Thich Nhat Hanh's The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
Begin: 10/18/07
End: 10/27/07
Quality: Five out of Ten.
Reason: Unread. Random.
Genre: Religion. Buddhism. Zen Buddhism.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1998.
Fog Index: 11.6/60% are harder.
Flesch Index: 62/70% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 8.7/64% are harder.
Complex Words: 13%/58% are harder.
Number: First.
Synopsis: This is Thick Nhat Hanh explaining the basic of Buddhist teachings.
Thoughts: Very good. I really liked quite a bit of it. My major problem was just that everything is so regimented. There was forever the eight fold path and then the 3 precious jewels and then the 6 paramitas.

Sharon Kay Penman's Cruel as the Grave

Sharon Kay Penman’s Cruel as the Grave
Begin: 10/25/07
End: 10/26/07
Quality: Five out of Ten.
Reason: Unread. Random.
Genre: Historical Fiction. Mystery.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1998.
Fog Index: 8.7/82% are harder.
Flesch Index: 70.7/83% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 6.8/81% are harder.
Complex Words: 8%/83% are harder.
Number: Second.
Synopsis: The story takes place in the spring on 1193. It is part of a series involving Justin De Quincy, the Queen’s Man. In this novel, De Quincy helps Eleanor defuse a political situation with her youngest son as well as solve the murder of a young welsh girl and has some drama with the Lady Claudine.
Thoughts: Horrible writing! Horrible! If it wasn’t for my love of Eleanor and the fact that it’s a really short novel, I totally wouldn’t have read it. I just felt that the writing was mediocre at best.

Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera

Begin: 10/24/07
End: 10/25/07
Quality: Four out of Ten.
Reason: Modern Drama
Genre: Drama. Modern Drama.
Original Language: German.
Date of Publication: 1928.
Fog Index: N/A
Flesch Index: N/A
Flesch-Kincaid Index: N/A
Complex Words:N/A.
Number: Second.
Synopsis: Machealth is a master criminal. He ends up marrying Mr. Peachum, the “King of Beggars”, daughter, Polly, who then wants him hanged for marrying his daughter behind his back. Mr. Peachum then tries to get Machealth hanged.
Thoughts: I really didn’t like it. I had to force myself to finish it. It just kept reminding me of Oliver and the characters and all the damn songs were annoying the shit out of me.

Thorton Wilder's Our Town

Thorton Wilder's Our Town
Begin: 10/12/07
End: 10/21/07
Quality: Ten out of Ten.
Reason: Reading Plan.
Genre: Fiction. African-American Fiction. Literature.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1977.
Fog Index: N/A
Flesch Index: N/A
Flesch-Kincaid Index: N/A
Complex Words:N/A.
Number: A Few.
Synopsis: Well, it’s really quite a number of stories, now isn’t it. The main one is Milkman and his lack of identity but that doesn’t really do justice to the story, not by a long shot.
Thoughts:When I was initially reading it, I wasn’t that impressed. I have always heard really good things about this story and so I was a little surprised. After I finished however and got to thinking about it, I realized it was a lot more impressive than I first thought it was writing about love and life of us all. Very good!

“Well, I guess that don’t any harm, either. Whereever you come near the human race, there’s layers and layers of nonsense….” (309)

“There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being….You know as well as I do that the dead don’t stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they lose hold of the earth…and the ambitions they had…and the pleasures they had…and the things they suffered…and the people they loved. They get weaned away from the earth-that’s the way I put it-weaned away.

And they stay here while the earth part of ‘em burns away, burns out: and all that time they slowly get indifferent to what’s goin’ on in Grover’s Corner.

They’re waitin’. They’re waitin’ for something that they feel is comin’. Something important, and great. Aren’t they waitin’ for the eternal part in them to come out clear?” (309)

“Live people don’t understand, do they?”
“No, dear-not very much.
“They’re sort of shut up in little boxes, aren’t they.” (311)

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?- every, every minute?
“No. {pause} The saints and poets, maybe- they do some.
I’m ready to go back.

Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Begin: 10/12/07
End: 10/21/07
Quality: Ten out of Ten.
Reason: Reading Plan.
Genre: Fiction. African-American Fiction. Literature.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1977.
Fog Index: N/A
Flesch Index: N/A
Flesch-Kincaid Index: N/A
Complex Words:N/A.
Number: A Few.
Synopsis: Well, it’s really quite a number of stories, now isn’t it. The main one is Milkman and his lack of identity but that doesn’t really do justice to the story, not by a long shot.
Thoughts: What to say about this book? Well, first of all, can I just take a moment and fucking bow down before Toni Morrison? She is seriously the best damn living writer we have. A fucking national treasure.

