Bony Mysteries by Arthur Upfield

Just finished two more Bony mysteries by Arthur Upfield. The first, Bushranger of the Skies, is one of the best of the series: It starts quickly, with dramatic action. Bony is called to central Australia to investigate unsolved murders and, while approaching the settlement on foot, sees a police car bombed from a small but swift plane, and narrowly misses being bombed himself. The strong-willed owner of the station, called The MacPherson, by the local aborigines, stonewalls Bony's attempts to investigate. Despite The MacPherson's vehement and threatening opposition, Bony persists in his investigation and quickly identifies the perpetrator of the crimes. The exciting remainder of the story deals with the challenging task of apprehending this lunatic. This book is filled with memorable characters, such as Burning Water, a half-caste like Bony, and chief of the local tribe - handsome, intelligent, powerful, and light-hearted but fiercely loyal to The MacPherson. In fact, Burning Water is one embodiment of the underlying theme of the book, spelled out in an early conversation between Bony and The MacPherson's niece:

Niece: "What makes the world go round?"
"Money."
"No."
"Love?"
"No. I'll tell you. It's loyalty. Only the basest of us are not actuated by loyalty: loyalty to one's class, to one's people, to one's ideals."

Wonderful story!

Then I read Mr. Jelly's Business - even better than Bushranger! After quite a bit of drinking, a farmer jumps in his car to head home, passes his correct turn and runs up to the Number 1 Rabbit Fence, requiring him to back the car up to make a right turn...but he veers off into a ditch containing a large pipe, which traps the car. He is not hurt, so gets out of the car and.......vanishes. Days and then weeks go by. Has he "taken a bunk?" Or been murdered? The open country provides little cover for hiding a body. Bony takes a job working on the Rabbit Fence and systematically examines the ground, meets the man's wife and neighbors, and initiates investigations into the man's recent travels and financial situation. One neighbor is the very mysterious Mr. Jelly, who intermittently goes away for a few days, returning haggard but wealthier, and his charming and sensible daughter Lucy and her younger sister, the delightful Sunflower. This is an excellent mystery, and a compelling story with very emotional scenes between Bony and these daughters, and an extremely tense search that must be completed before the homeowners return. Outstanding!

City of Light - Lauren Belfer

City of Light was the debut novel of Lauren Belfer - who wrote Fierce Radiance, reviewed by Eileen previously. The book is kind of a cross between Edith Wharton in Buffalo and PD James! An interesting portrait of, and commentary on, wealthy upper class families in Buffalo in the early 1900's, with a fascinating account of the development of hydroelectric power using water bypassed from the Falls - which aroused passionate opposition from those who revered nature, worshipping the majesty and beauty of the Falls and opposing the forces for development. The main character, Miss Barret, Headmistress of a prestigious girls' academy, is a self-made and independent woman, living within these currents, but unaware of how they direct her life, until she becomes embroiled in a mysterious murder. Ms. Belfer's novels are rich in history and human interaction, powerfully emotional, and compelling. City of Light is not as polished as Fierce Radiance, but is a very worthwhile read - with a bonus for those of us who know Buffalo! For example, a whole chapter is devoted to Elbert Hubbard, the Leader of the Roycroft artists' commune. A hoot! He is depicted as a charming, savvy, and clear-eyed opportunist! Worth the price of admission.

The Dante Club is the first novel, a mystery, by Matthew Pearl, who developed it from a senior thesis completed while he was an undergrad at Harvard - quite a spectacular debut, featuring intimate and fascinating knowledge of Dante's Commedia and the "Club" - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., James Russell Lowell and others - that first translated it into English. In a sharp parallel with current events, the story also explores the fate of veterans of the civil war, returning to civilized Boston after enduring unimaginable horrors on the battlefield. These subjects combine in a series of meticulous and grisly murders, carried out with fidelity to some of the punishments in The Inferno. Quite a good read!

State of Wonder - Ann Patchett

This captivating story describes the quest of a pharmaceutical researcher, Dr. Marina Singh, to determine how her long-time colleague and friend, Dr. Anders Eckman, died. He had been sent by the CEO of their company to the Amazon to find the brilliant but renegade researcher Dr. Annick Swenson, who has shrouded her efforts to develop a new drug in complete secrecy. After three months with little communication from Eckman, the CEO receives a terse and sterile note from Dr. Swenson saying simply that Eckman died of a fever. Dr. Singh initially accepts the assignment to find out what happened out of her friendship for Dr. Eckman, sympathy for his wife, and loyalty to the CEO. But there are relationships within relationships - Singh is actually the secret lover of the CEO, Eckman's wife had been worried about whether Singh was having an affair with Eckman, and the imperious Dr. Swenson was formerly the exacting supervisor of Dr. Singh during her medical residency. These connections, and new ones that develop, especially with a deaf native boy, Easter, are the main substance of the book, and the driving force of its narrative. But Patchett also astonishes with vivid, startling episodes. Wonderful reading.

