Detective Newton

July 31, 2009
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Margret Guthrie of The Scientist gave a favorable review to Newton and the Counterfeiter. It sounds like a wonderful little vignette into the great mathe-magician’s life.

The philosopher eventually assembled such a compelling case against Chaloner — from testimony by witnesses, informants, and even the wives and mistresses of the criminal’s associates — that he was able to bring him up on charges of counterfeiting the King’s coin, a treasonable offence, in 1698.

On Thomas Levenson’s writing, she notes

[His] pace and timing rival those of the best crime story authors. He has written a real page-turner, perfect for a long afternoon’s engagement with the hammock or whiling away a long airport layover.

July 16, 2009
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Nature journal has published a review of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics. The book is a re-release, and Alan Lightman recommends the book. It is a set of short stories with cosmological themes. It is whimsical, in one case having a mollusc imagining it had a mustache. The anthology compared favorably with Primo Levy’s Periodic Table. I am now interested in reading Cosmicomics. I have yet to read Levy’s book, although it is collecting dust on my book shelf.

Thoughts on Ken MacLeod’s Engine City

July 8, 2009
Review, Thoughts
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I want to avoid trashing books, since the goal of this blog is to engage the ideas, themes, and characters of books, on the author’s terms. However, Engine City has such issues with writing and presentation that it seems unavoidable that I talk about the writing. I didn’t like the characters in this book. I did not care what happened to them. The leaps from chapter to chapter isn’t graceful but comes across as disjointed. It isn’t always straightforward how one chapter necessarily relates to the last, despite the fact that the story progresses linearly, switching among various time points and character perspectives. Another source of confusion lies in the advancement of story by years – and it isn’t always clear by how many years – as the story uses slow-than-light travel, meaning that there is time-dilation. To be sure, the story, plot, and characters aren’t difficult to follow, but the writing disrupted narrative flow and went a long way to sour the novel’s entertainment value for me.

Aside from that, I thought there are a number of interesting ideas. First and foremost, MacLeod tackles the issue of the Singularity. For all intents and purposes, the Singularity implies the existence of an advanced intelligence. We cannot hope to relate, in our present humanity, to this intelligence. It matters not where the intelligence arose (alien, human made silica, or post-transcendence human.) Various sci-fi authors have settled into different camps/schools, regarding how they should tackle this subject. Some of them argue that it is difficult to write about post-Singularity events, so it makes sense to ignore it and focus on the non-transcendent characters. In other words, the authors will continue to muck it out with the plebes. Some others focus on mundanes interacting/divining the intentions of the Singularity.

I, for one, do not see the difficulty in dealing with the Singularity. Since humans cannot hope to understand a god’s mind, or a Singularity-intelligence, I think, practically speaking, we can make up any motive/action that we want. After all, such an approach has worked for religion. Therefore, I do not see putting words into god’s mouth as a hurdle for sci-fi writers.

MacLeod introduces such a concept, although this aspect of the story isn’t really emphasized. The gods, in this case, arose from nanp-silica based life on asteroids. Bathed in the energy of the sun, they aggregated not into a multi-cell organism, but a networked multi-cellular, super-intelligence. And this super-intelligence does not like noise. So it does what any self-respecting Transcendent will do, who has access to computational powers to model million-body Newtonian mechanical problems. It uses mass-driver weapons to destroy, with pinpoint precision, sources of said noise. The only thing it needs are the right sized asteroids and time. We find out how this intelligence deals with infestations at the beginning and the end of the novel.

What happens in between deals with humans, displaced into a set of star systems on the other side of Sol, readying themselves for an alien invasion. The alien invasion, it turns out, may be a red herring. It turns out these aliens are in fact our creators, and we are not certain what threat they carry.  They already had one colony that had been destroyed on earth (and they had manipulated lifeforms there that eventually evolved into humans.) The novel concerns itself with the interface between humans and their creators, although this matter isn’t probed too deeply.

The nature of these creatures is that they can make a lot of things. They are, in essence, cornucopias. This is a direction that comes too late in the way the novel is plotted; as it is, we don’t really see what impact these creatures would have. A new philosophical idea was also introduced: if the gods could develop out in hard vacuum, in nanostructures of space material, then such intelligences may also have developed on a planet. This “gaia” may work in concert with the gods in the asteroids. Again, this idea came too late, since, at this point, new characters enter the plot and eventually captures and executes the heroes.It is interesting that the heroes were executed not for their role in fomenting instability and war, but for “deicide”. Thus, it is as if the story was composed of multiple short stories.

At first, I thought this proved a failing, since it led to abrupt transitions, dangling plot lines, and unexplored consequences. Over time, I can see how this style of exposition may have worked. The exposition style limits our point of view to when our heroes make their port of calls, after a physical journey of immense temporal delays. We see them encounter civilization at different points of development. Their unsteady grasp of their present encounter is mirrored by the reader’s own disorientation after each time jump, with disorientation lessening as the plot develops for that time period. Unfortunately, I do not feel that MacLeod pulled it off.

