Well Re(a)d

I felt myself blush a little, a not at all common thing for me, when the cashier of the book store acknowledged the conspicuousness of the size of the pile of books I piled on the counter in front of her. I had been given a gift card to the amount of $125 for the local mall, and after a couple hours of fruitless searching, I’d found nothing I could deem worth its price tag outside of the literature I was now fumbling with.

After taking in each of the titles, she stated that it looked like heavy reading. It wasn’t something that had even entered my mind. To me it was simply interesting. I can not even make the claim that I saw it as educational or in any way adventurous.

Great books for great minds, she tells me with a half shrug. I smile as the only alternative to frowning at her and retreat with the books in tow.

At the closure of this month I have completed most of the books. Originally having some order in mind, I resulted to reading them impulsively as my mood flew to whichever topic, but in an effort to break myself in the habit of reading several at once I have tried to stay true to one partner at a time.

Memoirs of a Geisha was my only fictional enterprise, purchased on a whim despite my general avoidance of any blatant fiction. It was excellently penned, however the ending was quite lacking in its general consequenceless heroine rewarding nature. This distaste, of course, is probably just from my own personal scrapes that do not let me forget that there is never such a happy ending without far more dire repercussions than the protagonist faced. Still, I would like to see the movie at some point for the sake of curiosity.

Bhagavad-Gita, a Hindi religious discourse, was simply beautiful. It was the perfect sort of book: the kind that can be read in one sitting, but only digested through the course of many. I found it curious that I had never read it before, and having taken the initiative to do so at long last was both very gratifying and calming.

The Prince is something that, simply due to content and author, I had always circumnavigated. Although Machiavelli is commonly lumped in with Sun Tzu and Nietzsche, it was just something I was not previously compelled to pick up. It was not intriguing in depth or approach enough to keep me faithful, and I ended up stopping dead centre and putting it off for the Bhagavad-Gita.

Buddhist Scriptures has not yet had found its way into my itinerary. The Buddhist philosophy or religion (whichever you prefer to call it) does not have any canonized ‘this is a Buddhist script’ texts, and as a result the only thing available is a compilation of the closest things possible.

The Art of War is one that most people jump to read as an in and of itself booklet. Knowing that this was not the case, I have held off until I had a satisfactory understanding of the principles of Taoism, which the book is intended to be an extension of. It is easy to see why even someone from the business sector would study this work, however it would be very interesting to see a credible modern day Sun Tzu implement today’s machines. With the Taoism gushing from his lectures, I would not at all be surprised to read that Lee had implemented The Art physically.

The Motorcycle Diaries of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara were a fun read. To me, though, they did not portray (as many have claimed) the man behind the myth. To me, they portrayed Ernesto Guevara – a man that Che summarily killed and replaced for the benefit of a great many people. Although one can see in Ernesto the first hints of Che, in my opinion Diaries does not truly touch on the revolutionary that later replaced the bumming doctor in its pages in the way that most have romanticized it to.

The Double is cumbersome and boring no matter how many times I attempt to read it, in whatever mood or with whatever determination. Dostoyevsky simply doesn’t catch my attention for whatever reason and entails the greatest of struggles to reach his final pages.

Desert Exile by Yoshiko Uchida is a stirring and factual recounting of a young girl’s family struggling in the American internment camps of World War II. The account lays aside the obvious unfounded political and racial foolishness of modern America in favour of simply telling the story of her family with all love and warmth. For this reason, it is all the more endearing and terrifying all at once, and says more for the failure of America Proper than any political discourse would have.

Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life is, simply put, a symphony in words. Jon Lee Anderson renders every detail in a most interesting way, easily able to inspire anyone with a political conscience or simply a passive interest in the welfare of his follow humans. The work, which took five years to complete, is easily one of the most enjoyable I have read in an equal span of time. I hesitate to use the word adventure, but it assuredly puts the reader next to the commandant through personal and wide-scale battles that Tom Sawyer would envy. Of any moans and groans that come to mind with the thought of a biography, this hero’s tale throws them all aside.

Mein Kampf, in its uncommonly presented two-volume unabridged version, is something that I struggled halfway through around the seventh grade. It was not that it was at all difficult to understand. On the contrary, it was so clear that my personal anger at Hitler’s absurdity would force me to stop every two or three pages for the inability to continue with his rubbish. I loaned my first copy to a friend my first or second year of owning it, and never retrieved it. Having since regretted not finishing the screenplay for Addie’s future dictatorship, I picked up a new copy. A short glance at almost any page in the compilation can leave even the densest reader with absolutely no doubt that there, before having any formal office of any kind, Hitler had said word for word exactly what his intent was.

The total is some 3500 pages at around 125 pages a day minimum to finish in the 28 days of February. Of course, with absolutely nothing to do as I waited for my application return and my personal shipping date, this has been an easy and welcome pace as an alternative to drowning myself in stupidities like games or television. The solitude and quiet offered by being kept eternally waiting has, if nothing else, at least provided the ability to absorb fully and think deeply about the gifts the authors and lives have given in their own rights.

As for me, I’m no closer to revising or continuing the 55 or so pages of my own book that have been sitting, unscathed, for what’s fast approaching a decade. After I repeatedly met my only literary goal of being published before graduating high school, I turned the majority of my focus elsewhere or lost it entirely. Although I will hopefully find it and direct it to the point of a proud fruition at some stretch, I do not hold out any expectation to do so. After recently examining so many fine gems in such a short period, it is quite overwhelming to think that I would be pretentious enough at this point in my life to attempt to stain any pages with my own words, knowing that it has been said better already ad nauseum for thousands of years.