reality is not what it seems

Carlo Rovelli picked a great title when he chose Reality is Not What it Seems for this follow up to his Seven Brief Lessons on Physics,* which started out a pamphlet and became an international best seller. Rovelli talks a little bit about this in the introduction; how this book came to be; how people had been asking him to explain the theories of quantum gravity in layman's terms, which he was reluctant to try and do. He did try when pressed, and the result was a small book, but because of its popularity, he was pressed further to expand on that work and the result, he explains, is this book.

I will go ahead and tell you now, that I was quoting phrases, and reading passages out loud to anyone who would listen. my apologies to my family When I finished, I gave the book to my wife and recommended that she read it.

In the first few chapters, Rovelli traces the history of where we are in physics, and our understanding of how the universe works. How scientists and philosophers built upon the work of their predecessors to unlock the secrets of the universe as we know it. Because I am interested in this kind of thing, I had a pretty good idea about where we are and how we got there, but the story that Rovelli tells both provided missing links in the trail of information, extended what I understood and how different theories relate to one another, and in a way that was both succinct, and mesmerizing. Two chapters in and I was hooked.

Rovelli then goes on to describe quantum physics, and what we know about it, building upon what we've learned in the past, until he gets to the point where the theories aren't proven yet, and its still conjecture and competing theses. He points out that there are two main branches of theories, the one he is working on and believes in, and the other, which is string theory. You got me about which is correct, or more correct, but he makes a passionate argument.

Read this Book--I enjoyed it thoroughly--but maybe only if you are interested in this kind of stuff. Its good, but I'm not sure how much general appeal it will have for the less geekily inclined.

* You can download a copy of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by clicking here.

 

 

world without end

World Without End is Ken Follett's 2007 follow-up to his 1989 The Pillars of the Earth. Its the second in his Kingsbridge series, which apparently has 3 more, making it a total of 5 in this series, so, pentology, I guess.

Pillars was good--it's actually listed in the 'good' section on the right-hand column of this blog--so I was interested to see where this one would go.  We're still in Kingsbridge, where the first story takes place, and the cathedral that formed the framework around which the first installment was built, is already in place. This book is also about the people, rather than the building, but things have changed in the years that have elapsed in Kingsbridge (or in the 18 years that elapsed between writing the first and second books!) This book is a little more soapy than I recall the first one being, and a little more sexy. Its not a bodice ripper, by any means, but I did get the feeling that Follett may have taken a little more freedom with what propriety may have allowed during the period without some shunning, if not hanging. But what do I know; my experience with what happened and what people did or could do in the 1200s is limited to the other things I've read and seen on the screen, so who's to say which notion is correct.

That said, World Without End was entertaining, if perhaps not quite as good as the original. As I said, there are now three more: after another 10 year gap, Follett produced A Column of Fire, sounds like he should have that looked at and then just three years later, and then another three more, he cracked out the remaining two. Are there more coming? Don't know, guess we'll wait and see. Based on this read, I won't be running out to get the next one, but if I stumble across it in the wild, as I did this one, I'll probably pick it up.

I read this a while ago (a few months ago?) and didn't get a chance or make a chance to write about this one at the time. I have a few more to catch up on too.

book of illusions

The Book of Illusions is a novel Paul Auster, published in 2002, and was apparently pretty well received at the time. I don't really follow things like that, but they show up when I do a little searching to put together my review, and lots of book descriptions say it was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2004. His work is generally lauded, I've come to understand. Go Paul Auster.

I picked this one up at the book sale at the Moses Greeley Parker Memorial Library in Dracut, Massachusetts. Library books sales are one of my favorite ways to find books. Lost of times the library will stock up on new books that are very popular so they can meet the demand. Often times it is the Friends of the Library group, who helps to funds these additional copies so that patrons aren't disappointed by not being able to secure a copy of the latest popular book by being put on a wait list. Once the rush is over, the library may begin to sell off additional copies to make room for the new popular title.

I enjoyed this false history* story very much. David Zimmer is a professor who stumbles upon some thought to be lost silent movies by a less than well known actor from the 1920s, and contemporary of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Zimmer takes advantage of the discovery to create a project to help help cope with recent tragedy that has also left him with more time on his hands than he wants, and extra spending money to follow this pursuit. He takes it upon himself to find out all he can, and write the definitive book on this unknown champion of the silent film genre.

What he eventually finds changes his life more than he expected, and some of those experiences tilt into the surreal. I have read anything by Auster in the past that I recall, but I really like his writing style. Its direct, pared down, clean and easy to read. Like all the best writers, Auster is invisible, and the story just feels like its being absorbed rather than read and interpreted. Auster's first person story telling seamless slipped between Zimmer's story, the silent movies plots he was watching, and the book he was writing. All of which seem to inform, reflect, and in some cases foreshadow one another. Art evincing art, evincing art.

I'll keep my eye out for Paul Auster. Auster died last April at 77. Read this book. 

