Hilary's Book Blog

I liked Isaac’s Storm well enough–a good, workman-like job. This book is about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, which I had never heard of until a few years ago, when I bought a huge portfolio of photos of it at the Blueberry Festival book sale. I was fascinated by the scale and grandeur of the temporary buildings. So I was eager to learn more about it, and this book was moderately satisfying on that score. It’s a bizarre combination of biography, social study, and true crime, all fairly well-done but inevitably a little disjointed. And very few photos, which is really too bad. The best part is the description of building the first Ferris Wheel, invented specifically for the fair by George W. G. Ferris (although Larson’s coy concealment of his name until the last minute, so that we don’t know ahead of time what the great centerpiece of the Fair will be, gets quite annoying). What an astounding feat to pull off perfectly on the first try! Some of the other proposals (the idea was to rival Eiffel’s tower) are amusing:

Another inventor, J. B. McComber, representing the Chicago-Tower Spiral-Spring Ascension and Toboggan Transportation Company, proposed a tower with a height of 8,947 feet, nearly nine times the height of the Eiffel Tower, with a base one thousand feet in diameter sunk two thousand feet into the earth. Elevated rails would lead from the top of the tower all the way to New York, Boston, Baltimore, and other cities. Visitors ready to conclude their visit to the fair and daring enough to ride elevators to the top would then toboggan all the way back home. “As the cost of the tower and its slides is of secondary importance,” McComber noted, “I do not mention it here, but will furnish figures upon application.”

I’m about a dozen books behind… I initially thought of ending every post with “This is probably the last post ever” (instead of the kiss-of-death “I’m going to have more time for this blog soon!”) Maybe I should start doing that now. We’ll see.

I’m hooked on these now–no warm-up here, I enjoyed it from the start. In this volume they travel to India–great descriptive passages. Stephen Maturin becomes a more & more sympathetic character, and his unrequited love for Diana Villiers (what a fool she is!) is heart-wrenching. Jack Aubrey takes command of yet another ship, and we get to watch his instant loyalty and love for it, as well as his ability to bring the crew together. Lots of good subtext about leadership. My favorite part: Maturin’s difficult recovery from a fever turns the corner after he finds a new species of land tortoise. There’s a great bit also about a sloth he brings on board, which sleeps in the rigging.

Some things in this book made me laugh really hard–notably the product warning labels, some of which I’d seen before but I still like. Collapsible stroller: “Remove child before folding.” Good collections of stupid products, stupid things people have said, stupid tax-writeoffs, etc. and lots of good corporate stupidity and stupid greed. Unfortunately, nothing is documented and quite a few anecdotes reek of urban legend or distortion. As a kid I used to read my grandmother’s Reader’s Digests cover to cover, and I particularly liked Senator William Proxmire’s Golden Fleece awards, which were lauded by RD. Only as an adult did I learn that Proxmire typically misrepresented the scientific studies he reviled. I get the impression these authors take the same liberties, selectively playing up some aspects for their humor or “outrageousness.” Does that matter in a humor book? If it’s presented as fact, yes it does.

The last two in my Mushroom Planet collection (I’m missing A Mystery for Mr. Bass). Pretty good, like the others, not great. But the last page of Time is missing! We don’t have it at the library, either. In these later books, Cameron introduces lots of geography and some history, especially of Wales (she must be Welsh or have Welsh connections). But her portrayal of Welsh stereotypes as actually being extraterrestrial is pretty strange, when you think about it. Planetoid has yet another big-headed, childlike person with an unusual name (Prewytt Brumblydge) who turns out to be a Mycetian–you’d think Chuck and David could recognize them on sight by now. Prewytt almost makes the world explode by letting his scientific curiosity get away from him. The only reason David and Chuck need to use the spaceship is to get high enough above the earth that they can do a visual seach for Prewytt–I wonder when satellite surveillance started? I identified completely with Chuck in this passage:

“C’mon Dave–let’s go!” yelled Chuck, about to burst with impatience over his grandfather’s slow, careful deliberations. How he hated waiting while people thought. He never could understand why they just didn’t start in doing something.

Time is much more preoccupied with mythology than science fiction. The Necklace of Ta has been stolen and the gems that make it up distributed among an array of people. The gems make them crazy–obsessed with mushroom shapes and losing touch with everything that mattered to them before. The structure is that of a mystery, as Mr. Bass and the boys track the gems in search of the thief, Penmaen Parry. Stonehenge and the Arthurian legends make an appearance, and an ancient enemy called “Narrow Brain”–love that name.

Mind-blowing–the epitome of “sense of wonder.” I’ve liked Bill Bryson’s work since Made in America: an Informal History of the English Language in the United States (1995), before he hit the big time with A Walk in the Woods, still his funniest book. I can see why some people don’t like him; his jocularity could become irritating, and his bemused persona can start to feel a little forced. But to me it’s just the right amount–a laugh every page or so–and he judiciously plays it down in this book, a whirlwind tour of the universe and the people who’ve discovered the little we know about this amazing place. The other strengths he shows here are an ability to find the most interesting anecdotes (many I haven’t heard before, I’m sure some exaggerated a little for effect), excellent descriptive skills to help the reader begin to picture what’s inconceivably large, small, numerous, etc., and of course clear writing.