King Peggy

This was truly a delightful book! It is the true story of how Peggielene Bartels, a Ghanaian native, moved to America to work in the Ghanaian Embassy as a secretary, eventually became a US citizen and then, completely out of the blue, got a phone call from a relative in Ghana, saying that she had been chosen as the village's new King! (Her uncle had been King before, but Peggy thought this had to be a joke, because there are virtually no female Kings in Africa!). She finds out that the news is on the level, but she soon realizes that the village elders have chosen her in large part because she is a woman, is much younger than them, and lives far away - virtually guaranteeing that they will be able to dominate her. Guess she moved away from Africa before they ever got a chance to get to know her!! Peggy is a strong-minded, caring person, who develops big plans for her impoverished village - and she cuts off the bribes and corruption that have prevented much progress, eventually doing wonderful things for the village. She also has a wicked sense of humor - and the book is touching and exceptionally funny. A light, but wonderful, read!

Busman's Honeymoon

Have recently read a couple more Dorothy Sayers mysteries, featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and, in this case, former accused murderer and Wimsey's long-time flame, Harriet Vane. These are delightful reads - very well-crafted mysteries, with excellent writing. Sayers was a classical scholar - she spoke many languages fluently and her translation of Dante was highly regarded. (Amusingly, Wimsey's mother casts disparaging remarks on the contemporary novel The Stars Look Down, elsewhere praised within this blog!) As well as being an excellent mystery, Busman's Honeymoon has the fringe benefit of dueling quotations - Lord Peter and the investigating constable keep commenting on events in the investigation by quoting various poets and playwrights, challenging each other to identify the author. Highly recommended.

Still more children's books? Really?

We seem not to have commented on The Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart - I think I only read two of the three, but they were wonderfully fresh, funny, and extremely clever.  So I just saw The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict on the new books section of one of the best city libraries in the world, our own Cincinnati Public Library!  Well, this "prequel" is not so delightfully new, but, like a second trip to Italy, it's familiar and satisfying, while still offering pleasurable new discoveries.

On a completely different tack, I greatly enjoyed The Midnight Folk by John Masefield, former Poet Laureate of England (1930-67):

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking.

The Midnight Folk tells the story of Kay Harker, a seven year old boy who seeks to recover a treasure stolen from his grandfather, to whom it had been entrusted. Kay is opposed by a coven of witches who are also seeking the treasure. One (big Spoiler!) is his governess! Kay finds clues through dreams that seem real and leave tangible residues upon waking. He is also befriended and aided by many talking animals, mermaids, and remarkable characters. One such is the fox, Rollicum Bitem, shown in the Folio edition picture above

I crept out of covert and what did I see?
Ow-ow-ow-diddle-ow!
But seven fat bunnies, each waiting for me.
With a poacher's noosey, catch the fat goosey,
Ho says Rollicum Bitem.

Really it's like a delightful mixture of Wind In the Willows, Treasure Island, and Fairy Tales. Quite charming!

Cake in the Hatbox

All of the Upfield Napoleon Bonaparte mysteries are a pleasure to read, and Cake in the Hatbox is one of the best.  Bony happens to be in northwestern Australia when a local policemen is found murdered and so he is naturally called upon to lead the investigation.  Officer Stenhouse, a hard, brutal man, appears to have been shot with his own rifle, by his aborigine tracker, who has disappeared, but Bony rapidly determines that the murder scene has been staged.  Discovering the real scene of the murder, the motive, and the culprits requires all of Bony's keen intelligence and considerable skills as a tracker.  Early on he realizes, even before locating the body, that the aborigine tracker also has been killed, putting Bony immediately into conflict with the tracker's tribe, who are relentless in attempting to identify the murderer and avenge the tracker's death.  Key to the mystery are the Breens,  a rough and fiercely independent family - three giant and immensely strong brothers and their beautiful, iron-willed sister, the baker responsible for the literal "Cake in the Box" and the figurative "Cake in the Box" - mini-mysteries that are delightfully revealed as Bony solves the murders, with an exceptional ability to strike a balance between what is legally required and what is just.  

The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power

The fourth volume in the ongoing, detailed, yet completely absorbing biography of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro was published recently. Caro is a titan of biography: his research is exhaustive, based on hundreds of interviews, examination of all relevant documents, and even substantial time living in places where Johnson spent formative periods. Caro famously spent more years writing Johnson volume III, than Johnson spent living it! Yet reading his prose is effortless - logically organized and lively, it's more like a yarn than a history.

Caro originally conceived this biography as three books - now four are out, with numbers five or, even, six in the works. I used to say that I hoped Caro (now 77) would live long enough to finish the series. Now I say that I hope I live long enough to finish reading the series!

