What to say about this book? It is harder to know than for most.
What it is, actually, is easier to state. It is early 20th century (mostly pre-WWII) sWhat to say about this book? It is harder to know than for most.
What it is, actually, is easier to state. It is early 20th century (mostly pre-WWII) short-form adventure fiction. There are spies, thieves, explorers, soldiers, and rogues of many different types. They lie to one another, steal from one another, try to kill one another in some cases, and discover the truth, the treasure, or the solution.
If this sounds grim, it is not; this is adventure fiction with a mostly jovial spirit. There are occasional bits of terror or grief, but for the most part the protagonists swash and buckle without as much anxiety as the typical early 21st century real-life citizen of the western world spends on topics like "do I check my email too much?" The denizens of these stories are living in a dangerous world, and for the most part they are fine with that.
They are, also, so far as one can tell, all fairly racist.
Fortunately, race plays a minor role in all of these tales. I am guessing that the editors of this book selected from the decades of short stories which appeared in "The Strand" magazine those which were least likely to offend modern readers. They did not entirely succeed.
However, given that there are only a few sentences in the book which you have to wince at, shake your head as if to fling off a foul scent, and then proceed onwards to the next sentence in the hope that there will be no ethnic slurs for the rest of the story, I found that I was able to enjoy the good parts, and otherwise enjoy that standards on race had changed for the better in the last hundred years.
Surprisingly, the standards in regards to sex were considerably better. There were several female protagonists, and they were all different from one another, but all interesting and talented and courageous in their very different ways.
But, political correctness aside, there are a lot of fun stories here, and only a few moments in the book which are unfortunate. If those few moments are a few too many for you to enjoy reading it, you have my full sympathy, and I won't try to argue you out of your opinion. But I believe it is possible to enjoy the 99% good in spite of the 1% distasteful, and I only wish that there were more of that 99% being written today....more
There was a time, when many of the upper and upper middle class homes had a room called a "Cabinet of Curiousities", "Wunderkammer", or something simiThere was a time, when many of the upper and upper middle class homes had a room called a "Cabinet of Curiousities", "Wunderkammer", or something similar. It held fossils, taxidermy, oddly shaped antlers or coral or other animal parts, paintings, small sculptures, crystals or other geological oddities, and basically anything else that would be suitable for impressing your guests. It was sort of like a substitute for TV, except way cooler.
This book, is an attempt to create a 21st century Chamber of Wonders, in book form. There are plenty of visuals, which is nice, but the emphasis is on the text, which is really in many ways an attempt to get you, the reader, to realize just how amazing the universe is. In truth, then, it is generally an attempt to get you to realize how amazing it is that we, the human species, have figured out so many things about the universe.
We begin with light, because the event that gave the author the idea for this book was an incident in his kitchen one morning. There was a series of reflections outside his window that eventually ended up in the mysterious patch of light on the ceiling of his kitchen. After a few minutes, he had realized where it was coming from, and laughed out loud, causing his very young daughter to laugh as well, and he had the idea to try to make a book of these kind of moments; the wonder and joy that comes from learning about a thing in the world that you didn't know before (or didn't understand).
Some people, of course, don't like it when things are explained, and think that a "wonder" should be a mystery, unexplained or better yet unexplainable. This book takes the opposite take, and tells us about a whole "Wunderkammer" of phenomena, from light to heart to brain and beyond, that are explained (at least in part), and still wondrous. There is no Big Idea here, no unifying theme, except this, and it is enough!
This is a book ideally suited for reading in small doses. I read it over breakfast, a few pages at a time. Wonder for breakfast. It was a good way to put any of the disappointments of the day before behind me, and a great way to start each day with open eyes and an openness to wonder. I was sorry to see it end, and look forward to the author's next book....more
So, Jane Eyre. Deciding what you think of it is nearly like deciding what one thinks of "Hamlet"; it seems to have a position in English literature whSo, Jane Eyre. Deciding what you think of it is nearly like deciding what one thinks of "Hamlet"; it seems to have a position in English literature which is quite immune to the opinion of any modern reader.
