Weasel Words
A Book Log
August
25,
2002
Those of you who've been hanging around Weasel Words since the beginning
will have forgotten that back in February, I put up a partial review of
Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy
. And,
since I'm mentioning it again, you've probably guessed that I've finally
finished it, some six months later. Before I go on to talk about the book
itself, I thought I'd take a few moments to talk about the change in my
reading habits that was necessitated so that I might finish the book
within my lifetime.
Up until I finished college, it was my practice to only read one book at a
time -- since all the books I read for optional pleasure were fiction,
reading multiple books at once was pointless. If I'd tried to read two at
once (which I didn't, having no real desire to do so), I'd only have
gotten engrossed in one of them, read it to completion, and then returned
to the other one, anyway.
But once the mandated non-fiction reading of college disappeared, I found
myself more interested in reading non-fiction on my own time. The problem
with non-fiction is that it's generally too long and involved to read
quickly, and too deep to read when I want light reading. My practice of
reading one book at a time quickly devolved into a practice of starting a
non-fiction book, enjoying it for a while, then really really really
wanting to read some light fiction as a break. The inability to fulfill
this desire made the non-fiction seem like a chore, whereupon I'd realize
that (not being in college) I had no reason to force myself to complete
the chore, and would toss the non-fiction back on the shelf.
Obviously, that wouldn't do at all. So, I eventually relaxed my
one-book-at-a-time practice to allow both a non-fiction book and a fiction
book to be read at the same time. While this could have worked well in
theory, in practice it devolved in the same way that reading two fiction
books would have -- except that the book that got me caught up into
finishing was almost invariably the fiction book. So, my non-fiction
books tended to get ignored for months and months, until I finally
returned them to my bookshelf in ignoble defeat; which is why my bookshelf
has a dozen or so non-fiction books with bookmarks stuck in them around
the page 100 mark.
Russell's intellectual history had suffered that same fate long before
February -- my reading it then constituted a revival from the graveyard of
half-read books -- and seemed fated to suffer that fate again after
February. But a few months ago, in a sudden fit of literary genius, I hit
upon a master stroke of an idea that solved my recurring problem.
The problem, I realized in a flash, was that I was treating each reading
session as a separate choice, thereby making my reading habits operate in
a winner-take-all, rather than proportional, fashion. With this insight,
a solution became obvious. To expand:
Let's say that I want to read both a fiction book, and a non-fiction book,
but that I slightly prefer the fiction book: I have a 60% desire to read
the fiction, and a 40% desire to read the non-fiction. Now, the way I'd
been handling things, I'd choose which book I wanted to read every single
time I picked a book up off my coffee table for a session of reading.
Since I almost always preferred the fiction (though only slightly), I'd
end up reading it nearly 100% of the time. The solution was to
pre-allocate my reading time in such a way that I no longer needed to make
choices for each reading session, but allocated time between my fiction
and non-fiction readings on a per-book, rather than per-session, basis.
This could have been as simple as reading fiction on odd days and
non-fiction on even days, but I chose a different method, which possesses
a significant advantage over that naive system. My method, simply, is to
read my fiction book at all times except when I'm lying in bed before
going to sleep. The extra advantage here is that I'm never kept
reading late into the night because of a gripping plot turn. Not for me
are bleary-eyed mornings caused by too-gripping fiction. No, my bedtime
struggles now consist of forcing myself to put down a critique of
Rousseau, an exposition of Hegel -- a much easier struggle.
Well. I confess that I never meant to give my full Treatise on the
Methodology of Reading Non-Fiction here; let's chalk it up to the residual
influence of the philosophical mindset. At any rate, let's move on to
talking about Russell's book.
When last I wrote about it, I was still in the middle of the medieval
philosophy section, which I finished to great satisfaction before moving
on to the modern philosophy. I was a bit nervous about the transition:
medieval philosophy is a comfortable subject for me, and one in which I
have a reasonable background; modern philosophy is unfamiliar and scary.
Or, I should more properly say, was unfamiliar and scary. After reading
this book, I now have a reasonably solid overview of philosophy up until
the early twentieth century (Russell is writing in 1943); in particular,
my knowledge of 19th century philosophy -- the Romantics, Kant, Hegel,
Marx, the Utilitarians -- is enormously improved from a state of total
ignorance. I almost want to re-read Brust and Bull's Freedom and
Necessity just to see how much more of it makes sense now.
I have nothing but praise for this book. It covers a broad ground with
almost exactly the desired depth, is written lucidly and
straightforwardly, mixes well the functions of description and analysis,
and is pervaded throughout with an unmistakeable and penetrating
intelligence. If the subject matter (or parts of it; the book tackles the
history chronologically and contains each philosopher to their own
chapter, so lends itself well to excerpt) interests you at all, I
recommend this book highly.
| :::
August
19,
2002
When I was a wee lad, my parents had tons of random old books (gleaned
from garage and library sales) sitting around the house. Among them was a
book that must have been a reading textbook: it was filled with short
stories and excerpts from longer works, and had discussion questions at
the end of each selection. It had really good selections, though;
much better than the stuff I remember reading in my actual schoolbooks.
