At Home

Posted on January 21, 2012 by smellincoffee

At Home: A Short History of Private Life
© 2011 Bill Bryson
512 pages

How much history and how many laughs can you put under one roof? Take a tour of Bill Bryson’s old English home with him and find out.  At the outset of the book, Bryson shares a few experiences in and around his home which impressed upon him the fact that there’s a great deal of fascinating history bound up in the mundane environment we take most for granted; our houses. And so, he labors to tell the stories of his house — of all of houses, and of civilization in general.

A guided visit through his house, room, by room, frames a collection of essays covering the entire range of human activity and history. Some topics are directly connected to the room in question. For instance, when writing on the kitchen Bryson treats the reader to a history of salt and spice — after assuring us that nothing we touch today will have “more bloodshed, suffering, and woe […] than the innocuous twin pillars of your salt and pepper shaker.”  Other connections are more tenuous: while in the cellar, Bryson rambles cheerfully on about the materials used in homebuilding, and a journey into the garden merits a discussion on public parks. Each room inspires several different but connected sets of thoughts; the kitchen is also a place to discussion nutrition. While the Victorian period in America and England provides the setting of most of Bryson’s thoughts, they cover most of western history.

At Home is enormously entertaining, not just to serious-minded students of history who are honestly fascinating by brick-making and the tools of Neanderthals, but to those who enjoy the absurd and grotesque — history abounds in little stories that make modern audiences’ jaws drop in horror or disbelief, and Bryson is a gleeful sharer of those tales. If the content doesn’t make you laugh, Bryson’s dry wit in delivering these stories will.

Recommended to those who want some light reading that will provide laughs and sneak in a little history to boot.

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The Oceans

Posted on January 21, 2012 by smellincoffee

The Oceans
© 2000 Ellen J. Prager with Sylvia A. Earle
314 pages

Seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, constituting a vast and largely unknown world of its own — vitally important to ours, but scarcely explored and barely understood. Beneath the placid (but sometimes storm-tossed) surface lay valley with depths that have never been plumbed; volcanic mountains; great beasts whose size staggers the imagination, and creatures so bizarre that they could just as easily hail from another world. The Oceans is a brief but substantial introduction to this fascinating and vitally important element of our planet.

Life began in the oceans, albeit in very different waters from the ones we delight in today. Prager opens the book with a history of ‘evolution’s drama’, following the growth and divergence of life through th Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras, ending with our own Cenozoic. The oceans have been home to a marvelous variety of life throughout the ages, and the authors devote the rest of the book to understanding the current oceanic environment, examine its chemical, geologic, and biological aspects in turn. Even those of us who don’t live near a coast experience the ocean’s effects on our lives, through weather; a separate section covers hurricanes, monsoons, El Niño effects, sea level changes, and the increasing impact of global warming. Given how much of our  economies — indeed, planetary life itself — depends on the health of the seas, an understanding of them is crucial, especially for those in political and economic leadership. Unfortunately, humans — not known for being the most farsighted of creatures — have been steadily destroying that environment for decades. In “A Once-Bountiful Sea”,  the authors examine the kinds of damage being done, but offer some encouragement in the fact that some governments are taking the issue seriously, if only out of economic reality and not out of concern for the global environment. The final chapter looks to the future of oceanography, for what we know is dwarfed by what we don’t; only 95% of the ocean have been explored. The best is yet to come.

While the subject is fascinating by itself, and utterly relevant, Ellen Prager also proves to be an excellent guide through the oceans, not drowning the reader in details but still delivering depth. She proves talented at explaining fundamental processes in a lucid way — for instance, showing how waves worth.  She’s the author of several other books (Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime: the Ocean’s Oddest Creatures and Why They Matter;  Furious Earth: the Science and Nature of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis, among others), and I’ll definitely be looking into them in the future.