Of course, that is not quite true. "The Pilgrim's Progress", for example, was a quite widely read and influential book for centuries, but is now rather less well known than before. Perhaps there will be a time, in some future century, when "Jane Eyre" will not be significant. Not this century, though, I think; recently I had cause to visit a bookstore in Bratislava, Slovakia, and saw on the floor amidst other preeminent fictional characters (such as "Huckleberry Finn" and, if I recall correctly, "Hamlet"), a star marked "Jane Eyrova". Charlotte Brontë's output may not have been as great as Shakespeare's, but her greatest work left a mark that still remains after nearly two centuries, at least. Why?
One thing that is most surprising to me is that it was criticized in her time for "coarseness". It seems to me an exceedingly refined tale, in language and reverence for religion, but for its time it apparently pushed the boundaries of the acceptable. Perhaps people were uncomfortable with the idea of representing the clergyman who runs the school Jane Eyre attends, as less than merciful and far less than wise. It shows something of the standards to which Charlotte Brontë was aiming her cannons; she attended a school in her own youth where standards were excessively strict, and girls (including two of her sisters) died of disease (perhaps partly as a result).
Jane Eyre, the protagonist, is also not our conventional fairy-tale heroine. She is, we are told on several occasions and in several ways, not a beauty. The romantic interest has, shall we say, several flaws. Additionally, she rescues him, from the very first encounter (when his horse has slipped on the ice and his leg is pinned beneath it) to the last, rather than the reverse. She gets her fortune, but not from marrying a wealthy prince. You may infer that she read a great deal in her youth, and was not entirely satisfied with the fairy tale heroines.
The language style is, of course, antiquated, and this is either a boon or bane, according to your taste. I quite enjoyed it. The story is straight from Charlotte Brontë's life, for the most part, with the details and names changed. There are, of course, one or two principal plot points which are not at all from her own experience, but for the most part the limited scope of Jane Eyre's world is reflective of the limited scope of Charlotte Brontë's. Within that limited scope, though, she is a keen observer of human nature, and despite the archaic language the many different characters are most decidedly recognizable from real life.
The plot, while entirely serviceable, is not really the point here, I think. The character of our protagonist is the primary attraction, and the way she copes with one form of hard circumstance after another. She is not perfect, but she is tough and resilient, wary and wise; if I have any criticism at all it would be that she exhibits virtually none of the teenage overexuberance and overenthusiasm which normally characterizes that age. Perhaps, though, this lack of innocence in youth is a reflection of a hard childhood, and we are left to wonder how close it may have come to Charlotte Brontë's own character. The specter of disease stalked the family from her early childhood (when her two older sisters died from tuberculosis) through to her own death shortly after marrying, the last of her family of six siblings to survive. Knowledge of the author's (and her family's) tragic history give the entire book a slightly melancholy air, but if there is one thing to take away from the tale it is the idea of bearing up under hard circumstances, without giving up. If she had lived longer, and been able to range further and longer in the world, she might have given us a lengthy canon to match Shakespeare's, with dozens of tales of pride, fortitude, deception, resilience, and hard-won wisdom. In reality, she died at thirty-nine years of age, and we have only a few novels, "Jane Eyre" the best known by far. It is enough....more
When reading "Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death", one of Heinrich's earlier books, he mentions in passing things he saw or did in the forest sWhen reading "Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death", one of Heinrich's earlier books, he mentions in passing things he saw or did in the forest shortly after World War 2, when his family was living there and had to scavenge food. He does not elaborate, as his topic then was more nature and less humanity. But, it did pique one's interest. Here he gives us the rest of the story, and it is a whopper.
Heinrich begins near the end, with a visit to his mother ("mamushka"), living alone as an old lady (well, she has cats and other animals). In the barn, he comes across possessions of his now-deceased father, and it inspires him to write his father's life story. Heinrich the Elder was, among other things:
1) one of the world's experts on ichneumon wasps 2) a WW1 fighter pilot 3) a WW2 veteran 4) an immigrant who had to sneak out of Poland and back into Germany, with his family, evading both the retreating Nazis, the very-angry-at-Germans Poles, the also-angry-at-Germans Soviets, and find a way to get himself and his family to America 5) a grumpy old man who did not entirely approve of the turn of late 20th century biology from field research into mathematically-oriented lab work
But this, of course, leaves out a great deal, and it takes over 400 well-written pages for Heinrich the Younger to do it so I won't try to summarize more here. It is, of course, also the tale of the author's life, and in particular the ways in which it paralleled and diverged from his father's. There is a point, often around middle-age, when a man often starts to think differently about his parents. Instead of being an authoritative and often unreasonable source of frustration, you are more able to see them as people who are often just making it up as they go along, just like you.
