Gifford has incorporated over 1,000 additions and corrections to the first edition. The introduction and headnotes to sections provide general geographical, biographical and historical background. The annotations gloss place names, define slang terms, give capsule histories of institutions and political and cultural movements and figures, supply bits of local and Irish legend and lore, explain religious nomenclature and practices, trace literary allusions and references to other cultures.
The suggestive potential of minor details was enormously fascinating to Joyce, and the precision of his use of detail is a most important aspect of his literary method. The annotations in this volume illuminate details which are not in the public realm for most of us.]]>
It's worth noting that this will explain the references (fragmentary Irish sayings, references to the Odyssey, life in Dublin in the early 20th century, and on and on and on) but it won't spell out the plot for you. So it doesn't spoil everything.
My only criticism of it (and it's not of the book itself, but of the genre) is that it presents everything as if it were equally important. This is not true and can be a little overwhelming.]]>
author: James Joyce
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1922
rating: 5
read at: 2017/01/15
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves:
review:
I don't think you need to understand absolutely everything when reading Ulysses, but there's line of understanding beyond which the book regularly ceases to make any sense at all, which is no fun. This reference helped me stay on the right side of that line. I'm sure that without Ulysses Annotated I would never have finished Ulysses.
It's worth noting that this will explain the references (fragmentary Irish sayings, references to the Odyssey, life in Dublin in the early 20th century, and on and on and on) but it won't spell out the plot for you. So it doesn't spoil everything.
My only criticism of it (and it's not of the book itself, but of the genre) is that it presents everything as if it were equally important. This is not true and can be a little overwhelming.
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For Richard, the game was the perfect opportunity to launder his aging hundred dollar bills and begin his own high-tech start up鈥攁 venture that has morphed into a Fortune 500 computer gaming group, Corporation 9592, with its own super successful online role-playing game, T鈥橰ain. But the line between fantasy and reality becomes dangerously blurred when a young gold farmer accidently triggers a virtual war for dominance鈥攁nd Richard is caught at the center.
In this edgy, 21st century tale, Neal Stephenson, one of the most ambitious and prophetic writers of our time, returns to the terrain of his cyberpunk masterpieces Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, leading readers through the looking glass and into the dark heart of imagination.]]>
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves:
review:
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At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.]]>
author: Lauren Groff
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves:
review:
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Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues鈥攁 bee, a key, and a sword鈥攖hat lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians鈥攊t is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose鈥攊n both the mysterious book and in his own life.]]>
author: Erin Morgenstern
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves:
review:
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Ten years after his prize-winning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka鈥檚 foremost authors, Shehan Karunatilaka is back with a 鈥渢hrilling satire鈥� (Economist) and rip-roaring state-of-the-nation epic that offers equal parts mordant wit and disturbing, profound truths.]]>
author: Shehan Karunatilaka
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves:
review:
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In Jon Fosse's vivid, hallucinatory prose, all these moments in time inhabit the same space, and the ghosts of the past collide with those who still live on.
Aliss at the Fire is a haunting exploration of love, ranking among the greatest meditations on marriage and loss.]]>
The characters are one-dimensional and their motivations and reactions uninteresting. Even the things which happen to them are tragically mundane. It's billed as "one of the greatest meditations on marriage and human fate", but not only it is certainly not, it's also not much of anything else. Awful.]]>
author: Jon Fosse
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2003
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/15
date added: 2023/12/15
shelves:
review:
Perhaps one of the most difficult-to-read things I鈥檝e ever struggled through, and not just because it鈥檚 extremely bleak (which I'm fine with); it conveys anxiety of the characters through repetition, broken sentences, and repetition, and while that does certainly work (you are guaranteed to feel anxious after struggling through just one of its multiple-page-spanning, endlessly looping paragraphs), it makes the book very unrewarding to read. It also feels cheap: there is grief, loss, and (somewhere) hope here, and it could be so much better conveyed.
The characters are one-dimensional and their motivations and reactions uninteresting. Even the things which happen to them are tragically mundane. It's billed as "one of the greatest meditations on marriage and human fate", but not only it is certainly not, it's also not much of anything else. Awful.
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In a working-class town in a county west of London, a schoolgirl scribbles stories in the back pages of her exercise book, intoxicated by the first sparks of her imagination. As she grows, everything and everyone she encounters become fuel for a burning talent. The large Russian man in the ancient maroon car who careens around the grocery store where she works as a checkout clerk, and slips her a copy of Beyond Good and Evil. The growing heaps of other books in which she loses-and finds-herself. Even the derailing of a friendship, in a devastating violation. The thrill of learning to conjure characters and scenarios in her head is matched by the exhilaration of forging her own way in the world, the two kinds of ingenuity kindling to a brilliant conflagration.
Exceeding the extraordinary promise of Bennett's mold-shattering debut, Checkout 19 is a radical affirmation of the power of the imagination and the magic escape those who master it open to us all.]]>
author: Claire-Louise Bennett
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2023/10/03
date added: 2023/10/02
shelves:
review:
There is a fine line in stream-of-consciousness writing between the glorious sensation of being taken for a ride in someone else's head and thumping self-indulgence and Checkout 19 stomped right over it. Which is a shame, because I think the other Bennett book I read, Pond, danced along it perfectly, and there were passages in Checkout 19 which I loved.
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author: Louis de Berni猫res
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves:
review:
Short, witty. Loved it.
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When Eugenides, the Thief of Eddis, stole Hamiathes's Gift, the Queen of Attolia lost more than a mythical relic. She lost face. Everyone knew that Eugenides had outwitted and escaped her. To restore her reputation and reassert her power, the Queen of Attolia will go to any length and accept any help that is offered... she will risk her country to execute the perfect revenge.
...but
Eugenides can steal anything. And he taunts the Queen of Attolia, moving through her strongholds seemingly at will. So Attolia waits, secure in the knowledge that the Thief will slip, that he will haunt her palace one too many times.
鈥t what price?
When Eugenides finds his small mountain country at war with Attolia, he must steal a man, he must steal a queen, he must steal peace. But his greatest triumph鈥攁nd his greatest loss鈥攃omes in capturing something that the Queen of Attolia thought she had sacrificed long ago...
Books for the Teen Age 2001 (NYPL) and Bulletin Blue Ribbon Best of 2000 Award.]]>
author: Megan Whalen Turner
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/04
date added: 2023/06/04
shelves:
review:
Read immediately after The Thief because lots of people said they should be appreciated in the context of each other. I agree. Again, an enjoyable read. I'm a little bothered by the way the book starts with extreme violence as a way of setting up the plot of the rest of the novel, not just because it's cliche but also because it's kind of, well, icky. But I did enjoy the way it was resolved.
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The king's scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king's prison. The magus is interested only in the thief's abilities. What Gen is interested in is anyone's guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses.
Megan Whalen Turner weaves Gen's stories and Gen's story together with style and verve in a novel that is filled with intrigue, adventure, and surprise.]]>
author: Megan Whalen Turner
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/04
date added: 2023/06/04
shelves:
review:
Fun, inventive, slightly-romantic page-turner. I liked the way the author was influenced by the Greek pantheon but didn't copy it.
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The book was originally written for a Chinese audience (by a Chinese author), and it contains a lot of references to China's history. I loved learning about China's history through references to the Cultural Revolution (clarified in footnotes by the translator), and the comparisons to non-Chinese scientific method and technology. I also really liked the translator's note at the end, where he talks about how a translated work shouldn't feel like a native one, but should instead retain some otherness because it's talking about a different culture. I agree with this point of view and I think translator Ken Liu nailed it.
I couldn't identify with any of the characters and didn't understand why they felt the need to do the things they did.
To be honest I'm quite wary of scifi in general. As far as I'm concerned, scifi = fantasy + justifications, often bad ones. I sometimes end up feeling that scifi would be better off if it never tried to explain itself and just asked readers to suspend disbelief. The Three-Body Problem gets a mixed score on this. At the start of the book it's very much hard science which has either happened or plausibly could happen. I liked the stuff related to the Red Coast transmitter, and the VR game. However, it definitely got sillier towards the end. By the final few chapters we have [spoilers removed]. Scifi should be at least a little bit plausible or else it starts to feel like fantasy.
Finally, I know this is trite, but the Trisolaris system involves the planet and three stars. Solving the orbital equations is therefore not a three-body problem. It is a four-body problem. Even if the planet is so (relatively) massless that it doesn't much affect the star orbits, which is likely, the Trisolarans have to include it in their model it because the whole point is to predict the location of the planet relative to its suns. In a book where the plot hinges on the notion that seemingly-insignificant peturbations to a system can dramatically change its outcome, it's weird that none of the characters points this out. It couldn't just be for the catchy title: "The Four-Body problem" would have been even kinkier!]]>
author: Liu Cixin
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/15
date added: 2023/05/15
shelves:
review:
It sounds like an exclusive adults-only club for kinky physicists, but The Three-Body Problem is both an actual problem in classical mechanics, and the first book in a sci-fi trilogy by Cixin Liu, published in 2008. Covering a large timespan, several generations, and multiple countries ("the scope of it was immense," proclaims Barack Obama on the front cover of my edition), it's an interesting but somewhat flawed meditation on the applications of science, morality, existential threat, and, fundamentally, whether the human race is capable of redeeming itself.
The book was originally written for a Chinese audience (by a Chinese author), and it contains a lot of references to China's history. I loved learning about China's history through references to the Cultural Revolution (clarified in footnotes by the translator), and the comparisons to non-Chinese scientific method and technology. I also really liked the translator's note at the end, where he talks about how a translated work shouldn't feel like a native one, but should instead retain some otherness because it's talking about a different culture. I agree with this point of view and I think translator Ken Liu nailed it.
I couldn't identify with any of the characters and didn't understand why they felt the need to do the things they did.
To be honest I'm quite wary of scifi in general. As far as I'm concerned, scifi = fantasy + justifications, often bad ones. I sometimes end up feeling that scifi would be better off if it never tried to explain itself and just asked readers to suspend disbelief. The Three-Body Problem gets a mixed score on this. At the start of the book it's very much hard science which has either happened or plausibly could happen. I liked the stuff related to the Red Coast transmitter, and the VR game. However, it definitely got sillier towards the end. By the final few chapters we have [spoilers removed]. Scifi should be at least a little bit plausible or else it starts to feel like fantasy.
Finally, I know this is trite, but the Trisolaris system involves the planet and three stars. Solving the orbital equations is therefore not a three-body problem. It is a four-body problem. Even if the planet is so (relatively) massless that it doesn't much affect the star orbits, which is likely, the Trisolarans have to include it in their model it because the whole point is to predict the location of the planet relative to its suns. In a book where the plot hinges on the notion that seemingly-insignificant peturbations to a system can dramatically change its outcome, it's weird that none of the characters points this out. It couldn't just be for the catchy title: "The Four-Body problem" would have been even kinkier!
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Hester Heller is a translator.
A muse. A musiker.
Hester Heller is inscrutable, even to herself.
In a time when looking into the past has become a socially unacceptable and illegal act in the Nation, a group of scholars are offered an attractive residency to allow them to pursue their projects. When the residency transpires to be a devastating trick, these Researchers go on the run, and soon discover that their projects all relate to one major the Isletese Disaster 鈥� the decline and subsequent devastation fifty years earlier of a long-forgotten roaming archipelago called The Islets.
One figure emerges as central to all of their Hester Heller, a reformed cult musiker turned student recruited from the Institute for Transmission as an agent of the state and tasked with gathering reconnaissance on the Disaster by using her old band Vehicle as a cover. Heller is the key to the Researchers collective story, which they try to piece together while evading their pursuers.
Compiled from the Researchers鈥� disparate documentation, recollections, and even their imaginations, Vehicle is a timely and daring exploration of xenophobia, exploitation, the writing of histories and legacies, and the politics of translation.]]>
The book is structured as a prose poem, and some of the writing is beautiful. I will never forget the line "mating with you was like being covered in leeches", despite hoping that I'll never want to consider using it.
I found the book a little flabby, and not all of it came together for me, but I enjoyed it.]]>
author: Jen Calleja
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/08
date added: 2023/05/14
shelves:
review:
The back cover of Vehicle describes it as an "exploration of xenophobia, exploitation, the writing of histories and legacies, and the politics of translation" and having finished the book I don't think I'm able to give any more insight than that. There is a story, there are characters, but action is primarily a series of loosely-connected vignettes around a main character, Hester Heller, who is seemingly perfect, or, if she has a flaw, it is only that she refuses to carry out the ridiculous rituals and debasement of herself which would be required to progress her career or allow her to live a comfortable life. The vignettes are all about Hester or reactions to Hester. Hester translates the same texts her father did, putting his rosy portray of the refugees in a far colder and less sympathetic (to the host country) light. Hester is incredibly beautiful. Hester is incredibly smart. Hester is able to get people to open up to her in ways that nobody else can. Hester fully understands the conspiracy against her but courageously accepts it. Hester is a bastion of virtue in a corrupt world. Hester, to be frank, is, by the end, pretty annoying.
