April 2012 Books

The Odyssey of Homer - Translated by Richmond Lattimore
First published: 750 B.C
Rating: 5
Goodreads

Excellent, highly readable translation of a very exciting epic.  It is truly remarkable to think that both The Iliad and The Odyssey were first composed and performed in the oral tradition and were written down on papyrus scrolls many years after initially created.

Audiocourse: Greek Drama - Tragedy and Comedy by Professor Peter Meineck
Rating: 5
Modern Scholar course

An excellent course covering the major plays of the four prominent ancient Greek playwrights: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes.  What made this course so interesting is that not only is Prof. Meineck a scholar, but he has also produced these plays for the stage.

He speaks about the cultural and political backdrop at the time of the first production in Athens, Greece and how the audience would've thought and felt about certain topics and even moments within each play.  He also addresses the use of masks, the chorus, the three actors and minimal use of props.  A highly recommended course.

Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton
First published: 1942
Rating: 5
Goodreads

When I mentioned to my daughter that I wanted a good book on Greek and Roman mythology, she recommended this book which was part of her high school required reading list.  This became a critical source of information while reading The Iliad and The Odyssey.  I am sure it will come in handy while working my way through the extant plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides.

The Paris Review Interviews: Women Writers at Work edited by George Plimpton
Published: 1998
Rating: 4
Goodreads

The Virginia Woolf Reader edited by Mitchell Leaska
Published: 1984
Rating: 5
Goodreads

I have been intimidated by Virginia Woolf so it was perfect when I spotted this reader with An  Anthology of her Best Short Stories, Essays, Fiction, and Nonfiction on the front cover.  What better way to sample her writing and see how accessible it was?

End result?  I loved reading her essays, short stories, diary excerpts and various letters.  I tried to read the sections from her novels but found it was too difficult to pick up the story mid-stream.  I now own and look forward to reading: A Room of One's Own, Moments of Being, A Writer's Diary and Mrs. Dalloway.

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child (#13 Jack Reacher series)
Published: 2009
Rating: 4
Goodreads

I bought this at a local library book sale a couple of years ago and picked it up after deciding that I wanted a quick and engrossing read after being immersed in Homer's epics for the past few weeks.   I was happy to find it unnecessary to read prior books in the series.

Jack Reacher is a highly trained, extremely intelligent ex-military cop, whose mind is engaged 110% throughout the story.  And because it is told in the first person, the reader knows exactly what he is thinking.  I enjoyed this far more than the one book I read in the Kurt Wallender series,  The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell.  I definitely plan to read more.

"Killing Floor" by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #1)

Published: 1997
Read: 2011
Genre: Fiction - Hard boiled detective
Rating: 3
Reviews: Goodreads
Author web site








Another library book that I picked up based on a recommendation from my sister-in-law.  A very quick read that did not disappoint.

The narrator is Jack Reacher, an ex-military cop who is wrongfully charged with a brutal homicide in a small town in Georgia.  He happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but as it turns out, it is good for the US economy that despite being homeless, jobless and a self described vagrant, he wandered into Margrave, GA when he did.

Because this is told in the first person, we are privy to all his observations, thoughts and reasons why he reacts one way, and not another.  Very interesting.

We may not think very much of a military cop but are cautioned against underestimating them.

A military policeman deals with military lawbreakers.  Those lawbreakers are service guys.  Highly trained in weapons, sabotage, unarmed combat.  Rangers, Green Berets, Marines.  Not just killers.  Trained killers.  Extremely well trained, at huge public expense. So the military policeman is trained even better.  Better with weapons.  Better unarmed (53). 

Reacher is one such military cop - to the nth degree.  This is good because the bad guys are really bad - sadistic, malevolent and evil.  The torture scene of a married couple is one of the most gruesome ever.  Anyone other than Reacher and his special skills would not stand a chance.  In this quote, he examines his feelings after ruthlessly killing one man and blinding another:

But I didn't feel much at all.  Nothing, in fact.  No guilt, no remorse.  None at all.  I felt like I'd chased two roaches around that bathroom and stomped on them.  But at least a roach is a rational, reasonable, evolved sort of a creature.  Those Aryans in that bathroom had been worse than vermin.  I'd kicked one of them in the throat and he had suffocated on his smashed larynx.  Well, tough shit.  He started it, right? Attacking me was like pushing open a forbidden door.  What waited on the other side was his problem.  His risk.  If he didn't like it, he shouldn't have pushed open the damn door.  I shrugged and forgot about it (118). 

My heart felt like it stopped beating when reading this explanation from the coroner to Jack. It made me think of the fateful morning when I found Josh, our beloved son, dead.

Postmortem hypostasis.  Lividity.  When you die, your circulation stops, right?  Heart isn't beating anymore.  Your blood obeys the law of gravity. It settles to the bottom of your body, into the lowest available vessels, usually into the tiny capillaries in the skin next to the floor or whatever you've fallen down onto.  The red cells settle first.  They stain the skin red.  Then they clot, so the stain is fixed, like a photograph.  After a few hours, the stains are permanent.

In Reacher, I see a combination of several famous detective protagonists. He is highly observant and surprises many with uncanny deductions, similar to Sherlock Holmes.   He is violent, like Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade as depicted in the previous quote, but deferential to women in a Philip Marlowe way.  All three; Reacher, Spade and Marlowe are magnets for women.

Similar to Chandler's writing in The Big Sleep, Lee Child also uses interesting analogies.

This was a man who wallowed in the yuppie dream like a pig in shit (50).

She was going to come face to face with reality the same way a runaway truck comes face to face with the side of a building (205). 

What remain unanswered is why he is jobless and homeless.  I wonder if this will be disclosed as the series continues.  Only one way to find out.....

Takaways: Read next few books in the series:

• Die Trying (#2)
• Trip Wire (#3)
• Running Blind (#4)
• Echo Burning (#5)