Heinrich the Elder managed to survive a very turbulent part of the 20th century, in the part of Europe where it was at its most turbulent, and brought his wife (or more than one, it's kind of complicated) and several children alive with him. Some of this was good luck. Some of this was good planning. Some of it was things like using his position to rescue a Polish welder from a concentration camp, and discovering later that people can be very grateful for that kind of thing, and you may find their help immensely useful when the tables are turned. The story, or several parallel ones, are told skillfully and with a great combination of humor and empathy, both honest and forgiving about flaws (his father's or his own or anyone else's).
Equally interesting is the enormous contrast between the pre-war Poland and Germany which the story begins in, and the post-WW2 America (especially Maine) which it ends up in. The contrast between the two worlds is enormous, and the ability of anyone who manages to live life in both of them is to be admired. There is also a similar distance between the earlier world of biology in which hunting (literally) for new species in the remotest wildernesses of the world, was what was called for (and paid for), and the later portion in which lab analysis was instead. Here, the author made the leap better than his father, and it adds a very human touch to the scientific part of the tale. It is said sometimes that science advances one tombstone at a time, as the opponents of new ideas are not so much convinced as outlasted. There is some truth to it, but it adds a new dimension to the saying, to read the story of one scientist, never at home in the new world, who was nevertheless (like all the scientists of his generation) a necessary precondition for it....more
Before he launched Progressive International with Bernie Sanders in 2018, before he wrote books on the world's response to the 2008 financial crisis,Before he launched Progressive International with Bernie Sanders in 2018, before he wrote books on the world's response to the 2008 financial crisis, before he was Greece's Finance Minister in 2015 during high-stakes negotiations between Greece and the EU on how to cope with Greece's economic and budgetary collapse, Yanis Varoufakis wrote a book (in Greek) explaining economics to adolescents (such as his daughter). It was subsequently translated into many other languages, but not into English until 2017.
His daughter was, I think, around 11 years old at the time he wrote this book, although I cannot find that detail just now so I might be slightly off. In any case, he was clearly writing at someone who was old enough to talk to about complex issues like how finance works, but not so old as to already have done a lot of reading on that. The book is, of course, a good book for adults to read as well, largely because most of us have not done that much reading about how finance works either.
More importantly, much of what we have read about how finance works, is not true. In some cases it was never true, but more importantly, finance today does not work the same as it did 100-200 years ago. Most of the money in our economy, today, has no physical existence, not even as paper. Most of the government debt, is not for the purpose of the government being able to spend more (it is for financial institutions such as banks to be able to buy a reliable bond that is highly liquid, and absolutely safe).
Not everything in Varoufakis' analysis is correct, in my opinion. He seems entirely too confident in the ability of democracy to rein in government excesses on behalf of the wealthy and well-connected, and therefore not particularly worried about government accumulating more and more power. It also seems clear to me that, the larger the polity, the more remote its leaders are from any given citizen (and the closer they are to the very wealthy). Thus, the government of Greece is much closer to caring about the welfare of ordinary Greeks, than the EU, which begs the question of whether it is a good idea for Greece to have committed their economic welfare into the hands of a bunch of non-Greeks in Brussels.
But, while his view of the world and how it could/should work may not be any better than the neo-liberal ideology which reigned from the end of the Cold War until 2008, it is at least a different view, and he is at his best when he is puncturing that neo-liberal ideology by pointing out the many ways in which the reality does not match the theory.
I have a 13-year old daughter; it had occurred to me when I began reading this book that I might wish to give it to her when I was done. If she had the slightest bit of interest in economics, I probably would. In the meantime, I think reading it myself has stimulated a lot of fresh thinking about how our economy works, and how it ought to work instead. Any book that does that is worth reading....more
Douglas Hofstadter (writing here with his Francophone colleague Emmanuel Sander) has written a 5-star book of about 200 pages, and has hidden it insidDouglas Hofstadter (writing here with his Francophone colleague Emmanuel Sander) has written a 5-star book of about 200 pages, and has hidden it inside a 500+ page tome. He has made a really splendid book, and then repeated each and every point so often as to make the whole thing longer, and less splendid. He has penned a truly excellent work, were it of a modest length, but he has engaged in an abundance of redundancy, such that the whole is less than the sum of its parts, were there fewer parts. He wrote a really fine work, that was greatly in need of a stern ruthless editor, not because any part of it was bad but rather because often four pages were used when one would do. He has...
