All reviews copyright 1984-2012 Evelyn C. Leeper.
THE BED OF PROCRUSTES: PHILOSOPHICAL AND PRACTICAL APHORISMS by Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/23/2012]
The "Wall Street Journal" blurb on the back of THE BED OF PROCRUSTES: PHILOSOPHICAL AND PRACTICAL APHORISMS by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (ISBN 978-1-4000-6997-2) says, "[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne." I've read Montaigne, and Taleb is no Montaigne. Nor is he Francois La Rochefoucauld, nor George Bernard Shaw, nor Oscar Wilde. His comments vary from the obvious:
"It seems that it is the most unsuccessful people who give the most advice, particularly for writing and financial matters."
to the just plain wrong:
"Read nothing from the past one hundred years; eat no fruits from the past one thousand years; drink nothing from the past four thousand years (just wine and water); but talk to no ordinary man over forty. A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty."
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, this book is from the past one hundred years, beer is also more than four thousand years old (at any rate, older than wine), and Taleb himself is over forty. The notion that we should not talk to anyone over the age of forty is just outrageous.
Read Montaigne instead.
To order The Bed of Procrustes from amazon.com, click here.
THE BLACK SWAN: THE IMPACT OF THE HIGHLY IMPROBABLE by Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/14/2007]
THE BLACK SWAN: THE IMPACT OF THE HIGHLY IMPROBABLE by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (ISBN-13 978-1-4000-6351-2, ISBN-10 1-400-06351-5) spends a lot of time explaining how people spend a lot of time trying to predict the future, while failing to take into account that so much of it is improbable (or unpredictable, if you prefer). He gave many examples (in fact, perhaps more than were needed), but one of the clearest was for the casino when he spoke at a seminar. All of the casino's risk management was aimed at cheaters, since the casino operated on the assumption that the law of averages was on their side. Yet "it turned out that the four largest losses incurred or narrowly avoided by the casino fell completely outside their sophisticated models." And what were these? First was a "$100 million dollar [loss] when an irreplaceable performer in their main show was maimed by a tiger." (Ironically, the casino had considered the tiger attacking the crowd, but not its trainer.) A disgruntled contractor tried to blow up the casino. An employee, for reasons completely unknown, failed *for years* to file IRS forms for big winners. When discovered, only paying an enormous fine kept the casino from being losing its license. And lastly, the casino owner embezzled casino funds to pay a kidnapper's ransom demand on his daughter.
All this is fascinating, of course, but since by their very nature unpredictable events are, well, unpredictable, it is not clear what Taleb expects people (or casinos) to do. Should a casino forget about trying to control the odds for its games because a meteor might hit it tomorrow? Yes, we need to recognize that predicting the future is a very shaky proposition, but we still have to attempt to plan. When you drive somewhere, you take a spare tire, but not a spare set of spark plugs, because the chances are greater that you will need the former than the latter.
The "black swan" of the title is one of the black swans of Australia, which amazed everyone, who until then had "known" that all swans were white. It is connected to the problem of induction, which is the assumption that the past is a (good) predictor of the future. Taleb gives several examples where induction fails, but the fact is that in general induction works fairly well, and I am sure Taleb uses it all the time. (Every time he has dialed his home phone number, he gets connected to his home, so he expects it will happen the next time too.)
Taleb gives Nelson Goodman's paradox of "grue". Something is "grue" if it is green before (say) December 31, 2010, and then blue after that date. Observing it to be green for hundreds of days before December 31, 2006, and hence apparently grue as well, does not correctly predict whether it actually is grue. The problem I see is that once you have defined a transition point, you must observe on either side for the observations to be meaningful. One might as easily consider H2O, defined as something solid below 0 degrees Celsius, liquid between 0 and 100 degrees, and gaseous about 100 degrees. Performing a lot of observations of something, but only at temperatures below minus- 10 degrees Celsius, is not actually enormously informative. (I think some philosophers have found problems with this attempt to avoid the problem of induction with a concept such as "grue", but I have not been able to figure them out.)
There are some interesting ideas in the book, but it goes on too long, and spends too much time on how life is unpredictable. I am reminded of a meeting about a computer center move, during which we addressed all sorts of problems we thought might crop up. At the end, someone asked, "Are there any other problems we have not thought of?" "Well, Joe, if we could answer that, we would have thought of them!"
To order The Black Swan from amazon.com, click here.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/03/2010]
I mentioned recently that I listened to both a Teaching Company course and a UC Berkeley course on ancient Rome. Obviously there was a lot of overlap in the content, but the presentations were very different.
The UC Berkeley course (hereafter called UCB) was a series of (audio) podcasts of the real lectures for a real course with real students, etc. It was intended, so far as I can tell, as a way to allow students who cannot attend some of the lectures to keep up with the course. As a result, it is very different from the Teaching Company course (hereafter called TTC).