 

*In 2010, Duke Special recorded an album in tribute to the 12 fictional lost movies of the fictional silent film star, Hector Mann, in Auster's book. The 12 tracks on the album have the same names as the 12 silent films described in The Book of Illusions. Wild.

aednan: an epic

 

Aednan: An Epic is a long form poetry saga by Linnea Axelsson, translated into English by Saskia Vogel. We're going to stick with the theme of exploitation and subjugation of natives that we started in Typee, although I didn't know that when I picked up this book at my local library. When I picked it up, what I thought was: Epic poetry? Hell yeah!

Its always great to read books written in other cultures, and from different perspectives. If I had all the time in the world I would learn multiple languages, so that I could read in different languages. That would be grand, but for now, I will continue to rely upon translators.

The story follows the lives, and is told from the points of view, of multiple generations of a Sami * family, from the 1910s until the present. At the beginning of this story, the protagonists and their tribal families, raised reindeer and followed their herds across all of their native land, Sapmi, * which stretched across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and into a part of Russia. At the the time they moved freely across their land, with little thought given to the national borders which had grown up around them. In a word, they were nomadic.

In time, the governments of these countries began to rope the Sami in, excluding them from areas where the various governments determined was off limits to their ranging due to things the Sami didn't recognize, such as private property, public works project, and other developments and exclusions they needed to learn to live with. Eventually, the Sami in this family were isolated in a part of Sweden, and their ranging was completely cut off. This was hard for the Sami, because their culture had grown up around following the natural ranging of the reindeer herds. But that was now curtailed, and hemmed in as well. Think Native American reservation. They even went through the a forced assimilation process that many aboriginal peoples were forced to endure.

Its clear that the assimilation process worked in many ways, and many Sami became the neighbors of other ordinary Swedes, but what Axelsson shows us is that there are many, that still suffer from that process, and others who fight for reparations for what was done to their people. 

An an epic, it was a little slow, and in some cases, a little hard to tell who was narrating. Its epic in its scope, but this isn't Beowulf or The Iliad, nor is it trying to be. This is an epic of suffering and injustice, which should be read, lest we let it happen again. The Sami have begun to regain and rebuild their cultural heritage and have won recognition from the Swedish government.

* The words Sami and Sapmi are both properly spelled with an acute accent mark over the A, ( a straight line pointing at 2:00 o'clock, rather than a grave accent mark, which points at 10:00) but in my experience, those things don't always render properly on Blogger, so I've left them off rather than taking the chance that you'll see question marks or gray boxes in their place.

typee

Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life was Herman Melville's first book. The paperback version I read, is from Penguin Classics, printed in 1996. I borrowed this copy from my office lending library.

This version looks like it may have been prepared with the school market in mind. There is an introduction (about 20 pages) by Professor John Bryant, who also prepared other commentary on the text, and an extensive appendixes. Bryant's introduction helps to place Typee within Melville's life, as well is within the larger context of the world in which it was written. Bryant, according to the bio in the front matter, is a professor at Hofstra University and an author and/or editor of all things Melville, basically. yeah, Melville nerd 

It was interesting to learn that Typee was published in Britain, and then in America, but editors in each took offense to differing things, and so Melville modified or removed items to suit the local tastes, actually, more than once, which means there are two authorized versions--British and American--each with its own various editions, as ther edits and corrections were made. That, of course, makes it difficult to know what the original, unmodified author's intent was. Bryant has edited this version as a hybrid between the two, to try and get at the most complete and accurate interpretation of the author's original story. To that end he has also made 'corrections' to the manuscript for typos and in some case words that Melville may have selected in error. These edits and corrections, along with explanatory notes are included in the appendixes.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Melville was essentially stranded on this island for months,* living with the natives, and essentially shacked up with a local young woman. That, along with the fact that the women went around topless--when they weren't completely naked whilst swimming, bathing, or just hanging out on a canoe--was one of the things Melville needed to edit out or tone down, in order to keep from stunning British and/or American readers.

What was maybe most problematic, however, is that Melville had a real problem with what so call 'modern society' had brought to the natives of the South Pacific at the hands of missionaries. Its was Melville's believe that way the natives lived, in harmony with nature, and at ease in their tribal societies, was not improved by the introduction of modern society. He was heartbroken that in an attempt to improve the lives of the natives, the missionaries brought structure and religion to a place where Melville that it wasn't required to improve either the people or their lives. The introduction of structure and religion also meant rules, governance, and money. In reality, from Melville's point of view, at least, that meant the white men came to exploit what the islands had to offer, and what the native used to take for free from the forest they now had to work for, and quickly came under the thumb of westerners. It was apparently too much for his readers, worried his editors, that men of god could be making the lives of those they were trying to 'save' so much worse. Melville uses the colonization of the Hawaiian Islands as an example of the corruption, poverty, and exploitation that westernization had brought at the hands of missionaries. He also didn't believe that all missionaries were innocent of the tragedy they wrought. On the contrary, it was his believe that even some who came with good intentions were swayed by the luxuries that exploitation brought and were soon become exploiters themselves.