I think you get the point.
To be honest, I gave up on this book about 1/3 of the way through, the first time. Then it sat on my "to be read" shelf for a year or two, waiting on judgement, in a sort of libro limbo. I had very nearly decided to send it to the used bookstore, but I did not, and ultimately returned to it.
The reason is that, over time, I noticed that my mind returned to the ideas in it again and again, months or years after reading only the first part of it.
So, once more unto the breach, and I started from the beginning because it had been so long. In the end, I was very happy to have persisted, as there are some real worthy insights here as to how and why, as the subtitle puts it, analogy is the fuel and fire of thinking. It's no small task, thinking about thinking, and a great deal of nonsense has been written about it. Finding out more about how your own brain works, is worth a bit of repetition. We get much more than a bit of repetition here, though.
But, towards the end, after all the threads and examples have been well and truly tied together, every 'i' dotted, every 't' crossed, every point and counterpoint addressed, he does it all again. Through a rather unconvincing dialogue between two characters, just introduced, he goes through nearly the entire book's contents, again, for 20 pages. Agh. Dr. Hofstadter, you are a man who thinks many interesting thoughts. Please allow an editor to guide you in the matter of how many times, and in how many ways, each one needs to be made.
However, in the meantime, I must say that I found the book well worth reading, and I will seek out his next....more
So, I got to go to Prague, recently. I had delusions of learning Czech before I went, but that didn't seem to stick at all. It was fun, though. One ofSo, I got to go to Prague, recently. I had delusions of learning Czech before I went, but that didn't seem to stick at all. It was fun, though. One of the ridiculous things I like to do when I have the great fortune to visit a city in another country, is hit a bookstore. For the most part, this is ridiculous, because I can't read any of them. But, there is often a little English section, and that can be interesting, because sometimes you see books there that you wouldn't see in your hometown bookstore, nor even think to look for online.
For example, this little book of Czech fairytales. I like the fact that it is hardbound with a ribbon bookmark woven into the binding. I like the fact that it has copious illustrations, by someone named Lucie Müllerová. I like the fact that it had tales each about the perfect length for reading after I was in bed, before I went to sleep.
These tales were collected by Božena Němcová (a woman from the mid 19th century who unfortunately lived only to the age of 42 but is now pictured on the Czech 500 crown note) and Karel Jaromír Erben (a gentleman from the 19th century who lived rather longer), but are presumably much older. They are the equivalent of the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm in German-speaking lands, and for much the same reason: by collecting these folk tales, it was intended that the Czechs begin to think of themselves as a people, with a distinctive culture.
If this is valid, then it appears that the Czechs used to spend a lot of time making deals with devils. Actually, arbitrary conditions and unfair curses and deals with the devil all feature prominently in this collection, and I suppose perhaps this was good preparation for the experience of the Czech people throughout the 20th century.
My favorite tale is probably "The Devil and Kate", even though I have several friends named Kate and none of them are like the woman in the story. She is, in fact, not an entirely sympathetic character, as the devil in question is mostly feeling sorry for her and trying to help her out, but then regrets it. In fact, Kate more or less gets shuffled offstage about halfway through this story, which is odd since she's the only named character, except for Lucifer, who has a cameo in which he dispenses some excellent relationship advice but otherwise takes no part in the course of events.
In fact, though, I pretty much enjoyed all of these stories. I enjoyed even the ones where the outcome seemed unfair to at least some of the characters. It seems like a lot of daughters get married off to people they haven't had a chance to meet yet, for example, but they're normally peasants who now have magical abilities to conjure up wealth so it's not the worse fate I suppose. I think my favorite pictures were the ones of the magical pot which would pour forth porridge until you said the words to stop it, when the old lady forgot what the words were and it flooded the village. I like to imagine Lucie Müllerová frowned at least a little bit as she tried to figure out how that should be illustrated. It reminded me a bit of the Great Molasses Flood of Boston.