The main difference is that TTC is completely self-contained, while UCB assumes the students will read the textbooks and readings. (As was clear from listening to the real lectures at UCB, the students there did not always do the readings before the class.) TTC has a reading list, with recommended and additional readings for each lecture, but does not assume the student is reading them. For one thing, I think TTC realizes that while a matriculated college student will pay a few hundred dollars for textbooks for a course, someone taking a TTC course probably will not. For another, in their advertisements TTC talks about how you can learn a subject during your commute time, etc., just by listening to their course. If you also have to do all the readings they listed, it would double or triple the time, at least. So in the lecture, the professor tells you everything to be covered about that lecture's topic.
The UCB lectures, on the other hand, are more like one or two details, livened up for the class. The professor (in this case) spent a lot of time making comparisons between actual history and HBO's "Rome"; SPARTACUS; I, CLAUDIUS; and so on. She also used terms she had not defined in previous lectures, but which presumably were in the readings. And she also made reference to a lot of visuals, which even those students in the course using the podcast could not see.
Apparently, UC Berkeley has a networking site called "B-space", because the professor would say things like, "I couldn't make copies of the supplemental reading because the copy machine is broken, but you can find it on B-space," or, "The study guides are on B-space." This is great for the actual students, but a bit annoying for us hangers-on. (TTC's booklet serves as a sort of study guide, I suppose.)
TTC's professor, on the other hand, had no references to television or movies that I can remember, but covered the material in a lot more detail in the lectures. Obviously, this is because the lectures are all there is for the vast majority of their students.
(Interestingly, the lecture on Christians under Diocletian for UCB was given by one of the professor's teaching assistants, and it was by far the best organized and most informative of the lectures (IMHO). It was also the only one done in a "traditional" lecture style.)
I will admit that if you take the UCB course with all the reading, quizzes, papers, and exams, you will probably learn more and retain it longer than if you take TTC's course. On the other hand, if you take TTC's course and do all the readings *it* lists, you will also probably learn more and retain it longer.
One big difference not mentioned often is the effect of discussion (classroom and otherwise). Any discussion of correspondence courses or today's more hi-tech versions of distance learning talks about this: a student sitting alone in a room studying does not have the advantage of a student in a group of students and teachers engaged in lively discussion. One solution to this problem with TTC is to take the course with someone else. Mark and I first did this with a course on the "Great Books" that we listened to on a cross-country trip, and we found that we kept stopping the course to comment on it, discuss what the professor had just said, and so on. This may be hard to do if you're listening to the course on your commute, but I still recommend it.
SHERLOCK HOLMES & THE CHINESE JUNK AFFAIR by Roy Templeman:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/01/2005]
Roy Templeman's SHERLOCK HOLMES & THE CHINESE JUNK AFFAIR (ISBN 0-9475-3373-7) includes the title story as well as "The Tick Tock Man" and "The Trophy Room". The stories are a bit convoluted, but the writing is competent, and the title story is of interest to science fiction fans, involving as it does an inventor's demonstration of a teleportation machine.
To order Sherlock Holmes & the Chinese Junk Affair from amazon.com, click here.
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE RUNNING NOOSE by Donald Thomas:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/25/2005]
And speaking of fan cults, Donald Thomas's SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE RUNNING NOOSE (ISBN 0-330-48647-0) is yet another collection of "new" adventures of the master sleuth, and a pretty good one. Thomas sticks to the Victorian/Edwardian milieu and doesn't add a lot of sex or out-of-character goings-on. However--WARNING!!-- this is the British/Canadian title of SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE VOICE FROM THE CRYPT (ISBN 0-786-71325-9), so don't be fooled into buying both!! Thomas's first Holmes book, THE SECRET CASES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (ISBN 0-786-70636-8) does not appear to have any aliases.
To order this under the title Sherlock Holmes and the Running Noose from amazon.com, click here.
To order this under the title Sherlock Holmes and the Voice from the Crypt from amazon.com, click here.
To order The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes from amazon.com, click here.
THE HIDDEN LIFE OF DOGS by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/23/2011]
This month's choice for the "science discussion group" was THE HIDDEN LIFE OF DOGS by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (ISBN 978-0-395- 66958-8). (I put "science discussion group" in quotation marks because the group was originally just the "book discussion group" and after other, more focused, groups formed, was referred to as the "original discussion group." Now it seems to have mutated into a "science discussion group.")
Thomas appears to have no professional credentials as a scientist. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that many of the questions she says are unanswered may well have been answered. In addition, because she wants to remain just an observer, she does not perform any experiments that might answer these questions. For example, she says that to determine how the husky Misha navigated, she would need to blindfold him and take him somewhere, then see if he could find his way home--but she will not do that.
