We had a glimpse of what summer could be like last week, and it was good!
We had a glimpse of what summer could be like last week, and it was good!
07:03 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
There's a lovely review of Nancy's new book, Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon, at CrimeCritics.com. The publication date is Feb 19, according to Amazon, but Nancy will be signing at Kate's Mystery Books in Cambridge on Feb 4 (from 5pm-7pm) so I assume they'll be getting some advance copies.
06:29 PM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
This book was a whole lot better than I expected. I knew it was roughly based on the life of Laura Bush and I guess I expected some sort of trashy tell-all. And in a way, it's sort of like the movie "W" told from the wife's viewpoint. But actually it's quite a thoughtful novel that raises a lot of questions about the nature of marriage and the responsibility of a wife as she navigates the challenges that follow from her choice of a husband - from dealing with his wealthy family, his personal drinking problems, and finally the very-public life entailed in being the wife of a president. The only big drawback of the book is that you inevitably have to spend a lot of time living with Charlie Blackwell, who is a bit of an ass, and you really wonder what Alice saw in this guy in the first place.
07:29 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Farthing is the first book in Jo Walton's "Small Change" series, which continues with Ha'Penny and Half a Crown. It starts out as a cozy British murder mystery, told from two points of view, a society deb and the inspector from Scotland Yard. But it's set in an alternate universe where Britain made peace with Hitler in WW II and the societal reforms caused by the war never happened - the upper class is still firmly entrenched in its country-house privilege. As the story proceeds, political clouds gather.
08:57 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I've started reading Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy. I suspect I'll be reading it for quite a while, as it's nearly 1500 pages long and I can only read it at home because it's too big to tote around. It's set in India in the 1950's, and follows several interlocking families, centering on one family's search for a husband for one of their daughters. I'm enjoying it so far, as it's an interesting story and a great picture of Indian life and culture.
My newest music is The Jonas Brothers, a very young pop-rock group that I heard on Dancing With the Stars last week. Lots of fun and very bouncy - great music for doing housework by. I would like to put it on my iPod to listen to when walking, but this is one of the CDs that failed when I tried to read it onto my computer, grumble.
From Netflix, I'm re-watching the old version of I, Claudius that was on PBS back in the 70's. I got inspired to see it again after watching Rome on HBO, when Octavian met Livia, and I suddenly realized this was that Livia, the character in I, Claudius who ended up poisoning just about everybody in sight to make her son Tiberius emperor. Great fun, especially when Patrick Stewart turned up as Sejanus in the latest episode. I recognized him even with hair.
Also just watched Away From Her, just about the saddest movie about Alzheimer's ever made. Very beautiful, but don't watch it unless you're prepared to suffer a bit along with the characters.
On TV, I'm getting into Battlestar Galactica, in spite of not having seen the previous seasons. My Tivo gave me a short video with a summary of everything that's happened so far, and watching that several times (the narrator talks very fast, so it's taken a few go-rounds to try to absorb everything) and reading the catch-up article in Slate, I feel ready to give it a try. After watching the first episode of the current season, I have concluded that I'm going to try really hard not to take anything too seriously, because it seems clear that the main goal of that show is to mess with your head. It looks like it's going to be an interesting ride.
08:16 PM in Books, Film, Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I'm trying to figure out what books to bring with me to read on the trip. For some reason everything on my "to read" list right now is large and heavy - I haven't been able to find one slim paperback to slip into my carry-on tote. I just started reading A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, which looks really good, but which is the Gone With the Wind of India, coming in at 1468 pages and weighing two and a half pounds, even in paperback! The last book I got through Paperback Swap was actually a hardcover - a Robert Parker novel that looks like it can be read in about 30 minutes. Sigh.
10:19 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Jo Walton has an interesting discussion of Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner's classic SF novel from the 1960's. Stand on Zanzibar is set in 2010, which we're fast approaching (hard as that is to believe). Walton reviews some of Brunner's predictions - what he got right and what he got wrong.
A tiny thing he got right was people celebrating the millennium at the end of 1999 and again at the end of 2000. He gets full marks for that one.
A big thing he gets completely wrong is the US having a socialised medical system and good education. I don't know where he can have got that from. I suspect it comes from just being too British to believe any civilized country would keep on without these things.
Interesting reading, especially for someone who read Stand on Zanzibar when it first came out.
07:53 PM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
And that's all I have to say about that. For now.