Caro's invariable subject is power. His first book, The Power Broker, about Robert Moses, was a detailed study of the most powerful man in New York State for several decades. And power is the explicit subject of the Johnson series. The third volume, Master of the Senate, spent ~150 pages describing the history of the US Senate, convincingly demonstrating how the dictates of the Constitution, the historical traditions of the Senate, and the powerful and monolithic Southern Bloc of Senators made it impossible for any single man to wield power in that body - all to set the stage for the astonishing consolidation, almost creation, of power by the junior Senator from Texas. Johnson himself is quoted saying,

I do understand power, whatever else may be said about me. I know where to look for it, and how to use it."

The Passage of Power describes a new chapter in Johnson's search for power, describing how he failed to capture the Democratic Presidential nomination for the 1960 election and then decided to accept the Vice-Presidential nomination, strongly against the advice of his best friends and advisors, who argued forcefully that the Vice Presidency is a ludicrous, powerless office. Johnson believed he could alter that situation, telling one friend, "Power is where power goes." But he was wrong. He had misread and badly underestimated Jack Kennedy, who sidelined him completely. Johnson was regarded by the Kennedy inner circle ("the Harvards", as he called them) as a rube ("Uncle Cornpone" or "Rufus") and was personally snubbed and administratively excluded. In the absence of any meaningful role, with no opportunity to groom himself to replace Kennedy at the conclusion of his term, Johnson literally wasted away, physically and mentally.

The gripping part of this volume is the shocking assassination of Kennedy and the immediate transformation in Johnson; he came alive, overcoming enormous obstacles, to seize the reins of power and wield them with astonishing effectiveness. For example, the description of how he managed to steer a civil rights act through Congress is exceptionally impressive. Caro lauds Johnson's achievement in the highest terms:

The 1965 Act would be passed after another titanic struggle, in which, with men and women (and children, many children) being beaten in Selma on their way to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, singing "We Shall Overcome" as they marched into tear gas and billy clubs and bullwhips, Lyndon Johnson went before Congress and said, "We Shall Overcome," thereby adopting the cicil rights rallying cry as his own. (When Martin Luther King, watching the speech on television in Selma, heard Johnson say that, he began to cry - the first time his assistants had ever seen him cry). ..... To bring black Americans more fully into the political system, he had to break the power of the South in the Senate - and he broke it. It was Abraham Lincoln who "struck off the chains of black Americans," I have written, "but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy's sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their owndestiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life." How true a part? Forty-three years later, a mere blink in history's eye, a black American, Barack Obama, was sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.

For me, this book provided new insight into Jack and Robert Kennedy, the incomparable speechwriter and Kennedy accolyte Ted Sorenson, and, through the masterful protrayal of the strengths and weaknesses of LBJ, new insights into the character of men.

The Long Fall

I previously reviewed a Walter Mosley Leonid McGill mystery entitled The Thrill is Gone. This one, the first in the Leonid McGill series, is also set in New York and again involves the hard, street-savvy McGill sorting out the complex and sordid story that lies behind the sanitized assignment he accepts from a lawyer acting on behalf of an undisclosed client. When, however, McGill discovers that the "missing persons" he has located are being murdered in succession, he takes a deeper and more perilous interest in the case. As always, Mosley offers sharp dialog, interesting human interactions and a window into the cynical and tough-guy side of New York City. For me, though, the earlier Mosleys - written before 2000, say - are still the best.

The Mill on the Floss

George Eliot's books are highly intelligent and rewardingly insightful - the scope of setting and action is intentionally narrow, with a corresponding intensity of examination - like focusing sunlight with a magnifying glass so tightly that the spot bursts into flame. This book describes the Tulliver Family, centering on brother and sister Maggie and Tom, as they grow from childhood to young adults. The Tullivers have lived for generations as owners of a mill on the River Floss, near the larger city of St. Oggs (both fictional). The heart of the book is the troubled relationship between Maggie and Tom, made inevitable by the important difference in their characters. Tom has a strong moral sense and an unwavering confidence in the correctness of his judgments. Maggie is a sensitive and caring person, quick to empathize with others, but prone to impulsiveness that invariably leads her into troubles.

But if Tom had told his strongest feeling at that moment, he would have said, "I'd do just the same again." That was his usual mode of viewing his past actions; whereas Maggie was always wishing she had done something different.

Imprudent legal actions by Mr. Tulliver lead disastrously to bankruptcy and disgrace. Tom responds with courage and purpose, eventually paying the debts and restoring the family's honor. With the best of motives and honor, Maggie is nevertheless drawn into two conflicting romantic situations, causing a decisive break with Tom, who cuts her completely. Maggie remains devoted to Tom, however, and the book concludes with an emotional reconciliation between the two.