The book is structured as a prose poem, and some of the writing is beautiful. I will never forget the line "mating with you was like being covered in leeches", despite hoping that I'll never want to consider using it.
I found the book a little flabby, and not all of it came together for me, but I enjoyed it.
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Kitty Talbot needs a fortune. Or rather, she needs a husband who has a fortune. Left with her father鈥檚 massive debts, she has only twelve weeks to save her family from ruin.
Kitty has never been one to back down from a challenge, so she leaves home and heads toward the most dangerous battleground in all of England: the London season.
Kitty may be neither accomplished nor especially genteel鈥攂ut she is utterly single-minded; imbued with cunning and ingenuity, she knows that risk is just part of the game.
The only thing she doesn鈥檛 anticipate is Lord Radcliffe. The worldly Radcliffe sees Kitty for the mercenary fortune-hunter that she really is and is determined to scotch her plans at all costs, until their parrying takes a completely different turn...
This is a frothy pleasure, full of brilliant repartee and enticing wit鈥攐ne that readers will find an irresistible delight.]]>
author: Sophie Irwin
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/08
shelves: to-read
review:
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author: Freydoon Rassouli
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/04/01
shelves:
review:
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So I gave it a try with this children's book. It was fun! Gripping. I think I would have found it a bit scary if I'd read it as a kid. Not necessarily a bad thing.
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author: Katherine Rundell
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/21
date added: 2023/01/21
shelves:
review:
I listened to Rundell on a podcast talking about her work, and discovered from there she'd written a book called "Why you should read children's books, even though you are so old and wise". I think her point -- I haven't read that book (and why would I, it's not for kids) -- is basically that even though you will never re-experience the exact same wonder and innocence you had when you first started reading, you can be transported there to some extent and re-live that joy and sense of adventure and fun.
So I gave it a try with this children's book. It was fun! Gripping. I think I would have found it a bit scary if I'd read it as a kid. Not necessarily a bad thing.
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Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.
The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one anotioner, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers鈥攖hey discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding鈥攂ut it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.
Book 1 drops you straight into horror and mystery. Relatively short and tightly-written, it sets everything up without giving any answers, making me hungry to read book 2, which is鈥� mostly about corporate factionalism? The difficulties of managing what is effectively a remote sub-branch of an institution when all the real decisions are made in head office? Yes, there is mystery here, too, but no resolution and no real plot advancement. Then there is Book 3, in which everything is鈥� okay, most things are鈥� okay, a couple of things are revealed, but in an alternating-narrative, chapter-by-chapter drip-feed which feels like the author wanted to keep the suspense up until the last second but actually just left me impatiently waiting for the answers.
There鈥檚 no personal development here; the only thing that changes and adapts is [spoilers removed]. Nobody has learnt anything or grown by the end. There is an element of Southern Baptist small-town Gothic horror which comes across as strange to my non-American eyes: religion-inspired threads are laid out but never really woven together. There is an environmentalist aspect which is similarly not really developed in any way. The overall message, [spoilers removed], I found a little disappointing, particularly in the particular way that the story was resolved. Although, come to think of it, that overall message is also something that the Abrahamic religions treat as a fundamental tenet of their faiths, so perhaps the religious imagery is more deeply woven into this series than I first realised.
The book is saved by its central mystery, which is interesting, and the horror elements, which are great, and genuinely scary. I had to stop myself from reading it last thing at night, even though it was addictive. And addictive it was: I was reading whenever I had a spare moment. For that reason I鈥檓 giving it five stars 鈥� despite its flaws, it fully engaged me, gave me a lot to think about, and kept me coming back.]]>
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/21
date added: 2023/01/21
shelves:
review:
This series picked me up and didn鈥檛 let me go. Whenever I started reading a couple of pages I鈥檇 find myself still there, an hour later, trying to piece the story together from the fragments thrown to me. I found it super compelling and thought-provoking, which is good because in many ways the series is quite strange and a little flabby.
Book 1 drops you straight into horror and mystery. Relatively short and tightly-written, it sets everything up without giving any answers, making me hungry to read book 2, which is鈥� mostly about corporate factionalism? The difficulties of managing what is effectively a remote sub-branch of an institution when all the real decisions are made in head office? Yes, there is mystery here, too, but no resolution and no real plot advancement. Then there is Book 3, in which everything is鈥� okay, most things are鈥� okay, a couple of things are revealed, but in an alternating-narrative, chapter-by-chapter drip-feed which feels like the author wanted to keep the suspense up until the last second but actually just left me impatiently waiting for the answers.
There鈥檚 no personal development here; the only thing that changes and adapts is [spoilers removed]. Nobody has learnt anything or grown by the end. There is an element of Southern Baptist small-town Gothic horror which comes across as strange to my non-American eyes: religion-inspired threads are laid out but never really woven together. There is an environmentalist aspect which is similarly not really developed in any way. The overall message, [spoilers removed], I found a little disappointing, particularly in the particular way that the story was resolved. Although, come to think of it, that overall message is also something that the Abrahamic religions treat as a fundamental tenet of their faiths, so perhaps the religious imagery is more deeply woven into this series than I first realised.
The book is saved by its central mystery, which is interesting, and the horror elements, which are great, and genuinely scary. I had to stop myself from reading it last thing at night, even though it was addictive. And addictive it was: I was reading whenever I had a spare moment. For that reason I鈥檓 giving it five stars 鈥� despite its flaws, it fully engaged me, gave me a lot to think about, and kept me coming back.
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How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?
This short novel was an artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction.
A thoroughly absorbing, and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.]]>
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1886
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/27
date added: 2022/11/27
shelves:
review:
Enjoyed particularly the ruminations and "bargaining" that the narrator does with his condition and his body, which felt very real. By contrast, the revelation at the end is unsatisfyingly perfunctory and religious.
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'The sky seemed to rip apart from end to end to pour fire down upon me'
Meursault will not conform. When his mother dies, he refuses to show his emotions simply to satisfy the expectations of others. And when he commits a random act of violence on a sun-drenched beach, his lack of remorse only compounds his guilt in the eyes of society and law.
Albert Camus' portrayal of a man confronting the absurdity of human life became an existentialist classic. Yet it is also a book filled with quiet joy in the "tender indifference" of the physical world, and Sandra Smith's new translation based on listening to a recording of Camus reading aloud, sensitively renders the subtleties and dreamlike atmosphere of The Outsider.]]>
author: Albert Camus
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1942
rating: 3
read at: 2018/07/02
date added: 2022/10/17
shelves:
review:
This book shows, rather than tells, and the writing is beautiful. But the key message is a rather prosaic one, although it is written as if it were profound. The many other issues poor Meursault stumbles over as he trudges across the pages don't get more than a reference. A big mouthful, but nothing to chew on.
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Inspired by Bioy Casares鈥檚 fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cort谩zar, Gabriel Garc铆a M谩rquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction鈥檚 now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet鈥檚 Last Year at Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.]]>
author: Adolfo Bioy Casares
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1940
rating: 3
read at: 2022/06/27
date added: 2022/06/27
shelves:
review:
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author: Tim Powers
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at: 2022/06/07
date added: 2022/06/07
shelves:
review:
Compelling, but very pulpy.
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But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a dystopian society of grotesque exploitation. One will become our world. And Connie herself may strike the decisive blow...]]>
The book is absolutely bursting with ideas, many of them depressingly relevant today -- in particular, the utopia of the future deals with many issues, such as personal energy usage, local food production, and a return to "small society", which are extremely topical. It also serves as an interesting snapshot into the concerns of the time it was written, particularly around mental health and the role of women.
There is no real resolution to the novel, which I consider a plus, given that the issues that it raises are still so important. Marge Piercy is an excellent writer with a delicate touch (see also He, She, and It) and, although it often feels like the injustices heaped upon its main character are both unfair and unbearable, there is a glimmer of hope at the end.]]>
author: Marge Piercy
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1976
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/24
date added: 2022/05/24
shelves:
review:
An utterly horrific and very good story nominally about the role one person plays in shaping the future but actually about the dominance of the rich and powerful (and often male and white) over the rest of the world, and the attitude of the state towards mental health issues and social control more generally.
The book is absolutely bursting with ideas, many of them depressingly relevant today -- in particular, the utopia of the future deals with many issues, such as personal energy usage, local food production, and a return to "small society", which are extremely topical. It also serves as an interesting snapshot into the concerns of the time it was written, particularly around mental health and the role of women.
There is no real resolution to the novel, which I consider a plus, given that the issues that it raises are still so important. Marge Piercy is an excellent writer with a delicate touch (see also He, She, and It) and, although it often feels like the injustices heaped upon its main character are both unfair and unbearable, there is a glimmer of hope at the end.
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This is an existential scream of a novel about loneliness (and the postal service!), written in Vigdis Hjorth's trademark spare, rhythmic and cutting style.]]>
My only issue is that the conclusion felt rushed. [spoilers removed] The ending felt too happy, in other words; is that a very grouchy thing to write? Maybe I need my own postal-service-inspired redemption.]]>
author: Vigdis Hjorth
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2022/04/18
date added: 2022/04/17
shelves:
review:
Deliciously excruciating. Several times, while working or doing housework, I felt myself compelled to jump back onto the sofa to read it, which is a delightful feeling.
My only issue is that the conclusion felt rushed. [spoilers removed] The ending felt too happy, in other words; is that a very grouchy thing to write? Maybe I need my own postal-service-inspired redemption.
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author: H.G. Wells
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1896
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/10
date added: 2022/01/27
shelves:
review:
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February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. "God has called him home." Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body.
From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state鈥攃alled, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo鈥攁 monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.
Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction's ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices鈥攍iving and dead, historical and invented鈥攖o ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?]]>
I enjoyed many parts of the book, but found myself slogging through it near the end -- there just wasn't enough material to carry the book. I would have preferred this as one or two shorter stories.]]>
author: George Saunders
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2021/09/24
date added: 2021/09/24
shelves:
review:
Extremely clever, sometimes funny, and unashamedly unique, Lincoln in the Bardo, nonetheless, feels a little underwhelming. The overarching redemptive plot is thin: Bardo, as I understand it, doesn't appear to be a punishment or opportunity for atonement or a time during which a spirit must grow, but simply is, as a state between life and death. In this book, to be in the Bardo is to be more like your classic ghost, unable to leave the material plane until you have come to terms with your past or had some form of reconciliation. It ends up feeling a little like appropriation, which is very Saunders in general: stories with a very colourful set of characters and references, none as significant as one might hope. The denoument is a little deus ex: a single exclamation from Willie ("we're dead!") is enough to move most people along.
I enjoyed many parts of the book, but found myself slogging through it near the end -- there just wasn't enough material to carry the book. I would have preferred this as one or two shorter stories.
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A year later, they鈥檙e both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.
Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]>
author: Sally Rooney
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/18
shelves: to-read
review:
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In New York Times bestselling author Tracy Chevalier鈥檚 newest historical saga, she introduces Honor Bright, a modest English Quaker who moves to Ohio in 1850, only to find herself alienated and alone in a strange land. Sick from the moment she leaves England, and fleeing personal disappointment, she is forced by family tragedy to rely on strangers in a harsh, unfamiliar landscape.
Nineteenth-century America is practical, precarious, and unsentimental, and scarred by the continuing injustice of slavery. In her new home Honor discovers that principles count for little, even within a religious community meant to be committed to human equality.
However, drawn into the clandestine activities of the Underground Railroad, a network helping runaway slaves escape to freedom, Honor befriends two surprising women who embody the remarkable power of defiance. Eventually she must decide if she too can act on what she believes in, whatever the personal costs.
A powerful journey brimming with color and drama, The Last Runaway is Tracy Chevalier鈥檚 vivid engagement with an iconic part of American history.]]>
author: Tracy Chevalier
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/11
shelves: to-read
review:
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In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]>
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:
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author: Jon McGregor
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:
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If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she鈥檇 most likely be a sight more careful with them.
听
In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants鈥� hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.
Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen鈥檚 classic鈥攊nto the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars鈥攁nd, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own.听]]>
author: Jo Baker
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/01
shelves: to-read
review:
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WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age鈥攁 world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.
Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?]]>
Okay, now for the fun bit where I get to talk about鈥�
[spoilers removed]]]>
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2021/07/26
date added: 2021/07/26
shelves:
review:
It鈥檚 almost impossible to review this book鈥檚 extremely strange plot without spoilers, but here鈥檚 a very short description: fascinating sci-fi elements, but ultimately big on plot and short on themes, if you know what I mean. There is lots of fantastic stuff happening, but it never really gets anywhere. The ending is particularly unsatisfying, both for the whiffs of deus ex machina and for what it says about the author鈥檚 opinions of the human race.
Okay, now for the fun bit where I get to talk about鈥�
[spoilers removed]
]]>
The near-distant future. Millions of kilometres from Earth.
The crew of the Six-Thousand ship consists of those who were born, and those who were created. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike find themselves longing for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory.
Gradually, the crew members come to see themselves in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether their work can carry on as before 鈥� and what it means to be truly alive.
Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Ravn鈥檚 crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity.]]>
The writing of each monologue is perhaps the saving grace of the book -- the concept is great, but the execution doesn't quite live up to it, resulting in the occasional plot-dump amid the sparsity and grace. A little too much is left unsaid -- the novel walks a fine line of showing, not telling, and occasionally veers into incomprehensible. It wasn't just the overall picture that was sometimes hard to grasp -- sometimes I found myself rereading individual paragraphs or sentences, too. It almost feels like I should be blaming this on the translation, but of course I can't be sure.
I enjoyed it anyway and found myself getting caught up in the plot. If nothing else, it's a quick read.
Also I keep wanting to rip that orange post-it off the front cover.
If you like this style of writing, I recommend Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Completely different genre and less plot-driven, but surprisingly similar anyway.]]>
author: Olga Ravn
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2021/07/09
date added: 2021/07/09
shelves:
review:
A tale told through short monologues, but the author has a poetry background and it shows -- each interview is a beautiful almost-poem in itself, each one like a tiny shard of a mirror reflecting a facet of the whole.
The writing of each monologue is perhaps the saving grace of the book -- the concept is great, but the execution doesn't quite live up to it, resulting in the occasional plot-dump amid the sparsity and grace. A little too much is left unsaid -- the novel walks a fine line of showing, not telling, and occasionally veers into incomprehensible. It wasn't just the overall picture that was sometimes hard to grasp -- sometimes I found myself rereading individual paragraphs or sentences, too. It almost feels like I should be blaming this on the translation, but of course I can't be sure.
I enjoyed it anyway and found myself getting caught up in the plot. If nothing else, it's a quick read.
Also I keep wanting to rip that orange post-it off the front cover.
If you like this style of writing, I recommend Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Completely different genre and less plot-driven, but surprisingly similar anyway.
]]>
Women and Women: The fissures in a queer matriarchal utopia are exposed when a boy, a creature usually contained in ghettoised isolation - appears beneath young Y奴ko's window
You May Dream: An extreme government initiative curbing overpopulation prompts a woman to re-evaluate her friendships
Night Picnic: The last family in a desolate city learns to be human through the awkward appropriation of popular culture
That Old Seaside Club: Passive-aggressive furniture provides unwelcome romantic advice
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Tense interplanetary politics distort Emma's love life
Forgotten: Jane's ex-girlfriend reppears, radically altered and insistent on a catch-up
Terminal Boredom: Tokyo's teenagers, disaffected and numb from excessive screentime, find distraction in violence.
Suzuki's singular slant on science fiction remains fresh and essential. Concerns about society, gender and imperialism dovetail irresistibly with flights of speculative wonder. And with a kitchen sink in the corner of even her wildest stories, Suzuki reminds us that while society may be limitless, relationships remain impossible]]>
This mercilessly-bleak collection grabbed my attention and held it, but it seemed to do so as if by force -- reading was both enjoyable and horrifying. I read it over several evenings, and by the last story the book had actually started almost physically to loom on my bedside table. I'd always pick it up, but with trepidation. I was scared of what was coming next.
Technically, the stories are excellent -- I think they all hold up roughly equally well. The characters, or character copies, rather, as the protagonists of each story have a lot in common, are well-sketched: a girl or woman, coming to terms, and ultimately accepting, her lack of agency in the face of what can only be described as utter dystopia. Accepting unhappily, accepting with regret, accepting sometimes with a half-hearted rebellion or a fight, but accepting nonetheless. As you can imagine, this is not a theme that lends itself to happy endings, and in fact these stories (with perhaps one exception) don't really end. They just run out of words.
It's not perfect. These are scifi stories from the 70s and 80s, and some of the plot points around scifi tech seem hackneyed now. Fortunately, these parts are never major aspects of the story, so, for example, a story which has a wireheading plot would actually function just fine with a slightly different sci-fi deus ex, or indeed none at all. A more difficult aspect for me was the translation. It's not that it's bad, it's just that ... well, these are stories written in Japanese by a woman living in Japan, forty years ago, so it already felt difficult for me to try to take the point of view that Suzuki would have expected her readers to have. But on top of that, each story has a different translator, and for a couple of the stories I found myself rereading passages trying to work out if the reason I hadn't understood the overt plot points, let alone picked up on any nuance, was because I lacked the relevant cultural context, or because I was just thick (or, more likely, both).
I have a low opinion of sci-fi as a genre because it conjures images of usually-white mostly-men heading bravely out into the galaxy to show off their superior culture to the lesser beings (thus enlightening them or making them come to terms with their inferiority, depending on the author), but I'm slowly realising that this is a very narrow-minded view. Terminal Boredom is nothing like this, of course: the sci-fi elements are mostly tools to bring about or enforce dystopic laws or cultural norms.
The overall message I got from this collection is: Submit. You are powerless to resist, and you probably don't really want to anyway. I enjoyed the book and I recommend it, but I found it quite tough to read in parts. If you personally are feeling particularly unhappy with the world and your place in it, you may wish to put it aside for a little while.]]>
author: Izumi Suzuki
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2021/07/03
date added: 2021/07/03
shelves:
review:
"Sounds like my kind of world. But I'd prefer living in a nightmare."
This mercilessly-bleak collection grabbed my attention and held it, but it seemed to do so as if by force -- reading was both enjoyable and horrifying. I read it over several evenings, and by the last story the book had actually started almost physically to loom on my bedside table. I'd always pick it up, but with trepidation. I was scared of what was coming next.
Technically, the stories are excellent -- I think they all hold up roughly equally well. The characters, or character copies, rather, as the protagonists of each story have a lot in common, are well-sketched: a girl or woman, coming to terms, and ultimately accepting, her lack of agency in the face of what can only be described as utter dystopia. Accepting unhappily, accepting with regret, accepting sometimes with a half-hearted rebellion or a fight, but accepting nonetheless. As you can imagine, this is not a theme that lends itself to happy endings, and in fact these stories (with perhaps one exception) don't really end. They just run out of words.
It's not perfect. These are scifi stories from the 70s and 80s, and some of the plot points around scifi tech seem hackneyed now. Fortunately, these parts are never major aspects of the story, so, for example, a story which has a wireheading plot would actually function just fine with a slightly different sci-fi deus ex, or indeed none at all. A more difficult aspect for me was the translation. It's not that it's bad, it's just that ... well, these are stories written in Japanese by a woman living in Japan, forty years ago, so it already felt difficult for me to try to take the point of view that Suzuki would have expected her readers to have. But on top of that, each story has a different translator, and for a couple of the stories I found myself rereading passages trying to work out if the reason I hadn't understood the overt plot points, let alone picked up on any nuance, was because I lacked the relevant cultural context, or because I was just thick (or, more likely, both).
I have a low opinion of sci-fi as a genre because it conjures images of usually-white mostly-men heading bravely out into the galaxy to show off their superior culture to the lesser beings (thus enlightening them or making them come to terms with their inferiority, depending on the author), but I'm slowly realising that this is a very narrow-minded view. Terminal Boredom is nothing like this, of course: the sci-fi elements are mostly tools to bring about or enforce dystopic laws or cultural norms.
The overall message I got from this collection is: Submit. You are powerless to resist, and you probably don't really want to anyway. I enjoyed the book and I recommend it, but I found it quite tough to read in parts. If you personally are feeling particularly unhappy with the world and your place in it, you may wish to put it aside for a little while.
]]>
The central message of this book is that we will never fully understand living things if we continue to think of genes, organisms, and environments as separate entities, each with its distinct role to play in the history and operation of organic processes. Here Lewontin shows that an organism is a unique consequence of both genes and environment, of both internal and external features. Rejecting the notion that genes determine the organism, which then adapts to the environment, he explains that organisms, influenced in their development by their circumstances, in turn create, modify, and choose the environment in which they live.
The Triple Helix is vintage brilliant, eloquent, passionate, and deeply critical. But it is neither a manifesto for a radical new methodology nor a brief for a new theory. It is instead a primer on the complexity of biological processes, a reminder to all of us that living things are never as simple as they may seem.]]>
author: Richard C. Lewontin
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/08
shelves: to-read
review:
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This is the quote which opens The Poet as Botanist. Ruskin was writing in Modern Painters, and, in the context of visual art, such a ranking might well make sense. If you鈥檙e painting something, you want to see the object as it is, but also to see it as the many things that it could be 鈥� to feel the associations, but not to let them master you. But it seems that Ruskin might have meant to apply his little hierarchy to more than just painters, and that made me sufficiently indignant 鈥� what鈥檚 wrong, exactly, with seeing a primrose as a fairy鈥檚 shield? 鈥� to draw me in.
M. M. Mahood鈥檚 book 鈥� collection of essays, really 鈥� is peppered with these sorts of quotes, many examples of botanically-inspired poetry, and thorough analyses. In the analyses, Mahood writes masterfully, as the life-long academic she was, and with a simplicity of explication that can only come from a total understanding of her topic. Several essays are on individual poets and are necessarily somewhat biographical, but the focus is always primarily on their poetry and their reasons for writing it. And the poets she chooses are fascinating 鈥� or, at least, Mahood makes them seem so. The dour Crabbe (鈥淚 hate these long green lanes; there鈥檚 nothing seen / in this vile country but eternal green鈥�), the physician-cum-poet Erasmus Darwin, whom Ruskin would have firmly slotted into Rank 2 (鈥淭hat mighty master of unmeaning rhyme鈥�, grumbles Byron), the scientific accuracy, and clear talent, of D. H. Lawrence.
Mahood colours the discussion with plenty of historical context. For example, apparently the Linnaean classification system, when it reached England, was viewed with suspicion, not just because it replaced colourful local names with incomprehensible Latin, but because it was a moral hazard. 鈥淚 have several times seen boys and girls botanising together,鈥� writes an alarmed Revernd Polwhele, on the dangers of teaching girls to classify flowers. (Ruskin was one of many to attempt to introduce his own system, but didn鈥檛 complete it: in a letter he wrote that he was mostly pleased with it apart from 鈥渁 large class called Tiresomes, which were plants who didn鈥檛 know their own minds鈥�. Imagine the classroom in a world where Ruskin鈥檚 system took over: 鈥淭oday, children, we learn about the tiresomes鈥�!)
The steady pace of the essays breaks down a little in the final chapter, Poetry and Photosynthesis. Here Mahood gives a broader overview of several poets, including more modern ones. The writing is as excellent as in the other chapters, but the information density increases dramatically 鈥� it feels as if there was a lot more to say, but not enough space to say it.
The book is not an easy read. I read it, slowly and patchily, over the course of eight months. But it鈥檚 a lot of fun, and Mahood鈥檚 passion for the topic is infectious.
]]>
author: M.M. Mahood
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2020/08/28
date added: 2020/08/28
shelves:
review:
鈥淲e have the three ranks鈥�, writes John Ruskin, on the different ways in which someone might perceive a primrose. Firstly, 鈥渢he man who perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose: a star, or a sun, or a fairy鈥檚 shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever nothing more than itself 鈥� a little flower, apprehended in the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the associations and passions may be, that crowd around it.鈥�
This is the quote which opens The Poet as Botanist. Ruskin was writing in Modern Painters, and, in the context of visual art, such a ranking might well make sense. If you鈥檙e painting something, you want to see the object as it is, but also to see it as the many things that it could be 鈥� to feel the associations, but not to let them master you. But it seems that Ruskin might have meant to apply his little hierarchy to more than just painters, and that made me sufficiently indignant 鈥� what鈥檚 wrong, exactly, with seeing a primrose as a fairy鈥檚 shield? 鈥� to draw me in.