Like many fairy tales, there are plot holes big enough to drive an enchanted carriage with four horses through, and the characterization is generally pretty sketchy. However, as Shaun Tan has recently pointed out to me in his book "The Singing Bones", a good fairy tale sticks in your head because it has lots of imperfections, but they are of just the right kind, and the things that don't make sense just make you think about the story more. I am glad that people such as Erben and Němcová took the time to beat the bushes for these old tales, and wrote them down before they were forgotten. Read one every night before sleep, they are time tested to tease your brain in just the right way....more
Some of Shaun Tan's books have only artwork in them, usually paintings. Some of them also have text in them. This book has no paintings, and none of tSome of Shaun Tan's books have only artwork in them, usually paintings. Some of them also have text in them. This book has no paintings, and none of the words are Tan's own. It is some of his best work.
What he has done, is to take several dozen of Grimm's fairy tales, and make for each a small figure (or sometimes a few) out of clay, paper maché, and whatnot, and taken a picture of them. Something about the perspective of the photographs makes me feel that I have my head on the table right next to them, and I am about to reach out and pick one up. Which, if I were, I would, because they are fascinating to look at, regardless of (because of?) the fact that each is composed of only a few shapes and curves, the outline of a figure.
With each, he has included a paragraph or two (usually from the middle) of the tale from the Brothers Grimm that it is meant to represent. Not long ago I read "The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm", translated by Jack D. Zipes, and he actually contributed a forward to this book (as did Neil Gaiman). Both are excellent and insightful, but in the Afterword, Shaun Tan adds this:
"...these tales of nameless princes, peasants, stepsisters, and witches remain constantly intriguing, not least because they are often a little disturbing and hard to explain."
Now Gaiman and Zipes are both experts and masters in their fields, and they both have a lot to say about fairy tales that is worth reading as well, but I think this is a point I had not heard before, but immediately recognized as true. The tales aren't just fascinating in spite of the inexplicable cruelty by otherwise good people, or inexplicable oversights by otherwise smart people, or all the other "flaws" that a modern writer would want to rub out or fix, but rather in part because of it. Like reality, they don't all quite make sense, but they don't make sense in a way that we recognize. While short, they are untidy, and untidy in a way that, generation after generation, century after century, has shrugged off efforts to straighten them out. Make as many saccharine movie versions of them as you like, they pop back up, raw and wrong, ready for another generation of storytellers to try to tell them. They are entirely unrealistic, but they _feel_ real, and they feel real not in spite of their disturbing and inexplicable bits but in large part because of it.
If we lived in a tidy world that made sense, we might not need Grimm's fairy tales, or want them. We do not, and thus we do. Tan brings them to us, in a way that makes you want to lean close, stare at them, and try to pick them up....more
I really wanted to like it, having liked the first two a good bit. I found it brooding, full of characters being angry at each other, in a world fullI really wanted to like it, having liked the first two a good bit. I found it brooding, full of characters being angry at each other, in a world full of nastiness. I also found the entire concept of "this is a real world except it is also the fictional creation of a guy named Fenoglio" to be extra weird, with him inside as an active character. I suppose it could raise some interesting questions about free will and reality and so forth, but I found it all just kind of annoying. I stalled out about halfway through the book. Recently, I picked it up and tried to finish, but stalled out again about 2/3 of the way through. Stalling out twice is enough. I will read Funke again, but not this book....more
The first book by Shaun Tan that I read, was "The Arrival", which was pictures without words (although it did have a great story, beautifully told). TThe first book by Shaun Tan that I read, was "The Arrival", which was pictures without words (although it did have a great story, beautifully told). This book, is roughly equal parts pictures and words, each short story a pairing of the two. The Table of Contents is a two-page spread of silhouettes, each one a different animal species, and they are arranged on the page in no particular order. Yet, if I find myself wanting to reread, say, the one where the boardmembers of the corporation are turned into frogs, it is elegantly easy to find the frog silhouette, and see inside it the number "129", and turn to it and see the first sentence, "One afternoon the members of the board all turned into frogs." Leave it to Shaun Tan to re-invent how a Table of Contents can work, and do it well.
