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Recently Read
Jun. 25th, 2005 02:55 pmI mentioned that I'd finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and enjoyed it quite a bit. It develops slowly, I'll admit. The beginning is rather arch, almost Austenian, although the characters seem a bit odd, more like Dickens than Austen. (Several of them develop in unexpected directions as the novel progresses; they aren't mere grotesques.) The main villain slips in unobtrusively, and very slowly the horror of his activities becomes clear, but he's such an original that I found myself still smiling at him even after it became clear what he was. The climax struck me as a bit deus ex, but it was appropriate, and the coda, though a bit sad, also had its humorous side, and it was certainly in keeping with the established personalities of the characters.
Other recent reads include Laura Joh Rowland's The Dragon King's Palace, Michael Ignatieff's The Lesser Evil, Richard Fortey's Earth, Georgette Heyer's April Lady, and George Weigel's Letters to a Young Catholic.
I'm not sure what to say about Rowland. I enjoy her Sano Ichiro mysteries, as much for the insight into early-Tokugawa Japan as for the stories themselves, and this one was no exception. However, I'm a bit bothered by her writing style - more specifically, by her use of viewpoint. There's usually one viewpoint character operating at a time, and for the most part we're confined to what that character can perceive. That's unobjectionable. But Rowland frequently fills us in, not only on the character's internal emotions, but on underlying psychological causes and the like - not showing us, through the character's thoughts, but outright telling us what forces are in play. That's... unsatisfying, somehow. Anyway, The Dragon King's Palace is a good entry in the series; Reiko, in particular, gets a chance to strut her stuff. She's developed into a character with a network of personal relationships of her own, not entirely contingent on her husband's relationships. (For some reason, Nick and Nora Charles come to mind. Granting the differences in genre, there are some resemblances between Sano and Nick, but I think Reiko is a much better developed character than Nora.)
The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror is an interesting and, in my opinion, sound analysis of the unusual demands of the current situation. Ignatieff takes a moderate position, recognizing that the struggle against terrorism does require extraordinary measures in some situations, but carefully examining the necessary limits on those measures. Some are absolute - he rejects torture as a tool of interrogation, for example - and some are formal, such as the necessity of "sunset" provisions. He also distinguishes usefully among several different sorts of terrorism, and comments on the different strategies necessary to deal with them.
Fortey's Earth: An Intimate History probably merits more careful study than I was able to give it. As an overview of the processes of plate tectonics, it's quite illuminating; he tended to lose me, though, in the intricacies of the classification of minerals. Still, I think I learned a fair bit; in particular, I have a better grasp of the different characters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and of the mountain-building cycle as well.
April Lady is pretty run-of-the-mill as Heyer novels go; it's entertaining, but less intricate than her usual work, I think. Unfortunately, the Harlequin edition is riddled with misspellings; most of them can probably be attributed either to proofreaders not being familiar with rarer words (in particular, terms special to the Regency era) or - horrors - to indiscriminate spellchecking. E.g., one passage has "opposite" where "apposite" is clearly intended. I found this rather distracting from the story; I think I'm going to go back to buying the English editions of Heyer.
I won't say much about Weigel's Letters to a Young Catholic. Weigel is rather conservative theologically, and while I agree with him on many points we have a major disagreement as to the interface between religion and government. Still, I think it was good for me to read this. I'm seized with a desire to read Chesterton essays.
I've begun reading A Pirate of Exquisite Mind by Diana and Michael Preston; this is a biography of the pirate/naturalist William Dampier, who seems to have been a most remarkable person. Also, I've started in on Little Women, which I've never read. (I subscribe to the Library of America, and have dozens of volumes of their editions, but I just realized that I've scarcely looked at any of them. Something needs to be done about that. The range is enormous, covering usual suspects like Jefferson, Twain, and Irving, but also lesser-known figures including William Bartram and Paul Bowles, and reaching as far as James Thurber and H. P. Lovecraft!)
Other recent reads include Laura Joh Rowland's The Dragon King's Palace, Michael Ignatieff's The Lesser Evil, Richard Fortey's Earth, Georgette Heyer's April Lady, and George Weigel's Letters to a Young Catholic.
I'm not sure what to say about Rowland. I enjoy her Sano Ichiro mysteries, as much for the insight into early-Tokugawa Japan as for the stories themselves, and this one was no exception. However, I'm a bit bothered by her writing style - more specifically, by her use of viewpoint. There's usually one viewpoint character operating at a time, and for the most part we're confined to what that character can perceive. That's unobjectionable. But Rowland frequently fills us in, not only on the character's internal emotions, but on underlying psychological causes and the like - not showing us, through the character's thoughts, but outright telling us what forces are in play. That's... unsatisfying, somehow. Anyway, The Dragon King's Palace is a good entry in the series; Reiko, in particular, gets a chance to strut her stuff. She's developed into a character with a network of personal relationships of her own, not entirely contingent on her husband's relationships. (For some reason, Nick and Nora Charles come to mind. Granting the differences in genre, there are some resemblances between Sano and Nick, but I think Reiko is a much better developed character than Nora.)
The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror is an interesting and, in my opinion, sound analysis of the unusual demands of the current situation. Ignatieff takes a moderate position, recognizing that the struggle against terrorism does require extraordinary measures in some situations, but carefully examining the necessary limits on those measures. Some are absolute - he rejects torture as a tool of interrogation, for example - and some are formal, such as the necessity of "sunset" provisions. He also distinguishes usefully among several different sorts of terrorism, and comments on the different strategies necessary to deal with them.
Fortey's Earth: An Intimate History probably merits more careful study than I was able to give it. As an overview of the processes of plate tectonics, it's quite illuminating; he tended to lose me, though, in the intricacies of the classification of minerals. Still, I think I learned a fair bit; in particular, I have a better grasp of the different characters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and of the mountain-building cycle as well.
April Lady is pretty run-of-the-mill as Heyer novels go; it's entertaining, but less intricate than her usual work, I think. Unfortunately, the Harlequin edition is riddled with misspellings; most of them can probably be attributed either to proofreaders not being familiar with rarer words (in particular, terms special to the Regency era) or - horrors - to indiscriminate spellchecking. E.g., one passage has "opposite" where "apposite" is clearly intended. I found this rather distracting from the story; I think I'm going to go back to buying the English editions of Heyer.
I won't say much about Weigel's Letters to a Young Catholic. Weigel is rather conservative theologically, and while I agree with him on many points we have a major disagreement as to the interface between religion and government. Still, I think it was good for me to read this. I'm seized with a desire to read Chesterton essays.
I've begun reading A Pirate of Exquisite Mind by Diana and Michael Preston; this is a biography of the pirate/naturalist William Dampier, who seems to have been a most remarkable person. Also, I've started in on Little Women, which I've never read. (I subscribe to the Library of America, and have dozens of volumes of their editions, but I just realized that I've scarcely looked at any of them. Something needs to be done about that. The range is enormous, covering usual suspects like Jefferson, Twain, and Irving, but also lesser-known figures including William Bartram and Paul Bowles, and reaching as far as James Thurber and H. P. Lovecraft!)
