2011 Cumulative Reading List

Earlier in the year I took advantage of blogger's "pages" function to keep a running list of everything I've read, since the blog's own index tends to become cluttered. Tomorrow the page shall be wiped clean in preparation for 2012, but here for posterity is the list, updated for the final time only moments ago. There are three books on the list still in need of reviewing, and I fully intended to accomplish that today, but it was a nice day and I spend it outside, reading and dozing in the sun.  You can't blame me for that, can you?

I regard the bolded entries as particularly superior accomplishments. Also note, this is not my annual "year in review" post. That should come sometime this next week, though.

-- January --
1. In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson
2. Reunion, Michael Jan Friedman (Fiction)
3. The Evolution of God, Robert Wright
4. To End All Wars, Adam Hochschild
5. Redcoat, Bernard Cornwell  (Fiction)
6. Sex on Six Legs, Marlene Zuke
7. The Black Echo, Michael Connelly (Fiction)
8. The Rise and Fall of the Bible, Timothy Beal.
9. A Far Better Rest, Susanne Alleyn (Fiction)
10. The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to be Happy, Michael Foley.
11. Beyond Band of Brothers: the War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters, Dick Winters
12. Electric Universe: The Shocking True Story of Electricity, David Bodanis
13. 50 Jobs in 50 States, Daniel Seddiqui

-- February --
14. Star Trek Titan: Sword of Damocles, Geoffrey Thorne. (Fiction)
15. Star Trek Vanguard: Harbinger, David Mack (Fiction)
16. Agincourt, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
17. Star Trek Vanguard: Summon the Thunder, Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore (Fiction)
18. Overlook, Michael Connelly (Fiction)
19. The Near East, Isaac Asimov
20. Star Trek Titan: Over a Torrent Sea, Christopher L. Bennett (Fiction)
21. A History of Life on Earth, Jon Erickson
22. The Revolutionist, Robert Littell (Fiction)
23. The Outline of History, Volume I, H.G. Wells.
24. Paths of Disharmony, Dayton Ward (Fiction)
25. With Wings Like Eagles, Michael Korda


-- March --
26. The History of Japan, Kenneth Scott Latourette
27. The Fort, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
28. Confessions, Augustine of Hippo
29. Reap the Whirlwind, David Mack (Fiction)
30. The Fall of Terok Nor, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (Fiction)
31. The War of the Prophets, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (Fiction)
32. Inferno, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (Fiction)
33. A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe (Fiction)
34. Then Everything Changed, Jeff Greenfield
35. The Forgotten 500,  Gregory Freeman
36. You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, Howard Zinn
37. Bomber, Len Deighton

-- April --
38. Gallows Thief, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
39. What Catholics Really Believe, Karl Keating
40. Echo Park, Michael Connelly (Fiction)
41. The Archer's Tale, Bernard Cornwell  (Fiction)
42. Star Trek Vanguard: Open Secrets, Dayton Ward (Fiction)
43. The Heart and the Fist, Eric Greitens
44. Why Do Catholics Do That?, Kevin Orlin Johnson
45. The Stars, Like Dust, Isaac Asimov (Fiction)
46. The Book of Wisdom, New English Bible
47. Disaster 1906: The  San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, Edward F. Dolan Jr.
48. The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman (Fiction)
49. Ecclesiasticus, New English Bible
50. Sharpe's Rifles, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)

-- May --
51. The Tragedy of the Moon, Isaac Asimov
52. The Coming, Joe Haldeman (Fiction)
53. The Book of Tobit, New English Bible
54. The Undiscovered Country, J.M.Dillard (Fiction)
55. City of Bones, Michael Connelly (Fiction)
56. Guns, Ed McBain (Fiction)
57. The Sea-Wolf, Jack London (Fiction)
58. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (Fiction)
59. Earth Science Made Simple, Edward Albins
60. Cave Paintings to Picasso, Henry Sayre
61. Sharpe's Tiger, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
62. The Ethical Assassin, David Liss (Fiction)
63. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown (Horrible, Horrible Fiction)

--June--
64. Star Trek Vanguard: Precipice, David Mack (Fiction)
65. Montevallo: Images of America, Clark Hultquist and Carey Heatherly
66. All I Really Need to Know I  Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum
67. The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan
68. Sharpe's Triumph, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
69. Biology Made Simple, Rita Mary King
70. The Currents of Space, Isaac Asimov (Fiction)
71. Cop Hater, Ed McBain (fiction)
72. Sharpe's Fortress, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
73. God is not One, Stephen Prothero
74. The Final Storm, Jeff Shaara (fiction)

