Marta Oulie, by Sigrid Undset

** spoiler alert ** This is Sigrid Undset's first novel, published when she was 24. The novel is written as a series of entries in a diary, which outline the thoughts and feelings of Marta Oulie, a woman in her thirties, the wife of Otto, a successful businessman and mother of four children, who allows herself to fall into an affair with Henrik, who is her cousin, her husband's best friend and business partner.

For such a young writer with no similar life experiences, Undset does a very convincing job outlining Marta's thoughts and feelings--her reminiscence of how she and her husband met, the happy early days of their marriage, her dissatisfaction with her role as wife and mother, the creeping (though undeserved) condescension in her attitude towards her husband, and her attraction towards the more sophisticated and educated Henrik. After she has her fourth child, (Henrik's), she comes to her senses and realizes how spoiled and selfish she has been, but her newfound appreciation for her family, husband, and comfortable middle class life comes too late. Otto's TB has been discovered to be terminal, and, like it or not, she's about to lose it all.

This early short novel is obviously not as complex as the historical series she is most famous for, like Kristin Lavransdatter, but it's very realistic and believable. Undset has already started to explore themes that appear in her later work: family relationships, sin, repentance, and redemption.

The Complete Guide to Fasting, by Dr. Jason Fung & Jimmy Moore

Excellent book that clearly explains the science behind why fasting works more efficiently and with fewer negative effects than calorie reduction and why it's particularly good for type 2 diabetic s and insulin resistant people. The book also gives practical guidelines on how to implement a fasting regimen in your life and what to expect while you're on it. I bought this because I want 2017 to be the year when I finally lose the weight and improve my health.

The Lady with the Little Dog, by Anton Chekhov

This is the first Chekhov story I've ever read. He has a spare style--not too much description, dialogue or psychological analysis. The details he does give about the characters and their interactions are suggestive enough so that you can get a really vivid sense of the personalities and what they're thinking out of what he does tell you. This story had an unresolved ending, so it came across as a "slice of life" type sketch rather than a complete story where you know exactly what happened to everyone.

The Judgment of the Nations, by Christopher Dawson

This book is my introduction to British historian Christopher Dawson, and I think it's brilliant. Definitely going to be reading more of his work. He finished this in 1942, so he was working on it when WW2 broke out and in those tense and depressing years leading up to it. His purpose in writing it was to offer some reasons why the countries of the West, whose culture and values were formed by Christianity and the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome ended up fighting two horribly self-destructive world wars. 

He discusses the tensions that began to develop between nations as their styles of government diverged (constitutional vs. autocratic monarchies, nation-states vs. multilingual multiethnic empires, fundamentally civilian vs. military states), and as Christianity splintered into multiple denominations. Differences in belief do cause differences in worldview, which have practical ramifications. He also expounds on the Enlightenment, the scientific materialist world view that came with it, the impact of the Industrial Revolution, and of the Socialist movements of all stripes that aspired to bring the rapidly growing economies under state control.

Eugénie Grandet, by Honoré de Balzac

This is a tragic story about a young lady living in a French town in the Loire region with her miserly father, patient long suffering mother and faithful servant.  Being of a rich family, she is courted by the sons of other well to do families in her town, when one day her handsome young cousin from Paris comes to live with them for a while. Which suitor succeeds in winning her heart, and will he win her hand as well?

  Balzac clearly meant the story to criticize the too avid pursuit of wealth, to the point where more precious things are sacrificed for its sake and where even the enjoyment of the wealth (presumably the main why reason one wants it) is forgotten in the desire to possess it.

Matryona's House and Other Stories, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

This collection includes 6 short stories and about a dozen prose poems, which are basically short sketches of a character or situation that illustrates an idea.  My three favorites among the short stories were <i>Matryona's House</i>, <i>The Right Hand</i>, and <i>An Incident at Krechetovka Station</i>.

<i>Matryona's House</i> is narrated by a schoolteacher who has just arrived to work in the school of a little rural town.  Looking around for lodgings, and preferring peace and quiet, he is directed to the house of a poor elderly widow named Matryona.  She is a simple peasant woman who has worked hard all her life, lives alone in an old-fashioned decrepit house, and over time, the schoolteacher comes to appreciate her qualities: reliability, endurance, common sense, generosity, loyalty, faith in God, and love of life in its many forms, from the lame cat she has adopted to the fig plants she cultivates in her home.  He comes to realize just how rare these qualities are after her death in an accident, when he learns more about her life from how her friends and relatives talk about her--often in ways that showed that they did not understand or appreciate her worth at all.

