The 306 Greatest Books #80 - Anna Karenina

Note - This review 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.

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. This book is the only book that is on all 4 of my Top 100 book lists and in my Top 10 book list (Sybervision, Norwegian, Observer, BBC, and Zane's).

Being the only book on all 5 of my Greatest Books lists, I had high hopes for it. And to start off, I thought this was one of the most well written stories I have ever read. Tolstoy just flows with descriptions that make you feel you understand everything that is going on. The characters are extremely well developed and even though they are Russian (which has a tendency to jump around with names a bit) it is still easy to follow who is who. I enjoyed several of the references to early communist culture (the book takes place about 30 years before the communist revolution) and several of the characters' personality polarities and themes that are emphasized in the book (religious vs non-religious, upper vs lower class, etc.). However, I did have some problems with the book. The story felt like two separate stories going on at the same time. The "main" one should be the one with Anna but I got the feeling that for the most part the main story was the one that centered around Levin, who supposedly represented Tolstoy himself. The Anna story itself felt enjoyable and well written, focusing around her leaving her husband for another man, of which that relationship slowly dissolves over the length of the book as well. While the story with Levin, although in parts were very good, I felt was very political and sometimes unimportant to anything. The whole last section (after the Anna story line was wrapped up) felt forced and out of place, leaving me wishing that the book would just end. All in all, I very much enjoyed the first half of the novel but the second half seemed to drag on a bit. I am not going to recommend this on my list and personally would not consider this the greatest book ever. But being that it is on so many book lists it probably should be one that you read.

About Me - My Last Name

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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I found this online regarding my last name (Lehane) and thought it was pretty cool.


Among the interesting tidbits I ran across is the meaning of the origin of the name, which I got from the Ancestry.com website. "Lehane" is a reduced Anglicized form of the Gaelic 'Ó Liáithan', meaning 'a descendant of Liáithan', a personal name from a diminutive of 'liáth' which translates as 'gray'. Therefore 'Ó Liáithan' translates to English as 'a descendant of Gray'. This opens the remote possibility, that the Gray and Lehane family lines share a distant but common ancestry.

Home Remodel - Building a Bar

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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Building a Bar

I have been steadily working on the new house for some time and I wanted to publish some photos of my current project - the bar. Now the bar I built in my old house was far larger but I spent much less time on it. My hope is that this one will not only be functional, but it would also blend in well with the woodwork.



This first image is of the space that we are putting the bar into. It is next to stairs going up into the rest of the house. The only problem is that the bottom half is a false wall covering the entrance to the crawlspace. This meant that I had to make the bar completely removable if someone needs to get under there.



This is what the bar looks like that I added. I has some problem with the finish on the doors so that will need to be redone but I think it looks good so far. I tried to match the pattern of the walls with the doors but we wanted it darker so it would stand out a bit.



On the inside we wanted to use as a storage space for bar stuff (like cups and shot glasses) so I put in shelves. Not bad looking figuring the entire thing can be removed in under 5 minutes.

The 306 Greatest Books #79 - The BFG

Note - This review 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.

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The BFG by Roald Dahl. This book can be found on the Observer and BBC Book Lists.

The BFG is a children's book about a little girl who discovers a Big Friendly Giant (AKA the BFG). Along with the BFG, there are other giants who are not so friendly, well, because they eat people. The plot of the story is that the little girl convinces the BFG to take the bad giants down. I found this to be a rather gruesome story for a child but ended up being a perfect children's book. My main gripe, and this is a general gripe with Dahl, was that the made-up words got to be a bit tiresome after a while. The story has clear cut morality issues and includes a heroine who is just your everyday kid. It is a good story for kids that parents do not need to be too worried about, despite the gruesomeness. Overall, the book was enjoyable, but it was just not my cup of tea.

The 306 Greatest Books #78 - Robinson Crusoe

Note - This review 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.

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. This book can be found on the Sybervision and Observer book lists.

While I was reading Robinson Crusoe, I definitely got a Cast Away feeling about the book. I know many people thought that Cast Away was a boring movie, and the book came across the same way. It just seemed to drag on forever. At the beginning of the novel I kept waiting, and waiting, for him to become ship wrecked, and then when he finally was, nothing exciting happened. For a book that seemed to be billed as an action-adventure novel, I got none of that through the narrative. It's not a totally bad book and I rather enjoyed the plot, I just felt it was really slow at times. I found it amusing how, no matter what Robinson did, he seemed to end up with the short end of the stick. One major problem I had with the book though, was that Defoe constantly referred to the Native Americans/Native Islanders as savages and cannibals. I can see how Crusoe might have thought of them that way at the beginning of the story but even after meeting them Defoe continued to show them eating other humans. Sorry, but cannibalism was not that widespread. This is a definite pass for me.