Archive for September 19, 2008
Alright, I’m ready…
What kind of book is it that makes me so into it that I can’t put it down, yet so excited to be done with it so I can move on?
That would be the Twilight Series. I really hope you don’t take it personally if you feel differently.
Who wants to lend me Breaking Dawn so I can get on with it…?
And for the record, I am really excited to see the movie. I vote that it’ll call for one heck of a Girls Night Out.
The Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tzu
My review
This was a ‘book’ that I had been assigned to read selections from when I was in my English 101 class. I had been quite intrigued by the parts I had read, so I was looking forward to reading the rest of it. When I went to the bookstore in search for it, I had no idea how long it actually was, and imagined I was in for another really long, tough read. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was 159 pages long with Chinese on every left hand page and English on every right. So It was only really 80 pages. It took me the whole of 2 hours to read.
Just like it had been in my Eng 101 class, the rest of the book was also intriguing. It’s a sort of religious text for the Chinese, and had a lot of truths in it. (While it had some things I wasn’t so sure were truths…) It is all about humility, seeking for simplicity, doing only that which is necessary, not seeking to be acknowledged, etc. etc. It talked about governments and what makes them successful or unsuccessful (something that definitely graps interest from me in election times). It talked about the heavens and their role in man’s life.
I gave it a 2 (“it was ok”) because it didn’t leave me feeling changed or empowered or anything like that. Not to mention that I wasn’t necessarily riveted. The only reason I went ahead and read it for 2 hours straight was to be done with it so I could move on. That’s not to say that it’s not interesting and that I wouldn’t go back to it and quote it and such…I actually marked a lot of parts with stickys so that I could do just that, it just wasn’t anything special.
Oh well, definitely not a waste of 2 hours, and I get to put another FLAG on my reading list. Hooray!
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
I don’t even know where to begin. While I don’t think I could give this book 5 stars as I would Monte Cristo or A Tale of Two Cities, I can say that my life has been changed by this book. So many lessons can be learned through the studying of Wang Lung’s life:
1. What we wish for one day becomes necessity the next.
Wang Lung goes through a period of famine in his lifetime, and while his wife and children and father resort to begging in the streets to purchase enough food for that evening, he works all day carting people around the city to earn his meal. While even one extra piece of silver in his hand is unheard of one day, silver runs from it the next after he finds a small fortune.
2. Ugly women are harder workers, and cause little upheavel in a home.
I have to laugh at me even listing this one, but it is so true. The book begins with Wang Lung praying for rain, and washing himself wholly for the first time in a long time in preparation for his new wife. He knows from his father that she is not attractive, but that one should hope for a wife that is not. She turns out to be the most selfless, hardworking woman out of all the women in Wang Lung’s life. I have to say that his wife, O-lan, could be now considered one of my heroes. If only I could be so selfless. I’m not saying that you have to be ugly to be selfless, but that sometimes beauty paves the way for vanity which just causes all sorts of problems.I won’t say any more so I don’t spoil it for anyone who is planning on reading it.
3. Land is the only completely secure place to invest your money.
I actually was talking to Blair yesterday about how all this stuff going on with our country’s economy makes me nervous to want to invest any of our money, for fear that all will be lost. I told him we might be safer just burying our money in a hole in our backyard. He said that the only thing that really is safe, since even cash in the backyard can lose its value, is land. It was fitting that I was reading this book at the time…
4. Giving in to lusts will not bring joy.
I’ll just leave it at that.
I could really go on and on, but I’ll go ahead and call that good. I highly recommend this book to anyone. It is relatively short (my copy is 357 pages) and an easy read.
What next? The Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tzu.