The crocodiles who live on the 87th floor, the giant yak that the factory workers ride home from work, the owls that sit at your bedside in the hospital and stare at you until you are well again, the giant snails that scandalized a city by having sexual intercourse in public, they are all there, each with their own story, and each with their own picture.
The wonder of it is that the pictures are complete in themselves, quietly satisfying to look at and wonder about even if there were no story given to us, and so are the texts. Even with no picture, they would be graceful and moving. That they each work separately, and then work together as well, is an amazing feat. Few people can write well, and few people can paint well, and somehow Shaun Tan has become a master at both.
While reading it the first time, I could not help but share a few of them with my wife and daughter, reading them aloud and then holding up the picture to look at. Once done, I put it by my bedside and re-read, and re-gazed at, one of them every night for some time....more
Not so long ago, Mayan script could not be read. It was not really until the 1970's that enough was understood to learn many of the most significant fNot so long ago, Mayan script could not be read. It was not really until the 1970's that enough was understood to learn many of the most significant facts about the Mayan history, pre-European contact. Prior to that time, there were prominent researchers who thought that the ancient Mayan civilization was a peaceful one. Some even thought that the apparent ruined cities were actually just religious centers, which the Mayans would go to only occasionally, for ceremonies. Once the Mayan script was readable, it became apparent that the Mayan civilization was actually a lot more like ancient Greece or Renaissance Italy, with multiple warring city-states that would engage in a nearly endless series of alliances, wars, and betrayals. The archaeology could help inform this history, but it couldn't provide it in the first place; you needed to be able to read the script.
So it is with the study of prehistoric times, but the script in question is not one invented by humans, but rather one that invented humans: DNA. Archaeologists, linguists, biologists, and others have all provided valuable information about what our human, or proto-human, ancestors did or didn't do in the past. But, until recently, we couldn't actually read the DNA of the mummies, frozen corpses, or bog sacrifices which came to light from time to time. David Reich is one of the first generation of researchers who can. Hold on to your hat, we are in for a whirlwind of change and an avalanche of new findings.
My personal favorite: it appears that the blond, blue-eyed, pale-skinned northern European is not a "pure" race, Aryan or anything else, but rather the result of a mixture of three races. One, was brown skinned and brown eyed, but with blond hair. One, was brown skinned and black haired, but with blue eyes. The third, was brown eyed and black haired, with pale skin.
Reich successfully covers a heck of a lot of ground, here, in a readable and even enjoyable way. Neanderthals (and other homo-but-not-sapien species), the Indian subcontinent and castes, the origins of the Indo-Europeans, how many groups came across the Bering Strait to become the ancestors of the Native Americans, the many leavings (and occasional returns) of humans to sub-Saharan Africa (and what was happening with the people who stayed there), the settling of east Asia, and a whole host of ethical and political issues.
An example: if you get people to voluntarily donate their DNA, for the explicit purpose of using it in scientific research, taking care to get informed consent forms signed, and then their tribe announces that they do not give consent for anyone in their tribe to take part in such research, what do you do? Ignore the issue of tribal-level consent, or deny the individuals the same right to self-determination (on having their DNA sequenced) that you would give any white person? These donors took the time to donate a DNA sample and fill out the paperwork, after all, with the expectation that it would advance science; telling them it won't be used after all is sort of breaking your promise. There are no easy answers here, and there's a lot of icky history with regard to the science of genetics, and the field of research into Native American tribe's ancestors. Reich does a good job of discussing the issues in a thoughtful way.
In fact, that kind of encapsulates a lot of the issues with DNA research. We like to think of ourselves as individuals, with the right to know ourselves, but anyone who has looked into the issue of how DNA testing interacts with adoption, or infidelity, or genetic susceptibility to disease, encounters the fact that allowing one person to get the data, denies anyone related (or theoretically related) to them the option of not doing that, or keeping it private if they do. We share DNA. It ties us, and our histories and our decisions, together, even when we would rather it did not. Knowing something about your DNA, tells you something about mine as well. Not being allowed to know about your ancestors, denies me the ability to know something about mine (because we're all related, eventually). As the evidence so far shows, we have been splitting into different races, and then mixing again, for a long long time, and it has happened on every continent, multiple times.
