Book Review Brief: To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

I finished my first Ernest Hemingway novel last night and frankly I wasn't so impressed, though I'm not ready to blame that on Hemingway.  For one thing, I kind of got lost about half way through it and never recovered.  A couple of chapters introduce new characters and, if I'm not mistaken, are narrated through their eyes.  All of that led to some confusion and confusion is difficult to fight when you're laying in bed, holding the book, and ready to fall asleep.

Also, this novel was written in the mid-1930s.  Hemingway didn't really become popular and an award-winner until the 50s.  So you could say that this book was perhaps not his greatest work.  Anyway, glad I completed it and back to the library it goes.

I'm currently entrenched in The Stories of John Cheever which is a collection of short stories.  Some have been very poignant.  At Barnes and Noble today (btw, I HATE paying full price--Amazon is usually the way to go--but we were on vacation) I picked up Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter.  I plan to get to that sometime before the summer's out.

New Blog Features

If you scroll down and look at the right side, you'll notice that I've added a couple of things to this blog. One is the "This Day in History" widget and the other is the news feed about selected topics. The topics I've selected are those dear to my heart: UCLA, U.S. History, and World History. Hopefully this will add even more interest for all of the FongHistory readers out there (both of you!).

I've also enabled the RSS feed so you can get the blog fed to your feeder (or something like that).

ABC News Special on Randy Pausch Tonight

ABC News will be featuring a story on Randy Pausch tonight at 10 pm. Here's the link to the story that reported his death.

Randy Pausch Dead at 47

My students and I talked about Randy Pausch at the end of this past school year as his book The Last Lecture stood atop the bestseller lists and he was named as one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People.  He died Friday of pancreatic cancer.  

Along with millions of other people, I was touched by the ideas in his book.  They were very simple lessons about life but lessons which have been cast aside in most people's lives.  My heart goes out to his wife and young children.

Book Review Brief: Hamptons Bohemia by Helen A. Harrison and Constance Ayers Denne

I just finished what really is more of a coffee table book (i.e. a lot of pictures!) that was interesting and entertaining.  Hamptons Bohemia is a social history of the Hamptons, which is on the eastern end of Long Island in New York.  It discusses the growth of the area and the migration of artists and writers to this now-fashionable spot.

Among the many who frequented the place and gave it its reputation as a haven for art and literature are Truman Capote, John Steinbeck, and John Knowles (author of A Separate Peace).   The part that intrigued me was a section about the artist Jackson Pollock who lived there with his wife Lee Krasner.  It made me interested in watching the movie Pollock with Ed Harris.  He and the film were nominated for several awards when it came out in 2000.

The book has some nice vintage photographs of these famous folks and their homes as well as asides with excerpts from novels and poems and pictures of artwork created by some of the Hamptons' famous residents.  An enlightening read.