--July--
75. Sharpe's Trafalgar, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
76. Sharpe's Prey, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
77. Robots and Empire, Isaac Asimov (fiction)
78. An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor
79. Diary of a Wimpy Kid #2: Rodrick Rules,  Jeff Kinney
80. Why Choose the Episcopal Church,  John M. Krumm (fiction)
81. Judge and Jury, James Patterson (fiction)
82. Honeymoon, James Patterson (fiction)
83. The Big Switch, Harry Turtledove (fiction)
84. The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond
85. Diary of a Wimpy Kid #1, Jeff Kinney

--August--
86. Star Trek Titan: Synthesis, James Swallow (fiction)
87. Seven Ages of Paris, Alistair Horne
88. Covert, Bob Delaney
89. Gospel Medicine, Barbara Brown Taylor
90. Isaac Asimov's Caliban, Roger MacBride Allen (fiction)
91. The Age of Faith, Will Durant
92. The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov (fiction)
93. The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Wallace Stegner (fiction)

--September--

94. Astronomy Made Simple, Kevin B. Marvel
95. The Feather Merchants, Max Shulman (fiction)
96. The Illiad, translated by Barbara Leonie Picard
97. Your Faith, Your Life: An Invitation to the Episcopal Church, Jennifer Gamber and Bill Lewellison
98. The Renaissance, Will Durant
99. Sharpe's Gold, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
100. Marcus Aurelius: A Life, Frank McLynn
101. Discourses, Epictetus
102. The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling (fiction)
103. Dhammapada, trans. Max Mueller, annotated by Jack MacGuire
104. The Red Pyramid, Rick Riordian (fiction)
105. Sharpe's Escape, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
106. Walking with Dinosaurs, Tim Haines

--October--

107. The Reformation, Will Durant
108. The Union Club Mysteries, Isaac Asimov (Fiction)
109. The Good German, Joseph Kanon (Fiction)
110. The Lost Hero, Rick Riordan  (Fiction)
111. Pathways, Jeri Taylor (Fiction)
112. The Complete Guide to Walking for Health, Weight Loss, and Fitness; Mark Fenton
113. Sharpe's Fury,  Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
114. Active Living Every Day; Steven Blair, Andrew Dunn, Bess Marcus, Ruth Ann Carpenter, and Peter Jaret.

115. The Planet that Wasn't, Isaac Asimov
116. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (fiction)
117. At Home in Mitford, Jan Karon (fiction)
118. The Beginning Runner's Handbook, Ian MacNeill and Doug Clement.
119. The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, Barbara Rossing
120. Clash of Wings: World War II in the Sky, Walter J. Boyne
121. Sharpe's Company, Bernard Cornwell (Fiction)
122. The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (fiction)

-- November --
123. The Astral, Kate Christensen (fiction)
124. Sharpe's Sword, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
125. KunstlerCast: Conversations with James Howard Kunstler....the tragic comedy of surburban sprawl; Duncan Crary
126. The Greater Journey, David McCullough
127. Plain and Simple: A Woman's Journey to the Amish,  Sue Bender
128. God Has a Dream, Desmond Tutu
129. The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis
130. In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
131. A Light in the Window, Jan Karon (fiction)
132. Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut (fiction)

--December--
133.Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku
134.Redwall, Brian Jacques (fiction)
135. Santa and Pete, Christopher Moore (fiction)
136. Bicycle Diaries, David Byrne
137. The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, James Howard Kunstler
138. Incognito: the Secret Lives of the Brain, David Eagleman
139. Open Your Heart with Bicycling: Mastering Life through the Love of the Road, Shawn B. Rohrbach
140. 11/22/63, Stephen King (fiction)
141. The Litigators, John Grisham (fiction)
142. Sharpe's Enemy, Bernard Cornwell (fiction)
143. Social Graces: Words of Wisdom on Civility in a Changing Society, ed. Jim Brosseau

Sharpe's Enemy

Sharpe's Enemy: Richard Sharpe and the Defense of Portugal, Christmas 1812
© 1984 Bernard Cornwell
351 pages

It's Christmastime, but winter quarters don't exist for Richard Sharpe,  our tall, scar-faced soldier-turned-officer with flint in his eyes. Deserters from the Spanish, Portuguese, British, and French armies have banded together and are terrorizing the countryside, causing considerable friction between the British army and the Spanish themselves. To make matters worse, the renegades have taken a number of royal ladies prisoner and are holding them hostage...and among the leaders of the renegades is Obadiah Hakeswill, a truly despicable creature whose main activities are rape, theft, and escape. Sharpe sets forth with his Rifles to rescue the hostages with a bit of derring-do, but bumps into the French army along the way -- and while they also intend to rescue their own hostages from Hakeswille, the Imperial troops also have other things in mind this Christmas season...