This is my favorite of any of Ms. Morrison’s novels. I know that Beloved is heralded as the cat’s meow and I do not for a minute doubt that it deserve’s that title. I love that book, I really do, but it’s just so damn depressing. While Song of Solomon is very uplifting and, I think, much more lyrical. Plus, it is quite a bit more accessible than, probably, any of Morrison’s other novels. The characters are just so alive and remarkable. Pilate. Who is not completely mesmerized by Pilate? She appears in this novel and everyone else just pales in comparison. She is one of those characters that I want in my life, that I really feel is an old friend because I have spent so much time not only reading the novel but also thinking about her. Macon, Ruth, Dr. Foster, Circe. Guitar. Sing. Solomon. These are all characters that will stay with you for a long time, even those whom the book only touches on briefly.

Now, there are a couple aspects of the story that I would very much like to delve into for a moment. The first issue is that of names. This is such a hugely important aspect of this book.
We have the difference between what the official names for places are such as Mercy Hospital and Mains Avenue. Yet, the oral tradition of the African Americans in the town refers to it as No Mercy hospital and Mains Avenue as Not Doctor Street. The locals know the reality and call it like they see it. We have the names that the first Macon Dead populated his farm with. He named it Lincoln’s Heaven. He names the animals in the same manner. The names of places are accurate “namings” of the reality of these places.

Then there is what people are named, either by their parents, by bureaucrats or by the community. Macon Dead does not allow anyone to speak the name of his wife. He also does not use his real name of Jake, instead he goes by the name that the “drunk yankee” gave him. And we see how happy and completed Milkman becomes when he discovers the names of his grandparents. We should not forget, especially in a Toni Morrison novel, the mythology of names. The power one gets from knowing someone’s true name. We also have Pilate who carries around her name in a snuff box, the name that her illiterate father wrote out for the midwife. Is it coincidence that First Corinthians is the sister who decides to love considering that is the epistle most concerned with love?

We have the names that were given to Milkman and Guitar, not their real names.
“What’s your trouble? You don’t like your name?”
“No.” Milkman let his head fall to the back of the booth. “No, I don’t like my name.”
“Let me tell you something, baby. Niggers get their names the way they get everything else- the best way they can. The best way they can.”

The other major thing that I wished to talk about was flying. The epigraph of the novel is…
“The fathers may soar / And the children may know their names” The novel then opens on Robert Smith’s attempt at flight. It is a theme that while I would not say runs through the novel is nevertheless extremely important to the novel. Flight is a means to escape(overstating the obvious, I know) and we see various characters escaping their oppression. Solomon, Milkman (although that can be questioned) Robert Smith, Pilate. Pilate can fly while her feet touch the ground, Milkman notes at one point. Solomon flies off, leaving his children and wife bereft of a father, and goes back to African, escaping the oppression of slavery.



“He walked there now-strutted is the better word, for he had a high behind and an athlete’s stride-thinking of names. Surely, he thought, he and his sister had some ancestor, some lithe young man with onyx skin and legs as straight as cane stalks, who had a name that was real. A name given to him at birth with love and seriousness. A name that was not a joke, nor a disguise nor a brand name. But who this lithe young man was, and where his cane stalk legs carried him from or to, could never be known. No. nor his name. His own parents, in some mood of perverness or resignation, had agreed to abidge by a naming done to them by somebody who couldn’t have cared less. Agreed to take and pass on to all their issue this heavy name scrawled in perfect thoughtlessness by a drunken Yankee in the Union Army. A literal slip on the pen handed to his father on a piece of paper and which he handed to his only son, and his son likewise handed on to his; Macon Dead who begat a second Macon Dead .”

“Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it. Just like Mr. Smith. He couldn’t carry it. It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, You know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy? Don’t you see, Lord? Your own son couldn’t carry it. If it killed Him, what you think it’s gonna do to me? Huh? Huh?” (26)

“And heard as well her shouts when the baby, who they had believed was dead also, inched its way headfirst out of a still, silent and indifferent cave of flesh, dragging her own cord and her own afterbirth behind her. But the rest was true. Once the new baby’s lifeline was cut, the cord stump shriveled, fell off and left no trace of having ever existed” (28)

“It was becoming a habit-this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had.” (35)

“Taken apart, it looked alright. Even better than all right. But it lacked coherence, a coming together of the features into a total self. It was all very tentative, the way he looked, like a man around a corner of someplace he is not supposed to be, trying to make up his mind whether to go forward or to turn back. The decision he made would be extremely important, but the way in which he made the decision would be careless, haphazard and uninformed.” (70)

