Yet again I am delighted to have encountered (through the Gollancz SF Masterworks series) a book I would never otherwise have read.
Ghyl Tarvoke is a curious young man, who drifts aimlessly through his young world, allowed by his father the freedom to live somewhat outside the strictures of society. When his father is killed for contradicting the simplistic understanding of the police and judiciary, Ghyl rises beyond his childhood dreams of star flight and adventure to uncover truths worth sharing.
The story unfolds slowly, with a tempo that only gradually rises in the second act, and which finally hits its stride well into the third act. Vance takes the time to build the environment of his characters in lavish (but never tiring) detail. Thus, we care when Ghyl makes his break from polite society, and delight when the rough cloth of his society finally shows signs of unraveling.
This is a very good book, well worth the time to read.
Thursday, 21 August 2008
Review: "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon
On a recent trip, I finally finished "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet". Most times, I'll wade through historical nonfiction, and it seems unfamiliar, difficult to engage with. I've abandoned even well written books like "The Power Broker" and "Team of Rivals" because it just wasn't enjoyable to keep on reading. I may finally have discovered what I've been doing wrong. In short, read what you know. Although broadening your interests is a worthy goal, you have to build on your current knowledge and understanding and branch out from there. Case in point: This book deals with the history of the internet, email, telnet, FTP, chat, all topics near to my heart, and that made this book a great departure point for me.
Most of the technologies discussed in this book are so well established that their RFC (requests for coment) are commandments, well understood and inviolable. In this book, these RFCs are brought to life as the product of careful thought, ongoing and fierce debate, and even trial and error. In short, the technology we take for granted was crafted by sharp minds and strong personalities working through their differences and the inevitable technical hurdles. Most of us don't get to make this big a difference (connecting billions of people with each other), but their success should inspire us to try anyway.
Given how much I enjoyed this, I think it may finally be time to read up on the history of Computer Science a bit more, perhaps with a biography of Turing...
Most of the technologies discussed in this book are so well established that their RFC (requests for coment) are commandments, well understood and inviolable. In this book, these RFCs are brought to life as the product of careful thought, ongoing and fierce debate, and even trial and error. In short, the technology we take for granted was crafted by sharp minds and strong personalities working through their differences and the inevitable technical hurdles. Most of us don't get to make this big a difference (connecting billions of people with each other), but their success should inspire us to try anyway.
Given how much I enjoyed this, I think it may finally be time to read up on the history of Computer Science a bit more, perhaps with a biography of Turing...
Monday, 4 August 2008
Review: "Desolation Island" by Patrick O'Brian...
I went through all the fiction books in the house while resting during my recent cold. At the bottom of the stack was "Desolation Island", the fifth in the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. I'm glad I finally got to it.
As with the other books in the series, "Desolation Island" is set during the Napoleonic Wars, a generation after Nelson. The period is lovingly rendered, the details of daily life are amazingly rich. However, what holds the piece together are the central characters and their motivation. We see their great moments and their human and ordinary moments. The color of their emotional lives shows through. We realize that these were people living in their time and making their way within the constraints of their society. During the first few books, the details about bracings, sails, riggings can be incomprehensible. After five books, patience wins out, and the technical detail adds to the charm and even the excitement of the work.
Anyway, this was an enjoyable read. Looking at the fact that there are twenty volumes in the series, I was considering taking a break once I finished the book. However, things are left at a good stopping point, but somewhat unresolved at the end of "Desolation Island", so I may have to pick up "Fortunes of War" before I stop reading the series for a while.
As with the other books in the series, "Desolation Island" is set during the Napoleonic Wars, a generation after Nelson. The period is lovingly rendered, the details of daily life are amazingly rich. However, what holds the piece together are the central characters and their motivation. We see their great moments and their human and ordinary moments. The color of their emotional lives shows through. We realize that these were people living in their time and making their way within the constraints of their society. During the first few books, the details about bracings, sails, riggings can be incomprehensible. After five books, patience wins out, and the technical detail adds to the charm and even the excitement of the work.
Anyway, this was an enjoyable read. Looking at the fact that there are twenty volumes in the series, I was considering taking a break once I finished the book. However, things are left at a good stopping point, but somewhat unresolved at the end of "Desolation Island", so I may have to pick up "Fortunes of War" before I stop reading the series for a while.