Sharpe's Enemy has all the elements that make for an excellent Sharpe novel --  the action is small in scale, but intense, with Sharpe and his rifles engaged in action first against a castle of blackguards and then an entire French army.  The enemy is an old, familiar, and thoroughly hatable one. The only fictional character whose grisly death I've longed to read more than Hakeswill would be Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter novels. The stakes are high -- the lives of innocents and the potential progress of the allied army in 1813 --  and Sharpe has to contend with idiot aristocrats to boot. It is indeed a rollicking good read...but the ending spoiled things for me. What should have been a gloriously satisfying moment for Sharpe is ruined by late-game action, and that same action threw me off, as well. On the bright side, Cornwell introduced a French intelligence officer with a lot of potential -- and he's supposed to make an appearance in my next Sharpe read, Sharpe's Honour.

The Litigators

The Litigators
© 2011 John Grisham
385 pages

The Litigators may be unique among John Grisham's work in that from the start, it's written as a comedy. The lead character (David Zinc) intoduces himself to the story by having a nervous breakdown on his way to work and taking refuge in a local bar, where he happily drinks the day away before stumbling into a seedy two-man firm of ambulance chasers and declaring that he'd like to be their new associate.  His two new employers, Figg and Finley, border on the pathetic themselves: one is an on-again off-again drunk who can't stay out of rehab, and the other is on his fourth marriage and a fan of get-rich-quick schemes that always result in catastrophe.  While they're not keen on taking on a new hire, one is about to engage the firm in a mass tort action. It seems there's a bad drug on the market, and every lawyer with an eye for the future is trying to get a piece of the pie by piling on. They could use a hand in getting their 'boutique firm' involved, and so Zinc becomes the third man in their unintentional comedy troupe.

Think of The Litigators as The King of Torts meets The Street Lawyer, delivered as a comedy of errors and peopled by two of the Three Stooges. Everything that can go wrong does: by mid-novel they're facing a perfect storm that promises disaster.The lead character is so fundamentally decent, though, that the reader is left wincing at the fact that the poor guy is facing a fate that is the legal equivalent of falling into a woodchipper. But the Litigators isn't simply the story of a horrifically-executed trial:   Zinc finds perverse value in his new life, enjoying the fact that instead of slaving away in a corporate tower working in international finance, he's actually helping people...and so bizaarely, in a novel where the usual fate of Grisham's trials and heroes are reversed,  the ending is unambiguous and (for me) satisfying.  Look for it if you're in a mood for a quick and comedic read with some mild legal-thriller action thrown in.

11/22/63

11/22/63
© 2011 Stephen King
849 pages

What would you do if you could walk through a door and into another world -- the land of ago, where it's always September 1958, where gas is cheap, root beer is creamy, and cars sport tailfins? Such was the opportunity English teacher Jake Epping accepted when his friend Al invited him into the pantry of his diner. For years, Al has known that there exists a curious fissure in spacetime there, one which allows people to pass from the present to 1958 as easily as descending a few steps. He's never revealed it before now, but he has something he wants to accomplish in the past -- something he can't do himself.

The mission, of course, is saving President Kennedy's life on 11/22/63 -- five years from the date that the fissure opens into. If Epping takes on the mission -- and he will, for personal reasons as well as to help his friend Al -- he will have to live at least five years of his life in the past, in a time without modern medicine and conveniences. But the past has its attractions, as well.

11/22/63 is a multistage novel; at first, Epping is drawn in by the extraordinary premise and the novelty of exploring the past. Before setting forth on his mission proper, he takes several jaunts into the past to explore how he might survival in this familiar-yet-alien world, and realizes that simple changes can have broad effects -- and the greater the effect of a potential change, the harder it will be to accomplish. The past is not a static canvas giving Epping free room to move: it is obdurate. It resists change, and the whole of the novel is haunted by the past's resiliency. Even when things seem to be going well, there's still anticipation that something is bound to go horrifically wrong.  As Jake's mission begins in earnest, the novel becomes more a story about a man finding his place in a community. I haven't read much of King (The Stand, Christine, and Firestarter), but I wouldn't expect such emotional meat from an author who is known for horror and fantasy. King's characters seem real, to the point that I started googling at various intervals to see if they were historic personalities. As the fifties give way to the sixties, Jake's mission takes priority -- leading to the action which we've been building up to for hundreds of pages. I had no idea what to expect from the ending, but King delivers a stellar conclusion.

