Category Archives: BM - Reading 2009 - Page 2

18049. (Matthew Jarpe) Radio Freefall

An enter­tain­ing first nov­el that pulled me in after a few pages and made me want to know the out­come. The rock musi­cian char­ac­ters make a nice change from the usu­al cyber-punk heroes, and the music lore feels cred­i­ble. There are some minor char­ac­ters too obvi­ous­ly para­chut­ed in for the sole pur­pose of giv­ing back­ground expla­na­tion. Unob­tru­sive­ly reveal­ing the back­ground has always been a dif­fi­cult writ­ing prob­lem in SF. The set­ting is in the near future, with a tech­nol­o­gy and social his­to­ry that seems unlike­ly in so short a time-span, but that’s a quib­ble. It’s a good, sol­id SF read, and I’ll seek out the author’s next work.

READINGAUGUST 2009

17961. (David G. Man­del­baum) The Plains Cree ― An Ethno­graph­ic, His­tor­i­cal, and
. . . . . Com­par­a­tive Study
17962. (Jane Jacobs) The Nature of Economies
17963. (John S. Mil­loy) The Plains Cree: Trade, Diplo­ma­cy and War, 1790 to 1870
17964. (Josi­ah Gregg) Com­merce of the Prairies 
17965. (Geof­frey Ashe) Camelot and the Vision of Albion
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17962. (Jane Jacobs) The Nature of Economies

This, the sec­ond-last of Jane Jacobs books, con­tin­ues the “dia­logue” ini­ti­at­ed in Sys­tems of Sur­vival. The start­ing point of the con­ver­sa­tion is this prof­fered axiom: “human beings exist whol­ly with­in nature as part of the nat­ur­al order in every respect”. From here, Jacobs argues that ecosys­tems and economies should be con­cep­tu­al­ized in rough­ly the same way, and that the same prin­ci­ples of co-ordi­na­tion, inter­de­pen­dence, com­bi­na­tion, and re-com­bi­na­tion under­lie them. It is good, sol­id stuff — vin­tage Jacobs. Plen­ty of con­crete exam­ples are used to bring the abstract argu­ments down to earth.

I rec­om­mend that any­one engaged in any of the dis­ci­plines of the human­i­ties — his­to­ry, eco­nom­ics, pol­i­tics, archae­ol­o­gy, urbanol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy — should famil­iar­ize them­self with this remark­able wom­an’s work. She made major con­tri­bu­tions to all of these fields, and cre­at­ed a body of thought that tran­scends their boundaries.

READINGJULY 2009

(Fritz Leiber) The Ghost Light ― Mas­ter­works of Sci­ence Fic­tion and Fan­ta­sy [Byron Preiss Visu­al Book, 
. designed by Alex Jay; ill. John Jude Palen­car, Bri­an Humphrey, JoEllen Trilling, Pat Orte­ga, Thomas 
. Canty, David Wis­ner, Robert Gould, Steve Leialo­ha, Paul Rivoche, Ben Asen]:
. . . . 17775. (Fritz Leiber) Intro­duc­tion [pref­ace]
. . . . 17776. (Fritz Leiber) The Ghost Light [sto­ry]
. . . . 17777. [5] (Fritz Leiber) Com­ing Attrac­tions [sto­ry]
. . . . 17778. [3] (Fritz Leiber) A Desk­ful of Girls [sto­ry]
. . . . 17779. [3] (Fritz Leiber) Space-Time for Springers [sto­ry]
. . . . 17780. (Fritz Leiber) Four Ghosts in Ham­let [sto­ry]
. . . . 17781. [4] (Fritz Leiber) Gonna Roll the Bones [sto­ry]
. . . . 17782. (Fritz Leiber) Bazaar of the Bizarre [sto­ry]
. . . . 17783. (Fritz Leiber) Mid­night by the Mor­phy Watch [sto­ry]
. . . . 17784. (Fritz Leiber) Black Glass [sto­ry]
. . . . 17785. (Fritz Leiber) Not Much Dis­or­der and Not So Ear­ly Sex: An Autobiographic 
. . . . . . . . Essay [arti­cle]
17775. (Steve Muhlberg­er) [in blog Muhlberg­er’s Ear­ly His­to­ry] Review of A His­to­ry of Mod­ern Iran
. . . . . by Arvand Abra­hami­an [review]
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(Fritz Leiber) The Ghost Light ― Masterworks of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Fritz Leiber, over the years, wrote some of the finest fan­ta­sy fic­tion there is, and some pret­ty decent sci­ence fic­tion, as well. This col­lec­tion, enlivened by illus­tra­tions by sev­er­al artists, is a good intro­duc­tion. It con­tains some of his most famous sto­ries — “Com­ing Attrac­tions”, “Gonna Roll the Bones” and the deligh­tul “Space-Time for Springers”, but it also has the unusu­al semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal “Four Ghosts in Ham­let”, based on his expe­ri­ences in his father’s Shake­speare­an com­pa­ny. One well-known sto­ry that I’d missed until now is “Mid­night by the Mor­phy Watch”, which involves the miss­ing pock­et watch of the 19th cen­tu­ry chess mas­ter, Paul Mor­phy. Sto­ries like this make you want to buy an over­stuffed arm­chair and take up pipe smok­ing. Read more »

