Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks
353 pages
Published 2007
Read from September 27 to September 29
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Ever
since I was 12, I have had music almost constantly stuck in my head. It
began when my father had taken me and fled from Ohio after my brother
had ran away to live with our mother's family. It was a disordered time,
a time of escalation for my father's debilitating paranoia; while I,
having lost my only "friend" and point of stability in the world, was
left trying to cling to fragments of my old life (I resumed writing,
with a persistent idea of showing off my stories to Randy after he "came
back"), Eric was desperately trying to shed effects and belongings and
ties, streamlining (as he thought) his efforts to seek "asylum" for us
in various foreign countries. The car that drew us west lacked a working
radio, and Eric kept hold of only two or three cassettes, one of which
was the Moody Blues' Seventh Sojourn. As autumn chilled the plains and volcanic mesas of western New Mexico, I heard Seventh Sojourn
again and again and again, the only music I knew for months; when Eric
grew sick of the repetition and refused to play the tape, I
reconstructed it note by note, song by song in my head. I could begin
with the opening thrum and drums of "Lost in a Lost World" and replay
the album all the way to the whistling and clapping and synthesizer
blurt that closed out "I'm Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band)."
From those cramped, crippling days more than half a lifetime ago, I've
rarely known more than a few minutes' peace from the intrusions of
musical earworms.
Whether because of this or just out of general
intellectual curiosity, the subject of music's effect on the brain has
long fascinated me. And since I already like the work of Oliver Sacks,
this book was an obvious choice. Although Sacks is a fluent writer, his
neurological works are, necessarily, oriented for the appreciation of
lay readers. "Tales" is indeed an apt description of Musciophilia's
contents; Sacks describes various patients and correspondents, an
edifyingly broad array of musical pathologies and anomalies, but I came
away from it not feeling that I understood much more than I had before.
Sacks' analysis rarely delves beyond the correlation between certain
neurological abnormalities and musical maladies and prodigies; a line
from the closing paragraph, "Music is part of being human," is just
about all I took away from this book. Granted, anything more involved
would get technical quite rapidly, and the "purpose" of humanity's
musicality is of course the topic of unresolved (perhaps unresolvable)
debate. I can't fault Sacks for his safe, descriptive format, but Musicophilia felt more like a list of neurological curiosities than anything insightful.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Saturday, September 28, 2013
2013 read #125: The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente.
The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente
258 pagesPublished 2012
Read from September 26 to September 28
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
One interesting thing about the Harry Potter series is how J. K. Rowling aged the material in parallel with her protagonists. Never having read much juvenile fiction aside from Harry Potter before this year, I don't know whether this is unusual or not, but nevertheless it's kind of neat how The Sorcerer's Stone is all whimsy and scrumptious puns and wish fulfillment, with minimal menace, whereas from the end of The Goblet of Fire, when Edward Cullen snuffs it, on through the final three volumes, all that whimsy gets mushed into an increasingly awkward fit with Grimmer and Darker and More Menacing wizardry.
I'm only two books deep into The Girl Who [Verbed into] Fairyland [and Did Whatever] series (the third volume is available but hasn't hit my library yet), but it's already evident that Valente is not taking the Harry Potter approach with her narration. I suppose she already hit her intended admixture of Grim and Whimsy in the first book, so the subject matter won't necessarily get bleaker, but it's a tiny bit jarring for the narrative voice to be, if anything, even more Aunty Cathy Spins a Spooky Yarn for Bedtime than before, when our heroine is now supposed to be a teenager. One chapter begins, "I find it reasonable to suppose that some of you, dear readers, have been to a party or two in your young lives." You could argue that the meta-narrative conscious narrator is indispensable to the outlook and atmosphere of the series, and usually Valente's slyly mysterious, universally omniscient narration is charming enough. But in this book I felt it was laid on a bit thick.
Speaking of meta-narrative, the just-past-midway chapter "Questing Physicks" is possibly my favorite example to date of genre awareness in a fantasy novel. On further reflection, it is my favorite, bar none. (Admittedly, I've read very little Pratchett.) I would recommend you read this series solely to get to this chapter. Also because it's a cute and colorful and mostly engaging fantasy series so far. Whichever rationale motivates you.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
2013 read #124: The First Frontier by Scott Weidensaul.
The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, & Endurance in Early America by Scott Weidensaul
400 pages
Published 2012
Read from September 24 to September 26
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
I think I've mentioned before how I prefer the older end of history. I think World War I is far more interesting than World War II. The late Middle Ages don't interest me nearly as much as the early Middle Ages. I prefer the Greeks to the Romans. My favorite temple site is Göbekli Tepe. Naturally, my favorite period in American-European interaction begins with Skraelings and Vikings and ends with the Seven Years War, when celebrity names like George Washington and Ben Franklin begin to appear. I was immediately sold on the description of The First Frontier: "Here is the older, wilder, darker history of a time when the land between the Atlantic and the Appalachians was contested ground."
