Books for January, 2003

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. It took me quite awhile to plow through this one, and I almost gave up 1/3 of the way through, but then it began holding my interest more firmly. I was quite engrossed in it by the end. I would recommend this to any sf writer doing world building; it examines the relationships between the types of plants and animals available to a people, and how that determines the course of cultures, esp. agriculture, ability to wage war, development of diseases, etc. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, etc. Here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times review which give you a good capsule synopsis:

Jared Diamond...is broadly erudite, writes in a style that pleasantly expresses scientific concepts in vernacular American English and deals almost exclusively in questions that should interest everyone concerned about how humanity developed. . . .Guns, Germs, and Steel is his answer to a question proffered by his New Guinean friend, Yali: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [steel axes, umbrellas, matches, soft drinks, etc.- the material stuff of civilization], but we black people had little cargo of our own?" It is an obvious and important question, and one to which professional historians, including myself, tend to react as if we'd discovered a coral snake in the shower...we shy away from Yali's question because the easiest answer is one that many bray and bray about and others would rather die than utter. Race...

Jared Diamond had done us all a great favor by supplying a rock-solid alternative to the racist answer...

Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. kijjohnson has raved to me about P.G. Wodehouse for years, but this was the first time I picked one up (finally!) She's right, of course, the comedy was wonderful. What was particularly interesting to me (aside from the author's brilliant use of language of course--and the casual racism, very common for the time it was written) was watching the technical job the writer was doing, to use a narrator who is really intellectually dim, but the reader still sees what Bertie Wooster is totally missing about the events he is relating. Reminds me of the similar use of Charlie Gordon (a retarded man) as a first person narrator in the various incarnations of Flowers for Algernon.

The Private World of Georgette Heyer, a biography by Joan Aiken Hodge. (I've read several of Hodge's novels.) Intriguing to see how a biographer handles a subject who felt so strongly about her privacy that she never granted a single interview. I've enjoyed Heyer's work very much, so was interested to see the sort of person she was. It sounds as though she could be a prickly person. It doesn't sound as though she had much respect for many of her fans, although that may be in part a reflection of how frustrated she was by how little respect the critics, in turn, had of her work since she was writing romances. Interestingly, as Hodge points out (and I hadn't really considered this before), actually, she wasn't a very romantic person at all. She had formidable research skills, and that was the part of the biography I really enjoyed, the excerpts from her research notebooks on the Regency period. She was quite a good artist as well, which was news to me--there are pages and pages of meticulous renderings of fashions, carriages, etc., of the period in which she was writing.

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride. I paid more attention to the story, which was absorbing, than the writing, which probably is a good sign. It is certainly an interesting enough story, about a Polish Jewish woman who immigrated to America soon after birth; as an adult she moved to New York City, leaving her family and faith behind in Virginia. She married a black man, making her even more isolated, and she ended up raising twelve children in the face of really daunting poverty. Her son, the author, writes of how his mother's complicated history affected his search for his own racial identity.

The Reluctant Widow, by Georgette Heyer. Re-read. I picked this one up again because I had mentioned in my LiveJournal that it was one of the few Georgette Heyers I've read that I really don't like, and I was curious to find out whether I still had as much antipathy to the heroine as I remembered. Yep, I do. What a shrew. I can't see why the hero wanted to marry her in the end.

And that's it for the month. I note that only one this month is a re-read, which is good. A shorter list than usual, but I had two longer books that usual, Guns, Germs, and Steel, and right now am in the middle of Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, which I picked up for the first time after seeing the movie (which I certainly recommend). I am finding it to be an absolute orgy of joy. I will report on it at length at the end of next month.

Cheers,
Peg

Evening out

Tonight was my night out, and B. minnehaha surprised and really touched me by inviting me to be his guest to dinner at Vincent's (perhaps moved to compassion after I had posted one too many LiveJournal entries about the hassles of trying to cook for a family of impossibly picky eaters). ( Read more... )

Peg

Gloating over new acquisitions

I saw one when I went to visit kijjohnson, I was overcome with covetous lust; I ordered it off the Internet, and it came yesterday. I have my new Levenger lap desk! Lovely for handwriting work, reviewing loose manuscript pages, and will also be useful when I get a laptop (someday!):



Closeup here:



I like how the stand lets you easily store it beside a chair:



Also, my latest acquisition from the Noble Collection arrived today, and I wore it for my evening out at Vincent's with B. minnehaha:



Okay, so I can't buy anything else for awhile. (Except maybe a hot water heater.)

Peg

I think I finally have what Rolf is up to!

papersky wrote a comment on a previous entry that has suddenly made much of the book fall into place. See here. This was such a crucial comment, and my reply is so long that it doesn't fit in the comments section, so I'm posting it in my main journal:

I mean he [Rolf] could have deliberately made her pregnant, because making people pregnant and then drawing strength from the fetus, which then dies and is miscarried, keeps him young, and it has to be his baby, but the bit where he does it misfires because of the winter magic and because Solveig wants her, she knows she's pregnant and she wants to be, a wanted baby plus winter magic, and so it misfires? And that would give him a reason for wanting to get hold of Ingrid now, if he could figure out a way to suck the strength from her now, which maybe would be a new thing he'd need to do at both ends of the year or something?

WOW! I want to mull over what you've said, Jo, but I think you've come up with a really elegant solution! And it solves another problem I had too with my original scenario; I couldn't figure out why he was stupid enough to get her pregnant in the first place, if he didn't want her to be. To be blunt, he'd use a condom. BUT if he's trying to get her pregnant, he could use his magic to make HER birth control fail (and Agnes' daughter would be smart enough to use protection, you betcha), but then, as you say, her magic takes over, and it protects Ingrid from miscarrying.

It also increases the threat when he kidnaps Ingrid, as I think he will do. There'll be a much clearer reason for him to kill her, and so it'll be a race against time. But the ice palace is involved in Rolf's plans, too. I'll have to think about it; the ice palace is strong with winter magic (it traps magic under the ice). Because Solveig is designing/building the ice palace, it's a wild card as far as Rolf is concerned.

( I'm thinking loud here. Spoilers galore, people! )

This is absolutely terrific, Jo. Thanks! You've really handed me the right solution, I think, and it has made so much more fall into place!

Gratefully,
Peg

We've lost the Columbia

Oh my god.

Heartsick.