M. M. Mahood鈥檚 book 鈥� collection of essays, really 鈥� is peppered with these sorts of quotes, many examples of botanically-inspired poetry, and thorough analyses. In the analyses, Mahood writes masterfully, as the life-long academic she was, and with a simplicity of explication that can only come from a total understanding of her topic. Several essays are on individual poets and are necessarily somewhat biographical, but the focus is always primarily on their poetry and their reasons for writing it. And the poets she chooses are fascinating 鈥� or, at least, Mahood makes them seem so. The dour Crabbe (鈥淚 hate these long green lanes; there鈥檚 nothing seen / in this vile country but eternal green鈥�), the physician-cum-poet Erasmus Darwin, whom Ruskin would have firmly slotted into Rank 2 (鈥淭hat mighty master of unmeaning rhyme鈥�, grumbles Byron), the scientific accuracy, and clear talent, of D. H. Lawrence.
Mahood colours the discussion with plenty of historical context. For example, apparently the Linnaean classification system, when it reached England, was viewed with suspicion, not just because it replaced colourful local names with incomprehensible Latin, but because it was a moral hazard. 鈥淚 have several times seen boys and girls botanising together,鈥� writes an alarmed Revernd Polwhele, on the dangers of teaching girls to classify flowers. (Ruskin was one of many to attempt to introduce his own system, but didn鈥檛 complete it: in a letter he wrote that he was mostly pleased with it apart from 鈥渁 large class called Tiresomes, which were plants who didn鈥檛 know their own minds鈥�. Imagine the classroom in a world where Ruskin鈥檚 system took over: 鈥淭oday, children, we learn about the tiresomes鈥�!)
The steady pace of the essays breaks down a little in the final chapter, Poetry and Photosynthesis. Here Mahood gives a broader overview of several poets, including more modern ones. The writing is as excellent as in the other chapters, but the information density increases dramatically 鈥� it feels as if there was a lot more to say, but not enough space to say it.
The book is not an easy read. I read it, slowly and patchily, over the course of eight months. But it鈥檚 a lot of fun, and Mahood鈥檚 passion for the topic is infectious.
]]>
author: John Ruskin
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1860
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2019/11/25
shelves:
review:
This book, which is a spirited defence of humanity in the face of value-maximising political economics, raises many questions which remain unanswered today.
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Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda鈥檚 assistance, he co-designs Adam鈥檚 personality. This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever 鈥� a love triangle soon forms. These three beings will confront a profound moral dilemma. Ian McEwan鈥檚 subversive and entertaining new novel poses fundamental questions: what makes us human? Our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns of the power to invent things beyond our control.]]>
author: Ian McEwan
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:
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In this epic tale from the Viking Age that ranges across Scandinavia and Viking Britain, two poets compete for the love of Helga the Fair - with fatal consequences.
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.
The Icelandic Sagas were oral in origin and written down in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Other Icelandic Sagas available in Penguin Classics include Njal's Saga, Egil's Saga, Sagas of Warrior-Poets, Gisli Sursson's Saga and the Saga of the People of Eyri, The Saga of Grettir the Strong, The Saga of the People of Laxardal and Bolli Bollason's Tale, The Vinland Sagas and Comic Sagas from Iceland.]]>
author: Unknown
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.24
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at: 2019/09/29
date added: 2019/09/28
shelves:
review:
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Seventeen years later, Circe is struggling through a divorce in fraught and ever-changing Singapore when a project comes up at work: a remake of the cult seventies horror film series 'Ponti', the very project that defined Amisa's short-lived film career. Suddenly Circe is knocked off balance: by memories of the two women she once knew, by guilt, and by a past that threatens her conscience.
Told from the perspectives of all three women, Ponti is about friendship and memory, about the things we do when we're on the cusp of adulthood that haunt us years later. Beautifully written by debut author Sharlene Teo, and enormously atmospheric, Ponti marks the launch of an exciting new literary voice in the vein of Zadie Smith.]]>
author: Sharlene Teo
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2019/09/19
date added: 2019/09/19
shelves:
review:
Beautiful imagery, scattered haphazardly into a plot which wriggles rather than twists and ultimately goes nowhere. Really disappointing -- there was a lot of promise.
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author: Nicholson Baker
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1988
rating: 2
read at: 2019/09/03
date added: 2019/09/14
shelves:
review:
Not clever enough to get away with being this self-indulgent.
]]>
He screamed, "You are an evil man!"
And I paused a while to wonder:
"If I have no free will then how can I
Be morally culpable, I wonder"
I love the song, but this stanza is hilariously incongruous, and in the next line we're back to killing people. There's no follow-up.
Grendel reminded me a lot of that song. A bit of murder, a bit of pondering the meaningless of existence, a bit more murder. There's no development to Grendel's nihilism -- he just reiterates the same thoughts over and over.
Worse, the plot, such as it is, is as predictable and tiresome as the bull who repeatedly charges, pointlesslessly, like a machine. Ruminations on the darkness in people's souls. Casual misogyny, which admittedly is a little surprising coming from a non-human monster.
With such a great premise, there could have been so much more to this book.]]>
author: John Gardner
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1971
rating: 2
read at: 2019/06/01
date added: 2019/07/13
shelves:
review:
In "O'Malley's bar" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, there's a great bit where the main character, in the middle of murdering people, has a flash of philosophical reflection:
He screamed, "You are an evil man!"
And I paused a while to wonder:
"If I have no free will then how can I
Be morally culpable, I wonder"
I love the song, but this stanza is hilariously incongruous, and in the next line we're back to killing people. There's no follow-up.
Grendel reminded me a lot of that song. A bit of murder, a bit of pondering the meaningless of existence, a bit more murder. There's no development to Grendel's nihilism -- he just reiterates the same thoughts over and over.
Worse, the plot, such as it is, is as predictable and tiresome as the bull who repeatedly charges, pointlesslessly, like a machine. Ruminations on the darkness in people's souls. Casual misogyny, which admittedly is a little surprising coming from a non-human monster.
With such a great premise, there could have been so much more to this book.
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Set in the twenty-third century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and philosophy, which he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game).]]>
There are a lot of spoilers below, so they're hidden here, but if you're considering reading the book: This is a very entertaining satire of ivory-tower academia, and some other themes, by an excellent writer. Highly recommended. You'll enjoy it.
Okay, now for the spoilers.
[spoilers removed]]]>
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1943
rating: 3
read at: 2019/06/26
date added: 2019/06/27
shelves:
review:
We'll Never Penetrate The Interior of The Cosmic Mystery If You Keep Taking Yourself So Damn Seriously
There are a lot of spoilers below, so they're hidden here, but if you're considering reading the book: This is a very entertaining satire of ivory-tower academia, and some other themes, by an excellent writer. Highly recommended. You'll enjoy it.
Okay, now for the spoilers.
[spoilers removed]
]]>
There's a serial killer on the loose. His macabre calling card is to leave the ABC Railway Guide beside each victim's body. But if A is for Alice Asher, bludgeoned to death in Andover, and B is for Betty Bernard, strangled with her belt on the beach at Bexhill, who will then be Victim C? More importantly, why is this happening?
Often considered to be one of Agatha Christie's best.
Librarian's note: the first fifteen novels in the Hercule Poirot series are 1) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920; 2) The Murder on the Links, 1923; 3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926; 4) The Big Four, 1927; 5) The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928; 6) Peril at End House, 1932; 7) Lord Edgware Dies, 1933; 8) Murder on the Orient Express, 1934; 9) Three Act Tragedy, 1935; 10) Death in the Clouds, 1935; 11) The A.B.C. Murders, 1936; 12) Murder in Mesopotamia, 1936; 13) Cards on the Table, 1936; 14) Dumb Witness, 1937; and 15) Death on the Nile, 1937. These are just the novels; Poirot also appears in this period in a play, Black Coffee, 1930, and two collections of short stories, Poirot Investigates, 1924, and Murder in the Mews, 1937. Each novel, play and short story has its own entry on 欧宝娱乐.]]>
author: Agatha Christie
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1936
rating: 0
read at: 2019/01/13
date added: 2019/01/13
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author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1926
rating: 0
read at: 2018/12/06
date added: 2018/12/11
shelves:
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An听NPR听Best Book of the Year Selection
New York City in the 1980s was a mesmerizing, wild place. A hotbed for hip hop, underground culture, and unmatched creative energy, it spawned some of the most significant art of the 20th century. It was where Jean-Michel Basquiat became an avant-garde street artist and painter, swiftly achieving worldwide fame. During the years before his death at the age of 27, he shared his life with his lover and muse, Suzanne Mallouk.
A runaway from an unhappy home in Canada, Suzanne first met Jean-Michel in a bar on the Lower East Side in 1980. Thus began a tumultuous and passionate relationship that deeply influenced one of the most exceptional artists of our time.
In emotionally resonant prose, award-winning author Jennifer Clement tells the story of the passion that swept Suzanne and Jean-Michel into a short-lived, unforgettable affair. A poetic interpretation like no other, Widow Basquiat is an expression of the unrelenting power of addiction, obsession and love.]]>
But most of the time her short, sharp sketches work well, and there are some beautiful lines, often from Suzanne herself. His obsessiveness and playfulness. His sweat coming out of her pores.]]>
author: Jennifer Clement
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2018/10/01
date added: 2018/09/30
shelves:
review:
People are simply and concisely outlined, but Jennifer Clement tries to make everyone interesting. Suzanne and Jean-Michel sparkle: we don't need to fill the whole sky with glitter. Who cares if the heroin dealer, whom we will never hear about again, can quote Dostoyevsky?
But most of the time her short, sharp sketches work well, and there are some beautiful lines, often from Suzanne herself. His obsessiveness and playfulness. His sweat coming out of her pores.
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Following the publication of his celebrated New York Times bestseller Do No Harm, Marsh retired from his full-time job in England to work pro bono in Ukraine and Nepal. In Admissions, he describes the difficulties of working in these troubled, impoverished countries and the further insights it has given him into the practice of medicine.
Marsh also faces up to the burden of responsibility that can come with trying to reduce human suffering. Unearthing memories of his early days as a medical student and the experiences that shaped him as a young surgeon, he explores the difficulties of a profession that deals in probabilities rather than certainties and where the overwhelming urge to prolong life can come at a tragic cost for patients and those who love them.
Reflecting on what forty years of handling the human brain has taught him, Marsh finds a different purpose in life as he approaches the end of his professional career and a fresh understanding of what matters to us all in the end.]]>
author: Henry Marsh
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/08/30
shelves:
review:
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In neurosurgery, more than in any other branch of medicine, the doctor's oath to "do no harm" holds a bitter irony. Operations on the brain carry grave risks. Every day, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh must make agonizing decisions, often in the face of great urgency and uncertainty.
If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practiced by calm and detached doctors, this gripping, brutally honest account will make you think again. With astonishing compassion and candor, Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets, and the moments of black humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life.
Do No Harm provides unforgettable insight into the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern hospital. Above all, it is a lesson in the need for hope when faced with life's most difficult decisions.]]>
author: Henry Marsh
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/08/30
shelves:
review:
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Beginning with the neighbouring passenger on the flight out and his tales of fast boats and failed marriages, the storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city the sequence of voice begins to weave a complex human tapestry. The more they talk the more elliptical their listener becomes, as she shapes and directs their accounts until certain themes begin to emerge: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself.
Outline is a novel about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form.]]>
author: Rachel Cusk
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2018/06/25
date added: 2018/06/25
shelves:
review:
This is a great premise, to gradually reveal more about the narrator though the way others interact with her, and the simple, sparse writing style should have helped, but somehow it didn't quite come together for me. I ended up feeling like I wasn't actually learning that much about the narrator, who certainly came across as the most interesting character in the book, but was instead learning a lot about the rather-less-scintillating people she encountered or taught. Even that could have worked, by building up a picture through 100 cloudy reflections -- so I don't quite know what happened.
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In Metamophoses, Ovid brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation鈥攐ften as a result of love or lust鈥攚here men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy. Erudite but light-hearted, dramatic and yet playful, Metamorphoses has influenced writers and artists throughout the centuries from Shakespeare and Titian to Picasso and Ted Hughes.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]>
author: Ovid
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.08
book published: 8
rating: 0
read at: 2018/05/25
date added: 2018/05/24
shelves:
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author: Kate Briggs
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2018/03/22
date added: 2018/03/22
shelves:
review:
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Contents:
"Leave It to Jeeves"
"Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest"
"Jeeves and the Hard-boiled Egg"
"Absent Treatment"
"Helping Freddie"
"Rallying Round Old George"
"Doing Clarence a Bit of Good"
"The Aunt and the Sluggard"
Of the eight stories in the collection, half feature the popular characters Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, while the others concern Reggie Pepper, an early prototype for Bertie Wooster.
