Adam Bede

Adam Bede was the first full novel by Marian Evans, under the pen name of George Eliot.  Evans had already been working for several years as assistant editor of The Westminster Review under her own name and had a solid but modest reputation as essayist and reviewer. But Adam Bede received wide acclaim and sparked great  interest in the identity of the mysterious author.  Surprisingly, an imposter stepped forward, forcing Evans to acknowledge that she was "George Eliot".    Her subsequent novels were all published under George Eliot -  "She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would not be taken seriously."  No, wait - that they WOULD be taken seriously, she said.  (I wonder what she was thinking).  

Eliot is an insightful observer of humanity and nature and her insights are presented in fluent and memorable language.  The setting is rural and unsophisticated, but the interactions among the characters are timeless and fascinating.  All of the conversations, and particularly the repartee between Mrs. Poyser and any of her natural adversaries, feature lively rural expressions that vividly convey the essence of the issues under discussion.  Adam Bede tells the story of four intertwined lives and loves, centering on the carpenter Adam Bede, who is strong, skilled, upright, and true.  Very admirable, and likable, yet also rather rigid.  He bears some clear resemblance to Tom Tulliver from Mill on the Floss (reviewed in this Blog), who shares many characteristics with Eliot's brother, who bitterly disapproved of her "unconventional" marriage to philosopher George Henry Lewes.   Perhaps a theme of Eliot's is to show the far-reaching consequences of apparently minor acts and decisions that are determined, for better or worse, by elements of character.  This is a very readable, gratifying and rewarding book.

Dostoevsky: A Writer in his Time

This book is a condensed version of a five-volume examination of the life, world and works of Dostoevsky, by Joseph Frank.  The condensed version still runs to over 900 pages.  But Frank writes beautifully and the condensation (by Mary Petrusewicz) is outstanding - so it is a pleasure to read.  Frank weaves together the story of Dostoevsky's life, the literary and political history of Russia from about 1830 to the early 1880's, and the development of Dostoevsky's thought,  in such a way as to illuminate clearly and forcefully the underlying beliefs and philosophical "arguments" that Dostoevsky converted so brilliantly into gripping characters and stories.  Frank's books have been described as magisterial, because, in addition to the thorough research and literary insight,  Frank also writes with tremendous empathy for human struggles and aspirations and the ability of artists to distill  these currents into profound works that stir the soul.  It is truly ennobling to read this book and feel the power of great art.  I have read several books by Dostoevsky, and found them to be thrilling, but always felt there were underlying currents I was missing.  Frank's work filled in these gaps for me - I have come to understand that each of Dostoevsky's books portrays political, religious, moral and philosophical ideas through the actions of the characters.  Dostoevsky led a tremendously dramatic and passionate life.  He was arrested along with other intellectuals for revolutionary ideas, sent before a firing squad, but saved by the Tsar at the last minute; imprisoned in Siberia for four years, and exiled from St. Petersburg for another six; suffered from frequent and debilitating bouts of epilepsy; was crushed by the early death of children; was terribly addicted to gambling for many years; but was a loving and devoted husband and father.  Late in life, he was revered as a virtual saint by all classes of Russians. But Frank's work is not hagiography - Frank depicts Dostoevsky's virulent anti-semitism and nationalistic fervor with honesty and censure.  More than any book I have read recently, this comes close to being life-changing.

Ernest Cline's Ready Player One

WOW! My bookclub's most recent pick was Ready Player One, and I read this thrilling 372-page sci-fi novel cover to cover over the last several hours. Talk about a page-turner! I won't give away the main quest driving the plot, but suffice to say, it is action-packed and awesome.

The experience of reading this book was very self-indulgent for a cyberpunk nerd like myself -- it is a book about otaku, for otaku, and it has the works: a post-apocalyptic wasteland where everyone with enough money for a visor and "haptic gloves" escapes the filth and squalor of our used-up Earth via a full-dive VR universe called OASIS; brilliant teen hackers; a soulless corporate entity in full villain mode; and, in an unusual twist on your typical sci-fi novel, endless real-world references to obscure sci-fi, video games, and everything 1980s.