Review – Tom Perotta – Little Children and The Abstinence Teacher, Part II

November 10, 2008
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OK. I should have moved on. I have continued reading, but haven’t posted any reviews. However, this book really stuck with me, and I need to get this off my chest.

I have noted in my review of Little Children that Perotta paints sympathetic portraits of suburbanites. Sure, by merely describing how they act, Perotta hoists the lot of them on their own petards. Again, I need to stress that Perotta does not present a one-sided portrait of these harried fathers and mothers. This is important, as Ruth and Tim, the two protagonists, are on two opposite sides of the debate on sex education and how far private religion should extend into public schooling.

Of the two, Ruth comes across as insouciant and flip. It actually makes it hard to root for her, despite the fact that hers is probably the more realistic point of view: kids will have experiment and have sex. Why ignore this fact and tell them to repress their urges? Sex education becomes damage control, rather than a vaccination. Her nemesis is JoAnn, not surprisingly, an attractive, sexy, but virginal spokeswoman for a conservative Christian organization. Again, Perotta avoids the easy send-up; as portrayed, there are no dissatisfied boyfriends, grumbling fiance, or kinky neuroses (or any hint of “doesn’t-really-count-as-sex” sex). As a matter of fact, JoAnn comes across as rather dignified, given the contrast in Ruth’s divorced, lonely, and somewhat aimless life. However, there is no doubt that Perotta’s sympathy lies with Ruth; the arguments against knowledge of sex usually are spoofed with wild figures, false accounts of disease transmittance or injunctions from the Bible. Ruth at least gives voice to various numbers and facts about STDs and birth control.

Tim enters the story as Ruth’s daughter’s soccer coach. After a win, Tim gathers his players, who form a circle to give thanks to God. Ruth is mortified, and so the plot is set; Tim and Ruth fall into their roles as adversaries, although Tim is generally an unwilling participant. Tim comes off as a sincere man, who wandered in his youth and failed as a husband and father. Now divorced, he shares custody of his daughter and tries hard to make amends. He too is somewhat aimless; he desires the past that he has lost and has no idea how to let go or move on. He is prodded into a relationship, and then marriage, with Carrie, a fellow parishioner, by the pastor.

It would be easy to focus on the red state/blue state split, the evangelical authoritarians against the liberal sophisticates. There are no new arguments here. What I carried from this book was an admiration of how well Perotta portrays characters. Even the pastor, the obvious lightning rod for anti-evangelical sentiment, doesn’t fall into that role. Pastor Dennis is a dynamic young man who converted Tim. I think enthusiastic best describes Dennis. Dennis is naturally disgusted with Tim for being so weak now; of course Tim made mistakes with his first wife. But now Tim pursues Ruth, spurning Carrie, and it seems realistic to me that while Dennis may overlook past transgression, he abhors what Tim does.

I think the least sympathetic character in the whole book is Carrie, Tim’s wife. She is dutiful to a fault. When I write these reviews, I have no  idea what the author’s intentions are (unless I’ve read interviews). It seems to me that Perotta’s intention with Carrie is to use her to represent the worse of the Christian authoritarian movement. First, Tim does admit that Carrie is his better. But then Perotta twists the knife a little – against Carrie. Carrie realizes it. Her attempt to provide a stable home is her duty. Her settling down with Tim is her duty. When Carrie buys sexy lingerie to ignite passion in their lives, it’s her duty. Submerging her desires; it’s her duty. Her marriage to Tim is a duty.

Therein lies Perotta’s main point; why are evangelicals so gung-ho about submission? Worse, it isn’t even as if Carrie does her duty for god. It is unclear if her motivation is faith, fear of being alone, or a need to amend her past by starting a life as a chaste wife. It is unclear what emptiness she is trying to fill. I might have mis-read the book, but I thought that all the other characters seem sincere. They generally believed in what they are doing, even if how they go about it turns into a complete mess. We don’t read too much about JoAnn’s life, or Pastor Dennis’s wife. As I had mentioned, it seems that JoAnn has it together.

As for Pastor Dennis, there is an element of pride in his pushing Tim to do the right thing; Tim was an official convert. Again, that is a reasonable portrayal of a very human sin. Tim struggles; he has lusts, and he knows what comes of it. He lost his wife over it. But lust is on the same continuum as a capacity for passion; he lacks that with his current wife. One problem is the biblical injunction to have stability, to have a woman simply to temper the man’s wild urges. Ruth is no stranger to sex; she has even enjoyed some of it. But she has also felt pain at being used, and her adult life seems devoted to addressing the symptoms of promiscuity, the logistics of avoiding pregnancy and disease management, and not so much really helping kids – or herself – find happiness or joy on their own terms. Ruth understands enough that religion is not a salve, and neither is living for the moment. But she isn’t sure how to proceed with living in the moment, to be happy and not merely pleasure-seeking. Carrie, by contrast, seems bitter. She has grown to dislike her past (promiscuous) self, but she doesn’t like her present self either. However, she seized on the fact that being able to suppressing her desires places her on moral ground, and more importantly higher than her husband. Despite her meekness, that’s the game she decides to play, and she certainly knows the score. That makes her the ugliest character in the story.