<i>The Right Hand</i> is a story told by a man who notices a homeless and obviously very sick old veteran being ignored by passersby on the street.  The veteran has traveled a long way in a weakened condition in the hopes of being admitted to a hospital in Tashkent.  The narrator is an ex-prisoner who has gotten in trouble in the past for counter-revolutionary activities, while the old veteran served with distinction as a Red revolutionary, and has the papers to prove it.  The veteran thinks his proof of loyal service to the Communist cause will help him get admitted for treatment in his time of need, but the joke is that the machine-like bureaucracy of the hospital treats both men in exactly the same way, regardless of past service, political views, or state of health: neither can get any service because the admissions office has stopped taking new patients for the day, and mere human considerations are not allowed to take precedence over that ironclad rule.

<i>An Incident at Krechetovka Station</i> is about an official at a busy railway station in wartime whose job it is to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible.  One day, a soldier who has somehow got left behind by his transport shows up at the station, and it is up to the official to decide whether or not he is who he says he is and what is to be done with him.  It's a story about the conditions of war, the bureaucracy involved in dealing with the complex logistics of moving massive amounts of people and cargo, and how easily an individual can fall through the cracks to either beat the system or be crushed by it.

Incident on Lake Geneva, by Stefan Zweig

As I see it, An Incident on Lake Geneva is a short story about the increasing incomprehensibility of the modern world, particularly during wartime, and how alien it has become to man’s nature.

 One day, during World War II, a fisherman on Lake Geneva picks up a nearly naked man floating about in the water on a homemade raft.  The man can’t speak any language that the fisherman knows, so when he gets to shore (causing a sensation because of the man’s unusual appearance) he takes the man to the local authorities and they find a hotel owner who can speak Russian, the only language the fugitive speaks.   It turns out the man is a Siberian peasant from the very beautiful, very isolated region of Lake Baikal.  He was conscripted into the Red Army, fought in the war, was taken prisoner, then escaped.  All he wants is to get home to his wife and children, so he has been slowly making his way back as best he can.  Because the war is still going on, the Swiss hotel owner and the authorities offer him lodging at a local inn, saying he can’t go back yet because the war is still on.  The man can’t seem to understand why he can’t do something so natural as to go home, and his anxiety over his family’s well-being and despair of ever seeing them again get the better of him.

It's a very short story, so the characters and plot are not as complex as in the other Zweig stories I've read, but it's a moving description of a situation that illustrates a larger truth.

Journey into the Past, by Stefan Zweig

Zweig again displays his talent for coming up with interesting situations, realistic characters, and psychological insight in this short story about a young man at the start of a promising career who falls in love with his boss's wife, and then is separated from her due to being transferred overseas for much longer than expected because of World War I.  Will they be able to pick up where they left off, or not? 

Tombeau de la Rouerie, par Michel Mohrt

Ce livre est à la fois une courte introduction à la vie d'Armand Tuffin, Marquis de la Rouerie, et une réflexion sur les parallèles entre sa vie et celle de l’auteur, Michel Mohrt, aussi Breton, soldat français pendant la 2eme guerre mondiale.  Le Marquis de la Rouerie n’est pas assez connu aux Etats-Unis pour son service dans l’armée de Washington.  C’etait dans les livres et les discours de l’historien et journaliste autrichien, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, que j’ai appris quelque chose de lui pour la premiere fois.   Le marquis était un homme qui aimait la liberté, et comme Edmund Burke, il reconnaissait que la révolution française a ete détourné par un mouvement qui n’avait rien à voir avec les idées libérales de la guerre d’indépendence américaine.  Avec le comte de Noyan, il fondait l’association bretonne pour sauvegarder les libertés de sa province, quelle association deviendrait plus tard la Chouannerie dont le but était de renverser le gouvernement révolutionnaire.

American Diplomacy, by George F. Kennan

This book consists of six Walgreen lectures Kennan gave in the 1950's about the major wars the U.S. participated in, including the Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II, and his observations about American foreign policy during that time.  Also included is the famous "Long Telegram," which he sent to the State Department during his service as an ambassador.  It is a concise explanation of the ideology of the Soviet Union, their motivations, and how best to deal with them--apparently given as the answer to the question of why the Soviets were becoming less and less cooperative after World War II.

One of the main ideas behind the book is the warning that moral considerations should not be relied upon too much when determining foreign policy or entering wars.  He favors the approach more common in the 19th century and earlier of pursuing national interests because it limits military engagements to the accomplishment of well defined goals, rather than the unconditional surrender and regime change that characterized 20th century wars.  He got a (figurative) black eye for this idea from Alexander Solzhenitsyn during the latter's 1978 Harvard Commencement Address.  While the narrow pursuit of national interest made sense during the 19th century, when there was a strong moral consensus among the nations, it may be inadequate when dealing with totalitarian regimes whose moral outlook (or lack of one) is very different from one's own and lies at the very root of the war.