Its clear then, that Melville isn't interested in a purely maritime adventure story, based on his escapades. Melville's ability to fatten up his stories appears to have been born here in Typee. From what was essentially a tale he told at parties, Melville, at the urging of his listeners, put down his adventures, and then added in a bunch of other information that he had researched or heard about, along with his personal thoughts about colonization and evangelism, in order to flesh it out to a novel. Whole chapters on how harpoons are made and used in Moby Dick, I'm looking at you.

Is this nonfiction? A journal of actual events with some additional researched information (which may or may not be completely accurate) thrown in? Or is it a fictionalized account, inspired by the true events witnessed by Melville while he was stranded on the island for those few months and some other information that Melville used to support his social commentary conclusions about western interference in native cultures and the societal damage caused by religious indoctrination? To be honest, I'm sympathetic to Melville's thoughts about western exploitation of native cultures. Not just here, but everywhere. 

I called this Melville's first novel, multiple times during this entry, but perhaps that's unfair. Lets just say this is Melville's first book and leave it at that. This was is worth a read if you haven't already.

* Depending on what you read (or believe) Melville may have been in captivity, albeit a very relaxed captivity, for multiple months, as the story indicates, or maybe just a month.

metropolis

Metropolis by Philip Kerr.

I'm trying to play catch up, so I'm working in reverse to gets some notes down, or a review, I guess you could say, of the recent books I've read. I tried to list them all in 'the books' tab above, and I did my best to put them in rough order. I fell down on the job of keeping track for most of this year, but I was able to cobble the list together based on the stack of books I have here, quick lists of books I jotted down in a draft posts here on the blog, and some photos I took of the book covers to help me remember, whenever it occurred to me that I wasn't getting the job done.

At some point, the books I've read will have been completed far enough in the past that I may not remember enough about them to be worth it to actually write about them. My guess is that it may depend on whether I still have the book and can flip through it, how much I liked it when I read it, etc. Metropolis is just a few books back, and while I don't recall the names of the characters, I do recall them, and the story.

As you can see in the Amazon link for the paperback version, linked above, Metropolis is a Bernie Gunther novel. Gunther is a recurring character in Kerr's books, altho I think this is the first one I've read. There is one other Kerr book included here on the blog,* but its not a crime story. Gunther is a detective (newly minted in this book) on the Berlin police force, between world wars I and II. Its the late 20s I think, and Nazism is on the rise. The murders Gunter is looking into appear to be hate related, and targeted at specific groups of people--prostitutes and disabled WWI veterans. Gunther is following leads, that no one else he works with thinks are worth his time, but he's young, and once he gets an idea in his head...

The story follows Gunther's rise into the Berlin Murder Squad, or whatever that group is called, and his investigation into these two groups of murders. His investigations take him to some of the seedier parts of Berlin, and his adventures (or misadventures) in that secret layer of Berlin society is what provides the colorful backdrop to this story, which was at times horrifying, disgusting, and sad, but was also, in some cases, sensual, and occasionally sexy.

Kerr has woven quite a tapestry upon which he has set these Bernie Gunther novels it seems, so I can see why folks keep reading. I'll keep my eyes out for more, but I won't be jumping in the car to get them today.

 

* in the link to the other Kerr story on the blog, you find a link to a third Philip Kerr book I read, called Dark Matter, which was pretty good.

ex-libris

Ex-Libris is from 1998, so its been kicking around for a while. I borrowed this copy from my small lending library we have at my office. It pre-dates this blog so I wasn't sure if I had read it or not, but I do recall reading Ross King's Brunelleschi's Dome years ago, and it was very good--you can find it in the right-hand column in my 'great' list--so I thought I may have. But no, I don't think I did, or at least I don't remember reading it, tho the first part did seem familiar. After looking back at the blog, I did find two others Domino (which I didn't finish) and Leonardo and the Last Supper, which I did finish. In that review, I noted a few other books from Ross King that I had read, but this isn't one of them.

So if I was looking for a pattern in my reactions to Ross King's writing, I would say that I tend to like his novelized historical books, versus his historical novels. It seems like when his work is based more on a single historical work and how it came to be, he does better than straight fictional stories, even if those stories do include a fair amount of historical research and content. I would put Ex-Libris in the latter category, but that said, I liked this one better than some of the others. I may have read this one, I guessed that I did in my review of Domino (linked above) but I didn't remember then either. Forgettable is probably not a great attribute for a book, but perhaps its apt here.

If this one had a draw back, its that it has so much research and history, that it was, at times, a little hard to follow. There were so many interlacing facts, spread out over a hundred or so years, that it would take a college history class to untangle them, never mind understand them in context. So I did what I assume most readers who aren't 17th century historian would do, I ignored most of it, tried to remember the high points, and assumed that King would help fill in the blanks as we went along, which he obligingly did.

