Reading Notebook

Chesapeake.  James A. Michener.  November 2003.

In the early 1990's, I burnt myself out on Michener.  For two years, he's all I read!  I started with Hawaii on our Honeymoon to that same state, then read Alaska, Centennial, Tales of the South Pacific, Space, and on and on.  I got about 1/2 way through Texas, and just couldn't do anymore.  This book, and several others of his, have been on my mind for some time, but there was always a bit of trepidation due to my prior burnout.    In fact, I bought this at a used box store several years ago for $1, and it's been sitting in my not-read pile all that time.

What do I have to say after finally reading Michener again?  One word:  "WOW!"  Ok, so I'll say more than that.  This book reminded me why I think Michener is an incredible writer and a genius.  There's so much research that goes into each of his epics, but beyond that, you really get to know the characters, and how the families are intertwined over the centuries, religion, politics, etc. across time, and on and on...  They are truly incredible books.

I only have a few points that I'll pull out here:

• On Hiram Carter:  "... his father might have succeeded in keeping the boy socially passive except for a genetic accident over which there was no control:  Hiram was on of those fortunate men who take women seriously.  This meant that his life gained an added dimension; unlike the moon, he did not move through the dark night with one hemisphere forever blank, for his association with women brightened it."
• On George Washington, and I only pull this out because I read John Adam's biography, and I'd like to read one on Jefferson and Franklin as well:  "I rarely see him with a book.  He's no Adams or Jefferson, but maybe they read too much."
• On another character, who was "weak:"  "She made the hard decisions because all his life he had inclined towards the easy ones, and in doing so, had dissipated whatever character he might have had."
• Finally, there was a great section on the garden that Rosalind planted.  I read it to Kelly one evening, but it is too long to include here, but it reminded me of the landscaping we've done this past spring and summer in front of our house.

Overall, an excellent book, and I will read more Michener now.  But I think I'll pace myself this time.  :-)   Recessional and The Source are two I really want to get to in the next year.

 

The Odyssey.  Homer.  September 2003.

Well, Barnes and Nobel has a new picture for this book from their "Classics" series, and it's not the picture I have.  Oh well.  Anyway, this is the prose translation by Samuel Butler -- the same translator of the Illiad I read earlier this year, which was also prose.  I still think I should probably read at least some of the verse version of these two books at some point, but I'm not sure when I will do that.  I also have an unabridged audio tape version of the Odyssey that I need to listen to soon.

 

The Old Port Town of Beaufort, North Carolina.    Jean Bruyere Kell.  September 2003.

Kelly and I had our first weekend get-a-way without Riley over Labor Day, and we went to Beaufort NC.  We stayed at a local Inn, ate lots of seafood, took a ferry to an outer bank island to hang out, walked all over the island in search of wild horses, kayaked, and went into all the stores on the water front.  In one of the stores, an very old lady asked us where we were from, how we were doing, etc.  It turns out she was 94 year old Jean Bruyere Kell, the author of this book.  She has lived in Beaufort since 1930 after moving there from NJ!  She signed our copy of the book.  :-)

The book gives a brief history of Beaufort, but it's main emphasis is on all of the very historical houses in the small town.  Many of the houses were built in the 1700 and 1800's, and discussed the history -- who built them, who's lived there, how they've been used over the years, etc.  I mostly read the town history section, and skimmed the house histories.

 

The Universe in a Nutshell.  Stephen Hawking.  August 2003.

I read Hawking's first book, "A Brief History of Time," some time ago.  I always enjoy books of this nature -- books that discuss the Universe, physics, relativity, quantum mechanics -- basically any that talk about the search of the Grand Unification Theory.  I've read many such books and articles, including Roger Penrose's "The Emporer's New Mind."  But those were all before I started writing here... This book is much different than Hawking's first.  In that one, there was just one equation (E = mc^2), and no pictures or diagrams (that I recall).  This book is almost like a DK book -- tons of pictures and side bars to go into.  Some of the pictures are a bit silly, but overall they add to the understanding and depth of the discussions.

