HSU IT Department

Usually when I read the New York Times Book Review on Sundays there are at least two titles, often more, that I am inspired to add to my to-read list. Today I went through the entire section and did not add any. It seems like this should mean something but I'm not sure what.

Courtesy of a colleague on GoodReads, however, I also read a superb essay by Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, written for The New Yorker. Burgess begins by talking about A Clockwork Orange but expands into a discussion of the role of the state, free will, the nature of good and evil, and all sort of other remarkably timely and pertinent topics (especially considering it was originally written in 1972!). An essay to savor. This was one of my favorite bits:

...We probably have no duty to like Beethoven or hate Coca-Cola, but it is at least conceivable that we have a duty to distrust the state...In small social entities—English parishes, Swiss cantons—the machine that governs can sometimes be identified with the community that is governed. But when the social entity grows large, becomes a megalopolis, a state, a federation, the governing machine becomes remote, impersonal, even inhuman. It takes money from us for purposes we do not seem to sanction; it treats us as abstract statistics; it controls an army; it supports a police force whose function does not always appear to be protective...[I]n our own century, the state has been responsible for most of our nightmares. No single individual or free association of individuals could have achieved the repressive techniques of Nazi Germany, the slaughter of intensive bombing, or the atomic bomb. War departments can think in terms of megadeaths, while it is as much as the average man can do to entertain dreams of killing the boss. The modern state, whether in a totalitarian or a democratic country, has far too much power, and we are probably right to fear it...

Catching up on book reviews, yay!! Also, I will shortly be doing another bookshelf purge and free giveaway, so watch this space ;)

"Jane Austen with dragons" sounds like a recipe for disaster, yes? And it could have been, easily. Luckily, however, Walton does a masterful job with this weird mashup and gives us a clever, well-written and engaging tale. All the classic Austen components are there: the maiden sisters worried about their lack of dowry, the centrality of reputation and honor, the rigid ideas of class, an intra-family lawsuit (shades of Bleak House!), a missing heir, even a (slightly) dirty vicar. Then there are the dragon elements: they breathe fire, sleep on gold, eat raw meat, live for hundreds of years, and kill the runts of the litter. Instead of these things just being tacked on like window dressing, however, Walton makes them an integral part of the characters and the story, weaving them into an entertaining and diverting story.

It isn't epic fantasy by any means, but it's great fun and I enjoyed it thoroughly; if she writes more novels set in this world I would read them with relish.

Philip K. Dick's Eye in the Sky, another book that I wanted to like more than I did. One of the difficulties with reading older classic sci-fi is that sometimes you forget how impressive it was when it was first published -- you're jaded by all the amazing stuff that's been written since. I have a feeling this was a remarkable book when it was first published, but it fell a little flat for me.

Which is annoying, because the premise is exactly my kind of thing: a physics accident propels a group of people into another world, where they have to figure out not only the rules of their strange new world but how to escape it. And then they have to do it all over again. And again. The various worlds they fall into and out of are all very different, but each one is so short-lived that I barely had time to suss out what was going on before I was jolted into the next one; there's an abruptness to it that I found frustrating. I wanted more, and more detailed, explorations of the various neurotic obsessions that were externalized as these separate worlds.

The book also suffers a bit from being so very firmly grounded in 1957. Many little clues betray this, the most obvious being that the main villain of the piece is Communism, or rather prejudice against/fear of Communism. It's hard to grasp how enormous and looming a threat Communism was perceived to be in the 1950s; because it was a very specific enemy with a very specific lifespan, this "dates" the story a bit.

Worth a read, mostly as a psychological variant of the "many worlds" hypothesis. Plus I'm amused by the fact that the original cover shows a bunch of expendable redshirts, nine years before Star Trek made them a cultural icon :)

Mr Psmith and started a revisit of Buffy the Vampire Slayer about a month ago; we began with Episode 1, Season 1 and have been working our way through it, relishing every minute of it, and finally finished last night. I'd forgotten what emotional powerhouses the last few episodes are, just one thing after another: Xander's speech to the Potentials about Buffy, Faith's return and what it triggers, Willow's activation of all the Potentials, and -- of course -- Spike. I cried like a baby for half of the last episode and was totally wrung out by the time we got to the end.

We talked for a while afterwards about what exactly it is that makes Buffy so great: the writing with its clever use of language, the great storytelling, the three-dimensional characters? We determined it's all of the above, but two things in particular stand out. First, there's the constant reassuring sense that Joss knows where he's going with it, where he's taking you. He's never just killing time or floundering about. Almost every episode adds something to the overall structure of the tale: expanded understanding of a character, character growth, fleshing out the Slayer mythos/backstory, propelling the story arc forward (even the musical episode wasn't just a gimmick, it actually advance the plot in important ways), etc. Second, there's the way that so much of the time he's exploring aspects of what it means to be human: guilt, free will, family, love, faith, what it means to be/feel different, what it means to have/not have a soul, can evil be redeemed. Not every episode is all deep and philosophical, but even the funny ones often deal with larger questions. That gives the show overall a substance and a depth that others like Charmed and Supernatural can't quite match.

In other news, I'd gotten sadly behind on my book reviews on goodreads, so I took advantage of having today off (Memorial Day for us Yanks) to get caught up. Rather than posting all of them here, I'll just give a snippet and link through for anyone who's interested. It's quite an assortment: one non-fiction, two Stephen Kings, a psychological thriller, and a kids' fantasy. My reading tastes are a bit eclectic, as you can see :)

For me, Hogwarts will always hold the crown for Best Sentient Castle, but I did enjoy my visit to Castle Glower. The title is a bit misleading, since the castle doesn't in fact only change on Tuesdays but rather whenever it feels like it, or whenever it's necessary, but that's a minor point... more

It's tough to decide which story here is the more engrossing in The Spark: Jake the math and physics savant whose mind was nearly lost to autism, or Kristine Barnett the mother and teacher who argues (convincingly) for connecting with children through their passions... more

I picked up Alys, Always off the "New Fiction" shelf at the library; I had never heard of it, it had no jacket so no summary or blurb, but I read the first paragraph and was hooked. I recommend this as the best way to approach this book: knowing absolutely nothing about it... more

Under the Dome is the sort of book that makes you suspect Stephen King has a very low opinion of homo sapiens: a small town is abruptly and inexplicably cut off from the outside world, which causes mundanely bad people to become Very Bad People Indeed... more

11/22/63 is King's take on the classic change-the-past-to-improve-the-future trope (I think Hitler and JFK are probably tied for favorite characters to kill/not kill in this scenario). To power the tension, King employs a variation of the Novikov self-consistency principle in which history actively resists being altered... more