This story is about the power of knowledge, the concentrated power of libraries as fonts of learning, and the various historical powers that struggled to control, ban, censor, and contain that knowledge and keep its power for themselves. It was also a powerful reminder, for me, of why public libraries are the great democratizers, as they have taken that power from the rich and wealthy few that used to hoard it for themselves, and delivered it into the hands of the people.

If you enjoyed King's books on the duomo in Florence, and the frescoes by DaVinci and Michelangelo, you'll enjoy this one too, just not as much.

sea of poppies

Amitav Ghosh has a number of books, but I don't recall reading any of them. I came across Sea of Poppies in a library book sale and decided to give it a whirl. Its an historical novel that takes place in India in the early 1800s when the English colonizers there were running an opium trade between there and China. After looking this up for a link, I found that it is the first in a Trilogy know collectively as The Ibis Trilogy. The other books are River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire.

There is a wide cast of characters, but they come from three major groups: the local Indians, the western colonists, and a sort mishmash of transplanted folks who end up being on the outside to both of the other parties. Its this group of people, who intermingle with the locals and the colonizers, whose perspective I ended up identifying with and thereby viewing the story from. I suppose, depending on where you're from, or where your sympathies lie, your viewpoint may be different, but perhaps its Ghosh's multicultural lifestyle* that allows us to see the story from each side. I felt the plight of the local folks who were being forced to grow poppies to feed the opium machine, even to the point that they weren't allowed subsistence crops to feed their families.

The story is epic in its story arc, but ended abruptly for my taste, but perhaps knowing as I do now that its the first of a trilogy, makes the needle lifted from the record ending a little more understandable. I do like books, part of a series or not, that have a beginning, a middle and an end. This one does, to be sure, but the ending was a little abrupt.

I'll keep my eye out for the others, but I won't be seeking them out at the store or the library.

 

Note: I'm trying to post about a few of the recent books I've read. I've fallen out of the habit of writing about them as I finish them, but I did manage to record what books they were. You can find a list of them on the Books page here, linked on the tab above.

* According to the book jacket, Ghosh lives in India and New York.

impossible lives of great wells

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells is a 2014 book by Andrew Sean Greer, the author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli, 10 years prior. I liked that earlier, book and I liked this one too, altho perhaps not quite as much. There are some similar themes Greer is exploring here, and the premise of the story is also fantastical.

Greer is again examining love, loss, and longing. And because this also has historical fiction aspects, he is also looking at a woman's place and standing in American society in the various time periods in which the story takes place.

This was a fun ride and Greer has constructed some pretty complex characters, and developed their personalities and interactions in ways that really help us understand how these people feel about each other, and how society, from differing time periods, influence those personalities and interactions.

Suspension of disbelieve is again required for this one, and if you enjoyed Max Tivoli then you'll probably enjoy this one.

persepolis

I haven't read a ton of graphic novels, but some.* This book was a loan from my oldest; not too long ago I commented that I had read a bunch of books written by authors sympathetic to the Israeli point of view in its continuing quarrels with its Middle Eastern neighbors, and I was hoping to read something that took a different view. Marjane Satrapi was born in Iran, was raised there as a child, and moved to Austria for her education--what ended up as essentially a boarding school, with her parents stuck in Iran--not long after the fundamentalist revolution or uprising in Iran.  

Persepolis ** is her telling, in two parts, of her life as a child in Iran,  her teens in Austria as a student and newly birthed innocent into the ways of the West, and her eventual return (at least for a while) to her home and family. One assumes this is strictly autobiographical, but I don't know that I actually read that anywhere... let's check. Random House lists it as Biography/Memoir, so I guess so.

The illustrations/cartooning in the graphic novel are bold, black and white. When I did an image search for Marjane Satrapi a lot of her photos are also black and white, which made me wonder if that is so because that is what she wanted, or if the photographer or publisher of the photo used black and white because of the novel's imagery. hmmm

The story of Satrapi is one of conflict; between her and her family and the oppression the are forced to live under, as well as the conflict of her innocent early years in contrast to the modernism of Vienna where she attended school. She rebelled against the regime as a child, and rebelled against xenophobia and elitism in Vienna, and after her return to Tehran, she rebels again as an adult, and eventually leaves again to live in France and find the freedom she tasted as a teen.

As you would expect there are scenes of sweetness, and sickening oppression, stress, anger, prejudice, love, and healing, but none of these ideas and feelings overwhelms the story. In the end I felt for the author, and had the feeling that she did the best she could with what she had. Maybe not as good as some in similar circumstances, but better than most. 

While confirming for this blog entry, I discovered that there is another book, Persepolis 2, that presumably continues the story, so I'll need to look for that. There was also an animated movie of the same name, with a limited US release, in 2007.