(It does seem, by the way, that some of her suggestions about how Misha navigates--using the stars, for example, or hearing the ocean and so knowing which way was east--have some problems based on what I remember of Boston-area roads. In specific, the use of directional signals cannot work if there are roads with center dividers, center barriers, or noise-reduction walls, especially if there are very long distances between gaps in the barriers. However, the book was published in 1993, and it is possible that many of the barriers are more recent than that.)
Thomas's point of view is anthropomorphic, at times possibly overly so. She realizes this, and defends it by saying, "Using the experience of one's species to evaluate the experience of another species has been a useful tool to many of the great wildlife biologists." I am not sure this is a reasonable defense--surely it is a useful tool for farmers and hunters to assume animals have no feelings, but that does not make it a valid position to take. In any case, Thomas's anthropomorphism extends to referring to talking about humane societies "executing" dogs, about how Misha had "married" another husky, and about how dogs and elephants can be "slaves",
Thomas also talks briefly about what I believe is a major issue in the dog breeding community today--health and behavioral problems caused by over-emphasis of what are deemed desirable traits. In particular, Thomas talks about brachycephalic (short-faced) dogs such as pugs and bulldogs, which have so much trouble breathing that they are prone to blacking out under exertion, stress, or even just normal existence. (Many airlines refuse to carry them, because they cannot survive the lower air pressure in airplane cabins.) As Thomas describes the problem, "Born with the same number of sinuses and teeth, the same amount of tongue, soft palate, and nasal passages as normal dogs, they lack the proper space to house these organs; all are squashed together inside the deformed skull." There is currently much debate about changing the official description of these breeds to allow for less compressed skulls. In Britain, they have already done so for the bulldog (or at any rate, accepted an additional breed of bulldog that is less compressed), while in the United States they have resisted change. (I believe that in some places there is a question of whether continuing to breed brachycephalic dogs might not be considered actionable under law as animal cruelty.)
Thomas also says, "Primates feel pure, flat immobility as boredom, but dogs feel it as peace." Perhaps this is true to some extent, but it implies that there is no problem with keeping a dog in a small apartment all day and only taking it outside twice a day for short walks.
To order The Hidden Life of Dogs from amazon.com, click here.
COUNTERKNOWLEDGE: HOW WE SURRENDERED TO CONSPIRACY THEORIES, QUACK MEDICINE, BOGUS SCIENCE AND FAKE HISTORY by Damian Thompson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/19/2008]
COUNTERKNOWLEDGE: HOW WE SURRENDERED TO CONSPIRACY THEORIES, QUACK MEDICINE, BOGUS SCIENCE AND FAKE HISTORY by Damian Thompson (ISBN-13 978-0-670-06865-4, ISBN-10 0-670-06865-9) is all about "fake knowledge", by which Thompson means creationism, pseudo-history, alternative medicine, and so on. The most interesting part (for me) was Thompson's description of how some of the pseudo-history came about. In 1982 Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln wrote HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL, upon which Dan Brown based THE DA VINCI CODE. In the 1990s the Priory of Sion upon which the premise of HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL was based was revealed to be a hoax concocted in the 1940s, which even Baigent and Leigh acknowledged. Yet even this did not seem to change the general public's mind--when THE DA VINCI CODE came out *after* the hoax was exposed, HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL was reprinted with nary a word about the hoax. And Thompson also describes how 1421: THE YEAR THE CHINESE DISCOVERED AMERICA was created and marketed.
However, I am not convinced that Thompson doesn't get some things wrong either. In his section on creationism, he writes, "Muslims are not young-earthers, since the idea that the world is 6,000 years old is extracted from genealogies in the Old Testament and is therefore explicitly Judaeo-Christian." (page 39) But Muslims also accept and revere the Old Testament, so I have no idea why I should believe what Thompson says.
To order Counterknowledge from amazon.com, click here.
SMILE WHEN YOU'RE LYING: CONFESSIONS OF A ROGUE TRAVEL WRITER by Chuck Thompson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/14/2008]
And speaking of the travel/tourist industry, in SMILE WHEN YOU'RE LYING: CONFESSIONS OF A ROGUE TRAVEL WRITER by Chuck Thompson (ISBN-13 978-0-8050-8209-8, ISBN-10 0-8050-8209-3) the author seems to have two purposes. First, he wants to convince the reader that everything they read from established "travel writers" is hype--and overwritten hype at that. The first example he gives is:
"Renaissance funhogs, brace yourselves: This trip, combining three days of mountain biking with five days of whitewater rafting on the Colorado River, may be the tastiest pairing since chocolate and cabernet. It takes you straight into the heart of Canyonlands' high-desert rock garden, defined by the goose-necking canyons of Green and Colorado and an almost hallucinogenic symphony of spires, buttes, mesas, hoodoos, fins, arches, and slickrock."
