interesting but made my brain hurt - multiple views of the universe, bubble universes, linear models of the universe, expansion, true infinity, it was both mind expanding (if infinity is real, then there are infinite universes, if the number of particles is finite and n then there must be n+1 universes  and therefore there must be duplicates. If there are dumplicartes then they are identical in all respects therefore must be more than 1 of you. This reminds me of what I thought infinity meant when I was a kid. 

This was like the book of the metre but simpler. A survey of all the units and kinds of measurement. Easy to read, and a coffee table chapter length.

This was a good one - the lives of the mathematicians, including all the good stories like Galois.

This was a slightly sad book; Erwin has become part of popular culture with the cat (which gets barely a mention in here).

Obviously anyone who has a lifetime of work in a complex field that few people can honestly hope to understand or offer comment on, is going to be hard to do justice to. The biographer does a good job of linking Erwin's personal, spiritual and professional lives which prevents the book becoming too dry, but it's not an easy read whne the equations come out. I couldn't follow the eigenvector formulae and didn't try to , as it's far too complex for me. I was happy to see the development of ideas and the relationships with Neils Bohr, Paul Dirac, Albert Einstein etc and the way ES explored the field he was interested in, drew together the thoughts of collaborators, and presented these new ideas in ways that cemented understanding. He was, as well as a clever thinker, a clear explainer, which is at least as important.

In his personal life, he had some unusual relationships that were reported honestly  but which were a little uncomfortable, but in the context of the 1920s and 30s perhaps made sense. His marriage and his children and lovers made for some complexity in his life, and all this against the backdrop of the rise of Nazism in Austria and Germany mean one shouldn't be too quick to judge. The letter he wrote to excuse himself for attitudes and behaviour early in 1939(?) was a complication that made it difficult for him to work or indeed to escape cleanly from Europe - and his own rejection of work in the US because of prohibition is with hindsight a poor one. He could have been with Einstein at Princeton but instead lived out the war in Ireland - not that that was a disaster, but it could have been different.

The book was dense and readable, for a serious biography of a theoretical physicist. It took me a while, but I enjoyed it.The thought part refers to his interest in Vedantic (?) Eastern philosophy and his ideas around self and spirituality that seem to have gone alongside his ideas on casuality. He doesn't seem to have been a crackpot, just someone for whom normal religion didn't fit, but the Eastern ideas on self and consciousness had a bit more - refer to 'The Tao of Physics' for more on this. I've read and enjoyed a few books along these lines so tend to appreciate these ideas where I might have otherwise rejected them -the idea that the universe and our perceptions of it are not as straightforward as science might suggest is appealing, and the ideas around quantum physics and uncertainty link into this quite well.

It felt like a grown up task, to read this, and yet it was a 'good' book to read. The last chapter felt like a reconciliation between Erwin and Anny, whether it was or not, I think the biographer felt sympathy. As did I.

Whoops, thought this would be a bit different - Lord Ashcroft is a fine person, and has helped us recover the lost medals stolen from Waiouru if I remember correctly, so good for him. He spends his money collecting and preserving medals and telling the stories attached to them, and this book is one of a series. It lists the recipients, in chronological order, and the circumstances around their award. It's naturally sad as many of the people commemorated died as part of the action for which they medal was awarded - but not all, so there were some who were alive to comment. The tales of derring do are fine, although they become a bit samey as the service history is listed - only a few truly stand out. The writing is good enough, if a bit 'boys own' and breathless, I think it's just that any war history becomes a bit overwhelming after enough examples are listed.

Yeah, I must stop reading these collections of newspaper columns collected together and published as books. They are dull, unconnected, annoying for being out of context with the times. And really exist purely to cash in on the Top Gear thing. Given that I have several of Clarkson's and haven't finished one because it got boring, this is the same. It'd be different if they were actual books, but these spliced together things are crap. Sorry.

A few ebooks - actually audiobooks - to add to the list - the first three in the Alvin Maker cycle by good old Orson Scott Card. On loan from the library, played through Overdrive on the iphone, through the car bluetooth connection. Yay tech. It works pretty well except for a week where I got my settings confused and it tried to play music instead, so I just listened to the phone speaker in the cupholder. Somehow I got the settings right again accidentally so we're all good again.

The books needed a good edit - they're preachy, with long sections on slavery, religion, the colonialism of the US, the natural link of the Red man to nature...this I think ends iup a 6 book cycle but I wonder whether it might have been brought down a bit. Orson talked at the end of book 12 and explained how it grew, so at least he understands...

Good tales; I always liked the books (I read Prentice Alvin or possibly Journeyman years ago) and they've been good company in the car. The magic is fun ,with the hexes and knacks, and the language of frontier America is trying for a Mark Twain but obviously doesn't quite have the gravitas or humour. Perhaps that's why it doesn't quite get there - the preachiness isn't as plain entertaining as some good ol' tale tellin - although he plays with language it can be self conscious - harder to spot in an audio book in some ways, more natural in others. The alternating narrators for different story threads is good, keeps it clear who is the central character, but there are times I want it to huirry the hell up as i only have so many minutes a day I can listen, and when he goes off on another rant I know it'll be ages before I find out what happens next. At least I do care.

Now here's another maths book. Mr Aczel wrote 'Fermat's Last Theorem' so he knows his stuff. This is mainly a recap of we known stories, but there is some new material (mostly on Bourbaki and Grothendieck http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2014/11/20/reclusive-mathematician-passes-away)

This was good, worth a re-read some time, lots of interestiing tales. Given that I know about Galois and Bernouilli and Fibonacci, thier treatment seemed a bit light compared with some, but then there were others who were very well covered. Overall a knowledgeable work well told.

Steampunk, McScience and Rumpole

Well you can tell I'd pick this one up - anything with William Gibson on it is ok by me. Unfortunately it's not. It is the defining Steampunk novel, and the alternate history, non-electronic Victorian world (Albertian, really, I suppose) is interesting. The Stink is a pivotal event, where London is engulfed by smog. Captain Swing is here and I wonder whether Terry Pratchett was referencing him in Captain Swing of the Cable Street Peculiars - have to look that one up. The book has some good bits, and some that make no sense. It chops and changes and seems to end at least three times. I lost my way and lost interest nad wonldn't read again unless I needed to show evidence for Steampunk somehow. Disappointed as I was hoping for some of the writing the Gibson does so well, and I don't think it's there in the way Neuromancer or Burning Chrome had it. SO the Gibson contribution? Conceptual perhaps.