* Watchmen, and one or two others.

** The title Persepolis, I presume, comes from the capital City of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire, of the same name, founded by Darius I, about 2500 years ago, which sits in current south-west Iran. The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

gawain and the green knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl & Sir Orfeo are three poems translated from Middle English by J.R.R. Tolkien. The first two were discovered contained in the same manuscript, along with two other poems, written in the same hand, around the year 1400, according to the introduction, edited by Christopher Tolkien from a number of sources which original with his father, including notes, transcripts from broadcast interviews, etc. Sir Orfeo is contained in three extant manuscripts, and the one Tolkien used is dated to the 1330s, inscribed, probably in London. The original authors are unknown.

Tolkien worked on the translations a number of times from the1920s up through at lest the 1950s according to the preface by Christopher Tolkien, and in some case in collaboration with other experts in the field. In some cases, Christopher found multiple versions, and made an effort to use the most recent updated forms for this publication. The copyright is dated 1975 and held by Tolkien's long time publisher, George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. and published in 1980 by Ballantine Books, of New York.

The trickiest part of the translations, according to the front matter, is the rhythm, not the strict iambic metrical foot used in other forms, such as Shakespeare, but a more loose rhythm of stressed and less stressed syllables, more closely matching natural speech, combined with alliterative sounds within many of the lines, such as this example given in the Appendix (also credited to J.R.R. Tolkien, and edited by Christopher):

Tirius went to Tuscany         and towns founded*

In this line, I've bolded the stressed syllables in red, and obviously, Tirius, Tuscany and Towns alliterate. I've added the break in the line, as the example in the aforementioned appendix did, to illustrate that each line is composed of two chunks, according to Tolkien.

The trick is apparently finding the words in moderns English that both tell the same story, give the same intended meaning, maintain the meter and rhythm, and don't damage the structure of the poem or its speech patterns so much that it is no longer a worthy representation of the original.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the longest poem, at about 80 pages, Pearl is about 33 pages, and Sir Orfeo is shortest at about 15 pages. Each seems designed to be spoken aloud, as one assumes that not many in the 1300s and 1400s could read, and they each seems to be focused on a story that is both exciting, and includes lessons on life and strong moral. They each extol the glory of God and being good, and the rewards that come from keeping both of those aspirations close at heart. Each also has a sprinkling of magic, often dressed as dream or phantasm brought on by sleep, drink, or love. All of the ingredients for that which Tolkien was trying to restore to England, its lost native mythology, which he imagined was as rich and diverse as the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, or any other ancient civilization that didn't suffer the losses brought on by England's northern, damp climate, which is so hostile to things like old parchment manuscripts.

What I found most fun was the similarities in some of the themes from the adventures themselves that were clearly the inspirations,** at least in part, for some of Tolkien's fiction. That itself, is worth the price of admission.

* Sir Gawain, stanza 1 

** Tolkien fans out there will have heard the comparisons between The Lord of the Rings and Wagner's Ring Cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen) which Tolkien denied, and still many try to say that it is at least partially inspired by Wagner, regardless of the author's dismissal. But Wagner was himself inspired by an old Middle High German poem from around 1200, called Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs), which is in turn, based on oral traditions that likely go back to Old Norse sources, which Tolkien did study. In his 2011 essay on this comparison, Jamie McGregor provides a quote from Tom Shippey's work on Tolkien, indicating that Tolkien has a distinct dislike for Wagner (and other authors, including Shakespeare) and felt that they "had got something very important, not quite right." That, to me, explains why the similarities are present, i.e., they used the same source material, but Tolkien's inspiration, and what he took from the texts and traditions he studied, could be his own.***

*** One of Tolkien's friends--and a member of the Inklings, which they founded with their literary friends--C.S. Lewis, was described by Roberts Giddings, again, according to McGregor's essay, noted above, as a "rabid Wagnerite" and in his mind the source of the Wagner "taint" in Tolkien's work. Not having read Giddings work myself, I can't tell you if that theory is supported by any evidence, but in absence of that, I'll only add that it may be that Lewis saw these associations himself, and may have even brought them up to Tolkien himself, and if he did, I assume that Tolkien's response was the same to Lewis as it was to more public comparisons, altho, I also assume, perhaps more pointed.

code of conduct

Scot Harvath is at it again, in Brad Thor's new spy/counterterrorism adventure, Code of Conduct. Well, I say new, but its just new to me. The copyright date is 2015, so I'm assuming this book has either been kicking around the house a while, or my wife bought in (along with a handful of other adventure books, I assume) on a more recent outing and I just found it. Either way, this is the kind of book my wife likes to read, and I read by default. 

I'm not complaining, I enjoy the spy/crime/intrigue novel as much as the next person, I just find that this isn't the type of book I actively go looking for at the library or the book store. I do buy books like this when I find them at book sales and the like, because I know that my wife and I will both get to read them. My wife is not likely to read the fantasy, or scifi, or surreal books which tend to be my first choices when I'm doing the aforementioned active looking.

