Book 6/50: P.G. Wodehouse, Big Money.  270 pages.  Completed around 2/1/2009.

Another fun book for leisure reading…time to get back to more substantive stuff.

This was really interesting reading.  It was nice to get Obama’s perspective on a wide variety of issues straight from him.  Whether you agree or disagree with him (and most likely, like me, sometimes you’ll agree and sometimes not), I think most people that read this will come away from it feeling that it’s refreshing just to hear somebody address, in a clear manner, all the issues he addresses.  He also comes across as someone with strong opinions, but seeking consensus on issues.  In other words, he consistently approaches issues by looking for points that both sides can agree on, and using that for a starting point.  It’ll be interesting to see how the ideas he puts forward in this book begin to materialize in his presidency as time goes on.

There’s not too much to say about this; it was hilarious like Wodehouse books usually are.  I was struck by the thought last night that plots in Wodehouse books are somewhat secondary; they’re really only vehicles to enjoying his hilarious way with words.

Book 3/50: Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner.  371 pages.  Completed 1/5/2009.

This book was really excellent, though pretty dark at times.  I’ll avoid a synopsis since that would spoil some of the more interesting surprises, but it’s set in Afghanistan, narrated by a boy growing up there.  Friendship, tumultuous parent-child relationships, courage and cowardice, power, guilt, and redemption, are all topics dealt with beautifully in the framework of this really riveting story.

This is a very moving book, and rings very true.  On top of all that, it gives a good bit of Afghan history from the last 40 years.  It’s always nice to sneak in a bit of education amidst a great story!

Book 2/50: Agatha Christie, The Moving Finger.  216 pages.

Completed: 1/4/2009

This is the first Agatha Christie mystery I’ve read since high school, or possibly college, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I had the same experience I remember from those times, where there are subtle clues that make me think I know who the culprit is, only it changes every few pages.   This time, one of my three main suspects was actually the guilty party, but it wasn’t my first choice.  

Also, this book was the first in quite a while to hook me so thoroughly that I started it and finished it without stopping (with the slight exception of getting up to munch on homemade brownies and milk every so often.)  That’s why I’m writing this review at 2:30 AM.

I think I’m going to have to read some more Agatha Christie mysteries this year….

Book 1/50: Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture.  224 pages.

Completed: January 2, 2009.  

Randy Pausch, the author of this book, passed away in the fall of 2008.  He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon who was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.  Knowing that he likely had only a few months to live, he gave a talk for Carnegie Mellon’s “Last Lecture” series that was truly his last lecture.  He called it “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.”  It became an internet phenomenon, and this book encompasses a lot of what he talked about in that lecture, plus other thoughts.  

I was telling Bethany about this book tonight, and told her that if I ever end up with a terminal diagnosis, I hope I can approach life the way that Randy Pausch did.  

This book is filled with down-to-earth, practical advice for living life as it is meant to be lived, and making the most of every minute.  It’s an excellent read.

From the title, you can probably tell that this book is a tad depressing.  It’s about the genocide in Rwanda in the mid-1990′s.  Basically, there were two ethnic groups: Hutus and Tutsis.  The Hutus, who were in power, decided that the Tutsis were the cause of all of the country’s problems and needed to be wiped out.  So, they began promoting anti-Tutsi propaganda, and eventually called upon every Hutu to turn against their Tutsi friends and neighbors and massacre them, all in service to the country, of course.  Generally this took the form of hacking them into pieces with machetes.

A kind of mob mentality ensued in which people turned into killing machines, with no compassion or mercy.  Most estimates say that nearly a million Tutsis were killed in the genocide.

The most interesting part of the book, to me, told of the return home of Hutu refugees, who had fled the country after Tutsis took back over.  In many cases they returned to their homes to live amongst Tutsi survivors whose families they had slaughtered.  In some cases the Tutsi survivors sought revenge by killing the Hutu; others turned them in to the authorities or simply tried to coexist, hoping that a life of living with the memories and guilt of what they had done was the worst punishment.

All in all, although the book was pretty dark and gruesome in parts, it was an excellent read.  For one thing, I am pretty ignorant of African history overall, and this book helped me out a bit in understanding some of that.  Also, as with accounts of the Holocaust, it’s always intriguing to me to see what heinous acts seemingly ordinary people will commit when given governmental sanction to do so.  Scary, but very interesting.

For the next year or so, this blog will probably focus primarily on the books I’m reading.  In 2009, I’m going to try something my brother attempted this year (I’m not sure if he’s going to complete it or not): reading 50 books in a year.  I actually would like to make it to 52, one for each week, but I’ll set the bar a tad lower at 50 and see how that goes.

My reading list will be a mix of fiction and nonfiction.  Below is a list of some of the books I plan to start with:

• The Bible (KJV): haven’t read the Bible through lately, so it’s about time to do that again.  
• Lewis Glinert, Modern Hebrew: An Essential Grammar
• Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
• Lemony Snicket, Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography
• Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
• Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope
• John Pollock, The Master
• Peter Singer, Practical Ethics
• Barry Holtz, Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts
• Elie Wiesel, הלילה (Night): reading this in Hebrew, if I can manage the vocabulary
• Ora Band, Reader: Modern Hebrew Prose and Poetry

And various others, but these are some of the first that I’m planning to read.  I’ll review them as I go.  Meanwhile, I have one book to finish reading before the first of the year in order to clear out my books-in-progress pile.  When I finish it, it will be the first time in years that I haven’t had multiple books in progress at the same time.

So, like I did with my first post on poverty, I’m going to give what I think is the rough outline these posts will take.

1. Why I believe in God
2. The implications of belief in God
3. Why I trust the Bible
4. The implications of trusting the Bible
5. Seeking a relationship with God
6. Who is God?
7. Becoming a Christian
8. Salvation
9. Christian living
10. Faith and works

I’m sure other stuff will work its way in there; this is just my first guess at roughly how this will work itself out.  Stay tuned if you’re interested; I plan to be updating this more frequently than my usual monthly post.

This weekend, while reading this book, I was intrigued by his discussion of Genesis 6:9.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.  (NIV)

Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.  (KJV)

Jewish scholars have wondered why the Bible uses the phrase "blameless among the people of his time" after already calling Noah a "righteous man."  Apparently, they reason, it is further explaining what it means when it says he was "righteous."

According to this book, two main interpretations have been suggested.  First, the Bible means that Noah was a righteous man, when you consider the evil time in which he lived.  In other words, had he lived in a more moral era, he might not have been considered so impressive; but he was pretty decent compared to the rest of humanity at that immoral time.  Under this interpretation, it’s kind of an insinuation that Noah was not all that great of a person except in comparison with really wicked people.

The second interpretation, favored by Telushkin, is that Noah was a righteous man in spite of the exceptionally wicked environment in which he lived.  Thus, had he lived in a more moral era, without the evil influences of his time, he would be expected to be an even more righteous man.

Telushkin used this as an example of judging people mercifully; we should look at Noah (and others) with an eye towards seeing them in the best light possible, not the worst.  However, the other lesson we can draw from this is that even in an immoral age and environment, it is possible to resist the crowd and live in a way that pleases God.  Although it may be harder, it can be done, and we can’t use the immoral state of the world around us to justify our own immorality.

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