This Week at the Library (17/07/08)

Books this Update:

• The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Harry Potter Universe by Tere Stouffer
• The Undertaker's Window by Philip Margolin
• The History of Science from 1945 to the 1990s by Ray Spangenburg and Diane Moser
• Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare by Isaac Asimov
• The Neandertal Enigma by James Shreeve

I began this week with The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Harry Potter Universe. While I was amused by the idea of a Harry Potter encyclopedia -- there are, after all, probably already Potter wikis out there -- I actually found the book to be amusing. The author, who holds a Masters in Children’s Literature and who is apparently one of the first Harry Potter scholars (?), wrote her graduate paper on the differences between the Potter universe and the universes of other similar fantasy works by C.S. Lewis and J. R. Tolkien. This is sort of what she does in this book. Stouffer looks into the origin of various characters’ names, the origin of their spells, the history of mythological creatures in human literature -- drawing on various mythologies and folk tales, from the Judeo-Christian bible to Celtic fairies. It’s a brief, but interesting read if you like the Potter books and want to learn more about trolls and so on. I’m not much for fantasy, but the Potter books are unique in …bewitching me.

Next I read Philip Margolin’s The Undertaker’s Widow, which I found to be rather captivating. It’s about an ethical judged named Quinn who finds himself rapidly being entangled by a web of conspiracy, deceit, and blackmail. I enjoyed it immensely. While blurbs on the back of the book describe it as a “legal” thriller, it could be variously described as mystery, a political thriller, or a legal thriller. The story takes place in Portland, Oregon, and the mystery begins when a contender for one of Oregon’s senatorial slots shoots an intruder in her home after he shoots her husband. It was a fast, tight story with several nice twists.

After that, I read The History of Science from 1945 to the 1990s. I commented last week that the physics was rapidly going over my head, and that problem was exaggerated here. I read the section on gluons and muons and that sort of thing several times and didn’t understand a lick of it. Since the book was published in the 1990s, it doesn’t mentioned string or M-theory, one of which I actually remember from Dan Falk’s terrific Universe on a T-Shirt. I think I should revisit that book, since I remember actually understanding -- at least a little bit -- the atom. Happily, atomic theory is only one small section of the book. As ever, the book is divided into two parts: Physical Science and Life Science. In all of the preceding books, an appendix in the back included a section on the scientific method. In this book, that section introduced the book. Life Science was mostly about viruses -- AIDS received much more publicity back then in the 90s. I only see an occasional commercial about it now, and if it weren’t the fact that I read newspapers from around the world, I might be oblivious to its continuing existence. I haven’t heard anything about AIDS from network television in years.

What made this book a blast for me was the rest of the Physical Science section, as large parts of it were on space and that I understand quite well. The book was written in the early 90s, so it mentions possible plans for “Freedom Station”, which I know from reading Basecamps to the Stars was the planned US-only space station before the idea was scrapped in favor of the International Space Station, which sounds much less gimmicky. The book references the then still-living Carl Sagan, which was a bit weird. He died in 1996. It’s strange reading a book from the 1990s and realizing it was over a decade ago. I came of age in the 90s, so it’ll always be my “home” decade -- or the decade that my temporal frame of reference is at least partially tied to.

Next I read The Neandertal Enigma. (While “Neanderthal’ is the typical spelling, the author drops the second H because the “th” sound doesn’t exist in the German language, which is where “Neanderthal” derives from.) The book is about the author’s struggle to figure out where Neanderthals fit into human evolution. The impression I have from contemporary reading of various books is that Neanderthals aren’t our ancestors: they were roaming around Europe and Asia, but eventually squeezed out and eliminated by our ancestors, who were migrating out of Africa. This in fact a new theory when the author hears it in this book, and it is in opposition to the old idea that Homo sapiens evolved directly from Neanderthals. The Leakeys and their work at Olduvai Gorge are mentioned a lot.

Ancient bones from Olduvai
Echoes of the very first cry
‘Who made me here, and why?’
‘Beneath the copper sun..
African ideas, African ideas.
Make the future clear, make the future clear.
And we are scatterlings of Africa, both you and I
We’re on the road to Phelamunga,
Beneath a copper sky
And we are scatterlings of Africa,
On a journey to the stars..
Far below we leave forever dreams of what we were.