“The lengths to which lost love drove men and women never surprised them. They had seen women pull their dresses over their heads and howl like dogs for lost love. And men who set in doorways with pennies in their mouths for lost love. ‘Thank god,’ they whispered to themselves, thank god I ain’t never had one of them graveyard loves.” (128)

“Two growed-up women talkin’ about a man like he was a house or needed one. He ain’t a house, he’s a man, and whatever he need, don’t none of you got it.” (138)

“I don’t remember my mother because she died before I was born” (141)

“So I knew right away what he meant cause he was right there when we did it. He meant that if you take a life, the you own it. You responsible for it. You can’t get rid of nobody by killing them. They still there, and they know yours now.” (208)

“Stop sniveling,” it said. “Stop picking around the edges of the world. Take advantage, and if you can’t take advantage, take disadvantage. We live here. On this planet, in this nation, in this county right here. Nowhere else! We got a home in this rock, don’t you see! Nobody starving in my home; nobody crying in my home, and if I got a home you got one too! Grab it! Grab this land! Take it. Hold it, mybrothers, make it, my brothers, shake it, squeeze it, turn it , twist it, beat it, kick it, kiss it, whip it, stomp it, dig it, plow it, seed it, reap it, rent it, buy it, sell it, own it, build it, mutiply it, and pass it on, can you hear me? Pass it on.” (235)

“You think because he doesn’t love you that you are worthless. You think because he doesn’t want you anymore that he is right- that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Hagar, don’t. It a bad word, ‘belong’. Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn’t be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can’t even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, because the clouds let him; they don’t wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him. Hear me, Hagar?” He spoke to her as he would to a very young child. “You can’t own a human being. You can’t lose what you don’t own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don’t, do you? And neither does he? You’re turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can’t value you more than you value yourself.” (305)

William Shakespeare's Macbeth

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Begin: 10/14/07
End: 10/18/07
Quality: Eight out of Ten.
Reason: Reading Plan.
Genre: Fiction. Drama. Classics.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1623.
Fog Index: 6.7/92% are harder
Flesch Index: 75.4/90% are harder
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 5.0/93% are harder
Complex Words: 8%/86% have more.
Number: A Few.
Synopsis: Macbeth does very well in a Scottish war. Three witches prophecy that he will be thane of Cawdor and then king. When he is given the title of thane of Cawdor, Macbeth gets to thinking and with his wife’s help, kills the King, thus becoming king. And thus the tragedy begins.
Thoughts: What to say about Macbeth? What a fool, a bloody fool! And it’s so weird, he’s so concerned about regicide and killing such a good man in the beginning and then he makes this warped, twisted tyrant who kills friends and children. His wife, who started off more ambitious than him, just loses her damn mind. Very interesting story. Loyalty to both his king and to his friends is tossed out the window for ambition. Macbeth suffers, Scotland suffers, and everyone suffers, except maybe the witches who could give a shit.

“Whither shall I fly?/I have done no harm. But I remember now/I am in this earthly world, where to do harm/Is often laudable, to do good sometime/accounted dangerous folly. Why then, alas,/Do I put up that womanely defense,/to say I have done no harm?” (IV.ii. 72-75)

“Boundless intemperance/In nature is a tyranny; it hath been/th’ untimely emptying of the happy throne,/And fall of many kings. But fear not yet/to take upon you what is your: you may/convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty/and yet seem cold, the time you may so hoodwink./We have willing dames enough. There cannot be/that vulture in you,to devour so many/as Will to greatness dedicate themselves,/finding it so inclinded” (IV.iii. 67-75)

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow/creeps in this petty pace from day to day,/to the last syllable of recorded time;/and all our yesterdays have lighted fools/the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!/Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ and then is heard no more. It is a tale/told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/signifying nothing.” (V.v. 17-28)

J.R.R. Tolkien's Return of the King

J.R.R. Tolkien's Return of the King
Begin: 10/06/07
End: 10/11/07
Quality: Ten out of Ten.
Reason: Reading Plan.
Genre: Fiction. Novel. Fantasy. Epic. Classic.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1954.
Fog Index: 7.5/85% are harder
Flesch Index: 80.7/96% are harder
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 5.6/85% are harder
Complex Words: 4%/92% have more.
Number: Countless.
Synopsis: This is the final book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The first half of the book deals with the war on Gondor while the second half deals with Frodo and Sam making it to Mount Doom and the outcomes of the War of the Ring.
Thoughts: A little sad it’s all over. Impressive as always. I kept finding little refrences to the fact that Sauron didn’t really have willing servants but slaves that he bent to his will which is interesting spin on things. Orcs not being evil creatures as much as just tools of Sauron. I was also extremely fascinated with Saruman in this reading. I just can’t figure this fucker out, was he that power mad and disturbed? They gave him chance after chance. How can that man have that much pride?