Related:

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The Misunderstood Jew

Posted on January 19, 2012 by smellincoffee

The Misunderstood Jew: the Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus
© 2007 Amy-Jill Levine
250 pages

 Amy-Jill Levine is a Jew for Jesus. No, not that kind of Jew — she’s happily Orthodox, thank you very much. But she grew up with Christian friends and developed an interest in Christian culture to the point that as a child, her Barbie and Ken dolls took celebrated Eucharist with one another — and as an adult, she teaches on the New Testament at a largely Protestant divinity school. As someone who cherishes both religious traditions, she writes to help Christians and Jews understand one another, and believes that such an understanding may and must be rooted on the fact that Jesus, the inspiration of Christianity, was thoroughly Jewish. He is neither a heretical figure Jews should distance themselves from, nor a theological revolutionary who rendered Judaism irrelevant to those who followed him.

The first chapter covers material which I expected to be the whole of the book; using the gospel accounts  to establish that Jesus was a Jew in practice, beliefs, manners, and dress. Some of this is open to interpretation — Levine believes that Jesus simply taught the heart of Judaism without answering to particularly restrictive schools of it and emphasizes that the Christian perception of Jewish orthodoxy is somewhat skewed given that the Pharisees of the bible are written as villains.   After this she devotes a chapter to the growth of the Christian church  from a small community of Jews to a network of communities spread out around the Mediterranean basin, dominated by ‘Gentiles’.  As the church moves further away from Judaism, hostility between the two now-divergent faiths increases, and this leads into several chapters on anti-Semitism. First, Levine examines claims that the New Testament is explicitly anti-Jewish. She doesn’t believe so, but allows that it CAN be used in an anti-Jewish fashion,  and this is a source of agitation for her throughout the book. She even devotes a chapter (“With Friends Like These…”) to attacking liberal theologians who see Christ as rescuing spirituality from religion…because, since the religion in question is Judaism, they must not think very much of it. This chapter bothered me, for Levine seems overly sensitive. Criticizing the perceived excesses of first-century Judaism is no more anti-Jewish than criticizing the abuses of the Israeli state is anti-Semitic. Excesses are excesses regardless of who perpetuates them.  Unfortunately, Levine doesn’t seem to keen on the idea of admitting that there were excesses at the time, when surely there must have been — when has an institution with the power of religion never been abused?

The final chapter, however, ends things on a high note. In “Distinct Canons; Distinct Practices”, Levine drives home the point that Judaism and Christianity are different religions: Jewish theology and Christian theology aren’t the same. The best example is that of original sin and the fall from grace. It is Paul who invents the idea that Jesus died as a sacrifice to redeem people, and it is Christians who are obsessed with the idea of sin and it keeping them from the afterlife. Judaism isn’t about the afterlife. 
While the book has its merits, I left ultimately disappointed. I think more space should have been devoted to first-century Judaism to more fully establish the context of Jesus’ life, especially since first-century Judaism and modern Orthodox Judaism are as different as first-century Christianity and its modern forms. Jesus’ Jewish audience shares ideas with him that no modern Jew would profess — belief in Satan as a villain, for instance,  seen as an evil dragon.  They’re also obsessed by the end of the world; that apocalyptic fire is now largely dead. The Misunderstood Jew should still be of use to Christians who are utterly oblivious about Judaism, but I think the the audience it would best serve are Jews who are leery of both Jesus and the New Testament, for Levine does establish that Jesus and the gospel accounts are firmly rooted in Jewish culture and not hostile to it. 
Related:
I haven’t read either of these, but I’m fans of both of the authors and look forward to experiencing the books at some point. 
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This Week at the Library (18 January)

Posted on January 18, 2012 by smellincoffee

Pending Reviews: How the Mind Works, Stephen Pinker; The Misunderstood Jew: the Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine.
Currently Reading: The Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene; At Home, Bill Bryson
Potentials: The Oceans, Ellen Prager
New Releases: Bernard Cornwell just published the sixth Saxon Stories novel, The Death of Kings, which excites me to no end. Here’s hoping my library picks it up quickly.

