Category Archives: Book

BELLE: Bonjour Gaston. Gaston, may I have my book, please?
GASTON: How can you read this? There’s no pictures!
BELLE: Well, some people use their imaginations.
GASTON: Belle, it’s about time you got your head out of those books and paid attention to more important things…like me! The whole town’s talking about it. It’s not right for a woman to read–soon she starts getting ideas…and thinking.
BELLE: Gaston, you are positively primeval.
GASTON: Why thank you, Belle.
—
Source: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991)
http://www.fpx.de/fp/Disney/Scripts/BeautyAndTheBeast.txt

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Property, Martyr, Spy: A Righteous Gentile Vs. The Third Reich by Eric Metaxas

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Started 11th June 2012 Finished 10th September 2012 I dislike Metaxas’ penchant for reducing a person’s name to a nickname without clearly defining the situation. Is frustrating. Also disliking his “start a chapter with a quote out of context because it’s shiny” thing where he then uses the quote in context in the chapter (or the next chapter) and I read the quote in context and am suddenly struck with the ugliest feeling of deja vu I’ve encountered yet in my life. But those things aside, the book is an amazing testament to the life and times of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I started reading this book shortly after my wife devoured it as we both prepared for/participated in a production of Tim Jorgenson’s play, “Bonhoeffer”. Not only was being a part of the play a deep and meaningful experiences, but this book helped bring some much more depth and clarity to … Continue reading →

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon – By Gideon Defoe

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Started 27th August 2012 Finished 3rd September 2012 Just brilliantly silly and wonderful. If you’ve never read Gideon Defoe’s rampant silliness, what are you waiting for? Permission? Than I grant it you. Just go. Enjoy. Be sure to approach with an open mind as it’s very, VERY, silly. But that’s part of the reason I love it. In this latest romp, the Pirate Captain (that’s his entire name) decides to quit pirating and become a beekeeper But his ambitions are challenged by a recently deposed Napoleon. Thus chaos ensues. Epic, hilarious, anti-common sense hilarity.

Mornings On Horseback – by David McCullough

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Very interesting approach to a biography. Examines how Theodore Roosevelt (Jr.) grew up and the various challenges he faced growing up that made him the man he was. Started 3/25/2012 Finished 6/22/2012 “[Theodore Roosevelt Sr. ] had a passion for fine horses and to see him astride one of his own in Central Park was…to see the model of Christian manhood” (pg 32). “Separated from home and the beloved ‘home faces,’ he could slip rapidly into abject homesickness and sounds, on paper at least, most uncharacteristically plaintive. He felt bereft of real friends” (pg 32). “Then they turned south again, from Edinburgh to York, an exhausting, sooty eight hours ‘in the cars’ relieved by some of the most appealing scenery of the whole trip: distant blue glances of the Firth of Forth, small white beaches, rolling surf, rolling country; then red-tiled Berwick-upon-Tweed and the Tweed emptying into the North Sea; … Continue reading →

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

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Started Sunday night, finished Monday night. It’s that gripping and exciting. I’m very interested in picking up/borrowing the sequels just to see what else happens to the world Suzanne Collins created. Having watched some trailers for the upcoming film, I am reminded of how unusual my brain is. Examples: When I started reading, despite the description of the forest around it, District 12 in my head has a blood red sky/hue to it because of the war. The forest was green and lush, just not District 12 itself. The Capitol was envisioned similar to Coruscant from the Star Wars prequels. Katniss looked like a hooded, elvish princess about 90% of the time (during the games or in the forest that is). Rue reminded me of Susie Johnston from Phineas and Ferb. Thresh reminded me of Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver. Cato looked like Billy from Boxer Hokey. I can’t wait … Continue reading →

To Try Men’s Soul by Newt Gingrich & William R. Forstchen

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Started: 2/5/2012 Finished: 3/2/2012 An absolutely fascinating study. I like how the foreword directly addresses the fact that they (Gingrich and Forstchen) interrupted a perfectly good narrative of alternate history in World War II’s Pacific theatre to dramatize this particular event. Before reading this, the only thing I had in my mind regarding this historical event was that one painting of “King George” standing stern and glorious in one of the boats as it sails through the ice floes of the Delaware. I never really thought about how much that night truly sucked and how on edge Washington was regarding the crossing and the secret plan.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

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Started: 1/23/2012 Finished: 2/4/2012 Stephen King, how dare you! Every time I read one of your books, I’m inexorably sucked in. But the movie adaptations are always horrible! Or at least I’m still bitter about Dreamcatcher. Anyways, it was really exciting to learn so much more about the Kennedy assassination than ever before….I mean Lee Harvey Oswald is always portrayed so wimpishly in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins that sometimes you forget what he was really like. *shudder* But the whole thing was incredible as our hero stalks Oswald and prepares to change history. But more than that, our main character was a really likable guy! For whatever reason I deeply connected with him and wished him nothing but personal happiness by the end (and was mostly mollified). New favorite word: obdurate. Definition: Adjective: Stubbornly refusing to change one’s opinion or course of action

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

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The Princess Bride S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure The ‘good parts’ version Abridged by William Goldman Author of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Started: some time after Jenny’s birthday party (Aug 2011) Finished: shortly afterwards I’m fairly certain that I liked the book a great deal more than the movie (at least my many fractured viewings of the movie), but I do have to give them credit for doing some incredibly interesting things and creating a great cult film.

The Pixar Touch: The Making Of A Company by David A. Price

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Available on Amazon. Many thanks to my good friend Jeff Allen for recommending this book. It is an absolutely riveting read. For me it kind of capped off/continued the Disney company history that I so enjoyed discovering in Walt Disney: Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler (covering Walt’s lifetime) and Disney Wars by James Stewart (covering the period from Walt’s death to the successful ousting of Eisner) by telling a completely different story: the story of Pixar. How Ed Catmull, a Mormon computer scientist who knew he couldn’t draw good enough to be an animator decided that he would make a movie with a computer instead (in the 60s). How he gathered a brain trust of computer scientists, electrical engineers, artists and writers around him and shepherded them through 40 years of business transactions and negotiations from the New York Institute of Technology to Lucasfilm to Emeryville, all … Continue reading →

The Price Of Freedom by A. C. Crispin

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Amazing!!!! It answers almost every single question that has arisen about Jack Sparrow since discovering his delightful character in the first film. It’s practically a complete back story, but does so with a gripping narrative and a story that is as lush and vibrant as any locale we’ve seen Jack visit in his four films. Also makes me want to pick up the junior novels that delve into Jack’s childhood to see what other gems are out there to glean about Jack Sparrow. I also want to pick up A. C. Crispin’s other novels (she does Han Solo’s backstory!!!).

Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex (Book 7) by Eoin Colfer

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I adore Eoin Colfer’s writing. There really isn’t much more to say about it. In this, his 7th venture into the universe of teenaged, criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl, Colfer outdoes himself while paying tribute to the depth of work he has already completed. While I felt a little lost in the beginning, reading Wikipedia helped me remember the characters being referenced, and it was purely a tertiary feeling as the characters and dialogue that were most important were immediately embraced and enjoyed – like old friends out for another night on the town.