08:06 PM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Last night I finally got to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie, which I liked very much. Shocking to see how much the actors have grown, though. But the special effects were first-rate, and it's been so long since I read the book that I didn't much mind all the inevitable things that had to be missing from the book to make it fit into a movie. I can always go back and read the book again anyway.
Speaking of reading, I've ordered Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from Amazon UK, so it should arrive around the time I get back from Connecticut. So I believe I will be entering a Harry Potter reading frenzy as soon as it comes. (I got into buying the British editions because Alex gave me a few of the British special editions as a gift at one point, so of course I have to complete the set. But it's getting expensive with the drop of the dollar, so I'm glad this is the last one.)
I got back late last night, so now I am late getting started for Connecticut. But I am going to finish packing now and try to take off before noon.
10:01 AM in Books, Film | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Those of you who read Nancy's Aunt Dimity books may have noticed a change in cover art with her last book. The old covers featured a stuffed rabbit named Reginald, a 'character' in many of the stories, artfully placed among elements of the story. Here are a few examples:
And here's some examples of the new covers:
I don't know about you, but to me, the old covers really conveyed a lot more information about what type of book you were getting than the new covers, which appear to me to be hopelessly generic.
Nancy has posted an open letter on her web site, inviting fans to send her letters of comment on the cover art decision that she can pass on to her publisher. (Because otherwise she has no control over cover content.) So I'd like to invite any of you who read her books and have an opinion to check out her web site and send such a letter.
More on writing to the publishers and a sample letter...
11:38 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan, is about where our food comes from. The four meals range from a fast-food meal that is the result of factory farming, two "organic meals" - one from the large-scale organic industry and another from a small sustainable operation, and the last meal is the result of the author's own hunting and gathering. Each meal serves as a starting point to discuss many of the issues surrounding the production of that particular meal.
I already knew a lot of the stuff in the book - the evils of factory farming, the harm it does to the environment and our health and the cruelty it serves out to the animals involved. I knew that the subsidized glut of cheap corn and the development of high fructose corn syrup and other corn-based food additives was the impetus behind many of the unhealthful processed foods that clog our grocery shelves. I knew that using plant-based foods to raise meat is wasteful of our resources. (I'd read Diet for a Small Planet back in the 60's.) But this book pulls together all of this information and adds more. I guess I'd never really grokked just how much of our non-renewable fossil fuels go into our current food-production industry: from making the heavy duty fertilizers and pesticides that intensive farming relies on, to the energy consumption required to transport produce in refrigerator trucks thousands of miles from the places it is grown. And the insane waste involved in separating grain and animal production, so that we have to apply artificial fertilizers to the grain and then have the natural fertilizer produced by the animals become an environmental pollutant.
But one thing I liked about the book is that it really doesn't claim to have all the answers. Factory farming is clearly bad, but then when you try organic farming, it's hard to do it on the scale that is needed without falling into some of the same traps. And obviously we can't all raise and hunt our own food in this day and age. So the best result is likely to be some sort of compromise between all of these approaches. Another place where the book is very balanced is when it goes into the whole ethical issue of eating meat at all. Again, it doesn't advocate any one particular viewpoint, but presents the arguments pro and con that have been brought to bear by many people and groups.
This was a very thoughtful book that opened my eyes to a very serious issue. It seems pretty clear to me that if and when we pass peak oil production, some of this energy-intensive network will start to break down. Add the disruptions likely to be caused by global warming and it's hard to see how we will survive the next 50 years without pretty serious difficulties. It also made me wonder if this whole biofuels initiative is just a big scam. If it takes oil to grow and process corn to make into fuel, how much are we really saving?
On the personal side, I think I'm going to make more of an effort to buy local and organic produce and try to find humane sources for meat and eggs.
02:34 PM in Books | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
With the spring we've had, it seems somehow appropriate that it would rain on the 4th of the July. My sympathy would be with all those guys out there with their blankets spread on the Esplanade, but I'm safely at home, totally wrapped up in a great book for summer reading - His Majesty's Dragon, by Naomi Novik. A thoroughly delightful fantasy novel - imagine the Napoleonic wars, only with dragons. It's sort a cross between Anne McCaffrey, Patrick O'Brien, and Jane Austin. It sounds a bit gimmicky, I'll admit, but it's very well thought out and a lot of fun. And the character of Temeraire is completely lovable (even if he is a bit of a messy eater).
