, The Time Machine shows us what Wells' view of the future might look like as his time traveler takes a machine into the future. The book is a very short and fast-paced, action story that is perfectly geared towards the geek in me. Fairly recently, from when the book was publish, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was introduced and this book incorporates the (then) modern day thinking on the Theory of Evolution. This shows that Wells was on the very cutting edge of society, taking new ideas and incorporating them into an already cutting edge story. Overall, this is a great book. The plot starts off fairly slow, but as it picks up, the story draws you in quite quickly. Wells does an amazing job of taking his modern day society and projecting what might happen with the human race several hundred thousand years in the future. He then proceeds beyond this to the end of the planet Earth all together. It is definitely a visionary work for its time and a must read.

The 306 Greatest Books #39 - The Divine Comedy

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. This book can be found on the Sybervision and the Norwegian Book Lists. 

The Divine Comedy is broken up into three separate parts: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. The story follows the poet Dante as he travels through each of the three afterlife worlds, meeting many of the people who once lived along his travels. By far the most interesting and most commonly read was Inferno. I had read Inferno in one of my college classes and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The visualizations were exquisite and remain with you years after you read it. I still remember everything that happened upon reaching the furthest depths of Hell. However, having read this in one of my classes I was probably spoiled, because upon reading the remaining two books on my own for this list, I found them dull and incomprehensible at times. The contemporary illustrations were also well beyond my understanding, even with an annotated book copy that helped explain some of that stuff. It got tedious though to bounce back and forth between text and description. It could have been my translation was not the best (a good translation is key), but it could also have been that having someone knowledgeable about the book made it that much more enjoyable. My suggestion with this series is to do it with someone who knows what is going on, like in a college class.