11/22/63 has, I think, displaced The Stand as my favorite King novel. It's as compelling a character drama as I've ever read, filled with little historical details that delighted a person fascinated with the period like myself -- and of course,  driven by the tantalizing lure of being able to change the past.  Definite recommendation. Had I participated in the Broke and the Bookish's most recent list (top ten books read in 2011), this would have have been on there.

The City in Mind

The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition
© 2001 James Howard Kunstler
272 pages

The study of civilization is nothing less than the study of the culture of cities. Humanity has survived on the Earth for hundreds of thousands of years, but not until we began to aggregate in cities did we truly come into our own. Cities have been the cultural centers of our race and the driving force of our history which unlocked our potential in the last ten thousand years or so, and in The City in Mind, James Howard Kunstler reflects on their role in our history and their contribution to the quality of our everyday lives, focusing on a panel of select cities that may allow us to see what makes a city work and what drives it towards failure.

In The Geography of Nowhere,  Kunstler railed against the disintegration of the American city and the rise of what he sees as an imminently inferior form of urban living -- suburban sprawl. Although a couple of chapters here reflect that theme,  the book is not as intensely focused. It reads something like a collection of essays, each giving the history of a given city's development and emphasizing one particular period or element. The opening chapter on Paris is devoted to Napoleon III and Hausmann's thoughtful redesign of Paris in the 19th century, for instance, and how it led to a fairly ugly medieval city's transformation into a jewel of urban design.  Kunstler visits the classic spirit with Rome, and with Boston shows the reader how a city can recover from decades of thoughtless planning and sprawl.  I bought this book in part because I delight in reading Kunstler when he's on a  critical rampage, destroying atrocious buildings and miles of commercial strips and box stories with biting with -- and two chapters on Las Vegas and Atlanta give him just the excuse. Atlanta is used as a case-study for the failure of edge cities, while Vegas -- which Kunstler surely deems the worst city in America -- showcases a wide variety of failures, from the practical to the spiritual.  Kunstler is not a religious man, but he sees proper urban design as something which enhances the value of life; when done properly, it honors us and creates a place worth living in.

The chapters mentioned are the book's strong points. There were other sections, like that on Mexico City, that I didn't quite understand the point of. Kunstler is informative there -- I'd known nothing about the history of the modern city following the Spanish conquest -- but to what urban design-related end. I had the same reaction to another chapter, possibly because I expected more sections along the lines of Paris and Las Vegas, chapters which clearly point out good and dismal approach at design, whereas Kunstler had a more general focus in mind. Some sections are available on Kunstler's website for your reading pleasure.

Top Ten Books I'd Like to See Under the Tree

This week the Broke and the Bookish want to know what books we'd most like to receive for Christmas.


There's virtually no chance of my getting books for Christmas, because despite being from a family of readers,  everyone claims they don't know what kind of books I'm liable to like. I consider this a silly claim given that I read almost everything (I even have a list of books I'd like!), but even my attempts at getting books indirectly -- by requesting bookstore giftcards -- have rendered nothing. I did have some success last year when, on my birthday, I asked that someone please give me cash so I could buy some used books online. I managed to buy three Star Trek novels with my birthday money.

But, if I lived in an alternate universe where people gave me books for Christmas, the ten I'd be most delighted to see under the tree would be...

1. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human, V.S. Ramachandran. I almost bought this for myself last January, but went with three Trek books instead.

2. The Architecture of Community, Leon Krier OR The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs.

3. On Desire: Why We Want What We Want, William Braxton Irvine. Ho, ho, I'm desiring a book on desire.

4. Star Trek Vanguard: What Judgments Come, Dayton Ward

5. In Praise of Idleness and other Essays, Bertrand Russell

6. Life Ascending: the Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, Nick Lane

7. The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization, Brian M. Fagan.



8. The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century, James Howard Kunstler.  Primarily about the consequences of peak oil.

9.  The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P.  Feynman. I've never read Feynman before, but the Symphony of Science series stirred my interest in both him and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

10. On Disobedience: Why Freedom Means Saying "No" To Power, Erich Fromm. I don't know what this   one will be about, properly, but Fromm is a provocative author.