The preface of my edition (another beautiful Folio) states that this is Eliot's most autobiographical book - reflecting her estrangement from her own family and especially her brother, which resulted from her unconventional and socially unacceptable relationship with a married man. The book is deeply absorbing, with detailed and thoughtful exploration of relationships, with moving descriptions of powerful consequences resulting from small choices, and with a variety of strong characters - some good, some weak, some generous and some selfish - but every one convincingly and sympathetically rendered. Very highly recommended!

Our Kind of Traitor

Just finished “Our Kind of Traitor” by John le Carre – I thought it was brand new, as I picked it up off the New Books shelf of our Library, but it was actually published in 2010. Well, it was excellent, as usual, but as I have seen in Le Carre’s other recent books, he increasingly indicts major distortions of society caused by massively outsized greed, corruption and international criminality.

In this book, a British academic and his lawyer girlfriend are drawn into helping Dima, a Russian vor or mafia-type, who wishes to defect to Britain to save himself and achieve revenge on a criminal kingpin who has killed Dima’s right-hand man. Dima is “the greatest money launderer in the world” and crusaders within the British Secret Service attempt to use his defection to clean up the financially corrupted British establishment, but they are naturally opposed by those who benefit from the corruption. The novel, intensely readable and absorbing, ends powerfully and unhappily.

le Carre asserts in comments on The Constant Gardener and Our Kind of Traitor that he does not exaggerate the extent of corruption, but if anything, understates it. Interested? Here’s a lengthy and very thoughtful interview, from Democracynow.com in which he discusses these views (http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/11/exclusive_british_novelist_john_le_carr)

A quick, thought-provoking read - highly recommended.

Plays by Lee Blessing

I should have updated more frequently here, but as I have not, I'll give a quick rundown with this. I've been looking at a lot of plays by a very little-known playwright named Lee Blessing, and so I'll list each and give a quick rundown.

A Walk in the Woods-- This is Blessing's most well-known play. In fact, if anyone has heard of him, it would be because of this play. The play is awesome! It's about two negotiators, one from Russia, one from America, who, over a long period, try to develop agreements for arms reductions. All the scenes take place while they walk in the woods after negotiations, which explains the title. The play was great-- very thinly disguised commentary, but great despite that. Recommended for people who like plays or talk about arms reduction.

Down the Road-- This one is not one of Blessing's well-known plays. This is easily the creepiest play I have read in a long time, but I found it extremely interesting. It's about a couple who interviews a serial killer for a book about him. The play concerns how our writing of such books from the murderers perspective glamorizes serial killing and other such crimes, though, for the most part, the play leads one to see how they might not be as different from serial killers as they might think. Scarrrrryyyyy. If you'd like something to make you really think, go for this one.

Fortinbras-- This was my favorite of all of them. The play takes place right after the death scene in Hamlet, and basically discusses what happens once Fortinbras takes over. The play is hilarious for the first part, and then interesting for the second part. The play flows nicely within the two, and so I found it to be ultra awesome, and I now yearn to play Fortinbras in this production some day. If you want to laugh, read this one.

Cobb-- This play is an interesting look at the first baseball player inducted into the hall of fame, Tyler Cobb. This play is the least distinctive of all of them, since it's mostly biographical, but it manages to tell Cobb's story in a way that really engages the reader (or audience, hopefully). Read this one if you want a quick read for fun and to learn a bit about Tyler Cobb.

Theater, admittedly, is meant to be performed, not read. I think all of these, however, lend themselves to reading, so take your pick. If any of them are performed near you, though, go for it and check it out. You will enjoy.

my list

Hey everybody

I'm going to be maintaining a list of recommended reading on my website.  It's not finished just yet but I thought it might be of some interest.  Cheers

http://colindrumm.com/recommended-reading/

Ryu Mitsuse - 10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights

This book is utterly insane, and operates under the principle that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, mystical experience, or a really incredible psychedelic voyage.

At one point, Jesus of Nazareth and Siddhartha Guatama the Buddha, who are cyborgs, fight a laser battle amidst the fortieth-century ruins of Tokyo.  I feel like that should be recommendation enough.  If dream narratives aren't your thing, though, you might find the book frustrating.

The story is a sort of metaphysical space-opera with Dickian gnostic overtones, featuring Plato, Jesus, Buddha, and the goddess Asura.  The translation is excellent and highly poetic; the original Japanese must be pretty amazing.  

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash

Stephenson has rapidly become one of my very favorite, if not all time favorite, authors. Snow Crash is so incredible - Stephenson's vision of the future is a rarity in its clarity, depth, and originality. The overpopulated earth has become a trashy wasteland, and the technological/economic elite have essentially moved to a digital existence, most often "goggled in" to the virtual reality of the Metaverse, where your avatar can move around and conduct business in the same way as on earth. Hackers, especially the samurai-sword wielding protagonist (named Hiro Protagonist), have the upper hand in a landscape they can control. However, the intersection between man and machine, embodied particularly in the hackers' binary-acccomodating neural pathways, has led to the dangerous potential for computer viruses to infect the user's mind. This unique vision has even more resonance given Google's recent announcement that they are developing glasses which will project a virtual reality and other information over the real world. This novel's astounding scope encompasses the exploration of memes, Glossolalia, drugs, viruses, and religion, which are depicted as being basically synonymous. A wonderful page-turner!

Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time

Since I have recently been pursuing the fundamental philosophical question "why is there something instead of nothing" from one end of the philosophical tradition, Daoist metaphysics in particular, I decided to switch gears for a bit and see what professor Hawking had to say about the issue.

A Brief History of Time is an eminently accessible guided tour, not through time itself, but through the Western tradition's understanding of the nature of the universe.  Hawking walks the reader through the major paradigm shifts in intellectual history, beginning with the Copernican revolution, and explains in each case why the previous theory had to be abandoned and why the new one was chosen.  The first section of the book should be familiar to most readers from high school.  The second half was all things I had heard of before, and understood to some extent, but quantum mechanics et al. are always worth thinking about again.

Hawking presents the history of cosmology as the gradual reconciliation and elaboration of partial theories, with the current problem in physics understood as the production of a theory that will unify quantum mechanics and general relativity; in other words, reconcile our theories about what happens at very small scales and very large ones, respectively.  Reading this book makes me nostalgic for the alternate life in which I pursued mathematics and understood in something more than a qualitative way what was at stake in all of this, but Hawking generously includes the rest of us in the conversation with his clear presentation.

The best part of the book, by far, is Hawking's stories about the bets he has made with various physicists on points of theoretical contention.

"I... believe there are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature."

John Brunner - Stand on Zanzibar

Another classic science fiction novel that I never knew existed.  Written in 1968, Stand on Zanzibar is set in a crowded, decolonized early 21st century.  The world is filled with mass-market psychedelics and eugenic legislation, overstimulated and disney-fied in a way that hits pretty close to home.  The world's crowded cities are terrorized by "muckers," or people driven to the point of berzerk killing sprees.  Brunner's vision is on the level of a Philip K. Dick in terms of sheer affectual prescience.

The novel contains several narrative threads, interspersed with commercials and other snippets from the infosphere, as well as vignettes that act as character sketches of various dysfunctional relationships (usually centered around attempts to circumvent eugenics laws).  Other sections are polemics, written in the voice of Chad Mulligan, who can perhaps best be described as stand up comedian channeling Vonnegut.

The two main plot lines involve a propaganda campaign by a Southeast Asian archipelago claiming that they will genetically modify their next generation to breed a perfect species, and a series of negotiations between a large US corporation and a small African ex-colony which is mysteriously free of violence, and whose people have had a reputation for witchcraft stretching back into prehistory.

The novel is scathing and quite funny.  I find most satire to be a bit cringe-inducing, but Brunner pulls off his tone with an aplomb that reminds me most of David Foster Wallace.

Paul Gilding - The Great Disruption

There is a war coming.

In this book, Gilding tries to articulate a way out of the mess we're in - he says, in essence, "if we're going to solve these problems, here's what it will look like."  He argues that the coming crisis will initiate a response from the first world directly analogous to that of the second world war, in which enormous swaths of first world economy were nationalized and repurposed to the war effort.  It is this wartime economy, with an emphasis on efficiency and frugality, that will allow us to orchestrate a crisis management response to the collapse that we are now far too late to head off with more gradual efforts.

While much of the material covered in the book is not new to me, Gilding's experience as first an environmental activist with Greenpeace, and later as a environmental consultant who has worked with people like the CEO of DuPont, provides a perspective that is more of an insider's view.

I think the most important point that I drew from this book was his argument that we cannot fight a war on two fronts.  The first front is the radical and transformative restructuring of our political and economic systems that will allow the creation of a sustainable and steady-state (as opposed to growth-focused) economy.  The second is the direct response to the chaos and violence that will make the conflict of the twentieth century look like a gentlemanly session of fisticuffs.  Since the vested interests of the current establishment will, like any hegemony, fight to protect its power, we need to find a way to in the short term harness the old capitalist system to fight the Carbon War, in a concerted effort that will in turn bring about the systemic transformation that we need so desperately.

While I don't know if I share Gilding's optimism, his analogy to the war-time effort of WWII is thought provoking (he notes that military spending went from 3 percent of GDP at the beginning of the war to 39 percent at the end, in a time when the GDP as a whole increased by 75 percent.)  If we can accomplish something similar, along with a total paradigm shift in the consciousness of the first world which will divert our collective activity away from mindless consumption, there may still be hope.

The Anubis Gates

... Wow. Where to begin with this book?

Okay, this is a book in the fantasy genre that, in some circles, I believe, has been sourced as an inspiration for steampunk novels, which I have yet to read. Honestly, I'm not sure why, because it had little to do with steampunk, but it had a sort of science fiction element in regards to time travel, and the rest is just straight fantasy.

"Just straight fantasy", however, can barely begin to describe the scope of this book. The story is so masterful and creative that it blew my mind. The basic idea is that a bunch of Egyptian warlocks are using their magic to change the past, thereby assuring Egypt's supremacy in the world. Our hero is Brendan Doyle, a modern expert on Coleridge, who travels to the past so as to attend one of Coleridge's lectures, but by the screwy nature of fate, he gets captured and is stuck in the past. The stories collide, and all hell breaks loose.

Again, I cannot describe just how awesome the story is. The plot devices are magnificent, the writing is great, the characters are amusing and engaging, and the extranormal aspets of the story are explained well and keep consistent with themselves throughout.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is at all interested in fantasy, or history, or even a little science fiction. Seriously. READ IT!

The Power of Full Engagement

Another in my slew of self-improvement books comes "The Power of Full Engagement". This particular one focuses on the idea that one should budget their energy, not their time, so as to achieve maximum productivity.

The book was quite good, in my opinion, as it offered information that normally doesn't get tossed around in self-improvement circles as much. The only complaint I would voice against the book is that it was too long for the information imparted. The system they gave towards working on one's life, in my opinion, was quite good, but because of this, I felt the book lacked focus, considering it could have summed up the core message in about a hundred pages.

Nonetheless, I think that the book is a good primer on the subject, and I'd recommend reading it to up the simplicity of your life.

Thomas Cleary - The Essential Confucius

This is the best book I have ever read.

Cleary's translation is extremely readable - his ordering is somewhat unorthodox but I don't understand what the details of that are.

As for the text itself, nothing has ever struck me so deeply.  I have read the Analects before, but I did not fully appreciate it.  I think everyone should study this book carefully and live their life by it.  I am not going to say anything else about it because it is very short and the master speaks for himself.

Ken Wilber - Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

Reading this book was an interesting experience.

My dad is a pretty devoted Wilberian.  It would perhaps not be far from the mark to say that "wilberism" was the religion that I grew up in.  For this reason, the strangest thing about reading this book was realizing how profoundly I had been influenced by Wilber's system.

The other strange thing was the contrast between how much I liked the first half and how much I disliked the second.  I'll return to this in a second, although the details of our disagreement are too technical for a blog post.

(I do however find Wilber's aesthetics to be a bit questionable.  He gets into bestselling cult-leader territory, and he has horrible taste in art.  He uses too many words with capital letters, and is more in bed with the New Agers than he would like to admit.)

The basic project of this book, which was published in 1996 as a response to the rather dogmatic deconstructionism that was (and still is) the current theoretical orthodoxy in academia.

Wilber here attempts to devise a synthesis of rationality (coded: western) and mysticism (coded: eastern).  The elegant theoretical structure with which he describes the internal dynamics of intellectual history is impressive, and, as I said, my own thought is as indebted to Wilber as it is to my other touchstones like Jameson or Harvey.  His elaboration of this structure takes up the first half of the book.  Wilber's thought here is presented with a clarity that is admirable; It is perfectly accessible to a lay person and for somebody with a background in theory it is quite easy.

An attempted sketch of Wilber's arguments (and I am in substantial agreement with all of these positions - but I would draw my picture a little bit differently):

The metaphysical structure of the entire universe is the holon, which is a whole that is also a part of some higher structure.  For example, oxygen atoms are wholes, but they are parts of water molecules.  I am a whole, but I am a part of my society.  Everything is like this.  In fact, the entire universe is an enormous "holarchy" composed of progressively higher levels of organization.

All holons can only be fully understood through a consideration of their manifestations in four "Quadrants:" upper left, lower left, upper right, and lower right.  Essentially, these are four different viewpoints on the same phenomena.  The universe is thus a great holarchy which is unfolding simultaneously through the four quadrants.  The right hand side is the objective side, while the left hand side is the subjective side; the top is singular, the bottom is plural.  Furthermore, the quadrants can be mapped onto the grammatical pronouns in the following way; upper left is I, lower left is We, upper right is It, and lower right is Its.

So if we want to understand, for example, consciousness, we need to understand it from all of these perspectives.  The upper left is the individual subjective, or psychological development.  The lower left is culture, or the collective subjective.  The upper right is the individual objective, the development of the brain.  The lower right is the collective objective, the systems of political and social organization.

Holons evolve through these quadrants in a process that is essentially a Hegelian dialectic.  Wilber stresses the phrase "transcend and include," which means that each higher holon contains all of the structure of its parts, plus more.