To be honest, parts of this book seemed to gloss over certain topics too much.  I may have more background in the material than the target audience because I have read a lot on it, but I often felt there was not a enough information to understand the topic or the main point of the discussion.  There didn't always seem to be a strong flow between sections.  That being said, the book is still good, and does a good job of explaining the majority of points.

[ p.s. Thanks to John, Jezz, and Patrick for giving this to me for my 33rd birthday!  We were staying in Boston with them around my birthday, and this was a nice present.  :-)  ]

The New Father.  Armin A. Brott.  June 2003.

This is the 2nd book in the series -- the 1st one was "The Expectant Father," which I reviewed briefly last year.  I must say these books are really fantastic.  What I like most is at the beginning of each chapter, which corresponds to each of the 1st 12 months of your baby's life, there is a section called "What's Going on With the Baby?"  Then there are subsections:  physically, emotionally/socially, verbally, and intellectually.  What I would do is each month, I'd read the previous month's "What's Going on Section," the current months full chapter, and the next months "What's going on section."   Babies all develop at different rates, so what is listed for a particular month may not match up exactly with your babies current month, but by reading the previous and next months, you should generally see most of what your baby is doing.  In addition to those sections, there is lot of other good information in the book.  I highly recommend it for all new Dads!

The Iliad.  Homer.  June 2003.

First, these Barnes and Noble classics are great!  I picked this up, the Republic, the Odyssey, etc. all for just $7!  Not the highest quality hardback, but not bad at all. Second, per below, I had listened to an abridged version of this on tape, and it's well worth it to supplement one with the other.

Now, as for the story.  It's funny that the title is "The Iliad," when that is a 10 year war, whereas this story only covers a small bit of it near the end of the war.  It does start with "Sing, O Goddess, the Anger of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Acheaens..."  So right there it tells you the book won't be about the whole war, but about "the Anger of Achilles."

Over all, I really liked the story.  This version of the book is in prose, not verse, and I don't really know if that is helpful or harmful.  It flowed well, but I would like to compare the two someday.  

I had to admit I had trouble following it early on.  The book uses "Son of ____" more times than it uses the persons real name, so I kept having to flip back to the character bio page.  Also, god's are in and out of the fight, and it was hard to keep track of which god was for which side/person, so the bio page again was quite useful.   The amount of violence, blood, and gore is amazing.  If you think Hollywood is bad today, just read a couple of the battle scenes of this book!  VERY graphic!

 

The Dawn of Man.  Steve Parker and Michael Day.  June 2003.

I was not able to find a picture of this book, maybe someday I'll scan it.

I remember buying this for a dollar or two at a used book store 7 or 8 years ago, and it sat on my shelf until just recently.  After reading the Earth's Children series and Neanderthal (see below), I wanted a non-fiction account of early man.  This book actually starts much earlier than that, though, but all of it was quite fascinating.  It's amazing how many competing theories there are, and how much debate there is, surrounding many issues such as where did modern humans originate (Out of Africa theory vs. multiple evolutions in diverse geo areas), etc.   My college minor was linguistics, and I could easily see me having studied anthropology instead.  At the time, I was more interested in computer translation, but historical linguistics -- trying to piece together language families and language evolution, is equally as fascinating.

The book was published in 1992, so it's not totally out of date, though I still find new articles and more debate about once a month on line.  This book has lots of great pictures and illustrations, and is well worth the read.

