Capsule Book Reviews (William Blake, Fray, All Quiet on the Western Front)

Goodreads.com is a website that should be on every bibliophile's bookmarks. You can keep track of what books you're reading, have read, and want to read. Other features including seeing what your friends (or favorite authors) are reading, trivia, and forums. But my favorite feature is the review function where you can give a book a star rating (1-5) and write a little blurb about it. These capsule reviews come from my Goodreads page.

Blake: Poems by William Blake (Everyman's Library, 1994)

William Blake was a mystic poet who was not afraid to challenge the religious and political views of his day. Like the other Romantic poets, he creates beautiful images of nature especially in Songs of Innocence); but he is not naive and understands the natural and moral evil that haunts the universe and provides haunting imagery of evil and demonic power. Blake also brings up some interesting philosophical questions in his longer poems The Everlasting Gospel and Marriage of Heaven and Hell where he ponders if there is really a dichotomy between reason and desire and attempts to solve the ancient Dionysian/Apollonian problem. Blake's prophetic poems are slightly denser than his other works and derivative of other sources like the Bible and Paradise Lost, but they are a valiant attempt at world-building. 4/5 Stars


Fray by Joss Whedon and Karl Moline (Dark Horse Comics, 2003)

Not Whedon's best work, but it is interesting seeing a concept to see a "Slayer" who is even more amoral than Faith. The plot was a bit of a rehash of season 1 of Buffy and the art was shaky in spots. However, this cyberpunk world was extremely interesting and may have even influenced Firefly... The latter issues especially shine along with the relationship between Melaka and her siblings Harth and Erin. 3/5 Stars


All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (Vintage Books, 2009)


I read this book in 11th grade, and it has had a great impact on my thinking as a pacifist. Through reading this book, I realized that soldiers are pawns of their government and neither hurt nor hindered by the outcome. The humorous conversation among the soldiers about the war leaders fighting in a ring for each other's country especially proved this point. All Quiet also contains uncanny juxtapositions between peaceful nature images and brutal, grotesque battle scenes. It also reveals the vulnerable nature of humans because no character is spared from fickle death, not even the protagonist. In conclusion, All Quiet on the Western Front is an excellent, balanced look at the mind and actions of the "lost generation" of 1918. You will not look at war or good and evil the same way after reading this novel.


So what do you think of these books? Any books you would like me to review? Please comment below.

Interesting Nietzsche Quotes to Ponder (Part I)

I am currently reading Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra for my Existentialism class at The Master's College. In the early chapters of the work, Zarathustra tells the people of the village that "God is dead" which they laugh at and later hate. Even though I may not agree with everything he says, Nietzsche is extremely quotable and makes you think about who you are in this world, what are the point of morals, and if you're really yourself or just going along with the herd mentality. Without further ado...

"Ten truths a day you must find; else you will still be seeking truth by night, and your soul will remain hungry." (Chapter 2 "On the Teachers of Virture")

"Ten times a day you must laugh and be cheerful; else you will be disturbe at night by your stomach, this father of gloom." (Ibid.)

"Blessed are the sleepy ones: for they shall soon drop off." (Ibid.)

"The creator wanted to look away from himself; so he created the world." ("On the Afterworldly")

"The body is a great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd." ("On the Despisers of the Body")

"Instruments and toys are sense and spirit; behind them still lies the spirit." (Ibid.)

"... in the end all your passions became virtues and all your devils, angels." ("On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions")

"But what matter your good people to me? Much about your good people nauseates me; and verily, it is not  their evil." ("On the Pale Criminal")

"Write with blood, and you will experience that blood is spirit." ("On Reading and Writing")

"We are all of us fair beasts of burden, male and female asses." (Ibid.)

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness." (Ibid.)

"It is by invisible hands that we are bent and tortured worst." ("On the Tree on the Mountainside")

"But it is with man as it is with the tree. The more he aspires to the height and light, the more strongly do his roots strive earthward, downward, into the dark-the deep-into evil." (Ibid.)

"Nobody speaks to me; the frost of loneliness makes me shiver." (Ibid.)

"And even the liberated spirit must still purify himself." (Ibid.)

"Know that the noble man stands in everybody's way. The noble man stands in the way of the good too: and even if they call him one of the good, they thus want to do away with him" (Ibid.)

"You should love peace as a means to new wars- and the short peace more than the long... Let your peace be a victory!" ("Of War and Warriors")

"In sarcasm the prankster and weakling meet. But they misunderstand each other." (Ibid.)

"... man is something that shall be overcome" (Ibid.)

"State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters." ("On the New Idol")

"But the state tells lies in all the tongues of good and evil; and whatever it says it lies- and whatever it has it has stolen." (Ibid.)

"All-too-many are born: for the superfluous the state was invented." (Ibid.)

"They are always sick; they vomit their gall and call it a newspaper." (Ibid.)

"The earth is free even now for the great souls. There are still many empty seats for the lonesome and twosome, fanned by the fragrance of the silent seas." (Ibid.)

"Flee, my friend, into your solitude!" ("On the Flies of the Marketplace")

"Where solitude ceases the marketplace begins; and where the marketplace begins the noise of the great actors and the buzzing of the poisonous flies begins too." (Ibid.)

"In the world even the best things amount to nothing without someone to make a show of them..." (Ibid.)

"Blood is what they want from you in all innocence." (Ibid.)

"... you are the bad conscience of your neighbors: for they are unworthy of you." (Ibid.)

"It is bad to live in cities: these too many are in heat." ("Of Chastity")

"Chastity is a virtue in some, but almost a vice in many. They abstain, but the bitch, sensuality, leers enviously out of everything they do." (Ibid.)

"It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters." (Ibid.)

"Our faith in others betrays in what respect we would like to have faith in ourselves." ("On Friends")

"In a friend one should have one's best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him." (Ibid.)

"Compassion for the friend should conceal itself under a hard shell, and you should break a tooth on it." (Ibid.)

"As much as you give the friend, I will give even my enemy, and I shall not be any the poorer for it. There is comradeship: let there be friendship!" (Ibid.)

"Humanity still has no goal." ("On the Thousand and One Goals")

The Cave (and a short rant with a happy Easter ending)

Darkness fills the room,
Like death in the tomb.
Ignorance and despair
Laying my soul bare
A prison for mind,
 Truth is a crime,
A dungeon for my reason,
Enlightenment is treason.

Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was right when he said, "Despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage." People around me tell me what to do and think about so many things without asking why I do these things. Questions are more powerful than imperative statements. Just a thought, if I'm allowed...

Instead of working together to formulate opinions about the world around us, websites and news outlets that claim to be "fair and balanced" really just pick a side and stick to that part of a story. One must have some kind of foundation of  truth, but that should not stop them from reading about the "other side." I'm a Christian, but I also read books, watch films, and listen to music by Jews, agnostics, Marxists, and even worshipers of the Roman snake god Glycon.

Many Christians disparage postmodernism. True, postmodernism rejects objective truth and with it all religious dogma. However, postmodernism widened the rigid narrow canon that used to only consist of books written by dead white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. But with the advent of postmodernism and the "hermeneutics of suspicion", books by women, minorities, and persons who went against the grain of their culture can be included in the ranks of great writers. Also, postmodernism isn't snobbish and doesn't try to find an objective idea of a "great book", which a centuries old debate. It gets half the story right: the human race is desperately flawed and cannot be "cured" by cured by modern science and technology.

But it's missing one thing: a Savior.

"And as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but he has risen. Remember how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again." Luke 24:5-7 (NASB)