I would have included a book by Phil Plait (Death from the Skies or Bad Astronomy), but I think I'm going to buy one of those for my birthday this year. I'm trying to break myself of the habit of spending my leisure-book money on Trek instead of science and sociology books, which I think I should prioritize since my home library doesn't carry a lot of those.

Teaser Tuesday (20 December)

Teaser Tuesday! Happy teasing and Merrie Yuletide/Solstice/Christmas!

"It sounds as though you've been trying to sew your skin back together," said Mrs. Weasley with a snort of mirthless laughter, "but even you, Arthur, wouldn't be that stupid --"

 "I fancy a cup of tea, too," said Harry, jumping to his feet. Hermione, Ron, and Ginny almost sprinted to the door with him. As it swung closed behind them, they heard Mrs. Weasley shriek, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THAT'S THE GENERAL IDEA?"

p. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, p. 507. I'm doing a Christmastime re-read of the Harry Potter series.

For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago -- silently, without warning -- that tide reversed, and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current. Without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the last third of the century.

p. 27: Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert D. Putnam

And thank you to my nephew, who pointed out that I'd written today's date as 20 September for some reason.

Bicycle Diaries

Bicycle Diaries
© 2009 David Byrne
297 pages

Though I've never heard of the musician and visual artist David Bryne before, his recollections of time spent in some of the world's greatest cities had my attention from the start -- for he experienced them on the saddle of a bike, bringing a fold-up bicycle with him as part of his luggage. The bicycle allows him to explore cities more intimately than from a car, but more quickly than on foot -- and while he cycles through Berlin, Istanbul, London, Buenos Aires, he ponders on subjects which they inspire.

Every city inspires musing on different matters. He begins with a fantastic critique of American cities that is right out of The Geography of Nowhere: I posted a selection here. In Buenos Aires, he writes about the local music scene: in Berlin, a visit to the Stasi museum prompts an essay about justification and human nature. Thoughts on biking bookend the text; his final section on New York focuses mainly on its attempts to become a more bike-friendly city, and the epilogue addresses the bicycle's potentially expanding role in the future as energy crises force us to make more intelligent decisions about where we live and how we get around. These and the opening section on American cities made the book for me.

Cities featured are Berlin, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Manila, Sydney, London, San Francisco, and New York.

Incognito

Incognito: the Secret Lives of the Brain
© 2011 David Eagleman
304 pages

Carl Sagan once described astronomy as a 'profoundly humbling experience', for it allows us to appreciate how infinitesimally small Earth -- and ourselves --are in relation to the size of the Cosmos. David Eagleman sees neurology in very much the same way, and even uses Copernicus and Galileo as his models in introducing the study of the brain to lay readers. While those two astronomers unseated the heavens by helping people to realize Earth is not the center of the universe, neurology makes us realize we are not the center of ourselves. The conscience self is a very small part of an incredibly intricate and surprisingly autonomous brain.

The brain has always fascinated me. While those of us raised in the west are typically taught to take for granted that there is a separate, inviolable "I"-- a true Self, a soul -- residing in us, aspects of that "self", like our personality, have been proven to be tied to the ordinary grey matter of the brain and its millions of firing synapses. And from another angle -- that of philosophy or religion -- we seem to have not one Self, but multiple selves, each with its own ideas. Our brains produce thoughts completely without our input: are "we" really in control?  I'm reminded of a line from the Christian writer Paul: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."  But while Paul decided that he was a man possessed by sin, neurology can shed more light on the subject. Eagleman describes our brains as a 'team of rivals', an organ which has preserved several different evolutionary approaches to solving the same problem -- and while this allows us to be fundamentally creative creatures, it leads to self-conflict, self-conflict that requires that which we call consciousness. That small, minute portion of our brain can make important decisions, but it is rather like the CEO at the head of an international company -- a crucial, but overwhelmingly minor part. The vast majority of our body's and our brain's activity is completely concealed from us, and Eagleman's examples -- written for a lay audience - -should astonish those completely new to the subject.  I have a hearty appreciation for the subject matter (having read V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain), but found Incognito a fun reminder.

Incognito is open to all readers, though those who are more versed in the subject matter (readers of Ramachandran, Daniel Dennett, and Stephen Pinker, say) may find it a bit  light in content.

Redwall

Redwall
© 1986 Brian Jacques
351 pages

At the edge of a great wood there stands a tall, red-brick abbey that offers peace, medicine, food, and sanctuary to call creatures in need. Its name is Redwall...and it is run by a quasi-religious order of mice.