To my irritation, that book got lost somewhere along the way, so I have no
idea who wrote those stories I liked so much, which is a true pity (I'd
really like to be able to find the author of the "Home on the Range"
story that would reduce me to helpless tears of laughter).
I have had one serendipitous moment of discovery, though: A while back,
someone was talking about George MacDonald's The Princess and the
Goblin
, and they referenced a scene that I recognized as a
selection I'd read in that textbook. So now, a long-lost story that I
remembered fondly was rediscovered, and it turned out that there was a lot
more to the story than the excerpt I'd read. I was at once excited and a
bit wary, because... well, what if the book didn't live up to my memories?
Those of you who have been reading along will have noted that I don't
really like kids' books very often (the ones that I've liked here have
been ones that aren't really kids' books at all -- the fourth Harry Potter
and Pullman's trilogy), and MacDonald was writing a kids' book. But it
turns out there's a group of kids' books I actually can enjoy, and that's
really old ones; MacDonald, writing in the 19th century, definitely
qualifies in this group.
I can't tell you why I like older books, exactly. The obvious culprit is
the language, which is more elegant and formal than modern kids' books
(or, indeed, most modern books altogether). Writers like MacDonald,
Tolkien, and Dunsany (who wasn't writing kids' books, but has much of the
same stylistic traits) have a different rhythm and cadence to their
writing than writers like Rowling and Cooper. Older books also seem more
prone to the "Dear Reader" sort of omniscient narrative that forcibly
injects the voice and personality of the writer into the narrative, a
style that I prefer to the unadorned naturalism of modern tight-third
narration.
So, I can report with some relief that I did enjoy this book after all.
The writing was enjoyable, the plot was eventful and developed enough that
it didn't feel abridged, and the general atmosphere of the book was
properly musty and aged.
My main complaint has to do with the afterword, which I read before I'd
finished the book. The afterword explained that there was a significant
Christian allegorical element to the book, which pissed me right off,
because I'd never have noticed it if not for that afterword (I missed the
allegory in Narnia, to give you an idea how oblivious I can be to this
stuff), but once I noticed it, it was painfully obvious. Still, I was
able largely to ignore it by deliberately not reading for allegorical
meaning, by treating things in the book as if they were only what they
appeared on the surface and not at all possessed of metaphorical
significance.
| :::
August
13,
2002
When I picked up Neil Gaiman's Coraline
, the question wasn't
whether or not I would like it; I knew I would. The question is whether
I'd end up classing it as a significant work (like Sandman or
American Gods) or a minor one (Stardust, Neverwhere).
The small size of the book -- it's only 160 pages, with large line-spacing
-- argued for the latter, but you never know.
After reading it, it's very definitely a minor book. It's well-crafted
and written, with some truly great lines, but there's very little to it.
Unlike Terry Pratchett's recent Discworld book and Pullman's trilogy,
which were putatively aimed at children, but differed in no way from adult
fare, Gaiman's book is a children's book through and through. The
characters, the story, and even the writing style are all geared toward a
younger crowd.
This isn't a bad thing, necessarily; as I said, it's a fine book. It
does, however, mean that there's a sense of smallness and spareness to the
book that prevents it from being truly great or memorable. There's just
not enough story here to really support anything grand. Ultimately,
Coraline reads more like the centerpiece of an anthology of short
fiction than a standalone novel: I'd rave about "Coraline" if it were
included in Smoke and Mirrors, but I can only say quietly nice
things about Coraline.
| :::
August
8,
2002
Earlier, I mentioned en passant that Alan Moore's Promethea, Book
3
was pretentious and dreary. Well, okay, I didn't say it
specifically about Book 3, but I could have done so with precise accuracy.
However this series started out, it's now taken a horrible, horrible wrong
turn.
Rather than a story with characters and plot, Promethea is now a
tutorial on the occult, thinly veiled behind the merest facade of story.
I kept paging through this volume, hoping that this bizarre digression
would end soon, but it never did. As much as I hate dumping series in the
middle, I'm dumping this one. It's difficult to believe that something as
painfully dull and pretentious as this is written by the same guy who
writes the enormously fun Tom Strong and Top 10.
To wash the bad taste of Promethea out of my mouth, I read some
other comics, Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise: Child of Rage
and Strangers in Paradise: Tropic of Desire
, the ninth and
tenth volumes in Moore's SiP series.
Strangers in Paradise is far outside of the mold of what most
people think of as comic books in that it doesn't involve any superpowers
or fantastic elements. It is, at least at first, focused solely on the
relationships between a group of people (by virtue of which it's gotten
something of a reputation as a "chick comic"). As the series goes on, it
gradually picks up a suspense/crime/conspiracy subplot, which is less
interesting than the main story, but occasionally overwhelms it. (As an
analogy, consider how much less interesting Sluggy Freelance is when it's focusing on
all the dull Hereti-Corp business. Same kinda thing.)
