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.

Presenting Our New Dog - Jackson

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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We had went to buy dog food the other day and they happened to be having what they called a "Super pet adoption". I thought they could fly or something. I was apparently wrong. But anyway, by the time I locked the car the wife was already in the middle of a swarm of puppies.

I saw this one puppy that looked so sad in his cage and he was the same puppy they had up for adoption over a month before. We ended up taking the dog for a walk and I still felt really bad for him because he was 7 and it was likely he was not going to get adopted. So we decided to take him home. Well afterwards I found out he was in a foster home at the time so I felt less bad than before.

Well now that we have him home. He seems to be slowly adjusting. He is much higher energy than either Twix or Aikman, so it is a big adjustment for us all. Twix still is not sure what to do with him. She is the alpha of the family but Jackson is trying to take over so Twix is very unhappy. But hopefully she comes around soon.

The 306 Greatest Books #77 - Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable

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 Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett. This book can be found on the Norwegian Book List, with Malone Dies appearing by itself on the Observer Book List.

The trilogy of Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable at first reminded me of Ulysses, which if anyone has noticed, I despised. But Beckett soon broke away from the incessant ramblings that plagued that novel and gave two really good stories, Molloy and Malone Dies. The novels were written with all the emotion removed and in a rather cryptic way that keeps the reader guessing as you read on. One of the interesting things about Molloy is that as you read through the second half of the story, it begins to feel as if you are getting the prelude to the first half. Malone Dies at first seemed to be completely disjointed from the first novel but reading through it you get the feeling the story may be about the character of Molloy and the book is just a continuation of the first novel. In the third novel, The Unnamable, Beckett returns to the rambling speech that is full of run-on sentences saying nothing. If it was not for the last novel I might recommend this series, but The Unnamable killed it for me. Unfortunately, you need to read all three to get the entire story. So although I somewhat enjoyed parts of it, I can not recommend this as a novel series to be read.

The 306 Greatest Books #76 - Self-Reliance

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 Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.

After having read the original Nature, I was not looking forward to continuing to read Emerson, however this was a very short read and that always helps me power through if need be. Reading Self-Reliance had actually improved my opinion of Emerson. I found it difficult to understand what Emerson was talking about a lot of times in Nature. However, Self-Reliance was anything but difficult, it was straight forward and actually provided a good lesson. Self-Reliance was about how man (and woman) have become too reliant on other people and things and that they are no longer their own person. Emerson stated that we need to break free of the things we rely on to truly become individuals. Only the individuals are remembered through history, not the ones who just copied other people. Overall a relatively straightforward and easy read with a positive life lesson.

The 306 Greatest Books #75 - Nature

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 Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.

While reading through the 100 Greatest Books I sometimes have difficulty in determining exactly which books the list creator was referring to. This was one of those problem books. It turns out that Emerson wrote three different works entitled Nature and I was resolved to read all of them until I came across a website that stated that his first Nature was published in 1936 was the most prominent of the three. It was also the only Nature work published before Self-Reliance, and since the Sybervision Book List is listed chronologically, I assumed that the original Nature must be the one being referred to. Overall, Nature was not all together as exciting or interesting as I thought it would or could be. By far I feel that Thoreau had the same ideals and intent but had managed to portray them in a better way. So, it turns out that Emerson is not one of my favorite philosophers, but I can see how his work might have been groundbreaking at the time.