Surviving Sabah:  The Land below the Winds.  Jack Crawford.  June 2003

I found this book from a post to the Adventurous Concepts message board.  "Bryan's Mom," posted that she was reading it at one of the check points during the Florida Coast to Coast.  I picked it up soon thereafter and read it in just a couple of days -- it's just under 100 pages. As you probably know,  I like to write race reports of my races -- if you don't, just check out the races link from the front page of 2sparrows.org.  I also love to read race reports -- many teams have a writer that posts their stories on the web.  This was the 1st time I've seen one make it to book form. I enjoyed reading it for a few reasons.  First, you always can learn by reading race reports, though of course racing itself is the best teacher.   Second, I see that I need to improve my writing to make my reports more interesting.  Right now I just give the basic details of events, but not much else.  Jack was able to do better in that regards.  There were several typos/grammar mistakes, but I think that is expected at this level of publishing -- almost a "self-publishing" company, though a bit more than that.

 

On Becoming Babywise II.  Gary Ezzo.  June 2003.

This is a very short book and perhaps could just be added to the 1st Babywise.   There were several things about the 1st book I liked and several that I did not like.  We took what we liked and found many of the principles to be good ones.  I feel the same way about this book -- there are something I agree with and will do, and some things that I don't care for.  I like play pen time for sure, and trying to keep a routine as best as possible -- though with us that is of course very tough to do.  But our daughter Riley is a real trooper and does very well even when we don't give her the routine she needs.  We just now at the age where a little discipline is needed -- one example is she wants to eat the cat food all the time!  So we can try some of the techniques in this book to see if they work -- strong "NO,"  slight squeeze to the hand, crib isolation time, etc.

Canoe Racing:  The Competitors Guide to Marathon and Downriver Canoe Racing.  Peter Heed and Dick Mansfield.  May 2003.

I did a very quick read of this book on the way to Florida right before the Coast to Coast race.  Charlie and I were going to be using my Jensen 18 canoe while our teammates Ron and Jon were going to be in an Equator sit on top kayak.  I had gotten this book for several reasons, but the biggest reason to read it on this trip right before a race was to learn how to do a deep water rescue in a canoe.  Unfortunately, the book does not cover that at all.  However, it does cover everything else you would probably want to know about canoeing, so it is still a great book to read.  And I did learn lots of things that we put into practice in the race.  I am now re-reading this book because I did not spend much time with it on the drive.

The Endurance Athlete's Guide to Success.  May 2003.

This is a short book that I got in an order I placed to Hammer Nutrition/e-Caps.  It is of course geared towards all of their products, but I thought it was well written and the research behind it is sound.  And I've had great success with Hammer Gel and Endurolytes for Adventure Racing. I haven't tried any of their other products, but other racers have raved about Sustained Energy.  They have a new product Perpeteum that I am going to try as soon as I exhaust my current supply of Endurox R4.

 

The Iliad.  Homer.  (Classics on cassette).  April 2003.

I borrowed this from Dad and Nadia and listened to it over a few months whenever I found myself in the mustang -- the car with a tape player!  I do admit that I had to listen to the first couple of tapes a few times each to really know what was going on.  But I'm reading the book now too, and so once I started that, keeping up with the tape was fine.  Look for a review on the book soon! As for this audio version, it is abridged.  I found it hard to follow all the characters by voice alone because there was just one reader, but I always have that problem.  I don't think someone should just use this audio version to get a full appreciation of the story, though.  Read the book!  :-)

Neanderthal.  John Darnton.  April 2003.

I first read this book four or five years ago after I found it at Dad and Nadia's place one weekend.  I wanted to re-read it now after having read the five books of the Earth's Children series, to see what similarities and differences I could find in these two historical fiction accounts of the time.  Both authors clearly did very detailed research, so I thought this would be interesting.  Overall, I'd have to say I was not that crazy about Neanderthal.  It was an ok book, though sometimes both the writing and the plot were not to my liking.   But with that out of the way, on to some interesting finds/comments:

• "The Khodzant Enigma:"  In the prologue, Darnton discussed the pictograph of Khodzant, which is a stone carving (but not the original, so dating doesn't shed any light), that has a section missing.  The carving is trying to tell a story, apparently about relationships between prehistoric man and Neanderthal's.   But with the final section missing, there's no way to know the outcome of the story, which one would hope would explain, or at least help explain, why modern man still exists and Neandertha'ls became extinct about 30,000 years ago.  The reason I bring this up here is that the book is not clear if this carving exists -- it of course makes it seem like it does.  I did some quick web searches on it, but the very few references I did find are just to the book itself.   So at this point, I don't know if it is true or not, but I'd have to lean towards it not being true.
• The following really jumped out at me -- its Creb (the Mog-ur) from Earth's Children!  "Here we have the find by Ralph Solecki in the great Shanidar cave in Iraq.  Our prehistoric man here was killed by a rock fall.  He was old, perhaps forty, which in Neanderthal years makes him ancient.  See that damage to the skull?  It probably comes from the cave-in.  But look at his right arm.  It was amputated some years before --see? -- just above the elbow.  He had arthritis.  Now look at the left side of the face.  See that bone scar tissue?  He was blind in the left eye...."  So this shows both Auel and Darnton read the same literature in their research.
• The other interesting comparison is that in each book, the author gives Neanderthal language, or something close to it.  With Auel, she assumes they had a complex sign language, and that the grunts and other noises they could make with their less developed vocal structures were just a supplement.  But Darnton, on the other hand, gives them something similar to telepathy called remote viewing.  Neanderthals are able to do this with humans -- see what they see through the human's eyes, but it's not clear if that is all they can do or if they have something more advanced with others of their own kind.
• Another similarity:  both assume humans, at least some humans, hate Neanderthal's because they are too similar to humans.  I.e. the slight differences they do have stand out much more, because they are so similar when compared to any other animal, and those differences are easy to latch onto and cultivate hatred.  I think this is still true today, whether it is racial, cultural, religious, etc.  It is sad that such differences are not celebrated, but instead are the breeding grounds of hate.
• One thing Darnton states that I disagree with is that, with humans, much of thought is formulated through language.  This of course has been a major debate in linguistics for a long time, and here's my take:   Think about giving someone directions to your home.  That course of thought is clearly formulated through language.  But now just think about the drive home, and not having to communicate it.  You are of course still thinking about it, but not using language, because there is no need to communicate it when you think about it in that way.  

 

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language.  March 2003.  David Crystal.

This is really a fantastic book to have around, if you like language/linguistics.  My minor at NC State was linguistics, and I've had this book since then.  I just picked it up now to read the section on language acquisition in infants, so I could see what all Riley has gone through over the past 7.5 months, as well as what we can expect over the next couple of years.   There are several theories that are discussed, but you really need to take aspects of each and combine them to get an overall view of what occurs.  Riley is just now starting the babble phase, mostly with "ma's" and "ba's."  She'd had the "aah" thing down for quite some time.  She has also learned different pitches, volumes, squeals,  and is of course full of facial expressions.  We called her the "drama-queen" for a long time, because of her many faces, yawns, stretches, etc.

The Shelters of Stone.  March 2003.  Jean M. Auel.

The 5th book in the Earth's Children series.  There is supposedly going to be one more, and there has to be!  This one leaves you hanging with many unresolved conflicts.  I'd have to say this has been the best of the four books following the classic "Clan of the Cave Bear."  While still a bit repetitive for someone who has read all 5 books in just a few months (and probably not so for someone who reads them as they are published), overall this book was more captivating.  Perhaps it was due to the number of people at Jondalar's home, or the number of conflicts that arose, or perhaps it was something else all together.  Either way, I wish I didn't have to wait a few years until the final book is published to finish out the series.

Classical Mythology.  Professor Elizabeth Vandiver.  The Teach Company.  March 2003.

