The City and the Stars

This is Arthur C Clarke's rewrite of his first sci fi novel, Against the Fall of Night. I have reviewed the first version separately.

The two versions are similar in major aspects, but differ in many details. The second version seems more "realistic", but some of its characters seem less well developed in some ways. I liked the first version a bit better.

My review of the first version gives a summary that should also suffice for the second, so I will not say more here on that.

I'd probably recommend reading both versions and have readers decide for themselves which is better.

Against the Fall of Night and Sequel

There are two books in one here. The first is Arthur C Clarke's first sci fi novel, Against the Fall of Night. The second is a sequel written with Clarke's permission by another author titled, Beyond the Fall of Night. I liked the first, but really didn't care for the second.

Set in the very far future on Earth, the first book is a tale of two, very different human civilizations which have been separated for many, many years. One is super technological with very long living people. The other is more the back to nature type with people with much shorter life spans.

A young man from the super tech group rediscovers the other group and goes on an adventure with a friend he meets among the other group. He learns the real truth about Earth's history and the split of humanity. Quite a surprise.

It's a good story, though some aspects seem a bit of a stretch. It was written a long time ago.

The sequel is just weird. I was barely able to force myself to finish it.

Interestingly, Clarke rewrote the first book and published it as The City and the Stars. I reviewed it separately. I liked both versions, but I liked the first a bit more than the second. See what you think.

Every Frenchman Has One

A star in many great movies of the last century, Olivia de Havilland wrote this book about her first years living in France. It was originally published in the early 1960's. She is still living there and is now 102 years old; the book was republished in honor of her 100th birthday complete with an interview with her.

Overall, I did enjoy the book. Some chapters were really hilarious. Some were a bit hard on the French, but some expressed possibly well deserved criticism. A few will probably give the politically correct a fit. But, I think all were pretty much factually correct.

Times have changed, so let this book take you back and make you laugh/smile, sigh and/or maybe cringe.

Spoiler Alert:

The title refers to the French obsession with the liver - probably not what you thought, right? :)

The Essential Charles Fillmore

I bought this book several years ago, but I never seemed to get to it. Then one day, I just decided to start it.

It went fairly well at first, but then it slowed down for me. Honestly, this may have been due more to distractions in my life than anything in the book - though I will say that the writing style dates from the time much of the book was actually written which can be a bit tough for people these days. Things did speed up closer to the end. It took me a year to get through it. That's pretty slow for me. Hopefully, it goes faster for you. It was worth the effort I think - there is much to ponder here.

The book covers the essentials in the philosophy of Charles Fillmore of the Unity movement - for the most part, in his own words from old articles he wrote - organized by major topic. Commentary is provided by James Gaither who is associated with the Unity School.

It would be quite difficult to summarize this book, and I'm not going to attempt that here. Basically though, it gives readers insight into the Unity movement which is a metaphysical Christian philosophical movement. Unity has groups all over, in addition to a central headquarters. I guess it could be called a Christian demonination, but maybe a less conventional one. Their website is useful in many respects, by the way.

Reading this book gives readers a lot to consider and that could take some time. It gave me some useful insight and pointed me to topics I'd like to explore further in other Unity publications. I was a little disappointed in lack of detail in some portions of the book, but hopefully I'll find this in these other publications.

As I said, this book isn't the easiest to read and may take a lot of time to get through, but I do consider it worth the effort. If you decide to give it a try, I hope you find it helpful.

Mindset Warrior Summary Guide for Peterson's 12 Rules for Life

I thought that reading the summary would save time and hopefully deliver the same overall benefit as reading the actual book. This did not work as planned from what I can see.

First, the formatting, grammar etc left a lot to be desired making it a slow read. Second, the summary left me confused rather than enlightened versus the book - I did thumb through a copy of the book in a store, so I had some idea of what I should see in a summary. 

Buy the book or a better summary and read that rather than this.