Writing II: Blog Post 5

I finished "The Road" several days ago and I have to say I loved it. That might be a bad sign, considering it was a brutally dark and depressing book. But my own sociopathic tendencies aside, it really was a great book. It was the epitome of a gripping survival adventure and despite all the hardships and horror, the ending was somewhat hopeful. Either way, really epic story, and for once the movie of it actually followed the book (*cough *cough *hobbit *cough). Now I have started my new book, "The Heart of Everything That Is", which is a biography of a Native American Red Cloud, who led the Sioux and various other Indian people in the only winning war against the US. This book is actually really awesome, especially for a history work. If you have ever read a history textbook, you know how dry they can be, but this book is so in depth and well-flowing that it feels like a novel. Not to mention that it is just plain interesting. The authors, Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, do a great job of creating a scene, especially at the Indian gatherings and raids. It must have been incredibly difficult to track down all this information, and I can't imagine how long it took to verify everything in the book. The bibliography is about 10 pages long, so these guys must really love history. Aside from just being an interesting story, I find it fascinating since I am planning on majoring in history in college so this type of writing might be appealing to me, so getting an idea of how historians write is probably a good idea. One thing I have noticed in the book, and perhaps it helps to keep the reader entertained, is that although I am only on page 67, there have to have already been a dozen references to torture and graphic killings by the Sioux people. I understand that the Sioux people were warriors, and in Great Plains Indian culture torture killings were common (as stated in the book), but I feel like any book that needs to mention the removal of a man's reproductive organ and subsequent replacement in his mouth to cause suffocation more than twice may be pandering to the side of readers that love good old fashion violence and death. And lets be honest, almost everyone loves violence, human nature is naturally drawn to watching it. For real, I'd totally watch gladiator battles if we had them today, millions of people would. Anyways, so far my new book is also great, and I'm quite enjoying it.