Booking through Thursday: Periodicals

Posted on January 20, 2011 by smellincoffee

From Booking through Thursday:

Even I read things other than books from time to time … like, Magazines! What magazines/journals do you read?

Back in 2000, when getting excited about the release of The Sims, I bought a magazine called PC Gamer and enjoyed it enough that I subscribed for years thereafter, until after I’d graduated high school. My machine could no longer play modern games, and since the magazine had gotten thinner and less attractive visually, I let the subscription lapse. I keep them in a box in my closet, which baffles anyone who asks about  it. I maintain that one day I am going to want to read those old editorials and staff pieces. It’s mostly a sentimental value, though. Because I now have a not-yet obsolete gaming rig, I have entertained notions of resuming my subscription.

I also bought Disney Adventures magazine faithfully as a kid, since it was my only way to stay hip about pop culture.

At the library, I browse National Geographic, The Smithsonian, and other random science/history magazines that catch my eye. I sometimes read Newsweek or Times, but this only rarely.

In bookstores, I sometimes buy copies of mental floss, Star Trek: the Magazine,  The Skeptical Inqurier, and the odd pop history magazine. I’d like to subscribe to magazines like Free Inquiry, UU World, and The Humanist, but as a student my mailing address tends to fluctuate and I do not like forwarding addresses. I’d also like to try Analog magazine, the modern form of the old Astounding Stories, but I have not read much real science fiction and find “hard SF” to be a bit intimidaitng. In the future I can see subscribing to Scientific American. I’ve read one issue and enjoyed it.

I also receive The Historian, a historical journal, as a benefit of being a member of Phi Alpha Theta. Even though I’ve not read any of them in full, I’m always happy to see them arrive in the mail — same goes for a science magazine(ish) the Howard Hughes Medical Institute used to put out.

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Teaser Tuesday (18 January)

Posted on January 18, 2011 by smellincoffee

This is my 52nd Teaser Tuesday, which means I’ve been following the little game for a year now. That may be “just shy” of a year, since my first TT post was published on 19 January 2010.  I enjoy this weekly diversion, though it and Top Ten Tuesdays keep me up entirely too late on Monday evenings. 😉

Since this is an anniversary, let’s make it a triple course!

“You wouldn’t become an American for liberty, Sam, because you don’t think we lack it. And you wouldn’t become an American out of a republican conviction, because you can’t even spell it — but you’d become an American for Caroline. That’s what love is, Sam.”  

Redcoat, Bernard Cornwell.

This is overly long but entirely too good to not share.

The NCF [No-Conscription Fellowship] scored another another rhetorical point when, in the course of one legal case, a lawyer on the government’s side, Sir Archibald Bodkin (best known to history as the man who would later get James Joyce’s novel Ulysses banned from publication is postwar England) declared that “war will become impossible if all men were to have the view that war is wrong.” Delighted, the NCF proceeded to issue a poster with exactly those words  on it, credited to Bodkin. The government then arrested an NCF member for putting up this subversive poster. In response, the NCF’s lawyer demanded the arrest of Bodkin, as the author of the offending words. The organization’s newspaper — named, with deliberate irony, the Tribunal — called for Bodkin to prosecute himself, and declared that the NCF would provide relief payments to his wife and children if he sent himself to jail. 

To End All Wars, Adam Hochschild. 
I was planning on posting a teaser from Sex on Six Legs, but do you really want to read the context of the phrase “pulsing inside with fly”? 
…yes?  Okay, then. It’s your stomach.

Once a female fly locates a calling cricket, she deposits tiny larvae on him. A larva, usually one but sometimes two or even three, burrows inside the cricket’s body and starts, every so slowly, to eat his flesh while he is still alive. First it feeds on his body fat, but eventually, as the fly maggot grows until it occupies the entire body, from head to abdomen, it consumes the male’s other organs so he is is a shell that looks like  cricket but is pulsing inside with fly.

p. 18, Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love, and Language from the Insect World. Marlene Zuk.
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Top Ten Inspirational Characters

Posted on January 18, 2011 by smellincoffee

This week the Broke and the Bookish want ten characters from fiction who’ve inspired us. I assumed they meant  from books when writing my list. And awaaaaaay we go. (Don’t take these too seriously: after a few entries I settled for ‘admirable characters I can remember.’)

1. Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Saxon Stories, Bernard Cornwell)

This is not Uhtred, but Brad Pitt’s Achilles character is similar in temperament.

Uhtred is a surely Viking who lives outside the law, sneers at convention, and tends to solve problems with his swords. Despite this, he’s not a bad fellow. Though he’s no innocent,  he is a wolf preying on other wolves — not  a wolf amid the sheep, like a king or a priest. I like his forthright bluntness. He makes no excuses for himself — but what I most like about Uhtred is that he enjoys life, with gusto. Whenever I read Uhtred’s stories, I feel like slamming down goblets of drink with enthusiasm, whacking strangers on the back in friendship, and singing old songs loudly and without a care in the world as to if they’re off-key or not.

2. Ebeneezer Scrooge (A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens)


 I never knew how to swing a cane properly until I met ol’ Ebeneezer. 

He may be a crotechy old man, but when made to see the consequences of his actions, both for himself and for those around him,  Scrooge seeks to create his own redemption — and he does so even though those who knew him before mock him for it.

3. Harry Potter (Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling)

I know such a popular literary figure seems like an obvious choice, but (Azkaban spoilers!) when Harry decided to rise above easy vengeance and bring Peter Pettigrew to trial instead of letting Sirus and Remus feed him to Crookshanks, I was…impressed. Then, in Goblet of Fire, he goes out of his way to assist his rivals in the Second Task, because he believes without assistance,  Fleur’s sister and Hermione will be left to die. And then there’s the whole abandoning-oneself-to-death-to-defeat-the-dark-lord thing!

4. Sidney Carton (A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens)

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”  Those words captivated me even when reading this book as a child (via Great Illustrated Classics). Carton epitomizes the heroic sacrifice to me.

…hey, I warned you.

5. Ducky (California Diaries, Ann M. Martin)

Ducky has shown up on one of these lists before, and that’s because he’s a great guy. He makes his introduction in the California Diaries series by coming to the rescue of three soaked, sicked, humiliated, and terrified freshmen who just escaped from a hazing trap. In the second book, he drives for several hours at night looking for a friend who has run away (one of the same girls), and later keeps a vigil outside of his friend Alex’s house, because Alex is depressed and suicidal.  So Ducky is serving as the big brother figure to a group of younger girls while at the same time trying to make sense of how he and his own childhood friends have grown apart. On top of all this, he’s doing it without a support system: his parents are research scientists working across the globe, his older brother is useless, and his best friend is the suicidal Alex mentioned prior.  But Ducky takes it all on his shoulders, and even when he is disheartened, manages to survive.

6. Sam Damon (Once an Eagle, Anton Myrer)

Sam joined the Army when the Great War started, not because he was bored or looking for glory, but because he thought it was the right thing to do. He survives and prospers in the Army not through wealth or family influence, by working hard,  learning all he can about the situation he’s in, making the best of every situation, and doing right by his men. From the trenches in Belgium to the jungles of Korea and Vietnam, that is Sam Damon:  he pursues the ‘right’ course of action and accepts the hard word simply because it’s the right thing to do and the work needs to be done. It’s a simple, and admirable, ethic.

7. Salvor Hardin (Foundation, Isaac Asimov)

Hardin appeared in two of Asimov’s foundation stories, and in both manages to save his city-planet Terminus from annexation and defeat at the hands of four great kingdoms through audacity and cleverness while uttering aphorisms like “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent” and “It’s a poor blaster that doesn’t point both ways”.