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“It seems a shame to have to turn your back on what took so long and required so much work and study to accomplish.”
Bryce thought it seemed a shame, too. But starving seemed an even bigger shame. “You don’t always get to do what you want to do,” he said. “Sometimes, you do what you have to do, and pick up the pieces from there.”

p. 380, Supervolcano: Eruption

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Supervolcano: Eruption

Posted on January 17, 2012 by smellincoffee

Supervolcano: Eruption
© 2011 Harry Turtledove
420 pages

“I love the smell of hydrogen sulfide in the morning,” Daniel intoned. “Smells like…tenure.”
p. 146

Sometimes, even Harry Turtledove must tire of penning novels based on World War II. I don’t know what spurred his interest in writing this novel — the fact that 2012 will be a good year for disaster entertainment, perhaps, or the simple need to take a break from the War that Came Early series — but this science fiction apocalyptic adventure is a drastic change from his usual military-action tomes. He opens on Lieutenant Colin Ferguson, a recently divorced and badly hungover cop taking a vacation to Yellowstone National Park to clear his mind, who barks at a parka-clad figure hunched over a geyser to scold her for trespassing. She proves to be a geologist taking readings of seismic activity,  one who believes the Yellowstone basin presents a future danger to the global environment.  Underneath the geysers and pine trees lurks trouble: a supervolcano in the making. Were it to erupt, the energy released would destroy everything around it for hundreds of miles — and the amount of ash thrown into Earth’s skies could very well lead to an ice age.  Naturally, someone forgets knock on wood.

From the start, the newly-single Curtis is interested in this geologist; his attraction and genuine interest in the implications of such a catastrophe compel him to learn more about it, preferably over dinner dates with her.  Their budding relationship allows Turtledove to gently explain the premise and science of the novel in an unobtrusive way, though the novel’s action is slow to take off. The fun doesn’t start until a quarter of the way in: for the first hundred or so pages, Turtledove introduces his panel of viewpoint characters, all of whom are Colin’s relations — his divorced wife, his sons (one a touring  20-something musician, the other a perpetual college student),  his impressively abrasive daughter Vanessa, and her ex-boyfriend,  who is working on a thesis related to Hellenistic poetry and who has remained friends with Colin despite being dumped by the lieutenant’s daughter.

In the end, it’s the premise and not necessarily its execution which carries the novel. The usual Turtledove baggage — repetition — is fully present, and the pace sometimes bogs down in minutia. This is especially striking after Yellowstone goes “boom”, in a scene where a band-on-tour  breakfasts in Maine, and the viewpoint character devotes an entire page to describing what each member of the band had for breakfast. There’s a giant dead zone in the middle of the continent, and he hasn’t heard from his sister in Denver — but these are trivial matters compared to the appropriateness of ordering Mexican food in a fishing village, apparently. Still, Turtledove won me over for the most part. He introduces a fun character in the last fifth of the novel whose personality makes him one of the most likable characters in the novel (not that he’s against a lot of competition: Curtis’ sons are bums, and even he refers to his daughter as ‘a mean dog’). Once the disaster began to unfold, my interest peaked, especially as months wore on and people began having to make adjustments.  The amount of time that passes in the novel is unclear to me — it begins immediately after Memorial Day, and at least one college semester passes — but it’s lengthy enough that we see more than immediate consequences. The wasteland of the plains strains the connections between the east and west coasts, causing resource crunches; the ash fallout creates a respiratory panic; the United States’ diminished strength creates fun times for the middle east when Iran decides to seize the day and bloody Israel’s nose. The novel leaves before entering long-term territory, though. Does mass starvation follow the ruin of all the plains crops? What becomes of the nations who rely on the US for their imported food?    The end leaves many of the characters hanging,  but all resolute to pick up the pieces as best they can.

Although burdened with painful repetition and slow to start, ultimately the interesting premise and character growth push Supervolcano into ‘fair enough’ territory. It’s left me with the desire to study up on volcanoes and the possibility of a Yellowstone disaster — isn’t provoking an interest in learning the point of science fiction?

