The 306 Greatest Books #49 - The Book of Job

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 Book of Job by an anonymous author. This book can be found on the Norwegian Book List.

Although I have seen many 100 Greatest Book lists that put the entire Bible on them, out of my four lists only The Book of Job had made the cut. The Book of Job is often considered to be one of the best stories in the bible because of its attempts to justify the presence of good and evil both together on Earth. As I was reading through the story though, I was getting a little bit confused by the text about who was arguing for each side as God and Satan verbally sparred it out. Otherwise, the book seems to get its point across. Essentially, the story is about a man named Job (pronounced "Jobe") who looses his family and his health because of a bet between Gob and Satan to show that Job will still be a man of God despite all his tragedies. After reading the story I can see the moral implications of the story but it leaves a sour taste in my mouth to see God killing people just to prove a point. Overall, I probably wouldn't advise this as a great work of literature.

The 306 Greatest Books #48 - His Dark Materials

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 His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. This book can be found on the BBC and My Book Lists. The first book in this trilogy can be found on the Observer Book List under its UK title, Northern Lights. 

His Dark Materials has quickly become one of my favorite stories of all time. The series is absolutely enthralling, not letting me put it down for a moment. And it is one of the few series I have returned to time and time again. The story can be considered a cross between The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings, where the world building is a bit less in-depth than LotR and much less preachy than Narnia. I find it a cross between the two stories that takes the best of both worlds. The story is about parallel universes, where the primary character, Lira, is a kid with a physical manifestation of her soul literally on her sleeve; or running all around as the case may be. Lira starts out being a very young kid with little worldly experience, who, over the course of the story, grows into the hero the story needs. I have often heard criticism that this series is like the "atheist's bible" or some nonsense like that, and I find that surprising as this book is actually very spiritual. It is very anti-organized religion though and that could be a bit off-putting to some. I found the story to be a well-written and fast-paced read (about 1000 pages in 2 weeks), where in the end all the plot lines got wrapped up neatly. Although, I do disagree with how it ended, but looking back on the story there was really no other way it could have gone. This is obviously a must read for me and one I have often recommended to a lot of people.

The 306 Greatest Books #47 - A Doll's House

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 A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. This book can be found on the Sybervision, Norwegian, and My Book Lists. 

A Doll's House is interesting because it is basically about the women's liberation movement long before there was ever a movement. The play is about a woman who has done nothing with her life except try to please two men, her father and her husband. However, it is when something tragic happens that she realizes that nothing is as perfect as it seems. The characters were written well and believable, and the story is very easy to read. Personally, I often have some issues reading plays because I feel I miss out on many of the hidden themes. Plays are often a lot denser with material because the "fluff" gets excised that you could potentially have in a novel, so anything left in the play is usually very important for the feel of the play or the plot. However, with A Doll's House I feel like I caught most of the subtle themes throughout the story and it was, like most plays, a very fast read. Definitely on my recommend list. 

The 306 Greatest Books #46 - Beowulf

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 Beowulf by an unknown author. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List. 

I should start off my review of this story with the premise that I do not generally like stories that are written in "Old English" or something close to modern English, such as Shakespeare. They take too much for me to get invested in the story personally and I find that detracts from my enjoyment. The story of Beowulf is about a famous man who slays several monsters and eventually gets killed while taking down a dragon. The story is rather difficult upon first reading because of the illusions created by the author. Unlike The Divine Comedy though, the illusions are not related to contemporary concepts but it is more of a figurative language. For example, instead of saying "ocean" it becomes a "whale-path." So a first reading can be rather a rather arduous task but future readings present more opportunities for understanding. Overall, the story itself is very simplistic but I believe it is the rich language which is used to describe the story which caused it to be placed on the "100 Greatest Books of All Time" list. Overall, this is not a particular favorite of mine, mainly because the language is such a barrier for me.

Home Remodel - Our New Walkway

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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Our New Walkway

This is our backyard before we put the walkway in. The walkway's main purpose was to stop Twix from getting so muddy when she ran around, so it is going to be rather long to cut out all the mud. You can see our outline spray painted on the ground.

Working on the path. It takes three layers to make sure everything drains and stays properly. A kind of "dry cement" layer, a sand layer, and the rocks on top. We also kept the old pathway blocks I purchased last year and put them in the middle of the path.

Veronica surveying the work done so far. This is how far we got at the end of day 1. Not to bad. Unfortunately that was one of our only days to work consistently on it.

Halfway done. Most of the time took digging up the ground, which Veronica did and laying the edging, which I did. Then both of us put down the layers and stamped them down but that did not take much time at all.

While working on this I knew we were getting a real BBQ, so I started working on a little patio for it. Veronica actually started this but I felt it needed to be perfect so I laid some sand down under it to flatten it out.

And this is it all done. The garden between the walkway and the garage took almost a week to just break up all the clumps of sod that were non-transportable.

And another look at the finished work from the back showing our new cherry tree and you can see the BBQ in the background.