Thompson's goal in this is to convince the reader that travel writers--and the sorts of vacations they promote--are not to be trusted. They are too insulated from the destination, too controlled, and so on. This goal is somewhat undercut by what seems to be Thompson's other purpose: to tell the most hair-raising stories about his travels that he can. While he claims to be trying to convince readers that the Philippines is the friendliest country in the world, I can't help but feel that telling a long story of how a bus trip left him standing on a deserted country road at 3:30 in the morning to change buses, and that while waiting he was approached by eight men with machetes soliciting him for gay sex, saved only by the sudden (and fortunate) arrival of the bus-- well, this story is not going to get Americans traveling to the Philippines in droves, and certainly not on trips involving independent bus travel.
Not everything he says is accurate. For example, he also claims that you can recharge dead batteries by rubbing them briskly on your pants leg for a minute or two, and this may make them last as long as an hour or two. While resting the battery may help it recover slightly, and heating it by rubbing may add a little more, one cannot actually recharge a battery this way.
But once in a while, he does get it right, such as when he writes, "Spicy Is Almost Never Spicy: In the United States when they tell you it's spicy, it's not spicy. In the rest of the world when they tell you it's spicy, there's a 20 percent chance it's spicy. In Thailand when they tell you it's spicy, it's going to taste like someone shoving a blowtorch down your throat for the next twenty- five minutes."
To order Smile When You're Lying from amazon.com, click here.
THE FRODO FRANCHISE by Kristin Thompson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/12/2010]
THE FRODO FRANCHISE by Kristin Thompson (ISBN-13 978-0-520-24774-1) is not about the film trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" as about the whole phenomenon that grew up around it, and how it changed Hollywood. For example, when they started filming it, the only actor with any real web site was Ian McKellen (McKellen.com). Studios and movie producers had no idea of what to do on their web sites. Harry Knowles of "Ain't It Cool News" said, "When I consulted with LucasFilms on StarWars.com, they asked me, 'What is it that fans really want?' And I said, 'Fans want to know if you're using Phillips head or flat-head screws on your set, don't you understand!? Fandom wants to know *everything*. There *isn't* enough information you can give them.'" I'll add that as proof of this, this book will be bought by lots of fans with only peripheral interest in the business end, but who are as completist as their budget allows. DVDs were just getting started; what extras to provide and how was a question still unanswered.
Something somewhat peripheral to the LOTR phenomenon was the comment made by an anonymous Disney executive when asked why so many leading directors make R-rated films when PG-13 films are the most financially successful: "You can't get directors of the caliber of Anthony Minghella, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino to work on movies designed to get kids to buy toys and drag their parents to theme parks. And these are the directors who win Academy Awards."
To order The Frodo Franchise from amazon.com, click here.
MASTERS OF MYSTERY by H. Douglas Thomson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/28/2005]
MASTERS OF MYSTERY by H. Douglas Thomson (ISBN 0-486-23606-4) is a survey of the mystery field--written in 1931. As such, it understandably covers many writers whose stars have been eclipsed by other authors. Freeman Wills Crofts is not exactly a household name these days, while Dashiell Hammett gets only six lines--and Thompson makes a major error in them (he puts Sam Spade in RED HARVEST and THE DAIN CURSE). There has been a change in critical attitudes towards mysteries (and towards literature in general) in the last seventy years, so this is valuable as an insight into the attitudes of the time, as well as a place where one can find at least some information about the lesser-known early mystery writers. And editor E. F. Bleiler's footnotes elaborate on Thompson's brief allusions, correct Thompson's errors of fact, and quibble with some of what he sees as Thompson's errors of judgement. Warning: Thomson assumes you have read all the works he discusses, so there are spoilers if you have not.
To order Masters of Mystery from amazon.com, click here.
THE SECRET DOCUMENTS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by June Thomson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/30/2006]
THE SECRET DOCUMENTS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by June Thomson (ISBN 0-7490-0407-X) is the fourth in Thomson's series of Sherlock Holmes pastiche collections. (The first three are THE SECRET FILES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE SECRET CHRONICLES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and THE SECRET JOURNALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES.) These are among the best pastiches being written now, staying true to the tone of the originals. (Too many of today's authors feel compelled to add sex, or violence, or twenty-first sensibilities, or humor, or something else inappropriate for a Holmes story.) These seven stories (or most of them) also are based on asides or references in the original Doyle stories, giving them additional authenticity. There are also a lot of footnotes, giving this the appearance of an annotated edition, except of course, the footnotes are by the same person who wrote the text.
To order The Secret Documents of Sherlock Holmes from amazon.com, click here.