Yeah, of Britain. OK so it's a celebration of British scientists and a tie in with a TV series, so lots of quotes from Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking and Robert Winston and James Dyson - all good stuff, presented in logical and clear chapters with enough science and intrigue to make a good story, and  still be worth reading. Two of the people celebrated were from New Zealand, Ernest Rutherford from Nelson and Maurice Wilkins, from Pongaroa (coworker with Rosalind Franklin).

This one had Pink Floyd running around in my head - 'hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way'.

One of those books which stays in your head even though it's quiet and restrained, but it leaves you with unresolved issues and questions - did he adopt the boy, even though they turn out not to be related? Where did the mother go? Is Brenda  interested? I don't know enough about Chekov to get the references but I assume there is a conscious attempt to show the bleak, mundane  part of life on the South Coast while I suppose trying to be as good as. It's a mystery/thriller which is worth a read even after you know the events and who did what, as those things matter less than the conversations. A lot of the characters are sketched, and the novel is economical as a result, and could have been padded out a lot more. Glad it wasn't. The characters are caricatures, which is why I think it'll live on in my imagination. The lawyers are in particular, which I guess is the Rumpole coming through. I picked the book because I like Mortimer's Rumpole, but forgot about him while I read it, and only reminded myself later. It's ok, a quick read, a diversion. Not literature - thank goodness.

Mixed Bag here

These books all come from the Napier library. I've been trying to work my way through them despite having had a nasty dose of man flu, and a lot of distractions . They've been good to settle down with and clear my head, but I have to admit that I've not managed to process a lot of the higher science as it is frankly, beyond what I need to know and beyond the casual reader. But that's fine.

First up is the novel - I've described Ender and Orson Scott Card before and nothing has changed. This is the third novel I've read, and is chronologically sensible, although this was written second and the other one I read takes place before it but was written long after, if you follow. Card uses FTL travel to allow his characters to observe and participate in interstellar politics and does so cleverly - it's good scifi. I like that. The planet concerned here is populated by Portuguese immigrants so has language and religion that reflect this. I found this less engaging, but it sets up some conversations about free will, colonialism, and I suppose there is a reflection of the experience of the inhabitants of South America who were overwhelmed by the Europeans in the 15thC.

In the end the drama concerns the discovery of strange life forms, unexpected biology, and potentially a plague that could cause the people on planet to be quarantined there. Ender solves everyone's problems and plans to settle down, so this won't be a problem for him. It ends better than I feared, as it was a bit of a grind again getting through the middle of the book and all the handwringing. I think there are many more books in the series nad I might check a precis before  I commit to more as they aren't brain off restful like my thrillers, nor really good like an Ursula Le Guin fantasy or a CJ Cherryh space story (don't start me on her cat or unicorn series - gaah)

This one was picked because it had Bill Bryson on the cover. I will read anything he's in, and his Short History of Nearly Everything is a classic of its kind. This is a survey of the history of the Royal Society from Newton on, each chapter written by a person of interest who has a perspective that's relevant to the time and topic they've chosen. This makes it interesting, but somewhat disconnected, and it was worthy without being quite the book I was expecting. Good stuff in it.

This was great - Alex follows up his previous Alex in Numberland with this and I enjoyed it even more - the storytelling and the weaving of maths and probability into an interesting narrative. A lot of these maths books have, obviously, the same basic content so it becomes a challenge to tell stories in a new way and to link the ideas to relevant concepts. Alex is my new favourite - from John Gribben and Ian Stewart, I'll read anything he publishes. Might need to google him and find a website.

OK another novel - and Neil is a favourite because of the Pratchett link. I enjoyed Anansi Boys before, and got this out at the same time. It's magical realism again, and has a scary hiver and some interesting supernatural people and a boy who falls into a battle between them. It would make a good horror film, it's tense and scary and has some grue, but is well told. The book includes interesting extras at the end - deleted excerpts, discussion questions (or was that Anansi Boys not this?) anyway worth the time and will leave me with longtime mental pictures of the characters.

Here we go, Ian Stewart, he of the Discworld science books, leads me down the story from inventing counting and basic number theory through all sorts of good things - until I suddenly found I was completely lost. The point where the P/NP problem appears as a life raft means you're well out from the beach. Again, enjoyed, saw some familiar material, feel smarter.

Just starting this but put the picture up - will let you know. The life of Galileo Galilei. I enjoyed 'Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel, and I have A More Perfect Heaven which I think I've written about and if not, I will. So this fits in with them.

I'm a collector/hoarder - and as a Pratchett fan I want everything he wrote, but am also put off by the spin off publishers who are wringing the last drops of cash out of us. So finding the library has these saves me dropping large amounts of cash on something I won't re-read. And that's about right for this. Nicely imagined, obviously dropped into Raising Steam the way Where's My Cow was in Thud, it's a coffeetable book and of limited value. Some nice bits, like pig boring, which shows up in The Shepherd's Crown later, and maps, but in the end doesn't add much to the work in my opinion.

This is book seven I think, and continues the theme where Milton tries to escape his past, find a way forward sober, and help people he finds along the way. The consequences of his work in New Orleans follow him to the ends of the earth, and he has to use all his guile and strength to survive Avi Bachman's revenge. Help from a few friends, a new environment in the Southern Hemisphere and Asia, and a pretty well written story with no major plot holes that I could see (beyond the usual suspension of disbelief in a thriller with global assassins supported by the Mossad, etc).  It's a good extension of the series and certainly keeps the pot boiling without feeling like a potboiler. I've complained before about handwringing and it's true that in an early book it felt like we were being 

pounded by the AA message and justifications to explain Milton's motivations. He has to keep it going but it feels consistent now and perhaps intrudes less into the story. Well worth the eprice.

Sad sad sad to read 'The Last Discworld Novel'. Tying the witches books more tightly to Tiffany Aching, this story feels a bit like the 'Apples' short story with Granny. It obviously links to Lords and Ladies, and Raising Steam. It's not complete, and the afterword acknowledges this . It was written in parts, and you could perhaps work out which parts were written when TP was better, and which were 'anticipating your instructions'. It's not fair to judge it as a complete Discworld novel knowing this, and for sure it lacks the magic of language and 'surprise' that we are so used to.

