The Prince

by Niccolo Machiavelli

Not a lot to say about this book. I read it for a few reasons: 1) A college professor told me every college student should read it before graduating. Well, I didn't make that goal, but I figured better late than never. 2) It gets referenced a lot and I wanted to have a better understanding of what everyone is referring to. 3) I found it on sale at Barnes & Noble + I had a gift card to Barnes & Noble = impulse purchase.

Overall I found it fascinating. If Machiavelli wasn't right in everything he said, he certainly made a good case for it. Admittedly he backed up his statements with examples from history that I was not familiar with so I find it hard to argue with him. The one thing I will argue with him on is his statement that a prince should study war above all things (by prince he means sovereign. He uses the word the way I would use "king"). While I recognize that this must have been very important for a prince at that time (not so much now), I highly doubt it was the only thing a prince should study. Machiavelli himself listed a plethora of examples of a prince needing to understand people, both the specific people around him, as well as how people operate in groups.

I will even agree with Machiavelli's most infamous statement that it is better for a prince to be feared than loved. His reasoning for this is basically that goodwill in and of itself is not enough to keep men from rising up against you and he's right. Men, in general, are selfish and short-sighted and whatever love they bear for their prince is unlikely to be enough to prevent them from rising against him when times get tough. Machiavelli does not say that it is not good for a prince to be loved and I'm afraid that's how this statement is often interpreted. What he actually says is that, if it were possible to be both feared and loved, that would be ideal but, seeing as how that is rarely, if ever, possible, one must choose and the best choice of the two is to be feared.

According to the notes in my translation, the section of this piece that caused the most offense was the one preceding his famous line about fear vs. love. In said section, Machiavelli discusses the various traits a prince should have. I'm not going to list them all but he basically says that, while it sounds like a good idea thing to possess all those traits men think of as virtuous and to abstain from all traits viewed as undesirable, it's just not possible. Machiavelli goes on to list virtuous princes who were overthrown and princes with less than favorable reputations who maintained solid kingdoms throughout their lives. The fact of the matter is that, while one might wish to be thought of as honest and virtuous, possessing those qualities, particularly in the extreme, can lead a monarch to serious problems. Anyone who has seen the first season of Game of Thrones knows that.

My guess would be that where Machiavelli really upset people was when he said it didn't matter whether a prince was religious or not, although it was usually a good idea to appear religious.

DISCLAIMER: I used the term "men" to mean mankind in general because I didn't feel like writing "men and women" every time. So don't take it personally, guys.

Jazz

by Toni Morrison

I loved this book. I had been reading a lot of light fluffy stuff and was ready for something a little more dense. Even though this only took me a week to get through, it's not a very long book and was much more thought-provoking than anything else I've read lately. This is the kind of book you don't zip through. You have to sip it slowly and really savor it. I will probably need to read it at least once more in order to fully appreciate it.

I adore Toni Morrison's writing. I admire her ability to just ignore the standard laws of writing. For example, while most of us feel obligated to put commas after each item in a list, she feels no such compulsion. Yet it works phenomenally well because commas create pauses in our prose and Morrison doesn't want those pauses. It gives her writing a sense of flow, but it doesn't get out of control. I read once that she tries to make her writing sound like jazz and I think she has mastered that art. Her creative use of grammar gives her writing a musical quality. It seems to carry you along with it as she tells you her story. I found myself completely absorbed by it and angry at the phone for ringing when I was clearly trying to read this book! Rude!

Morrison also feels no need to tell her story in a chronological manner and I'm also totally okay with that. The only problem was I did have trouble in some parts trying to figure out what happened when and how it related to other events in the story. Hence my need to re-read this book. Maybe not right away, but someday. I promise you though, all the events and characters are related to each other, some of them in surprising ways.

I'm also in awe of Morrison's choice of narrator in that she was not omniscient. She would write a chapter where a character explained their thoughts and actions and then the narrator would step back and speculate as to why that character did such-and-such or what they thought about a certain event. And she wouldn't even reach a conclusion. She would merely state that she wondered about it, maybe put forth a few theories, and then move on. I loved that because it made it feel like I was reading this story with the narrator, rather than having the narrator tell me the story. It was as if we were discovering these people and events together.

Divergent

by Veronica Roth

So I read about two chapters of this book and went, "I am so over this whole dystopia thing. So, why am I even reading this?" Well, the answer is threefold. 1) Because everyone else and their mother has started reading it and I want to be part of the in-crowd (PLEASE don't exclude me! I'll read anything! Yeah, sometimes I'm still that shy, nervous little 14-year-old and for that I apologize). 2) A friend of mine whose opinion I respect read it and loved it. Sorry, but on this one we have to disagree. 3) The book was a super quick read and I knew it would only take a few hours of my life to get through.

That being said, I think there are a lot of similarities to the Hunger Games here, both good and bad. First off, we have another 16-year-old kick-ass girl as our heroine. Don't get me wrong, I love a good old-fashioned kick-ass heroine (Buffy is only my favorite show ever). My problem is with the author sticking me inside her head and not letting me out. I'm sorry, I already spent my time as a neurotic teenager, I really don't want to spend any more time in that hell.

Much like Katniss, our heroine, Tris, is pretty good at survival stuff, underestimates herself (actually, in this case, I'm okay with that, with Katniss, it got kind of obnoxious), and is clueless when it comes to boys. Sometimes she's clueless with people in general and that, too, is all normal teenage girl stuff. I just don't want to be stuck in her head for all of it.

My other problem was entering this story knowing that it involved civil war. So I spent 3/4 of the book going "where's the war?" Once the war started, it was awesome. The action scenes were intense and suspenseful and kept me reading. But, again, I have to quibble about being stuck inside the main character's head because, if I hadn't been, it would have increased my suspense. As it was, I knew the narrator needed to stick around and was therefore safe.

So, right now I'm debating whether or not I want to continue reading this series. Now that the war is in full swing, I might ...

Vanity Fair

by William Makepeace Thackeray

I loved this book! I wasn't expecting to. Honestly, I'm not sure what I was expecting. I had seen the movie with Reese Witherspoon and I had heard that she made Rebecca much too sympathetic (which she did) but I wasn't expecting something so satirical. Thackeray makes fun of each and every one of his characters mercilessly and it's great fun! All of his characters are caricatures so don't expect them to be full-fleshed people. They are paper puppets who exist purely for Thackeray to mock and ridicule and watching him do so is immensely enjoyable.

I think this is his version of Trollope's "The Way We Live Now". He's making fun of, not only his characters, but of society and the way it operated in his day. He relentlessly points out and makes fun of all of society's little idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Despite it's size (a mere 800 pages) it's not nearly as formidable as it looks. Thackeray's writing style is very conversational and, therefore, very light and fluffy and easy to breeze through. Before I knew it I was half-way through!

Another thing I hadn't realized before reading this book was that Rebecca is merely one of two main characters. Her friend, Amelia, is the true heroine of the book but I don't think she even appeared in the movie. I can understand why. She's boring. The only reason I kept reading about her was because I loved watching Thackeray make fun of her and the people around her. Without that there is absolutely nothing engaging about her so leaving her out of the movie was an excellent choice. Not to mention there's quite enough material to cover with just Rebecca's adventures (like I said, the book is 800 pages long! It covers a lot of ground!)