Things I learned: How very little we know about the inside of our planet. That Yellowstone is a HUGE volcano, so large that there is no cone:

Beneath the surface is a magma chamber that is about forty-five miles across–roughly the same dimensions as the park–and about eight miles thick at its thickest point. Imagine a pile of TNT about the size of Rhode Island and reaching eight miles into the sky, about the height of the highest cirrus clouds, and you have some idea of what visitors to Yellowstone are shuffling around on top of.

That Linneaus was a sex-obsessed egomaniac. (The less-stellar qualities of scientists are on disply throughout, but not in a way that discredits their achievements.) A sense of how incredibly complex and speedy the activities of a single cell are.

Every cell in nature is a thing of wonder. Even the simplest are far beyond the limits of human ingenuity. To build the most basic yeast cell, for example, you would have to miniaturize about the same number of components as are found in a Boeing 777 jetliner and fit them into a sphere just five microns across; then somehow you would have to persuade that sphere to reproduce.

It saddens me that so many people think the material world is so much simpler than it is, that it’s “mere” matter. There is nothing mere about it. The simplification and pattern-grouping that makes the human consciouness see a fairly unified, comprehensible “interface” to the world has the downside of blinding us to so much. A book like this can temporarily open a window on the jaw-droppingly amazing all around us.

Gerhard is a close friend of my mother’s who’s become a friend of ours too; he’s a witty and brilliant conversationalist, and also happens to specialize in Tennyson, my favorite poet. A few years ago he kindly gave us a copy of this book (with a funny inscription) and I finally got around to reading it. The reason it took me such a long time is mostly laziness; makes me realize how often I reach for what’s easy and/or familiar to read rather than something more challenging. Not that it was hard to read (on the contrary, it’s admirably clear and well-constructed), but to do justice to literary criticism takes a certain kind of attention and focus that I often seem to lack. I jotted down notes as I went along, which helped. (learned some new words: psychomachy, kex, fuscus, theodicy, vatic, ogdoad, oread)

The book helped me understand more clearly a lot of what appeals to me in Tennyson (gee, I guess that’s what this lit crit fad is all about, huh?)–his theme of “the tragic inevitability of change and of human mortality.” (The discussion of “Tears, Idle Tears” is especially good. Gerhard traces the conflicts in Tennyson’s depictions of love (in the broadest sense), between sensuousness and idealism, between classic myth and Christianity, between “hearth and home” and the “fatal woman.” The last chapter, “The Myth of Western Love” (discussing Idylls of the King), talks about why the stories of Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot and Tristan/Iseult/Mark were popular topics for the Victorians, which in turn made me appreciate T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (one of my all-time favorites) in a new way.

The lasting significance of the Idylls of the King is the comprehensive way in which it outlines the most basic of human tragedies, the personal and social dislocations that arise from man’s passion to transcend mutability and mortality. Muted in our own sensibility is the extreme aversion to the human body that certain historical periods have stressed in the sense/soul division of both Platonic eros and Christian agape. But man’s fleshly nature is still his most pesistent reminder of change and death; his heroic drive to elude these twin terrors is as intense as ever; and the certainty of their triumph over his best efforts is as much the occasion of idle tears as it has always been. Whether or not we insist upon translating into a contemporary idiom the Platonic/Christian terminology (a marriage-war between sense and soul) in which Tennyson couches these themes, we cannot escape the continuing relevance for our restless, questing selves of Tennyson’s vast Arthurian tapestry.

The Police were one of my very favorite bands for a long time, and part of the reason I got into the independent/underground music which had a huge effect on my life. I had a big crush on Sting as a teenager (me and 83 million others!). I can’t disagree with the accusations that he’s pretentious, arrogant, etc. (which leads to funny song titles like Allen Clapp’s “Why Sting is Such an Idiot” and Atom and His Package’s “Sting Cannot Possibly Be the Same Guy Who Was in The Police;” I wish they had quotable lyrics too…), but I still think he has moments of brilliance as a songwriter and I love his powerful furry voice. So all that helped me slog through this not-very-good book. Sting’s another candidate for the Wonderful Adjective Cellar, but the most irritating stylistic tic is the verb tenses: some past, some present, and a heck of a lot of that bizarre future perfect (“In the interim I will have become famous,” but speaking from a past POV set as the present) which infects bad memoirs. How did that start? Is there a master switch somewhere where we can turn it off?

A few interesting perspectives and anecdotes, especially about the Copeland brothers (Miles, shown in all his shrewd, cost-cutting glory, didn’t take to Sting at all initially and couldn’t get his name right–“that guy, whatsisname, Smig?”), and a good evocation of the sheer persistence, hard work, and raw ambition that led to the success of the Police. Three very experienced musicians, flexible enough to adapt to the changes that were sweeping through the industry, and willing to do whatever it took–no wonder they thrived when most other bands fell apart. “…The backbone of our legend will be that we would play anywhere, travel any distance, sleep anywhere there was a bed, give 100 percent and never complain.” Our music biz friend Geoff told us years ago that that appetite for touring, and the willingness to keep it up for years, was the main ingredient in “making it.” Best story in the book is about his meeting with Miles Davis:

The great man fixes me with his eye.