This was another course from the Teaching Company that I borrowed  from Dad and Nadia, similar to the one I listened to last year called "How to Listen to and Understand Great Music."  This one consisted of forty-eight 30 minute lectures on 24 CD's.  I've been listening to it on and off the past month or so, as I've drive around town.  I wouldn't rate this as highly as the Great Music course by Robert Greenberg.  Vandiver isn't nearly as engrossing, and the format was a bit different than I expected.   However, there is still certainly a lot of great information and I do consider it worthwhile, especially as I plan to tackle The Iliad, The Odyssey, and the Aeneid soon.  I've already started listening to the Iliad, and the what I learned from this course shown benefits.

 

The Plains of Passage.  Jean Auel.  March 2003.

This is the 4th book in the Earth's Children (tm) series.  To me, it was quite repetitive in the beginning -- in terms of repeating stories/character histories, etc., from the first 3 books.  However, this book was published several years after the second, so for people who read them as they were published, that probably would be a good thing.  But I picked this book up the day after I finished the other one, and I've read all three other ones in the last month or two, so for me, I didn't need the repetition.

I still think the 1st book, Clan of the Cave Bear, is a real classic.  While the other three have been good, they are not in the same class as the first, in my opinion.  The research Auel did is again first rate.  I wish I could do more research and corroboration to verify what's fact and what is fiction.  The web page http://www.geocities.com/auelpage/series/bk4moravia.htm has a few tidbits that are useful for this, but there's so much more I want to know!

( I still think the sex scenes are a bit much!  I'd love to say to any high schooler, these are books you should read, and that you could learn a lot from.  And while that is true, and while most high schoolers probably have read or seen sex just as vivid and detailed as these books, I must admit I'd still have trouble recommending them to someone that age.  Perhaps I'm getting old and conservative!  :-/  )

 

Mommy Made (and Daddy too):  Home Cooking for a Healthy Baby and Toddler. February 2003.

While I didn't read this book cover to cover, or even all the non-recipe pages, I read enough of it to learn how to make certain baby foods, and in what order and at what age they are ok to introduce.  Kelly and I are making as many foods for Riley as we can at home.  So far, we've done banana, avocado, sweet potato, and acorn squash.  She loves banana and does ok with avocado and sweet potato, but the last few times we've tried the squash, she hasn't been that interested. This book is an excellent resource for anyone that wants to make food at home rather than buying everything!

The Mammoth Hunters.  Jean M. Auel.  February 2003.

This is the 3rd book in the "Earth's Children" series.  The 1st book was fantastic - a true classic.  The 2nd book was very good too, as was this one.  The story kept me very interested the whole way.  However, I must admit that this one had a bit of a "romance novel" feel to it.  Not that it was like a romance novel (it certainly wasn't as shallow), but the detail in the sex scenes seems a bit gratuitous.  I guess that was true in the 2nd book to some extent, but I didn't think about it as much then.  For some reason, it struck me more in this book, though I would guess the quantity was approximately the same.   If the Clan of the Cave Bear, the 1st book, is read by many high school students, I would have to bet that the 2nd and 3rd book are not, just because of this!

Even with my previous comments, I'm looking forward to the next two books.  I've always loved "historical fiction," though I did burn myself out with James Michener several years ago.  (I think I will read Chesapeake this year, finally!  It's been sitting on my shelf for several years!)  It is difficult to know sometimes how much what Auel has written is historical, and how much is fiction.  Of course, the specific characters and conversations are fiction, but how much of the other things are?  Well, the following two web pages are useful to help figure some of this out:

• http://geocities.com/auelpage/series/bk3mamhunt.htm
• An excellent page that has pictures and a brief quote from the series regarding many of the herbs Ayla used:  http://ecfans.com/aylasherbs/

Here is one quote from the book, regarding how a Clan woman would show a man she loves him (since they would not verbalize it very much, if at all):  "A Clan woman does not say, she shows.  Woman does thing for man she loves, she cooks food as he likes, makes favorite tea ready in morning when he wakes up....  Even better if woman can know what he wants before he asks.  Shows she pays close attention to learn habits and moods, knows him, cares."

Valley of the Horses.  Jean M. Auel.  February 2003.

