Book 2: A Canticle for Leibowitz

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a 1959 post-apocolyptic science fiction novel by Walter Miller.

This book is three short stories. The first, Fiat Homo, is set in the mid-26th century, 600 years after a nuclear holocaust nearly destroys mankind.  Science and technology were blamed for the war, and the society called itself "Simpletons" and persecuted anyone who deigned to learn or invent. Leibowitz, an engineer from the time before "the Flame Deluge", survived the blast along with his science and engineering texts and notes. He converted to catholicism and founded an order of monks to preserve these historical documents, called "the Memoribilia," of the 20th century humans. Fiat Homo tells the tale of the canonization of Leibowitz and gives a picture of a church that preserves civilization and the relics and history of mankind.

Fiat Lux, the second story, set 600 years after the first, tells of the beginning of secularization, the development of science, both by the church and by the secular cognoscenti, and the beginnings of the rift between the two. By the end, the church begins to grow weary of the technology and worries about the future.

Fiat Voluntas Tua, the third story, set 600 years after the second, tells a tale of a civilization that has developed spaceships, colonies on other planets, and has redeveloped nuclear weaponry. Society is engaged in a massive cold war, coming to the brink. As might be expected, the book culminates with mankind nearly wiping itself out again with a nuclear war. Panicked, the church sends a small colony to a neighboring planet, taking with it the sacred Memoribilia, to be preserved for future humans, presumably starting the cycle over again.

This book is often predictable, giving lessons of the cyclic (and destructive) nature of humanity, of the benefits and dangers of technology, and of the usefulness and obstructiveness of the church (these things, too, seem to be cyclic). The book is full of symbolism and serious themes -- there is a heated debate at the end of the story about euthanizing people with critical levels of radiation exposure, and here we see again the church trying to save humans (humanity) from themselves (itself), very literally -- but also has several humorous moments; for example, in Fiat Homo, when one of the monks is on a desert sojourn, he finds a fallout shelter, but he believes that a fallout is a desert monster and destroyer of humans.

I'm sure many research papers have been written on this book, and it's critically acclaimed. I had a hard time getting through Fiat Lux, but I'll chalk that up to being excessively tired throughout. I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

By the way, if you decide to read this book and don't speak Latin, be warned: there are several Latin phrases and passages throughout. You can read the book while skipping them (I did), but Wikipedia has a page which probably would prove helpful. I wish I had found this before reading the book.

Book 1: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Ever wonder what the best night to order fish at a restaurant is? Or where the chefs at your favorite restaurant dine? Or whether the kitchen in your favorite Chinese restaurant is as clean as you'd like to it be? Anthony Bourdain, formerly the executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in NYC and currently host of the Travel Channel's No Reservations, writes an autobiography/expose of the restaurant industry with Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. In addition to tales of how he got his start -- from dropping out of Vassar to dishwashing in Provincetown to attending CIA and eventually cooking and/or cheffing at several major NYC restaurants -- Bourdain gives us an inside look at the dirty little secrets of the restaurant industry. We see who's sleeping with whom (hint: everyone, with everyone), why you shouldn't order fish on a Monday (it was delivered Thursday), and a quick way to gauge the cleanliness of a kitchen (see if the restroom is clean; it's WAY easier to keep clean than a kitchen).

Bourdain doesn't seem to pull any punches or sugar-coat anything along the way; he has a very what-you-see-is-what-you-get writing style, and the book reads as though he's sitting across from you, telling his tales over a cold one, or several.  He drops some helpful hints for the would-be chefs also: why you shouldn't quit your day job and go to culinary school, how to make your own dishes look as beautiful as some of the food you see in high-end restaurants (hint: small metal rings), and what tools are essential for your home kitchen (it's fewer than you might think). 

If you have strong objections to tales of sex in the storage closet or gratuitous heroin/cocaine use and the selling of your LPs on the streets of NYC to fund your next score, or if you don't want to hear that the bread on your table might have been on another table previously, this might not be the book for you. But I chuckled lots throughout, and I truly enjoyed this peek -- through Bourdain's eyes -- into the crazy world of the restaurant workers.

