Christina Widmann's Blog, page 2
October 24, 2021
Carlos Taranilla: Ciudades Legendarias
Muy Lector mío:
Carlos Taranilla sabe demasiado. Peor, padece el irresistible afán de compartir todo lo que sabe. Sólo escribiendo sobre enigmas y secretos, sobre lo desconocido, a ratos consigue enganchar al lector con un ensayo ameno.
Poco sabemos sobre el caudillo maya Pakal. Pero consta quién descubrió su tumba y qué exploradores la visitaron a lo largo de varios siglos. Y Taranilla nos lo dice todo. El sinfín de nombres y fechas me hace bostezar. Lo mismo le ocurre con la ciudad de Tikal y con los restos sumergidos en el lago Titicaca.
En vez de centrarse en los enigmas, Taranilla se ciñe a lo conocido. Su capítulo sobre las runas nórdicas es, lisa y llanamente, una entrada de enciclopedia: La historia de los vikingos, los métodos de adivinación en que se empleaban las runas, los significados exactos de cada signo, todo. Sólo al final y casi de paso nos enteramos de que queda por ahí alguna pregunta no resuelta.
Sobre la denominada Ciudad Z, a cambio, se sabe poco. En este caso Carlos Taranilla no puede dar un listado de exploradores porque no había más que uno. Por fin se ve obligado a hablar a fondo del enigma. También sobre el Mary Celeste le sale un capítulo interesante.
Los capítulos sobre la física también enganchan. La señal Wow, el campo magnético de la tierra, supuestos encuentros con alienígenas -- aquí Taranilla escribe con soltura. Unas pocas veces cae en la tentación de incluir cifras que no vienen al caso (como los años de construcción de cada telescopio que menciona). Y no entiendo por qué exactamente le dedica un capítulo a la constelación Ofiuco, que como mucho será un enigma para los astrólogos, que no para la ciencia. Pero en total esta es la mejor parte del libro.
En su mayoría Cuidades Legendarias no acaba de ser el ensayo entretenido que me esperaba. A menudo los lectores tenemos que abrirnos camino por una maraña de información de la cual no toda viene al caso, y sin un hilo de narración que nos condujese. Lo recomiendo si estás dispuesto a esforzarte. Si prefieres que el autor te entretenga, recomiendo Civilizaciones perdidas de Rafael Alemañ Berenguer, de tema similar y mucho más legible.
Atentamente
Christina Widmann de Fran
Carlos Taranilla: Ciudades Legendarias
Muy Lector mío: Carlos Taranilla sabe demasiado. Peor, padece el irresistible afán de compartir todo lo que sabe. Sólo escribiendo sobre enigmas y secretos, sobre lo desconocido, a ratos consigue eng…
September 26, 2021
Stanford was rigged
Dear Reader,
On the first 200 pages he tears down our pessimistic image of mankind. Lord of the Flies? It's just a novel. And written by a grumpy schoolteacher who, bored with the usual happy-ending adventure novels, decided to write 'what would really happen on a deserted island'. What would really happen? We can't ship a dozen kids to some island to find out. But it turns out that six boys got stranded together in 1965. The Tongan castaways kept each other alive and healthy for more than a year until a fisherman took them home. Those happy-ending adventure novels were right after all.
[Or were they? I'd like to hear Bregman's view about what happened on Pitcairn.\n Fifteen men, twelve women and a baby landed there. Eight years later \nthere was one man and nine women left (and 19 children). Some of the \nadults died of disease, but most killed each other.]
Milgram's experiment? Bregman makes a convincing case that it didn't measure blind obedience at all. Nobody just obeyed. All of them had to be coaxed and prodded. Those who pushed the last button did it sweating. For Bregman, Milgram's experiment measured how much people were willing to damn themselves in order to help others. In this case, to help science. People will only do bad things if they believe they're working towards a good goal.
The Stanford Prison Experiment? Robber's Cave? Both were rigged (by psychologists who also believed they were doing good). It takes quite some pressure and manipulation to turn people into enemies and make them fight. In war, Bregman writes, most soldiers don't want to kill anybody. They'll shoot too high, they'll reload slowly. If left alone, most wouldn't shoot at all.
