The 306 Greatest Books #64 - The Stranger

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 Stranger by Albert Camus. This book can be found on the Norwegian and My Book Lists.

The Stranger is a very short and easy book to read, which I was able to finish in just a couple of hours. But that does not mean it cannot be a meaningful book. The story is written in the first person narrative about a man who is so self absorbed that he feels little or no emotion through everything that happens to him and does not realize most of his life is passing him by. The story starts with his mother's death, of which he never shows remorse for and becomes one of the reasons for his downfall in the end. Eventually, the main character is led to murder another man and his moral qualities, or lack there of, are his deciding factors. He eventually realizes his personal flaws but by then it is too late. The book is written in the "American" style that I so particularly enjoy. Short, crisp sentences that are easy to read and easy to understand. I am going to put this on my must read list because not only is it enjoyable, it also provides a pretty good life lesson.

The 306 Greatest Books #63 - The Origin of Species

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 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.

I should preface this review with the fact that I am a paleontologist and I have been studying geology and paleontology for over 20 years. I came into reading The Origin of Species knowing full well that the text was written over 150 years ago and the science of paleontology and evolution has progressed at a lightening pace since then. That being said, I still was not sure what I was getting into when I read it. To quote my former evolutionary biology teacher "Don't read The Origin of Species unless you have to." This is a science textbook and that is how it reads. The science itself is severely out of date and the text is rather dull to boot. Since the science is not current, I recommend that someone reading this should have a basic scientific background so that they can understand where the science is questionable or not. The main problem I have with The Origin of Species is that instead of doing science experiments, Darwin typically takes observations and makes large leaps of logic to explain why his observations are the way they are. Granted this is a seminal and often interesting work of scientific history, but it is too much of a difficult read for me to recommend it.