Gifts, Voices, and Powers; Le Guin. Yes. I read these out of order, starting with Powers because I didn’t notice it was part of a series (one of the hazards of avoiding knowing anything about a book before reading it). The reading didn’t suffer much from the different sequencing. These are sturdy young-adult works, exploring complex themes as Le Guin can.
I can find no indication whether there will be more Annals forthcoming.

Through a set of coïncidences, I read three Hispaniola-connected works in rapid succession (the middle work overlapped, I think, both of the others). I chose Oscar Wao from a list of starred Publishers Weekly reviews. While I was reading it, the folks at my house watched Muppet Treasure Island, which caused me to wonder yet again how close it hews to the Stevenson story. This time, I wondered long enough to go check on Project Gutenberg, and it was (of course) there, so I started reading it online. About that same time, my hold on Pirate Freedom got to the top of the list, completing the weird Hispaniola trifecta. Given the common connection, I’m opting to combine the reviews in one entry.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Díaz. Yes. Memory has faded somewhat, but I do recall enjoying the story, and the writing, greatly. Very character-driven, with many shout-outs to the nerd community. Much of the action takes place on Hispaniola.

Treasure Island, Stevenson. Yes. YA fiction used to be a great deal bloodier than it is now. According to Cecil, Stevenson became the standard for pirate depictions, and I have to believe that it’s due to the strength and durability of his narrative. The Muppet version is admirably close, differing mostly for comic effect or brevity. The Hispaniola is, of course, the treasure ship.

Pirate Freedom, Wolfe. Yes. Reading Wolfe makes me wonder why I don’t read more Wolfe. I expect it may be, as with Davies, that he’s so good I have to pay a lot of attention. This was a much lighter work than his multi-volume epics, but nonetheless great for that. Not all that much of the action takes place on Hispaniola, but between the action there and the piracy, it clearly fits in this fortuitous group.

The Lyre of Orpheus, Davies. Yes. Davies is extremely good, and I suspect it’s mostly because of the large amount of attention I have to pay that I haven’t read much more. I read the Deptford Trilogy some time ago (before I started reviewing everything I read), and also enjoyed it despite Davies’s habit of including extensive background information (Jungian psychology in Deptford, opera in Orpheus—KCLS refers to the former work as “didactic fiction”). I was surprised to see in the KCLS listing that Orpheus was a sequel. I’ll likely have to get to What’s Bred in the Bone one of these days.
Davies correctly uses “whoever”, bless him, which is only to be expected from Canada’s prose laureate. He does not, however, seem to have an ear for American speech: “That’ll do to be going on with” is not something I would expect to hear from a Californian grad student.

A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, LeGuin. Yes. There’s not a whole lot more to say about LeGuin than “yes.” This collection includes some relatively early works, and it shows to the extent that there is less subtlety than in her later works. We’re not talking Tepper-blatant, natch, but she was clearly refining her craft. Sometimes my attention span isn’t sufficient to the task, but Ms LeGuin is always worthy of my effort.

Have Mercy on Us All, Vargas. Yes. This was an enjoyable, briskly moving read. The only item I found truly remarkable was the perfect use of the objective case:

Up and walked with my little boy (whom because of my wife’s making him idle, I dare not leave at home) … to excuse my not being at home at dinner to Mrs T; who I perceive is vexed because I do not serve her in something against the great feasting for her husband’s reading in helping her to some good penn’orths, but I care not.

Turns out it was not Vargas (or her translator), but Pepys who understood the language (though I don’t think Vargas or her translator got it wrong anywhere, either). I haven’t chosen to read any more Vargas, but I have nothing against the idea in principle.

Crooked Little Vein, Ellis. Yes. It’s been a bit too long since I read this to remember what I liked and didn’t like about it, but it was, overall, entertaining. I am given to understand that virtually all of the bizarre practices referred to in the book actually occur with some regularity.

The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt, Ray. Non-fiction. This was a book club recommendation, and it was extremely informative. Pathetic fallacy (the stone having a sense of humor, the stone having made up its mind to be deciphered by a Frenchman) distracts badly when it appears. Fortunately, it does not appear all that frequently. The work naturally goes into far more detail than the corresponding section of The Codebreakers, and gives a substantially different view of the early work of the two folks who were key in arriving at a translation.

There is a section in which the author offers some awfully tortured rationalizations why keeping artifacts away from their countries of origin is okay (“where would it end?” “who’s to say where its home really is?” like that), and while I’m not passionate about returning the marbles or the stone to where they were fashioned, that’s mostly because I’m likely to get to London before Athens or Egypt, and I can’t pretend I have any justification for my selfish preference.

The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing, Kahn. Non-fiction. This is one of the standards of the field, and it touches on a surprising array of subjects, including the Rosetta Stone (which was, after all, a code-breaking challenge). Even if you’re not of the class of geek that must read this, it does have plenty of goodness, but do mind the caveats after the jump.

Continue reading →

I Am a Strange Loop, Hofstadter. Non-fiction. I am (it turns out, several months later) not going to be able to say in this review everything that I want to. IAaSL is at a first approximation a deeper exploration of some of the recurring themes in Hofstadter’s work: most notably, consciousness (which he asserts is equivalent to a “soul”, and I don’t see a lot of reason to differ on that point), how it arises, and what it means.
Hofstadter spends a lot of time in the book asserting that my model of you is an extension of your consciousness. For a number of reasons, I am unable to buy it: I’m fully prepared to accept that my consciousness is more or less an accident of the way my senses work, and, especially, how my sensory/processing system feeds back into itself. My model of me, though, is based on observations of my actions, not the same direct feedback that brought me to consciousness. Similarly, my model of you doesn’t have any direct feedback relationship with your senses. Yes, you can tell me what you know about why you do things, but 1) no one has perfect knowledge of why one does things, and 2) your reports are delayed by time and filtered by both your senses and your model of you. My model of you is never going to surprise me with some insight into itself.
The time-sensitivity in feedback is, I think, a vital element that I’m not sure Hofstadter sufficiently respects. I’m fascinated by the study that showed our inability to tickle ourselves is very tightly time-limited (if you delay the result of my action enough (and it doesn’t take much), I will find it more tickling than if you don’t).
One thought that keeps coming up for me goes something like this: I am (i.e., my consciousness is) the total of my memories and my sensory input. So, who am I when I’m amnesiac? And variations on that theme. I find that a much more interesting rat hole to climb down than debating whether a loved one lives on (in anything more than a metaphorical sense) in the memories of others.
Thought-provoking, as Hofstadter always is, but not his best-directed effort.

an abundance of katherines, Green. Yes. Differently annoying from looking for alaska, particularly in having to wait most of the book to find out why presented-as-smart kids are misusing a perfectly fine word. Green (or his editor) is docked points for “anyone except whom he’d already been.” Also, the misuse of “theorem” and the misspelling “discreet particle.”