Fortunately, these last two volumes finish up most of that subplot early,
and then get back to the interesting stuff. I'm not entirely pleased with
the ending, which smacks far too deeply of "It was all just a dream" --
which, after ten volumes, is even more galling than usual -- but
otherwise, I found these quite enjoyable.
| :::
August
7,
2002
My book database is back
online, so those of you who wish to calibrate your tastes against mine can
now look over the full list of books I own and my ratings of them. You
can also see how scarily many unread books I have, but never mind that.
(Warning: That file is 200K+ in size.)
You might notice that there aren't many awful books on the list, and fewer
mediocre ones than you'd expect; this is a direct consequence of my recent
purge, wherein I got rid of nearly all the books that I never wanted to
see again. I was cautious about it, though, figuring that it's a lot
easier to get rid of a book later than to reacquire it later if I find
myself missing it, so there are still some not-so-great books left.
As a technical aside, I'll note that my book database is now kept in XML
format and transformed to HTML via XSLT. The advantage of this is that
the data and the display code are both extremely portable and require
minimal server-side setup (which wasn't true of my previous SQL and JSP
setup, or the Berkeley DB and Perl CGI I'd done before that, or the SQL
Server and ASP.Net version I'd played with briefly).
Right now, I do the XML-to-HTML conversion whenever I update the XML file,
but as Web browsers evolve, they should be able to deal properly with the
raw XML. In fact, if you've got a modern version of IE (one that comes
with MSXML 3.0 or higher; and no, I have no idea how you find that out),
you can do this right now. Looking at the XML file will give you
the exact same appearance as the HTML file, and only doing a "View Source"
will reveal that you're really getting XML.
| :::
August
5,
2002
I'd been meaning to read something by Lawrence Watt-Evans for a long time
-- he's an occasionally regular (oxymoron noted) poster to the
rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup, and I've always found his posts to be worth
reading, so I figured I should check out his fiction.
Well, now I have. I read Lawrence Watt-Evans' The Misenchanted
Sword
, which is the first book in his Ethshar series. It wasn't
really what I was expecting. From the zany sound of the back cover and
the Darrell K. Sweet cover -- not to mention the title -- I was expecting
a light, humorous fantasy of magic gone amusingly wrong. It started out
how I would have expected: A scout in an interminable war between the
Kingdom of Ethshar and the evil, sorcerous Northerners stumbles on an old,
eccentric hermit who enchants his sword in a slightly unpredictable
fashion. Very familiar fantasy stuff, all.
And then it takes unexpected turns (which I shan't detail here, because
that's the kind of non-spoiling guy I am). The net effect is a deeper
book than you'd expect from that setup and premise, and one that goes in
directions you wouldn't think it'd go. It's not particularly grim or
heavy, but it's not the light romp I was expecting.
I liked it. It wasn't brilliant, but it was definitely in the upper
echelon of goodness. Watt-Evans is a craftsmanlike writer whose prose,
characters, background, and plot all combine to make a very enjoyable
novel. I want to see more of this world and will definitely be reading
the sequels. (Or at least the immediate sequel, which I own; I gather
that many of the others are out of print.)
| :::
August
2,
2002
After the post-human weirdness of Tomorrow and Tomorrow, I wanted
to read something deeply familiar and comfortable, which meant a book from
the epic fantasy authors I'd started reading in junior high. The book on
my shelf that came closest to fitting this description was Raymond E.
Feist's Krondor: The Assassins
.
Still, I was a bit hesitant to pick this book up. It's not because I
don't like Feist, mind. Even though I don't think he's nearly as good as
I thought back in junior high, I still think he's a pretty competent
writer. Sure, maybe his stories are a bit too obviously lifted from an
RPG setting, but as generic epic fantasy goes, they're competently done
and interesting. Plus, since I'd started reading them forever ago,
they're comfortable and nostalgic books for me.
The reason I was hesitant is that the previous book Feist had written,
Krondor: The Betrayal, was terrible. The reason for that is that
it was adapted from a computer game -- characters, plot, and all. I read
an interview with Feist where he stated that he had a hard time adapting
the book from the game, and I can believe it: The demands of a game plot
are rather decidedly different than those of a book plot, and what works
in one medium wouldn't necessarily work well in the other. (And what's
worse, Betrayal at Krondor was a lousy computer game. Although,
admittedly, that's a minority opinion.)
Anyway, I picked up this book, afraid that it would be an equally bad
translation of the second Krondor game, and was fairly nervous while
reading it. It turned out to be okay, though: Not as good as his purely
original stuff, but light years better than the previous book. I found
out later -- while I was looking up a few facts for this weblog entry, in
fact -- that it wasn't actually based on the second game, but was a
bridging novel to link the two game-adapted books together. Which means
that the next book in the series is another game-adapted book. I'm
thinking I might skip that one, but don't regret reading this one.
| :::
Previous Entries...