Weidensaul's writing is engaging in the mold of experiential, interpretive history, beginning chapters with in media res point-of-view descriptions, a gimmick that oversteps the known facts of encounter to create a more vivid impression on the reader. I'm not sure how I feel about that, especially the part about going beyond the facts; a similar gimmick animates Steven Mithen's excellent After the Ice, but where Mithen takes care to separate his interpretive fiction from the actual finds of archaeology, you wouldn't know what's fact and what's extrapolation in Weidensaul's account unless you made careful study of the end notes. Which is unfortunate, given how little is actually known of contact period native cultures and early encounters, and how much room for interpretation there is within the limited sources. (Weidensaul presents as fact the idea that Basque fishers and whalers, and other seaborne entrepreneurs of western Europe, were in contact with the people of the eastern American seaboard for "centuries" before any official European explorers arrived, which, while plausible, was still conjecture last time I checked.) It's clear Weidensaul did his research, retrieving loads of interesting factoids from various records and garbled accounts, but at this point I think I would like a huge tome filled with primary sources, with only minimal glossing to provide context and possible interpretations of events.
400 pages
Published 2012
Read from September 24 to September 26
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
I think I've mentioned before how I prefer the older end of history. I think World War I is far more interesting than World War II. The late Middle Ages don't interest me nearly as much as the early Middle Ages. I prefer the Greeks to the Romans. My favorite temple site is Göbekli Tepe. Naturally, my favorite period in American-European interaction begins with Skraelings and Vikings and ends with the Seven Years War, when celebrity names like George Washington and Ben Franklin begin to appear. I was immediately sold on the description of The First Frontier: "Here is the older, wilder, darker history of a time when the land between the Atlantic and the Appalachians was contested ground."
Weidensaul's writing is engaging in the mold of experiential, interpretive history, beginning chapters with in media res point-of-view descriptions, a gimmick that oversteps the known facts of encounter to create a more vivid impression on the reader. I'm not sure how I feel about that, especially the part about going beyond the facts; a similar gimmick animates Steven Mithen's excellent After the Ice, but where Mithen takes care to separate his interpretive fiction from the actual finds of archaeology, you wouldn't know what's fact and what's extrapolation in Weidensaul's account unless you made careful study of the end notes. Which is unfortunate, given how little is actually known of contact period native cultures and early encounters, and how much room for interpretation there is within the limited sources. (Weidensaul presents as fact the idea that Basque fishers and whalers, and other seaborne entrepreneurs of western Europe, were in contact with the people of the eastern American seaboard for "centuries" before any official European explorers arrived, which, while plausible, was still conjecture last time I checked.) It's clear Weidensaul did his research, retrieving loads of interesting factoids from various records and garbled accounts, but at this point I think I would like a huge tome filled with primary sources, with only minimal glossing to provide context and possible interpretations of events.
Monday, September 23, 2013
2013 read #123: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
247 pages
Published 2011
Read from September 22 to September 23
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
As a writer who's more wanna-be than actual, I am disgusted by Catherynne M. Valente's productivity. Referencing only the volumes at my local library, it would seem that she's been publishing two or three novels a year for the last three or so years -- which is ridiculous. It makes me feel ridiculous, anyway, seeing as I can barely manage to complete two or three short stories within twelve months.
And so far they've all been good novels, which only makes me feel worse. I was a bit on the fence about this book; it was cute, aggressively twee in the current post-modern fantasy fashion, but for the first hundred pages or so Valente seemed to be going through the motions, cranking out the expected clever tweaks of fairy tale folklore and Gaiman-esque wordplay without supplying much heart to the underlying story. And even after finishing it, I have to say parts of it were lacking -- we are told, several times, how "dear" the character Saturday becomes to the central heroine, but I for one felt he never matriculated beyond placeholder status. The ending, however, was terrific, especially the revelation of the identity of the Evil Ruler (though, possible spoilers, that particular twist was essentially identical to the equivalent reveal in Lev Grossman's The Magicians, so no originality points for Valente). Cumulatively speaking, I feel confident bumping this up to the "really good book" grade. Mainly because I have a weakness for this cutesy-fey shit.
So yeah. Stop writing so much, Valente. You're making me feel bad.
247 pages
Published 2011
Read from September 22 to September 23
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
As a writer who's more wanna-be than actual, I am disgusted by Catherynne M. Valente's productivity. Referencing only the volumes at my local library, it would seem that she's been publishing two or three novels a year for the last three or so years -- which is ridiculous. It makes me feel ridiculous, anyway, seeing as I can barely manage to complete two or three short stories within twelve months.
And so far they've all been good novels, which only makes me feel worse. I was a bit on the fence about this book; it was cute, aggressively twee in the current post-modern fantasy fashion, but for the first hundred pages or so Valente seemed to be going through the motions, cranking out the expected clever tweaks of fairy tale folklore and Gaiman-esque wordplay without supplying much heart to the underlying story. And even after finishing it, I have to say parts of it were lacking -- we are told, several times, how "dear" the character Saturday becomes to the central heroine, but I for one felt he never matriculated beyond placeholder status. The ending, however, was terrific, especially the revelation of the identity of the Evil Ruler (though, possible spoilers, that particular twist was essentially identical to the equivalent reveal in Lev Grossman's The Magicians, so no originality points for Valente). Cumulatively speaking, I feel confident bumping this up to the "really good book" grade. Mainly because I have a weakness for this cutesy-fey shit.
So yeah. Stop writing so much, Valente. You're making me feel bad.
2013 read #122: True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey.
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
352 pages
Published 2000
Read from September 20 to September 22
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
Dare I say it -- reading 122 books this year (so far!) has made my reading tastes slightly more... sophisticated. There are still embarrassing moments where I rate juvenile fic flavors of the month higher than certain classics of English language literature, but then, I've always been up-front about the capricious, wholly subjective nature of my ratings. On the other hand, not every well-written piece of modern literary fiction is going to automatically blow me away now.