The British newspaper The Observer says that the otaku is "the passionate obsessive, the information age's embodiment of the connoisseur, more concerned with the accumulation of data than of objects." In Ready Player One, and in many nerd subcultures IRL, a player's ability to amass vast knowledge of game-related trivia is a sought-after mark of authenticity, and a status symbol within the group.

In one early scene, our ridiculously erudite, but chronically poor and therefore low-level hero, Perzival, spars with the braggart I-r0k in a VR chat room, about what it takes to be a "gunter" (egg hunter, or elite gamer):

"Poseur."
"Poseur? Penis-ville is calling me a poseur? ...This chump is so broke that he has to bum rides to Greyhawk, just so he can kill kobolds for copper pieces! And he's calling me a poseur!"
..."That's right, I called you a poseur, poseur." I stood up and got in his grille. "You're an ignorant know-nothing twink. Just because you're fourteenth-level, it doesn't make you a gunter. You actually have to possess some knowledge."

As Perzival's friend Aech would say, "Word."


This novel is recommended for everyone, but especially if you like:
- Stephenson's Snow Crash
- Sword Art Online (anime TV series)
- Gibson's Idoru

Book Blog Tags

Hello all,

I think one of the nicest features of this blog is the tag ("label") system, which allows you to find interesting reviews on a wide variety of topics by clicking on a label at the bottom of a post. I have tried at various times to go back and add labels to posts which were labeled minimally or not at all, to help build this feature.

Today, I began a new project, of organizing all the existing tags into some sort of schematic. Not really a necessary project, but it was interesting to see what all we had come up with over the years. I will probably edit this list from time to time.

Heads up, many of these tags could fit in different categories, so I went with what seemed best to me, but if there are any mistakes (e.g., fictional personnage in the historical personnage list), please do let me know, as I didn't recognize all of the labels. (Also, I tried to be pretty serious about the categories --although it was tempting to editorialize by putting "capitalism" under "Maladies," for example, I resisted those urges.)

Thanks, and enjoy!

WHO

Authors, Thinkers, and Historical Personages

Alexander McCall Smith, Alice Waters, Amara Lakous, Ann Patchett, Anthony Bourdain, Armitage, Asimov, Arthur Upfield, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, Ben Franklin, Billy Collins, Bin Laden, Bogart, Bologna, Branch Rickey, Buddha, Camilleri, chandler, China Mieville, Confucius, Dalgliesh, Dante, David Foster Wallace, David Harvey, David Sedaris, Day Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, dostoevsky, Douglas Adams, Edith Wharton, Elbert Hubbard, Emily Dickinson, Ernest Callenbach, Fermi, Fortinbras, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Galileo, Gawain, George Eliot, Greimas, Hegel, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville, Hoover, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Isaiah Berlin, J.K. Rowling, Jack Kennedy, Jackie Robinson, Jaimy Gordon, James, James Russell Lowell, Jim Butcher, John Brunner, John Grisham, John Masefield, Jonathan Franzen, Joseph Conrad, Josh Foor, Joyce Carol Oates, JT Kalnay, Kay Thopson, Ken Wilber, kim stanley robinson, Kimball, King, Kurt Vonnegut, Lauren Belfer, LBJ, Le Carre, le Carré, Lee Blessing, Leonid McGill, Lisbeth Salander, Lyndon Johnson, Marcus Samuelsson, Marx, Mikael Blomkvist, Miyazaki, Napoleon, Neal Stephenson, Ned Kelly, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Orwell, pasternak, Paul Gilding, philip k. dick, Philip Marlowe, Philip Pullman, Plato, Reinhold Nieburhr, Robert Caro, Robert Kennedy, Robert Louis Stevenson, Roycroft, Sam Irvine, Sayers, Seeger, Shakespeare, Sir John Mortimer, Smiley, Stanislaw Lem, Stephen Hawking, Stieg Larsson, Studs Terkel, Tesla, Thackeray, Thomas Cleary, Thoreau, Tim Powers, Tolstoy, Trenton lee Stewart, Truman Capote, Turgenev, Umberto Eco, upfield, Ursula K. LeGuin, vory, walter benjamin, walter m. miller, Walter Mosley, Warren Buffett, william gibson, William Kennedy