There is also a great deal of discussion about the different things we learn from mitochondrial DNA (inherited from the mother only), Y chromosomes (inherited from the father only), and the rest of our DNA. Looking at all three types of data can tell us things we don't always like to hear about. Like, for example, tales of all of the men in a region being exterminated by the invaders, but the women appear to have survived and reproduced. It is hard to believe that most of that did not resemble ancient tales of rape and pillage. We are, all of us, descended from people who did some very bad things.
Oh, and for you "Highlander" fans, you will be happy to know that the Kurgan people are, in fact, probably the ones who spread the Indo-European languages across two continents.
I also want to point out that Reich makes excellent use of visuals to tell a complex story (or more than one). Maps,, timelines, and all manner of diagrams help us to follow the multiple splitting and merging events, and when and where they happened.
Reich admits early on that much of what he has to tell us, could be modified by more discoveries in the near future, but what we know already is enough to think on for many days. On the whole, though, what we have gotten from this new science so far, is a glimpse into a distant past, well before written history, that was as full of drama and tragedy, adventure and violence and sex as any opera or ancient Greek epic. It was all forgotten, entirely 100% forgotten and lost, for millennia. Until now. Now, like the skeleton in the closet of the human family's old house, it is all coming out....more
Full disclosure: I am a big J.R.R. Tolkien fan. This might seem an odd thing to need to disclose, but the reality is that JRRT and C.S. Lewis have becFull disclosure: I am a big J.R.R. Tolkien fan. This might seem an odd thing to need to disclose, but the reality is that JRRT and C.S. Lewis have become more or less connected to one another in the minds of the reading public, for several reasons. They were friends, and both members of an Oxford writers group called the Inklings. Moreover, they both wrote highly successful series of fiction novels in the field that has come to be called "fantasy", before the genre was even well established. In fact, it is not much of an exaggeration to say that JRRT and CSL are a large part of how the genre now called fantasy became commercially established. As a result, their works are more or less the standard to which other, mostly later fantasy fiction is compared. This means that, for CSL, the standard to which he is compared is Tolkien. It is a high standard, in my opinion, and I do not intend it as a criticism of any sort to say that it does not quite live up to that.
I probably have CSL and JRRT even more firmly connected in my mind than others, because I read the Narnia chronicles as a child, almost immediately after I had run out of new JRRT to read. I recall liking it then, but had not reread it for about 40 years before this year. I am always a bit anxious about rereading childhood favorites, in case they fail to measure up.
In fact, it did measure up, more or less. The wardrobe is mysterious and enchanting, the witch is villainous but also a fascinating character, and the lion is a bit too grand to have an opinion on but it is easy to imagine the impression he makes on all those around him (including the four children).
One thing that I noticed this time is that, though it has magic and battle, the story spends most of its time on things like the internal mental struggles of Edmond or Lucy. In fact, the battle that is, in one sense, the climax of the book, happens mostly "off-screen". I could try to imagine how CSL's own experience of trench warfare in the Great War might have impacted this, but in reality I have no idea if it did, and if so how.
I should admit that the ending, wherein the now-grown children return to Earth and as they do so, return to being children, struck me as unrealistic. I know, it is absurd that I could accept the existence of fauns, minotaurs, magic wands that turn people to stone, talking lions, and wardrobes that function as portals through time and space, but then balked at children growing up and then getting turned back into children. But, there it is. Now, it is a much more obvious metaphor for the act of reading a book, perhaps one that you found on a high shelf in an old house you are unfamiliar with. Once you finish reading it, no matter how much time passed in the book (perhaps a lifetime), when you close the cover you are back to the same age you were when you started. When I read it as a child, I just thought, "huh? you can't grow young again!"
By and large, though, the imagery and story worked for me just as well this time as when I was a young'un, somewhere around Edmund's age I expect. No need for my anxiety at all. I mostly read the text version, but I did listen some to the audiobook that came with it, with Michael York doing an excellent job of reading it. I also quite liked Pauline Baynes' artwork.
This book opens with a pretty heavy piece of news. One of the authors, Daniel Wegner, died before it was published. What is more, he died of ALS, andThis book opens with a pretty heavy piece of news. One of the authors, Daniel Wegner, died before it was published. What is more, he died of ALS, and towards the very end of his life, he was essentially a mind only, with his body able to do little more than breathe (and eventually, not even that). It is almost certainly not a complete coincidence that Wegner had become interested in the topic, but since he was a Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he must have had an interest in the relations between mind and body long before he became aware that his mind would keep working well long after his body had ceased to. The other author, Kurt Gray, was a student of his, and worked with him completed the book after Wegner's death, at his request.