Peter Carey's Parrot & Olivier in America was the first book this year that really and truly amazed me. It's interesting to note how effusive I was in my praise for that book -- the power of Carey's writing, the poetry of his word choice -- while with True History of the Kelly Gang, I'm content to note, "That was a good book. I liked it quite a lot." I did love the vernacular rhythm of Kelly's narrative voice, but after all this reading this year, I accept it as a job well done instead of elevating it as an artistic revelation.
That said (and I always segue into my concluding paragraph with a variation on "That said," it's getting a bit repetitive, don't you think?), True History was an excellent book, fully up to the standard I expected of Carey after Parrot & Olivier. Like all tragedies, knowing the outcome from the start doesn't lessen the effect, or make it any less of a bummer once you've closed the book and put it away.
352 pages
Published 2000
Read from September 20 to September 22
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
Dare I say it -- reading 122 books this year (so far!) has made my reading tastes slightly more... sophisticated. There are still embarrassing moments where I rate juvenile fic flavors of the month higher than certain classics of English language literature, but then, I've always been up-front about the capricious, wholly subjective nature of my ratings. On the other hand, not every well-written piece of modern literary fiction is going to automatically blow me away now.
Peter Carey's Parrot & Olivier in America was the first book this year that really and truly amazed me. It's interesting to note how effusive I was in my praise for that book -- the power of Carey's writing, the poetry of his word choice -- while with True History of the Kelly Gang, I'm content to note, "That was a good book. I liked it quite a lot." I did love the vernacular rhythm of Kelly's narrative voice, but after all this reading this year, I accept it as a job well done instead of elevating it as an artistic revelation.
That said (and I always segue into my concluding paragraph with a variation on "That said," it's getting a bit repetitive, don't you think?), True History was an excellent book, fully up to the standard I expected of Carey after Parrot & Olivier. Like all tragedies, knowing the outcome from the start doesn't lessen the effect, or make it any less of a bummer once you've closed the book and put it away.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
2013 read #121: Old Man River by Paul Schneider.
Old Man River: The Mississippi River in North American History by Paul Schneider
334 pages
Published 2013
Read from September 18 to September 19
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
The subtitle, I think, fudges the truth a bit. The Mississippi itself would seem ample subject for a popular history such as this, but Old Man River overtops its banks and pulls the entire Mississippi watershed within its purview, from the dubiously dated habitation of the Meadowcroft Shelter in Pennsylvania to the Deepwater Horizon incident, from Clovis sites at the headwaters of the Cimarron to an extended interlude among the Iroquois and Huron in future New York and Ontario. A better subtitle might be "Selected Incidents and Anecdotes from the Middle Half of the Continental United States." Not content with the scope of that subject matter, Schneider inserts tales of his own kayak-and-taxicab excursions throughout the drainage basin. Schneider's prose is journalistic, a fast read but hardly poetic. The likes of Rebecca Solnit, Edward Abbey, and Ellen Meloy have spoiled me; Schneider's excursions seem pedestrian, banal, contrived, lacking the shades of meaning and insight found in better travel writing, touristy even -- altogether pointless against the backdrop of exploration and genocide that he breezes through. (The sad litany of colonial wars against native nations, told with such heartbreaking intensity throughout Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, gets compressed here into a literal bullet-list, a mere two pages long.)
On the whole, though, Old Man River is enjoyable, if undemanding. When not briskly summarized, the chapters of actual history are absorbing, reviving my dormant interest in early American history. Picking through the bibliography yielded several titles I want to look into as soon as my current library backlog (a box of thirteen more books, which I keep resupplying faster than I consume) is down to a more manageable stock.
334 pages
Published 2013
Read from September 18 to September 19
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
The subtitle, I think, fudges the truth a bit. The Mississippi itself would seem ample subject for a popular history such as this, but Old Man River overtops its banks and pulls the entire Mississippi watershed within its purview, from the dubiously dated habitation of the Meadowcroft Shelter in Pennsylvania to the Deepwater Horizon incident, from Clovis sites at the headwaters of the Cimarron to an extended interlude among the Iroquois and Huron in future New York and Ontario. A better subtitle might be "Selected Incidents and Anecdotes from the Middle Half of the Continental United States." Not content with the scope of that subject matter, Schneider inserts tales of his own kayak-and-taxicab excursions throughout the drainage basin. Schneider's prose is journalistic, a fast read but hardly poetic. The likes of Rebecca Solnit, Edward Abbey, and Ellen Meloy have spoiled me; Schneider's excursions seem pedestrian, banal, contrived, lacking the shades of meaning and insight found in better travel writing, touristy even -- altogether pointless against the backdrop of exploration and genocide that he breezes through. (The sad litany of colonial wars against native nations, told with such heartbreaking intensity throughout Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, gets compressed here into a literal bullet-list, a mere two pages long.)