THE BOOKMAN by Lavie Tidhar:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/04/2011]
Does no one write straight alternate history any more? And by straight, I do not mean as opposed to gay alternate history, but just plain old "this one event happened in a different--yet plausible--way and here is how society was affected." Instead, all I seem to see are alternate histories with vampires, alternate histories with steampunk, alternate histories with the Great Old Ones, and so on. While these may be fine for what they are, they seem to be crowding out the more historically based alternate histories. The latest I've seen is THE BOOKMAN by Lavie Tidhar (ISBN 978-0-00-734658-5), which seems to want to be Kim Newman meets Jasper Fforde, with touches of Neil Gaiman and Harry Turtledove thrown in.
It's possible that some of what I say might be considered spoilers, so you have been warned.
The Kim Newman part is the premise that Amerigo Vespucci discovered Caliban's island and Les Lézards, a reptilian race who became the ruling family of England (with all the same names as the monarchs in our time line, and how likely is that?). The Jasper Fforde part is all the literary allusions, such as an inspector named Irene Adler, a knight named Harry Flashman, and a literary terrorist group known as the Persons from Porlock, who knock on the doors of famous authors and recite nonsense to them until the authors forget what the they were working on. The Neil Gaiman is the overall mysterious alien Victorian atmosphere reminiscent of "A Study in Emerald"; the Harry Turtledove part is the intelligent reptile part. But any actual consideration of how the society would be different if ruled by reptiles seems to be minimal: not only did Turtledove spend more time on it in his "World War" tetralogy than this whole novel does. James Patrick Kelly spent more time on it in his novelette "Think Like a Dinosuar".
For what it is, THE BOOKMAN is good. But just as a fan of Westerns would be upset if their favorite TV Westerns were cancelled and replaced by sit-coms, no matter how excellent the sit-coms were, so do I see this sort of novel as filling publishers' alternate history slots to the exclusion of more "historical" alternate history.
To order The Bookman from amazon.com, click here.
BOOKSTORE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JEANETTE WATSON AND BOOKS & CO. by Lynne Tillman:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/02/2007]
BOOKSTORE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JEANETTE WATSON AND BOOKS & CO. by Lynne Tillman (ISBN-10 0-151-00425-0, ISBN-13: 978-0-151-00425-6) is a paean to the independent bookstore Books & Co. that existed in Manhattan from 1978 to 1997. It is not a narrative, but a series of recollections by Watson, people who worked at the store, people who shopped at the store, authors, and others. All extol the virtues of the independent bookstore, where the owner and staff love books, know just what to recommend to the regular customers, encourage new authors and marginal fields such as poetry, give fabulous parties for signings and readings, and generally are wonderful people. Woody Allen used the store as a setting in EVERYBODY SAYS I LOVE YOU, because he loved it so much. But somewhere towards the end of the book, we discover that this utopia is built on sand--it survived as long as it did only because Watson (and her family) kept subsidizing it. The Whitney Museum of American Art was their landlord, and came under fire, first for not giving them a lower-than-market-price rent, and then for not taking over the bookstore and continuing to run it the same way. The fact that the Whitney also had to deal with financial issues, and was an art museum, not a literary organization, seemed to elude most people.
Poor commercial planning caused many of the store's apparently unending financial problems. They include renting space next door to store books, paying Madison Avenue rent for what was effectively a warehouse. They spent more on refreshments for a reading than the increased sales would cover. And they had entire orders of hard covers signed by the authors *before* they were sold (meaning the store could not return unsold copies).
But almost everyone seems to want to blame the store's demise on the chains. Some independent bookstores are still going (*), so there are ways to compete, but the business model used by Books & Co. was not one. Books & Co. was undoubtedly a wonderful store run by idealistic people, but it was not a sustainable business venture.
(*) Shakespeare & Co. still has three stores, including one uptown, indicating that rents are not the only factor. But they have books that appeal to more people, while still concentrating on something other than best-sellers. Books & Co. seemed to try to have the most literary, the most edgy books and that had to limit their clientele a lot. (There were a lot of authors interviewed with whom I am not familiar.) And Michael Powell, of the still-successful Powell's in Portland, says, "Powell's had the strength of the used-book world; we can keep focusing on used and out of print, and that's something that Borders and Barnes & Noble don't have, and that gives us strength." This is ironic in two ways: Borders used to be one of those wonderful independents (one store in Ann Arbor in the 1970s), and Barnes & Noble used to carry used books, back when they had only three locations, all in Manhattan. Powell also says, "We are not prejudiced against any class of books . . . we are not prejudiced against pop fiction, romances, history. We wanted to treat all customers, all readers, as serious people."
To order Bookstore from amazon.com, click here.
"The Gladiator's War: A Dialog" by Lois Tilton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/12/2005]
Lois Tilton, "The Gladiator's War: A Dialog" (Asimov's Jun 04): The dialog here is between Crixus and Marcus Terentius Varro. Varro was a real Roman historian and Crixus was a real Gaul who fought with Spartacus. In this dialogue, they discuss the effects of Spartacus's burning of Rome. It's fairly dry, having the same fault that people accused Asimov's early "Foundation" books of having: all the action happens off-stage and all we get is people talking about it. I don't find this a major problem, and really liked this story. (And the final line is a nice ironic nod to a William Tenn story.)