Revised versions of all the Jeeves stories in this collection were later published in the 1925 short story collection Carry On, Jeeves. One of the Reggie Pepper stories in this collection was later rewritten as a Jeeves story, which was also included in Carry On, Jeeves.]]>
author: P.G. Wodehouse
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1919
rating: 2
read at: 2018/03/11
date added: 2018/03/12
shelves:
review:
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Attrib. and other stories celebrates the tricksiness of language just as it confronts its limits. Correspondingly, the stories are littered with the physical ephemera of language: dictionaries, dog-eared pages, bookmarks and old coffee stains on older books. This is writing that centres on the weird, tender intricacies of the everyday where characters vie to 'own' their words, tell tall tales and attempt to define their worlds.
With affectionate, irreverent and playful prose, the inability to communicate exactly what we mean dominates this bold debut collection from one of Britain鈥檚 most original new writers.]]>
author: Eley Williams
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2018/03/07
shelves:
review:
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Apparently, the happiest places on earth include, somewhat unexpectedly, Iceland, Bhutan, and India. Weiner also visits the country deemed most malcontent, Moldova, and finds real merit in the claim.
But the question remains: What makes people happy? Is it the freedom of the West or the myriad restrictions of Singapore? The simple ashrams of India or the glittering shopping malls of Qatar?
From the youthful drunkenness of Iceland to the despond of Slough, a sad but resilient town in Heathrow's flight path, Weiner offers wry yet profound observations about the way people relate to circumstance and fate.
Both revealing and inspirational, perhaps the best thing about this hilarious trip across four continents is that for the reader, the "geography of bliss" is wherever they happen to find themselves while reading it.]]>
author: Eric Weiner
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:
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But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.]]>
author: Neil deGrasse Tyson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:
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At the centre of this novel is the passionate love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff - recounted with such emotional intensity that a plain tale of the Yorkshire moors acquires the depth and simplicity of ancient tragedy.
This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has corrected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations.
New to the fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind the beloved work.
Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are included, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and critical reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role of Victorian Christianity plays in the novel, while Martha Nussbaum traces the novel's romanticism. Finally, Lin Haire-Sargeant scrutinizes the role of Heathcliff in film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.
A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.]]>
author: Emily Bront毛
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1847
rating: 2
read at: 2017/10/15
date added: 2017/10/15
shelves:
review:
This contains the most inane and unrealistic characterisations I have ever encountered in a classic.
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Radical Victorian reformer Henry Mayhew walked the streets of London interviewing ordinary flower girls, market traders, piemen and costermongers to create the first ever work of mass social observation, and the ultimate account of urban life - including an extraordinary description of the city from a hot air balloon.
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.
Henry Mayhew (1812-1887)
Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor is available in Penguin Classics.]]>
author: Henry Mayhew
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/09/22
shelves:
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Odessa was a uniquely Jewish city, and the stories of Isaac Babel - a Jewish man, writing in Russian, born in Odessa - uncover its tough underbelly. Gangsters, prostitutes, beggars, smugglers: no one escapes the pungent, sinewy force of Babel's pen.
From the tales of the magnetic cruelty of Benya Krik - infamous mob boss, and one of the great anti-heroes of Russian literature - to the devastating semi-autobiographical account of a young Jewish boy caught up in a pogrom, this collection of stories is considered one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian literature.
Translated with precision and sensitivity by Boris Dralyuk, whose rendering of the rich Odessan argot is pitch-perfect,听Odessa Stories听is the first ever stand-alone collection of all the stories Babel set in the city - and includes tales from the original collection as well as later ones.
Isaac Babel
was a short-story writer, playwright, literary translator and journalist. He joined the Red Army as a correspondent during the Russian civil war. The first major Russian-Jewish writer to write in Russian, he was hugely popular during his lifetime. He was murdered in Stalin's purges in 1940, at the age of 45.]]>
author: Isaac Babel
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1931
rating: 3
read at: 2017/01/25
date added: 2017/05/15
shelves:
review:
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James Gordon has added a lot of his own wit and opinion to the text, and this also helps to lighten up what could otherwise be a very dry subject. Thoroughly entertaining and accessible to everybody.]]>
author: James Edward Gordon
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at: 2017/02/03
date added: 2017/02/04
shelves:
review:
This was much more fun than a book about structural engineering deserves to be. The theory is very accessible and comprehensible, and it's illustrated very interestingly with reference to examples, often from the natural world. For example, thrust lines in architecture are discussed with reference to Doric temples and Gothic cathedrals, and torsion in flight surfaces with reference to the off-centre placement of the quill in the wing feather of a bird.
James Gordon has added a lot of his own wit and opinion to the text, and this also helps to lighten up what could otherwise be a very dry subject. Thoroughly entertaining and accessible to everybody.
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This edition is the standard Random House/Bodley Head text that first appeared in 1960.
(*) New cover existing, same ISBN:
See it as ISBN13 9780141182803 / ISBN10 0141182806]]>
author: James Joyce
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1922
rating: 5
read at: 2017/01/15
date added: 2017/01/15
shelves:
review:
Holy shit.
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Winner of the Prix Goncourt
In this strange, elegant novel, winner of France's premier literary prize, Patrick Modiano portrays a man in pursuit of the identity he lost in the murky days of the Paris Occupation, the black hole of French memory.
For ten years Guy Roland has lived without a past. His current life and name were given to him by his recently retired boss, Hutte, who welcomed him, a onetime client, into his detective agency. Guy makes full use of Hutte's files 鈥� directories, yearbooks, and papers of all kinds going back half a century 鈥� but his leads are few. Could he really be the person in that photograph, a young man remembered by some as a South American attach茅? Or was he someone else, perhaps the disappeared scion of a prominent local family? He interviews strangers and is tantalized by half-clues until, at last, he grasps a thread that leads him through the maze of his own repressed experience.
On one level Missing Person is a detective thriller, a 1950s film noir mix of smoky caf茅s, illegal passports, and insubstantial figures crossing bridges in the fog. On another level, it is also a haunting meditation on the nature of the self. Modiano's sparce, hypnotic prose, superbly translated by Daniel Weissbort, draws his readers into the intoxication of a rare literary experience.
Librarian's note: See an alternate cover edition for this ISBN here.]]>
author: Patrick Modiano
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1978
rating: 3
read at: 2016/10/14
date added: 2016/10/23
shelves:
review:
Nicely-sketched characters and scenes fail to fully disguise a thin plot. At several points in the novel the narrator asks himself the sort of interesting philosophical questions I was hoping the novel would actually illustrate or explore. The book ends abruptly and artlessly.
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The problem is that what could have been a very engaging history of the Roman empire is also interspersed with analogies to the current-day EU. These comparisons appear infrequently and unexpectedly, like dog poos in a public park, and one is left with the feeling that the Classics scholar felt compelled to demonstrate how much one can learn from history, but wasn鈥檛 really sure how to go about it.
There simply isn鈥檛 a lot of commonality between the EU and the Roman Empire. This causes Johnson problems in two ways. The first is that you can鈥檛 use one system as a model for another until you鈥檝e demonstrated that they are sufficiently similar in the areas of interest. Johnson doesn鈥檛 do this, or even get close, so he is stuck with a sort of parody of comparison in which he points out the things which made the Roman empire great, and then points out that the EU does not have those things. He then leaves things there, presumably expecting the reader to make the obvious, but incorrect, logical leap.
Worshipping the emperor, for example, was one of the shared practices which united the Roman empire culturally. Nobody is going to worship any president of the EU, whose high-ranking members are so far the opposite of 鈥渃harismatic leadership鈥� that it sometimes feels that they were specifically selected for unpleasantness. That doesn鈥檛, of course, mean that the EU is doomed to failure 鈥� it just means that it鈥檚 not like the Roman empire.
But Johnson鈥檚 failure to draw reasonable parallels between Rome and the EU causes a second problem, which is much worse: he ends up contradicting himself.
Take the issue of Turkey entering the EU, for example. This crops up near the end of the book, which has been busily occupied with teaching us that the Roman empire succeeded because it established a common, but loose, cultural identity 鈥� a common religion (but not an exclusive one); a common Roman architectural style, even an empire-wide favourite fish sauce. Part of the reason for its decline was that it spread itself too thin, and accepted local rule. With that act, a lot of the unifying Roman-ness disappeared. Without the egg-white in the cake, as Johnson puts it, the empire fell apart. The implication is of course that the empire should have avoided this if possible 鈥� retain a cultural identity; consolidate power in Rome; and so on.
But Turkey, with its Muslim population, is very culturally distinct from the EU. Some people, writes Boris, would argue that this means they shouldn't join it -- it wouldn't work, would dilute the common values, such as they are, and would weaken the union.
Miraculously, Johnson at this point attempts to turn his argument about on its head. The EU will never be the new European empire, he writes. There is no common culture! No common architectural style, no common customs. Certainly no common fish sauce. Therefore, he writes, why not give up on these half-baked ideas of commonality and let Turkey in? His reasoning is mostly based around security 鈥� better to have Turkey striving to align itself with the EU鈥檚 goals than working against it. I happen to agree with this argument, but it is an argument for increasing the cultural diversity of an already-very-diverse EU 鈥� rather oddly-placed in a book which has just finished making the case that too much cultural diversity and division of power destroyed the Roman empire.
The EU portion seems like a wash 鈥� the connections are poorly placed and simply don鈥檛 reach anything approaching an argument. The history portion, however, is great 鈥� and, fortunately, that鈥檚 the majority of the book.
Overall, it鈥檚 a fun walk in the park if you watch where you step.]]>
author: Boris Johnson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2016/07/31
date added: 2016/07/31
shelves:
review:
Boris Johnson has a charming, avuncular style of writing, weaving hundreds of interesting stories of the Roman empire together to trace its history, through its apotheosis under Augustus to its decline. Johnson always treats the reader as an intellectual equal, leading them gently through a complex tangle of issues, which Johnson has dotted with facts in the same way that one might sprinkle dressing on a salad, to arrive at the conclusion that any reasonable person should make 鈥� i.e. the one which Johnson himself happens to be promulgating. This style is so fun to read, and so charmingly beguiling, that it鈥檚 easy to miss that half the time the author, by the end of the chapter, has started, apparently without noticing, to argue against himself.
The problem is that what could have been a very engaging history of the Roman empire is also interspersed with analogies to the current-day EU. These comparisons appear infrequently and unexpectedly, like dog poos in a public park, and one is left with the feeling that the Classics scholar felt compelled to demonstrate how much one can learn from history, but wasn鈥檛 really sure how to go about it.
There simply isn鈥檛 a lot of commonality between the EU and the Roman Empire. This causes Johnson problems in two ways. The first is that you can鈥檛 use one system as a model for another until you鈥檝e demonstrated that they are sufficiently similar in the areas of interest. Johnson doesn鈥檛 do this, or even get close, so he is stuck with a sort of parody of comparison in which he points out the things which made the Roman empire great, and then points out that the EU does not have those things. He then leaves things there, presumably expecting the reader to make the obvious, but incorrect, logical leap.
Worshipping the emperor, for example, was one of the shared practices which united the Roman empire culturally. Nobody is going to worship any president of the EU, whose high-ranking members are so far the opposite of 鈥渃harismatic leadership鈥� that it sometimes feels that they were specifically selected for unpleasantness. That doesn鈥檛, of course, mean that the EU is doomed to failure 鈥� it just means that it鈥檚 not like the Roman empire.
But Johnson鈥檚 failure to draw reasonable parallels between Rome and the EU causes a second problem, which is much worse: he ends up contradicting himself.
Take the issue of Turkey entering the EU, for example. This crops up near the end of the book, which has been busily occupied with teaching us that the Roman empire succeeded because it established a common, but loose, cultural identity 鈥� a common religion (but not an exclusive one); a common Roman architectural style, even an empire-wide favourite fish sauce. Part of the reason for its decline was that it spread itself too thin, and accepted local rule. With that act, a lot of the unifying Roman-ness disappeared. Without the egg-white in the cake, as Johnson puts it, the empire fell apart. The implication is of course that the empire should have avoided this if possible 鈥� retain a cultural identity; consolidate power in Rome; and so on.
But Turkey, with its Muslim population, is very culturally distinct from the EU. Some people, writes Boris, would argue that this means they shouldn't join it -- it wouldn't work, would dilute the common values, such as they are, and would weaken the union.
Miraculously, Johnson at this point attempts to turn his argument about on its head. The EU will never be the new European empire, he writes. There is no common culture! No common architectural style, no common customs. Certainly no common fish sauce. Therefore, he writes, why not give up on these half-baked ideas of commonality and let Turkey in? His reasoning is mostly based around security 鈥� better to have Turkey striving to align itself with the EU鈥檚 goals than working against it. I happen to agree with this argument, but it is an argument for increasing the cultural diversity of an already-very-diverse EU 鈥� rather oddly-placed in a book which has just finished making the case that too much cultural diversity and division of power destroyed the Roman empire.
