Started: May 13, 2012
Finished: May 24, 2012
Pages: 418
Light is a hard, spiky book. It uses the trope of three parallel stories told in a cycle of three chapters, with the added complication that the third storyline begins as the tank-dreams of a hallucination junkie. But it's almost a relief to encounter those: story one follows a serial killer physicist trying to invent quantum computing in 1999. Story two takes place in the far future where a petulant ship's intelligence carelessly murders other expeditions that are also cruising the pyschedelic fringes of the galactic core. Story three is just hard to make any sense of.
As you may have gathered by now, I found it difficult to engage with Light. The book bursts with a disturbing weirdness. The serial killer is driven by an obsession with chance and a fear of the Shranker....who may not even exist. The intelligent ship is a deeply unsympathetic character who inhabits a universe where space-faring species do no more than scavenge the grandiose and inexplicable remains of vanished cultures. And when the tank-dream junkie returns to the "real" world, it's one where he remembers nothing of his life except that everyone is trying to kill him.
Light is not a comfortable read. I'm not at all sure what it was "about". But the writing was excellent and the characters and images were striking. So, while not exactly recommended, not exactly dis-recommended either.
Saturday 26 May 2012
Monday 21 May 2012
Christmas Mourning by Magaret Maron
Started: May 16
Finished: May 18
Pages: 289
Margaret Maron writes very comfortable books. When you visit Deborah Knott, her husband, stepson, and her large extended family, it feels very natural to spend a few days with her preparing for Christmas and watching her husband figure our the causes of the latest tragedy to hit Colleton County. I suppose that makes her books fall into the "cozy" category, even though the deaths are seem real and sad, and unpleasantness lurks beneath the surface of the life of the perfect cheerleader and her grieving family. But every neatly-wrapped up murder mystery needs to have a murder at its heart (Alexander McCall Smith excepted), and Maron writes better than many mystery authors. So Christmas Mourning wasn't a bad way to waste a few head-achy summer hours.
Finished: May 18
Pages: 289
Margaret Maron writes very comfortable books. When you visit Deborah Knott, her husband, stepson, and her large extended family, it feels very natural to spend a few days with her preparing for Christmas and watching her husband figure our the causes of the latest tragedy to hit Colleton County. I suppose that makes her books fall into the "cozy" category, even though the deaths are seem real and sad, and unpleasantness lurks beneath the surface of the life of the perfect cheerleader and her grieving family. But every neatly-wrapped up murder mystery needs to have a murder at its heart (Alexander McCall Smith excepted), and Maron writes better than many mystery authors. So Christmas Mourning wasn't a bad way to waste a few head-achy summer hours.
Wednesday 16 May 2012
1493 by Charles C. Mann
Started: Feb. 23
Stalled: Feb 25
Restarted: April 28, 2012
Finished: May 13, 2012
Pages: 459
Charles Mann's previous book, 1491, uses recent archeological and historical research to draw a picture of the Americas before Columbus's arrival. 1493 describes the impact of on the entire world of sustained European involvement in the Americas post-"discovery".
Both books are full of surprising facts. Perhaps the single most unbelievable item from 1493 is that earthworms are not native to North America. I looked at the footnote on that one, and am tempted to actually look up those references myself! (The assertion in the book is that farmers in the Chesapeake Bay area brought earthworms with them both in ship ballast and in the root balls of plants that they transported to their new home. Okay, it's a plausible scenario for introduction....but weren't there any American earthworms in that ecological niche before contact? And how do you know? For that matter, how do you know that the "European" earthworms weren't already here when the British settlers arrived?), I could list a lot more random facts, but I'd hate to spoil too many of these nuggets for anyone who might like to go on to read 1493. Rest assured there are lots more.
Mann uses these surprising facts along with a lot of historical detail to build the central theses of his book: the Spanish conquest of the Americas fundamentally changed the world. It was the start of an inexorable process that led to the world becoming effectively a single economy, and increasingly a single ecosystem. Furthermore, this change was a direct, real, and traceable result of various decisions made by first the Spanish conquistadoras and later by (mostly) the subsequent Spanish colonial administrations. As with 1491, Mann's arguments are convincing both because of the amount of detail he includes, and because of the way he links his stories together to draw the bigger picture.
