This Week at the Library (2/6)

Posted on June 2, 2010 by smellincoffee

This week….

I started off with Revenge of the Sith, Matthew Stover’s excellent novelization of Star Wars’ Episode III. Stover improved upon the movie by expanding characterization and creating deeper tension between the lead characters that redeemed weaker parts of the movie altogether.

Next I read Lemony’s Snicket’s The Unauthorized Autobiography,  a faux-collection of documents — letters, memos, newspaper clippings, play scripts, photographs — that relate to the Series of Unfortunate Events and tease readers by allowing them to piece together some of the series’ mysteries.

I decided to finish Animorphs, a series from my youth, and jumped in past the halfway point with book 30, The Reunion, in which the Animorphs attempt to capitalize on the conflict between two Yeerk generals to remove both of them as threats.

My big read last week was John Reader’s Africa, a comprehensive history of Africa that began with the cooling of the mantle and fades away after the first of Africa’s independence movements. Reader’s is a general history that attempts to dispel myths about Africa: I enjoyed my trek through it and emerged all the better for it.

Quotation of the Week: “The history books make arouse admiration for some strategic decision, or horror at some tactical blunder; the novels can conjure up a tingle of excitement, but it is the numbers that constitute the most telling and durable evocations of the [Great][W]ar. They are impossible to forget.” – John Reader

Upcoming Reads:

  • Death in Winter, Michael Jan Friedman. I’m trying to get back into Trek literature, and Friedman is without question my favorite author in that genre.
  • Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne.
  • Dinosaur Lives, John R. Horner
  • Elizabeth the Queen, Alison Weir. My library didn’t have it, but during a recent trip to the zoo I stopped by a local bookshop to spend a gift card. 
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Africa

Posted on June 2, 2010 by smellincoffee

Africa: a Biography of the Continent
© 1997  John Reader
816 pages

And we are scatterlings of Africa, both you and I 

We’re on the road to Phelemanga, beneath a copper sky;

And we are scatterlings of Africa, on a journey to the stars

Far below we leave forever

Dreams of what we where.


For whatever reason, Africa has long maintained a hold over my imagination as a vast land abundant in natural spectacles, and as humanity’s first home with ancient secrets yet to be revealed. I have read a little about it, although not in the course of doing this blog, and intend to read still more. John Reader’s Africa appeared to be an appropriate jumping-off point for further studies,

One of my history professors always devoted the first week of classes to establishing extensive background for that particular class’s topic, and he liked to joke that we were going back “to the cooling of the mantle”. Reader does this literally, beginning the story of Africa with the formation of the great plates that make up the Earth’s crust. From there he covers the evolution of life, of the primates, and finally of humanity, making the transition from natural history to human history a quarter of the way in.

Reader focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, ignoring Africa’s Mediterranean coast after the fall of ancient Egypt and Arabian expansion. Given the scope of his book, Africa takes a general approach. Reader examines the rise of African city-states and civilizations based on economic considerations: in “Cities without Citadels”,  those polities that thrived on their ironmongery are the stars, later replaced by the cattle-based cultures and still later by those that thrived on the European slave trade. Reader portrays sub-Saharan Africa as a harsh land with unreliable weather and only marginally-useful soil: that humanity  has survived there at all is a tribute not to natural bounty, but to human resilience.

Reader gives significant coverage to Europe’s influence on Africa, which is generally negative:  initially European demand for gold shapes the slave trader, and still later European wars become African wars once colonial expansion takes off. The modern era gets short shrift, although a few independence movements (South Africa, particularly) receive special attention.

Reader’s work is certainly expansive and does justice to his overall aim, which is to clear away myths surrounding the continent and its people. It’s left me particularly intrigued by the various effects of European exploration and colonization on the various polities below the Sahara.

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Teaser Tuesday (1-6)

Posted on June 1, 2010 by smellincoffee

Teaser Tuesdays will be a bit different for a couple of months: I have responsibilities on Tuesdays that prevent me from coming near a computer until the early evening. Thus the link to ShouldBeReading will be to the blog itself, and not the TT post — although on a Tuesday the most current post would be Teaser Tuesday, so the effect is the same.