On the whole, though, Old Man River is enjoyable, if undemanding. When not briskly summarized, the chapters of actual history are absorbing, reviving my dormant interest in early American history. Picking through the bibliography yielded several titles I want to look into as soon as my current library backlog (a box of thirteen more books, which I keep resupplying faster than I consume) is down to a more manageable stock.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
2013 read #120: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
374 pages
Published 2008
Read from September 16 to September 17
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
One of the most interesting questions in current pop literature is, how does a book series become a craze? Publishers, I'm sure, want to know how to bottle phenomenal, irrational popularity into a patent formula. I want to know how it occurs because I think it's a fascinating sociological question. I know that once a series reaches sufficient media saturation to intrude upon the awareness of people who don't read habitually, the Facebook-of-your-aunt threshold perhaps, super-bestsellerdom is inevitable. The question is, how does any particular series reach that point? Advertising and media campaigns have a lot to do with it, of course, but if that were all there were to it, every publishing house would churn out half a dozen crazy-fan series every year. Is there an additional common ingredient, or is it all just fad and happenstance? Luck, even?
Before now, my only personal exposure to fan-craze fiction was the Harry Potter series. When I finally got into the series around 2004, I found the first installment only mildly entertaining, but by the third book I was wholly invested. No sense of "fan community" was involved in the process for me; I didn't even go to a release party until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and I never had anything to do with fan message boards or anything like that. What got me hooked, I think, was the world J. K. Rowling built around and beyond Hogwarts, the mix of punning whimsy and moderately creepy folklore from around Western Europe, and to a lesser degree a fondness for the large supporting cast (though The Order of the Phoenix did its very best to make me hate all those adolescent little shits). But I've always been a sucker for excellent worldbuilding. That's all that kept me reading the Dark Tower series, after all, once Stephen King got off the drugs and his storytelling went off the rails.
I didn't know what to expect going into The Hunger Games, aside from a general sense of post-apocalyptic Carousel shenanigans, a strong female lead, and a multiethnic supporting cast that much of its online fanbase assumed was lily-white. After reading a bunch of juvenile fic this year, much of it centered on strong female leads and a lot of it set in fantasy universes, I was curious to pinpoint the je ne sais quoi that propelled this book into stratospheric bestsellerdom while the likes of, say, Summer and Bird languish in more typical habitual-readers-only obscurity.
Massive spoilers follow. Don't read on unless you've already read The Hunger Games, don't plan on reading it, or otherwise don't care about massive spoilers.
On one hand, with the exception of the faked-for-reality-TV-audiences romance (which I knew to expect because you can't spend time on the internet without absorbing super-fan-series plot details through osmosis), every beat of the story was predictable. The strong female protagonist was not merely a strong female protagonist; she was orphaned by her father and estranged from her mother, and had to take care of her little sister! The society paired your bog-standard post-apocalyptic survival town with your typical decadent 1970s technological-dystopia-with-a-human-sacrifice-fixation, right on down to the impractical "futuristic" fashions in the capital and the country's stupid portmanteau name. I knew from the moment Katniss didn't obtain the bow and arrows from Cornucopia, she would get them by eliminating another tribute. I knew from the moment she made a friend, that friend would have to die in a melodramatic turning point. Once Rue died, I knew Thresh would emerge at some point and refrain from killing Katniss out of noble gratitude. I knew Peeta was only with the Careers to give Katniss a chance. I knew something would happen to make them think they both could win. When the "rule change" was announced, I knew it would be revoked at the last minute, when just the two of them were left. And so on and so forth.
On the other hand, all those predictable beats were hit in an extremely satisfying, entertaining way. And after Rue died, and Katniss received the gift of bread from District 11, I was unexpectedly moved, considering Rue as a character was only on-screen for, what, two chapters? (Also, anyone who thought Rue wasn't black was a goddamn idiot; it's completely blatant in the text.) Even something that should have annoyed me, the on-the-nose naming of the characters, didn't bother me too much; I was too amused by the aptness of naming the main villain Cato that I forgave the rest. All in all The Hunger Games was well-executed popcorn sci-fi, and I'm moderately interested to see the inevitable fight to take downIngsoc Panem and President Snow in the next two books.
Nothing in this book, though, really made it clear to me why The Hunger Games, and not any of a hundred other series, took off the way it did. Maybe I'm just not predisposed to fannishness in general, and that blinkers me where these books are concerned. At least, unlike Twilight, it's a genuinely good read with a positive message to chew over.
374 pages
Published 2008
Read from September 16 to September 17
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
One of the most interesting questions in current pop literature is, how does a book series become a craze? Publishers, I'm sure, want to know how to bottle phenomenal, irrational popularity into a patent formula. I want to know how it occurs because I think it's a fascinating sociological question. I know that once a series reaches sufficient media saturation to intrude upon the awareness of people who don't read habitually, the Facebook-of-your-aunt threshold perhaps, super-bestsellerdom is inevitable. The question is, how does any particular series reach that point? Advertising and media campaigns have a lot to do with it, of course, but if that were all there were to it, every publishing house would churn out half a dozen crazy-fan series every year. Is there an additional common ingredient, or is it all just fad and happenstance? Luck, even?
Before now, my only personal exposure to fan-craze fiction was the Harry Potter series. When I finally got into the series around 2004, I found the first installment only mildly entertaining, but by the third book I was wholly invested. No sense of "fan community" was involved in the process for me; I didn't even go to a release party until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and I never had anything to do with fan message boards or anything like that. What got me hooked, I think, was the world J. K. Rowling built around and beyond Hogwarts, the mix of punning whimsy and moderately creepy folklore from around Western Europe, and to a lesser degree a fondness for the large supporting cast (though The Order of the Phoenix did its very best to make me hate all those adolescent little shits). But I've always been a sucker for excellent worldbuilding. That's all that kept me reading the Dark Tower series, after all, once Stephen King got off the drugs and his storytelling went off the rails.
