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September 10
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Anne
took the never-ending book quiz.
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August 29
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Anne
added a question to the never-ending book quiz.
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August 28
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Anne
gave
 
to:
Use of Weapons (Paperback)
by Iain M. Banks
bookshelves:
fiction,
sff
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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recommended to Anne by:
Eleanor
recommended for: Sci-fi fans
read in August, 2008
Anne said:
"Use of Weapons was the August 2008 pick for my sci-fi book club, and I enjoyed it immensely. It's a dense and challenging book to get through. The scattered timeline and the dreamlike quality of many passages put off some readers. Frustrati...more
Use of Weapons was the August 2008 pick for my sci-fi book club, and I enjoyed it immensely. It's a dense and challenging book to get through. The scattered timeline and the dreamlike quality of many passages put off some readers. Frustratingly, Banks leaves out what would have been the most revealing and emotionally fraught scenes. He provides us only with beginnings and middles, always cutting to black right after the climax, never giving us a resolution. But all of those apparent flaws are deliberate literary techniques, and I think that Banks uses them to great effect.
In my reading, Use of Weapons is a meditation on situational ethics, their use, and their cost. The book's title refers both to the way in which the main character, Cheradinine Zakalwe, ruthlessly uses every available weapon to win his wars, and to the way in which the Culture uses Zakalwe himself. As a weapon, Zakalwe will destroy whatever he is aimed at and he has no apparent morality beyond the morality of the purpose to which he is set. But he is haunted my memories of some unforgivable act which, at the time, he thought was necessary.
Zakalwe works for the Culture in order to redeem himself, fighting wars that will supposedly make the universe a better place. The Culture is an ancient, interstellar civilization that is governed by computers. They attempt to guide the fate of less developed societies in order to make them "more civilized", but the connection between Zakalwe's actions and the Culture's goals is never explored. Likewise, the reader is never given any sense of the goal which drove Zakalwe to commit his great crime. All of the action in the book is a means to an end that is never specified. We are left wondering whether any end could be good enough to justify Zakalwe's actions-- or whether he is truly beyond redemption.
The novel's central dilemma is thus a paradox: if the reader believes that the end justifies the means, then nothing Zakalwe did in pursuit of a moral goal could be immoral and, thus, he does not require redemption. But if the end does not justify the means, then Zakalwe can never be redeemed by fighting the Culture's wars.
I thought this was a thought-provoking and beautifully written book, but it's definitely not for everyone. I'd recommend it to anyone who has the patience to read it....less
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August 27
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Anne
gave
to:
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit (Paperback)
by Daniel Quinn
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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recommended to Anne by:
Cai
recommended for: environmentalists, activists
read in July, 2008
Anne said:
"Almost great. . . but not quite.
First off, this isn't fiction, it's philosophy, and it's very much a product of its time. Most people who are concerned about environmentalism, human rights, and Western society will have already considered many o...more
Almost great. . . but not quite.
First off, this isn't fiction, it's philosophy, and it's very much a product of its time. Most people who are concerned about environmentalism, human rights, and Western society will have already considered many of the things this book presents. The author has a very interesting way of framing issues that will be thought-provoking to some readers, but offensive to others. Unfortunately, Quinn is just not a good enough writer to make Ishmael a pleasure to read. So the book must stand or fall on the basis of its ideas, and it doesn't quite stand.
I would very much like to read a book that went beyond exploring the cultural and environmental problems of our day, and actually proposed feasible solutions. ...less
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July 30
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Anne
marked as to-read:
The Book of Results (Paperback)
by Ray Sherwin
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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July 08
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Anne
gave
to:
Celebrating Life: Rites of Passage for All Ages (Paperback)
by Tzipora Klein
bookshelves:
non-fiction,
religion
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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recommended to Anne by:
Cat
recommended for: B* students
read in July, 2008
Anne said:
"I really didn't like this book. It's basically a collection of rituals for life transitions, which is a fantastic idea and something we need more of. But it was poorly written, factually fuzzy, and painfully heteronormative. That applies to most s...more
I really didn't like this book. It's basically a collection of rituals for life transitions, which is a fantastic idea and something we need more of. But it was poorly written, factually fuzzy, and painfully heteronormative. That applies to most stuff written on Wicca but, somehow, this got under my skin more.