Well, wow. Welcome to this book. There is not a chapter in it which will not touch on some topic of substantial moral and emotional weight, even the introduction. The subtitle is a pretty good summary of the scope: "Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters". We talk about robots, about animals other than humans, about brain-dead humans, about living humans who have lost part of their mental faculties due to Alzheimer's, about ghosts, about zombies, about infants, about fetuses, about people we regard as enemies. Every one of these topics brings with it substantial moral or psychological questions.
Wegner and Gray assert that we humans tend to want to categorize beings as either Moral Agents, with a capacity for agency and possessing moral responsibility, or Moral Patients, with a capacity for Experiencing and possessing Moral Rights. The more we are able perceive that an entity has the capacity to think and do, the more we think of them in one way, and the more we perceive them as lacking that, the less. So, it is difficult for us to perceive a person as simultaneously a dangerous criminal who does hideously awful things to other people, and the victim of a horrible upbringing full of physical and psychological abuse.
There are a lot of psychological experiments mentioned in this book, many of them very interesting to read about. I did find myself wondering, repeatedly, while reading this book, "did this study effect ever get replicated?" Occasionally I would stop and use my smartphone to look up whether they did (mostly the answer was 'yes, successfully'). It does seem to me that whenever a book written by university academics goes into topics like a belief in God, they have a hard time pretending to be objective. God (or belief in same) gets an entire chapter in this book, and they try as much as one can expect, but were I a devout Christian I would have detected a pretty clear bias. I mean, not Richard Dawkins kind of bias or anything, but Wegner and Gray are coming at some pretty important and emotionally potent topics from a particular point of view, and they are humans, so it is not surprising that they have occasionally allowed some of that point of view to show through.
By and large, I found this to be a good book, that examines important issues about how we think about thinking. I would have liked to see some discussion of how they think their Moral Agent/Moral Patient axis interacts with Moral Foundations Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_f...) as proposed by Jonathan Haidt and others. But, perhaps the way those two interact simply hasn't been examined, and this is most definitely a book that wants to make sure its assertions are backed up by scientific research. There is not a chapter in it which does not make you think more carefully about a topic worth the effort....more
There are books which I read at the coffeeshop, or on the bus as part of my morning commute. These are books which require that you sit up straight anThere are books which I read at the coffeeshop, or on the bus as part of my morning commute. These are books which require that you sit up straight and pay attention, and maybe even think hard sometimes, to really absorb what you are being told. Then, there are other books which I read at night, lying in bed, as the last thing before I turn off the lamp and close my eyes. I would say that I pay attention to them as well, but in a different way. They help me to relax, and reading them is a bit meditative. This was such a book.
It helps that it is written by an artist, and it is filled with his wonderful drawings of owls. It is also filled with words that show an artist's talent for imagining a setting. Likely it is also helped by the pacing, in which (after a few initial chapters) each species of owl gets a few pages, making it a nice bite-sized chunk every evening.
It occurs to me only now, while writing this, that because owls are mostly nocturnal, the very topic itself might have put me into a mood ready for slumber. There are the occasional bits of mourning of the way in which humanity is dominating the landscape and devastating the ecosystem, but he mostly keeps the spotlight on the owl and how it lives its life. I am taken away from my all-too-human-oriented perspective, and allowed to forget about humanity for a few minutes.
Have I mentioned that the pictures are very nice? Also, there are maps for the ranges of the different species.
Owls, I have realized in the course of reading this book (and seeings its many illustrations), have somewhat stern and perhaps judgemental expressions, owing principally to their eyes and the feathers just above them that look like frowning eyebrows. This made the pictures of, say, the male bringing a dead rat to the female, or the female bumping the male off his branch as a way to tell him to go get another, are all the more amusing because of this.
About 4 months ago, I was at a state park in Illinois for a presentation on owls, in which half a dozen different (rescued) owls were brought out for us to see close up. Their eyes are really quite mesmerizing, and it is probably impossible for any reproduction (even high-resolution photographs) to be quite the same. But, Tony Angell's drawings are pretty close....more
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