Standing for Something by Gordon B. Hinckley

8/10

This is a good book with lots of practical advice, which is to be expected. It talks about 10 neglected virtues that, if applied, will change our lives for the better. I won't talk too much about the book but just mention this: President Hinckley has the unique ability to inspire, motivate, and instruct in a manner that doesn't come off as preachy. That is actually a pretty impressive skill.

To the quotes!:

"In our day, those found in dishonesty aren't put to death, but something within them dies. Conscience chokes, character withers, self-respect vanishes, integrity dies. How cheaply some men and women sell their good names!"

"It is surely neither coincidence nor happenstance that five of the Ten Commandments deal essentially with honesty in its broadest sense."

"Selfishness is the cause of most of our misery."

"Theology may be argued over, but personal testimony coupled with performance cannot be refuted."

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

4/10

I just finished reading this book today. What a doosy. It was long. And not my favorite. I didn't hate it, just didn't enjoy it all that much.

It is about fancy pants Russian upper-class society and all of their goings on. Most of the characters (and by 'most' I mean all but maybe one or two) are very dislikable. First of all, Anna sucks. Usually you're supposed to like the character that the book is named after, but I thought she was the most annoying person ever. She has an affair and leaves her husband (who is a nice guy by the way albeit a bit of a weirdy), abandons her son who she supposedly loves, and runs off with this dude, Vronsky. Then she gets way depressed because she is now an outcast in society due to her scandalous affair and whines and whines about it. Pity party U.S.A. Or U.S.S.R. as it were. Then she just starts to peck and peck away at Vronsky about every tiny thing and drives them both insane. Oh boy, get a grip lady. I did like, however, the situation she gets herself in at the end. Oh yeah, I won't give it away, but she gets what's coming.

Plus, this book shouldn't even be called 'Anna Karenina', but rather 'Constantine Levin'. That's what I say. He was the main character. He was the Tolstoy mouthpiece and the guy who was actually likable in this whole book. I related to this Levin fellow quite nicely. He was a breath of fresh air. He was a good dude and cared about other people. All the other characters were so selfish that it was quite maddening. I will give Tolstoy this, he does know how to write. He could describe the minutest event with perfect clarity. His descriptions of all the many different characters and their personalities was certainly something remarkable. Seriously, there were so many characters and they each had such different and unique personalities that you felt as though you knew them yourself for a long while.

Well, looks like I've gone on long enough. Well-written book, but just hard to ultimately enjoy due to the largely annoying actions and personalities of most of the characters. I probably missed out on a lot of the deeper meanings of the book I'm sure. So lets just put that out there.

Two quotes:

"Consolation in all human sorrows could be given only by love and faith...there are no sorrows too trivial for Christ's compassion."

"Hypocrisy in anything at all may deceive the most intelligent, shrewdest man, but the dullest child recognizes it no matter how skillfully it is concealed and is repelled by it."

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

6/10

This is an interesting bit of work from Shakespeare and quite unlike most of his other stories. It practically is in a genre of its own. It certainly isn't my favorite Shakespeare. In fact, it might be my least favorite that I've read. But I haven't read a ton, so take note of that. It's still worthwhile to read because Shakespeare is just cool and fun to read regardless.

Basically, a magician-esque type of dude was banished to a random, empty island. He was sent there along with his daughter by his brother. Now I don't remember perfectly all the details but it seemed to have something to do with inheriting the kingdom or something? And his brother became king by forcing his brother to some remote island? If that's not quite right, I do remember that his brother sent him to an island unjustly. So lets get that square.

Fast forward to 12 years later. His brother and entourage are traveling by ship coming back from a wedding. Well, this dude is a magician and he wrecks the ship and it crashes up on the island. Then the rest of the story is pretty much this guy doing all sorts of mischief to his brother and the gang. Nothing nasty, mostly messing around with them. It's silly, silly stuff.

2 quotes:

"Look thou be true; do not give dalliance Too much the reign; the strongest oaths are straw To the fire i' the blood."

"Let us not burden our remembrances With a heaviness that's gone."

Behind a Mask by Louisa May Alcott

6/10

Hello, I'm ba-ack. So we are going to be moving in with my Dad at the end of the month and have slowly began moving some of our stuff there. I packed up all my books and they are sitting in Father's garage. So I have not had access to any books. So my posts upcoming will likely have to be books that I finish up and not ones I have read from the past due to their current locale. But I guess once I move in with The Pops then I can scrounge around and pull a book out at random and report my findings. However, back to the present, I found a printout version of this Alcott story in my old school backpack as we were going through stuff in preparation for our move. So here we are: just chillin' watching the Masters and another book I've read ready to be notched in the annals.

This is quite a short book, hence the printout version I have. It is entertaining enough, but not my particular cup o' tea. It's all about this young governess who comes to live at this estate where all the men around end up falling in love with her. We learn, not at the start but eventually, that she is pulling all the strings and stringing them all along in ways that suit her own purposes. She is behind a mask as it were. Innocent and sweet on the outside, poison on the inside. She ends up humiliating a fair number of dudes when all is said and done. It's worth a looky-look, I say I say.

A solo quote:

"Traitors are always betrayed in the end."

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

7/10

This book was a'ight. It is one of the most influential books of all time and helped pave the way toward the end of slavery. Old honest Abe has been quoted to say something along the lines of, "So you're the little lady who started this great war" upon meeting Stowe. That was probably a huge paraphrase of the actual quote.

If I would have read this book back when it first came out I would have probably worshiped it tons more. That is unless I was a slaveholder myself and ruled with an iron fist. And whip. But reading it now was more of a, how you say, historical look back on an influential book of a day gone by. I think it held more weight then than now. Although there still are plenty of lessons to be learned for us in the here and now. It certainly isn't bad, it's good. I'm glad it was written and all. I think the main gripe I have is that it was pretty hardcore overly melodramatic at times. Kinda like overacting, or watching a soap opera, or one of those movies that just works and works and works at becoming a tearjerker. So much so that it ceases to be one and just becomes played out. But the book isn't that bad, but in parts it can feel like that. But I can't blame the Stowe-anator. She did what she had to do and obviously it worked. So bravo. It's worthwhile to read and can be pretty tender at parts when it's not too overdone. Like I said, it was a'ight, I definitely liked it more than I disliked it.

What I did like was that the book wasn't exactly what I expected. I thought it would be an obvious, outright display of terrible slaveholders and their terrible deeds. But instead, the first two slaveholders we meet, we actually like because they were good people. A lot of the book was a condemnation toward the people in the north for not doing anything about it when they were the ones who should know better. She did that part of the book in pretty cool and clever ways.

Also, maybe I didn't love it as much as I could have because the copy of my book was all falling apart. I was like, "C'mon!" Seriously poor binding job Harper Classics. Pages left and right were just coming right out. It was quite the dramatic effort on my part to go about reading this. It was indeed a parallel to the story inside in terms of the drama. Just picture it: bursts of frustration, pulling of hair also in frustration, tears, and perfectly innocent and lovable people dying around me. Quite the scene. But seriously, my book is thrashed and I am very displeased over the whole affair.

Quotey McQuoterson's:

"Nobody knows how much the Lord can help 'em, till they try."

"Unconscious acts of love and good will, which, like the cup of cold water given in the name of the disciple, shall never lose their reward."

"Laziness...ruins more souls than you can shake a stick at."

"O, with what freshness, what solemnity and beauty, is each new day born; as if to say to insensate man, 'Behold! thou hast one more chance! Strive for immortal glory!'"