A simple children’s fairy tale reaches this cynic during Christmas season.

My brother and I are reading some short Christmas stories as part of the holiday season. I’m through with a few of them, and a couple didn’t really do much for me, but yesterday I read Hans Christian Andersen’s The Fir Tree. You could read it free at that link, I’m guessing it took me 30 minutes or so to finish and is a really easy read; I definitely found it to be a touching and important fairy tale that I hadn’t run across before.

The cliff notes, if you don’t care to read it, are as follows…

Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground…a work of genius.

I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.

With these words, the rantings from a (fictional) embittered member of society begin. A deeply unhappy retired civil servant waxes existentialist more profoundly than I’ve otherwise seen it done.

After greatly enjoying Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, I wanted to read more of his work, but didn’t yet want to plunge into another difficult and lengthy undertaking like The Brothers Karamazov (his other apparent masterpiece, according to reputation) quite yet. So, I randomly selected the short, 160 page Notes from the Underground, expecting a decent read but nothing more. I wasn’t fully prepared to run into such a great work.

A favorite snippet from The Art of War.

I recently read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. It’s a bit of a difficult read, not one that I would deem “enjoyable,” but there’s a good bit of wisdom in it, wisdom that can be applied not only to battlefields 1500 years later, but wisdom that can be applied to other aspects of life (competition in business, for instance…heck, I saw some applicability in it for me as a poker player) as well. While I won’t rave about it like I have about some other recent reads, it’s a good book with unquestionable value.

I enjoyed this excerpt from chapter 7, “Maneuvering,” quite a bit.

Book Review: Crime and Punishment

I had heard the name Crime and Punishment for years, but didn’t know what it was about, who wrote it, anything. After having now read it, I can easily name it as one of my favorite books. It’s my first experience with the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, and certainly won’t be the last.

It’s a lot more difficult to immediately relate to 19th century Russia than it is to stories set in America or Britain, but Dostoevsky paints a vivid picture of a downtrodden area in St. Petersburg, a setting I really liked by the end of the book. The writing style was unique and took a bit of getting used to, particularly with characters being referred to by different names at different times, and with no real explanation given as to who the heck he’s talking about. However, once I got past these slowdowns, the book flowed more and more freely for me.

**minor spoilers within…really, they’re just spoilers if you don’t know what the book is about**

Books I’ve read lately.

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, I magically became a reader overnight. That wasn’t just a brief phase (or if it was, it’s a brief phase that hasn’t come close to ending yet). I’m enjoying reading quite a bit more than I ever have before, and am reading a good mix of different stuff to keep me entertained/interested…

Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe): Man gets shipwrecked on an island by himself and has to find a way to survive. It’s a fine novel for being one of the first ones (early 18th century), obviously it was groundbreaking in its own right, but it could really use an editor.

Great quote.

I long have considered it a personal flaw that I’ve got very little knowledge of classic literature, a flaw I’m finally coming around to fixing lately. So, I recently read Jane Austen’s Emma. I enjoyed it, it’s a good book, but I was flogged heavily for reading such a feminine book.

So, I decided to restore my masculinity a bit by shifting next to Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe’s classic novel about a man shipwrecked alone on a deserted island (See? No real possibility for romance. Now leave me alone). So far, I don’t think it’s amazing or anything, I’ve been bored at times and have had a bit of difficulty sticking with it…but it’s got just enough high points to keep me from putting it down completely. I’m a little less than halfway through it.

This quote jumped off the page to me as the best of the book so far:

And I add this part here, to hint to whoever shall read it, that whenever they come to a true sense of things, they will find deliverance from sin a much greater blessing than deliverance from affliction.

Words of wisdom, I would say. Deliverance from sin, being less tangible than deliverance from affliction, is a lot easier to take for granted…for me at least. Now it’s just a matter of coming to a true sense of things, as Defoe puts it; easier said than done, I’m sure.

I love running across quotes like this.