Others found it a magnificent sign off and found references I didn't  - I often miss things that are wildly obvious to others. I just figured Mrs Earwig = Mrs Ah-wij was a Hyacinth Bouquet joke, then just got the 'a witch' joke now. Headslap.

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/shepherds-crown-terry-pratchett-review/

I'm a collector and a hoarder and I paid full price on release as I always have. Although nowdays it's for the ebook. Recommended, but don't start with it.

5 Ways to Carry a Goat

The title was what won me on this one - any goat is ok by me, and when it said on the blurb ' the tale of a blogger who travelled the world, sleeping on couches offered by his readers' I figured it'd be worth a read. It was - it started slowly with Korea and Ben admitted that there really wasn't much insight available crashing with Aussie expats, in expat bars, drinking Australian beer. It got better, nad Ben admitted some edginess when he met some of the hosts and wondered about their lives and motivations beyond the obvious. He acknowledged that the single women who asked him to stay left him with some unresolved questions about what, really, he was getting himself into - -or I suppose, what they were. I'm glad he addressed it as it is always a part of the reader's awareness and we do wonder what is going on behind the scenes. Later in the book he points out that this early concern disappeared completely after the nth visit. Ethiopia nad Bangladesh were interesting and unlike any picture of third world life I'd run across before. The boys hoping for a sponsor left me moved, and I respect Ben's admission that he felt it, but didn't act on it - the level of selfawareness and honesty was good.
As the travels went on things got bot more and less interesting. The modern European cities - were more and more about the people. The feeling of homesickness by Canada was palpable, so again I respect Ben's honesty. It would have been tempting to rewrite things to make Ben superman and superfunny. I'm glad he didn't, it was a fun read and it reminded me of my own travel stories - didn't go up Everest, but did go to interesting places and pushed my own comfort zone.
And I did go to the website and look at the pictures from the trip - a good idea from a publishing point of view as plates presumably are expensive...

It turns out the EVE universe is a big online thing which I haven't checked out. It feels reading the book that there is a backstory, and it felt as though through the middle of the book that perhaps it had had some significant editing and some of the edges hadn't been joined up completely, but that could have been me. I'll have a look for others in the series, in the end it's a bit like the big ebook Space Opera stories, a bit overblown but a story about people rather than spacetech. Not as grand as Ian M Banks or as aggressive as Peter Hamilton...

This was great - myth, comedy, farce, classic Gaiman if there is such a thing, along with deleted chapters, comments from the author and the whole nine yards. Read it fast and enjoyed the whole thing. Magical realism? I guess so. The writing is fun, and the character development where Fat Charlie morphs into the self he ought to have been (but wasn't possibly because of the way the cool part of him was split away when he was young by the Voodoo aunty)reminds me of the character development in The Shipping News where Quoyle becomes part of the community and his growth is reflected in the prose and text.

I'll read Neil often - he's got the chops afterall. Did I review Stardust here? Read that earlier this year. It was good too, in the way The Princess Bride is.

I'd read the sequel of course, about Kit and Ossie when they were in Malta. This book sets up the Battle of France and has some great flying and fighting sequences. It also has Hannah and Bebe and frankly their section went on about twice as long as I think it should have. The book is primarily a war story and the other thread is relevant but I was bored in the end. It's brutal and pulls no punches in the war and fighting scenes and moves as fast as you'd expect, so the slow pace of the contrasting story arc feels like it takes forever.. Good to complete the set but will skim the dull capters if I re-read.

Another good maths book, follows on from the Alex in Numberland with deeper exploration of some good maths ideas and concepts. Alex writes well and clearly and explains concepts well, diving into appendices if the derivations look like they'll detract from the story. Good for a repeat read. Great stories about the usual topics, plus the Game of Life. Some good stuff on imaginary numbers too - that was a very good chapter for me.

 The pictures are out of order, but this is the book I read first - and really enjoyed. As above, Alex writes clearly and well, keeps you interested, and tells the good stories about number theory and history with the kind of storytelling I used to do. Very enjoyable and would dip in again to remind me. Certainly would read any other books by Alex.

Hey ho, another ebook series. I got into them, and ended up with three. Will probably carry on as the books aren't bad, although the 'enforcer' aspect of Jack's life gets increasingly taken over by the rakoshi monsters and the supernatural. And it's not what I usually read, so I'm struggling to decide. Jack is a good enigmatic and reasonably well drawn character, although he seems to go through the same issues with his Dad, his girlfriend and her daughter. He's a loner in the Reacher mould, and a fixer, so I guess I was expecting a Reacher type story. In many ways they are, but the supernatural does set it apart. Read the first one, and decide.

Whether I want to dig into the parallel 'Adversary' series I can't say...but if I do looking for a new series, I would be doing ok, the author is ok by me.

Short Fat Chick to Marathon Codebreaker

A funny couple this week
Kerre Woodham/McIvor's

 

for light reading, and by another New Zealand author, Jack Copeland, the story of Alan Turing which I expected to be a bit drier.

So it turns out that Turing was a runner, and a fast one, so there is an unexpected link between these two books. And Prof Copeland is a professor in Canterbury and is a prolific writer on Turing and his work and history. 

Kerre writes like she speaks but tells an entertaining story that is inspirational, that doesn't assume you know who she is (but does refer to times and people that have had a brief flash of fame but are no longer in the limelight. Someone Holmes, for example). The book is in two halves - training for the first marathon, the aftermath, and then training for and completing the New York marathon. She describes herself as a type A personality blond, and perhaps milks this to cover a few sins  - 'of course I haven't finished the book, darling, I'm blond' but is honest and self aware enough to come across as real and I liked that well enough (I think we ran into her at Paradiso many years ago in what she described as her bad years). I liked her description of the piss fairy - the one that says 'a friend at the door? Open a bottle, finish the creme de menthe, send the kids out for McDonalds, the piss fairy's in the house'. I could identify with that. I have my own relationship with that fairy.