“Sting, huh?”

“Yes sir,” I reply.

“Sting,” he says again, savoring the word in his mouth like a gob of spit, “you got the biggest fuckin’ head in the world.” His voice is no more than a malevolent whisper.

I’m not a little shaken by this, to say the least. “What exactly do you mean, er, Miles?”

“Saw ya in a fuckin’ movie, man, and your head filled the whole fuckin’ screen.”

Link to book

My second post-process for Distributed Proofreaders. Although nowadays this depiction of dog and cat personalities is trite, it probably was novel at the time. “Please, no stories told from the dog’s point of view” was already a staple of submission guidelines in the 80s, but it can’t have originated much before the late 19th century, can it? Black Beauty was 1877. (If I had oodles of time, surveying literature from an animal POV would be a lot of fun, if it hasn’t already been done…) Anyway, Colette’s poetic language is delightful, if sometimes a little excessive. (In a few spots the translation’s not quite spot-on, but not too many). “The Storm” is particularly evocative and “The Caller” has some funny bits:

THE LITTLE DOG 

… Do they leave you in the room all alone?

TOBY-DOG

It happens so now and then.

THE LITTLE DOG

And you don’t bark? I cry as soon as I’m left alone. I’m bored, afraid, feel sick, and chew up the cushions.

My mother used to talk about how Colette’s husband Willy repressed her, forced her to write for money, then put it out under his own name, etc., etc.–I don’t know how accurate that is, but it feels very strange that in this book written by a woman, the man is shown “scratching paper” (writing) and must not be disturbed, while the woman does housewifely stuff.

So many people raved about this book (and at work, we’ve had to request it though ILL enough times) that I ordered it for the library. Enchanting, absorbing, touching–right up until the end, at which point I threw the book from me and burst into angry tears. Yes, I prefer happy endings. Real life is crammed full of horrible things that can’t be prevented–why create more in fiction? But I can deal with sad, even tragic endings as long as there is some kind of redemption or transcendence, something I can feel good about. Of course I saw the sad ending coming–it made the theme of the fragility and beauty of life stronger, there was no other plausible outcome, and Patchett made it clear that the new life the terrorists and hostages evolved into was just a dream. But did she have to kill so many people we grew to love? Realistically, yes, and even that could be handled in a way I would not object to so much. It’s the suddenness of the ending, and the way that we’re then excluded from the main character’s heads–we’ve seen their thought processes and felt their emotions all through the book (very effectively–Patchett’s a brilliant writer), and then we only see a little bit of what the survivors do. Gen and Roxanne are getting married, but WHY? I can rationalize the cut-off as part of the tragedy–the sudden, shattering end of the idyll is too much to absorb–but it just feels very dissatisfying. It’s a sign of how deeply the book got to me that it could make me so angry and sad.

Every single guest and terrorist is transported by the beauty of Roxanne Coss’ voice, even those who’ve never particularly enjoyed music or even been exposed to it. Does that require some suspension of disbelief? I’m not sure. That they’re hearing it live makes a big difference–it’s not just the sound, it’s the performance, the group psychology, the whole experience. One of the greatest pleasures I get from reading is finding new topics of interest, curiosity, and research. I’ve never liked opera at all, but now I’ll check out a few CDs and who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind.

I wanted to like this book, I really did. The youth of the author, who was 15 when he started writing, intrigued me (see tangent on The Young Visiters), but didn’t raise my hopes. It was this terrific 3-way interview with Philip Pullman and Tamora Pierce that did. Pullman is a (mostly) fantastic writer, and I liked Pierce’s “Protector of the Small” series–not brilliant, but decent writing and enjoyable stories. Paolini held his own in the interview. Plus, I like good fantasy, I like dragons (one of the main characters is a female dragon named Saphira), and several people recommended it to me.

I gave up at 100 pages and it was a struggle to get that far. I checked out the last 25 pages in case some dramatic improvement had take place–but no. Paolini probably could be a good writer some day–as Jonathan said, a novel Proust wrote at 15 might not be so hot–but right now he could use “Cousin Len’s Wonderful Adjective Cellar” from Jack Finney’s story, which sucks up excess adjectives & adverbs. When I hit stuff like “Dark eyebrows rested above his intense brown eyes,” I’m jolted out of the “vivid and continuous dream” good fiction is supposed to engender (John Gardner’s phrase). Hearing Paolini’s sentences in my head felt like chewing gravel; he’s presumably aiming for a brawny Beowulfian pattern (“It struck her steed…[she] landed lightly, then glanced back for her guards”), but to me the result is self-concious and clunky. Nor did the scenarios in the first hundred pages seem particularly original: McCaffrey-style dragons in a world with Star Wars politics and Tolkien races. But again, he’s only 19 now, and to have the stylistic control and awareness to make the choices he did here (even if the result didn’t work for me) is remarakable. I guess my “bad fantasy” buttons were just pushed–purple prose combined with multi-volume stories…