8. Jake Berenson (Animorphs, K.A. Applegate)

The face of a battle-weary commando.
In middle school, I wasn’t asked to become the leader of a guerrilla force consisting of a group of six kids, waging a desperate war against a hidden alien invasion of parasites who take over people’s minds. Jake was, though, and boy — did he have a time of it. He endures years of constant bloody battle against hideous foes, years of living with the enemy (his brother is Controlled), years of knowing his decisions could kill his best friends and spell doom for Earth. The psychological stress seems incredible, but he doesn’t shrink with indecision or grow utterly callous. The experience hardens him far beyond his years, perhaps beyond that which is healthy, but his basic character endures.

9. Huck Finn (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain)

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:”All right, then, I’ll go to hell”- and tore it up.

For context, Huck has been faced with the choice of being a good Christian, which means following the law and returning his friend Jim to slavery, and doing what his natural empathy tells him. In deciding to keep hiding Jim, he choses to thwart the law and go to hell, instead of betraying his friend and damning his soul in a more real way. The irony of this is that I first heard the passage being read by an apologist  intent on mocking it, and I thought to myself — wow, I’ve gotta read this book.

10. Rudy Baylor (The Rainmaker, John Grisham)

Rudy Baylor was the first Grisham protagonist I ever read, and I found it easy to sympathize with the young man who took on an insurance company abusing its ‘clients’, refused to settle out of court rather than face their team of brilliant and experienced lawyers, and along the way rescued a friend from a case of domestic abuse.

Honorable mentions:

  • Ernest Everhard (The Iron Heel, Jack London)
  • Ellie Arroway (Contact, Carl Sagan)
  • Violet Baudelaire — “There’s always something.” (The Series of Unfortunate Events, Daniel Handle.)
  • Elias Vaughn (Warpath, David Mack)
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Redcoat

Posted on January 17, 2011 by smellincoffee

Redcoat
© 1998 Bernard Cornwell
485 pages

Shortly after the capture of Philadelphia in September 1777, General George Washington led his Continental army in battle against the now-defending British army. In the chaos of his opening assault,  brothers Sam and Nate Gilpin — both privates, and both wearing the red coat of the British army — were captured and ordered to tend to the American wounded, including an injured merchant-turned-patriot soldier named Jonathan Becket.  A sudden reversal offered both the chance to escape both the battle and a life’s service in the army — but Nate’s decision to make a run for it cost him his life.  Both armies retreated into winter quarters, where Sam continued nurse the American — now a prisoner himself — back to health at the behest of his sister, a strong-willed Patriot whose forthrightness and charm give her even Lord William Howe’s ear.  Throughout the long winter, while the American army languishes in Valley Forge,  Sam keeps the company of saucy rebel ladies, and makes unexpected friends and enemies alike — growing from a simple private to a troubled man torn by conviction.

Although this is a historical novel set in during the midst of the war, it is not a war story.  Most of the book takes place during the long winter of ’77-’78, and it is personal drama — character drama — that takes the field, as people struggle with loyalties to their countries, their ideals, their friends, and themselves. This surprised me, but pleasantly so. As usual, the novel is flecked with little historical and technical details that give the setting life, but it’s the characters who reign. Sam Gilpin is not unlike other main characters used by Cornwell —  strikingly decent, though not without his faults. Cornwell played an awful lot of tricks on me with the characters in this book — those who I started out liking, I grew to despise, and those I disliked at first I found myself utterly interested in. So help me, I never expected to be enthralled by a love triangle, but after reading a score or so pages in a matter of a week, something clicked and I read the better part of 300 pages in a single sitting. Romantic threads are only marginally existent in the books I read, but Cornwell’s worked for me. It’s not the war story I or others might’ve expected, but I certainly enjoyed it.

I checked this out because I could not find the Cornwell books I wanted to read, but what attracted me to this one — instead of Stonehenge, say — was the prospect of reading an ‘American’ story through the eyes of a British private. This was somewhat reflected by the favorable characterization of Lord William Howe, who seems an awfully kind gentleman to be wearing the coat of a military man, but Sam isn’t particularly passionate about the ‘Cause’. He’s in America to fight the rebellion because he’s a soldier and soldiers do as they’re told. His motivations mature rapidly through the winter, but Sam’s no idealist fighting to keep the Realm whole — or to campaign for Republicanism. The American characters tend to be preachy when they’re in Patriot mode, but they don’t hold a candle to the unpleasantness of the American loyalists, who are obsessed with money and are a downright ornery bunch. None of them seem to have any principles beyond getting rich and remaining so, which I think is unduly mean to the historical loyalists.

