And Both Were Young

And Both Were Young by Madeleine L'Engle

A girl goes off to boarding school in Switzerland. She has trouble fitting in. She is seen as not good at sports, though she is good at drawing. With the help of a teacher, she gradually becomes more happy at school. She also meets a boy who she likes. Later some mystery man comes and claims to be the father of the boy. She has a plan to try to verify and ends up getting hurt. They later discover the man was a con artist and the boy's parents died in the holocaust.

The girl has been secretly training in skiing with the aid of the boy and the teacher that befriended her. She enters a ski contest (to the chagrin of the PE teacher.) She fails to win because she stopped to help a fallen classmate, but gets the grand trophy anyway. She sees her father friends with the teacher she liked - but he says it is too soon after her mother died for him to get serious. 

It is a nice boarding school story that has conflict, but does not get too extreme.

The Hero With A Thousand Faces

The Hero With a Thousand Faces combines Freudian psychoanalysis with mythology to present a "universal" of human beliefs. The comparison of different archetypal myths across different culture is appealing. However, the book gets really bogged down in the psychoanalysis. The discussion of myths is interrupted with analysis of dreams (which often seems to show some sexual or maternal feeling.) The analysis of different mythologies has an odd relationship with "non-western" mythologies. They are at the same time referred and treated as inferior. This may just be a symptom of the analysis which seems to bring out the most extreme views that match the thesis. This leaves me wanting more, and stories are often left half-told, ending once they have got their point across.
I was less than impressed with the book. The conclusion and epilogue were especially demoralizing. He was attempting a focus on mythologies and had great respect for the importance in societies. He acknowledged the many different explanations of myths, and laments the lack of myths in modern society. (Society discovered the "light" of science, but lost the "light" of myth.) There was so much potential in a work of comparative mythology. Alas, the actual work got bogged down with the then-modern theory of psychoanalysis that it was not able to provide adequate treatment of the different myths.

1984

I remembered 1984 being a lot better. Maybe I am confusing it with other similar books. (It does seem a lot like The Giver in theme. The start of the book is primarily about physical relationships, then rebellion, then torture and brainwashing, then an ending contentment. What does the main character accomplish in the story? His seed of rebellion is quashed and he is back to a "respectable" member of society. He just went through a very painful way of getting there.
The society is very stratified. The senior party officials live like kings and have a right to limited privacy. The lesser party party members are always watched, but live within a rule of law. They are protected, but most adhere to the strict rules. Even history is subject to change. They are always monitored by two-way telescreens. Even their thoughts could turn them in. The lower classes are for all practical purposes ignored. They can get away with anything, but end up punishing themselves with internal crimes. The society is content, but suffering as war continues going on.
Why is the book important today? The stories of fake news do seem similar to what happens in the Oceana of the novel. People are manipulated in to believing what the government wants them to believe. These same people may see their physical comforts diminish as they are cheering on the war's heroes and "hating" the other side. This parallels the left's view of the right-wing reactionaries. However, the left doesn't get off unscathed. The party regularly rewrites history to conform to the the current views. Disgraced people are "removed" from historical accounts. The current enemy has "always" been the enemy. This parallels sure looks a lot like the right's view of left-wing political correctness and revisionist history. The stratification of society can also be adopted by either side to describe modern day America. We have a wealthy elite that control everything. The party, represented by big borther is the corporate entity that has total power over society. The upper party members are those corporate elite that exercise true power. The others are their minions. The lowest classes are meant to rot as being unimportant. (Or depending on political persuasion, they are kept in a sufficient mass to allow the middle class to be oppressed.)
The moral code (with sex restricted solely to procreation as a duty to the party) and torture (strict physical torture to brainwash nonconformists) occupy a great deal of the text, but reduce the power of the novel. A society that actively spends that much effort physically forcing control seems less powerful than one that uses subtlety to get people to exercise the control themselves.

