Review: Recent Books
September 4, 2006
Four I’ve read in the last bit that aren’t really worth an individual review. I read some other book about a some guy in London who had a job and was in love with a girl. After finishing it, I left it in my hotel room at the Golden Nugget. Whatever it was called,
[rating:3/5]
Shooting Water, by Devyani Saltzman.
[rating:3/5]
It was true. A local member of the Shiv Sena had tied a rope to his waist, a stone to the other end, and rowed himself out onto the Ganges. The Indian TV stations had captured it as he threw himself over the side. What they didn’t see, or chose not to see, was that when the cameras were gone, he pulled himself out of the shallows. only to do it again as soon as someone else was looking. We found out later that he was a “professional suicider,” if there is such a thing, paid by the Hindu right. He had once been hired to jump off a bridge. The suicider survived both attempts, of course, although he was making a show of it in the local hospital.
The Tomb, by F. Paul Wilson.
[rating:3/5]
Class Dismissed, 75 Outrageous, Mind-Expanding College Exploits, by Ben Applebaum, Ryan McNally, and Derrick Pittman.
[rating:3/5]
Once we heard from everyone that the paper had been passed out, we ran to the front of the crowd and shouted with megaphones and held up signs saying, “Hold up your paper.” Slowly a wave of paper rose across the sections until everyone was holding up their paper. Unsure if our planning had been for nothing, we suddenly heard a cheer all the way across the stadium from the Yale side. “You suck. You suck. You suck.” It was in unison, and it could clearly be heard. At that point we knew we had done it. We had successfully duped 1,800 Harvard fans into holding up papers spelling out, “WE SUCK!”
Hope and Honor, by Sid Shachnow.
[rating:3/5]
Two snips from the book, as Shachnow recounts some experiences from his time as a green beret in Vietnam:
As I watched the resentment and anger being portrayed on the television, I wished every American could have seen the gratitude on the faces of the villagers when we left An Long after my tour was completed. Was the sacrifice too great to help people who couldn’t defend themselves? Principles that I formed from my own experience influenced my belief that no sacrifice was too great to protect the defenseless. I had been on the other side of that coin for too many years in my childhood.
Four pages later:
“What are we fighting for, sir?” he asked. “We’re fighting for people who want us to stop destroying their country.”
I paused a long moment. “Hopefully we’re fighting for a society that has been oppressed and want a better life,” I said. “You must have suffered immensely, but it doesn’t make you less of a man. You must continue your courage that helped you get up out of that hospital bed and gives you the strength to face your problems every day. I’m sure it is no easy task…” I looked at him and took a breath. “You have compassion. You’re trying to set things straight. These are our only weapons of survival. Our compassion and our courage and our hope. These are the parts of us that cannot be taken away or touched by bullets or mortars. The courage, hope, and compassion that you show can never be extinguished and it will not be silenced.”
He looked at me. “I hope you’re right, sir. What I’ve endured is too much when I know we’re fighting for a society that hates us, a society with a land that we have destroyed with our bombs and our armor,” he almost smirked. “I watch a buddy of mind hand a kid a candy bar. The kid handed him a grenade that blew him to bits.”
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