Not as much as a ‘British’ version of events as I’d hoped, but I truly enjoyed this story of a man growing to realize there are things worth standing up for, like love and friendship.

Related:

  • Jeff Shaara’s Rise to Rebellion and The Glorious Cause, which feature American generals complaining about the complete uselessness of the militia and British generals complaining that this is a stupid war to waste money, time, and soldiers’ lives on. (Er, if memory serves.)
  • The Complete Idiot’s Guide to British History, authored by a Britisher and which gave me some much-needed perspective regarding Britain’s treatment of the colonies. 
Posted in historical fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

2011 Nonfiction Reading Challenge

Posted on January 16, 2011 by smellincoffee

The Broke and the Bookish, home of Top Ten Tuesdays, is hosting a nonfiction reading challenge which is meant to expand horizons even for people who read nonfiction on a regular basis, like myself.  They’ve listed nine categories to read from, and a few of them are those I rarely go near.  I’ve never done a challenge before, and this sounds like fun.

Culture: “Non-fiction books about different cultures, religions and foreign lands; memoirs & biographies count.”
There are a couple of books on India and China I’m interested in reading this year, though I think they’re mostly history. In any case, I also intend to read something about Hinduism this year. Will Durant’s books are heavily cultural, too.

Art: “Non-fiction books about anything art related (painters, music, architecture, photography, dance, literature, film, etc.). Memoirs/biographies of any people related to the arts count.”
Well, if my library has a book on the history of architecture I’d be interested — and if not, there’s always that biography of Sammy Davis Jr. which I never finished. I also want to read a biography of Audrey Hepburn, because she’s adorable in every movie I’ve seen her in.

Food: “Food memoirs, anything related to food industry, food lifestyles.”
…I have no real idea.  Maybe Epicures will say something about food?  I’m going to be reading his works this year.

Medical: “anything related to the medical field–industry memoirs, memoirs about illnesses (mental included) /diseases, etc.”
Hm.  I will have to poke around. I rarely venture into my library’s medical section, because it has books on homeopathy and by Keven Trudeau, and those just make me sink to the floor weeping.  This attracts attention and diminishes the productiveness of my library visits.

Travel: “travelogues, industry memoirs, travel guides, etc.”
This should be rather easy:  I still have the second Walking Across America book waiting for me.

Memoir/Biography: “Self explanatory “
Should be easy enough. I’m planning on reading D-Day parachutist Dick Winters’ memoirs, as he recently passed away.  I’m also interested in reading a big ol’  biography of Franklin Roosevelt.

Money: “Anything related to finances, economics, history of money, financial improvement etc.”
– Last year I intended to read The World is Flat, a book on globalization, but didn’t get around to it. This challenge will provide such an opportunity.

Science/Nature: “Anything related to any scientific field, memoirs count.”
– Sex on Six Legs, which won’t be released until late this year — but I have an advanced review copy.  Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan, which I haven’t read since 2006, is a likely contender. And to those challenge-folk reading, Carl Sagan was famous for working to popularize science. He’s written quite a few books in addition to hosting Cosmos. (Link is to “A Glorious Dawn”, which is..Cosmos in concentrate.)

History: “Anything history related– events, biographies of historic figures, etc.”
– Heh. History is my bread and butter, so to speak, so this one will be easy. The Age of Faith by Will Durant, and The Near East by Isaac Asimov are two reads I already have in mind. (You know, I really should get around to reading The Age of Faith so I don’t keep mentioning it in Broke-and-the-Bookish-related posts. It’s appeared on three or four lists now…)

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To End All Wars

Posted on January 14, 2011 by smellincoffee

To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918
© 2011 Adam Hochschild
480 pages

Disclaimer:   I read from an advanced review copy of the book, available through NetGalleys. No compensation for a review, good or negative, was offered or requested, aside from my own potential enjoyment of the book.