This is the 2nd book in the "Earth's Children" set, and after reading the 1st, "Clan of the Cave Bear," I could not wait to start this one.  My neighbor Nicki brought over books 2 - 5 in the series when she saw I was reading the 1st.   Overall, I this book was also very good, but I don't think it was as good as the 1st.  It seemed to take forever for Jondalar and Ayla to come together, even though it was obvious that they would.  Once they did, the book did become much more "emotional" to me...  I guess that has to do with how Ayla again had to learn from no culture background something new, just like she did in the 1st book from the Clan.  And for some reason, that is more touching than when she was confidently living on her own.  It is very similar to how the man in Stranger in a Strange Land, one of my all time favorites, had to learn human culture with no background.

Here are a few things that really jump out at me:

• quote:  "If you want to fall in love, you can't hold anything.  You have to open up, take that risk.  You'll be hurt sometimes, but if you don't, you'll never be happy."
• The book had very graphic sex!!  In the 1st book, there was not much sex at all, but in this one, there is a lot of it.  I wonder if people back then really did the things Auel says they did, or if she is taking certain liberties with them!  I doubt there could be much evidence either way I suppose, unless there are cave drawings or figurines or  some such.
• I was reading a Yoga Journal article about hand mudras, and it is interesting how the Neanderthals used "sign" as the basis of their language, with very simple sounds inter-mixed.  The YJ article speculated that hand gestures may be very innate to humans, perhaps even the basis of a pre-spoken human language -- similar to the Neanderthals in these books.
• I'm listening to "Classical Mythology" from the Teaching Company, and one of the lectures discusses the "Great Mother Earth Goddess," and whether early humans actually worshiped such a being or not.  The professor, Elizabeth Vandiver, takes the position that there really is no concrete evidence that the figurines archeologists have found were worshiped.  While there may be no true evidence for that, I would think it is likely.  Auel also takes that position, as the humans in this book all revere the Great Mother Earth Goddess, and Jondalar carries a figurine with him at most times (though he does give it away at one point).
• http://geocities.com/auelpage/series/bk2valley.htm

 

The Republic.  Plato.   January 2003.

This book took me a long time to read, for a variety of reasons.  I actually started it in August of 2001.  But after 9/11, I didn't feel much like reading this kind of book for a long time.  I have a feeling this book will always remind me that time.  As I've said before in this notebook, I did not read much in 2002 because of the Riley and the new house, and what I did read was often related to those two things!  At any rate, I did finally pick this back up and read it slowly.  I often read another book or two before picking this back up.

I thought that the Translator's introductions was very insightful.  I actually read a few pages of it, and a few pages of the actual book, until I finished it, and I learned a lot about Plato, the time the book was written, and even about the book itself.   The book did get a bit boring to me at times.  I think I probably should have spent more time thinking about some of the arguments, but I just wasn't into it as much as that would have taken.

Here are some various highlights:

• I was surprised at the equality between men and women that Plato had in his ideal state, considering the book was written 2500+ years ago.
• Some things about the ideal state seemed very "communistic" -- the way property didn't belong to anyone, etc.  And some things, like shared wives, shared children, etc., went even beyond that!
• It was amazing some of the things the ideal state would do:  remove art and poetry, etc., so that the minds of the people, especially the guardians, would not be corrupt.  Basically, they had to be trained in philosophy and gymnastics only -- everything else could be deemed bad.  ("We must remain firm in our conviction that that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into our state.") 
• From the special introduction by the translator:  "The want of energy is one of the main reasons why so few persons continue to improve in later years.  They have not the will, and do not know the way.  They never "try an experiment," or look up a point of interest for themselves..."   ==>  I hope I never get like this!
• And then from the book itself:  "There is nothing which for my part I like better ... than conversing with aged men;  for I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire whether the way is smooth and easy or rugged and difficult..."
• Any time "Phaedrus" was mentioned (in the two introductions), my interest was piqued.  I suppose I need to read that some day, since that is the name of the main character in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  ("Phaedrus... where the baser appetite and the nobler passionate impulse appear as a pair of steeds, one usually bent on thwarting, the other on aiding, the charioteer, who is, of course, the Will.")