I should note that I didn’t quite finish the book. As the argument and counter arguments about the “Eve” hypothesis (that all modern human beings descend from one African woman, whose ancestors then populated Europe and Asia while pushing out the Neanderthals) were developed more and more, I began to lose interest. It didn’t help that during my reading I had a sinus headache, which has just gone away today. It turns out that I am less interested in Neanderthals than I thought I was. On a side note, the author mentions Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series, which depicts Cro-Magnons (ice age humans) and Neanderthals living beside one another. I read the five books in the series last year. He refers to them as “romance” novels, which is interesting. I think he means they show a romanticized view of life back then, since sex doesn’t show up that much until the third book. After that, of course, Ayla and Jondalar are inseparable, joined at the...hips. The writing of The Neandertal Enigma is good, it’s such that it was becoming something I wasn’t all that interested in -- a lot of discussion about mitochondria DNA.

Next I read some of Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare. I say “some” because the book offers commentary on Shakespeare’s plays, and it would be rather silly of me to read commentaries on plays I’ve never read. While Asimov does quote liberally from the plays he’s commenting on and summarize the plot, I decided I didn’t want to read commentaries of plays I’ve not read. I did read some, and some were enjoyable even without having read the original plays, but I decided not to go on. (I decided to not go on right in the middle of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because I was tired of reading about fairies and goblins. I moved on to Julius Caesar.)

Pick of the Week: The History of Science from 1945 to the 1990s.
Quotation of the Week: Not an exact quote, but in The History of Science, the author commented that Pluto’s position as a planet seemed to be safe for the time being. I thought it amusing.
Next Week:

• The Rise of Reason, Ray Spangenburg and Diane Moser. The authors of The History of Science series have another series.
• Primates of the World, Rod and Ken Preston-Mafham
• Personal Memoirs, Ulysses S. Grant
• Asimov’s Mysteries, by Isaac Asimov. Science-fiction mysteries in short-story form.
• The Universe in a Nutshell, Stephen Hawking.

This Week at the Library (19/7)

Last week's reading consisted of The Stand by Stephen King and The Associate by Philip Margolin. I also checked out The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel, thinking that it was third in the series, but found out that night that it was not. I returned the book and focused on reading The Stand. I finished it yesterday, and it was quite a read. It was reccommended to me by a number of friends, and a blog I like to read mentioned the book in one of its articles on the Left Behind series. I've been meaning to read it for several months now, but I seem to always forget. Last week I checked it out, though, and I read it. The book is a end-of-the-world horror thriller. A virus called the "Superflu" or "Captain Trips" escapes a military lab and gives western civilization a firm kick in the 'nards. Military officials pass it on to China, the Soviet Union (the book was set in th 1980s at first), and western Europe. The book doesn't mention what happens to the rest of the world, but if what happens in the U.S. is any indicator, nearly everyone dies.

Not everyone dies, though, and the survivors in North America are drawn toward two cities through their dreams. Some people are drawn toward Las Vegas by a man who seems to embody the Devil, and others are drawn toward Boulder, to a very long-lived old woman named "Mother Abagail". The two societies begin to rebuild themselves. As the book's plot unfolds, we see that it's a good/evil struggle with severe religious overtones. That annoyed me, as I had been sold on the book because of the idea that this is a plot that could actually happen -- and some magic floating cowboy is farfetched. Good wins, of course. I don't know that I'll read any more Stephen King since horror isn't my preferred genre, but The Stand was enjoyable. I thought to compare it to two series of books. First is the Left Behind series. However far-fetched the character of Randal Flagg is, he's more believable than the oafish Nicolae Carpathia of Left Behind. Carpatha has a better name, though, so I'll give him that.

The second series that this book reminded me of is Countdown. The Countdown books were written in 1998. They were set in 1999. The first book, January, was set in January of 1999. The second book was February, and the series continued as such until the conclusion of the book at the "beginning" of the Millenium in 2000. The books were meant to cash in on the end of the world hysteria around that time. Some people thought Jesus was going to come back (as they did in in 999), and some thought that Y2K was going to destroy society. I don't know what happened in 2000 in the books, because I didn't get that far. In the beginning, though, society was dealt a grevious blow. On 1 January, 1999, all adults and all children turned into black goo and died. This left the teenagers in charge; scary. The teenagers do as the survivors in The Stand do, although it takes them a bit longer to "rebuild society". They're more concerned with partying . I recall enjoying the books, but as they progressed they included a lot of mystical prophecy, and that annoyed me. I like my apocalypses secular -- religious apocalypses are always silly. I doubt these books are still around, although I did see used copies being sold on Amazon a couple of years ago. I stopped reading around "August", because by that point the "prophecies" were everywhere. The cause of the spontaneous gooification of adults and children was a virus -- this one engineered by the Russians, I think. I never read the end of the book, so I can't be sure -- but I've read synopses of the series.

