Out of the Best Books by S. Michael Wilcox

 

10/10

I read this one a little over 4 months ago. This is my kind of book. A book that talks about classic literature and applies gospel principals. Almost impossible for me to not give a book like this a perfect rating. And Wilcox is the perfect guy to deliver. The book covers Anne of Green Gables (haven't read it), Les Miserables (read it), To Kill a Mockingbird (read it), Sense and Sensibility (haven't read it), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (read it), Little Women (haven't read it), a poem called "Renascence" (haven't read it; except I think he quoted the whole poem in the book, so now I have read it?), The Brothers Karamazov (read it), A Christmas Carol (read it), Much Ado About Nothing & As You Like It (read both), bits from various children's stories, parables from Jesus, and a speech from Emerson. It was super enjoyable from start to finish, even for the ones that I hadn't read. I think my favorite was him talking about The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, one of my all-time favorite books. Wilcox is so good. Below are some of my favorite quotes from Wilcox:

"A consistent message from Jesus throughout the New Testament was one of tension-and-guilt-releasing happiness."

"The candlesticks first house the soul of Jean Valjean, and one beautiful act of compassion by Bishop Myriel overturns the nineteen years of misery, injustice, and hate that had filled his life. This is a truth we must believe in! Goodness and benevolence, even in their simplest manifestations, are not just more powerful than evil, cruelty, and hatred, but are infinitely more powerful."

"We come to 'know' Him not in the reception of His many gifts to us, not in doctrinal explanations, not even in scriptural perusals, not even in prayer really, but in active loving - in the giving of the heart selflessly."

"But if we think of the nature of mockingbirds is to imitate the songs they hear around them, then Scout is the main mockingbird.... The great theme of the novel, as represented by Atticus Finch, could be stated thus: 'Make sure as parents, as a society, that the songs you sing are clear and filled with goodness, because there are little ones around who will mimic you.'"

"I fear that what I sometimes call the 'burden of perfectionism' is made much heavier than it need be, and we stumble under an unnecessary load, carrying guilt that is self-generated and does not come from the Spirit. How many useless stones have been cast at ourselves by ourselves? How many cast at others by well-meaning people supported by what they believe to be God's will or doctrines against things that common sense would say is not sin and not displeasing to Deity?"

"Even when we have done wrong, God simply wants us to recognize it and change. He has no interest in perpetuating sorrow."

"[T]he real you and me are what we are at our best, not our worst."

"The story is told to answer two questions - 'What shall I do to inherit eternal life?' And, 'Who is my neighbour?' (Luke 10:25, 29). That is the context. How many of us would be tempted to engage in more complex answers to these questions, involving proper ordinances, authority, the right beliefs, the appropriate combination of righteous deeds, prayer, scriptures, or worship? But Jesus simply answered with a story about 'a certain Samaritan' who had 'compassion" (Luke 10:33)."

"In Christianity, far too often it has been more important to be right than to be good."

The Natural by Bernard Malamud

 

6/10

I read this a little less than 5 months ago. It was a big letdown. This is a movie I've loved my whole life and the book does this incredible thing where it makes Roy Hobbs super unlikeable. He's sex-obsessed and treats everyone, especially women, very poorly. I prefer the majestic, almost fable-like Roy Hobbs from the movie. I guess there will be some spoilers, just in case anyone randomly reading this post would randomly want to read this book. In the book, the reason he can't play toward the end was not the bullet wound injury resurfacing, but rather, he overate. He was just pigging out in super unrealistic fashion. I looked it up just now. He eats a plate full of food. Then another plate full of corned beef, pastrami, turkey, potato salad, cheese, and pickles and finishes off this second plate with a crust of bread. Another plate of food. A sandwich. Three bottles of lemon pop. Three bottles of lime pop. Six hamburgers. Two tall glasses of milk. This puts him in the hospital and he misses the end of the season. So I guess his eating prowess is fable-like at least. He comes back for the final game that the Knights need to win but he takes a bribe and gets out on purpose every time. For his final at bat, he decides that he's going to try but ends up striking out to lose the game and end the season. The book ends with him walking on the street and picking up a newspaper about him taking a bribe and the commissioner saying if it's true that he'll be banned from baseball. A boy asks him if it's true and he can't deny it and the closing line is about him putting his hands to his face and weeping many bitter tears. Now I'm not opposed to a dark story. But I guess the movie just ruined that as a possibility for me. I hate to admit that the movie has an impact on my enjoyment of a book, but it just does. The book was otherwise enjoyable in that it was a well-written baseball story. There was enough here to get me to like it ok even though I very much didn't like this version of Roy Hobbs or how he finished as a failure rather than a hero.