SMITH OF WOOTON MAJOR & FARMER GILES OF HAM by J. R. R. Tolkien:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/23/2004]
When I bought J. R. R. Tolkien's SMITH OF WOOTON MAJOR & FARMER GILES OF HAM (ISBN 0-345-27351-6 and ISBN 0-618-00936-1) it was one mass-market paperback; now they are two trade paperbacks. Back then, the appeal was that these were the only other works available by Tolkien other than THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Now, the appeal is more that these are about the only other works published under Tolkien's name that are primarily his work (other than THE SILMARILLION). They are enjoyable enough children's fables (albeit with a bite), but not necessarily better than a lot of similar works. I guess I'm saying that if you pick these up expecting another "Lord of the Rings" experience, you will probably be disappointed.
To order Smith of Wooton Major from amazon.com, click here.
To order Farmer Giles of Ham from amazon.com, click here.
HADJI MURAD by Leo Tolstoy:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/28/2006]
Coincidentally, someone in our discussion group wanted to read a Russian novel, but no one wanted a "doorstop", so we chose HADJI MURAD by Leo Tolstoy (GREAT SHORT WORKS OF TOLSTOY, ISBN 0-060-58697-4). (This book also contains THE COSSACKS.) HADJI MURAD came highly recommended by Harold Bloom, but on the whole we were less than bowled over. Though Bloom claims the characters are all very detailed and well-drawn, we did not find it that way. An additional problem for me was that while there was a short glossary provided for the Tartar (Chechen) words, the edition I was reading did not translate any of the French that the characters spoke. I realize that all of Tolstoy's contemporary audience understood French as well as Russian, but the audience here and now does not. (Later translations seem to have fixed this with footnotes.) Oddly, this novel was made into the Italian movie THE WHITE WARRIOR, with muscleman Steve Reeves, and Mark said if you read it as an action-adventure novel, it is not bad.
To order Great Short Works of Tolstoy from amazon.com, click here.
OUR LADY OF DARKNESS by Peter Tremayne:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/04/2004]
Peter Tremayne's OUR LADY OF DARKNESS (ISBN 0-451-21221-5) is one of his Sister Fidelma mysteries, set in ancient Ireland. I enjoyed it, though with a lot of reservations. The most annoying was that Tremayne seems to have an axe to grind with 1) the suppression of the Irish Catholic Church by Rome, and 2) capital punishment. I also thought the red herrings seemed a bit over- done. And while the Irish background is a large part of the flavor of the book, Tremayne has filled the book with so many Gaelic titles, ancient laws, and other details of Irish history that I found myself lost at times. I suppose that's the same problem a lot of readers have with science fiction (or fantasy, for that matter), but I found myself wishing for a little less "alien" flavor. Trying to figure it out at the same time as I was trying to figure out the mystery was a bit much. On the other hand, this series is very popular, so maybe it's just me.
To order Our Lady of Darkness from amazon.com, click here.
THE TIME SELLER by Fernando Trias de Bes (read by Kerin McCue):
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/27/2012]
THE TIME SELLER by Fernando Trias de Bes (read by Kerin McCue) (ISBN 978-0-787-98838-8, audiobook ISBN 978-1-428-12696-1) is a satire which feels like science fiction, though there is not anything in it that is science fictional. (In this regard, it is a lot like China Mieville's THE CITY & THE CITY.) Our protagonist, AG ("Average Guy"), lives in the Unnamed Settled Area and works for IBN ("International Business Nonsense"). (The abbreviation for Unnamed Settled Area is never explicitly used.) AG is trying to find some way to make more money, at least enough to cover his mortgage payments. But he never seems to have enough time. And then he realizes that is the solution--sell people time. He starts with five-minute vials of time, but eventually sells larger and larger containers. No matter how much he sells, people want more. Don't have enough time to enjoy your morning coffee. Just open a half-hour can at work and you have a half hour to drink your coffee, put your feet up, and in fact do whatever you want. This is the sort of premise that does not bear close examination, and the book is best read as a commentary on our hectic lifestyle than as a serious science fictional premise.
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EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES by Lynne Truss:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/10/2004]
Lynne Truss's EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES (ISBN 1-592-40087-6) has been getting rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, and there is a lot to be said for it. But for all her vigilantism about punctuation, she manages to make mistakes. For example, she claims that Americans are taught to put all ending punctuation with quotation marks that occur at the end of a sentence, but that just is not true. Americans are taught to write, for example:
Did he really say, "If nominated, I will not run;
if elected I will not serve"?
We do *not" put the '?' inside the ending quotation marks.