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
Review: "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
Having read and enjoyed "The Kite Runner" last summer, I picked up "A Thousand Splendid Suns" when it first hit the charts. I didn't get the chance to read it until a recent cold gave me a bit of extra time next to my night stand. It was worth the wait.
"The Kite Runner" was an impressive mixture of personal and historical drama, and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" mines the same vein. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is also a story about Afghanistan, and covers much of the same time period, but where "Kite Runner" focused on the lives of the central character and the men in his life, in "Suns", the lives of four generations of women take center stage.
The fortunes of women in Afghanistan vary from the 1970s until the early 2000s. At the low point, a career, education, choice of husband, even the freedom to walk the streets unaccompanied are all denied to women. Even at the high point, the freedom to pursue any of these things is largely determined by the men in a woman's life.
With war as a constant backdrop, life becomes a daily exercise in loss, and a daily struggle for survival. Resources for women in this society are a luxury in good times, like education and music, and a burden in bad times. The shocking conditions at the womens' hospital in Kabul and the consignment of a female child to an orphanage to leave more food for the male child are especially striking examples.
Hosseini is obviously a gifted storyteller. He takes what must have been an overwhelming flood of stories from the lives of Afghani refugees and distills them down to a compelling handful of threads that make the point without quite overwhelming the reader.
This is a great book, and a quick read. Highly recommended.
"The Kite Runner" was an impressive mixture of personal and historical drama, and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" mines the same vein. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is also a story about Afghanistan, and covers much of the same time period, but where "Kite Runner" focused on the lives of the central character and the men in his life, in "Suns", the lives of four generations of women take center stage.
The fortunes of women in Afghanistan vary from the 1970s until the early 2000s. At the low point, a career, education, choice of husband, even the freedom to walk the streets unaccompanied are all denied to women. Even at the high point, the freedom to pursue any of these things is largely determined by the men in a woman's life.
With war as a constant backdrop, life becomes a daily exercise in loss, and a daily struggle for survival. Resources for women in this society are a luxury in good times, like education and music, and a burden in bad times. The shocking conditions at the womens' hospital in Kabul and the consignment of a female child to an orphanage to leave more food for the male child are especially striking examples.
Hosseini is obviously a gifted storyteller. He takes what must have been an overwhelming flood of stories from the lives of Afghani refugees and distills them down to a compelling handful of threads that make the point without quite overwhelming the reader.
This is a great book, and a quick read. Highly recommended.
Review: "The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios" by Yann Martel
Like many people, I first encountered Yann Martel's work with the stunning "Life of Pi", which was a playful and engaging book with dark notes to it, and which holds up to repeated readings. (There are other, less kind views of the book on librarything.)
"The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios" is a book of Martel's short fiction written prior to "Life of Pi". Other reviews (1 2)have criticised his experimentation with narrative devices as overly contrived. I can see that three of the four stories could be read that way, and to be honest, it's hard to shake that off as being anything other than a fair criticism.
The titular story revolves around storytelling game in which a man and his friend escape from a devastating illness by creating the history of a fictional family, kind of like "Hundred Years of Solitude: The Home Game". There are nice spots in the story, but on the whole the device does overstay its welcome a bit.
The next story is entitled "The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton". The lack of economy in even the names of stories tells you something about the maturity of his writing, although in this case, the story transcends its title. It is an ode to serendipity, to siezing the moment to discover something of the truth of another human being. The narrator stumbles on to a performance by a veterans' orchestra of a series of works, including the titular Rankin concerto. His pursuit of and interaction with the composer is well handled, and rings true with its small details of a failed life with brief hints of greatness. Not to spoil the next review, but I have a cold at the moment, and blew through this book and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini in a single sitting. Reading these books one after the other helped me see that this story is the strongest in the book precisely because it highlight's the author's ability to collect and present the details that make a compelling character.
The other stories in the book display this talent to perhaps lesser effect. "Manner of Dying" is engaging enough, but reads somewhat like an episode of the Twilight Zone, but without any metaphysical questions. "The Vita Æterna Mirror Company" is also engaging enough, but is so uneconomical with space (half the page is often literally filled with "blah blah blah") that it reads as though it were five pages of story spread thinly to cover just over forty pages. Contrast this with Borges, who is so economical that five pages merit their own careful study and reflection, or with Updike, whose short stories are so dense with descriptive detail that I can typically only read one or two at a sitting before my focus is strained (perhaps reading Updike is the antidote to the lack of focus that Google is purported to be engendering in modern readers).