Fictional Personages and Series

Bony, Hamlet, Harry Potter, Harry Dresden Files, Inspector Montalbano, Moby Dickens, Mysterious Benedict Society, Neuromancer, Rabbit Fence, Satan, Spiderman, Wimsey

Categories and Groups of People

Aborigine, aristocracy, baby, bushman, celebrity, coven, cowboy, dandy, doctor, dysfunctional family, idoru, immigrant, family, ghosts, junkies, LGBTQ, mafia, monk, nark, orphan, otaku, outlaw, pirates, police, private eye, prostitutes, serial killer, social networks, spy, teenager, twins, witches

Creatures

aliens, animals, demons, giant flying cats, mutants, panther, snakes, stoats, swordfish, vulture, whales

WHAT

Genre

adventure, apocalypse, apocalyptic literature, autobiography, biography, children's book, classic, comedy, comic book, coming of age, cyberpunk, detective, diary, drama, dystopia, essays, epic, experimental, fantasy, fiction, futuristic, graphic novel, light reading, lit theory, magical realism, mini-reviews, mystery, noir, nonfiction, Odyssey, parable, play, poetry, post-apocalyptic, post-nuclear, practical advice, National Book Award, problem comedy, propadana, revolutionary, romance, russian lit, satire, sci-fi, self-help, seminal, series, short stories, social commentary, steampunk, thriller, utopia, western, whodunit

Mood

comic, dark, depressing, heartwarming, humor, inspirational, motivational, searing, sentimental, uncomfortable

Disciplines

art, astrobiology, astrophysics, cosmology, criminal justice, geology, ecology, economics, health, history, law, math, medicine, metaphysics, philosophy, politics, psychology, religion, science, statistics, theology, theory, zoology

Maladies

alcoholism, autism, blindness, cancer, disease, drug culture, insomnia, paranoia, schizophrenia, tuberculosis

Computers and Sci-Fi

artifical intelligence, computer virus, computers, cyberspace, Fermi's paradox, hacking, nanotechnology, robot, space exploration, spaceship, time-travel, video games, virtual reality

Other Topics

abortion, adultery, airline, banks, baseball, chess, CIA, coal mining, cooking, corruption, cricket, crime, cuisine, death, espionage, eucharist, farming, feces, finance, fishing, folk music, food, gaming, glossolalia, heresy, horseracing, labyrinth, Latin, legal system, magic, martial arts, matrix, media, memory, mnemonics, murder, music, money laundering, networking, newspaper, organic, parenting, penicillin, precognition, protest, revenge, seafaring, semiotic square, sexuality, soul patches, technology, tennis, terrorism, tombstones, travel, treasure hunt, UN, war

WHEN

Historical Events and Time-period

1600s, 1700s, 1812, 1930s, 1970s, Civil War, Copernican revolution, early 1900s, French revolution, mid-1800s, postmodernity, revolutionary war, Soviet Russia, Spanish Civil War, twentieth century, World War II

WHERE

Places

Africa, amazon, America, ancient Greece, Australia, Boston, Buffalo, California, Chez Panisse, China, Egypt, England, Ethiopia, farm, Florida, France, Ghana, graveyard, India, Indonesia, Inferno, Israel, Italy, Japan, Los Angeles, manhattan, mars, monastery, moscow, New York, New Zealand, Niagara Falls, Nicaragua, NYC, old west, Online, Orange County, outerspace, Pacific Northwest, Philadelphia, Poland, Provence, Rockefeller Institute, Rome, Russia, Seattle, Thailand, Tokyo, vienna, Vietnam

WHY

Concepts, Movements, Ideologies and Ways of Life

asceticism, capitalism, communism, conspiracy, Daoism, democracy, emergence, environmentalism, free will, gnosticism, green movement, Judaism, liberty, messianism, mysticism, nihilism, poverty, power, racism, rationality, realism, spiritual enlightenment, spirituality, zen

Historical Events and Trends

Black history, civil rights, colonization, evolution of culture, global climatic disruption, globalization, race relations, serfdom

Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose

The first book I read with my Reedie bookclub was Umberto Ecos’s The Name of the Rose, a beautifully written murder mystery set in medieval Italy. In this thrilling tale, the young monk Adso follows his brilliantly perceptive but unorthodox master, William, to a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy, to investigate a murder which has taken place in a small but ostentatiously wealthy monastery whose heart is a labyrinth library. More horrors and mysteries are unveiled the deeper William and Adso dig, and the more the two suspect that certain persons are working against them to keep the monastery’s secrets from ever being revealed.