So, overall, I'd recommend reading it. Although... if I had to choose between reading 1491 and 1493, I'd read 1491. I enjoyed it more. It could be because I read 1491 while I was in Mexico and actually visiting some of the same specific places that he discusses in the book. It could also be that reading both books so close together was a bit much. He does have some annoying tendencies (like oversimplification of philosophical or political issues), which are easier to overlook in a one off. But it might also be that 1491 is the better book.
Stalled: Feb 25
Restarted: April 28, 2012
Finished: May 13, 2012
Pages: 459
Charles Mann's previous book, 1491, uses recent archeological and historical research to draw a picture of the Americas before Columbus's arrival. 1493 describes the impact of on the entire world of sustained European involvement in the Americas post-"discovery".
Both books are full of surprising facts. Perhaps the single most unbelievable item from 1493 is that earthworms are not native to North America. I looked at the footnote on that one, and am tempted to actually look up those references myself! (The assertion in the book is that farmers in the Chesapeake Bay area brought earthworms with them both in ship ballast and in the root balls of plants that they transported to their new home. Okay, it's a plausible scenario for introduction....but weren't there any American earthworms in that ecological niche before contact? And how do you know? For that matter, how do you know that the "European" earthworms weren't already here when the British settlers arrived?), I could list a lot more random facts, but I'd hate to spoil too many of these nuggets for anyone who might like to go on to read 1493. Rest assured there are lots more.
Mann uses these surprising facts along with a lot of historical detail to build the central theses of his book: the Spanish conquest of the Americas fundamentally changed the world. It was the start of an inexorable process that led to the world becoming effectively a single economy, and increasingly a single ecosystem. Furthermore, this change was a direct, real, and traceable result of various decisions made by first the Spanish conquistadoras and later by (mostly) the subsequent Spanish colonial administrations. As with 1491, Mann's arguments are convincing both because of the amount of detail he includes, and because of the way he links his stories together to draw the bigger picture.
So, overall, I'd recommend reading it. Although... if I had to choose between reading 1491 and 1493, I'd read 1491. I enjoyed it more. It could be because I read 1491 while I was in Mexico and actually visiting some of the same specific places that he discusses in the book. It could also be that reading both books so close together was a bit much. He does have some annoying tendencies (like oversimplification of philosophical or political issues), which are easier to overlook in a one off. But it might also be that 1491 is the better book.
Tuesday 8 May 2012
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith
Started: 20 April 2012
Finished: 8 May 2012
Pages: 213
Mysteries range from semi-horror through thrillers and police procedurals to the (usually) British cozy. In a cozy, the corpse barely appears. There are no graphic descriptions or upsetting details, you probably didn't get to know the person well or at all before they were "struck down", and you get the distinct impression that a murder occurred only to give the detective an excuse to poke about, ask questions, and solve a puzzle.
Take a British cozy, subtract the corpse, add an extra dose of quaint charm....and you have the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. In fact, I sometimes suspect Alexander McCall Smith of attempting to entirely subvert the mystery genre itself in aid of some obscure post-modern project. For example, his later books go to the point of almost subtracting the very mystery itself, let alone "tired" conventions like a resolution. And wouldn't a twee book be the best way of slipping something like that by an unsuspecting book-buying (well, borrowing) public?
Finished: 8 May 2012
Pages: 213
Mysteries range from semi-horror through thrillers and police procedurals to the (usually) British cozy. In a cozy, the corpse barely appears. There are no graphic descriptions or upsetting details, you probably didn't get to know the person well or at all before they were "struck down", and you get the distinct impression that a murder occurred only to give the detective an excuse to poke about, ask questions, and solve a puzzle.
Take a British cozy, subtract the corpse, add an extra dose of quaint charm....and you have the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. In fact, I sometimes suspect Alexander McCall Smith of attempting to entirely subvert the mystery genre itself in aid of some obscure post-modern project. For example, his later books go to the point of almost subtracting the very mystery itself, let alone "tired" conventions like a resolution. And wouldn't a twee book be the best way of slipping something like that by an unsuspecting book-buying (well, borrowing) public?
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