The second book I read was Philip Margolin's The Associate. It concerns an associate of a big Portland law firm who begins to think that his firm is trying to protect a big pharmaceutical that wants to sell baby-deforming drugs. I enjoyed the book, although I figured out who the "bad guy" was fairly early on. I'll be reading more Margolin in the future.

Pick of the Week: The Stand by Stephen King.

That finishes last week's reading.The third book I selected -- The Plains of Passage -- was actually fourth in the Earth's Children series, so I returned it unread. This week, I picked up:

1. The Middle Ages by Dorothy Mills.
2. Theories for Everything by John Langone, Bruce Stutz, and Andrea Gianopoulos.
3. The Mammoth Hunters by Jean M. Auel.
4. The German Empire by Michael Stürmer.
   

As always, I have high hopes.

This Week At the Library (12/7)

The first book I read last week was Jean M. Auel's The Valley of Horses. It is the second in Auel's Earth's Children series, and I found it immensely entertaining if a bit too fantastic to be believable. In the first book, a young Cro-Magnon girl named Ayla is orphaned by an earthquake. She is found and adopted by a emigrating band of people who call themselves "Clan"; they are Neanderthals and have also been displaced by the earthquake. The Clan of the Cave Bear is set during her growing-up period from childhood to adult hood She is physically and mentally different from the Clan, and her many differences and superior abilities earn her the ill will of the tribe's chieftan's son. At the end of the book, Ayla is exiled from the tribe when the son becomes the ruler. In this second book, she follows a river north hoping to find people that are more like her. She ends up settling in a cave in the middle of a valley occupied by horses. While in the valley, she begins to learn more about herself and her abilities. Her abilities are entertaining, if a bit far-fetched. For instance, she successfully tames a horse and uses it and a cave lion that she rears from a cub to help her hunt. The image of a young woman riding bareback on a horse flanked by a cave lion is interesting, but hard to believe. The book also focuses on another main character; a man named Jondolar. Jondolar is a Cro-Magnon man, and half of the book follows he and his brother Thonolan as they embark on a journey together.As the plot progresses, Jondolar is injured and falls under Ayla's care. As she takes care of them, they learn about one another and fall in love. Eventually the two of them decide to leave the valley together.

The Tribe of Tiger was a look at cats -- both domesticated and wild. It explores why they act the way they do. Tiger is a short but informing read, and I was never bored once. I checked this book out mainly because of a a lifelong fascination with big cats (my bedroom walls through my lifetime have been filled with pictures of lions, cheetahs, and especially tigers), but I think cat owners are the ones who would enjoy this book the most. I may own a cat in the future (once I'm done with university), so I thought it a wonderful read. The author is Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.

Dolphin Days was a similarly-themed book. The book was written by a marine biologist ( Kenneth S. Norris) who records what he learned through years of research into spinner dolphins. I enjoyed the book, but given my love for cetaceans I'm a bit biased. The last book I read this week was the second half of Asimov's Nightfall and other Stories. Asimov is a wonderful writer, although that's like saying Beethoven had an ear for music. I found every single one of the stories in this book to be entertaining. The settings of these various stories vary, but only three of them take a bit of getting used to. The others happen right here on Earth, and many of them not that far in the future. While I loved reading the short stories, I liked the introductions that he prefaced them with best. Asimov's wonderful personality really comes through in them.

Pick of the Week: Nightfall and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov.

Now to determine my reading for this week: I came to the library with four books in mind. The first two were by Philip Margolin. Margolin writes legal thrillers. I have read two of his books; Gone, but Not Forgotten and Proof Positive. The latter could have practically been a CSI episode. Today I aimed to pick up After Dark and The Associate. I found these two books when I searched the library's catalog for information on Portland, Oregon. Margolin lives in Portland, and sets many of his books in that city. I checked out The Associate, which is the story of a young lawyer who finds that his law firm may be defending a company that has committed horrific crimes. I planned to check out After Dark, but was compelled to leave it there until next week.

I made this decision based on the length of the second book I checked out this week; Stephen King's The Stand. Given my inherent disdain for supernaturalism, I do not do much reading in the horror genre. The last horror books I read, in fact, were the Goosebumps and Fear Street books of my childhood. Those are aimed at middle-school and high school students respectively. I have always wanted to read something by King, given his reputation in fiction. The Stand's plot deals with a virus that is accidentally developed and then sweeps across the globe and destroying civilization. It spanned several inches on the shelf, so I decided that three books would suffice for this week.

The third book I checked out was the third in the Earth's Children series. I don't know what Ayla and Jondolar will do, but I look forward to finding out and would bet money that I'll enjoy the read. So, here is my selection for the week:

1. The Stand by Stephen King
2. The Associate by Philip Margolin
3. The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel