This Week at the Library (3/12)

Books this Update:

• A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
• Colonization: Down to Earth, Harry Turtledove
• Armageddon in Retrospect, Kurt Vonnegut
• Almost Everyone's Guide to Science, Joshua Gribbin
• Women in the Middle Ages, Frances and Joseph Gies

This past week encompassed Thanksgiving, and so during the holiday I read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I love the story, and enjoy a tradition of watching the movie adaption with Patrick Stewart every Christmas -- or whenever I feel like watching it. Everyone in the west knows the story -- a selfish old miser who retorts "Bah, humbug!" at every "Merry Christmas!" who is visited by spirits and experiences a change of heart. That's a simplistic rendition of an extraordinarily well-written story -- a story that never fails to move me when I read it or watch the Stewart movie. Dickens' reputation is well-deserved. The ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come force Scrooge to realize the effects his actions have had on him and others. The story is a triumphant story of human redemption.

Next I continued in the Colonization series with Down to Earth. Down to Earth continues showing the effects long-term Lizard occupation has had on the Earth, as well as showing the effects of the colonization fleet's recent arrival. The fleet brings with it animals from Home, which interact with Earth's environment and native species. Meanwhile, political strife between the humans and the Lizards -- particularly in regard to Nazi Germany -- increases. This book is heavy on characterization, something I sometimes fail to comment on while focused on the story. I thought it excellent.

Next up was a series of writings by Kurt Vonnegut -- a speech, a letter, an essay, and a number of short stories. All had something to do with war and peace after war. Many of the stories were directly tied to World War 2, in which Vonnegut fought. I enjoyed most of the stories, with a couple of exceptions. As it usual with Vonnegut, I'm at a loss as to how to summarize the book.

Following this I read Almost Everyone's Guide to Science, a science book that provides the reader with a basic understanding of everything from atoms to evolution to the universe. The author begins with the atom and then moves up -- atoms to the molecules of life, the Sun to the solar system, the solar system to the universe -- and ties chapters neatly together at the end with a brief summary that doubles as a lead-in to the next chapter. I think the book is well-done.

Lastly, I read Women in the Middle Ages by Frances and Joseph Gies. The book is typical of the Gies in that it is a short, well-written historical narrative that quotes generous from primary sources and employs medieval art to illustrate its points. The book is divided into background chapters -- which examine women in the context of feudalism and theology -- and case-study chapters that focus on individual women to show what life was like for other women in their position. The case-study women range from working-class to nuns to noblewomen. I think Women in the Middle Ages may be one of the Gies' better works.

Pick of the Week: A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

Quotation of the Week: "Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have. What occurs to people when they read Kurt is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly difference place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that." - Mark Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect

Next Week:

• The Knight in History, Frances and Joseph Gies
• The Russian Revolution, Richard Pipes
• Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer

Women in the Middle Ages

Women in the Middle Ages
© Frances and Joseph Gies 1978
236 pages, plus index, notes, and bibliography.

Again this week I read from Frances and Joseph Gies' series on daily life in the medieval era. The book is divided smartly into two parts: background and women. The four background chapters detail the roles that social and other institutions shaped for women, beginning with a short summary of "Women in History". The two institution looked at in particular are the church and the feudal system. "Eve and Mary" focuses more on the theology backed by the church rather than the church itself.

The second part of the book consists of a series of seven case-studies. Each chapter focuses on one woman in particular, using her story to establish what kind of life other women in her situation lived. The women range in class and time -- the Gies relate the stories of an abbess (to explore female monasteries), an old noble (Blanche of Castile), bourgeoisie's women during the beginning and height of Europe's economic revival, peasants, and others in between.

The book ends with a summary, one that begins this way:

During the thousand years of the Middle Ages, Western society made historic strides, technological, commercial, political. Medieval innovations revolutionized industry, architecture, agriculture and intellectual life, while alleviating and enhancing daily living with the spinning wheel, water mill, windmill, wheelbarrow, crank, cam, flywheel, lateen sail, rudder, compass, stirrup, gunpowder, padded horse collar, nailed horse-shoe, three-field system, Gothic engineering, distillation, universities, rhymed verse, Hindu-Arabic numbers, the modern theater, movable type, and the printing press. The Commercial Revolution of the high Middle Ages, led by merchants like Francesco Datini, opened the new age of capitalism, as feudal political fragmentation gave way to new national states.

The technological, economic, and political surge could not fail to have its impact on women -- on the work they did, the clothes they wore, the food they ate, the houses they lived in; the health, security, stability, and intellectual enrichment of their lives.

Some parts of the book are mildly repetitive of Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages, but that's to be expected. As usual, the Gies write a relaxed and informative narrative that incorporates quotations from primary sources, resulting in a thoroughly interesting and informative read. I would probably say this is my third or fourth-favorite Gies novel (the first and second being Life in a Medieval City and Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel) One chapter mentions "Rose the Regrater", which was amusing.

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens

For a number of years now, I have made a tradition of watching A Christmas Carol with Patrick Stewart. I do not recall the first time I watched the movie, but it became an instant favorite. I will go so far as to say that the movie changed my life for the better in that through it I was able to gain the will to redeem my own self. I watched it during a troubled time in my life where I needed it. It is to me a powerful story about the ability of human beings to change themselves for the better. Although I have watched movie numberless times -- through several Christmases and during the year, even when Christmas was far away -- I have never read the story that inspired it. I decided to amend that this year.

The story is a familiar one: I would wager most people in the west have heard of it. They have at least heard the name Scrooge, and many people might remember that he was visited by ghosts and realized the "true meaning" of Christmas (as if there's only one). I remember as a child that Dickens "A Christmas Ghost Story" did spook me as a ghost story -- what with its doorknobs changing into the howling faces of dead people and spirits wandering about. During this past Thanksgiving break, I sat down and read the story -- and oh, what a story!


Old Marley was as dead a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile, and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country's done for.

A Christmas Carol is the story of one Ebeneezer Scrooge, the partner of the late Jacob Marley and something of a miser. Dickens writes that his heart was so cold that the winter wind did not bother him and the summer sun didn't warm him up -- so cold that everyone around him avoided his company. John Irving introduced the story in the copy I had, and he writes that although we see Scrooge as a caricature that Dickens was attempting to convey an accurate depiction of Dickensian England's heartless "robber barons". Scrooge likes profit -- so much that he doesn't bother repainting his firm's sign after the death of Marley, and snaps at his clerk (Bob Crachit) for attempting to burn coal.

Having introduced Scrooge as a selfish, spiteful old miser, Dickens begins his "Christmas ghost story" with peculiar things happening to him. A spectre of a hearse goes before him; his door-knob changes into the face of his late partner, howling at him; the portraits on his fireplace change into portraits of Marley. Finally a ghost appears -- the image of Marley, transparent and clothed in his funeral apparel -- but with additional elements, that of cash-boxes and money registers trained to him. Scrooge is at first skeptical, maintaining that he could be seeing things -- his senses could be fooled by undercooked food -- "A blot of mustard, a bit of moldy cheese...there's more of gravy than grave about you, friend".

Marley (after convincing Scrooge of his existence) warns Scrooge that unless his heart changes, he is in for a fate like Marley's -- to roam the Earth without rest as punishment for his selfishness. "It is required of every man," the ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death." Scoorge is perplexed that Marley is being punished -- he was a good businessman. Marley replies (in one of my favorite lines) "Business! Mankind was my business! The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business!"

Marley informs Scrooge that he will be visited by three ghosts as part of his reclamation. The next three parts of the story concern the visits of the three ghosts -- the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come. Each ghost takes Scrooge places and forces him to examine his life and the consequences of the decisions he has made. The Ghost of Christmas Past particularly upsets Scrooge. Bit by bit, we see Scrooge being slowly changed -- his heart slowly thawing. By the time he is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come, he is determined to not let certain things happen.