Post-edit note: according to a Turtledove wikisite, this is the first of a new trilogy. I hope Turtledove gets a better handle on what he’s aiming for here: while he can get away with a character-dominated story in a war novel in which the viewpoint characters are soldiers participating in the central drama, in Eruption they’re just getting in the way and reducing the supposed star of the show, the volcano, to an obscured background reference.

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The Throne of Fire

Posted on January 17, 2012 by smellincoffee

The Kane Chronicles #2: The Throne of Fire
© 2011 Rick Riordan
464 pages

Sadie Kane isn’t even a teenager yet, but she and her older brother have four days to find the three pieces of the lost Book of Ra, ressurected the old king of the gods, and help him defeat Apophis, giant snake and lord of chaos. Sucks being a kid, especially if you’re the heir of two powerful lines of ancient Egyptian pharaohs. And to make matters worse, the only adults who might be of help, magicians skilled in the Egyptian ways, are convinced that Sadie and Carter are up to no good — and they’re determined to kill the two youngsters who are causing so much trouble. At least they have a dwarf on their side.

In The Red Pyramid, Rick Riordan introduced his fantasy series steeped in the world of Egyptian mythology, and I for one found the new setting fantastic. It combines the familiar (chaos vs order) with the alien.  The central importance of the Nile is especially obvious here, as the attempt to resurrect Ra means taking a dangerous journey down it through the twelve Houses, meeting and prevailing over a panel of bizarre deities and demons while being chased by a mad Russian.  It’s not quite as novel as the first book — the setting is established and the general plot well-trodden, since Rioridan’s characters usually only have a few days before the world ends. At least poor Harry had the better part of a year to hunt down Horcruxes — but entertaining enough.

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Top Ten Books I’d Recommend to Someone Who Doesn’t Read Nonfiction

Posted on January 17, 2012 by smellincoffee

This week the Broke and the Bookish are asking people to recommend ten books to someone who doesn’t read a particular genre. Since nonfiction doesn’t get a lot of love in the blogging community — people read it sparingly if at all — and it generally constitutes half or more of my reading, I though I’d focus on it today.I consider nonfiction reading a valuable resource for continuing education — not only in specific subjects, but as a human being. Therefore, here are ten titles which I think could either (1) entice lay people to learn more about an area of human knowledge or (2) prompt people to consider the way they live their lives.

1. Guns, Germs, and Steel; Jared Diamond

Some books simply tell a story; others impart a fundamental understanding of how history works, In Guns, Germs, and Steel,  Diamond examines the success and failure of various civilizations as the result of geography and local resources, drawing on multiple disciplines; the result is a fantastic read that draws as much from science as it does from history.

2.  The Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton

Think philosophy is academic fluff with no relevance to your life? Hardly!  Throughout human history, the concerns of philosophers have always hit close to home; it’s only recently that they’ve acquired a poor reputation. Alain de Botton shows the value of a considered life by examining the thoughts of Seneca on anger, Epicures on simple living and anti-consumerism,  Schopenhauer on broken hearts, and more. A similar title is Plato’s Podcasts: the Ancients’ Guide to Modern Living.

3. Theories for Everything: An Illustrated History of Science, various authors (National Geographic)

While I’ve enjoyed learning about nature all my life, I didn’t become passionate about science until 2006 or so. In 2007 I read this, and it along with Dan Falk’s Universe on a T-Shirt provided the introduction and foundation of my on-going zeal for science and its history.

4. Amusing Ourselves to Death and/or Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology, Neil Postman

These two books are on the short list of works which have changed my life. Both share a general theme in that they  address the unexpected consequences of technology and  forced me to think about the way I use certain media. Amusing Ourselves to Death deals primarily with television and its poisonous effect on politics, religion, education, and journalism, as all are hijacked by impulses toward sensationalist entertainment devoid of actual content.

