The Lost - Daniel Mendelsohn

At night, I think about these things. I'm pleased with what I know, but now I think much more about everything I could have known, which was so much more than anything I can now learn and which is now gone forever. What I do know now is this: there's so much you don't really see, preoccupied as you are with the business of living; so much you never really notice, until suddenly, for whatever reason--you happen to look like someone long dead; you decide, suddenly, that it's important to let your children know where they came from--you need the information that people you once knew always had to give you, if only you'd asked. But by the time you think to ask, it's too late.

An amazing story of searching for his past is told in this well written non-fiction story by Mendelsohn. With an interest in his family tree discovered in his childhood, the author documents his efforts to discover six family members who disappeared along with six million other members of the Jewish family. The investigation involves a compelling mystery that moves to several continents. I loved the story and was quite moved at times by the touching family stories and the horrors of the Nazis. A lot of details about the people met along the way that sometimes got in the way of the story.

Hamlet - William Shakespeare

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?—To die,—to sleep,—
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die,—to sleep;—
To sleep: perchance to dream:—ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time

The River Sea - Marshall De Bruhl

Throughout the five centuries since its discovery, explorers, visionaries, soldiers of fortune,, men of God, slavers and the enslaved, scientists, men of good will and men of ill will, and men of appalling cruelty and rapacity have been drawn to the river and its vast basin.

Whether searching for El Dorado, the fabled land of gold and riches, seeking to spread God's word, hoping to exploit or develop the region's natural resources, or travelling out of wanderlust or idle curiosity, many thousands of the brave, the adventurous, and not a few of the foolhardy have come to the Amazon.

The introduction from which the quote was taken, piqued my interest in this new book. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations. In only 217 pages, the book covers the entire history of the exploration and development of the Amazon. I enjoyed the first half of the book with the early explorers much more than the later chapters detailing the exploitation of the people and resources. The tales are often dreadful, as I guess one might expect of jungle exploration. While the book is very well written, I lost interest in chapters about development of the rubber industry and another chapter entirely on an array of modern exploitation.

The Cloud Atlas - Liam Callanan

I'M A WANTED MAN.

That's hardly enough to distinguish me around here, of course, I've heard it said that a percentage of Alaska's population is always fleeing something--the authorities, spouses, children, civilization. By comparison, I have it easy. It's just a couple of old priests hunting me, and I know them both. I could take them if it came to that, and it won't.

I'll be honest up front. They're coming after me for the most mundane of reasons. The only thing slightly extraordinary is that they're coming at all. For a while, I thought they would just forget about me, and that I'd be able to live out my days like most fugitives here: not entirely free from want, but free from those that want you. But no, first one sent a letter and then the other: these initial letters just suggestions, of course. Then a second round, with a request. And the third round, with an order. Come home.

I have to admit that I confused this book with another by David Mitchell with the same title and released the same year. I enjoyed reading it, in spite of it being an over-ambitious first novel. The main character is a young soldier sent to Alaska during WW II to investigate balloon bombs launched by the Japanese. Alaska in the 1940s and the unusual bombs are enough to make for an interesting tale. The author introduces some other characters which weren't believable for me. The book takes off into some mystical directions that weren't woven into the story in a way that worked. Still, many seem to like this book and it is an interesting adventure in an unusual time and place involving a fascinating piece of WW II history.

Encounter - Milan Kundera

Two fidelities shaped us: fidelity to the revolution of modern art in the twentieth century and fidelity to the novel. Two fidelities not at all convergent. For the avant-garde (the ideologized version of modern art) has always relegated the novel to a position outside modernism, considering the form to be old hat, irrevocably conventional. When, later on, in the 1950s and 1960s, the latter-day avant-gardes began to create and proclaim their own modernism for the novel, they did it in a purely negative way: a novel with no characters, no plot, no story, if possible no punctuation: a novel that came close to be called the anti-novel.

A curious thing: the people who created modern poetry did not claim to be making anti-poetry. On the contrary, from Baudelaire on, poetic modernism was seeking a radical way to get at the essence of poetry, its most profound specificity.

This book of short essays and excerpts on art and artists displays Kundera's vast knowledge and deep insights into his subject. He is perceptive and challenging with his thoughts. Often academic and intellectual, it frequently moves into intimate insights. The book wanders and might be expected with pieces written over a long period of time. Kundera, however, is such a great intellect and superb writer, that the book is a pleasure to read and is guaranteed to spur the reader's thoughts on writers, artists, and great pieces of our cultural history.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much - Allison Hoover Bartlett

This book is basically an expanded magazine story that is not worth reading. I won't bother posting an excerpt since I do not recommend spending your time on this one. It sounded like an intriguing detective story that would also shed light on the world of rare book collectors. Unfortunately, the central character is an identity thief who uses others credit card to steal books. He has no redeeming qualities and not someone I can imagine anyone wanting to learn about. The author's ethics are as questionable as the thief's as she allows the crimes to continue with the justification that she has no legal duty to report the thief.