Though American history books tend to portray the Great War as merely the prologue of World War 2,  its momentous horror and long-reaching effects deserve more recognition. The war shattered the late 19th century’s dreams of an optimistic future — that with reason enthroned and science driving society, humanity would march ever courageously into a progressive future toward paradise.  That great vision vanished when national pride flared and the being known as Modern Man turned into a screaming chimpanzee with a machine-gun, perverting the material and intellectual accomplishments of humanity for the cause of destruction —  hell-bent on the brutal evisceration of its enemies and too drunken with anger, grief, and war-lust to stop the bloodshed.  To End All Wars delivers the full scope of the horror and makes it personal, but offers the reader inspiration and hope in the midst of lunacy by partially focusing on the lives of those who stood against the great madness.

To End all Wars consists of two intertwined narratives: the first is a general history of the great war, which is surprisingly detailed.  In spite of the book’s brevity, Hochschild managed to convey not only the essential course of the war (generally focusing on the Western Front), but an astonishing amount of pertinent details and background information — like the peculiarities and horrors of trench warfare and the requirements of this, the first great industrial conflict that demanded 70% of a nation’s active resources to maintain. Hochschild’s narrative makes the inhumane conditions , chronic and massive destruction of life, and utter pointlessness more obvious than any other Great War book I’ve read save soldiers’ memoirs.  The effect is all the more poignant to the reader because those who perish are not nameless: they are the loved ones of people we know personally.

The other entwined half of To End All Wars is a personal history of Britain in the last decades of the 19th century and during the Great War. Hochschild introduces a handful of individuals from varied classes and backgrounds who will each play their separate roles in the war to come. Some, like the miner-turned-politician Keir Hardy, will resist the war and be literally heartbroken by its initial popularity. Others, like Sir John French, will devote themselves to the Glory of the Realm and fight on come hell, high water, or Bolshevik revolution.  This portion begins with Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and chronicles the battle for expanded voting rights and social justice. Suffragettes are particularly visible, and the story of their fight astonished and delighted me.  How can a reader resist the charm of women who back furniture trucks into Paraliment’s doors and deploy a dozen or so suffragists to storm inside and shout “VOTES FOR WOMEN!”, joined by comrades rappelling through the ceiling skylights? This is the kind of lively drama that conventional history texts miss completely.

Among the ranks of these lives — through whom we witness the expansion of empire and the full horror of war — are heroes and villains, champions of the human spirit and aristocrats consumed by wealth and vanity. Few of them, however, are predictable. Charlotte Despard, one of the more heroic figures in the text, was as ardent a populist champion as Eugene Debs — but her brother was Sir John French.  Emmeline Pankhurst starts the book out as a socialist suffragette who attempts to blow up the prime minister’s home with him in it — but once the war starts, she becomes said minister’s staunch ally and denounces any and all who question her.  The effects the war had on personal relationships is fascinating:  Emmeline and the minister, once enemies, became allies — and Emmeline and two of her pacifist daughters, once comrades-in-arms, became strangers to one another. Other notable figures include Bertrand Russell and Rudyard Kipling, two literary-intellectual figures whose stances were in opposition. While Kipling produces poetry, stories, and essays praising war and the Honor of the Nation and denouncing Germans as subhuman, persistent enemies of civilization, Russell stands sadly in the rain and watches his countrymen cheer the deaths of human beings simply because their last names are different.  (He’s later thrown into jail for opposing the war.)