Scot Harvath fills the role of  kick-ass guy in Thor's adventure series, commonly referred to as the Scot Harvath Series. I wouldn't worry too much about what the series is called, it doesn't look like Brad Thor has another series. Its working for him, so why mess with it. Code of Conduct is book 14 in the 22.5 book series. yeah, I don't know, that's just the way its written

This book--again, copyright 2015--is about a pandemic that spreads around the world pretty quickly, infecting folks from the poorest to the rich and powerful. So its a little eerie to think of him banging away on his word processing app writing this story of a pandemic 5-years before COVID, and just to get the conspiracy theory junkies all juiced, Thor's pandemic is a man-made terrorist attack, with some megalomaniacal, new-world-order sauce thrown in there. 

This isn't the first time Brad Thor has written a Harvath book that seems to predict the future either, sooo...

In my review of the last book I read in this series I said that Scot "Harvath is your standard super secret agent man..."* I had the same feeling about the Harvath character in this book, as you can see above. I'm not sure that's a big problem, Thor is writing a pretty good action story and doesn't get too wound up about the backstory or supporting characters so much, but I did get the sense that there was some depth to these characters, its just that I think you'd have to read a bunch of these books in order to understand that.

* Yeah, I just quoted myself. Get your own blog.

 

amina al-sarifi adventures

I was first attracted to this book at the library. It was on the shelf, face out, in the new fiction section, not far from where I had recently found The Priory of the Orange Tree, and then The Day of Fallen Night, both by Samantha Shannon. The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is by Shannon Chakraborty,* so there is a similarity in the names, but not just that, the illustrations on all three of these books seemed similar, so I picked up Al-Sirafi thinking that it was another book by the same author.

Similar name (Shannon)... similar artwork... but no, this is a different adventure. One I turned out to like, but the similarity in the illustrations was uncanny. I figured that it had to be the same person.

Yep.

Ivan Belikov did the cover art for all three of these books. Belikov does these rich, crisp illustrations of mystical beasts that made him a great choice for all three of these adventures.

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi is the first (I'm assuming) in a new series of adventures for Shannon Chakraborty. I haven't read her stuff before that I can recall, but she established herself with another fantasy series known as the Daevabad Trilogy. I say the first in a series, but this actually read like the first book is a series, which has also intentionally left plenty of room for prequels, if this series does well. I guess you might call that savvy.

This story does--perhaps because of the need to leave room in both the future and the past--spend some time and text on both world building and backstory, but the adventure makes up for that, especially when one considers that there is probably more to come, and that backstory is going to be helpful in the future. and the past? the future-past? past-of-the-future? 

Chakraborty is a fan of history, according to he acknowledgments, and did lots of research to ensure that the travels, the ports, the seas, the ships, and the customs, Amina Al-Sarifi is awash in ring true. There is even a bibliography and further reading suggestions at the back of the book, including some translations of a few of the adventures this stories Al-Sarafi is based on. Most of Chakraborty's research was done in the original language, and she points out that there aren't many of those volumes that have been translated into English, so she has us (sole English speakers) at an advantage there. 

Does this book remind me of The Story of Sinbad the Sailor? Yep. Is that a bad thing? Nope. This one is worth a read, and I'll be looking for the next one.

* Shannon Chakraborty used to use the "author name" S.A. Chakraborty, which she used for the Daevabad Trilogy. Looks like Shannon Chakraborty is the name her future works will be published under.

death in vienna

A Death in Vienna by Daniel Silva is book 4 in the Gabriel Allon Series. I may have read this in the past, but it was probably before this blog, which makes sense given that this blog dates back to 2009, and this book was published in 2003. If I have read this previously, enough time has gone by that it didn't feel like a re-read. It was also interesting to go back into Silva's earlier Allon writing and see how things are different than they are now. There are obviously some similarities in the Allon series books, and the story arc (in more recent books) tend to be similar in a lot of cases, but not as much with this one.

It could be that this is an older, earlier work in the series, and the characters and style were still developing, but it may also be that this book is described in the backmatter as the third in a Holocaust series. It may be a combination of these things that makes things that makes this stand out, and I may be feeling like I've read this because I read one of the other books in that short series within a series.*

Fans of Silva and the Allon series will not be disappointed, and it may be worth while for serious fans to go back and re-read some of Silva's earlier efforts to see if I may be right about the style and story arc items I've pointed out, or at the very least, too see how things have changed, and remind ourselves about where these characters came from.

* I found 13 Daniel Silva books on my list of books read since 2009 on this blog.

river of doubt

At some point in February or March, I read River of Doubt, by Candice Millard, but I didn't get a chance to write about it. It was probably after Wool, but before Shift. I probably spent my time working on my post about why March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb instead of writing about this.