The absence of the wheel and the plough from sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, is cited in a context suggesting inherent backwardness and ineptitude. A closer look shows that the wheel and plough were simply never an option for the indigenous sub-Saharan farmer — not simply because many African soils are difficult to plough and domesticated draught animals would be susceptible to endemic disease; a more pressing reason was that feeding the animals would place unsustainable demands on the food-production system.

254, Africa: A Biography of the Continent.  John Reader.

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The Reunion

Posted on May 31, 2010 by smellincoffee

Animorphs #30: The Reunion
© 1999 K.A. Applegate
176 pages

Ever have one of those nights? Where you’re exhausted, where you’d pay anything just to fall asleep? But the wheels in your head just keep spinning and spinning and spinning? Imagined conversations. Me talking, explaining, arguing. Changing the words around, repeating them, rehashing them. Around and around in circles.  

Me talking to my mom. Raging. Explaining. Me talking to my mom, as my real mom, why I had to do it.

Me explaining to my mom as Visser One. Laughing, chortling, savoring my victory over head.

This is how I defeated you! I crowed.

This is how I saved you! I explained.

No choice. No choice. 

Long ago while in a local grocery store, I spotted an interesting book-cover that depicted a young boy about eleven years old transforming into a lizard. Naturally, it picqued my curiosity and I wanted to read it, but my mother — thinking it suspect for some reason — denied me the freedom to read it. Two years later I started reading the series behind her back and found myself entranced by it:  Animorphs is the story of a band of young adolescents who, with the help of an alien teenager, fight a secret invasion of Earth by a race of brain-controlling slugs called “Yeerks” by transforming into animals — an ability given to them by a doomed member of an alien race fighting against the Yeerks.  At the outset, the novels were chiefly entertaining for their premise — the idea of people “morphing” into animal forms, complete with animal instincts, fascinated me.  The series grew darker as the kids — eventually becoming teenagers — became more involved in a desperate guerilla war against the Yeerks.  They strike against the Yeerks using animal morphs, becoming bitterly-experienced warriors who fight savagely against long odds. Unfortunately, I lost access to the series before the final arc began and have not been able to attempt to complete it until now.

Because I do not quite remember where I  stopped reading, I’ve decided — arbitrarily — to jump in at number thirty. That means establishing a bit of background for curious parties reading this.

The book series began when a group of young adolescents, roughly of early middle school age, witnessed the crash of a small alien spacecraft containing one being, a warrior named Elfangor.  Elfangor informed the children that their planet was in danger, secretly invaded by the Yeerks who were slowly accumulating greater and greater numbers of human hosts.  His kind, the Andalites, were waging a great war against the Yeerks, for Earth was not the first planet to fall prey to the Yeerks: the slugs are spreading throughout the galazy, enslaving whole planets.  Elfangor was alone in attempting to prevent the Yeerks from gaining a foothold on Earth, and failed in his mission: he decided to empower the children — Jake, Rachel, Marco, Tobias, and Cassie — to fight for Earth by giving them the ability to “acquire” the DNA of animals and then transform into those animals at will.

This is an Andalite. They’re as cool as they look. 

Their enemies, the Yeerks, are insidious: the slugs worm their way inside a victim’s ear canal, squeezing into the various crevices of the brain and seizing control of it, turning the human body into their own:  the victim retains his or her personality, but cannot exert any control over their own body. The Yeerk inhabiting a host body is called a “Controller”. Controllers are everywhere, constantly — and discreetly — acquiring new victims. They have one great weakness: every three days, they must take in “Kandrona” rays’, originally transmitted from their native planet’s sun.  Most Yeerks do this communally at gathering sites known as “Yeerk pools”, but the elite have access to generators that provide the rays. The kids have precious few allies: the kid brother of Elfangor for one, and a few androids whose programming prevents them from partaking in violence. They’re useful as spies, however. The six — for “Ax”,  Elfangor’s brother, is part of their band — use a wide variety of “morphs” to spy on Controllers and strike their gains. They fight a holding action against the Yeerks, hoping that one day the Andalite battlefleet will arrive to start open war.