My List

In the comments of my last post, Jason asked which books were on my list for the new year. I have quite a number on my shelves at home and several others that have not yet been acquired. But I hadn't sat down to compile a list until just now, really, preferring to just take it a book at a time. So here's my list, rev 1.0. I'm certain that I won't read all of these and that I will read several not on this list. Some notes:
(1) the Grisham and Demille books are my guilty pleasure reading. I have not read a novel by either of these authors in quite some time, and I'd like to catch up with some of their more recent works. I've read some of the non-traditional Grisham in the past, and I think I'll stick to his legal novels.
(2) I've already read some of the "great" novels, notably the Hemingways. However, it's been probably 10-12 years since I've read them, and I forget much of the storyline. So they'll get a reread, which is an incredibly high accolade from me; I rarely reread anything that's not a textbook. The vast majority of the books on this (great books) list I've (embarrassingly) managed to avoid reading, required reading in college and high school notwithstanding.
(3) I love games (notably bridge and poker), and they play a nontrivial role in my life. I work in finance (at a small hedge fund), and I love to read about investing -- even when "investing" might be interchanged with "gambling". This should explain the vast majority of the rest of my books.

Incidentally, in typical Wyman fashion, I'm already behind on my reading. However, I've finished Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, his expose on cooking and life in the kitchen, and I am roughly halfway through A Canticle for Leibowitz, a post-apocolyptic novel describing the rebuilding of society after a nuclear war. I'll be finishing that this week and hoping to polish off something a little lighter before the end of the month, and I'll get some comments/notes about these up soon. Most importantly, I'm now in the habit of setting aside some time for reading, and I'm fairly happy that I'm doing so.

Without further ado, rev 1.0 of the reading list:

Great Novels:
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The Quiet American
Heart of Darkness
1984
Animal Farm
Ulysses
Lolita
The Sound and the Fury
Catch-22
The Invisible Man
Fahrenheit 451
On the Road
Atlas Shrugged
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Ender's Game
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Stranger in a Strange Land
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Old Man and the Sea
The Sun Also Rises


John Grisham Novels:
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The Broker
The Innocent Man
The Appeal
The Associate
The Confession

Nelson Demille Novels:
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The Talbot Odyssey
The Charm School
Wild Fire
The Gate House
The Lion

Business/Finance/Sociology:
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How to Win Friends and Influence People
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
How to Castrate a Bull: Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business
House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street
Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street

Bridge Books:
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The Play of the Hand at Contract Bridge
Take All Your Chances at Bridge
Bridge Squeezes Complete
Cardplay Technique: or the Art of Being Lucky
Bridge Squeezes for Everyone: Yes, even You!
Bridge Endplays for Everyone: Yes, even You!
Bridge in the Menagerie
Bridge in the Fourth Dimension
Adventures in Card Play

Poker Books:
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Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker
Ace on the River
The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time
Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheaters, and Binion's World Series of Poker
The Biggest Game in Town
Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player


Other:
-----------
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
Decision Points
Godel, Escher, Bach

The Journey Begins

I haven't read a heck of a lot since I was a child. Sure, I've read the occasional John Grisham book, and I've read plenty of math texts. But as a child I read tons and tons of books -- mostly classics. So one of my two resolutions for 2011 is to read 50 books (book-a-week, but even the most voracious of readers deserve some time off). Some of these are books I've already started. Some are books I've already read (but only if it's been a long time since I've read it and if I remember very little of the storyline). Some will be bridge books, but those are like work, and I want to get back to reading for fun (fiction, classics, etc.). Some will be about poker, finance, cooking, television, and other hobbies of mine.

So this is my accountability blog. Following in the footsteps of my good friend Mark (http://aproposofmark.com), I'll post some book reviews as I polish them off.

Welcome to the blog. I hope you enjoy it. Happy reading!