The book has a hint of 'written in a weekend after a lot of nagging by a desperate publisher' about it and the two halves suggest the publisher was unhappy about the length of it - that and all the 'my marathon story' bits by the other people who were there - but that doesn't detract from the value of the story or the book - a decent read. If I'd read it two years ago, maybe I'd have passed, but having become a runner, it was relevant enough to hold my attention and have me nodding at some of the stories. And a bit in awe of her times too...baggage.

The Turing story is also a book of two halves. A biography and tale of cryptography and espionage - excellent. The story of post war computer development, interesting. A comment on the mysterious death - a personal opinion without a lot of exposition - maybe because records were destroyed. The british PM's apology was mentioned but some further discussion on this might have been useful. Overall, readable, interesting, I would read more by this author - except that all his other books also appear to be about Turing or Colossus. Will pursue that...

PS Turing attempted to qualify for the Olympics and was fast enough but injured himself. FAST...

George Carlin, Robert Harris and Dava Sobel - strange bedfellows

This book took me from 2008 to 2015 to finish. Seriously. I kept losing it, reading a bit, losing it again...I wonder whether the red and yellow helped me to lose it more effectively?
So it's a book of random 'stand up' observations. One person called him 'a foul mouthed Jerry Seinfeld'. I just found it offensive and unfunny. I don't know George's work and fully accept he may be hilarious live, but as a book, not for me. I Googled him - he was a hippy VW campervan in Cars.
hmmm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Carlin

WAIT he was Rufus in Bill and Ted! He was a counter culture genius!
He was a guest on Welcome Back Kotter in 1978!


Still didn't enjoy the book though. And that's from someone who has read Tim Allen, Dave Barry and Bill Cosby books which are effectively exactly the same book, possibly with less swearing.

The Roman era murder mystery space is owned by Lindsey Davis  - Google inauthor:"Lindsey Davis". In the same way Patricia Cornwall owns the steamy Southern states' forensic pathology. So I had both high expectations, but also conflicted feelings, since Mr Harris has written other books that are somewhat controversial - Enigma and Fatherland - but a quick bit of research suggests (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harris_(novelist)) that if you like the historical fiction then his Cicero trilogy would be worth a look.

Pompeii is a good yarn; set in AD79 over the days of the eruption of Vesuvius. It is interesting - the engineering of the aqueducts puts a new spin on the genre and perhaps allows him to explore parts of life in Campania  that are fresh, where much of the excavated life of Herculaneum and Pompeii are so well reported as to be a bit ho hum. It's not over detailed - not so much as to put you off the story - in this he's better than Umberto Eco who forgets the story as he wombles off into exposition or philosophy. And the drama is very good. The secondary characters are a bit thin, but that means the book is a manageable length. Recommended.

I like Ms Sobel - Longitude, Galileo's Daughter, and now this. It's a little odd - a play within the book that uses real letters and quotations to imagine the way Rheticus persuades Copernicus to publish his ideas. If you like the Tudor era nad the emergence of scientific thought from religious dogma, then this is for you. It fits with my interest in maths, science, and social history - the Lutherans and Catholics are battling throughout - but it sometimes isn't absolutely clear where fact adn fiction are blended. If you want  to understand the times, it's great. As a reference work, perhaps not. But for my needs, it works well and provides an accessible insight that allows further study of areas that you pick up on, without the dry research to get to it. Or something.

Deep, shallow, Deep

It's been a while - got a bit bogged down with a new job and the school holidays - I've been reading though, just not writing about it.
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
A book I wanted to read, after knowing of the movie and having read bits of Eco previously, I was delighted to pick this book up. I'd been to Kloster Eberbach where apparently scenes were filmed in the old cellar so felt a connection In the end, I didn't really enjoy it until well into the tale. I've read three of four Eco books now and all of them are turgid, rambling, and while scholarly and perhaps written beautifully (I don't know that I can judge that when reading a translation), they are tiresome to read and I find myself being bored by the long elliptical passages. Perhaps I've become base and a Philistine and seeking action and a story arc that engages me, but I found myself failing to care about the protagonists, couldn't be bothered keeping up with the long exposition about various sins, sinners and scandals in the church, and even the two most significant passages of descriptive prose, the boys discovery of the carved doorway in the church, and it's allegorical features, and then the dream sequence where he sees a vision of carnality, which are so important to the book, I skimmed as being just too dense and too much for me.
My preference was the action sequences in the kitchen, stables and library, and the crisis that ends the book. So I'm shallow

I read this "Eco’s gargantuan and complex novel about a murder mystery involving a monastery and a series of clues hidden within their texts is entertaining if not thought-provoking. Influenced by Roland Barthes, Jorge Luis Borges and other enigmatic 20th century figures, the novel is a love letter to the shared process of interpretation that brings together communities and their readers." just now. 

To be honest, the clues were never of interest - the novel doesn't present as a murder mystery for the reader to solve. The writer has spent too much time on religious navel gazing nad because of it what could have been an interesting story set in a fascinating environment became turgid and unpleasant. So - did not like. I respect the scholarship and the book is entertaining, but can't decide what it is.

War - Remington Kane

This is another in the long list of these books - I read and reviewed The Life and Death of Cody Parker earlier and there isn't much to add. More violent fantasy revenge from our hitman protagonist. I'm hooked into the series nad they are readable for those late night don't want to think but need a book times but I don't think I need to spend much time here on it.

The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
Another book of the movie and another one widely praised - this one I did enjoy. Not a lot of action, no, but a complex tale with mystery and history intertwined. Plus a vague memory of Kristen Scott Thomas in the movie kept me interested in this book. A good tale reminiscent of Graham Green in its morality and tone. Worth a read.

The funny thing is that on looking for the book cover online I spotted on Goodreads that this polarised a lot of people, many of whom hated it for being all the vague, slow moving, 'this is like having gossamer draped over your face and then removed' complaints that it's 'too poetic'. I agree it's slow and nobody seems to do anything much, but hey, they're deeply broken by years of war, so ok. Anyway someone else wrote 'This book is a slow moving dream-- like a great, surrounding poem. The language is unbelievably sensual and the story is like nothing you'll ever read. It is thick with emotion and description. Although somewhat laborious at parts, it's altogether disassembling (to quote the author). It takes you into the raw bleeding heart of Almasy and never lets go. It made me want to die....and then be re-born and read it again. I could not ever express how much I love love love this book.'

So there you go. I used to read a lot of this sort of thing when I was exploring more, and perhaps trying to be seen reading interesting books, by interesting women. 