06:16 PM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Alex called me up this morning to ask if I knew what an antimacassar was. Having had old-fashioned grandmothers with parlors, I did. (He had already looked it up on Wikipedia, but he was just testing me.)
He had run across the word in Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome, a book that is widely considered to be the epitome of British humor, and one that is fondly referenced in Connie Willis's time travel story To Say Nothing of the Dog. ("To Say Nothing of the Dog" is the subtitle of the Jerome work, and the characters in the Jerome book turn up in the Connie Willis story.) Alex had found the Jerome book at the Book Barn (the book store I mentioned a few postings ago)
I read the first few pages, and it really is pretty funny. Here's a brief piece from the part I read, just to give you an idea of the style...
It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch--hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into--some fearful, devastating scourge, I know--and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever--read the symptoms--discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it--wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance--found, as I expected, that I had that too,--began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically--read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.
(This particular joke continues on for another page or so...)
Since Three Men in a Boat was published in 1909, it is now in the public domain and is available in many places on the web. (Like this one, for instance.)
Connie Willis's book is pretty good, too.
02:03 PM in Books | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Back in February, Making Light had a post urging people to read Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson, and to nominate it for a Hugo. Even though I don't read a lot of science fiction these days, and almost never actually buy books anymore, I dutifully bought this one at Boskone, and put it on my ever-growing "to be read" pile. So I just got around to reading it this past week.
Wow! This is a book that really brings back the sense of wonder into science fiction. Great and original scientific ideas, along with interesting characters and a real story. One word of advice, if you haven't read it yet. Don't read any reviews. Don't read the Making Light post. Don't even read the cover blurb, which gives away too much. Just read the book.
Happily, it did get nominated for the Hugo Award.
08:53 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The right wing's list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries includes The Feminine Mystique and The Kinsey Report right up there with The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf. A few notable honorable mentions: The Population Bomb, Origin of the Species, Coming of Age in Samoa, Unsafe at Any Speed, Silent Spring,The Limits to Growth, and Descent of Man. Seems like a pretty good reading list to me.
01:51 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Book review: Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, by Jennifer Gonnerman.
In 1983, Elaine Bartlett, a 26-year-old welfare mother with 4 children, made a fatal mistake. Despite having no previous criminal record and no serious drug involvement, she couldn't resist the lure of the "easy" $2500 she could earn carrying a drug package from NYC to Albany. As it turned out, the person offering her the money was a police informant who was planning to turn her in for his own gain, and so she was arrested. Due to inadequate legal counsel, and her own certainty that she had been set up, she chose to go to trial rather than take a deal. That was the wrong choice, and she ended up being sentenced to 20 years in prison for this first offense under the draconian Rockefeller drug laws.
This book describes how she was tempted to commit the crime, what it was like for her and her children as she served her time in prison, and finally her life on the outside, after being granted "clemancy" after serving 16 years of her 20-year term. You see how the deck is totally stacked, as she struggles to find someone who will give an ex-convict a job, searches for a place to live (ex-cons are banned from public housing in New York), deals with the restrictions of parole, and tries to bring her family back together and keep them out of trouble. But the damage caused by her 16-year absence is hard to overcome.
The author is a writer for The Village Voice who met Elaine Bartlett while she was in prison and decided to shadow her and write her story after she was released. So it's a very straightforward narrative, very non-judgemental, that describes the difficulties Elaine faces and the choices that she makes as she struggles to make a life for herself. Anyone who reads this will perhaps gain a little bit of understanding of the anonymous "welfare mother" or "ex-con", and will see how mandatory sentencing laws can be overly harsh and unfair. Elaine served more years in prison for delivering 4 ounces of cocaine than many murderers end up serving for their crime. And not only did it tear apart her own life, but it also had terrible effects on the lives of her four children.
05:39 PM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
On my visit to Connecticut I've been reading March, A Novel, by Geraldine Brooks. This highly original novel imagines the life of Little Women's father, based on the small role he plays in the book, and taking into account what we know about the character of Louisa May's actual father, Bronson Alcott. March is an idealist - a pacifist, vegetarian, educator, who loses his fortune and goes to war in support of the abolitionist cause. Brooks imagines a plausible backstory for March and Marmee, and a harrowing set of adventures for March in the South before he turns up in that Washington military hospital where Marmee goes to nurse him back to health. Abolitionist John Brown, plus Concord residents Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathanial Hawthorne play a role in the narrative, as well as the fictional Mr. Brooks, Laurie, and the tart-tongued Aunt March. Who knew that Marmee had such a temper when she was young? And did Thoreau really have a thing for Emerson's wife?