5. The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan

This staple of critical-thinking advocates stresses the importance of both science education in a world increasingly dependent on technology, and scientific thinking in general. Learning to think, to reason independently of any authority or tradition, is crucially important for individuals and society, as our freedom and strength depend on our ability to make good choices based on solid facts.

6. A Guide to the Good Life: the Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (William Irvine),  The Emperor’s Handbook (Marcus Aurelius, trans. David and Scott Hicks), or The Art of Living (Sharon Lebell)

While I reccommend philosophical reflection in general to everyone, one philosophical school in particular has proven a boon to me: Stoicism, which is enjoying a curious modern rebirth.  Don’t believe me? Edmund Kern penned The Wisdom of Harry Potter a few years ago and identifies Harry as a Stoic hero. Stoicism is an ancient school of Greek philosophy which focused on virtue as the sole good in life, and emphasized developing strength of character and offers freedom from the petty disturbances of life. I like to call it Buddhism for the western world. Of the books listed: the first is an introduction to the philosophy for modern minds, the second is a contemporary translation of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, a primary source for Stoics, and the third is an interpretation of Epictetus’ Handbook,  which sold me on the school to begin with.

7. The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to be Happy , Michael Foley

I read this book twice last year; it’s that good. Its essential premise is that we’ve created societies which not only fail to meet our needs as human beings, but often run counter to them. For instance, how do we find time for detachment and reflection when an ever-increasing number of gadgets vie for our attention?

8. A People’s History of America, Howard Zinn

Imagine a history written from the perspective of the powerless, the losers. That’s what Howard Zinn provided, and his narrative prompts readers to not only reconsider traditional versions of history, but to consider that the power to effect change lies not in the hands of Great Men, but in themselves. It is both history and a call to political activism much needed in these days.

9. In Praise of Slowness, Carl Honore

This is one I intend on re-reading soon..

In Praise of Slowness is a book that incorporates simple living, New Urbanism, and the philosophical life into its text. I will summarize as it as being written to make human lives human and livable once more. Where our way of life has reduced us to living passively, consuming unthinkingly, and bouncing from one task to the next without ever really enjoying anything, Slowness asserts that we should slow down and think about what it is we’re doing. 

10. A Life of Her Own, Emile Carles.

This was required reading for a European history class I took a few years ago, and I responded with it with such enthusiasm that I think I made my professor uncomfortable by gushing with thanks. It’s the biography of a French peasant woman who, despite her highly isolated  and conservative environment in an alpine farming village,  matures into an independent thinker whose political passions are formed in the early years of the 20th century. Reading this not only encouraged me — if she could flourish despite that environment, anyone can — but it added significantly to my understanding of political philosophy.

11. The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler

Were this list written just for American readers, I would have mentioned the Stoic books along with The Consolations of Philosophy, for The Geography of Nowhere is a must-read for American readers. In it, Kunstler attacks the land-use patterns of cheap oil (surburbanization and urban sprawl), decrying them as not only wasteful and doomed to extinction, but physically and spiritually degrading.  It’s become one of my favorite books, which sounds odd if you haven’t read Kunstler; his history is enlightening and his sharp criticism a joy to read.

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The Positronic Man

Posted on January 13, 2012 by smellincoffee

The Positronic Man
© 1993 Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg
290 pages

This novel takes me back to high school, where at some point following the release of The Bicentennial Man starring Robin Williams, I checked it out and read my very first Asimov. I’d watched enough Star Trek to know that ‘positronic’ meant that this was about an android, and thought perhaps the movie was based on it. My guess was right: The Positronic Man is an expansion of Asimov’s short story, “The Bicentennial Man”, just as Nightfall is an Asimov-Silverberg expansion of “Nightfall”.  The tale of Andrew Martin, the robot who wanted to become a man, is one of my favorite Asimov stories. Data from The Next Generation may have predisposed  me to being fascinated with the book’s theme — what does it mean to be a human, to be sentient?