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge, "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!" cries Scrooge as he and the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come approach a grave. Upon seeing his own name, Scrooge insists that he is not the man he once was -- "I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall shrive within me! I will not shut out the lessons that they teach! Oh, tell me that I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"

With those words, Scrooge finds himself in his bed -- alive -- on Christmas day, and begins to live with the spirit of Christmas for the first time, making amends to his fellow human beings. It is to be a wonderful story of human redemption -- of the power of the human will to change one's self for the better, to rise above that selfishness that comes to easily and to reach out to one another. Dickens' prose is marvelous, as is his use of symbolism. I highly recommend the story to you -- it's only a little over a hundred pages -- and declare it this week's Pick of the Week.

One quotation -- this from Scrooge's nephew Fred in response to Scrooge calling Christmas a humbug.

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, " returned the nephew [of Scrooge]: "Christmas, among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round [...] as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open up their shut-up hearts freely and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe it has done me good and will do me good, and I say God bless it!"

Almost Everyone's Guide to Science

Almost Everyone's Guide to Science
© 1998 John Gribbin
200ish pages

What's this? Science? With no history of- or -fiction added to it? Can it be? After so many months? Yes! The Thanksgiving holiday afforded me the opportunity to do more reading than usual, so I was able to find a science book to read. Almost Everyone's Guide to Science is a popular science book intended to give the reader a background in everything from atoms to the universe. I wanted to read a science book, and this was particularly useful because after so long a recess, my grasp on some of the topics I read about during the summer has been slipping.

The book is arranged topically, with the subjects increasing in scope as the book wears on. We begin with the atom and end with the universe. Humans -- via a chapter on evolution -- pop up midway through. The author is a talented writer, I think, one who manages to make abstract ideas easy to understand. He also ties together the entire book smartly. A paragraph at the end of each chapter summarizes the preceding chapter and frames it in such a way as to introduce the next chapter, tying the two topics together.

It was an excellent read, and my thanks go to whichever librarian put it on display, as that's how I found it on my way up to peruse the shelves.

Colonization: Down to Earth

Colonization: Down to Earth
© 2000 Harry Turtledove
618 pages

I continued reading Turtledove's Colonization series this week. "Down to Earth" is the second book in said series, which is about Earth in the 1960s. The Lizards have held the southern hemisphere and China for nearly twenty years, and the newly-arrived colonization fleet is making Earth more Home-like to them. Growing political political strife between the human nation-states and the Lizards -- and between the human nation-states themselves -- was the theme of the last book, and that continues in this. The Lizard version of the internet makes its appearance in this book. I always find that depictions of internet activity -- particularly from the late 1990s -- are always a little awkward. I don't know why.

The characters occupying this book are for the most part veterans of the Worldwar books, although there are a number of newcomers. One of the more interesting newcomers is Kassquit, a human female who has been raised by Lizards as a Lizard. Another element introduced is that of animals from Home -- grazing animals and pets -- being introduced into Earth's ecosystem. It strikes me as odd that the Lizards didn't anticipate what would happen when they did so -- since they boast so often that they are a methodical race that plans things through.

The aforementioned political strife is mostly between Nazi Germany and the Race. While the United States and the Soviet Union both realize that humanity is not yet ready to fight the lizards, the Nazis -- being who they are -- constantly provoke the Race, leading to a war at the end of the book that has the predictable conclusion. I really enjoyed the book, but will be taking a brief break from the series next week.

Armageddon in Retrospect

Armageddon in Retrospect
© 2008 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Trust
232 pages.

Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have. What occurs to people when they read Kurt is that thigns are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly difference place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that. - Mark Vonnegut

Armageddon in Retrospect, published posthumously, is Kurt Vonnegut's final collection of short stories and essays. A fan of Vonnegut recommended the book to me, although I probably would have read it anyway. (He works in the university library and so was able to check it out before I spotted it.) I had hoped the book is a collection of anti-war essays, but it is closer to a collection of short stories than a collection of essays. The book opens with a letter written from Vonnegut to his family during the war -- he fought during World War 2 for a few minutes before being captured by Germans during the Battle of the Bulge -- and a speech he gave, and all that follows is short stories.

