[Book Review] The Time Machine

The Time Machine. H.G. Wells. Signet Classics (2002). 118 pages.

This book was first published in 1895, but it could still give me fresh and interesting ideas. The story contained the time travelling concept, with the protagonist being identified as Time Traveller who has an incredible journey to over 800,000 years ahead by the machine he invents. There, he meets the evolutionary version of human beings, which not only do they have different body structure, but they also use different language and have different nature. Whatever the Time Traveller experiences in his journey both amazes and terrifies him.

The Time Machine is not a heavy-science fiction. There is not much introduction to the new technological concepts. However, what makes it so interesting is that the author also presented the ideas of socialism and eschatology. Unlike many science fictions which mostly show the development or the rise of technology that may affect human life in either positive or negative way, this book shows the downturn. The era to which the protagonist travels is in the point that everything, whether it be science or art term, has been plummeting. Moreover, in that era, the gap between upper class and working class is too wide that they seem to be impossible to converge again.

After reading this book, I felt like I want more from this author. His prediction is impressive. I've heard that some ideas he wrote in his books had later come true in reality. Even though some may not or maybe not yet happened, I still want to dig up his views even more, and I, therefore, will definitely read the other books of him. 

Below there're some ideas or quotes that I've found interesting:

“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers.”

“Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life -- the true civilizing process that makes life more and more secure -- had gone steadily on to a climax... And the harvest was what I saw.”

“So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.”

[Book Review] The Diary of a Young Girl

The Diary of a Young Girl. Anne Frank (Edited by Otto Frank). Puffin Books (2003). Paperback. 432 pages. 

This book is so good! I wish I read it earlier. Anne Frank wrote it during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands after she had received a blank diary as her 13th-birthday present. The diary recorded two-year life (1942-1944) of a Jewish girl who lost her childhood to the war and Nazi Germany. Because of anti-Jewish legislation, the Franks went into hiding in the "Secret Annex" of an office building in Amsterdam, where Anne's father, Otto Frank, used to do business there. With the help of some Otto's non-Jewish colleagues, the Frank family and four other Jews were able to get food and other supplies.

In Anne's diary, it mentioned the life in the Secret Annex. She frequently wrote about a difficult relationship with her mother, while she considered herself being emotionally close to her father. The diary also showed how the girl's heart had been eaten up with desperation and fear. Every time when the gunfire went off, or when someone besides the helpers came to the office, the Jews would keep quiet and conceal their existence as hard as possible, praying to survive the next day while being frightened that their hiding would be exposed. Those moments was like hell; and for Anne, it seemed like forever. 

Despite living in the dark period, she still had hope and dreams. With her aptitude for reading and writing, she wished she would become a writer. She even wrote some stories while hiding in the Secret Annex. I think her insight about world and people was invaluable, and I could see her improvement in writing through her diary. She was the girl who shone in the darkness. If she was alive after the war, she must have become a good writer. We might have seen her various works from then on.

Here are my favorite Anne Frank's quotes: 

"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."

"Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands."

"I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains."

"People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn’t stop you from having your own opinion."

"Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again."

"As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?"

"Women should be respected as well! Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn't women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?...Women, who struggle and suffer pain to ensure the continuation of the human race, make much tougher and more courageous soldiers than all those big-mouthed freedom-fighting heroes put together!"

[Book Review] A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens. HarperCollins (2013). 144 pages. 

It is such a heartwarming book. The plot is simple but so touching. The story is about a greedy, cold-hearted old man, Ebenezer Scrooge, who was a social outcast, and always refused to give others a hand. 

It began with the visit of a ghost, Scrooge's dead business partner. The ghost warned him that he would be haunted by three spirits of Christmas: Past, Present and Future. The spirit of Christmas Past showed Scrooge's memory how he gradually changed from a good-natured boy to that kind of man. It was 'time' that washed his kindness away and froze his heart into the block solid of ice. However, I could see his cold heart had slowly melted during the visit of three spirits.

This story made me think about when I was young, questioning myself if I have forgotten something important on the path of growing up. Along with this, it is beautifully written; it attracted me since the opening, bringing me to other Dickens' works.

This is one of my favorite character descriptions:

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.