While she says "the rituals in this book may be adapted to the circumstances of any group or family," the fact is that these rituals are predicated on the special sacredness of male and female gender roles, and heterosexual sexuality. The ritual for a blessing of conception includes such priceless lines as "through our love you have given me your seed to bring new life to this world". The puberty rituals are sex-segregated: the boys' ritual starts with a vignette about strength, the girls' ritual is introduced with an image of a little girl sewing, and being taught sexual modesty. And so it continues. Saying these rituals can be adapted for the queer, the poly, the non-biological parents, or even for modern life, don't make it so.
The book includes a ritual for emotional recovery from an abortion, but not one for emotional recovery from a rape.
Maybe it's that I know something about the author's life, know that she's *not* just presenting rituals based on her own experience. She's leaving a lot of her experience out, and a lot of the rituals she writes are for things she never went through or witnessed. Knowing that, the absolute way she presents her rituals falls a little flat.
I don't really have anything good to say about this book. I hope that, at some point, someone else will have a more useful review....less
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July 06
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Anne
is currently reading:
Patient by Patient: Lessons in Love, Loss, Hope, and Healing from a Doctor's Practice (Hardcover)
by Emily R. Transue
bookshelves:
currently-reading,
medical,
non-fiction
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Anne
gave
to:
Circle Within: Creating a Wiccan Spiritual Tradition (Paperback)
by Dianne Sylvan (Goodreads author!)
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Anne said:
"This is a very useful book for individuals looking to move beyond "Wicca 101" and create a personal spirituality which brings them closer to the gods. Sylvan includes several chapters with suggestions for ways to sanctify daily life, as we...more
This is a very useful book for individuals looking to move beyond "Wicca 101" and create a personal spirituality which brings them closer to the gods. Sylvan includes several chapters with suggestions for ways to sanctify daily life, as well as a short section of devotional rituals for various occasions. It is the only book I have seen of its kind.
However, like everything I've read that was published by Llewellyn, it's fairly superficial. It says more about why<I> Wiccans should be creating their own daily spiritual practice than about <i>how to go about doing it. And like most things Llewellyn publishes, it is sometimes strident, and sometimes offensively anti-Christian and anti-male.
If I'd read this book five years ago, it would have had more to offer. At this point, I got more out of Galen Gillete's Books of Hours and Ceisiwr Serith's Book of Pagan Prayer....less
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June 30
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Anne
gave
to:
Who Speaks For Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think (Hardcover)
by John L. Esposito
bookshelves:
non-fiction,
religion
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Anne said:
"A straightforward presentation of the results and the implications of the results from a worldwide Gallup poll of the world's Muslims. I found this book a much-needed counterbalance to the prevailing Islamaphobia in so much of the public discourse o...more
A straightforward presentation of the results and the implications of the results from a worldwide Gallup poll of the world's Muslims. I found this book a much-needed counterbalance to the prevailing Islamaphobia in so much of the public discourse of the USA. Among the points that this books makes are: jihad doesn't mean holy war; radical militant Muslims are better educated, richer, and less religious than moderate Muslims; sharia is not inherently anti-democratic or discriminatory; Muslim men and women around the world favor democracy and women's rights and consider that these goals can best be met through a fuller understanding of Islam, rather than by moving towards secularism. In the end, this book presents a picture of terrorism as politically, rather than religiously, motivated and of the abuses of Islamic law as being miscarriages of justice, rather than products of an intrinsically barbaric justice system. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning about the perspective of actual Muslims around the world.
However, this book is based on a poll, and you know what they say about lies, damn lies, and statistics. So the facts in the book may or may not be considered objectively true, depending on how much you credit polls. I consider it at least as accurate as anecdote, assumption, and the Washington Post-- which is to say, as good as it gets. ...less
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