Many years ago my home librarian brought this book to me and reccommended that I read it. I found it utterly captivating. I'd never read fantasy before, never developing a taste for magic and strange creatures -- but this was a different kind of fantasy, one in which real creatures simply took the place of human characters in a story that seemed positively epic to a younger reader such as myself. I'd only ever read books with simple plots before, but Redwall sported multiple stories: while the central conflict is one of good versus evil, with a great army of vermin (literal vermin -- rats, stoats, and weasels) arriving in hopes of conquering Mossflower,  the lead character Matthias is sent on a hero's quest, to find the lost sword of a legendary figure from Redwall's past so that he might destroy Cluny the Scourge.  His quest involves many dangers and distractions, comprising a series of perilous adventures, and Jacques tells that story while at the same time reporting on the siege of the abbey -- a siege fought with quasi-medieval weaponry, which should seem silly but works surprisingly well. It's as though this is set in the medieval-fantasy world of the Lord of the Rings, but using animal characters like moles who can dig tunnels in addition to wielding spears. Redwall inspired an entire series of novels set in this world and has a highly loyal fanbase who have taken to Jacques' characters with such gusto that they can have entire conversations in the dialects of his characters. I err, know from personal experience.

Redwall is an interesting literary experience, a mix of the mundane and fantastic, with lots of fun characters  and an easy-to-loathe villain. Although some of the magic has worn off since my childhood, I enjoyed my little return to Redwall Abby this Christmas season.

Related:  XKCD did a comic entitled "Notes on Rereading Redwall Books for the First Time Since Childhood" I rather like.

Related:
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NiMH, Robert C. O'Brien

Five Bookish Questions

Kelly of the Broke and the Bookish shared a quick book survey tonight, and I figured, why not?



1. The book I'm currently reading is Incognito: the Secret Lives of the Brain, by David Eagleman, which covers neurology and the subsconscious. It's probably one of the most fascinating books I've read this year, which is not surprising given my interest in the subject. The author and I definitely like reading the same guys: he's already quoted V.S. Ramachandran, whose "Phantoms in the Brain" absolutely astonished me, and Michael Shermer, who some may recognize as the author of Why People Believe Weird Things.

2.The last book I finished was...The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, by James Howard Kunstler, although perhaps I should mention Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne since I think I skipped a page or two of the Kunstler book. I was reading while being forced to listen to someone talk on the phone, and my attention wasn't quote focused.

3.The next book I want to read would be Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert Putnam. Before I lived in a university town, I'd never experienced how enriching living in an actual, healthy, human-sized community could be; I grew up living outside of town, and viewed it as a place we 'went to', not a place we lived in. After having graduated and moved back to my hometown for the time being, I found I missed the constant interaction with neighbors and fellow townspeople, so I've been actively  engaging myself in the local community and reflecting on how we've become isolated from one another in the last decades of the 20th century, despite the rise of connective technology like iphones and interstates.

4.The last book I bought would be Bowling Alone, though I purchased it and The City in Mind within a day of one another.

5.The last book I was given was 2000 Years of Prayer, edited by Michael Counsell, which contains a huge variety of Christian prayers, beginning with those mentioned in the Christian New Testament and including prayers from most every branch of Christianity. It's a fascinating resource for seeing the diversity and growth of Christianity through the centuries. The gift has strong sentimental value for me because the giver -- a new friend of mine who happens to be the associate rector at a local church -- was given a copy of this book by her parents when she attended seminary, so I know she's sharing something profoundly meaningful to her. She thought I would appreciate it given my interests in history, philosophy, and comparative religion, and she was right.

Santa and Pete

Santa and Pete: A Novel of Christmas Present and Past
© 1998 Christopher Moore and Pamela Johnson
176 pages

Seven year-old Terrence has no interest in spending his Saturdays keeping his elderly grandfather company while the older man runs his bus route.Who wants to be cooped up on a bus listening to an old man's stories when he could be outside playing? And the stories don't even make sense; they're about a place called New Amsterdam, a place grandpa seems to see when he looks out the window and sees New York. Instead of skyscrapers and apartment complexes, Terrence's grandfather acts as though he lives in a 17th century harbor town, where immigrants throughout Europe and Africa lived together and tried to make a world for themselves. Terrence can't help but notice the way passengers respond to the stories, though -- they lean forward, eyes bright, minds captivated by the way their driver can connect them with the past. And one snowy Christmas eve, when the bus breaks down in a blizzard, they are forced to wait -- but in the meantime, break out snacks from their shopping and hunker down while they're told the story of a man named St. Nicholas and his good friend Pete.