To End All Wars is an exceptional read. Its narrative of the war, slightly marred by an American bias toward the Allies, would  function well as a general introduction to the war, but the personal accounts make the book golden. The stories of those  who stand against ‘man’s blind indifference to his fellow man’, who oppose the inhumanity of their government’s actions, are inspirational enough, but their treatment at the hands of their fellow citizens serves to remind readers of other, more subtle costs of war — moral corruption.  Though Woodrow Wilson disingenuously referred to the war as a defense of democracy,  there’s little democracy to be seen in the actions of Britain’s government. Those who do not enthusiastically support the war and the government are spied on,  denounced, stoned, imprisoned, vilified by the press, and lined up to be shot. Though this is a story of the Great War, the ‘war to end all wars’,  its most important story is that of the pacifists, the socialists, the principled Christians, and the internationalist intellectuals who saw the war as futile, pointless, and the only true enemy of any nation.  While scenes of the destruction and death were emotionally difficult to read, the lives of those few provided a ray of hope, and their vindication at war’s end finishes the book on a somber, somewhat relieved note.

To End All Wars will be available commercially on 3 May 2011, from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Related:

  • The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900-1914, Phillip Blom
  • A People’s History of the 20th Century, Howard Zinn
  • The Great War in Modern Memory, Paul Fussell
  • All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque

Posted in history, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Go Go Gadget Literature….?

Posted on January 13, 2011 by smellincoffee
When I step into this library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it.
– Marie de Sevigne

Change is inescapable. As a student of history, I’ve realized that nothing, no matter how wonderful or precious, endures forever. We as people change with our experiences; life, language, and landscapes continue to evolve with use and time,  and even the stoutest mountains melt away under the withering of wind and rain. I realize this the more I get older, and it’s something of a solace: the wisdom in knowing that things must change allows me to make peace with the fact that the change is happening.

Even so, the rising popularity of e-readers makes me thump my nonexistent cane on the ground, scowl at the nonexistent kids on my lawn, and yell “You kids get those gadgets off my grass and outta my life!”.  The philosopher in me knows that if books wither away under the barrage of e-readers with cloyingly cute names like ‘Kindle’ and ‘Nook’,  the circumstances of such a defeat are out of my control, and thus not fit to get bothered about. I was a book-lover before I was a philosopher, though, and I can no more  accept the decline of books than I can watch them be burned at the hands of those incapable of appreciating the ideas they contain.

Part me believes, and cries in a protest borne of fear about books’ potential decline, that those who prefer electronic literature have failed to appreciate books as an art form. This is a feeling, a reaction. I know that to some people, a book is just an object with ideas in it and they can get those ideas from another object, this one with a glowing screen, just as easily. But books aren’t just objects to me, they’re….beautiful wonders. I love the feel of books, the smell of ink and paper, the texture of those pages, the stylized fonts whose ink gleams in the light. I enjoy them all the more as they age — as the pages yellow, as they take on the scents of owners and bookcases, as they acquire a history of their own. I keep books all around me — piled around my home, in my car. They’re on my person, if I travel — tucked into my jeans or jacket pockets. I’m a genuine bibliophile.

I like books too much to accept substitutes, which is all e-readers will ever be to me. I’m told they can hold hundreds of books at once, and I’ll admit that’s a great convenience. It’s also something of a liability, though, a case of putting one’s eggs all in one basket. E-readers can be broken, fried,  or otherwise rendered inoperative — and repair of electronic gadgets is increasingly difficult, if not impossible in the case of those oh-so-vulnerable LCD screens. Amazon can simply delete the books on your Kindle if it desires — and it has. It’s possible that book publishers will send you another e-reader to ensure you continue buying their stock, but it is not wise to count on the charity of those who seek profit. As for me, I like my libraries to have physical form — I like holding a book in my hands, turning the pages, feeling that physical presence, knowing that it is real. It can’t be deleted or corrupted by a software glitch. It’s there. It can be destroyed, but it will last longer than me and can endure things I cannot. I wouldn’t survive a fall from a skyscraper, for instance, but a book can. Its cover will be battered and perhaps a bit dirty, but it will survive.