As the major purpose of this book is to understand the evolution of culture, or the development of our collective worldview, this idea of transcendence and inclusion means that, in order to be healthy, a new worldview must embrace the truths of the worldview it has replaced.  As Freud discovered, repression leads to pathology.  Therefore, if a new worldview (e.g. the Rational of the Enlightenment) represses rather than includes it predecessor (the Mythic of the feudal period) then it becomes pathological.  This, Wilber argues, is the origin of the deconstructive turn in postmodernity.

Essentially, Wilber thinks that all of western philosophy since Plato has been an attempt to reduce on half of the quadrants to the other.  That is, to show that everything objective was only subjective, or to show that everything subjective was only objective.  The current pathology he terms "flatland" which is the reduction of the right hand quadrants to the left hand quadrants - basically to show that all subjective consciousness is "nothing but" the activity of neurons, etc.  His solution to this is that Western science and Eastern spirituality need to team up, and then everything will be great.

This is the first half of his book, and he's mostly totally right.  The second half is a polemic against a poorly argued straw man he calls "subtle reductionism."  As the blog is getting a bit long I won't go into the details, but the short version is that I myself am a "subtle reductionist," and I think Wilber does not fully appreciate most sophisticated version of this position.  I think that he does not understand the full philosophical implications of emergence, complexity, and evolutionary dynamics, and I think his mistakes here make the second half of the book moot.

TL;DR:
So, I guess, I would highly recommend the first seven chapters of this book.  In it, he presents the most complete and elegant comprehensive philosophical theory I have encountered.  After that, he makes a crippling mistake and takes a tangent off into orbit.

PS Sorry, Brack, I only read these very serious books these days.  But there is an absurdist science fiction novel on the way (secretly though Very Serious) and also the Analects of Confucius, which is exquisite.

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism

So I was researching into presidential candidates, and in the debate, I found that "American Exceptionalism" was mentioned multiple times. While I found basic definitions online, I found this book mentioned a few times, and thought that it might help teach me exactly what everyone was so hyped up about.

So, "American Exceptionalism" is the concept that America is a special nation, as first mentioned by de Tocqueville after a visit here. The term has transformed, until now, it refers to how America believes that it can justify its actions simply by dint of its "exceptionalism", and ignore the consequences as less exceptional nations cannot.

The book's premise is that America was founded upon principles of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and as admirable as this is, our pursuit of them in the modern day has stretched too far in three spheres: political, economic, and militaristic. The book goes through the three areas, giving the history of how we arrived at the current conditions in said area, and how we are pushing the limits of power.

The book, I thought, was very good in that it was very well-researched and made a great many points, but my difficulty with it is that I can't tell its actual purpose. The author lambasts the entirety of the U.S., and so alienates anyone he might be persuading. If the book is just to inform, it's quite interesting, but in that case, why the acerbic tone? As such, I think the book fails to accomplish whatever purpose it was intended for, but it was still a very interesting read. I recommend it to those interested in U.S. politics.

P.S. This guy has a love relationship with Reinhold Niebuhr, a well-known theologian whom I had to read last semester for my religion class.

The Stars Look Down

This novel, by Scottish physician and author AJ Cronin, is a powerful and emotional account of the plight of coal miners in Wales, interweaved with moving stories of struggles between people with different values.

The story begins cruelly with the miners returning to work after a lengthy and unsuccessful strike that has caused substantial hardship, to the point of desperate hunger. Robert Fenwick led the strike to obtain changes he felt essential for the miners' safety, but is now scorned by the miners and his own wife. Inevitably, the disaster he foresaw does occur: the miners break through a barrier into an underground reservoir, flooding the mine. Over 80 miners are quickly drowned, while Robert, with controlled intelligence and courage, leads his son Hughie and 10 others to safety into an old portion of the mine. They become trapped, however, by tons of collapsed tunnel and must wait for rescue. As days pass, first lit by candlelight and eventually in darkness, the miners die one by one. The account of the deaths by drowning, though short, is vivid and chilling; the drawn out description of the deaths of the trapped miners is harrowing.

Over the next decades, the story reveals the effects of this disaster on Robert's idealistic son Davey, on Arthur, the tortured son of the domineering and rapacious mine owner, and on Joe Gowlan, who flees the mines to become a successful and powerful war-profiteer. SPOILERS: Davey fights for miners' rights by striving to promote nationalization of the mines. Eventually elected to Parliament, Davey becomes a prominent miners' advocate, but the crushing realities of politics as usual and the influence of well-heeled capitalists defeat his efforts. After his father is debilitated by a stroke, Arthur uses the mine's astonishing war profits to initiate massive improvements. Crushingly, his outlays, coupled with economic downturn, lead him to the brink of bankruptcy, while his perceived weakness and the disregard for miners shown by politicians and other mine owners, make him an object of scorn rather than appreciation among the miners. The despicable Gowlan succeeds in business beyond his wildest dreams, makes massive amounts of money during the war, and eventually defeats Davey's attempt to be re-elected to Parliament.

