East of Eden

By John Steinbeck

Looking over my library history, I see that I’ve been picking at East of Eden for two and half years.  While I have a desire to read great literature, I can loose focus when the book is finally on my e-reader.

Having said that, East of Eden is a wonderfully written, multi-generation epic. It explores the idea of good, evil and choice. You must vs you may. 

AI says…

Major Themes

• Good Versus Evil: The novel questions whether human behavior is fated or chosen.
• Timshel: A central Hebrew word explored in the book meaning "thou mayest"—signifying that humans have the free will to choose goodness over evil.
• The Weight of Acceptance: The struggle of children trying to earn a parent's love and the destructive power when that love is missing.

The Hare with the Amber Eyes

By Edmund De Waal

I’m on a quest to understand the roots of antisemitism. Reading The Hare with Amber Eyes, the history of a family of secular Jewish bankers in Vienna. It showed me how integrated, needed, and influential a Jewish family could be, yet how they were always kept a little separated because of their background. 

The rise of the Nazi party decimated the family. A few escaped. Others died by genocide, malnutrition, or suicide. It was difficult to prepare for. Antisemitism had existed for centuries. The family always dealt with it. But the Nazis were different. They arrived by surprise, like a tsunami.

A few main takeaways I want to remember:

The family members who survived were the ones who left Vienna before the war started. Some destructive forces can’t be stopped from the inside. Sometimes the lesson is to get out of the way.

The Nazi state weaponized its civil service to systematically isolate and target people, even amid internal administrative chaos. Modern politics feels chaotic, but there is some comfort that today’s power structures lack that unified, weaponized momentum.

 

The Life of Pi

The movie trailer deceived me. The image of a boy and a tiger on a boat evoked Calvin and Hobbes. The book is most certainly not that. A ship transporting a zoo sinks in the Pacific. Amongst the survivors are the boy and the tiger. Their time together is horrifying tale of survival.

Or is it? The book is known for its philosophy. Which, I think, is loosely that if two different stories fit the facts, then choose the story that inspires you the most.

I disagree with that philosophy. Of course I am a pragmatic realist. This does not diminish the book. It’s wonderful writing. It’s a testament to the author that one can disagree with the book, without rejecting it. 

There is another way to interpret the book. That the boy was trapped on a life boat with a cannibal. After being rescued, rather than face those horrors, he tells a story of being trapped on the boat with a tiger.