I didn't know what to expect going into The Hunger Games, aside from a general sense of post-apocalyptic Carousel shenanigans, a strong female lead, and a multiethnic supporting cast that much of its online fanbase assumed was lily-white. After reading a bunch of juvenile fic this year, much of it centered on strong female leads and a lot of it set in fantasy universes, I was curious to pinpoint the je ne sais quoi that propelled this book into stratospheric bestsellerdom while the likes of, say, Summer and Bird languish in more typical habitual-readers-only obscurity.
Massive spoilers follow. Don't read on unless you've already read The Hunger Games, don't plan on reading it, or otherwise don't care about massive spoilers.
On one hand, with the exception of the faked-for-reality-TV-audiences romance (which I knew to expect because you can't spend time on the internet without absorbing super-fan-series plot details through osmosis), every beat of the story was predictable. The strong female protagonist was not merely a strong female protagonist; she was orphaned by her father and estranged from her mother, and had to take care of her little sister! The society paired your bog-standard post-apocalyptic survival town with your typical decadent 1970s technological-dystopia-with-a-human-sacrifice-fixation, right on down to the impractical "futuristic" fashions in the capital and the country's stupid portmanteau name. I knew from the moment Katniss didn't obtain the bow and arrows from Cornucopia, she would get them by eliminating another tribute. I knew from the moment she made a friend, that friend would have to die in a melodramatic turning point. Once Rue died, I knew Thresh would emerge at some point and refrain from killing Katniss out of noble gratitude. I knew Peeta was only with the Careers to give Katniss a chance. I knew something would happen to make them think they both could win. When the "rule change" was announced, I knew it would be revoked at the last minute, when just the two of them were left. And so on and so forth.
On the other hand, all those predictable beats were hit in an extremely satisfying, entertaining way. And after Rue died, and Katniss received the gift of bread from District 11, I was unexpectedly moved, considering Rue as a character was only on-screen for, what, two chapters? (Also, anyone who thought Rue wasn't black was a goddamn idiot; it's completely blatant in the text.) Even something that should have annoyed me, the on-the-nose naming of the characters, didn't bother me too much; I was too amused by the aptness of naming the main villain Cato that I forgave the rest. All in all The Hunger Games was well-executed popcorn sci-fi, and I'm moderately interested to see the inevitable fight to take down
Nothing in this book, though, really made it clear to me why The Hunger Games, and not any of a hundred other series, took off the way it did. Maybe I'm just not predisposed to fannishness in general, and that blinkers me where these books are concerned. At least, unlike Twilight, it's a genuinely good read with a positive message to chew over.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
2013 read #119: The Great Wall by Julia Lovell.
The Great Wall: China Against the World 1000 BC - AD 2000 by Julia Lovell
352 pages
Published 2006
Read from September 13 to September 15
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
It is inexplicably difficult, at least in my experience, to locate good, wide-ranging histories of China. This is true of any non-European or non-Anglophone part of the world, so I suppose it isn't that inexplicable, but it's still annoying. I know John Keay (whose history of India I quite enjoyed) wrote a similar history of China, which I've been meaning to get my hands on, but I'll have to order that from a different library. My own library's collection of Chinese history is spread evenly across three equally narrow and (to me) equally uninteresting aspects of a multi-millennium, continental-scale story: the rise of Chinese Communism, the subjugation of Tibet, and the Great Wall. You'd think such a vast, densely populated region of the planet, with such a long and complex history, couldn't be boiled down to three topics, but you'd evidently be wrong.
This book caught my eye while I was browsing a rival library by dint of its subtitle. I took "China Against the World" to indicate that The Great Wall was used allegorically, a catch-all term for a history of psychological isolationism. To an extent my hopeful interpretation was correct, but The Great Wall is also used literally: the inception, construction, and decay of various border fortifications forms the bulk of Lovell's topic, and the psycho-historical analysis never gets beyond "Barbarians invade, become emperors, and grow soft over succeeding generations, forgetting the need for flexible offense and withdrawing behind a literal wall of inflexible defensiveness" -- the same old "luxury corrupts" storyline that's been a fixture of historical explanation since the glory days of Sparta and Rome.
Lovell's prose is satisfyingly wry on occasion, and she includes a nice number of (probably embroidered) anecdotes of the kind I like so well, but her analysis rarely becomes more rigorous than that one basic storyline. And while it's nice that this book isn't 100% about the various defensive walls of Chinese history, using "the Great Wall" as a lens to examine Chinese history is still rather limiting. Narrowness of topic I might tolerate, or shallowness of analysis on occasion, but not both at the same time.
352 pages
Published 2006
Read from September 13 to September 15
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
It is inexplicably difficult, at least in my experience, to locate good, wide-ranging histories of China. This is true of any non-European or non-Anglophone part of the world, so I suppose it isn't that inexplicable, but it's still annoying. I know John Keay (whose history of India I quite enjoyed) wrote a similar history of China, which I've been meaning to get my hands on, but I'll have to order that from a different library. My own library's collection of Chinese history is spread evenly across three equally narrow and (to me) equally uninteresting aspects of a multi-millennium, continental-scale story: the rise of Chinese Communism, the subjugation of Tibet, and the Great Wall. You'd think such a vast, densely populated region of the planet, with such a long and complex history, couldn't be boiled down to three topics, but you'd evidently be wrong.
