Ah, labor day weekend. A good time to hide inside and valiantly pretend that your town is not being eaten alive by tourists. And a great time to reads books 251-253. And then I started re-reading the uncut version of The Stand, and while I may be a fast reader, over 1000 pages is still a lot to digest. But goddamn, The Stand is a good fucking book. I mean, seriously. Shit.

Bones to Ashes

Another Temperance Brennan mystery; this one was a lot more enjoyable to read because it didn’t reek of cigarettes. It’s a little late in the Book Project to start, but I’m kind of tempted to begin tracking the odors associated with books, to see if there’s a connection. For example, I notice that mystery books are often covered in the foul stench of cigarettes, suggesting that there is an overlap between smokers and mystery book readers.

Anyhow, I was a bit disappointed with this book because there wasn’t very much fun science. There were some diatoms, which was neat, but it was more of a character study than a mystery. Which is alright, I suppose, but the story was kind of cliched and predictable, and I can’t pretend that the ending was any big shocker. It’s so interesting to read about the science of forensics that I ended up feeling a bit cheated.

Demographics:

Bones to Ashes, by Kathy Reichs. Published 2007, 310 pages. Fiction.

Muhajababes

Have you ever wondered about what’s going on in Middle Eastern youth culture? According to the blurb on the back of this book, two thirds of the population of the Middle East is under 25, and as the introduction explains, Middle Easterners are becoming increasingly educated, too. When you get a seething mass of educated youth, it’s like a tinderbox, and that’s what the author wanted to explore.

She traveled around, looking for “young people” to interview, and meeting all sorts of fascinating people along the way, who in turn pointed her in the direction of more interesting people. Honestly, I’m a bit jealous of her, because it sounds like it must have been an awesome experience. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is even vaguely interested in Middle Eastern culture and in what’s going on in the Middle East right now.

It’s a little flippant at times, and there’s a lot of British slang (every time she talks about someone “lighting up a fag,” I twitch), but the voices of the people she interviews still come through, and she paints a wonderful picture without going overboard; her language is simple, clean, and mostly unassuming, which makes the profiles all the more outstanding.

Demographics:

Muhajababes, by Allegra Stratton. Published 2008, 265 pages. Biography.

The Pilgrim’s Progress

Holy Christian allegory, Batman. This was an interesting book for Vicki to recommend, and I’m interested to learn more about why she chose it. But it was a good book for me to read, since it is kind of one of the most famous works in the English literature canon. Pilgrim’s Progress is also referenced in a lot of other books (I’m thinking especially of Little Women here), so I feel like I’m going to get more out of those, having read Pilgrim’s Progress.

There’s also something kind of remarkable about reading a book which is over 300 years old, and still finding commonalities with the characters and their struggles. It just goes to show you that folks are folks, wherever they are and whenever they lived. While I can’t say that this book fired up Christian virtues or anything, it certainly gave me some food for thought.

And now I can make Slough of Despond jokes.

But seriously, this book has had a huge impact on English literature and the culture of several nations, including my own. The United States is steeped in Christian values, and I know that at one time, people ate this kind of stuff up. I’ll bet many of the Founders read The Pilgrim’s Progress, and I’m sure that countless readers have modeled themselves on Christian.

It’s sort of funny that I am going from reading a famous Christian allegorical tale and then reading an epic novel which, in a lot of ways, parallel’s Christian’s journey. Just goes to show you The Pilgrim’s Progress keeps packing a punch, eh?

Demographics:

The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan. Published 1678, 302 pages. Fiction.