The EU portion seems like a wash 鈥� the connections are poorly placed and simply don鈥檛 reach anything approaching an argument. The history portion, however, is great 鈥� and, fortunately, that鈥檚 the majority of the book.
Overall, it鈥檚 a fun walk in the park if you watch where you step.
]]>
This is a story of saints and spies, of fishermen and pirates, traders and marauders - and of how their wild and daring journeys across the North Sea built the world we know.
When the Roman Empire retreated, northern Europe was a barbarian outpost at the very edge of everything. A thousand years later, it was the heart of global empires and the home of science, art, enlightenment and money. We owe this transformation to the tides and storms of the North Sea.
The water was dangerous, but it was far easier than struggling over land; so it was the sea that brought people together. Boats carried food and raw materials, but also new ideas and information. The seafarers raided, ruined and killed, but they also settled and coupled. With them they brought new tastes and technologies - books, clothes, manners, paintings and machines.
In this dazzling historical adventure, we return to a time that is largely forgotten and watch as the modern world is born. We see the spread of money and how it paved the way for science. We see how plague terrorised even the rich and transformed daily life for the poor. We watch as the climate changed and coastlines shifted, people adapted and towns flourished. We see the arrival of the first politicians, artists, lawyers: citizens. From Viking raiders to Mongol hordes, Frisian fishermen to Hanseatic hustlers, travelling as far west as America and as far east as Byzantium, we see how the life and traffic of the seas changed everything.
Drawing on an astonishing breadth of learning and packed with human stories and revelations, this is the epic drama of how we came to be who we are.]]>
It's sad because the individual stories are very interesting -- the story of Simon Stevin in particular was fascinating -- and there obviously is a narrative to be woven around them all, but Michael Pye just didn't manage to weave it.
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author: Michael Pye
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2016/07/13
date added: 2016/07/14
shelves:
review:
This was agonising -- there is a massive story to be told here, but Pye chose to tell it by giving individual anecotes about historically significant figures. There was no continuity, and it felt cherry-picked. It felt like trying to learn 1000 years of history by reading tweets.
It's sad because the individual stories are very interesting -- the story of Simon Stevin in particular was fascinating -- and there obviously is a narrative to be woven around them all, but Michael Pye just didn't manage to weave it.
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It's good! I was laughing at 2400-year-old jokes.
The translation is quite loose in this edition, which works well but left me wanting to read another edition to compare.
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author: John Claughton
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2016/05/22
date added: 2016/05/22
shelves:
review:
I admit that I only bought this book because I read the quote about the ideal man ("broad shoulders, a humble tongue, firm buttocks, and a neat little prick") in the context of an article on Greek statue penis size (turns out that they're not particularly small after all) and liked it enough to read the rest of the play.
It's good! I was laughing at 2400-year-old jokes.
The translation is quite loose in this edition, which works well but left me wanting to read another edition to compare.
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This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.
At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender,
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.]]>
author: Jeanette Winterson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at: 2016/05/07
date added: 2016/05/07
shelves:
review:
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I enjoyed it, overall, and emphathised with Ijon Tichy more than once. I didn't give it four stars mainly because I have noticed that every book I have listed on 欧宝娱乐 has, when rounded to the nearest 0.5, an average rating of four stars.
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author: Stanis艂aw Lem
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1971
rating: 3
read at: 2016/04/14
date added: 2016/04/14
shelves:
review:
Sci-fi without the bold, brave, lone (white, male) adventurer -- or at least without the associated heroism. Short stories for short attention spans. I don't know how much of Lem Douglas Adams had read before he wrote The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but there are plenty of similar ideas in this book -- from the ennui arising from being able to shape-shift at will, to the hero mistaking alien races for furniture (and vice versa), to the overall theme of humanity being, galactically speaking, a little backwards and a little embarrassing.
I enjoyed it, overall, and emphathised with Ijon Tichy more than once. I didn't give it four stars mainly because I have noticed that every book I have listed on 欧宝娱乐 has, when rounded to the nearest 0.5, an average rating of four stars.
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One thing I really liked about it, and I'm not sure if I am even capable of conveying this properly, is the strong feeling of connectedness between narrator and her environment which pervades the stories: there doesn't seem be a strong boundary where the person ends and her house begins, for example. To put it another way, I felt like I was reading the thoughts and feelings of an entire place, not just a person. Having lived alone I have sometimes felt that after a while the rooms I move through and the things I use day to day become in some way an extension of myself, and I don't think I've read a novel which ever managed to capture this feeling until this one. To be honest I'm not even sure I knew that I had had that feeling until I read Pond and was reminded of it.
Sometimes the writing grates a little, but, overall, it's a virtuosic performance. Go and read it! It's excellent.
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author: Claire-Louise Bennett
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2016/03/23
date added: 2016/03/22
shelves:
review:
I love this book. I love writing which gets inside the head of someone else and doesn't let you out. Stream of consciousness is, I think, hard to write well, because it's so easy to veer into inanity on one side or pretentiousness on the other, but when it *is* written well it's fantastic and perspective-altering, sometimes permanently. Pond gets it perfectly right.
One thing I really liked about it, and I'm not sure if I am even capable of conveying this properly, is the strong feeling of connectedness between narrator and her environment which pervades the stories: there doesn't seem be a strong boundary where the person ends and her house begins, for example. To put it another way, I felt like I was reading the thoughts and feelings of an entire place, not just a person. Having lived alone I have sometimes felt that after a while the rooms I move through and the things I use day to day become in some way an extension of myself, and I don't think I've read a novel which ever managed to capture this feeling until this one. To be honest I'm not even sure I knew that I had had that feeling until I read Pond and was reminded of it.
Sometimes the writing grates a little, but, overall, it's a virtuosic performance. Go and read it! It's excellent.
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Philosophy Bites was set up in 2007 by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton. It has had over 12 million downloads, and is listened to all over the world.
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Edmonds and Warburton have put some effort into making the chapters flow into each other while also keeping a roughly chronological order, which makes for a satisfying read: a name will come up in one chapter only for that person to be discussed extensively in the next. Warburton (Edmonds generally sticks to doing introductions in this volume) is a skilled interviewer and manages to keep the topics manageably constrained (surely not easy when talking to philsophers about philosophy!) and wrap up each interview neatly.
It's just introductory-level stuff, but I liked these because they're either everything I'm ever going to want to know about a philosopher (John Rawls, Jean-Paul Sartre) or they're a great introduction and overview for learning more (G. W. F. Hegel, John Stuart Mill).]]>
author: David Edmonds
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2016/03/14
date added: 2016/03/14
shelves:
review:
A really clear and entertaining overview of a lot of philosophers, structured as a series of interviews (and actually originally a podcast, though I found the book much easier to digest).
Edmonds and Warburton have put some effort into making the chapters flow into each other while also keeping a roughly chronological order, which makes for a satisfying read: a name will come up in one chapter only for that person to be discussed extensively in the next. Warburton (Edmonds generally sticks to doing introductions in this volume) is a skilled interviewer and manages to keep the topics manageably constrained (surely not easy when talking to philsophers about philosophy!) and wrap up each interview neatly.
It's just introductory-level stuff, but I liked these because they're either everything I'm ever going to want to know about a philosopher (John Rawls, Jean-Paul Sartre) or they're a great introduction and overview for learning more (G. W. F. Hegel, John Stuart Mill).
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Enter brilliant, prickly, overweight astrophysicist, Lena Geduldig. Karl and Lena's connection is immediate. While they work on getting Wayne back, Karl and Lena fall in love -- with time travel, and each other. Unable to resist meddling with the past, Karl and Lena bounce around time. When Lena ultimately prevents her own long-ago rape, she alters the course of her life and threatens her future with Karl.
A high-spirited and engaging novel, Mo Daviau's EVERY ANXIOUS WAVE plays ball with the big questions of where we would go and who we would become if we could rewrite our pasts, as well as how to hold on to love across time.]]>
author: Mo Daviau
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/03/05
shelves: to-read
review:
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author: John Berger
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2016/02/08
date added: 2016/02/09
shelves:
review:
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author: Allan G Bromley
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at: 2016/01/25
date added: 2016/01/25
shelves:
review:
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This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously听sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.]]>
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1969
rating: 3
read at: 2015/12/15
date added: 2016/01/25
shelves:
review:
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author: Pamela Hansford Johnson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1940
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:
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Drawn in to the cockpit of world events and the forefront of technological innovation, Alan Turing was also an innocent and unpretentious gay man trying to live in a society that criminalized him. In 1952 he revealed his homosexuality and was forced to participate in a humiliating treatment program, and was ever after regarded as a security risk. His suicide in 1954 remains one of the many enigmas in an astonishing life story.]]>
It's well-known that Turing died young and suddenly, in what is almost universally agreed was a suicide. But if it was a suicide, it was completely unexpected to many: he left no note, had not taken great pains to put his affairs in order, and nobody recalled any changes in his personality immediately prior to the event. Still, depression is a messy business, and one can easily imagine Alan making a spur-of-the-moment decision. But the lack of closure begs for an explanation, and Hodges feels compelled to provide one: the last hundred pages of the book are a re-analysis of Turing's life in the light of attitudes to homosexuality in 1950s Britain, with references to the world stage and in particular the growing power of America. All very interesting stuff, but it's not about Turing, per se. More importantly, it seems very speculative. Was Turing affected by societal attitudes to his sexuality? No doubt. Did that lead to his suicide? Well, perhaps, and in another context I'd probably love to read an essay on the topic, but tacked on to the end of a biography about Turing, it seems a little opportunistic.
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author: Andrew Hodges
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at: 2015/05/11
date added: 2015/05/11
shelves:
review:
I enjoyed this very much. It's described as a "new kind of biography", apparently because of its focus on the mathematics behind Turing's work -- but if this is the new kind, I would hate to read the old kind about Alan Turing, for whom mathematics was so much a part of his life. Andrew Hodges writes with easy strength about everything from Turing's housekeeping habits (poor) to the details of his most well-known paper, which arguably kick-started the field of computer science. Despite Hodges' obvious admiration of and respect for his subject, he nonetheless conveys Alan as a real person, brilliant but human -- which must have been quite a difficult thing to do, thirty years after the fact. I'm very thankful that Hodges could write about one of my heroes in a way that was so accessible to me. But the book falls a little flat when its author starts to ruminate on Alan Turing's death.
It's well-known that Turing died young and suddenly, in what is almost universally agreed was a suicide. But if it was a suicide, it was completely unexpected to many: he left no note, had not taken great pains to put his affairs in order, and nobody recalled any changes in his personality immediately prior to the event. Still, depression is a messy business, and one can easily imagine Alan making a spur-of-the-moment decision. But the lack of closure begs for an explanation, and Hodges feels compelled to provide one: the last hundred pages of the book are a re-analysis of Turing's life in the light of attitudes to homosexuality in 1950s Britain, with references to the world stage and in particular the growing power of America. All very interesting stuff, but it's not about Turing, per se. More importantly, it seems very speculative. Was Turing affected by societal attitudes to his sexuality? No doubt. Did that lead to his suicide? Well, perhaps, and in another context I'd probably love to read an essay on the topic, but tacked on to the end of a biography about Turing, it seems a little opportunistic.
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author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1864
rating: 5
read at: 2012/09/23
date added: 2015/04/05
shelves:
review:
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Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, "To Kill A Mockingbird" takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.]]>
author: Harper Lee
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1960
rating: 2
read at: 2015/02/19
date added: 2015/03/06
shelves:
review:
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author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1945
rating: 0
read at: 2014/12/30
date added: 2015/01/05
shelves:
review:
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author: Sylvia Plath
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at: 2014/09/25
date added: 2014/09/25
shelves:
review:
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what it means to be a human being.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds
of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam]]>
author: Catherine Belsey
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at: 2014/09/18
date added: 2014/09/25
shelves:
review:
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The plot can be covered fairly briefly: the Player of Games is a story about a man named Gurgeh, who is the first sci-fi man to be named after the noise of cat sick. Gurgeh is a brilliant game player. I mean this literally: he plays board games exceptionally well. Alas, one day, Gurgeh makes a mistake -- if only he could play upon human emotions as well as he could play the board! The mistake means that Gurgeh is obliged to play the most complicated board game ever, against aliens whose very civilisation is based upon it. As the games progress, we realise that not just honour is at stake: Gurgeh represents a civilisation of peaceful expansion; the aliens are barbaric and thirsty for war. Whose culture will prevail?
Stop yawning. The fate of the galaxy is at stake.