After having read Silverberg and Asimov’s expansion of “Nightfall”, I cannot read the original story without missing the additional content. It seems like only half a story. The Positronic Man is more conservative on that count,  starting and ending at the same points as Asimov’s original story. That can scarcely be avoided, as much of the original story took place in the form of a flashback, as Andrew — preparing for a surgery that will constitute the ‘final’ leap and give him either the humanity he desires or the welcome release of death — recounts how he came to be such an usual creature, the being who is far more a robot and yet, not quite a man. The Positronic Man greatly enriches the experience; events which are summarized in a sentence or two in the original story unfold over the course of a chapter, allowing for a great deal more characterization, both on Andrew’s part and his human companions This isn’t simply a ‘lengthier’ version of ” Bicentennial  Man”: the additions, which flow so well from the original text, allow Andrew to truly evolve throughout the course of the book: he matures before our eyes as a character, not just as a robot who abandons metal coverings for pseudo-skin or gains legal standing. The polite, metallic servant introduced in the first chapter slowly grows into a thoughtful man, accomplished in multiple artistic and intellectual fields, driven by the same impulses that motivate us all.

I enjoyed this work tremendously;  while I don’t know how much is Silverberg and how much is Asimov’s, the result makes my favorite Asimov story even better.

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This Week at the Library (11 January)

Posted on January 11, 2012 by smellincoffee

Currently Reading: How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker; The Positronic Man, Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg; The Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene (on hold until I finish How the Mind Works).

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“It’s ridiculous, sir! Getting married.”
“Women like it, Patrick.”
“Why do they need us? Why don’t they just do it and tell us afterwards. Christ!”

p. 313, Sharpe’s Honour. Bernard Cornwell.

“Virtually nothing is known about the functioning microcircuity of the human brain, because there is a shortage of volunteers willing to give up their brains to science before they are dead.”

p. 184, How the Mind Works. Steven Pinker. 

You are a robot, Andrew reminded himself sternly.
You are a product of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.
And then Andrew would look at Little Miss and a sensation of great joy and warmth would spread through his positronic brain — a sensation that he had come to identify as ‘love’ — and then he would have to remind himself, all over again, that he was nothing more than a cleverly designed structure of metal and plastic with an artificial platinum-iridium brain inside his chrome-steel skull, and he had no right to feel emotions, or to think paradoxical thoughts, or to do any other such complex and mysterious human being.

p. 51, The Positronic Man, Asimov and Silverberg.
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Sharpe’s Honour

Posted on January 10, 2012 by smellincoffee

Sharpe’s Honour
© 1985 Bernard Cornwell
320 pages

In Sharpe’s Enemy, Richard Sharpe vanquished one foe only to create another, this time the subtle French intelligence officer Pierre Ducos. Ducos is an enemy both to England and Sharpe, for with one plan he manages to ensnare Sharpe in legal turmoil that may end in a death sentence, and begin the destruction of the Anglo-Spanish alliance which is driving the French army back across the Pyrenees. Sharpe’s only hope is the possible help of a treacherous and dangerously attractive ‘Marquesa’.

Without giving too much away, Sharpe spends most of the book in trouble as an escaped and condemned outlaw working behind enemy lines.  The escape tests Sharpe’s character several times, not just his resourcefulness;  there are times when giving his parole or simply refusing to go one would make his life much easier, but Sharpe insists on making a fight of it.At the same time that Sharpe is engaged in a battle for his life,  Wellington’s army and the French are moving toward one of the most decisive altercations of the Peninsular War: the Campaign at Vitoria. Much of the battle takes place without our rifleman, but it wouldn’t be a Sharpe novel without him making a dramatic entrance at a pivotal moment. The book is worth it just for the ending; being completely unfamiliar with the history of the Peninsular War, I flew into the book blind and didn’t know what surprises Wellington had up his sleeve or what fate would await him.

Although I missed the usual running interaction between Sharpe and his men, Honour offers plenty of excitement and a thoroughly satisfying ending that lifts the pall remaining from Sharpe’s Enemy‘s conclusion.

Next time: Sharpe’s Regiment invades France!

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