 Hey ho, more later.

End Game and Ice Ages

4 July 2015

Ender's Game: Orson Scott Card

I saw parts of the movie before I read this - to be honest, I fell asleep several times but that is probably more to do with my tendency to drink wine and sit at the computer watching movies, than to do with the movie itself. So when I spotted the book in theTeen section at the local library I grabbed it so I could do it justice. I had Card flagged for a bit of reading since I knew some of his other work - particularly the Maker books focussing on Alvin - I own a couple of those and was struggling to get into them again - plus I had listened to an audiobook of The Lost Gate which I quite enjoyed, and my kids enjoyed. I'd listened to it in pieces while cycling to work, the kids had heard half of it while we drove to see my parents on holiday last Summer, and are keen to hear the rest. Plus Andrew (13) watched the movie with his girlfriend a few weeks back and rated it highly. Anyway, with all of this, Ender Wiggin's story was high profile and so here we are.

First a note - when I listened to The Lost Gate I really liked the story telling and the way it blended myth, magic and science fiction/fantasy, taking familiar elements from eg Norse myth and blending them with modern ideas. I looked out for the follow up novels, and did a bit of research on Mr Card. In some ways I wish that I had not, as I then found that what I learned about the author coloured my understanding and enjoyment of the stories, and I'm not sure that that is entirely fair - at least from a narrative point of view. Of course a person's background and beliefs are relevant to their work - you can't read about the Mitford family and ignore their politics, and I can't watch a Tom Cruise film without being reminded that his association with Scientology means I wouldn't be comfortable having a drink with him. Or he with me. So it is with Mr Card - a nagging feeling that we would struggle to take one another seriously. Saying that, I've grown over time and would hate to be judged by things I might have said or done or published 20 plus years ago, so let's set my doubts aside and think that we might get on ok over a drink if we met today.

Anyway, Ender's Game is an early novel in his ouvre, developed from a short story, and as such deserves both reduced scrutiny, and yet, examination as evidence of emergent or developing themes. So we have a youth who has powers beyond those of his superiors, and his peers. Ender isn't superhuman, but he is remarkable - a product of genetic and behavioural optimisation, observed by shadowy and manipulative overseers from a military (space navy) bloc who have identified him as the best combination of ability and temperament yet, having observed and rejected his warlike older brother and his empathetic but not aggressive sister. 

Ender is taken from Earth to an orbital training station where young boys and girls like him are trained in war games (particularly, tactics and strategy as learned in mock combat in zero-gravity between troops of youths with, effectively, stun guns). Ender displays the ability and ruthlessness the Navy needs in a leader, so he is put through an accelerate program to hone him into an increasingly able leader of men, and to develop a core group of children who will follow his orders and his lead, while using their own initiative and talent to execute his battle plans as well as they can.

The narrative follows his development, and his struggle with the knowledge that his childhood and  his humanity is being sacrificed to a higher goal - victory over the buggers. The enemy race took a bit of getting used to - not capitalised, and only referred to as 'the buggers', this took some adaptation on my part since at least in New Zealand slang, the buggers is a throw away term for 'them', and so the term didn't automatically mean much to me. 

After a while I formed a picture in my head of an alien lifeform something like the insectile one in 'Starship Troopers', which helped.

So, I won't spoil this one, it's worth reading for yourself, but the book runs on into at least a five part series so you can predict that Ender has an ongoing future in the universe created. The combat is the least interesting part of the climax of the novel - which doesn't mean it is poorly done, it's just that there is a lot else going on around it. The science fiction (relativistic travel, orbital habitats, colony ships) is described in just enough detail to allow you to accept it and move on, without needing details of how anything is achieved - fair technique I think - and in the end it's a book about people, relationships, power and obligation to a greater cause. None of these things is out of place in a novel aimed at - well, at whom? Ender begins the novel at 6 - but this isn't a novel for 6-10 year olds. He is 11 at the end - my 11 year old will enjoy it. But he will find some of the metaphysical discussion tedious, I imagine. I found a lot of this side hard to swallow - that a child prodigy could, at 6 (or 8) make the leap into very adult patterns of behaviour and interaction with others. It reminds me of books written by men with female protagonists when there is a gap between what I read and what I believe. I guess I just didn't think that Card was really writing with any knowledge of a 6 year old, even allowing for the prodigy.

So, given that I've read some later work, is this an artefact of his early work that changes as he develops as a writer? Well, yes, in the case of Danny in The Lost Gate - I think Danny is a well-imagined teen. I had my issues with parts of that story too, but not with the characterisation of the main character, more with the secondary characters.

In Ender I saw an idea looking for a story to tell it. And the last chapter(s) of the book feel quite different to the first ones. The Speaker for the Dead section is a really interesting idea and I see there are novels with that title coming up, so I'll have to read ahead and see what I think - is Card developing ideas and his skills as a writer, or is Card clumsy and didactic with an L Ron Hubbard like tendency to preach and flog the same idea over and again, knowing that the books will keep selling? I'm keeping an open mind - but the lingering feeling I had was the sorrow that Ender felt at what he had done under the direction of his superiors, and his acceptance that it was nevertheless soemthing that had to be done, and that only he could have done. So a story of destiny and doom - and in this, the novel achieves heights that the characterisation and dialogue do not.

He Knew He Was Right - The Irrepressible Life of James Lovelock: John and Mary Gribben

I picked this book up because of the Gribbens (mentioned in the Drunkard's Walk review) who write well on scientific topics, with enough rigour to be satisfying but with clear enough language to be entertaining and not didactic.

I'm a child of the 1980s, so the sections of this book on the period from 1982-1988 when the Gaia hypothesis became a theory of Earth Systems Science, were highly charged for me and reminded me of my late teen years, when I was angry with the French (for nuclear testing). In those days the hole in the ozone layer which was only of academic interest to most of the population was of direct relevance to me and my peers here in New Zealand who burned and peeled and learned to hide from the sun because the intense UV that struck the earth here was so much stronger than in other parts of the world.

Many people my age will talk about global warming and climate change and the retreat of the glaciers, and maybe, if they have read a bit more, of the change in atmospheric gases trapped in ice core samples over time, and with any luck they'll know about the Carbon cycle and maybe be able to discuss anthropogenic climate change and the success of the global efforts to reduce the emission of CFC and other ozone-depleting chemicals into the atmosphere.

