Friends! Good morning! It is a Friday once again…and while a week ago was much more fun, as I was preparing to leave for Calgary and adventures with Robbie and Natasha (and yes it all was simply gorgeous!), today is still a good day. Let’s log some books that I knocked out during travel times last weekend, k?

5. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I’ve recently been convicted that I need to start reading Solzhenitsyn, one of the greatest literary and intellectual minds of the 20th century and surely the greatest to come out of the Soviet Union. This was his first novel, published in 1962 I believe? Depicting one day of a normal man in a prisoner work camp (part of the Soviet gulag), this book is both brutal and brilliant all at the same time. Took me a few days to read it and I couldn’t really put it down, it was so gripping (and horrifying). To know what man can do to fellow man is…chilling. This was a harrowing account of a moment-to-moment struggle for survival against the harshest odds, highlighted by the sheer routine nature of it all. This was just one day. There were many days before this one. There were many days after this one. And millions upon millions of prisoners were subjected to life in the gulags (years 1929-1953). I appreciate a book like this, especially seeing as it was written by a man who spent 8 years in the gulag himself – and so yes, he wrote from experience. But this book was just about an average man attempting to survive. An average man having an average day in a brutal labor camp in Siberia. You know. Very well worth the read and in my quest to discover more about this era of history, I will definitely be reading more Solzhenitsyn. There is indeed evil in this world.

6. A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke. And now for something a bit lighter! This was a brilliant little sci-fi novel. Published in 1961, this is truly a classic sci-fi work of the golden age. I need to start reading more Clarke! I loved this book because it posited a future in which man has a colony on the Moon…and that’s just perfectly normal! The plot of the book revolves around a “tourist bus” of sorts being sucked into a sea of dust on the face of the moon…and the struggle for survival by the crew and passengers of the bus while meanwhile the sturdy engineers from the colony attempt to mount a search/extract/rescue operation. This book was a thrill ride…just when you think things are all well and safe…guess again! And I of course loved all the detailed accounts of the engineers’ efforts to rescue the people. Plenty of delicious engineering details. The characters are sketched just enough for one to care about them, although they may come across a bit flat to modern sensibilities. But the sheer competence and intelligence of most of the main characters was a joy to experience. Heartily recommend, would read again. (And yes, I do need to read more by Clarke now)

Now I’m off. Have a brilliant Friday, dear friends.