Raid of No Return by Nathan Hale

 

8/10

I read this one a little less than five months ago. My now ten-year-old has read a few of these and asked me if I could read this one to him. We enjoyed it together. It's very detailed and informative. I learned a lot about this little piece of history from WWII. The story was pretty complicated with lots of different characters but was presented in a very kid-friendly way that made it as easy as possible to understand. With so many characters, it was hard to get attached to any of them. But that's a fault of the broad subject material more than anything else. I would happily read another one of these with my history loving boy.

The Kill Order by James Dashner

 

3/10

I read this one a little over 5 months ago. Not a good book. I enjoyed the first book in this series even though the writing was unimpressive, but every book since has been embarrassing. I can't remember if this is the last book in the series for me to read, but I feel like I have one more of these on my bookshelf. I'm not going to look because then I will be pulled into reading one more from this book series that I do not enjoy. I sure do wish I didn't feel like I had to finish every series I read, especially when there are surely way better books on my bookshelf. I can't explain why I'm like this. I need some robber in a ski mask to sneak into my house and grab the last book and run off into the night. It will be much easier for me to not finish the series if the book isn't in my house. As for this book, it was more of the same nonsense with the most detailed wrestling/fighting encounters that are just torture to read where every single movement in the fight is written out. I don't need a thousand different detailed fight descriptions. This book is lucky that I actually do try to like everything I read which makes it very rare for me to go as low as a 2 or 1 out of 10. Honestly not sure how anyone could ever enjoy this book.

The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

8/10

I read this one about 5 or 6 months ago. It was great. I just really love Thomas Hardy. He can write write. The story was masterfully set up and the whole second half of the book was just so good. The setting of the book, Egdon Heath, was so well described that it almost felt like a character of the book itself with its rolling hills and marshes, etc. And it really was as it factors in with so much that happens throughout the book including at the end. Great characters. Great interactions and relationships. Don't have much bad to say about it at all. I was really close to giving it a 9/10 but didn't for some reason. Just lacked 1 or 2 real memorable payoffs I guess. All I know is I can't wait to get to my next Thomas Hardy book because he has not disappointed me yet.

Thomas Hardy books I've read, ranked:

1. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
2. The Return of the Native
3. The Woodlanders

The Myth Makers by Hugh Nibley

 

6/10

I read this about 6 months ago. I'd been wanting to read this one for years and finally got around to it and was pretty disappointed. I didn't enjoy the format of the book at all. It's this weird conversation format. In the first portion of the book, he is a Chairman who is interviewing anti-Mormon authors where they quote anti statements about Joseph Smith's character. The second portion is the same but focuses on Joseph's money digging and picks out all the contradictions. The third and final part is a group of reporters interviewing an anti author who claimed Joseph got duped by a fake document and again points out all the ridiculous things with that claim. The fake conversational format got old for me pretty quick and distracted a lot from the topics being discussed. I would have enjoyed it a lot more if everything was presented in Nibley's usual scholarly format. Also, most of the money-digging portion and stuff about the seer stone felt very outdated. Nibley, of course, was working with information available at the time. This just isn't really a book that has much staying power.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

 

8/10

I read this book about 8 or 9 months ago. Although I have had some slight brushes with Gladwell in the past, this was my first deep dive with reading a full-length book of his. I feel like, while I did enjoy this book overall, I prefer the former slight brushes to the deep dive. My slight brushes were always interesting whereas the deep dive was interesting but got a bit tiresome after a while. The book seemed much longer than it needed to be. I did enjoy getting different stories and examples, but maybe in smaller, less repetitive doses. I know he was making slightly different points with each of his examples, but they were similar enough that it felt a tad bit repetitive. But I still did enjoy the book (hence the 8/10 rating) even though I've spent the entire time talking about things I didn't like. Some very fun stories and extremely insightful commentary overall.