 In this book about Mr Lovelock we learn about his career as a polymath who took an interest in all sorts of areas, and who specialised in finding applied, practical solutions to challenges such as measuring (or finding a way to measure) tiny amounts of particular gases in a sample. Early experimentation using war-surplus aircraft instruments (from which he scraped the numbers off the dials in order to collect small amounts of radium to use in his detectors) saw him develop machines which he developed into CFC detectors, but also, since they were sensitive to contamination by cigarette smoke, domestic smoke detectors.

He created machines for detecting evidence of life on other planets, both directly and remotely, and was involved with the Voyager and Mariner space programs (you'll have to read it to find out why he was involved with Voyager), but the thing for which he is most famous is in developing the idea that the Earth is an interlinked and connected series of mutually dependent ecosystems that work together to be, in effect, a living organism, analogous to a (gigantic) single cell. He called this 'The Gaia Hypothesis' and spent a long time developing this idea, and defending it from critics while also defending it from the emerging Green movement which, along with the fading Hippy one, seemed bent on taking the idea and twisting it to their own political or quasi-religious ends.

So if you liked Richard Dawkins' 'The Selfish Gene' you'll like this - possibly even more if you find Dawkins irritating (I blame the Facebook Dawkins as I have no interaction with the man himself).

I will finish this later tonight and let you know how it ends. So far, we still have a planet, but there are no guarantees that the next ice age isn't right around the corner...the good news - we may not survive it, but the planet will...

The Long Earth and a long intro

So to The Long Earth
To anyone who knows me, the Terry Pratchett link is the obvious one, but I suppose it is worth making it explicit. TP was a discovery from the mid  1980s - I mentioned just before in the Proulx review that my Mum a was a librarian and brought home books from the library that he thought I'd like. It got to the point where the library threw out books if nobody EXCEPT me had ever issued them  ---  it was a given that I had read them…
So I read Dark Side of the Sun and Strata and The Colour of Magic and so on at the same time as I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Stephen Donaldson Trilogy, a bunch of Sci fi like Isaac Azimov's Foundation series and the Dune books and  - before I disappear into an 80s reverie I need to move on. Let's just say that I was into TP before he was cool, OK hipsters?

I'm not sure that The Long Earth fits into my favorites yet. I just read through for the second or third time - and I haven't bought the sequels yet. Partly I dislike the modern 'buy today and preorder book two even though we haven't yet written it' thing, although I accept it's good business. Partly I worry that TP was at the end of his creative path and his illness meant that these books were ghost written, but we will get through that. Partly I think I read this as an ebook and ebooks are hard to judge in the same way I judge paper. As an academic I argue that ebooks/pdfs/online resources are about content and availability, and I rate them - but as a reader, I like books. But I'm coming around to ebooks via kindle, and I like the reduced clutter and the fact I can read on my phone, iPad, kindle, whatever, wherever. But does it lack gravitas? Do I believe that my possession of my ebook is as significant as that of a hardback? And do I judge the content differently because the reading experience is different?

Hmmm

More later, it's late..

A Tight Seal and an exercise in style

Busy week, some misery, some fun - and see my Facebook posts for the baby seal I met.
Meanwhile, literary criticism. 23-30 June 2015

OK this week we finished
The Long Earth - Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett
The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx
The Calculus diaries - Jennifer Ouellette

In reverse order

Jennifer Ouellette is probably very nice and certainly capable. Her publishers perhaps did her no favors with the cover and title of this book, but maybe I'm being picky since their intention is of course to attract those readers for whom calculus is anathema (ooo, look at the big word). Trouble is, it turns off anyone who isn't already a maths geek when they see the word 'calculus' in the title. The attempt to make it sexy with the byline 'A year discovering maths will help you lose weight, win in vegas and something zombie apocalypse' (there's a library sticker on the cover)
The rear says 'as amusing as it is enlightening' (ok, but a very Victorian comment). 'The tales …will captivate even the most maths-phobic' (lies). 'If, like me, you love the neatness of calculus…' (I do, but you lost me at 'like')
It goes on, and there is some positive info on the back, but really, we gave up  -unless you really like maths, you won't pick this up.

SO is it worth the read? Well, I think so. There is a slow and gentle introduction to what in America they call precalculus. The 'driving to Vegas' section is clear, although I found it dull - and I know she was trying so hard to make it interesting. Maybe it was the Prius - the most boring car ever - and the only way it becomes interesting is when you spend hours watching the fuel consumption display.
But don't let that stop you. JO introduces the derivative and the integral with insight and understanding and perhaps does this better than anyone I've read. She works hard to make this MEAN something, not just be an exercise in putting numbers into a formula. For that, she deserves credit for the whole book. And that credit is soon extended. It keep getting better, with real life examples, as alluded to on the cover, on house buying and the GFC, gambling, the design and construction of cathedrals, and so on. It is explained in language that my 13 year old can follow, but the maths is developed to a useful level.

I found it frustrating sometimes when concepts were introduced without the rigor that I expected, or were introduced but without context and evolution - some of the section on log and exponent explained that they were opposite and complementary, leaving me wanting the rest of the chapter. This is of course the problem with a book that aims to demystify a topic - we look to go deeper, but we aren't the target audience. The challenge for the author is to give the reader a comprehensible taste of the topic, and lead them into further reading, without losing the novice, or the expert, along the way.
This book walks that line well. Perhaps not perfectly, but the sins are of omission not commission. The book could go deeper, be longer, but then it would lose the simplicity and friendliness that it aimed for.
So then, why does it have such an awful cover and title? Hmmm, could just be me. Could be the publisher. Probably isn't the author.
note that the book I read doesn't have the funky roller coaster cover, but the messy looking one that reminded me of the 'Working Title' movies like Notting hill. Which perhaps means I'm not the intended reader [I like Hugh Grant OK, but maybe not in everything. You don't want to go Adam Sandler here…]




Anyway, that's how I felt. A re-read might smooth it out, but right now, I enjoyed it with annoyance, probably won't re-read. Back to the library for you…


Book 2 for the week - E Annie Proulx. I read this when it came out, (Mum was a librarian so when I went home during my University holidays in the mid 1990s she brought home stacks of books that she though I might like. She was usually right, but it put the pressure on me to get through them all)

E Annie Proulx is a pretty good writer. I know this because the tag line on the cover says 'winner of the Pulitzer prize for fiction 1994'
So I think I read this in 1995, probably in a hurry to give it back to Mum while I was visiting for a few days.