Gurgeh lives alone in his house in seclusion, being brilliant in various private ways. People sometimes visit him for entertainment or sex, but then they politely leave again after a few days. When people are visiting, Gurgeh's house takes care of the catering and cleaning up, so all Gurgeh has to do is be witty and/or skilled and/or seductive. You can imagine that a life of brilliance, quietude, pampering, relationships maintained by others, and no-strings-attached sex would appeal to a certain type of reader. In fact the whole novel is epic wish-fulfilment of the highest order, as what may be the single greatest game player in the Universe overcomes his own doubts about himself and comes into his own. I hadn't, however, realised that I was going to be reading escapist fiction, so the repeated references to Gurgeh's perfect, ubernerd, life-of-the-mind existence were a little jarring.
Rather like the stereotypical nerd, the book talks a lot about sex but doesn't actually have much sex, and it's always discussed in a rather disinterested, clinical context. Strewn throughout the book are passages about sex, alien sex, and sexual politics, all of which Banks somehow manages to make boring. The passages on alien sex, in particular, sound like a textbook for a kid's health class in a particularly conservative country: "The vagina turns inside-out to implant the fertilized egg in the third sex, on the right, which has a womb."
In fact, the particular aliens Gurgeh visits don't want to have sex with him and think he's kind of disgusting. This would be funnier, except that Gurgeh, predictably enough, decides that he didn't want to have sex with them anyway.
The sexual politics of the novel is also extremely tedious. Early on in the book Gurgeh is talking to a woman, Yay, who visited for the evening but refused to have sex with him. He asks her why. '"I feel you want to ... take me," Yay said, "like a piece, like an area. To be had; to be ... possessed." Suddenly she looked very puzzled. "There's something very ... I don't know; primitive, perhaps, about you, Gurgeh."'
I'm not sure what Banks was trying to do here, but this is classic romance-novel stuff: frail woman thrown into confusion by pure, raw, unadulterated gender role. It later transpires that changing gender and homosexual sex are completely normal in Gurgeh's civilisation, but Gurgeh has never done either of these things, making him a weirdo -- but a sexy, raw, "primitive" weirdo. In any case, this geek wish-fulfillment stuff is very strange to encounter in a sci fi book.
Gurgeh is also kind of a jerk. He ignores people he doesn't like, or actively brushes them away. Gurgeh's civilisation treats conscious machines as equivalent to people, and they certainly act like people, yet it's clear that Gurgeh considers the machines beneath him. Banks seems to go out of his way to establish Gurgeh as irascible and discriminatory. In one baffling scene a drone is trying to discuss an assignment with Gurgeh while Gurgeh actively flicks crumbs from his dinner at it in a remarkably petulant display of passive aggression. Yet at no point is the reader invited to sympathise with Gurgeh's negative aspects -- he's just the main character, he's kind of horrible, that's all there is to it.
The book is hampered by bad writing. The plot is spurred by a transgression of Gurgeh's which leads to an eyebrow-raising blackmailing scene in which all the pieces are there but never seem to come together: there's a paragraph, for example, where the blackmailer explains that he would be happy to reveal the transgression simply for its entertainment value, and then, immediately afterwards, somehow convinces Gurgeh that he wouldn't reveal anything if Gurgeh would just do his bidding. That's followed by a long passage in which Gurgeh mopes that he would never be forgiven, complete with imaginary visualised scenes of social embarrassment, which seem acutely hollow given the kind of man we have established Gurgeh to be. There is a lot of rubbing of beards, which is the universal sci fi action for distracted thought (it's an action which is, of course, accessible only to males, but that is not a problem for traditional sci fi). Gurgeh is a big rubber of beards -- fourteen times, actually, over the course of the book (thanks, Kindle search). It got so repetitive that I started to feel sorry for his chin. The ship Gurgeh travels on is constantly referred to as "the old warship" in the same sense that a thug in a different book would be constantly referred to as "the big man", i.e., lazily. Ocassionally Gurgeh will take a woman back to the old warship, and fuck her in it.
The plot drags. Gurgeh is forced to play a complicated game against aliens, who, it turns out, are rather dreadful. In a hair-raising twist, the reader is invited eventually to discover that the values Gurgeh condemns in the aliens are disturbingly similar to the values that we humans have here on Earth in the present day. Nothing significant is made of this revelation that wouldn't also fit in, say, a weekend newspaper opinion column. There are some half-hearted references to the idea that one's language shapes one's thoughts, but, again, only in ways which are both heavy-handed and cursory (for example: Gurgeh starts speaking in his native language, rather than the inferior language of the aliens, and immediately has an epiphany about how to win his current game). Problems of exposition crop up in several places. There are several long passages in which Gurgeh attempts to explain his civilisation's values to the aliens, apparently because this is the only way that Banks could find to explain Gurgeh's civilisation's values to his readers. In writing about the universe's most complicated game, Banks also has the problem that he needs to write about playing the game without getting bogged down in the rules. Consequently, there are several passages of the form "Gurgeh knew that he was missing something [...] In a flash of inspiration, Gurgeh realised what he was missing". Gameplay without the gameplay, in other words, and, for the reader, all of the frustration of game-playing, but none of the fun.
Frustration is a good summary of the whole book. Banks is aware enough of the genre's tropes to mock them (the names of the spaceships are great), but yet he doesn't manage to escape them. The result is stereotypical SF: one-dimensional characters, great ideas, and bad writing.
]]>
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1988
rating: 2
read at: 2014/08/24
date added: 2014/08/24
shelves:
review:
The last time I read "serious" sci-fi I was twelve years old. I was a bit obsessed with robots, so I bought Asimov's I, Robot collection and dove in. Even at that age, I could sense that something was off. It wasn't the robots -- Asimov writes great robots. In fact, Asimov is so good at writing robots that it seemed like he had applied the same formula to people. Everyone (or at least all the good people) were logical, unemotional, rational, and cold. Reading the stories was like watching a visualisation of a gas in a volume: each character was like a little molecule of logic, bouncing off other molecules to release tiny whisps of Plotium, the rarest of all sci fi elements. Disappointed, I gave up on the genre for a long time. Coming back to it with this book by Iain M. Banks, I soon remembered why I left.
The plot can be covered fairly briefly: the Player of Games is a story about a man named Gurgeh, who is the first sci-fi man to be named after the noise of cat sick. Gurgeh is a brilliant game player. I mean this literally: he plays board games exceptionally well. Alas, one day, Gurgeh makes a mistake -- if only he could play upon human emotions as well as he could play the board! The mistake means that Gurgeh is obliged to play the most complicated board game ever, against aliens whose very civilisation is based upon it. As the games progress, we realise that not just honour is at stake: Gurgeh represents a civilisation of peaceful expansion; the aliens are barbaric and thirsty for war. Whose culture will prevail?
Stop yawning. The fate of the galaxy is at stake.
Gurgeh lives alone in his house in seclusion, being brilliant in various private ways. People sometimes visit him for entertainment or sex, but then they politely leave again after a few days. When people are visiting, Gurgeh's house takes care of the catering and cleaning up, so all Gurgeh has to do is be witty and/or skilled and/or seductive. You can imagine that a life of brilliance, quietude, pampering, relationships maintained by others, and no-strings-attached sex would appeal to a certain type of reader. In fact the whole novel is epic wish-fulfilment of the highest order, as what may be the single greatest game player in the Universe overcomes his own doubts about himself and comes into his own. I hadn't, however, realised that I was going to be reading escapist fiction, so the repeated references to Gurgeh's perfect, ubernerd, life-of-the-mind existence were a little jarring.
Rather like the stereotypical nerd, the book talks a lot about sex but doesn't actually have much sex, and it's always discussed in a rather disinterested, clinical context. Strewn throughout the book are passages about sex, alien sex, and sexual politics, all of which Banks somehow manages to make boring. The passages on alien sex, in particular, sound like a textbook for a kid's health class in a particularly conservative country: "The vagina turns inside-out to implant the fertilized egg in the third sex, on the right, which has a womb."
In fact, the particular aliens Gurgeh visits don't want to have sex with him and think he's kind of disgusting. This would be funnier, except that Gurgeh, predictably enough, decides that he didn't want to have sex with them anyway.
The sexual politics of the novel is also extremely tedious. Early on in the book Gurgeh is talking to a woman, Yay, who visited for the evening but refused to have sex with him. He asks her why. '"I feel you want to ... take me," Yay said, "like a piece, like an area. To be had; to be ... possessed." Suddenly she looked very puzzled. "There's something very ... I don't know; primitive, perhaps, about you, Gurgeh."'
I'm not sure what Banks was trying to do here, but this is classic romance-novel stuff: frail woman thrown into confusion by pure, raw, unadulterated gender role. It later transpires that changing gender and homosexual sex are completely normal in Gurgeh's civilisation, but Gurgeh has never done either of these things, making him a weirdo -- but a sexy, raw, "primitive" weirdo. In any case, this geek wish-fulfillment stuff is very strange to encounter in a sci fi book.
Gurgeh is also kind of a jerk. He ignores people he doesn't like, or actively brushes them away. Gurgeh's civilisation treats conscious machines as equivalent to people, and they certainly act like people, yet it's clear that Gurgeh considers the machines beneath him. Banks seems to go out of his way to establish Gurgeh as irascible and discriminatory. In one baffling scene a drone is trying to discuss an assignment with Gurgeh while Gurgeh actively flicks crumbs from his dinner at it in a remarkably petulant display of passive aggression. Yet at no point is the reader invited to sympathise with Gurgeh's negative aspects -- he's just the main character, he's kind of horrible, that's all there is to it.
The book is hampered by bad writing. The plot is spurred by a transgression of Gurgeh's which leads to an eyebrow-raising blackmailing scene in which all the pieces are there but never seem to come together: there's a paragraph, for example, where the blackmailer explains that he would be happy to reveal the transgression simply for its entertainment value, and then, immediately afterwards, somehow convinces Gurgeh that he wouldn't reveal anything if Gurgeh would just do his bidding. That's followed by a long passage in which Gurgeh mopes that he would never be forgiven, complete with imaginary visualised scenes of social embarrassment, which seem acutely hollow given the kind of man we have established Gurgeh to be. There is a lot of rubbing of beards, which is the universal sci fi action for distracted thought (it's an action which is, of course, accessible only to males, but that is not a problem for traditional sci fi). Gurgeh is a big rubber of beards -- fourteen times, actually, over the course of the book (thanks, Kindle search). It got so repetitive that I started to feel sorry for his chin. The ship Gurgeh travels on is constantly referred to as "the old warship" in the same sense that a thug in a different book would be constantly referred to as "the big man", i.e., lazily. Ocassionally Gurgeh will take a woman back to the old warship, and fuck her in it.
The plot drags. Gurgeh is forced to play a complicated game against aliens, who, it turns out, are rather dreadful. In a hair-raising twist, the reader is invited eventually to discover that the values Gurgeh condemns in the aliens are disturbingly similar to the values that we humans have here on Earth in the present day. Nothing significant is made of this revelation that wouldn't also fit in, say, a weekend newspaper opinion column. There are some half-hearted references to the idea that one's language shapes one's thoughts, but, again, only in ways which are both heavy-handed and cursory (for example: Gurgeh starts speaking in his native language, rather than the inferior language of the aliens, and immediately has an epiphany about how to win his current game). Problems of exposition crop up in several places. There are several long passages in which Gurgeh attempts to explain his civilisation's values to the aliens, apparently because this is the only way that Banks could find to explain Gurgeh's civilisation's values to his readers. In writing about the universe's most complicated game, Banks also has the problem that he needs to write about playing the game without getting bogged down in the rules. Consequently, there are several passages of the form "Gurgeh knew that he was missing something [...] In a flash of inspiration, Gurgeh realised what he was missing". Gameplay without the gameplay, in other words, and, for the reader, all of the frustration of game-playing, but none of the fun.
Frustration is a good summary of the whole book. Banks is aware enough of the genre's tropes to mock them (the names of the spaceships are great), but yet he doesn't manage to escape them. The result is stereotypical SF: one-dimensional characters, great ideas, and bad writing.
]]>
Labyrinths is a representative selection of Borges' writing, some forty pieces drawn from various books of his published over the years. The translations are by Harriet de Onis, Anthony Kerrigan, and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as an extensive bibliography.]]>
This book also contains a few essays, some of which are immediately accessible (such as the reflection on an Argentinian, rather than Spanish, literary tradition), and some of which are less so (such as the rather baffling exposition on the nature of time).
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author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.48
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/14
date added: 2014/08/19
shelves:
review:
Borges writes clever stories with a sting or twist. After a while, the reader begins to anticipate the twist and so it loses some of its effect, but this doesn't ruin the stories. Each is only a few pages long, but they are fairly dense. Good travel reading.