Earth Abides

Earth Abides is an optimistic post-apocalyptic novel. Some disease sweeps through earth and wipes out almost everyone. It manages to happen very quickly, yet orderly. We just have to believe the author on this one. The narrator was out in woods when things happened, and nobody else seems to provide details. It seems there was time to properly bury everyone, but not to shut down stores or bring cars home.

Utilities were also still running. The hydroelectric power and plumbing still kept chugging along for a while, even without anybody to attend to it. Roads were still usable, though gradually tree-falls and floods cut off some routes. (However, long distance travels were still possible.)

The few people that remained tended to stay by themselves. Nobody seemed to ask why or engage in serious conversation. At first, they were mere scavengers trying to gather what they could and live off the working utilities. Eventually, things broke down and they found themselves returning back to nature. However, they do take shortcuts. Instead of going all the way back to stone arrowheads, they use the metal found in coins.

The new generations soon lose all contact with "civilization". They have become hunters, obtaining their sustenance from nature. The stored up knowledge of society had been gradually eaten away by nature. The old ones that remembered the civilization are treated as deities.

The novel seems to be attempting a connection between "savage" lifestyles and our more modern society. Perhaps the "natives" that had been encountered by Europeans had had advanced societies, but saw them quickly disappear due to the diseases that were brought in. By the time there was large-scale cultural contact, they had fallen into a pure survival mode.

The book paints the new society in an optimistic way. Rather than roving bands of thugs, we have people that want to work together and be happy. The one "bad guy" that they do encounter is quickly removed. People can still be happy even after the fall of society.

Sixth Column

Sixth Column starts out fast. In the first few sentences we hear of the Washington D.C. and New York going down as the U.S. is taken over by "Pan Asians". The story then focuses on a research outpost where most of the people have recently been killed. It turns out they have some "super-weapons" that can be tuned to only impact certain groups of people. They also have the ability to perform modern alchemy and change molecules to different elements. However they only have a half dozen people in their facility.

One "lawyer-turned hobo-turned private" goes on an exploratory mission and discovers that the pan-Asians have severely clamped down on the freedom of Americans. About the only venue for public meeting that remains is the church. Thus, they decide the way to organize is through the church. They create their own "church" that focuses on giving freely to the poor (with transmuted gold), while freely accepting the creeds of other religions. Eventually they prevail, vanquishing the Pan-Asians. Now the question remains of how the US will be organized. (This is touched briefly in the book. However, it could easily be an entirely new book. The technology could greatly alter the economy, while the extreme disruption may make alternate political organization more feasible.)

The book was first serialized in 1941 and later published in 1949. Its portrayal of races would probably never go in today's politically correct environment. However, considering the time it was published, it seems quite progressive. (In the novel Asian-Americans are in a no-man's land, killed off by the Pan-Asians who don't know what to do with them, but not trusted by most Americans.) The use of a scientific psuedo-church for ulterior means seems quite similar to modern scientology. (Perhaps Hubbard got his idea from reading Heinlein.) The story itself is an enjoyable, quick read.

red planet

The martians are advanced but peaceful. They tolerate earthlings on their planet. However, they tire of them and decide they must go. Luckily, some earthlings were nice to them, and they decide that they can stay if they behave themselves. That, in a nutshell, is Red Planet. However, that could also describe the last 10% of the book. Most of it is about the interactions of the earthlings on Mars. The main character has a Martian "pet", but it is more of a friend. When he goes off to school, the new headmaster is a real power-hungry jerk and tries to send the pet off to the zoo. This eventually leads to his death. There is also a doctor who expresses strong libertarian views. These come to the forefront as the "corporation" tries to restrict the rights of the people.
On one hand, Heinlein provides both a cautionary tale, advocating the importance of freedom and personal control over corporate control. On the other hand, he provides a blueprint for proper "native" relations, with the "visitors" assuming a mild footprint, interacting with the natives but not impeding their lives.
And he does this while providing a rollicking adventure on mars.