Written in 1935, the book expresses a view of capitalism that resonates with present conditions:

At last, through their constitutional hidebound apathy, people were beginning to question the soundness of a political and economic system which left want, misery and unemployment unrelieved. New and bold ideas went into circulation. Men no longer retreated in terror from the suggestion that capitalism, as a system of life, had failed.

At book's end, both Davey and Arthur are back in the mines, working under Gowlan. Jeez, this sounds depressing! The fundamental inequalities and unfairness of British society depicted here are leavened, however, by the rich interpersonal relationships, which provide many heart-warming and heart-rending incidents. Moreover, Davey convincingly achieves individual fulfillment, even as his professional ambitions are thwarted, and the book ends on an optimistic note. Very highly recommended!

David Harvey - The Enigma of Capital

David Harvey, who is, along with Fredric Jameson, one of my favorite academics, here presents his analysis of the recent financial crisis and offers a theory that attempts to explain the crisis-prone nature of capitalism in terms of the inner contradictions of the system.  At the center of his argument is the "surplus absorption problem," in which the surplus generated by capital today must be reinvested into new lines of production in order to maintain an increasingly unrealistic 3 percent annual compound growth.

While the argument is complex enough that I don't want to try and represent it here, the book is surprisingly accessible and the ideas in it are presented relatively simply.  Some familiarity with the vocabulary of academic Marxism is helpful to understand Harvey's argument, but it is much easier going than Jameson, for example.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the present financial crisis and why we desperately need to be shrinking our economy, not growing it.

Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio

In this second novel by Amara Lakous, an Algerian now living in Italy, a dozen denizens of Piazza Vittorio in Rome weigh in on whether or not Amadeo, believed by almost everyone to be a native Italian but actually an immigrant from Algiers who speaks Italian better than the Italians and knows the streets and byways of Rome better than an Italian taxidriver, really murdered the crude and offensive Lorenzo Manfredini, known as The Gladiator. The foundation of the novel is the universal plight of immigrants, but the Italians even distrust and dislike other Italians from different parts of the country. The voices are wonderful - sharp, humorous, arrogant, wacky - the characters are lively and the unfolding resolution of the murder mystery is unexpected and interesting. This was easy and pleasurable to read, but also thought-provoking and sad. Very highly recommended!

La's Orchestra Saves the World

Alexander McCall Smith is the "Bestselling Author of THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY" and many other books. This book's jacket describes La's Orchestra as "heartwarming" and I suspect all of his books would fit this adjective...while this would usually be a red flag for me, this book was recommended by Linda's sister Karen, who likes to have fun but is serious and levelheaded! And, as advertised, the book was really good. Set in the 1930's, the book focuses on La (short for Lavender), who is serious and thoughtful. Rather surprisingly, she marries young, but is soon widowed. She moves to the English countryside in a kind of defiant rebellion against her London life and, when war breaks out, establishes an amateur orchestra.

While there were moments of "heartwarming", it was more a sober book, dealing with the limited options for women at that time, how the British coped with war, and how one person touches others. Sober but ultimately fairly optimistic. I read that Smith is an amateur bassoonist and "Not content with merely founding the Really Terrible Orchestra in Edinburgh (which brings really great fun to its audiences), McCall Smith has established an opera house and opera training center in Botswana". A very interesting man, evidently with limitless energy, as in his "real" life, he is a professor of medical law at Edinburgh. Quite a worthwhile read, I thought.

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

The Scarlet Pimpernel is a swashbuckling adventure set in 1792 during the French Revolution. As hundreds of French aristocrats lose their heads to the guillotine, a band of intrepid English gentleman makes it their sport to boldly rescue these victims and hustle them to safety in England. The mysterious leader of this gang is the wily Scarlet Pimpernel, who signs his notes with a little drawing that same "humble wayside flower."

The main character is a beautiful Frenchwoman, Marguerite Blakeney, "the cleverest woman in Europe," who languishes in her marriage to a dandified fop, Sir Percy Blakeney. The story charts her disillusionment with her husband and involvement in the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary schemes that surround the Scarlet Pimpernel and his 19 loyal devotees.

The language is beautiful, the plot is exciting, and it has a satisfactorily happy ending, which apparently had not yet gone out of fashion in 1905 when the Baroness was writing. Highly, highly recommend.

*Note: I know Dad read this fairly recently but couldn't find the link - if you wrote about this, Dad, please include the link to your review here and I will comment on yours. Otherwise, feel free to add your thoughts here!*