My Book Reviews

Myth and Meaning (2009, originally published 1978)   by Claude Lévi-Strauss, London & New York: Routledge - A Review. I have been interested in mythology since my school days.  This classic, which runs to a total of 48 pages only, is the transcript of the 1977 MASSEY LECTURES. Entitled as above, these talks were broadcast on the CBC Radio series, IDEAS, in December 1977.   They were assembled from a series of lengthy conversations between Professor Lévi-Strauss  and Carole R. Jerome , producer in the Paris bureau of the CBC.   The lectures were expanded for publication. Claude Lévi-Strauss  (1908 – 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist (ethnology is that branch of anthropology which studies peoples and tribes), and has been called, along with James George Frazer , the "father of modern anthropology". He argued that the "savage" mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind and that human characteristics are the sam...

Review:   The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Penguin Books, 2007 I bought this book in Dublin Airport some days back as a light read, and that it is, too.   An average reader would read this novella in two to three hours.   The cover proclaims this book to be “an international bestseller,” and no doubt it is.    It was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007.   However, I’d give it 6 out of 10 for entertainment value and the same points for its depiction of the contrast between the world of American high finance and that of the simpler Eastern Islamic nations.   To give my evaluation some context, I’d give The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini 9, even 10, out of 10.   For me, that book was pure magic and as near to perfection as any novel I have ever read could possibly reach. Be that as it may, this is a good entertaining read. Our author, Hamid grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, where this novella is set.   As a gifted...

Review of the book Reality: A Very Short Introduction by Jan Westerhoff , O.U.P., 2011. I remember an old colleague once remarking that the Christian Brothers, who ran the schools we taught in, did not live in the real world.  That comment got me thinking.  Even 30 years ago I was interested in philosophy and questioned this very biased remark in my own mind. Everyone's life is equally real whether they are married, single, young, old or whatever.  It simply is not good enough - it's sheer bad logic for a start - to say X's life is more real than Y's.  Then when you come to think of it, what is reality anyway?  This is a big philosophical question, and indeed one worth asking and exploring.  This is a central question in that branch of philosophy called metaphysics. The author Jan Christoph Westerhoff is erudite, to say the least, and can boast of two Ph.D.s.  His home page is here and he teaches at the University of Durham. ...

A picture of my own copy of this book I have just finished reading the collected prose writings of William Styron , or in full  William Clark Styron, Jr. (1925 – 2006) who was a widely recognised American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.  He was best known for his novels, including: Lie Down in Darkness (1951), his acclaimed first novel, published at the young age of 26; The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), narrated by Nat Turner , the leader of an 1831 Virginia slave revolt  and the famous novel  Sophie's Choice  (1979), a story "told through the eyes of a young aspiring writer from the South, about a Polish Catholic survivor of Auschwitz and her brilliant but troubled Jewish lover in postwar Brooklyn"  and which became even more famous because the film that was made of this last work.  The novel The Confessions of Nat Turner  caused a furore when published, as many readers questioned how a Cauc...

The books reviewed hereunder on my kitchen table! 1. The God Delusion , Bantam Press, 2006 by Professor Richard Dawkins. 2. Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life , Blackwell Publishing, 2005, by Professor Alister McGrath. Both of these books are worth reading in tandem as essentially one is the rebuttal of the other.  McGrath's book is a rebuttal of the writings and teachings of  Richard Dawkins up until 2005, that is, all his books that appeared before The God Delusion , but nonetheless, they both can be profitably read as a commentary on one another.  This strategy is a good way of learning about the connotations, denotations, ramifications and implications of philosophical positions on any question.  Such a way of reading is decidedly philosophical and indeed Socratic in approach.  As our debate teacher, Mr Michael McLoughlin always reminded us young students at school: "Always bear in mind the arguments of the opposition." The G...

The books in question are on my bookshelves. This afternoon I spent a few hours attempting to sort out books in my library - always a dangerous thing to do as I end up reading, and indeed re-reading, rather than sorting, putting away or recycling.  Any book lover certainly knows this compulsion well.  Anyway, I chanced to spend more time perusing poetry books and anthologies, and now I will share with you a short review of five anthologies - with all of which Niall MacMonagle has had some connection.  MacMonagle is a teacher, broadcaster and critic here in Ireland.  Four of these anthologies form the series called Lifelines - Lifelines, I, II, III and Lifelines New and Collected - all published by Townhouse, Dublin,  1992, 1994, 1997 and 2004 respectively.  The fifth and final anthology is  Off The Wall , Marino, 2002. The word "anthology" has an unusual etymology, to say the least, viz., it derives from the Greek word ἀνθολογία ( ant...

Why is there Something rather than Nothing?: Questions from Great Philosophers , Penguin Books, 2008   Leszek Kołakowski (1927 – 2009) I recall reading one of Leslek Kolakowski's books in the early 1980s.   It was a book called simply Religion.   I remember its being a gripping read.   Leszek Kołakowski (1927 – 2009) was a Polish philosopher and, more correctly I believe, a historian of ideas on a par with another scholar, Isaiah Berlin. Kołakowski is best known for his critical analyses of Marxist thought, especially his three-volume history: Main Currents of Marxism. In 1986, Kołakowski was selected to give the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honour for achievement in the humanities.   Kołakowski's lecture, "The Idolatry of Politics", includes his much-quoted aphorism, "We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are." Why is there Something rather than Nothing?: Qu...