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.