This novel is a true page-turner, but also deals in depth with many interesting themes revolving around the nature of Truth – its complexity, mutability, and debatable impenetrability, the meaning of heresy, and whether knowledge should be shared freely with all, and if not, under what circumstances secret knowledge should be guarded, by whom, and through what means.

A truly fascinating book that I would recommend to all, and would definitely enjoy discussing at greater length!

Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia

A recent choice for my book club was Ecotopia. Written in 1975, Ecotopia depicts a vision of the United States in 1999, in which the Pacific Northwest has seceded from the union and been completely isolated from America for the past two decades. The motivation behind this split, led by the women-directed Survivalist Party, was the desire to entirely reform society on egalitarian and ecological grounds – achieving equality for all people, eliminating cars and other pollutants through strict regulation, and creating a “stable state,” sustainable society, which emphasizes recycling and a return to nature. In the (optimistically brief) period since its inception, the nation has largely achieved these goals, unbeknownst to America, which has continued on its wasteful decent into widespread pollution and overpopulation – alas, much like the America we know today.

The story of Ecotopia is from the perspective of William Weston, a journalist who becomes the first American emissary to visit the new country since its founding. Weston is a hard-nosed reporter, and the novel is divided into personal reflections written in his diary and his largely fact-based articles, which he posts back to America to be published. Fairly predictably, Weston’s initial prejudices are softened by the month+ he spends in the new country, and we see him open up to the nation’s “strange” and “barbaric” practices and “surprisingly” brilliant inventions.

Although at times a little heavy-handed, pat, and unrealistically utopian, I found the novel to be very well-imagined and articulated, and the tone believable. Moreover, I was happy to realize that Callenbach’s vision has in some ways been realized – Seattle recently instituted a ban on plastic bags, and all homes and apartments (and most businesses) are equipped with bins to divide “garbage” into recycling, compost, and (thus much reduced) waste. (Although I was horrified to see how inconsistently this is practiced in Ohio!)

It was depressing to finish the novel and remember that I cannot emigrate to Ecotopia, but even so I would definitely recommend this book.

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer - Philip K. Dick

Just finished reading Philip K. Dick's The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982), published posthumously. (For those who may not know, transmigration is "the religious or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body that may be human, animal or spiritual depending on the moral quality of the previous life's actions.")

The novel is set in the 1960s and 1970s, and follows the descent into drug addiction, radical religion, and madness of a deeply entwined but unhappy circle of five friends - intelligent but lonely Angel Archer, "professional student" at Cal Berkeley and poetic grass fiend, her disaffected husband, Jeff, whose maniacally intensive study of Wallenstein and Hitler becomes a pointless bid for his father's attention, Jeff's father, the dreamy but brilliant Bishop Timothy Archer, who unwittingly destroys himself and his friends, the Bishop's secret lover, the spiteful barbiturate addict Kirsten, and Kirsten's angelic son, the schizophrenic Bill.

The action begins on the day of John Lennon's death, with Angel's attempts to make sense of the "retributive fate" which has enveloped her life and destroyed those closest to her. For all this darkness, the book is a fairly light read, with some good humorous bits. For Philip K. Dick enthusiasts, it is also an interesting window into his thoughts in later years, and perhaps his most mature piece of writing. Although the repetitive nature of some of the lines was at times tedious for me, I believe it was a deliberate stylistic choice to evoke the obsessive nature of Angel's thoughts, and was effective for that purpose.

Bishop Archer's darkly comic misadventures are in fact based on the doings of the unfortunate Bishop James Pike - definitely worth reading a bit about that man, although save it for after you've read the novel - spoiler alert!

The 5th Wave

Janet Maslin recently wrote a piece for the New York Times about quality beach reads, and The 5th Wave is the first I've tackled from her list. It is a post-apocalyptic young adult novel about an alien invasion - War of the Worlds plus The Hunger Games plus The Stand. A great page turner - or wait for the movie, as it's already been optioned by Somy.