People are peaceful. Why? Because we domesticated ourselves. Here, Rutger Bregman explains a theory that has been gaining ground in anthropology: We are to neanderthals what puppies are to wolves. We're the childish, playful, friendly version. From this chapter on, Bregman calls us Homo puppy. So how come Homo puppy goes to war? Bregman comes at the question from several angles, but it all comes down to: If we go to war, we do it for each other. And given half a choice, we'll make peace.
A foray into pre-history. And how I'd love to believe Bregman's every word! He paints such a beautiful picture of our ancestors roaming the countryside as hunter-gatherers, free as the wind, going where they pleased. Whenever two groups met, they had a party. Occasionally they'd team up to build statues (on the Easter Islands) or a temple (Göbekli Tepe), just for fun. Hunter-gatherers owned nothing, claimed no land and never went to war. It all went bad when we stayed put, built cities and started inheriting land. That's when we started defending it.
And that's where Bregman is wrong. Attacking the evil patriarchy, he forgets matrilineal societies. Treating agriculture as the big mistake, he forgets a whole continent of territorial hunter-gatherers: Australia. Aboriginal Australians knew exactly where to find water and food on their own land, and what plants and animals were poisonous. Nomad tribes wandered, but not far. It would have been crazy to roam into regions where you didn't know what to eat and what could kill you. As far as we can tell, indigenous people on every continent were and are territorial. They defend their territories and they fight wars. Small wars by our standards - but if a tribe is just 500 people, then a battle with 5 killed on one side means 1 % of the population dead. World War 2 didn't kill that many.
Bregman sounds naive where he talks about pre-history. While he's great at tearing down false theories, his own Homo puppy story is still easy to attack on a few sides. I hope he'll read up on anthropology for later books and build a more solid version.
When Bregman arrives in the modern world, it gets better. He can back his claims with reliable evidence. Firms that throw out the management and let workers manage themselves - thrive. A prison where inmates and guards smoke together and you can't tell who is who - makes better people. Ex-cons from those prisons find their way back into the outside world and become someone's nice, law-abiding neighbour. All of those are experiments right now, but promising experiments. It's time to try them in more places.
We don't need a manager to make sure we arrive to work on time. We don't need a policeman on every corner. We don't need an overpowering government to steer us on the rightful path. People are decent sorts if you leave them alone, is Bregman's lesson. And he writes it beautifully. For 400 pages he takes us to a wonderful world where neighbours help each other, children go to school and want to learn, people work not for the money but because they love what they do. It's the world we live in, Bregman writes. Or it will be, if we turn off the TV and look outside.
Humankind, published originally in Dutch, has been translated into dozens of languages and is selling everywhere. It was time for some good news, and Bregman's book is nothing but.
Yours sincerely
Christina Widmann de Fran
Stanford was rigged
Dear Reader, Most people, if you get to know them, are decent sorts. It's that simple and that revolutionary. Since we hear quite a different story most of the day, Rutger Bregman elaborates. He dism…
September 1, 2021
Joe Abercrombie Goes West
Dear Reader,
There's a gold rush in Joe Abercrombie's fantasy world. Long lines of wagons are rolling out west. We're going with them to search for some missing children, to settle who's boss in the boomtown, and to find out who this enigmatic Northman is who calls himself Lamb.
As for the world, it's the Wild West as you know it from the movies. But the characters aren't your Western movie gunslingers. (Guns haven't been invented yet.) Instead, we get Shy South, a farmer in her twenties whose brother and sister were kidnapped. She doesn't know who, she doesn't know why. She knows she will follow their trail. With her goes her stepfather Lamb, a pacifist Northman if such a thing can exist.
In a parallel line, we follow a young man called Temple. He's everything but a fighter. Literally everything. In his young life he's been a priest's acolyte, a carpenter, a lawyer, the notary of a mercenary band. After a fall into the river he will be a cowherder for some weeks. A coward, but I like him.
And the magic? Joe Abercrombie uses very little of it. Up in the mountains there lives a tribe that can't be found except by those who know where it is. For generations, these Dragon people have been working on a larger magic. But down in the plains and in a boomtown called Crease, people don't need a wizard to help them do good or evil.
If you're new to Joe Abercrombie's novels, you have two options. You can read Red Country as\n a standalone; you'll love how the author weaves plot, characters and \nworldbuilding together into a page-turning adventure. However, the \ncharacters will keep dropping hints at backstories that never get fully \nexplained. It's realistic, but it won't satisfy. Which is why I \nrecommend option two: Read the First Law Trilogy, then the other two not-quite-standalones in the saga, and come to Red Country\n as book six in the series. You will know the backstory already, and \nrecognize those characters as old friends and favourite villains. It \nwill be glorious.