I didn't like it. I didn't like 'A Perfect Storm'* either. Actually there are a lot of books I've read partly because of their reputation, which I have disliked. Luckily, I am patient, read fast, and I'm a hoarder, so even the ones I didn't like get their chance to come through again (OK given the 5000 thing that we started off with on this blog, this may change).

So - when I read it through the first time, as a reader of Science Fiction and Fantasy primarily, I looked at the hints of magical realism in the book, and fixated on the grotesque. I found the characters repellent and the story to  be if not unbelievable, then implausible. 

Second time through (probably third, but I didn't track it) and I have enjoyed this a lot more. I'm sure Ms Proulx will be pleased to hear it. OK there are some issues that need addressed:

E Annie Proulx. I don't know what to call her. E? Annie? Proo or Prowlx or Prowl? It matters-  because if I don't know, I won't risk pronouncing it wrongly in a group. Disney got this, putting 'EEE-gor' and 'Rat - a - too -eee' on the cover of their cartoon dvds. Insulting to adults who might know the correct pronunciation, but targeted exactly correctly at the customer. So Ms E assumes that the reading public will go to the trouble of finding out. OK, most will - and of course your name is your name and I will do you the honor of finding out ---

[*another book Mum brought home and I read in a hurry - no other link to Ms P other than the sea….]

(It's 'Pru' and the E seems to be optional)

Anyway, magical realism? The book is WRITTEN, which is nice. I could see the rivets and bolts this time through. The symbols are clashed together (see what I did there) and the motifs of death and life and love and hope and despair are woven pretty tightly. The magic is in the use of language - you get flummoxed by the knots at the opening of each chapter, looking for the meaning, but within that is the sexuality of the women, the desperate longing of the men. The social commentary as developed through the articles in the newspapers. It's really good when you are aware of it; I suspect that my earlier readings were done by a younger person without insight, and perhaps rushed. This time through, older and I hope wiser, I see different things. Yes the symbolism of the knotted strings left at the house is left for the reader to explore, although the link between Agnis as an upholsterer and the old man as a knotter is interesting. Yes the slow blossoming of Quoyle as he finds usefulness and value in his life is mirrored by the story that shows Dennis and his family and their battle with the sea and drowning. The dark secrets of the Quoyles were more significant to me first time through; the darkness in the towns with the sexual abuse and alcoholism and despair resonated more this time.

The themes of escape to Florida contrast with the awareness that escape is temporary, that a Newfoundlander is always called home, and the underlying belief that leaving is always temporary as those who leave meet horrible ends is fascinating and deserves better exploration than I'm going to go into here - but doubtless others have explored this. For me the really interesting thing that I enjoyed a lot was the way Ms Proulx used language to chart the voyage of Quoyle from big chinned useless lump to valued member of the community. Her descriptive prose began the process, but she dropped that once the story got under way. The boat building metaphor is perhaps the pivotal one - after Quoyle nearly drowns when his boat sinks, he commissions another from Alvin Yark. Alvin is a relative of Wavey Prowse, which gives him significance - without that, we have no context - and his skills are rooted in time and tradition but the magical realism is invoked here again as he shapes timber into a boat frame. Quoyle undergoes a transformation as the boat takes shape and it becomes clear after the party when Nutbeem's boat is wrecked (sorry, spoilers all the way, but you probably already know this and even if you don't, the story is worth the read - like a Robertson Davies, it isn't the story, it's the language you read for) that Quoyle has made the transformation like an ugly duckling/caterpillar to butterfly. 

Quoyle shows this in several ways - the descriptive prose first - it stops with the defensive gestures, the attempts to make himself smaller and to hide his 'Quoyleness'. But the sentences go all Hemingway - read it and tell me I'm wrong. He goes native. Chopped, brief sentences, with a cadence and a rhythm that seemed alien when he moved into the community but now, he's one with them, he speaks like them, he has come home.

It's an elegant technique and having seen it, I am looking for it again. Well played, Ms Proulx - wish I'd thought of it first…

I read the end of the book in bed. Woke early, before the dawn. Laid a while. Read a chapter, then another. Felt the light break, and the new day rise over the house like fog flows up the harbor. Rising, still half asleep, I broke eggs into a bowl and looked to them, scrying the coming day while  gulls peel the wind from the blasted rocks. Turned eggs and bacon on the plate like curls of cedar from a plane. Outside the dog cried back to the lightening sky and whalebacks blistered the smooth water of the harbor and the sound of their breath was the sound of loss.

The Martian

I'm not the only one who liked 'The Martian' by Andy Weir. My friend Chris told me about it, so I downloaded it and read it on my phone that day. I liked it. My wife read it on her kindle. I gave the ipad to my 13 year old son and he read it (see, we're device and OS agnostic in our house)

Randall Munroe liked it (I assume - I guess just because he wrote this comic, doesn't mean HE liked it...)

But I bet he did. I'm on my third time through. It's good.

So you're stuck on Mars, you have a lot of resources but a lot of threats too. You have no way off the planet and it's four years before a rescue mission can get to you from Earth. Oh, and you have only a finite amount of food. Guess what? Not four years worth.

You should read it before the movie comes out

What Has Been Seen

read approx 19 June 2015
Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett

Published in 2009, fitting in the Ankh-Morpork series between Making Money and Raising Steam, this is a book that felt to me as though, like these, it was crossing the boundaries between Discworld and Roundworld rather too often. Like Going Postal and The Truth it was using an extended metaphor in Discworld and I felt, sometimes, that the escapist magic of earlier Discworld was giving way to a darker vision. In Thud, the vision was dark but the message was bright; in The Night Watch and The Fifth Elephant there was more darkness but a candle (a large, white candle) was held up against the darkness. But there was a nagging splinter, a thread that I didn't want pulled. In Thud it was the cubes of power and the implied equivalent of a Metro/Subway that Moist von Lipwig would doubtless be called to manage (but instead, steam power arrived). In Going Postal it was the Golem horses that upset the balance of the Discworld I love. It felt as though Discworld was going through rather more of an industrial revolution than I was entirely happy about - to the extent that on reading Dodger I became mentally confused about the world I was in in my mind.