READINGJUNE 2009

17694. (Stephen Fry) The Stars’ Ten­nis Balls
17695. (Thomas W. Best) Macropedius
17696. (Steve Muhlberg­er) [in blog Muhlberg­er’s Ear­ly His­to­ry] review of Joan of Arc: La Pucelle
. . . . . by Craig Tay­lor [review]
17697. (Jef­frey Toobin) Diverse Opin­ions [arti­cle]
17698. (Richard Scott Nokes) Beowulf: Prince of the Geats, Nazis, and Odin­ists [arti­cle]
17699. (Sharon Moalem) How Sex Works
17700. [2] (Damon Knight) Beyond the Bar­ri­er Read more »

17743. (Samuel P. Huntington) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

This is a stu­pid book. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s also been a very influ­en­tial one.

Hunt­ing­ton starts out by play­ing the old “civ­i­liza­tions” game, pop­u­lar from the late 19th cen­tu­ry onward. Nobody any longer takes you seri­ous­ly if you talk about nation­al­i­ties in a sil­ly, anthro­po­mor­phic way (“The Dutch are cheese-eat­ing, prac­ti­cal peo­ple, but they are doomed to fail­ure as nation because they smoke too much mar­i­jua­na and their feet must hurt from wear­ing wood­en shoes”). But if you shift the dis­cus­sion to “civ­i­liza­tions”, big seg­ments of the globe defined by arbi­trary cri­te­ria, you can get away with it. Read more »

17742. (Edward L. Ochsenschlager) Iraq’s Marsh Arabs in the Garden of Eden

This is a bril­liant book. Ochsen­schlager was engaged in an impor­tant archae­o­log­i­cal project in Iraq, start­ing in 1968. The site was the Sumer­ian city of Lagash. Puz­zled by some unglam­orous, but intrigu­ing arti­facts, he start­ed look­ing for analo­gies among the local peo­ple to inter­pret them. The local peo­ple includ­ed Bedouin tribes, the agri­cul­tur­al Beni Hasan, and the famous Mi’­dan [Marsh Arabs] who lived in the reed-filled swamps at the con­junc­tion of the Tigris and Euphrates. Read more »

17700. [2] (Damon Knight) Beyond the Barrier

I’m revis­it­ing this lit­tle-known nov­el, which I read as a kid. I did­n’t remem­ber much detail, only a few of the odd­er inci­dents in the sto­ry, and its creepy atmos­phere. Damon Knight first made a rep­u­ta­tion as an acer­bic crit­ic, and was extreme­ly crit­i­cal of A. E. van Vogt’s work. So it’s iron­ic that this nov­el struck me as dis­tinct­ly “van Vogt­ian”. It cer­tain­ly has that author’s ten­den­cy to jerk you from one plot devel­op­ment to anoth­er, and to con­stant­ly shift its frame of ref­er­ence. There’s also a bit of a Philip K. Dick feel to it. The sto­ry starts with a pro­tag­o­nist with mem­o­ry loss, a dubi­ous iden­ti­ty, enig­mat­ic events, mur­der, aliens mas­querad­ing as humans, and soon drifts into time-trav­el, wan­der­ing about an emp­ty space ship after the human race is extinct, and even has the main char­ac­ter fall through the earth like a yo-yo. The stuff is just piled on. And yet, it’s read­able. Read more »

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 — On Holy Books

There should be no Holy Books. Our species would make a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward if it for­sook the habit of declar­ing books to be sacred scrip­tures. The belief that cer­tain books aren’t just the writ­ings of human beings, but direct rev­e­la­tions from a divin­i­ty, or that they are “sacred” has caused no end of mis­chief. But I plead my case pre­cise­ly because I love and respect books. There is some pro­found wis­dom to be found, if one cares to look, in cer­tain books. But there seems, in my view, to be no greater insult to a wise per­son than to turn their work into a sil­ly mag­i­cal tal­is­man, to be mind­less­ly chant­ed and rant­ed, rather than read and judged with reason.
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