Vonnegut's short stories tend to be hit and miss for me, although I did enjoy most included in this book. There were a couple that I read through without really understanding them, but they were happy exceptions. Most of the stories deal with the war in some form or another: in "Guns Before Butter", a gang of POWs are obsessed with food recipies, to the annoyance of their German supervisier; in "Brighten Up", Vonnegut tells the story of a prisoner-turned-collaborator; in "The Commandant's Desk", Vonnegut examines Amerian occupation. "The Commandant's Desk" is probably my favorite of the stories.

My favorite piece in the book is "Wailing Shall Be in All Streets", which is a nonfiction essay where Vonnegut describes the Dresdren bombing. All in all, rather interesting. I'm glad I read the book.

This Week at the Library (26/11)

Books this Update:

• Colonization: Second Contact, Harry Turtledove
• The Winds of Change and Other Stories, Isaac Asimov
• Life in a Medieval Village, Frances and Joseph Gies
• The Art of Living, Epictetus -- trans. Sharon Leben

I began reading Harry Turtledove's Colonization series this week, which is a sequel series to his Worldwar. The Worldwar books, you may remember, featured a race of aliens interrupting the course of World War 2 by invading -- forcing Nazis, Soviets, the Japanese, Chinese nationalists, Chinese communists, and the Allies to work together. The lizards -- who call themselves the Race -- are unable to complete their plans to annex Earth, as they were unprepared to fight humanity, which had industrialized far more quickly than the Lizards anticipated. This series is set twenty years later. Human society and Lizard society co-exist, fairly peacefully, and each influences the other. Some humans -- Chinese nationalists and communists, as well as Muslim fundamentalists -- still fight the Lizards. Human technology has increased dramatically: cars are now hydrogen-powered, and humans have landed on both the Moon and Mars. As the book wears on, we see the increasing strain that the arrival of the Race's colonization fleet -- full of equipment, females, and so on -- is putting on Race-Human relations. Very good stuff: a refreshing change from the military-focused writing of the last books in the Worldwar series.

Next I continued reading the Gies' medieval history series with Life in a Medieval Village. The Gies' approach was similar to previous works -- using a case-studying, quoting heavily from primary sources, and weaving an enjoying and fairly interesting narrative. I didn't find this one qite as captiving as others -- like last week's Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel -- but perhaps those more excellent ones have spoiled me. We'll see.

Next I read a collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov called The Winds of Change and Other Stories. There were 21 stories in all, and I found all but one of them to be quite enjoyable. There's humor here as well as Asimov's brand of technological "thriller" stories. Quite enjoyable. Some were repeats, but I don't mind re-reading Asimov's stuff. Even if I know what is going to happen, his stories are such a delight to read for me.

Lastly I read a compilation of two works by Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher. The works were translated into modern English by Sharon Leben. The book is rather short (I finished it in two sittings) but very page is full of wisdom. The discourses are simply worded, quite frank, and exceptionally compelling to the student of philosophy. I was thrilled to read it. Epictetus advocates a life of virtue and self-control, saying that philosophy is a matter of everyday living -- not something that should be limited to religious instructors and professional philosophers. Exceptional stuff, I think.

Pick of the Week: The Art of Living, Epictetus, trans. Sharon Leben
Quotation of the Week: Anything from The Art of Living. Here's a sample: "Those who seek wisdom come to understand that even though the world may reward us for wrong or superficial reasons, such as our physical appearance, the family we come from, and so on, what really matters is who we are inside and what we are becoming. [...] The overvaluation of money, status, and compeetition poisons our personal relations. The flourishing life cannot be acheieved until we moderate our desires and see how superficial and fleeting they are. "

Next Week:

• Armageddon in Retrospect, Kurt Vonnegut
• Women in the Middle Ages, Frances and Joseph Gies
• Colonization: Down to Earth, Harry Turtledove