The story is set in a Christmas long ago, when Nicholas and his friend Peter traveled from the Netherlands to the New World, after hearing that the children there were in distress. They find the town  (New Amsterdam) enduring a poor harvest, a harsh winter, and on the verge of war with the natives. This being a Christmas story, Nicholas and Pete bring hope, peace, and friendship to the town and its perceived foes. Author Christopher Moore (not of Lamb fame) has produced a story that is a fascinating mix of fantasy, legend, and mythic history. I doubt many Americans are familar with the Dutch Christmas mythos, in which St. Nicholas arrives in town accompanied not by elves, but by a black man of Moorish descent named Piet -- or multiple black men. David Sedaris wrote about Christmas in Holland in the sketch, "Six to Eight Black Men". Although Sedaris revels in the absurdest aspects of the legend, here Moore presents the story of the two men in all seriousness. Their close friendship in a time of ethnic conflict should speak to American audiences, and despite playing fast and loose with both history and convention myth, the story itself is a charmer.

Teaser Tuesday (13 December)

Teaser Tuesday! 

You're not perceiving what's out there. You're perceiving whatever your brain tells you. 

Incognito: the Secret Lives of the Brain, David Eagleman. p. 33. This is a fascinating little about about neurology and the subconscious.

They say that Antarctica is the worst place on earth, but I believe that distinction belongs to Las Vegas, hands down. For one thing, Antarctica is more pleasing to look at.

The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, James Howard Kunstler. p.142

This Week at the Library (9 December)

This being the Christmas season, I'm currently in the middle of a Harry Potter re-read. This is not a tradition, though it may become one: in 2007 I re-read the entire series during Christmas break after I'd returned home from university, and for whatever reason the Christmas season strikes me as an appropriate time to revisit the series. Perhaps it is the magic of the season. In any case, my desktop wallpaper is also of Harry, Hermione, and Ron sitting in the Griffyndor common room, dressed for winter. At the moment I am halfway through Goblet of Fire, and Harry is stressing out over who to invite to the Yule Ball.

For serious reading, I'm halfway into The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. Like most books on physics and cosmology, it's a daunting mindscrew...but I'm staying with it and even learning from it. I've been using Galileo's Finger to help me, as it covers some of the same territory in a different perspective. (Galileo's Finger is a science book I've been chewing on for months. I could rush through it, but I like the author's approach enough to take things slow.)

Additionally, last night I began re-reading a book I read earlier in the year, but never reviewed. (It is on the cumulative reading list, though.) I'm in the mood for it, it's an excellent book, and I'd like to share it on here before year's end. The only other book I've failed to review is Erich Fromm's The Sane Society, and I will re-read it, too..eventually.

Oh! And I just realized today that there's a reason my library doesn't carry a novel called Sharpe's Skirmish. There's no such thing. That's a short story in another novel, Sharpe's Christmas. So, next week I'll be continuing in the Sharpe series. I'd been reading it chronologically, and wasn't sure what to do when I saw Skirmish is next in the series and my library didn't have it. Next up is Sharpe's Enemy, which is set around Christmas, so that's perfect.

Physics of the Future

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
© 2011 Michio Kaku
389 pages

We live in a remarkable time of human history. Since the industrial revolution, society has been radically altered by new innovations on a regular basis, and the rate of those world-changing transformations is ever-increasing, like a snowball growing in size and strength as it barrels down a hill. In Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku attempts to identify what changes may come in the 21st century, after interviewing hundreds of scientists from various fields. The result is extraordinarily interesting, covering projected developments in computers, artificial intelligence, medicine, nanotechnology, energy, and space travel as well as the future of wealth and humanity itself.

Although Kaku's field of theoretical physics doesn't lend itself well to lay understanding, here he writes expressly for a popular audience, inundating the text with references to pop culture. While he does engage in some scientific discussion from time to time to explain the basis of new technologies, the book emphasizes their effect on everyday lives, and his ultimate goal seems to be to wake the public up to the potential of science and the importance of appreciating it. When writing on technology,  that's easy to do -- there's no shortage of new toys that Kaku can tantalize readers with.  Imagine being able to take care of your entire morning routine -- cooking, errands, etc -- with a few orders given to your home computer via a headset while you sit in bed, for instance.