This book also contains a few essays, some of which are immediately accessible (such as the reflection on an Argentinian, rather than Spanish, literary tradition), and some of which are less so (such as the rather baffling exposition on the nature of time).
]]>
"The riddle of the traveling skull", republished by McSweeney's, is apparently one of Harry Stephen Keeler's more accessible and better books. Ostensibly a mystery centring around a human skull that the protagonist finds in a travelling bag, the plot grows to involve mistaken identities, a six-legged, four-armed circus performer, a confectionery magnate with a shadowy past, San Do Mar, and poetry written by a most surprising author. Unfortunately Keeler, writing in the 30s, comes across as incredibly racist (and rather sexist) to modern eyes. This is quite confronting, but if you can manage to overlook it the book is very enjoyable regardless.
The writing is somewhat amazing: always incredibly creative, but sometimes stilted and difficult to follow. The plot is impossible to predict, because every few pages Keeler invents some new twist to keep things moving (and maybe to write himself out of corners). It's difficult to tell whether he's making fun of the genre or is deadly serious, but it's hard not to like the book. Take this passage, where the main character (who works in the confectionery company) describes his beloved:
"Sweet that kiss, like our butter-cream center bar. And blonde she was, like our Crispo Taffy. With eyes as blue as jelly bean No. 18 -- which goes in the jelly bean mixture No. 9. Dressed all in pink silk, as pink and as crisp as our Silko-Spun Crunch.
But I'm talking in crude trade terms -- about something too fine to compare with mere candy."
Fortunately, the rest of the book isn't that zany, but passages like that keep the interest up: I was genuinely, rather than ironically, interested in solving the mystery by the end of the book: and, of course, did not do so until the final sentence.
Recommended!
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author: Harry Stephen Keeler
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1934
rating: 5
read at: 2007/07/01
date added: 2014/01/02
shelves:
review:
Two-thirds of the way through this crazy whodunnit I encountered a page inserted by the book's original publishers, claiming that all characters had been revealed, all clues presented, and the reader should now be able to guess the culprit. This sort of thing might have been plausible in an Agatha Christie, but in this book it was essentially a cruel joke -- the reader is guaranteed to be in the dark until the final page.
"The riddle of the traveling skull", republished by McSweeney's, is apparently one of Harry Stephen Keeler's more accessible and better books. Ostensibly a mystery centring around a human skull that the protagonist finds in a travelling bag, the plot grows to involve mistaken identities, a six-legged, four-armed circus performer, a confectionery magnate with a shadowy past, San Do Mar, and poetry written by a most surprising author. Unfortunately Keeler, writing in the 30s, comes across as incredibly racist (and rather sexist) to modern eyes. This is quite confronting, but if you can manage to overlook it the book is very enjoyable regardless.
The writing is somewhat amazing: always incredibly creative, but sometimes stilted and difficult to follow. The plot is impossible to predict, because every few pages Keeler invents some new twist to keep things moving (and maybe to write himself out of corners). It's difficult to tell whether he's making fun of the genre or is deadly serious, but it's hard not to like the book. Take this passage, where the main character (who works in the confectionery company) describes his beloved:
"Sweet that kiss, like our butter-cream center bar. And blonde she was, like our Crispo Taffy. With eyes as blue as jelly bean No. 18 -- which goes in the jelly bean mixture No. 9. Dressed all in pink silk, as pink and as crisp as our Silko-Spun Crunch.
But I'm talking in crude trade terms -- about something too fine to compare with mere candy."
Fortunately, the rest of the book isn't that zany, but passages like that keep the interest up: I was genuinely, rather than ironically, interested in solving the mystery by the end of the book: and, of course, did not do so until the final sentence.
Recommended!
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author: Sue Woolfe
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/12/27
shelves:
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This is Sue Woolfe's journey towards understanding the neurological basis of creativity. There is no dramatic conclusion, but it's a pleasant walk.
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In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.]]>
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2013/09/28
date added: 2013/09/28
shelves:
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We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist鈥檚 couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city鈥檚 demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life鈥攄ivorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house鈥攁nd then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco鈥檚 punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang鈥攚ho thrived and who faltered鈥攁nd we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie鈥檚 catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou鈥檚 far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.
A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both鈥攁nd escape the merciless progress of time鈥攊n the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.]]>
author: Jennifer Egan
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2013/08/18
date added: 2013/09/03
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Here, in one volume are all four full-length novels and fifty-six short stories about the colorful adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Every word Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote about Baker Street's most famous resident. Also included is an introduction by lifetime Sherlockians, Christopher and Barbara Roden.]]>
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1915
rating: 4
read at: 2009/07/17
date added: 2013/07/25
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author: Steven Sherrill
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:
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He is now Harry Dresden, Winter Knight to Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness. After Harry had no choice but to swear his fealty, Mab wasn鈥檛 about to let something as petty as death steal away the prize she had sought for so long. And now, her word is his command, no matter what she wants him to do, no matter where she wants him to go, and no matter who she wants him to kill.
Guess which Mab wants first?
Of course, it won鈥檛 be an ordinary, everyday assassination. Mab wants her newest minion to pull off the impossible: Kill an immortal. No problem there, right? And to make matters worse, there exists a growing threat to an unfathomable source of magic that could land Harry in the sort of trouble that will make death look like a holiday.
Beset by enemies new and old, Harry must gather his friends and allies, prevent the annihilation of countless innocents, and find a way out of his eternal subservience before his newfound powers claim the only thing he has left to call his own . . . his soul.]]>
author: Jim Butcher
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:
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I won't waste much time on the plot, because there isn't one. The most frustrating thing about... well, this whole genre, I guess, is that the protagonist has no real flaws. Oh, she tends to rush into things. Thinks with her heart, not her head. Tends to give people the benefit of the doubt. All the things you'd say at a job interview if asked about your weak points. (And you were interviewing at the kind of place which wanted to know about thinking with your heart. Maybe a florist?)
Because she has no flaws, Gilly has no real problems, either. Okay, she's been dumped, which sucks. But the entire story is "Gilly gets dumped and moves on." She doesn't really learn anything, and she doesn't change -- why would she? If the book had ended with Gilly being dumped again, plus the first few sentences from Chapter 1, I wouldn't have been surprised. Actually, that would have been kind of cool.
Am I being too analytical about this book, which is, after all, pretty clearly a wish-fulfilment fantasy romance? It wasn't that bad. The plot is cliche-driven, but the cliches are worked pretty hard. Gilly has a theme tune. And a dog. And a dog-walking group. And a strong-willed, sarcastic, wise-cracking older (and thus non-threatening) female mentor. Girlfriends who care about her, guys who (apparently) don't. The foregone conclusion is at least approached with a certain amount of subtlety.
I have to say, though, that the best part was reading the "popular highlights". On some Kindle devices, you can highlight specific passages and opt to have them shared with everybody.
Page 25, highlighted by 252 people: "Life can be like a padlock refusing to open. One small change in the combination can finally open the door."
Padlocks generally aren't used to secure doors. Possibly fence-gates. Or bicycles. Or wine cellars.
Page 365, highlighted by 172 people: "Life can be like a padlock refusing to open. One little change in the combination can finally open the door."
To be fair, this was quoted speech, but it was still odd to see it repeated 300 pages on, slightly changed. I have to say I think I prefer the "one small change" variant.
Page 208, highlighted by 25 people: "The world has to look at us, so we owe it to people to look decent."
I guess. The world can look the other way if it's bothered.
Page 147, highlighted by 181 people: "We say so many things that we don't mean, the truth hidden beneath the layers of what we ought to say."
This confused me a bit. So the truth is hidden beneath layers of things we're not saying? What are we saying then?
Anyway, this was a fun way to spend some time on holiday. Recommended for the price.
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author: Alice Peterson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2012/10/01
date added: 2013/01/07
shelves:
review:
This was on sale on Amazon for 20 pence and I couldn't resist. I'd say that it gave me 20p worth of entertainment, possibly slightly more.
I won't waste much time on the plot, because there isn't one. The most frustrating thing about... well, this whole genre, I guess, is that the protagonist has no real flaws. Oh, she tends to rush into things. Thinks with her heart, not her head. Tends to give people the benefit of the doubt. All the things you'd say at a job interview if asked about your weak points. (And you were interviewing at the kind of place which wanted to know about thinking with your heart. Maybe a florist?)
Because she has no flaws, Gilly has no real problems, either. Okay, she's been dumped, which sucks. But the entire story is "Gilly gets dumped and moves on." She doesn't really learn anything, and she doesn't change -- why would she? If the book had ended with Gilly being dumped again, plus the first few sentences from Chapter 1, I wouldn't have been surprised. Actually, that would have been kind of cool.
Am I being too analytical about this book, which is, after all, pretty clearly a wish-fulfilment fantasy romance? It wasn't that bad. The plot is cliche-driven, but the cliches are worked pretty hard. Gilly has a theme tune. And a dog. And a dog-walking group. And a strong-willed, sarcastic, wise-cracking older (and thus non-threatening) female mentor. Girlfriends who care about her, guys who (apparently) don't. The foregone conclusion is at least approached with a certain amount of subtlety.
I have to say, though, that the best part was reading the "popular highlights". On some Kindle devices, you can highlight specific passages and opt to have them shared with everybody.
Page 25, highlighted by 252 people: "Life can be like a padlock refusing to open. One small change in the combination can finally open the door."
Padlocks generally aren't used to secure doors. Possibly fence-gates. Or bicycles. Or wine cellars.
Page 365, highlighted by 172 people: "Life can be like a padlock refusing to open. One little change in the combination can finally open the door."
To be fair, this was quoted speech, but it was still odd to see it repeated 300 pages on, slightly changed. I have to say I think I prefer the "one small change" variant.
Page 208, highlighted by 25 people: "The world has to look at us, so we owe it to people to look decent."
I guess. The world can look the other way if it's bothered.
Page 147, highlighted by 181 people: "We say so many things that we don't mean, the truth hidden beneath the layers of what we ought to say."
This confused me a bit. So the truth is hidden beneath layers of things we're not saying? What are we saying then?
Anyway, this was a fun way to spend some time on holiday. Recommended for the price.
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This is an epic of love, hatred, war and revolution. This is a huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women.It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian brothers, whose plans to emigrate to America fall foul of war, conscription and revolution. In a plot of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, "Fall Of Giants" moves seamlessly from Washington to St Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty.]]>
author: Ken Follett
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2012/12/13
date added: 2012/12/29
shelves:
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author: Elizabeth Pisani
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2012/11/09
date added: 2012/11/09
shelves:
review:
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As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph鈥攖he human capacity for change.]]>
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
rating: 4
read at: 2012/10/21
date added: 2012/10/20
shelves:
review:
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author: Virginia Woolf
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1960
rating: 3
read at: 2012/07/01
date added: 2012/07/01
shelves:
review:
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author: Truman Capote
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1976
rating: 3
read at: 2012/07/01
date added: 2012/07/01
shelves:
review:
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An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author's lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.
One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth, a work whose nuances emerge for the first time in Diana Burgin's and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's splendid English version.]]>
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at: 2012/06/12
date added: 2012/06/14
shelves:
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Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fifty-seven years, the author requesting it be published only after his death (along with his stories about homosexuality later collected in The Life to Come).
Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely read and praised. It has been, and continues to be, adapted for major stage productions, including the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby.]]>
author: E.M. Forster
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1971
rating: 4
read at: 2012/04/03
date added: 2012/06/14
shelves:
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author: Lemony Snicket
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at: 2010/01/15
date added: 2012/01/29
shelves:
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author: Doris Lessing
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2011/12/10
date added: 2011/12/22
shelves:
review:
An interesting journey through psychoanalysis, Communism, first-wave feminism, the role of women, and personal relationships. One notebook too many.
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The Enemy
Pulling the strings of the prosecution is the powerful inner circle of S盲po, the state security police. Determined to protect the secrets and corruption at Sweden's rotten core, S盲po is not an adversary to take on alone.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Only with the help of Mikael Blomkvist and the journalists at Millennium magazine can Salander avoid the fate that has been decided for her. Together they form a compelling and dynamic alliance. This final volume of the Millenium Trilogy is the culmination of one of the most mesmerizing fictional achievements of our time.]]>
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at: 2010/07/06
date added: 2011/03/18
shelves:
review:
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author: Terry Pratchett
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1983
rating: 3
read at: 2010/11/23
date added: 2010/11/24
shelves:
review:
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author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1869
rating: 4
read at: 2010/10/09
date added: 2010/10/11
shelves:
review:
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Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.
Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]>
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2010/08/10
date added: 2010/08/12
shelves:
review:
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