Yours sincerely
Christina Widmann de Fran
Joe Abercrombie Goes West
Dear Reader, There's a gold rush in Joe Abercrombie's fantasy world. Long lines of wagons are rolling out west. We're going with them to search for some missing children, to settle who's boss in the …
August 30, 2021
No Heroes
Dear Reader,
This is the grimmest and darkest volume in the First Law saga. Get ready for blood and gore and the futility of war. Trust Bayaz to meddle, trust the Dogman to pull tricks. Trust Joe Abercrombie to balance tension and comic relief.
The war in the North flares up again. If you've read the trilogy, you'll recognize many characters and know the backstory and the politics involved. If you haven't, I suggest you start there or resign yourself to reading about a single battle without knowing anything about the war. Abercrombie doesn't repeat himself.
Three days of fighting about a hill with a circle of rocks on it, called The Heroes. They're the only heroes in this book. War is no place for noble motives and our characters know it. Only the freshest new recruits believe what the songs say, and they'll soon be cured of their romantic notions. Abercrombie shows us some of those recruits on both sides, some veterans and the leaders. In fact, he makes us root for both sides of the battle throughout. Most of the soldiers just want to look out for each other and come back alive.
So what have we got? General Jalenhorm, a nice guy who got promoted far beyond his abilities and causes chaos on his side of the battlefield. Finree, ambitious wife to a humble man. Bremer dan Gorst, royal observer of the Northern War. He made me laugh and cringe with his daily letters to the king.
On the other side, Black Dow: The most bloodthirsty bastard in the North. Him I'd wanted dead ever since Last Argument of Kings. But his fighters look like good people, most of them. They know they're following a killer, but they believe he's leading them in the right direction.
Abercrombie gives us a beautiful group of Named Men again. Their jokes and banter, their well-practised camaraderie, their grief each time one goes back to the mud! Be prepared to laugh and grieve with them as the plot pulls you through the pages.
Yours sincerely
Christina Widmann de Fran
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Dear Reader, This is the grimmest and darkest volume in the First Law saga. Get ready for blood and gore and the futility of war. Trust Bayaz to meddle, trust the Dogman to pull tricks. Trust Joe Abe…
August 19, 2021
Best Served Cold
Dear Reader,
Best Served Cold is a standalone novel in Joe Abercrombie's First Law world. It's the one novel you can enjoy without having read the trilogy. However, if you're coming to this book after Last Argument of Kings , you'll be delighted. Delighted to find out BSC starts just a few years after the ending of the previous book. Not enough time for anyone to die of old age. We get new characters, but we'll also meet familiar names.The plot is easy enough at first glance: Monza Murcatto, former general of a mercenary band, wants revenge on the men who killed her brother and left her for dead. Seven people must die, among them an influential banker and a duke. Her revenge might cause a war. It might bring the First of the Magi down on her. But to say it with a metaphor from the book: Monza doesn't care whose yard she pisses in. And we love her for it.
Caul Shivers was a second-tier character in the trilogy. Now he greets us as a protagonist. The warrior decided to become a better man in a better country. He embarked to Styria. But he finds no work - until Monza hires him to help with her revenge. What will Shivers be, a good man or a thug? Can he make Monza give up her bloody plan, or will she corrupt him? Here's a theme and a tension for the whole book.
Monza hires more help: A poisoner and his apprentice, an autistic ex-convict called Friendly, a torturer and her former mentor Nicomo Cosca. Together they break into some well-guarded buildings, attempt some daring assassinations and keep us readers on our toes. They fight among themselves, too. Who can trust whom among hired assassins?
Abercrombie being Abercrombie, he balances dark scenes with comic relief and gets better at juggling with every book. As backstories are revealed and relationships change, the author makes us rethink our opinions about most characters. Who is good, who is bad? Who to root for? We end up rooting for all of them. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and Abercrombie gets ever better at show-not-telling it.
Get your copy of Best Served Cold and stay tuned for my review of the next standalone: The Heroes .
Yours sincerely
Christina Widmann de Fran
Best Served Cold
Dear Reader, Best Served Cold is a standalone novel in Joe Abercrombie's First Law world. It's the one novel you can enjoy without having read the trilogy. However, if you're coming to this book afte…