Great fun for Little Women fans, and a moving story of a man struggling to live true to his conscience.
08:57 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
As mentioned below and in the sidebar, one of the recent books I read was A Natural History of Ferns, by Robbin C. Moran, the curator of ferns at the NY Botanical Garden. So now I'm chock-full with many interesting facts about the life cycle of ferns, to get myself in the mood for guiding at Garden in the Woods this spring.
I had already been aware of the difference between spores and seeds, and concept of alternation of generations in ferns. The quick version: Seeds are the result of a sexual union between a male and female gamete (pollen and egg), and contain an embryonic version of the new plant plus food storage tissue called the endosperm. Ferns do not produce seeds, they produce spores. Spores consist of a single cell and arise through asexual means, containing only the genetic material of its parent plant.
When it drops from the fern leaf, the spore lands on the ground and grows into a tiny plant called a prothallus, and this is where the sexual reproduction of the fern takes place. The prothallus has both male and female parts, and the sperm swims to germinate the egg through a film of water on the leaf of the prothallus (which is why most ferns require moisture to reproduce). The germinated egg in the prothallus grows into the fern plant that we recognize. These alternating generations are called the sporophyte (the fern plant that produces spores) and the gametophyte (the prothallus that produces gametes).
A Natural History of Ferns starts of explaining this in detail, but goes on to give a lot more interesting facts about the life cycle of ferns. Here are a few that I found particularly interesting.
10:23 AM in Books, Gardens | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Amazon.com has started a new feature (or at least a feature I never noticed before, called Statistically Improbable Phrases. They use their Search Inside the Book feature to come up with a list of phrases that are unique to the book in question, to give you a better idea of what the book might be about. For example, A Natural History of Ferns gives the following SIPs:
scaly polypody, spore shooting, forked ferns, potato fern, independent gametophytes, shoestring ferns, apogamous ferns, boreotropical flora, annulus cells, aborted spores, bracken fiddleheads, spira mirabilis, female spores, single sporangium, root mantles, produce sporophytes, fern genera, whisk ferns, tree fern trunks, green spores
They don't do this for all books, although I'm not sure what determines whether or not they do it for a particularly book. Here are some other SIPs for books I've read recently:
Football for Dummies: personal foul signal, blocking wedge, punting team, zone blitz
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: winter fourteener, rap ring
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: broadcast politics, web room
09:04 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (0)
I've added a few more books and movies to my sidebar list.
Touching the Void was an amazing re-enactment of a climbing disaster in the Peruvian Andes. It was beautifully filmed, much of it in the actual location of the events, and there were many times you would wonder how the heck they managed to get that shot. The people involved also narrated the film, so you could hear first-hand their thoughts and feelings. Part way through, when the disaster happened, you could not believe that they would both get out of there alive, although you knew they did because there they were narrating the film. The DVD also had some interesting pieces on their reactions on returning to the scene, and the additional problems they had after the end point of the film. A very tense and exciting movie.
I was very impressed by 21 Grams. It was a little confusing at first because it didn't use a conventional narrative style. I was glad I was watching it on DVD rather than a theater, because it allowed me to back up and start over once I kindof figured out what was going on. A review I read referred to it as a fugue, and that seemed apt, since it's the story of three people whose lives intertwine in matters of live and death. In the end, I thought it was brilliant and moving.
Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson is about global warming. But it's not a spectacular action story, it's a realistic view of how scientists work in this day and age - choosing which projects to fund and trying to convince an uncaring bureaucracy of the dangers of global warming. Set in the near future, the book refers to "The League of Drowning Nations", an alliance of low-lying countries that are in particular danger from the rising ocean levels. Very ironic to have read this just a few days before the tsunami swept over the Maldives.
My Life Without Me was the least interesting of the bunch. It's about a young mother who is facing an early death from cancer, but it didn't engage me. I didn't find it believable that she would (or could) keep the whole situation secret from her family, telling them that she just had "anemia". And it seemed just too pat that she was able to accomplish all of her goals in a few short months - finding a lover, a new mother for her children, and generally tidying up her life. Real life is messier than this. The film was well made and the acting was good, though, I just didn't believe in the story.
08:45 AM in Books, Film | Permalink | Comments (0)