“Too often have I hear of duty,” she cried. “But am I not of the House of Eorl, a shieldmaiden and not a dry-nurse? I have waited on faltering feet long enough. Since they falter no longer, it seems, may I not now spend my life as I will.”

“What do you dear, lady?” he said.
“A cage,” she said. “To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deads is gone beyond recall or desire.” (767)

“I pity even his slaves” (795)

“But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?” (849)

“Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.” (861)

“for he had few servants but many slaves of fear.” (880)

“But far worse than all such perils was the ever approaching threat that beat upon them as they went: the dreadful menace of the Power that waited, brooding in deep thought and sleepless malice behind the dark veil about its throne. Nearer and nearer it drew, looming blacker, like the oncoming of a wall of night at the last end of the world.” (914)

“Then suddenly, as before under the eaves of Emyn Muil, Sam saw these two rivals with other vision. A crouching shadow, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice.
‘Begoner and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the fire of Doom.” (922)

“and even at that moment all the hosts of Mordor trembled, doubt clutched their hearts, their laughter failed, their hands shook and their limbs were loosed. The Power that drove them on and filled them with hate and fury was wavering, its will was removed from them; and now looking in the eyes of their enemies they saw a deadly light and were afraid.” (927)

“But if you would know, I am turning aside soon. I am going to have a long talk with Bombadil; such a talk as I have not had in all my time. He is a moss-gatherer, and I have been a stone doomed to rolling. But my rolling days are ending, and now we shall have much to say to one another.” (974)

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Two Towers

J.R.R. Tolkien's Two Towers
Begin: 09/30/07
End: 10/05/07
Quality: Ten out of Ten.
Reason: Reading Plan.
Genre: Fiction. Novel. Fantasy. Epic. Classic.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1954.
Fog Index: 7.5/85% are harder
Flesch Index: 80.7/96% are harder
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 5.6/85% are harder
Complex Words: 4%/92% have more.
Number: Countless.
Synopsis: This story continues right after Fellowship of the Ring. It’s essentially two different books. The first one details Aragon, Gimli and Legolas chasing after Merry and Pippin who have been captured by Orcs. They then get caught up in the war between Saraman and the Rohan while Merry and Pippin get involved in the Ents battles against Saraman. The second book details Frodo and Sam’s journey to Mordor. They get lost trying to make their way to Mordor and capture Gollum who serves as their guide into Mordor.
Thoughts: Really good. This book, well the series, just sucks me in every time I read it. I lost my sheet with all my little page numbers for quotes but here is the only one I have.

“It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really have stayed there in peace” (646)

I did have a few thoughts on re-reading this novel.

The orcs weren’t necessarily evil. They didn’t even want to fight for sauron, they were more like slaves that were just doing their master’s bidding. They seemed to hate the Nazgul.

The scene where Frodo and Sam are at the crossroads and they see the statues head on the ground with the graffiti on it and the light is shining on it, giving it a crown. I thought this was profoundly foreshadowing the return of Aaragon to the throne of Gondor.

I also find it sad that in today’s world we have lost a lot of levels of friendship. The relationship between Sam and Frodo is not sexual in the least. They are not homosexuals. And yet that is what everyone is going to read them as in today’s world and that’s kinda sad. I mean, I’m all for revealing homosexual subtext if it’s there being a huge fag myself but sometimes it’s not there and we read it anyway and I kept finding myself doing just that and then getting annoyed. J.R.R. Tolkien seems to divorce sexuality from any of his characters. I just don’t really see any of them displaying passion which is one of his few failings.

I also would like a fantasy novel where the domain of the evil lord is not a wasteland. What about an evil lord who rules a beautiful city or a prestigious mountainside or a virgin forest, nope, all the evil guys here have horrible ecological balance.

I also find that Peter Jackson’s vision has infiltrated my readings of the books, which is very sad but happens quite a bit with good film adaptations.

On another note, I was reading this at work the other day and when I told two guests that I read it every year, they made fun of me. Evidently, they think it’s stupid to read the same books over and over again. I tried to explain that you can get something else out of a book every time that you read it but they weren’t having it. It irritated me. Honestly. I feel that some books are extremely rich, they have layers upon layers of meaning and that you can get something else every time that you read them that unlike say, a Danielle Steele novel, you are going to notice different things every time you read it. Plus, it’s also like hanging out with old friends again.