I heard from someone that I should read this, and its been a while since I put it on my list. It even made it to this blog; you can find it in the "notes and scribbles" applet at the bottom right of the page. The link takes you to the hardcover version of the book, so its probably been there a while.

In any case, I can see why, this was a good one. I'm not a big nonfiction fan, but I did like this one. I had no idea about this trip that Roosevelt took into the interior of the Amazon, which he decided to take just after his losing bid for the presidency in 1912. Millard lays out the trip from the early conception and planning stages through to its completion, along with some anecdotal information about the later lives of some of the expedition's members in an epilogue.

Most of the story is based on notes, letters, news stories and reports, and other documents. It seemed to me that very little needed to be glossed over by the author; she was able to find documentation for nearly every event and every day of the expedition. 

I was surprised and how difficult and trying this trip was without my never hearing about it. By the end, I was amazed that the party even made out alive.

sweet tooth

To prepare for this review of Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth--NOT to be confused with the book that inspired the Netflix show of the same name--I was looking for a cover shot, and another cover showed up that was very familiar. I wasn't searching for another book by McEwan, but maybe I picked this book up at the same library book sale. Maybe they were donated by the same fan. Who knows?

Sweet Tooth is the name of an operation, undertaken by the British secret service, and our protagonist is just getting her feet under her, learning the ropes at her new job, when she is tapped, along with a group of other new young women, to take on this task. Seems pretty thankless; a kind of late, cold war, down-with-communism effort that doesn't seem like it has the potential to win many hearts and minds.

The overall pace of this novel is a little slow, and the stakes aren't especially high. This isn't a James Bond story. I actually got to within about a hundred pages from the end, and I put it down to take a break and read something else. I don't do that often, so yeah, pretty slow. But I'll tell you, when I picked it back up, I was glad I did. The last hundred pages or so were not what I was expecting, and the book ended up being better than I thought it would be. 

I'm a pretty slow reader, and I usually read in short spurts (at breakfast, before going to sleep, maybe 20 minutes at a time) so it takes me a few weeks to pound through a book. If you're a fast reader, then this probably won't be a problem and I can recommend it as a pretty good read. If you are a slower reader, this one might be okay if you have a little more time on your hands, and don't necessarily need a book that keeps you rapt. Like, maybe you're going to the beach, but you also have to keep an eye on the kids, so they don't get swept into the ocean.

music of the spheres

The Music of the Spheres is the first novel by Elizabeth Redfern, which was published in 2010. Since then she has released one more book that I can find; Auriel Rising, which doesn't seem to have done all that well, given that its hard to find.

The Music of the Spheres doesn't appear to be a wildly popular book either, as I don't get a lot of hits for it when searching the web.* The plot was compelling, but perhaps the book was longer than it needed to be. They used a smaller font when printing it, perhaps to keep the size down (420 pp.) With a larger font, it could have been a considerably larger tome.

The story takes place mostly in 1795 London, during the month of June, and follows Jonathan Absey's increasingly frantic search for those responsible for his daughter's murder. What he ends up uncovering is much more geopolitically charged, and he begins to believe that his daughter's murder was just a small part in a much larger plot having to do with the end of monarchies and the rise of republicanism in Europe.

Perhaps it was Redfern's nod to realism, but readers do like a happy ending, I think or at least something nice to happen to someone along the way, if only to lighten the load of the reality of death.

Nope.

I did find myself wanting to know how it would all end, and I kept up hope, until that end came.

Nope.

 

* I even had trouble finding a decent cover image, and had to take my own photo, which I rarely need to do.

homer & langley

Homer & Langley is a novel by E.L. Doctorow, and it follows the lives of two brothers living in New York city from their boyhood to old age in their family mansion on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. The Collyer Brothers, were left alone when the flu pandemic of 1918-1920 carried their parents away not long after the older brother, Langley, returned from the Great War with his lungs burned and his body scarred by mustard gas.

The story is narrated in the voice of the younger brother, Homer, who has slowly lost hist sight in his early twenties, and so the brothers stay together in their family mansion, and try to take care of each other. They keep on the staff--the cook and the housekeepers--for as long as the money and the staff patience holds out, but both eventually drift away.

Perhaps it's post traumatic stress disorder (shell-shock in World War I) or maybe that, combined with the abrupt loss of his parents, but Langley isn't coping well and begins to obsess about a number of things, including getting his brother's sight restored, saving newspapers that his brother might one day read, helping his brother where he can by providing him with things he thinks may help, and a manic interest in a self-made theory that all things that happen are merely repetitions of things past, including people, which are the replacements for earlier generations.

Homer's voice calmly tells of his brothers eccentricities, their early adventures, his learning to play piano, the glamour of the roaring 20s in New York for two wealthy young brothers, and how their rudderlessness and idle combined with what was left of their wealth began to both isolate them from the world, and especially in Langley's case, from reality. By the 1970s, the two recluses live in a rabbit warren of hoarded stacks of newspaper and junk, through which the blind Homer can no longer find his way, and is afraid to try given that Langley's paranoia has driven him to booby trap the narrow paths against intruders.

The story ends as you might expect. A quick look online reveals what you may already know: that the Collyer Brother's story is true, and the facts in the case served as fuel for Doctorow's novelization. The birth order of the brothers was changed, and their story extended into the 1970s by Doctorow's story, leaving them at a ripe old age, when in fact they both died in their mansion in 1947 when Langley was 61, and Homer was 66. 

The house, after it was cleared of trash (120 tons, according to the Wikipedia article!) was declared by the city to the be unsafe, and in the summer of the year their bodies were discovered, the house was razed. In the 1960s, the city placed Collyer Brothers park on the site, which incidentally, is not across from Central Park, but further up Fifth Avenue in Harlem.

The real story seems much more bizarre and horrifying than Doctorow's fictional view of the inner thoughts of these brothers would have us believe. I don't think Doctorow really captured the insanity the two were clearly gripped by at the end of their lives, but perhaps Doctorow's theory is that Langley was crazy, and Homer was an innocent victim, swayed by the love of his brother and caretaker to portray him in a positive light. myeh.

E.L. Doctorow died in 2015.

ready player two

I didn't read Ready Player One, I saw the movie. I know, bad reader. <rolled newspaper to the snout> * I have, however, now recently read Ready Player Two, and it was pretty good. It was fast moving, funny, adventurous (in a what-I-assume-a-gamer-D&D-mash-up-in-the-future-would-be way) romantic, sweet, and slightly sickening around the edges. Ernest Cline is a few years younger than I am, so he was exposed to a lot of the same pop culture stuff I was, but I'm a little older and so missed al\ lot of the video game wave that came just as I went off to college while kids of his age were discovering video games outside the arcade, which is where I was most likely to play them. My dad did bring home a Pong console, with woodgrain contact paper on it, that we attached to our TV for tennis and racketball games. that was it tho

Cline has created a group of characters, that between them, have encyclopedic knowledge of of their areas of interest that would make any geek proud. It has always amazed me how so much minutia can be absorbed by a serious fan of something, when every outward sign would seem to indicate that they geek in question would be incapable of that knowledge. But that is what I think Cline's genius is; getting us to understand that the enthusiasts** in his stories aren't unlike us, or incapable, or in any way inferior to any of us who don't happen to know Gandalf's real name, all of Inigo Montoya's lines in The Princess Bride, Prince's songwriting credits for other artists, or the name of the first female protagonist video game.***

And like any good video game there were plenty of Easter eggs. Most of which, I probably missed, but go geeks! I had fun reading this, there were plenty of things for me to geek out on given the time period these future protagonists are looking back to (the last 40 years or so.) It went fast, and I would definitely read another one based on this read, but it looks like it took about 10 years to get this one done since the last, so we shouldn't hold our collective breath. Next question: will Spielberg make a movie of this one two? Maybe, I think is the answer. The first movie did really well so, my money is on yes.

* I know, relax, no one does that to dogs anymore; where you gonna find a newspaper?

**  yes, enthusiast = geek hey, are you reading ahead?

*** that's just good trivia, you'll have to figure that one out yourself.

liar's dictionary

This book was weeded from my local library, I assume because they had multiple copies when it first came out. This is the second book/first novel from British author Eley Williams, if I'm understanding the book jacket information correctly. 

'Dictionary' in the title gave me my first clue that this was going to be a book by a word nerd author, and I was right; Williams is definitely a word hound and this book is just busting with them. Obscure, archaic, quirky, and just plain made up words.

The Liar's Dictionary is a story told in parallel, both now and in the past, * and centers on the little known Swansby's New Encyclopaedic Dictionary; which has lexicographers chipping away at words and their varied meanings, and somewhat more importantly, what the words mean to them. But that's not all, there is a little of everything here: love, romance, obsession, intrigue, terrorism, tragedy, mystery, censorship... yeah, everything.

Williams even lets her characters run off with the narrative, spinning away into streams of consciousness, and free associative thought processes, laid bare. That tactic is (thankfully) rare, but it lends a sense of realism that almost echos one's own thoughts while reading. And its funny! In many places, I got a kick out how these characters dealt with the stresses of their complicated, and interwoven lives. This book isn't very big, but there is lot in here. I'll be looking for Eley Williams' next venture.

Read this book.

 

On an unrelated note, invasion of your neighbor, Ukraine, seems like a crummy way to celebrate Defender of the Fatherland Day, or Red Army Day, this February 23rd, Vlad.

* the parallel stories, told now and in the past, and tied together with mystery and modern sleuthing reminded me of my recent reading of The Lost Apothecary, and reading them so close was an interesting contrast. It makes me think that some kind kind of thematic reading series might be fun to work on at some point. Ideas? Leave a comment!