This book caught my eye while I was browsing a rival library by dint of its subtitle. I took "China Against the World" to indicate that The Great Wall was used allegorically, a catch-all term for a history of psychological isolationism. To an extent my hopeful interpretation was correct, but The Great Wall is also used literally: the inception, construction, and decay of various border fortifications forms the bulk of Lovell's topic, and the psycho-historical analysis never gets beyond "Barbarians invade, become emperors, and grow soft over succeeding generations, forgetting the need for flexible offense and withdrawing behind a literal wall of inflexible defensiveness" -- the same old "luxury corrupts" storyline that's been a fixture of historical explanation since the glory days of Sparta and Rome.
Lovell's prose is satisfyingly wry on occasion, and she includes a nice number of (probably embroidered) anecdotes of the kind I like so well, but her analysis rarely becomes more rigorous than that one basic storyline. And while it's nice that this book isn't 100% about the various defensive walls of Chinese history, using "the Great Wall" as a lens to examine Chinese history is still rather limiting. Narrowness of topic I might tolerate, or shallowness of analysis on occasion, but not both at the same time.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
2013 read #118: Queens Consort by Lisa Hilton.
Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Elizabeth of York by Lisa Hilton
426 pages
Published 2010
Read from September 7 to September 12
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
There is, of course, considerable overlap between Queens Consort and two other reviews of medieval English royalty I've read recently, The Plantagenets by Dan Jones and especially She-Wolves by Helen Castor. But The Plantagenets satisfies itself largely with naming the queens before wading back into its masculine tale of bloodshed and bloody politics, while She-Wolves focuses on storytelling at the expense of scholarly rigor. Hilton leans heavily in the other direction, offering a readable but often dry recitation of events and personalities, relishing lists of household expenditures and enumerating Christmas gifts passed between retainers, while occasionally forgetting to relate broader events in any systematic, lucid manner. Hilton does not help matters by doing little to distinguish the welter of Eleanors, Edwards, Elizabeths, Isabelles, and other ubiquitous names among the aristocracy of western Europe. She also follows the annoying custom of referring to royals by their title, even if several different men might be known as the "Duke of Clarence" or whatever over the course of the time period, or even within particular chapters. But that's typical of books of this sort, so I can't fault her there. I just wish they'd hit upon a different, less bewildering practice.
I liked the chronological breadth of Queens Consort as well as the household minutiae Hilton provides. Any English history after Richard II is unknown to me; a couple years ago I read a book on the English Civil War, but I remember so little of the read that I'm not entirely convinced it wasn't a book on the Wars of the Roses instead. The quick sketch of the course of the Wars of the Roses was therefore welcome, even if I failed to keep track of allegiances, or for that matter which family was which. And of course any history told from a female perspective is a welcome shift in perspective.
426 pages
Published 2010
Read from September 7 to September 12
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
There is, of course, considerable overlap between Queens Consort and two other reviews of medieval English royalty I've read recently, The Plantagenets by Dan Jones and especially She-Wolves by Helen Castor. But The Plantagenets satisfies itself largely with naming the queens before wading back into its masculine tale of bloodshed and bloody politics, while She-Wolves focuses on storytelling at the expense of scholarly rigor. Hilton leans heavily in the other direction, offering a readable but often dry recitation of events and personalities, relishing lists of household expenditures and enumerating Christmas gifts passed between retainers, while occasionally forgetting to relate broader events in any systematic, lucid manner. Hilton does not help matters by doing little to distinguish the welter of Eleanors, Edwards, Elizabeths, Isabelles, and other ubiquitous names among the aristocracy of western Europe. She also follows the annoying custom of referring to royals by their title, even if several different men might be known as the "Duke of Clarence" or whatever over the course of the time period, or even within particular chapters. But that's typical of books of this sort, so I can't fault her there. I just wish they'd hit upon a different, less bewildering practice.
I liked the chronological breadth of Queens Consort as well as the household minutiae Hilton provides. Any English history after Richard II is unknown to me; a couple years ago I read a book on the English Civil War, but I remember so little of the read that I'm not entirely convinced it wasn't a book on the Wars of the Roses instead. The quick sketch of the course of the Wars of the Roses was therefore welcome, even if I failed to keep track of allegiances, or for that matter which family was which. And of course any history told from a female perspective is a welcome shift in perspective.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
2013 read #117: Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente.
Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
352 pages
Published 2011
Read from September 7 to September 10
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
This book, plus one novella and a short story, is all I've read by Valente. Yet I already feel like inducting her into the select ranks of my favorite authors. Her prose gets turgid from time to time, and her works seem to offer more spectacle than emotional heft, but she just clicks with me. Deathless was everything R. Garcia y Robertson's Firebird promised but failed to be: a mesmerizing merger of Russian folklore and history. Despite some unevenness toward the middle, Deathless was an excellent read, employing fairy tale tricks of repetition and mirrored imagery to spectacular effect.
352 pages
Published 2011
Read from September 7 to September 10
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
This book, plus one novella and a short story, is all I've read by Valente. Yet I already feel like inducting her into the select ranks of my favorite authors. Her prose gets turgid from time to time, and her works seem to offer more spectacle than emotional heft, but she just clicks with me. Deathless was everything R. Garcia y Robertson's Firebird promised but failed to be: a mesmerizing merger of Russian folklore and history. Despite some unevenness toward the middle, Deathless was an excellent read, employing fairy tale tricks of repetition and mirrored imagery to spectacular effect.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
2013 read #116: The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar.