Truss does make some interesting observations about Biblical inerrancy when she points out that punctuation as we know it did not appear until the 15th century. So consider Luke 23:43:
"Verily I say unto thee this day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
Protestants render this as: "Verily, I say unto thee, this day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
Catholics render this as: "Verily I say unto thee this day, thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
(Yes, the originals are not in English, but they did not have punctuation either, and one presumes that either interpretation is consistent with the original text.)
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TALK TO THE HAND by Lynne Truss:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/14/2006]
Lynne Truss may be an expert on punctuation, but although TALK TO THE HAND (ISBN 1-592-40171-6) is punctuated very well, it is a very uninteresting read. Truss is complaining about the rudeness and lack of consideration in today's society, but since anyone who hasn't been living in a cave knows that people throw litter on the ground, talk about personal details in loud voices on their cell phones, and tell everyone else to "eff off". So what's the point of a book whinging about this? And is the fact that credit companies want you to call them if you are going to another country really an example of rudeness? That is in her chapter "Why Am I the One Doing This?" and while it makes sense to complain when one has to input one's credit card number multiple times on the same call to the credit card company, does Truss really expect the company to call you on a regular basis to see if you are going to another country soon? (I bet she wouldn't like that either.) And she complains that when she orders coffee, she has to choose size, flavor, type of milk, type of sweetener, and so on. Here she has a situation where the shop is trying to be accommodating, and she does not like that either.
To order Talk to the Hand from amazon.com, click here.
GODZILLA ON MY MIND by William Tsutsui:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/27/2006]
GODZILLA ON MY MIND by William Tsutsui (ISBN 1-4039-6474-2) looks at all the "Godzilla" films, and is as negative about the 1998 American version as most people are about the Di Laurentiis KING KONG. Admittedly, the TriStar film has even less going for it, as its "Godzilla" neither looks nor acts like Godzilla, but one could argue that if TriStar had called its film RAPTOR instead of GODZILLA, it would have been considered a fairly decent film. However, most of Tsutsui's book is about the real Godzilla (in all his incarnations). It is more a loving, anecdotal look at Godzilla than an academic study, though the notes indicate that Tsutsui did a good amount of research. Recommended for all fans of "the Big Guy."
To order Godzilla on My Mind from amazon.com, click here.
TIDE OF DEATH by E. C. Tubb:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/17/2009]
A couple of weeks ago, in the 04/03/09 issue of the MT VOID, I talked about the Linford Mystery Library of large print books. The ad in the back of one of their books says they publish "romances, mysteries, general fiction, non-fiction, and Westerns." And my library does have some volumes from the Linford Romance Library, the Linford Western Library, and so on. However, the most recent one I checked out was from the Linford Mystery Library and was E. C. Tubb's TIDE OF DEATH (ISBN-13 978-1-84782-145-4, ISBN-10 1-84782-145-6). The mystery is what this book is doing in a mystery library--it is a straight science fiction novel, pure and simple. Set in a post-atomic-war world full of controls and shortages, the book starts with the discovery of an almost magical source of unlimited free power. Then, of course, it turns out that there is a downside--it will grow and destroy the world. If this sounds terribly 1950s, it's because it was first published as WORLD AT BAY by Panther in 1954. While it is enjoyable in a nostalgic way, it does seem very dated now, though, and I wonder why they picked it, and what someone expecting a mystery would make of it.
To order Tide of Death from amazon.com, click here.
THE MARCH OF FOLLY by Barbara Tuchman:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/12/2010]
THE MARCH OF FOLLY by Barbara Tuchman (ISBN-13 978-0-345-30823-8) was the February book for the general discussion group. While I found her book THE GUNS OF AUGUST excellent, and Mark recommends A DISTANT MIRROR, I found most of this book less than enthralling. The best part was definitely Chapter One ("Pursuit of Policy Contrary to Self-Interest"), and overview of the subject. The topics examined in detail include the Trojan Horse, the Renaissance Popes' provocation of the Protestant Secession, the British loss of America, and the American loss in Vietnam. But Tuchman has a problem with them--she needs to pad each of them out enough to fill a hundred pages or so, but not enough to fill a whole book. The result is less than ideal; the British-lose-America chapter in particular is very hard to follow, with many digressions about who had which livings to give out and what the personalities of their ancestors were.
To order The March of Folly from amazon.com, click here.
REX LIBRIS: I, LIBRARIAN by James Turner:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/31/2008]
I found REX LIBRIS: I, LIBRARIAN by James Turner (ISBN-13 978-1-59362-062-2, ISBN-10 1-59362-062-4) intriguing, but impossible to read due to the tiny font size. At about half the height of the letters in the hardback I was reading, this made the letters only about a quarter the size.