So - UA is about football (the soccer kind) in as much as a Discworld book is about any one thing. Of course it's really about people, the way people treat each other, and about what it means to be an individual in a complex social setting. It uses the magical Discworld environment, and the accumulated 'world through a warped, and possibly slightly cracked, lens' background stories that it has built up, to examine the behaviour of people, human and otherwise, in various states of change.

It is a story about power and control and self determination, and about choice, and about chafing (although it missed the chance to make a joke about chafing dishes) and the consequences of  having just one drink too many -  whether a wheelbarrow of Winkles Old Peculiar or one or more glasses of sherry.

I think that Terry would have pointed to the Crab Bucket analogy as the clever creation in this novel, and it's a good one - though for me the scene when Juliet bakes a whole shift's worth of pies is the best of the night kitchen story arc. It's brief, it gets left a bit cold, but it says a lot about the seeking of worth which previously was all from Nutt's perspective.

I'm going to let you in on a secret here - I don't always get the references first time through. Sometimes I never do until someone points them out. So I got the 'My Fair Lady' references, but the Romeo and Juliet ones with the feuding families completely went over my head despite the obvious name. Terry tried to pack an awful lot into this book, in that sense. Nutt and his story is drawn from all sorts of places - the Uberwaldean ideas we saw in Raising Steam and The Fifth Elephant are enfolding all sorts of European/Transylvanian tales that link to the pagan ones we saw in Hogfather and Witches Abroad.

Better people than me have written about the Discworld books, and if you are reading this you either know the books enough to be able to quote them back to me, or you are about to -  either way you don't need me to explain them to you. Let me leave it by saying, in case you hadn't guessed, I love these books, I miss Terry and mourn his loss, and am just glad I have the books that have been part of my life since Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun that I brought home from the school library in1981.

If, as I said two posts ago, it's true we all read 5000 books in a lifetime, then there are books I have read and which therefore claim their place in my 5000, which I resent and wish I'd skipped. None of Terry's books will ever be like that. Most of them will be read and reread many times in my life and that's fine with me. I've read UA three or four times already, and I find more to enjoy, and different things to enjoy, each time. The complexity and familiarity work together to keep them fresh - and the disquiet I mentioned earlier about their creeping towards our world is settled when I think about the power of metaphor. 'Have I found worth?' asks Nutt. Yes, you have.

Pattern Recognition

I've been so busy reading that I lost track of the point of this log...until I returned 'The Drunkard's Walk' today and it reminded me that I'd intended to be good and keep this up to date. I also looked at the previous post and realised that absolutely nobody is likely to be interested in a huge block of text with no apparent point, so I'll be a bit more restrained and just keep it simple for a few.
So - Here is a book that ought not take too long to summarise
'The Life and Death of Cody Parker' by Remington Kane

Author 'Remington Kane' is following in the traditions of the pulp writers of the early 20th century; the Tanner novels are being written and released rapidly, are usually following a simple structure with a two-threaded narrative, and are gloriously addictive to read. They follow the exploits of 'Tanner', a lone wolf assassin who has a professional obsession with finishing the job no matter what, but who is being hunted by an equally obsessive ex FBI agent. The plots are pulp grade revenge fantasy stuff, there is an element of back story (including some revelations about the past of the main character) that keeps you reading the way you keep eating the popcorn. The action is fluent, moving through the plot arcs with good pace and a fair bit of violence. The books are cut down, without too much exposition or introspection by the characters, which makes them fast to read and relatively brief, but not unsatisfying for all that. The Tanner character isn't Jack Reacher, but there are elements of the genre here, and in the sense that Reacher is both Everyman and Superman, so is Tanner.

So - if you need a novel/novella to grab on the kindle for a flight/long wait/sleepless night, search up Kane on amazon and grab 'Inevitable I' for a few cents (OK, $3.99). In my opinion, the books improve, but you have to start at book one really...

OK that made me think back to a point made in the book I read before - it was made in a discussion about the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941

- that there were all sorts of clues and signs that, with hindsight, made it clear that the attack was coming. In fact, if you want to experience this in full, watch the classic movie on the subject (No, not the one with Ben Affleck, fun though it was), Tora Tora Tora

Now the point that was made in 'The Drunkard's Walk' was that hindsight enables us to create links between widely separated events because we have outside knowledge (as an observer from the future) that underlines their significance. The participants in the real time drama lack the knowledge or breadth of overview to make those links, and so it is missed at the time, lost in the noise of millions of competing and equally significant data points - until we select for significance.

So an author like Lee Child (or Remington Kane) can give a character like Tanner (or Reacher) great powers of observation and deduction, prescience and prowess simply by allowing them to have knowledge of events, or to see links, that we as reader may not have. It's the opposite of the horror genre, where we know in advance that the couple should stay away from the haunted house, that nobody there will help them to change their tyre, that there's something horrible behind the door. In this case the fascination lies not with the cleverness of the protagonist in anticipating the plot, but with the suspense as we wait to see just how the disembowelling will take place. I'm sure I ought to have used 'denouement' in there, but disembowelling just seemed to need to be there, so it can stay. Autocorrect doesn't like it, but hey, what are you gonna do?

The creation of links in this way is a great strength of our human brain, but the book pointed out that it has a tendency to find links even when there aren't any, and to obsessively seek to do so - our search for patterns can be dangerous as well as useful. It is reasonable to assume that our pattern recognition comes from a successful evolutionary trait where recognising a leopard in the long grass or up a tree was more useful than not recognising one, the false positive being less dangerous than the false negative. (This is why we need to use eg statistics to analyse for significance, or we would be forever running away from metaphorical leopards when we ought to be hollowing out gourds).

To conclude my thoughts on the Tanner novels in general, 'Cody' in particular, the fast pace of production of these books means that there are some typographical errors in them (particularly in the first, but I bet I couldn't find them again). The plot is pretty linear, with not a lot of set up for the action - it tends to build up, pay off, then find another action piece to build up. Thats why it's perfect for late night or airport reading, though, so no complaints here. No author wants to hear their book put me to sleep, but that's exactly what it did - every night until it was finished. Exactly what I bought it for.