| 1. Animal
Farm - George Orwell - I think I read this book in
high school so I thought it was time to read it again.
It is a story of a farm where the animals took control
of from the humans and made it their purpose to rid the
world of their suppressors and show the world they were
capable. They developed a set of commandments that all
four legged creatures (and birds) should live by. Over
time the pigs, with there superior intelligence, became
the leaders of the animals but slowly the pigs became
more and more reclusive and took on the characteristic
of the humans the animal wanted to replace. In the end
the pigs started to walk upright on two legs, ware human
clothing, drink human alcohol and smoke human
cigarettes. Over time the commandments were carefully
rewritten to supports the pigs in their quest for
control. In the end the animals were starved and
oppressed just as they were under human control, so
nothing had really changed. I guess the moral of this
story is where ever a group of animals (humans included)
gather there will always be ones that rise to the top
for control over all of the rest as history has proven
over and over. |
| 2. 1984 -
George Orwell - I thought I should reread
this novel as well as it has direct correlation to
today's politics. Big Brother altering history to remove
any previous data so that people wouldn't have any way
to compare their quality of life to previous times so
they couldn't know they were being oppressed and their
quality of life was diminishing. This is somewhat
analogous to the Republicans banning books and trying to
remove teaching of slavery so children would never know
our real history and how bad slaves were treated.
Winston's (the main character in the story) re-education
is really eye opening. How the state can make
you believe anything it wants you to believe and if you
cannot be re-educated your fate was sealed. It was
sometimes chilling to read this novel in the context of
today's politics and world order. This is a cautionary
story at best but hopefully not our actual future. |
| 3. The Omega
Factor - Steve Berry - I haven't read a Steve
Berry novel in a long time so I got this one from the
library. It is another story with deeply religious
implications of what happened to Mary, the mother of
Jesus. According to the gospel, Mary effectively
disappeared from history after Jesus died and stories
about what happened to her afterwards are many. Berry
has really dug into religious history and hearsay in
presenting this story. The debate about Mary was not
only where she lived out her life, but what happened
when she died. Was she human and was buried somewhere on
Earth as a normal human or did she ascend into heaven to
join her son. If she went to heaven did just her soul go
or did her whole body? Big questions that the actual
Pope in 1997 answered with a dictate that her soul and
body ascended to heaven and since he was the Pope and
Pope's don't make errors that was the end of the debate
that had lasted for thousands of years. Berry talks
about how Mary was elevated from a mere human woman to a
saint by religious dictates that slowly over the years
changed her story. He says the Roman Catholic church did
this to temper the male only aspects of their teachings. In this story there is a order of nuns who have protected her grave site for 2000 years and have eluded the Vatican's efforts to destroy them. After outsiders get involved, the nuns order is reveled to the Vatican and the Vatican sends in the Dominicans to destroy them and squash the narrative that Mary was buried as a human because it didn't jive with their official story which would make the Pope wrong. In the end the nuns outsmart the Vatican thugs into thinking they had destroyed the tomb and the bones of Mary and in doing so got the Vatican off of their backs. The real tomb and bones of Mary and the ashes of Joan of Arc were still in tact and the nuns order could continue guarding them without the Vatican knowing. This was a good story as to be expected from Steve Berry so I may grab another of his books to read. |
| 4. Ancient
Denvers - Kirk Johnson and Robert G. Raynolds - An
interesting read about the geologic evolution of the
Denver area, including Colorado Springs. The
authors present what the area looked like during
various epochs of time, from 300 million years ago to
the present. They discuss the two versions of the Rocky
Mountains that formed and how these time periods were
interwoven with absolutely flat inland seas. For each
time period the flora and fauna were described. There
are many fossils of plants that do not exist today and
many of those can be found around Castle Rock. Of course
many of the animals that existed in antiquity like
dinosaurs don't exist today either. An interesting fact
about Castle Rock is that its cap was formed at the very
bottom of the inland sea and it is now the highest point
as the earth around it has been eroded away. Many of the
points of geologic interest described in the book can be
seen around Morrison and not surprisingly at the Garden
of the Gods. This is a very short book so it was a very fast read but I think the authors did a good job of explaining the history of the area for the lay person. |