Considering the range of chapters, there seems to be something for everyone here. Being keen on human space flight, for instance, I looked forward to reading about the various ways in which we might further explore the deep black. While I try to stay well-read on that subject, Kaku touched on approaches I'd never heard of --like launching swarms of "nanoships".  Our medical prospects seem exciting and wondrous.  His predictions on the future of computers frankly horrified me, as he envisions increasing immersion inside virtual environments, or rather a day in which there's no real distinction between virtual and 'real' environments. We're already seeing this today, with applications for our gadgets that read the environment and give restaurant reviews for the dining establishments on a given street, but in the future this interaction will rely on contact lenses that project the Internet onto our eyeballs.

Kaku's work is triumphantly optimistic about the way technology will continue to dominate human lives,  which I appreciated given the cynical spirit of our times. However, more thoughtful consideration to the possible consequences of these technologies on our lives might have been in order. His projections point toward a world in which humans are increasingly spectators in their own lives, the subjects of Matrix-like domination by technology.  Considering the health problems our current use on automation has given us, do we really want a future in which that is increased?  There are seven billion people alive today, most of us doing jobs that Kaku sees machines doing in a hundred years. The kind of social disruption  that widespread job losses would cause is unimaginable.  He also takes a curiously light attitude toward energy. It would seem to me that in a world as technologically dominated as his in 2100, the section on energy would be fundamentally important -- the foundation on which every other section is based. Instead, it is treated as lightly as a commercial advertising toys mentions the need for batteries.

Even with these limitations, Physics of the Future recommends itself. It's open to anyone remotely literate and should have surprises in store even for those who consider themselves tolerably well-read in matters of science and technology. I imagine the sharpest criticism would come from those interested in social sciences like myself.

In Defense of Food

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
© 2009 Michael Pollan
256 pages

Michael Pollan's seminal work, The Omnivore's Dilemma, established that there's no such thing as a free, or even a cheap, lunch.  The low-cost processed foods that the American diet takes for granted exact their price in other ways. The abundance of food in the developed world has coincided, not accidentally, with a decline in its quality - - and so, curiously, while most of us can take the availability of food for granted, we can no longer take for granted that it is in fact food. Food has lost its meaning in the American mind, Pollan asserts here, and science and technology are to blame.

Pollan sees food as having fallen to the twofold assault of industrial agricultural and and ideological which he calls "nutritionism", which reduces food to nothing more than a carrier of nutrients. In his view, this misses the forest for a few twigs on a tree and ignores relationships between different food in traditional diets and the interplay of nutrients and body chemistry. Further, he believes that industrial agriculture  creates not food, but products resembling food -- and that nutritionism aids and abets this, creating a situation in which people are "overfed and undernourished".

In Defense of Food presents a problem for me. On the one hand, there are significant ideas worthy of consideration in here -- people do overly fixate on the value of one nutrient or another, industrial agriculture does sacrifice quality for quantity, and yes, the constant pattern of nutritional fixation does dovetail perfectly with relentless advertising-driven consumerism. Pollan's "food rules" make sense, like "Don't eat anything that doesn't look like food".  That is, if you want cheese, eat cheese -- not puffs of god-knows-what covered in orange powder.

The great problem for me is the anti-scientific attitude that develops from his attack on "nutritionism", an ideology which Pollan sees as being the spawn of scientists, journalists, and advertisers.  While scientists are just as human and potentially self-serving as anyone else, they attract the bulk of Pollan's ire. He mocks the fact that a half-century of nutritional advice has seen Americans grow not healthier, but fatter -- as if obesity and nutritional disorders were caused not by the popularity of fast food or a society dominated by cars, but by the fact that people followed the advice of a government study and got themselves fat by trying to stick to low-fat diets. A spirit of petty resentment pervades the book, as if Pollan is insulted that scientists would dare get their grubby lab gloves over his food. Those of us who are interested in science know all too well that the media does a horrible job at attempting scientific journalism, being irresponsible and ignorant of the subject --  leaving no room for nuance and pitching stories in such a way as to grab headlines. (PhD Comics did a GREAT comic on this.)  Pollan mentions the hype over resveratol, for instance, a compound found in many foods of the French diet which has been linked to health and longevity. While Pollan uses this as an example of nutritional fixation, I recently read an interview with the scientist whose work prompted the media frenzy (in Michio Kaku's The Physics of the Future), and he was dismayed by the way the media failed to understand that the variable he was studying was only one factor of many.  Here it is Pollan, not the scientist, who is overemphasizing the work.

In Defense of Food may be worth considering if you are just starting to become conscious or mindful about the foods you eat, but given Pollan's bias I can't earnestly recommend it to you. Given the importance of food, I'm sure there are superior books out there on the subject.