Applegate and her ghostwriters rotate characters in telling the books: Book #30, “The Reunion”, is told from Marco’s point of view. Marco is Jake’s best friend, and while Jake provides leadership and stability, Marco provides humor, often the sardonic variety. He’s intense, a difficult character to read: more than any of the others, he understands that he and his friends run a tightrope, risking death and defeat at every moment while enganging in morally questionable activity. Marco is the soldier who knows they teeter on the edge of insanity, but he hides the fear of what might happen behind a mask of laughing bravado.

That mask has a weakness: Marco’s mother, who disappeared during his childhood but resurfaced recently as a Controller: she is host to the highest-ranked officer in the Yeerk military, Visser One.  In every action involving her, Marco is torn between his duties as a member of the Animorphs and his love for his mother:  in The Reunion that comes to a head when he spots her walking the streets in a disguise and decides to follow her. He soon realizes that Visser One is on the run,  having lost a private war with another Yeerk ruler — Visser Three.  Visser Three is the kids’ main nemesis, as he heads the Earth invasion: Visser One was trapped on the surface when the kids undermined a project of hers that recquired experimentation on Earth.

Marco decides to use the conflict between the Vissers to the Animorphs’ advantage and contrives a plan that will — with luck — destroy both Vissers. That he is willing to sacrifice his mother — whom he loves dearly — for the cause indicates how dark the series already is that this point, having already wreaked an emotional toil on Marco and Jake particularly. The resulting plan sees the Animorphs take to the mountains amid a furious battle between the Vissers’ respective forces, but all does not go according to plan.

The Reunion made for a strong reentry into the Animorphs series. It’s a short read — I used to go through several of them a day in high school — so this series won’t take long to finish. If you can find the collection in your local library, it might make for a fun diversion regardless of age.

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Lemony Snicket: the Unauthorized Autobiography

Posted on May 28, 2010 by smellincoffee

Lemony Snicket: the Unauthorized Autobiography
© 2002 Daniel Handler
213 pages (containing “an overall feeling of doom”, according to the index.)

As the official representative of Lemony Snicket in all legal, literary, and social matters, I am often asked difficult questions, even when I am in a hurry. Recently the most common questions have been the following:
  1. Will you please get out of my way?
  2. Where did Lemony Snicket’s Lemony Snicket: the Unauthorized Autobiography come from? (p. ix.)

This is, I think, the oddest book I’ve ever read. Last summer I enjoyed The Series of Unfortunate Events immensely for its eccentric humor and mystery, so I eagerly dove into this. The Unauthorized Autobiography is a strange collection of documents that pertain to the events and people of the Unfortunate Events series. Snicket apparently passed it on — heavily edited — to ensure the safety of the Baudelaire children. The documents contained within — letters, play transcripts, black and white photographs,  memos, panicked slips of paper, official V.F.D. pamphlets, and the like — typically connect with the series as a whole, although some portions, photographs particularly, do not. (One photograph is titled “Total Strangers”, and another “This is not where the Baudelaire parents are buried”.)

The book as a whole is apparently intended to tantalize readers by helping them figure out answers to some questions about the series, but it was published before the fulfillment of the series. I’ve read the series, and so have already figured out the answers, so that portion of the book was lost on me. I enjoyed the author’s eccentric sense of humor and tidbits that revealed more about the Unfortunate Events universe, but I must confess to being a bit disappointed overall. Having read the last four books of the series may have spoiled this mid-series tease for me.

Perhaps the oddest part of the book: one of V.F.D’s pass phrases is from the Ramona Quimby books by Beverly Cleary. Cleary was my first “favorite author” as a child, and I adored her Henry Huggins and Romana Quimby books.

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Revenge of the Sith

Posted on May 27, 2010 by smellincoffee

Revenge of the Sith
© 2005: Screenplay, George Lucas; novelization, Matthew Stover.
419 pages

Blade to blade, they were identical. After thousands of hours in lightsaber sparring, they knew each other better than brothers, more intimately than lovers; they were complimentary halves of a single warrior. In every exchange, Obi-Wan gave ground. It was his way. And he knew that to strike Anakin down would be to burn his own heart to ash. (397)

An article on TvTropes convinced me to read the novelization of Revenge of the Sith, primarily because     it mentioned that Stover remedied my primary gripe with the movie, the way it turned Padme Amidala into a two-dimensional prop for Anakin whose only function seemed to be crying and wringing her hands in helplessness. Happily, I was not mislead here, for Revenge may be one of the better Star Wars works I’ve yet read.

Revenge of the Sith is the last of the prequel movies, depicting the downfall of the Galactic Republic and the fall of Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side. Skywalker is the hero of the hour, a lifetime prodigy whose exploits are known far and wide. He and his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi  have served the Republic tirelessly throughout the Clone Wars, but political stresses tug them apart. The Jedi council has grown concerned over the increasing amount of power invested in the Supreme Chancellor, and doubly wary given the Chancellor’s strong connection to young Anakin, who — while powerful, brave, and fiercely loyal — possesses fear and pride in abundance. While the Republic struggles to bring an end to the civil war which has so undermined its foundations, the JedI attempt to defend the integrity of both the Republic and Anakin. In the shadows, the Dark Lord of the Sith pulls the strings and anticipates his greatest triumph: unlimited and unquestioned mastery over the galaxy and its citizens.

What Stover adds to this is not just a few extra scenes that tie up loose ends, but passages that give the players involved in this great tragedy emotional depth, depth that explains and possibly even redeems some of the film’s weaker portions. Stover occasionally breaks from the usual third-person past-tense narration to focus on a character in the second tense, bringing the reader inside a character’s head. This approach handled character exposition well, and proved to be efficient in tackling Order 66.  The added character depth allows Stover to create more believable tension between Anakin and the main characters, particularly Obi-Wan and Amidala, the latter of whom is active throughout the book in an attempt to restore the Constitution to its pre-Palpatine form: Palpatine regards the 2,000 senators who join her cause as traitors, and links them with the alleged attempt on the part of the Jedi to overthrow the republic and place it under their rule. Thus, Anakin’s hostility toward Padme and Obi-Wan arriving on Mustafar together at the end of the movie has greater significance.  Although this a dark book, Stover adds in surprising and sometimes odd amounts of humor: Anakin starts throwing out snaky one-liners as soon as he steps foot on Mustfar and doesn’t quit until the last  of the separatists are dead.  Curiously, he underplays some of the more dramatic moments in the movie, particularly Anakin’s wail of unbelief when the Emperor tells him of Padme’s death.

Revenge of the Sith  made for a great read even though I’m so familiar with the movie. It added depth and humor to the original screenplay,  maintaining a strong stride until Mustafar. I can easily recommend it to Star Wars readers.

Related:

  • Shatterpoint, by the same author — to my surprise.I struggled through Shatterpoint, but Revenge was a breeze.
  • Dark Lord: the Rise of Darth Vader, by James Luceno. I’ve read this and enjoyed it, although since it’s been so long (before I started this blog, even), I can’t remember too many details. The novel is set immediately after Revenge of the Sith and focuses on Anakin as he grows accustomed to his new role as Darth Vader.
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This Week at the Library (26/5)

Posted on May 26, 2010 by smellincoffee

This week at the library….

I read North Korea: Another Country, a work which intended to show how North Korea’s history shaped its current path as a militant  and isolationist state. Cumings drew from Korean culture and the state’s early experience with its neighbors. While I think he conveyed his essential meaning, the book seems a bit scattered.

I next read The Life of Birds, one of David Attenborough’s nature works. Fascinating as always.

Lord Hornblower delighted me: I think it one of the better Hornblower novels. Set during the last months of the Napoleonic wars, we see Hornblower at his best in helping bring down the bloody Corsican.

I also finished George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, an account of his time living in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War when it functioned almost as a commune. He also records his time spent fighting in a local militia, although he saw little action. The book is most valuable to the modern reader for the light it sheds on Spanish politics of the day.

Pick of the Week: Oh…let’s say both Hornblower and Catalonia.

Selected Passages:
As we went out he stepped across the room and gripped my hand very hard. Queer, the affection you can feel for a stranger! It was though his spirit and mine had momentarily succeeded in bridging the gulf of language and tradition and meeting in utter intimacy.  (Orwell, describing his first meeting with a fellow International, this one an Italian expatriate. P. 3-4)

When one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle.[…] Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to act as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. (Orwell, describing Barcelona in the hands of the workers. P. 4-6)

It seemed dreadful that the defenders of the Republic should be this mob of ragged children carrying worn-out rifles which they did not know how to use. I remember wondering what would happen if a Fascist aeroplane passed our way — whether the airman would even bother to dive down and give us a burst from his machine-gun. Surely even from the air he could see we were not real soldiers? (Orwell, reflecting on the unpreparedness of Spain for the war. P. 19)

George Kopp, on his periodic tours of inspection, was quite frank with us. “This is not a war,” he used to say, “It is a comic opera with an occasional death.” (Orwell, p. 32, reflecting on the stagnation of the war on their front.)

Upcoming Reads:

  • Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Matthew Stover. I picked this up because it’s supposed to be better than the movie itself. Considering that I finished it only hours after cracking it open for the first time, I’d say the reputation is merited…
  • Lemony Snicket: the Unauthorized Autobiography, Daniel Handler.  Reading through the series of unfortunate events last summer was a real treat.
  • Africa: a Biography of the Continent, John Reader. I’ll be trekking through Africa for a good while, I think. It’s a right monster of a book. 
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Homage to Catalonia

Posted on May 26, 2010 by smellincoffee

Homage to Catalonia
© 1952 George Orwell
232 pages

On 17 July 1936, conservative and reactionary forces inside Spain opted to seize power by force, rather than allow the Popular Front government — an increasingly liberal, democratic, and progressive entity that undermined Spain’s vaunted traditions of feudalism  and religious tyranny — to continue to set the nation’s course. The result: civil war. The resulting war seemed to be two wars in once: a defense on the part of Spain’s middle-class liberals to maintain their established rights, and a revolution on the part of the working class to assert their own rights. In Catalonia, for instance, workers seized control of various businesses and utilities, establishing communes which they intended to defend with local militias. Remarkably, Spain’s liberals, socialists, anarchists, and other progressives did not fight alone: people from western Europe and the United States came to the defense of Spain’s republic: entire brigades were formed of these volunteers.

Emma Goldman’s account of these communes and of the international brigades enraptured me when I read of them for the first time, and fueled entirely my interest in the Spanish Civil War. As a humanist, nothing inspires me more than the idea of people putting aside their tribalism and breaking bread together in the common cause of civilization. Thus I eagerly anticipated George Orwell’s account of his time in the International brigades, specifically in the Workers for Marxist Unification militia. There were many such militias, for each union and political party seemed to have its own.

Readers who pick up Homage expecting a war memoir will be disappointed, for Orwell experienced little in the way of action aside from nighttime patrols and one raid. The first third of the book details how poorly-equipped the Republic and unions were for a conflict: training for the Internationals was nonexistent, and weapons were badly dated. Some were scarcely worth more than clubs, and more dangerous to the user than the target. Orwell’s own exit from the war came about when a malfunctioning weapon sent a bullet through his next.

After his one-time raid, Orwell’s troops are sent to Barcelona where politics dominates. Through his eyes, we see the increasing marginalization of socialists and anarchists in favor of the Stalin-backed Communists, who gain influence in the government and consolidate power. During Orwell’s time in Barcelona, government troops attack union-held sections of town, leading to intermittent street fighting. Orwell addresses the broader implications of the Communist party’s role in Spain’s future in the next chapter, seeing as little than the hired men of Stalin and Russia. Eventually the Communists achieve primacy, declaring unions and parties associated with the anarcho-socialist revolutionaries illegal. Orwell must subsequently beat a hasty escape from the land he came to fight for.

Homage to Catalonia was certainty worth my while, giving me a firmer handle on this period I’m increasingly interested in. I enjoyed Orwell’s voice as a writer: frank, honest, passionate, but ever humane. In spite of the treatment he received at the hands of Government guards, the text bears them no ill will. There is no bitterness here, only a sigh of disappointment that the cherished ideal did not withstand. I recommend it, and plan on reading more in this area as I can.

Related:

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Lord Hornblower

Posted on May 25, 2010 by smellincoffee

Lord Hornblower
© 1946 C.S. Forester
318 pages

      The year is 1814, and Sir Horatio Hornblower, commodore in his Britannic Majesty’s Royal Navy, has been sent to the coast of France on a secret mission. The crew of the gunship Flame have rebelled against their abusive captain and are offering their ship to Napoleon in return for amnesty and a new start. This cannot be tolerated: mutiny is intolerable even when justified, but treason?  Hornblower must somehow capture a ship of men who know they are damned if they surrender to him, and so before they make good on their threat to humiliate Britain by delivering Flame to France.

One thing leads to another, and a book about mutiny becomes the story of French political intrigue during the last months of the Napoleonic wars: a captured French noble approaches Hornblower and suggests that if the two of them work together to capture one of France’s nearby port city, they may be able to liberate northern France from Napoleon’s rule and do their part to send the naughty Corsican back to the hell that spawned him. This potential rebellion, unlike the similar Anglo-French Royalist effort in “Frogs and Lobsters”, stands a good chance of succeeding: Napoleon’s armies are pressed from all directions by the Austrians, Prussians, and Anglo-Spanish forces in Iberia.

And so Hornblower is thrust into the land war in France, participating in Napoleon’s defeat. While his wife Barbara helps host the Congress of Vienna, he travels to the interior of France to drink with old friends to the honor of other friends who did not survive the great conflict. When Napoleon escapes from Elba and makes France his once more, Hornblower — who has had a long-standing price on his head by Napoleon’s men — must flee for his life through the countryside, facing mounting peril.

Lord Hornblower is easily one of Forester’s better Hornblower works for me:  the adventure took me completely, and the many plot twists kept my on my heels, wondering where Forester would take me next — and what he might do, for the gloves were off in this book.  I half-expected the book to end with Hornblower facing a firing squad. Lord Hornblower would be a fitting end to the series if Forester had written them in chronological order, given that it finally ends the long war with France that began with the Revolution in Midshipman Hornblower and ties up loose ends with various characters. The book was also published in 1946, and I can’t help but wonder if the characters’ manifest joy at the end of the war — and their horror when Napoleon escapes to begin it anew — are the result of Forester’s own relief that the destruction during his own day in Europe had finally ended.

Photobucket

Inside cover art: click for full-sized image.

I have two more Hornblower books to enjoy, but I suspect compared to this they’re going to feel anticlimactic.

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Teaser Tuesday (25/5)

Posted on May 25, 2010 by smellincoffee

It’s Teesday Tuese!

Or…something. From ShouldBeReading.

The sermon was still going on, and  Hornblower feared that when it was finished there would be some more singing, more of those high-pitched noises from the surpliced choir boys which would distress him painfully again, more painfully than the sermon or the oaken stall. This was the price he had to pay for having a ribbon and star to wear, for being a Knight of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath; as he was known to be on sick-leave in England — and fully convalescent — he could not possibly evade attendance at this, the most important ceremonial of the Order.

C.S. Forester, Lord Hornblower. (p. 3-4) Poor Hornblower is tone-deaf.

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