It remains to be seen, however, if books will survive humanity’s obsession with immediacy and convenience. Maybe it’s the neo-Luddite in me, but I’ve stopped being convinced by claims to convenience, for all too often authenticity loses out in the bargain. In the United States, downtown streets have been turned into boarded-up ruins for convenience’s sake, as the glories of the free market prefer box stores in the suburbs staffed by unhappy peons to corner groceries. Once upon a time, Broad Street in my hometown (Selma, AL) used to have pedestrians. Every building had a bustling business in it, and above those buildings were more offices and even apartments where people lived. I never knew this until I started talking to people who lived in those days and began reading books — for now, a walk down Broad Street reveals only a scattering of operating shops. The upstairs are boarded up, and many of the buildings are condemned for lack of maintenance. No one lives there anymore: those buildings have lost their souls.

That, I fear, may one day happen to literature — that it will lose its soul and become nothing more than data tucked away inside a glowing gadget composed of a plastic case and rubber buttons. E-readers have a lot going for them, and I’ll admit to using GoogleBooks to find a specific passage containing choice quotations instead of doing a page-by-page search myself. Perhaps the conversion of literature into digital information is unavoidable. Perhaps one day, as in Star Trek, those who hold on to bound books will be seen as idiosyncratic intellectuals stuck in the past, holding on to antiquities — but if that’s the case, I intend on being one of them.

“To each his own, Number One.” 

The title is a reference to those old  Inspector Gadget cartoons starring a man whose suit can spawn virtually every tool he needs, from helicopters to grappling hooks.

Posted in Reflection | Tagged | 8 Comments

This Week at the Library (5 Jan – 12 January)

Posted on January 12, 2011 by smellincoffee

Slow week at the library this week, in part because I’m just starting to get over a rather miserable cold and in part because the books I checked out at the library weren’t what I was expecting. I went to the library hoping to start Bernard Cornwell’s  Arthurian legends series, but the entire set of books seemed missing. After inquiring with the librarians, who promised to look, I decided to settle for Redcoat, a story of a presumably British soldier during the American War of Independence. It hasn’t caught my fancy enough to read just yet, though.

I also checked out The Mind of Egypt after wandering about the library for nearly an hour and finding nothing of interest. (I was sick and tired at the time.) I figured this would be a cultural history of Egypt, covering Egyptian philosophy, religion, and science. Instead it seems to be about the Egyptian understanding of time — which is interesting, but not exactly attractive at the moment.

Instead, I spent most of the week reading The Evolution of God, a brief history of the Abrahamic god and how religious beliefs about him have changed through time. Robert Wright focused on the religions’ “home society’s” role in influencing their development, which has a lot ot offer but which is not a complete story as he tends to ignore big-picture elements (like outside influences on a given society’s religion).

Earlier in the week I read Reunion, a Michael Jan Friedman novel which introduced the Stargazer characters and had one of them try to kill the others. While Death in Winter spoiled  me for for the ‘whodunit’,  working out ‘whytheydunit’ proved to be just as  interesting for me. Fairly enjoyable.

I also read a wide swath of Isaac Asimov: the Complete Stories, volume two, and worked on The Age of Absurdity by Michael Foley. I got odd looks reading this one while watching NCIS with the advertising muted.

Reunion: 7.4
Evolution of God: 8.1

Potentials for next week:

  • To End All Wars, Adam Hochschild. For the first time ever, I am reading an advanced review copy of a book, thanks to Baley over at The Reader’s Book Blog for suggesting I check out a particular site, NetGalleys.  It’s a personal/social history of the Great War, featuring various pairs of individuals who were divided in their decision to support or protest the war. Quite good so far.
  • The Age of Absurdity, Michael Foley.  This is slow so far, but enjoyable. I think I’m on the outside of this cold, so hopefully my pace will pick up this week. 
  • Sex on Six Legs, a science book from NetGalleys. Haven’t started reading it yet, but part of the reason I registered at NetGalleys was to see if I could use it to find interesting science books.  Unfortunately, most of them are questionable — new age stuff and the odd book about why Jesus doesn’t have science — but this one is about a respectable subject, insect sex. 
  • Something by Bernard Cornwell. I may give Redcoat a go, or when I vist the library next I’ll see if I can find Arthur or Agincourt checked in. 