The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar
242 pages
Published 1992
Read September 6
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
The copyright date on this small-press edition says 2006, but I was hardly two pages into this book when I said to myself, "No way. No way this is from 2006. This was published in the early '90s, it had to have been." Sure enough, a quick Google search confirmed an original publication date of 1992. I don't know whether to feel accomplished or glum that I can so readily identify, on stylistic grounds alone, when a piece of fantasy fiction was published.
Maybe I shouldn't feel either, though, because pinpointing the '90s origin of this story was about as difficult as approximating the date of a blond boy in a bowl haircut and stone washed jeans and white hightops. This book is incredibly friggin' '90s. It feels like an extended version of Mike Resnick's story "Revolt of the Sugar Plum Fairies," the most dated story from the incredibly dated early '90s anthology After the King. While Millar has the decency to avoid TV commercial catch-phrases and none of his characters speak in jive (giving him two points up on Resnick), he nonetheless manages to cram in just about every stylistic convention of early '90s fantasy: a too-cool-to-care tone and hip sarcasm, winking references to older conventions of the genre, attempts at grittiness largely at odds with the flippant tone, heroic (but schizophrenic) homeless, freshman-level social commentary direct from Pearl Jam B-sides, casual (even "comedic") substance abuse. I don't know if the ghost of a Johnny Rotten stand-in coming down from heaven to find his guitar is a '90s fantasy cliche, but it feels like it should be. The characters, with the exception of the two human leads, are interchangeable and scarcely defined, which made the frequent two-paragraph digressions to the secondary "stories" seem dull and mostly pointless. (Hey, this fairy king in Cornwall has industrialized his kingdom and all his fairies are factory serfs! Oh, you still remember that from two pages ago? Well, I have nothing new to add to this plot thread, just thought you'd like the reminder.)
The main two humans are caught in another tiresome storytelling convention of their own, a rom-com. I'm actually a bit surprised this hasn't become some sort of summer vehicle for B-list actors. The woman is totally a punk-rock hippie girl stereotype, a manic pixie dream girl, except she has a colostomy bag and motivations (however flimsy) of her own. (An artsy manic pixie with Crohn's disease -- truly, a heroine for the internet age.) The man is a bigoted schlub and misanthropist. I pictured him differently while reading the book, but now that I'm thinking of casting calls, I could totally see him as a young Jack Black. The wider story around them is a run of the mill farce, full of misunderstandings and miscommunications and silly MacGuffins changing hands faster than I cared to keep track of them. Farces can quickly grow boring if not handled with panache, and this one quickly became boring.
I'm not sure why I'm being so generous with the rating. It wasn't a painful read, and I enjoyed myself (very) mildly, but that should rate two and a half stars, if I'm trying to be consistent. But whatever, I'm not. It's all arbitrary anyway.
242 pages
Published 1992
Read September 6
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
The copyright date on this small-press edition says 2006, but I was hardly two pages into this book when I said to myself, "No way. No way this is from 2006. This was published in the early '90s, it had to have been." Sure enough, a quick Google search confirmed an original publication date of 1992. I don't know whether to feel accomplished or glum that I can so readily identify, on stylistic grounds alone, when a piece of fantasy fiction was published.
Maybe I shouldn't feel either, though, because pinpointing the '90s origin of this story was about as difficult as approximating the date of a blond boy in a bowl haircut and stone washed jeans and white hightops. This book is incredibly friggin' '90s. It feels like an extended version of Mike Resnick's story "Revolt of the Sugar Plum Fairies," the most dated story from the incredibly dated early '90s anthology After the King. While Millar has the decency to avoid TV commercial catch-phrases and none of his characters speak in jive (giving him two points up on Resnick), he nonetheless manages to cram in just about every stylistic convention of early '90s fantasy: a too-cool-to-care tone and hip sarcasm, winking references to older conventions of the genre, attempts at grittiness largely at odds with the flippant tone, heroic (but schizophrenic) homeless, freshman-level social commentary direct from Pearl Jam B-sides, casual (even "comedic") substance abuse. I don't know if the ghost of a Johnny Rotten stand-in coming down from heaven to find his guitar is a '90s fantasy cliche, but it feels like it should be. The characters, with the exception of the two human leads, are interchangeable and scarcely defined, which made the frequent two-paragraph digressions to the secondary "stories" seem dull and mostly pointless. (Hey, this fairy king in Cornwall has industrialized his kingdom and all his fairies are factory serfs! Oh, you still remember that from two pages ago? Well, I have nothing new to add to this plot thread, just thought you'd like the reminder.)
The main two humans are caught in another tiresome storytelling convention of their own, a rom-com. I'm actually a bit surprised this hasn't become some sort of summer vehicle for B-list actors. The woman is totally a punk-rock hippie girl stereotype, a manic pixie dream girl, except she has a colostomy bag and motivations (however flimsy) of her own. (An artsy manic pixie with Crohn's disease -- truly, a heroine for the internet age.) The man is a bigoted schlub and misanthropist. I pictured him differently while reading the book, but now that I'm thinking of casting calls, I could totally see him as a young Jack Black. The wider story around them is a run of the mill farce, full of misunderstandings and miscommunications and silly MacGuffins changing hands faster than I cared to keep track of them. Farces can quickly grow boring if not handled with panache, and this one quickly became boring.