 

Clan of the Cave Bear.  Jean M. Auel.  January 2003.

Wow!  This was the first book in quite some time that I literally had trouble putting down.  I picked it up at the General Store in Pittsboro when Kelly and I had lunch there with Dad and Nadia on New Year's Eve, and once I started, it was hard to stop.  I think I read for 5 hours straight when traveling from Boston to Raleigh -- in the subway, in the bar at the airport, at the gate, and non-stop on the plane!!!  Someone at a used book store in Clearwater  had once recommended this book at the entire series to me, and they were right on!

The Clan of the Cave Bear is historical fiction, in which a lot of historical facts are mixed in with fictional characters, kind of like a James Michener (except it doesn't start at the dawn of time and go through the present day).  Instead, the setting is 35,000 years ago, about the time of the fall of the Neanderthal and rise of Cro-Magnons.  It follows a path of Ayla, a young Cro-Magnon, that loses her family in an earthquake, and is then rescued by a clan of Neanderthal's.   It's obvious the author did a tremendous amount of research, and it's also obvious she takes many liberties -- I guess that's what makes it historical fiction.  :-)

Anyway, the book is first rate as a story, and the writing is definitely engrossing.  There are also some times when it made me think a fair amount about humans, our evolution, and our behavior.  I always hate to say too much in what I write here, as I don't want to have any spoilers for those who have not read the books, and this is more of a way for me to recall what I thought about a book overall or some specific passages, than to give a review of the story.  So let me just say that I'm curious how much Brun (the Clan leader) and Broud (the heir)  humans have in them today (and for that matter, how much Ayla, Creb, and Iza), and whether or not Durc really carried on, or could carry on, the line of the Clan.

All in all, I thought this was fantastic, and I'm tempted to add it to my all time favorites list above.  But all of those have stood the test of time, and this one will have to as well.  I can't wait to pick up the next book in this 5 book series.

[added 1/29/03]:  there's a lot of good info at http://geocities.com/auelpage/series/bk1clan.htm

[update 4/8/03]:  I watched the movie, and for a while, I thought that the slight changes, which were mostly the order of events, were ok.  They made sense in trying to squeeze out certain things to fit the movie into an acceptable time.  However, the last scene got really silly, in my opinion, with the fight between Ayla and Broud.  Up until that point, I was ok with the changes, but I was very disappointed after that.

Lenegrin.  Jonathan D. Scott.  January 2003.

Jonathan Scott lives right across the street from Kelly's parents, and this is his first novel.  Kelly's parents gave me a signed copy for Christmas!  I had never heard of it, and I didn't even know Jonatha was a writer.  But I read this in just a few days after I got it.   I have to admit that it took me a while to warm to the writing style, though I liked the story right from the beginning.

For some reason, writing such as the following seemed too much for me early on, like it was forced, or like he was trying to write: "There are no words to describe the sheer terror of having no self.  To those who have never experienced a disruption in the continuity of their existence, I can never convey what it is like.  I was utterly alone."  But as I read the book, I understood that it wasn't forced or that he wasn't trying to write, and it grew on me.

It was strange in some ways, as it mixes the fantasy genre with thought strands from eastern philosophy/mysticism, and this also grew on me over time.  There was almost a kind of "super meditation" that would allow the characters to have special powers.  Also, at one point, the author had "not future to imagine and not past to remember ... [just] the present moment."  And that is very much a Yogic philosophy.

So all in all, I was quite pleased.  It did take a while to warm to the writing, but not the story, and in the end I enjoyed them both.  If you check out the Amazon reviews, you'll see some raving entries, so I'm not the only one that liked it.