Guns, Germs and Steel

This book written by Jared Diamond was a New York Times Bestseller and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Chris' sister read it as required reading for one of her classes in med school and she thought it was very informative. She knows that I like history and suggested this book to me, then gave it to me for Christmas. The idea of the book is to answer the question: "Why did history unfold differently on different continents?" The author, a professor of geography who has spent many years on the island of New Guinea, takes 471 pages to show his expertise in native New Guineans. He also takes a very darwinistic view of how the human species developed and contradicts himself numerous times throughout the work. As I began to read the book and realized that I did not like the author's voice, I pushed myself to read more. I do not like to think of myself as someone who is narrow-minded and I am usually willing to listen and most times genuinely interested to other points of view. However, I could not ignore the fact that although the author states that he will examine this question through every aspect of human life, ie. biology, herbology, economics, politics, etc. He never once brings up the subject of religion and its effects on the history of the world. Now, whether or not a person believes in a religion is beside the point. Throughout the history of the world, most peoples and continents have acted on principles based solely on their religious beliefs. In fact, most of the wars and conquests the world have known, which have surely played a major role in the success of certain continents over the others, where based on some sort of religious principles. Therefore, I quickly found a work of literature that blatantly ignores the effect of religion on the people of history to be very narrow-minded and unfounded. In short, I had a hard time believing any of the assumptions the authors stated in this book and consequently stopped reading it. Not to mention that if all one has to do to win a Pulitzer these days is to summarize any high school history text book and then add in their own glorified personal travel log to the islands of New Guinea, I have completey lost any interest in reading works from future recipients of the Pulitzer Prize.

P.S. - If anyone wants to borrow the book, I will gladly remove it from my shelves to make room for other more worthy works of literature, like Captian Underpants or Diary of a Wimpy Kid perhaps.

Horatio Hornblower

A while back, a friend of mine mentioned the Horatio Hornblower series as a series of books that Jared might like when he's a little older, with not much more about them than that she though she'd heard that one of the Star Trek captain's character was modeled after Horatio Hornblower. A couple months later while perusing at a used book sale, I found a couple of the books from the series and bought them. A few months after that while looking for a movie at the library, I stumbled upon a couple Horatio Hornblower movies. Chris and I watched one of the movies and then another, not even knowing what order they went in and inadvertently, watching them in the wrong order. The movies were good, really good. So, we checked out the first book from the library. I read it first, then Chris. We both loved the book and as with most series, couldn't wait to read the next one. I have read the first two books (Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and Lieutenant Hornblower) and Chris has read the first three (including Hornblower and the Hotspur).
The Horatio Hornblower series is set during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Horatio begins his service in the British Navy as a 17 year old who although very good at arithmetic, knows next to nothing about sailing or war. He very quickly learns the ropes of life at sea, overcoming the hardships that inevitably fall on a Midshipman. Horatio proves to be very talented with a sextant and navigation, which doesn't always win him brownie points with the other crew members. He also has a fire that burns within whenever they are engaged in battle. This fire enables him to think fast and make good decisions, which in the end prove to his benefit and ultimately his promotion. Chris and I both love the combination of tongue in cheek humor, dry intellectualism, and swashbuckling adventure. I would recommend these books to anyone, but would readily admit that not everyone would find them as entertaining as do we.
The most amazing aspect of this series is that the movies are actually better than the books. I believe this may be the first time that I have ever seen a movie based on a book that has surpassed the excellence of the book. So, if the prospect of reading 10 books full of dry intellectualism does not excite you, then look for the movies. There are 8 made-for-television movies. As far as I understand, the movies only cover the content of the first three books - which might be one reason why they are so good - the producers didn't try to cram 10 books into 4 hours, but rather picked the best part of the series and elaborated on that. The only negative thing I've discovered about this series is that it is difficult to find in it's entirety, but hey! I like a challenge.