I'm not sure why I'm being so generous with the rating. It wasn't a painful read, and I enjoyed myself (very) mildly, but that should rate two and a half stars, if I'm trying to be consistent. But whatever, I'm not. It's all arbitrary anyway.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
2013 read #115: Summer and Bird by Katherine Catmull.
Summer and Bird by Katherine Catmull
346 pages
Published 2012
Read from September 4 to September 5
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
This is a book I wish I'd written. Birds have always seemed under-utilized in fantasy; the bony, pinnate patterns of their lives have long struck me as a source of endlessly fascinating fantastic possibility, possibility reflected in the rich body of bird folklore in cultures around the world. This is the first novel I've read (out of the admittedly few fantasy works I've read) that wings and scratches its way into that alien treetop territory I've wanted to explore in my own fiction. Catmull's descriptive voice is terrifically evocative, and the emotional heart of the tale is refreshingly complex for a children's novel, though told without great subtlety. That overt sense that, yes, this is still a children's novel clipped my enjoyment somewhat, as did a (seemingly) extended sequence toward the middle of rather literal psychological symbolism. In my own bird-infested fantasy novels, the ones I do intend to write someday, I had toyed with the notion of manifesting fantasy-psychological symbols for my characters, but now I realize that can get quite dull.
On the whole, though, I emphatically recommend Summer and Bird. Support avian fairy tales!
346 pages
Published 2012
Read from September 4 to September 5
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
This is a book I wish I'd written. Birds have always seemed under-utilized in fantasy; the bony, pinnate patterns of their lives have long struck me as a source of endlessly fascinating fantastic possibility, possibility reflected in the rich body of bird folklore in cultures around the world. This is the first novel I've read (out of the admittedly few fantasy works I've read) that wings and scratches its way into that alien treetop territory I've wanted to explore in my own fiction. Catmull's descriptive voice is terrifically evocative, and the emotional heart of the tale is refreshingly complex for a children's novel, though told without great subtlety. That overt sense that, yes, this is still a children's novel clipped my enjoyment somewhat, as did a (seemingly) extended sequence toward the middle of rather literal psychological symbolism. In my own bird-infested fantasy novels, the ones I do intend to write someday, I had toyed with the notion of manifesting fantasy-psychological symbols for my characters, but now I realize that can get quite dull.
On the whole, though, I emphatically recommend Summer and Bird. Support avian fairy tales!
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
2013 read #114: A Natural History of North American Trees by Donald Culross Peattie.
A Natural History of North American Trees by Donald Culross Peattie
483 pages
Published 1950 (Volume 1) and 1953 (Volume 2), condensed and edited one volume edition published 2007
Read from August 28 to September 3
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
The prominence of "natural history" in the title led me to expect rather more, well, natural history content in this volume, a substantial amount of material on the ecology of each species and a better sense of their taxonomic interrelationships at the very least. While there is some such material, written in such fetchingly high-flown prose as to make the entire read feel like a sunshine-splashed drive along California mountain roads in a Studebaker Champion convertible, far too much of the book (for my tastes) is devoted to bald facts and figures of industrial exploitation. Peattie's message is definitely one of mingled conservation and sustainable forestry, but I can only read so many 65 year old statistics on board feet before my eyes glaze over. And as this is a clipped and hedged edition of Peattie's two-volume opus, I get the sense that many of the minor or more marginal woods -- often those I find most interesting, from my own inimical fondness for biogeographical history and oddity -- were quietly left out. My favorite sections were on geographically or temporally isolate species, such as stray tropical genera represented by a single North American species or a once-widespread fossil family now clinging on in a single remnant population. I wonder how many of those trees got left out of this fashionably streamlined edition.
Some modern maps and taxonomic diagrams would have been appreciated, too, but I suppose what I want then is a modern textbook on plant biogeography, not a somewhat forgotten classic of nature writing.
483 pages
Published 1950 (Volume 1) and 1953 (Volume 2), condensed and edited one volume edition published 2007
Read from August 28 to September 3
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
The prominence of "natural history" in the title led me to expect rather more, well, natural history content in this volume, a substantial amount of material on the ecology of each species and a better sense of their taxonomic interrelationships at the very least. While there is some such material, written in such fetchingly high-flown prose as to make the entire read feel like a sunshine-splashed drive along California mountain roads in a Studebaker Champion convertible, far too much of the book (for my tastes) is devoted to bald facts and figures of industrial exploitation. Peattie's message is definitely one of mingled conservation and sustainable forestry, but I can only read so many 65 year old statistics on board feet before my eyes glaze over. And as this is a clipped and hedged edition of Peattie's two-volume opus, I get the sense that many of the minor or more marginal woods -- often those I find most interesting, from my own inimical fondness for biogeographical history and oddity -- were quietly left out. My favorite sections were on geographically or temporally isolate species, such as stray tropical genera represented by a single North American species or a once-widespread fossil family now clinging on in a single remnant population. I wonder how many of those trees got left out of this fashionably streamlined edition.
Some modern maps and taxonomic diagrams would have been appreciated, too, but I suppose what I want then is a modern textbook on plant biogeography, not a somewhat forgotten classic of nature writing.
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