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Teaser Tuesday (11 January)

Posted on January 11, 2011 by smellincoffee

It’s teasin’ Tuesday again, but this week I’m going to do something different. “What, cheat? You always do that.” No, no.  Well, yes — but not as much, and for a far nobler purpose than my own amusement. I’m going post a teaser from a single current read (as opposed to two or three), but pair it with a…similar quotation from a different book, for comparison’s sake.

 ‎And the ad is no longer content to be passively observed. You no longer decode the ad, it decodes you. The latest digital billboards have concealed cameras and software that establish who is looking and display the appropriate ad — so a young man will see a bimbo advertising beer and a middle-aged woman will get details of a pampering-day offer at a health spa. Eventually these billboards will be able to recognize individuals and personalize the offering — seducing me with great 2-for-1 deals on Chinese poetry and hard-bop jazz.

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

Interactive advertising panels, which were linked to the city’s central database, contained sensors that detected the identichips of persons passing by on the street. The city’s AI used the identichip codes to look up each citizen’s purchasing history and economic profile, and it used that data to deliver targeted advertising tailored for maximum enticement. [..] In addition to being used for crass commercial profit, the system was a key tool of the BID, which used the network to monitor the movement and habits of Breen civilians and construct virtual models to suss out suspect behavior.

p. 120, Star Trek Typhon Pact: Zero Sum Game. David Mack. 
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Top Tenish Booking Resolutions

Posted on January 10, 2011 by smellincoffee

We’re only in the second week of the New Year, so it’s not too late to make resolutions: the Broke and the Bookish is calling for biblio-blogging-related resolutions this wear. I’m not actually much for resolutions, but the yearly changeover does provide a nice opportunity to consider goals for the next few months.

1. Think about upgrading the blog template this year.  May will mark four years of weekly visits to the library, and as content as I am with the blog’s current look I suppose a change is in order. I’m quite pleased with the new look for my philosophy/humanities blog,  which is encouraging. I don’t have any ideas currently, though: I’ve considered making a photograph of my home library the background, but  I suspect the blog itself would obscure  most of the picture.

2.  Read more science. In 2009, I remarked that my science reading seemed down — and it slipped further last year. I don’t wish to continue that kind of trend, so when I have spending money perhaps I should divert it toward pop-science books instead of more Star Trek paperbacks…

3. Continue in my  ‘religious/cultural literacy’ private studies, especially in regards to Hinduism. I’ve only read the Gita.

4. Continue reading classic literature and books which played significant role in human history, though I wouldn’t expect The Wealth of Nations or Das Kapital to make any appearances. 😉

5. Take those ten “to be read’ books from last year seriously. I’m reading one at present for leisure reading, and I could very well finish it soon. It’s an anthology, though, so it’s not as if stopping in the middle would prevent me from  resuming it in the future.

6. As finances allow, look into reading more translations from Stephen Mitchell. He translates and interprets classical and religious literature, and I’m particularly interested in his version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. He’s one of those authors I want to read more of, yet never think about when I’m approaching Amazon with my debit card in hand.

7. Stay active in the biblio-blogging community. I started following Teaser Tuesday, Top Ten Tuesdays, and Booking through Thursday this year and have met a number of fellow readers who enjoy writing about the books they’re engaged with. I’d like to become more active, though not necessarily in the meme-following sense. (Three is enough,, I think..)

8. Maybe…use Twitter more. Though it comes as a great surprise to some people, I actually have a twitter feed.  I signed up….at some point within the last two years so I could follow Darth Vader.  The initial posts were personal (“Psychology professor just walked in on me while listening to “Call Me” by Go West.”), but this year I started commenting on the books I was reading. I think I should comment on little discoveries as I’m reading, instead of just saying which book I’ve started. I could use it as a record of odd tidbits.

9. Follow up on old leads. Alison Weir was supposed to be a great discovery for my history reading, but I..forgot about her nonfiction works. Not sure how I managed that given that her biography of Elizabeth I sits openly on the shelves above my computer.

10. Continue enjoying Top Ten Tuesdays, of course! 

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