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ETERNAL LOVECRAFT edited by Jim Turner (Golden Gryphon, ISBN 0-9655901-7-8, 1998, 411pp):
This anthology is divided into three sections. The first is three stories which either have Lovecraft as a character or are expressly set in Lovecraft's "universe." The second set is eleven stories with some allusions to Lovecraft, but no direct connection. The third is four stories with "implied" Lovecraft connections. Though called Eternal Lovecraft, the connections between the stories and things Lovecraft seems at times tenuous, at least to me. (If you are more familiar with Lovecraft than I, then the connections may seem more obvious.)
This is the third book from Golden Gryphon, the first two being collections by James Patrick Kelly and R. Garcia y Robertson. As with the previous volumes, this is a well-produced, well-crafted book with a wonderful wrap-around dust jacket (by Nicholas Jainschigg). Unfortunately, I found the contents less interesting. But as I said, if you are a Lovecraft aficionado, your reaction will probably differ, and I certainly recommend you at least investigate this.
(This has nothing to do with this book, but I would like to commend my public library, which has the Kelly and Garcia y Robertson volumes. It is unusual for a public library to track the small press arena, and I'm quite pleased that my library does so.)
To order Eternal Lovecraft from amazon.com, click here.
GOD IS MY BROKER: A MONK-TYCOON REVEALS THE 7-1/2 LAWS OF SPIRITUAL AND FINANCIAL GROWTH by Brother Ty with Christopher and John Tierney:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/04/2008]
GOD IS MY BROKER: A MONK-TYCOON REVEALS THE 7-1/2 LAWS OF SPIRITUAL AND FINANCIAL GROWTH by Brother Ty with Christopher and John Tierney (ISBN-13 978-0-060-97761-0, ISBN-10 0-060-97761-2) is a both a parody and a critique of all those self-help books. (And the title appears to be a parody of all those really long, pretentious subtitles on books these days as well.) "Brother Ty" is a former stock broker turned monk who gets involved in his monastery's attempt to be more successful in marketing their wine. Along the way, we get to meet an internal investigator from the Vatican; agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; and even the Mafia. Each chapter is concluded with a "rule", a "meditation", and a "prayer" embodying that rule. For example, Rule III is "As long as God knows the truth, it doesn't matter what you tell your customers." The meditation includes questions such as "Who's more important, anyway--God or my customers?" and "Did God know I was lying? Did He stop the sale?" And the prayer begins: "Almighty God, Top Salesman of the Universe, Master of Pitches and Presentations, grant that I should exceed my quota, and that the truth shall not stay my tongue from its appointed task."
While this is reasonably amusing, ultimately it is not much more substantial than the self-help books it is ridiculing. (And somewhere in a back corner of my mind is the thought that a lot of these meditations and prayers sound a lot like those presented seriously in sermons which talk about how God rewards believers with wealth and success.)
To order God Is My Broker from amazon.com, click here.
DEATH BY BLACK HOLE: AND OTHER COSMIC QUANDRIES by Neil deGrasse Tyson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/28/2007]
DEATH BY BLACK HOLE: AND OTHER COSMIC QUANDRIES by Neil deGrasse Tyson (ISBN-13 978-0-393-33016-8, ISBN-10 0-393-33016-8) is a collection of "Universe" essays from the magazine NATURAL HISTORY. (Tyson has recently been seen on the History Channel series "Universe".) The essays vary in interest, but I do have to take exception to a couple of Tyson's conclusions in "Fear of Numbers". Tyson claims that people are afraid of negative numbers, and gives some supposed examples of this. For example, he says that "a mild case of this syndrome exists among car dealers, where instead of saying they will subtract $1,000 from the price of your car, they say you will receive $1,000 'cash back.'" This is more psychological than mathematical: people like getting cash back. Why else would people prefer to overpay their taxes and then get a refund, than pay less throughout the year? (And if they are getting a car loan, they really do end up with more money in their pocket right away.)
Tyson also claims that this fear of the minus sign is why accounting reports enclose negative amounts in parentheses rather than use the minus sign. I think it is more likely that this is done because it is easy to overlook a minus sign--it is fairly small, after all--or to confuse it with a dash or just an ink streak.
There is also an article, "Hollywood Nights", about how Hollywood manages to get the night sky wrong so often. For example, James Cameron spent a lot of time and money making sure that the dish patterns were correct on the Titanic, but did not seem to care that the stars in the night sky were all wrong. Directors also have the moon waxing and waning in the wrong direction, or make other astronomical mistakes.
Some of the astronomy complaints are a little unfair, though. Tyson complains that one sees a full moon much more frequently than the law of averages would indicate. But of course you do, and for the same reason that people always find parking spaces right where they need them--it serves the purpose of the film. In films, you also never have a situation where two important characters have the same first name, unless it is a plot point, and you also never see anyone doing anything (such as going to the dentist).that is not connected to the plot. As long as the full moon is not actually impossible (such as lasting two weeks), complaining about it on the basis of frequency hardly seems fair.
To order Death by Black Hole from amazon.com, click here.