In short, this is a collection that has its moments, but is obviously among the author's early work. To be honest, it's not a book that I would have bought myself, but having received it as a gift, I'm glad to have had the chance to read it (the "Rankin" story especially).
"The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios" is a book of Martel's short fiction written prior to "Life of Pi". Other reviews (1 2)have criticised his experimentation with narrative devices as overly contrived. I can see that three of the four stories could be read that way, and to be honest, it's hard to shake that off as being anything other than a fair criticism.
The titular story revolves around storytelling game in which a man and his friend escape from a devastating illness by creating the history of a fictional family, kind of like "Hundred Years of Solitude: The Home Game". There are nice spots in the story, but on the whole the device does overstay its welcome a bit.
The next story is entitled "The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton". The lack of economy in even the names of stories tells you something about the maturity of his writing, although in this case, the story transcends its title. It is an ode to serendipity, to siezing the moment to discover something of the truth of another human being. The narrator stumbles on to a performance by a veterans' orchestra of a series of works, including the titular Rankin concerto. His pursuit of and interaction with the composer is well handled, and rings true with its small details of a failed life with brief hints of greatness. Not to spoil the next review, but I have a cold at the moment, and blew through this book and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini in a single sitting. Reading these books one after the other helped me see that this story is the strongest in the book precisely because it highlight's the author's ability to collect and present the details that make a compelling character.
The other stories in the book display this talent to perhaps lesser effect. "Manner of Dying" is engaging enough, but reads somewhat like an episode of the Twilight Zone, but without any metaphysical questions. "The Vita Æterna Mirror Company" is also engaging enough, but is so uneconomical with space (half the page is often literally filled with "blah blah blah") that it reads as though it were five pages of story spread thinly to cover just over forty pages. Contrast this with Borges, who is so economical that five pages merit their own careful study and reflection, or with Updike, whose short stories are so dense with descriptive detail that I can typically only read one or two at a sitting before my focus is strained (perhaps reading Updike is the antidote to the lack of focus that Google is purported to be engendering in modern readers).
In short, this is a collection that has its moments, but is obviously among the author's early work. To be honest, it's not a book that I would have bought myself, but having received it as a gift, I'm glad to have had the chance to read it (the "Rankin" story especially).
Monday, 21 July 2008
Paris Photos
Our photos from the 9th Sakai conference and our subsequent holiday in Paris are now up on Flickr. Enjoy!
Sunday, 13 July 2008
Review: "The Mustache" (La Moustache) by Emmanuel Carrère
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." --Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis"
Hot on the heels of "Class Trip", I just finished "The Mustache" by Emmanuel Carrère. Written some ten years earlier than "Class Trip", this is an even more astonishing book.
The main character alters his routine one morning, and instead of shaving around his mustache of many years, decides to see how he'll look without it. From there his world is gradually unraveled. His present and future are tinged with uncertainty, and shockingly, so is his past. His very identity begins to slip away.
Where Gregor Samsa's transformation was grand and undeniable, the man behind (or lacking) the eponymous mustache suffers all the more for the complete acceptance his wife, friends, and colleagues all have of the altered reality that unfolds around him.
This is a grand portrayal of mental anguish and paranoia. For much of the book, the main character alternates between believing that he is insane and believing that the world is either mad or conspiring against him. The transitions between these two irreconcilable extremes are sometimes gradual, and sometimes startlingly abrupt.
In his struggle to find some stability in the shifting reality he occupies, the main character ends up becoming a kind of parody of the world traveler, latching onto what temporary routines and human connections he can while shifting from one impersonal locale (hotel, ferry, airport, restaurant) to another.
A bit of warning: the ending of this book is absolutely devastating. I was clenching my teeth when reading the last few pages, and very nearly had to bite my knuckle to keep from crying out.
This is an absolutely vital work, and wonderfully crafted. Highly recommended, but only for those who delight in the uncertainty and complexity of a book like "The Metamorphosis" and who also have a strong stomach.
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