Book reviews

2BRO2B is a bleak book by Kurt Vonnegut where he writes about a future world where man has conquered death. The only deaths arise from freak accidents or volunteers. To prevent a population explosion, there is a cap on the maximum number of people in any given locale. If one has to have a baby, a volunteer to die must also be found. We are then presented with a situation of a man who has had triplets but loves life and doesn’t want any of his relatives to die. I don’t want to spoil the fun, please read the book to find out its ending, besides it’s less than 10 pages on ebook.

In God bless you, Dr. Kevorkian he takes us through a story of his near NDE’s conducted at a state of the art lethal  injection execution facility in Huntsville, Texas. He tells us his first NDE was an accident or else who wouldn’t have set out on such a risky expedition. Dr. Jack Kevorkian is the man who saves his life several times he can’t count. In his several trips, he conducts many interviews with such people as Mary Shelley, Isaac Newton, Hitler, Isaac Asimov, Dr. Mary D. Ainsworth and many others. It is an interesting book, told in very small chapters, if we can call them that. For all friends on summer breaks with nothing to read, this is good reading material.

In Exile and the Kingdom, an anthology by Albert Camus, he writes on several themes, such as justice, infidelity, inhuman working conditions and inability of employees to have their grievances heard, the artist and his life/ tribulations- his problem with fame and so on and one story on religion. It makes for interesting reading.

In The fall, by Albert Camus, he tells the story of a judge-penitent. It is the confession of a former lawyer who I think has lost all his marbles.

In A happy death, Albert Camus’ first novel, he sketches the theme that will later be covered in the Myth of Sisyphus, the Rebel and the Stranger, that is death. In this book he asking if one can die a happy death. It is the story of Mersault, his crimes, his jealousies, his life and eventually his happy death. His struggles to find what it means to live a good life. He wants to die a conscious death.  He writes towards the end of the book

And in Zagreus’ very immobility confronting death he encountered the secret image of his own life. Fever helped him here, and with it, an exultant certainty of sustaining consciousness to the end, of dying with his eyes open.  Zagreus too had had his eyes open that day, and tears had fallen from them. But that was the last weakness of a man who had not had his share of life. Patrice was not afraid of such weakness. In the pounding of his feverish blood, though it failed to reach the limits of his body, he understood that such weakness would not be his. For he had played his part, fashioned his role, perfected man’s one duty, which is only to be happy. [..] Happiness was the fact he had existed.

 

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