The strength of this story lies in the complicated characters. Especially Ruth and Tim, who are both aimless but sense they are currently at the nadir of their lives. In the end, Tim of course puts his lot with Ruth; although it should be a big statement against the use of religion, sex, or marriage as a bandaid on dissatisfaction with life, it felt more like a realistic first step these two trying to decide what actually makes them happy. I think this is a sublime ending.

Review: Tom Perrotta, Little Children and The Abstinence Teacher, Part I

September 14, 2008
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Note: Not cool. I have had part of my review for Little Children and The Abstinence Teacher in draft for a couple of weeks. My blog is titled “No Time to Read”, I have less time writing reviews. I wanted to avoid writing short posts, as I prefer reading and writing longer, more thoughtful pieces. One thing I want to do is to combine and find links among multiple works (and I try doing that, somewhat clumsily, in this review.) To hell with that, I suppose. I’ll post the review as written, and I will follow up with the review of TAT “shortly”. I’ve also linked the books to Porter Square Bookstore, rather than Amazon, as Amazon doesn’t need my help.

Little Children and The Abstinence Teacher are two complex, sympathetic works. These are the only two Perrotta books I have read, but it is clear to me that he is a generous author, who is able to detail the complex thought chains lying below each of his characters’ surfaces. This generosity turns symbols into living, breathing people, enabling them to transcend simple, thematic opposition and actually interact with one another. The key point is that he does not treat the opposition as punching bags.

Little Children is the lesser work of the two, if only because the plot seems stilted next to the personalities. The inclusion of a child-molester in this story seems to serve no purpose other than to enable some opportunities for Brad to get out of the house (as part of a neighborhood watch group) and to provide some dramatic tension near the end of novel.

There is one misstep in characterization that occurs on the first page, when the women are introduced – except for our protagonist Sarah – as the mother of so-and-so child. It isn’t symbolism: it is a neon  sign that states Sarah is the contrarian of the bunch, a lapsed feminist who longs to be defined by anything other than motherhood. For the most part, the other women, who serve more as the Harpies than a Greek chorus, are not fleshed out. There is one little vignette where the shrew’s (Mary Ann’s) unhappy home life is laid bare, but for the rest of the story they serve to remind Sarah of the destiny awaiting her. No conversation is more meaningful than where the offspring is going to preschool, what toys are being recalled, what TV shows one had watched through heavy-lidded eyes.

That alone would drive one to drink, but Sarah chooses adultery instead. She was and is a mousy girl, who wanted to but couldn’t date the popular jock in high-school or college; she achieves this juvenile ambition by eventually sleep with Brad, a househusband who should be studying for his third attempt at passing the bar exam. The affair has great power within the context of the trapped lives both Sarah and Brad feel they lead. The excitement isn’t so much in the illicit nature of sneaking behind their spouses but rather in the fact that they share a common appreciation of one another. Therein lies the trick in Perrotta humanizing the two; certainly, I felt badly for Richard and Kathy, the spurned spouses. But I felt more sadness than anger in Sarah and Brad finding their escape in each other.

The humanization comes because one can identify with the cause of the affair: the perception that one’s spouse doesn’t fully appreciate him as a partner. It is not a matter of reality; it is that one spouse feels put upon and felt the need to seek that appreciation elsewhere. Brad is the simple case: he is going through his mid-life crisis early. He has failed the bar exam twice, but he states he entered law school on a whim. He watches teenage boys skateboarding and longs to join; instead, he winds up with a bunch of cops and ex-cops in a football league. He is satisfied being a house husband, but of course his wife is expecting him to contribute financially. Her moral support of his attempting the bar exam has crossed from wishing him well into an expectation that he will fail and not pull his financial weight. Sarah’s case is just as simple: her husband isn’t interested in her. She wants to be significant. She is intelligent, but decides that the only way to distinguish herself from the pack of mothers is to flirt with Brad. The two hit it off.

It would have been  cheap for Perrotta to distance the reader from Richard and Kathy. Instead, Perrotta turns them into people, each with flaws. Kathy is a harried woman, one reaching the limit of her patience with her husband. Fairly or not, she feels too put upon. She works and so doesn’t spend enough time with her son. Although she is following her dream of directing documentaries, it doesn’t pay well. She has been understanding and a cheerleader for her husband – despite his repeated failure. She is tired. Richard is more difficult to describe; he appreciated Sarah’s intelligence when they first met and now provides financial stability for their family. But in the end, he too is tired and desires something less ordinary.

That is what I like about Perrotta’s writing. Sure, he slings barbs at suburban life, but his characters are people like you or me. Under any number of circumstances, we could be Sarah, Richard, Kathy or Brad. Perrotta’s characters in an understandable manner, despite our disapproval. Recently, I had read Pinker’s The Blank Slate, which helped crystallized some ideas about human emotional and cultural baggage for me. Perrotta’s characters strike me as real because he describes the dissonance between basic desires driving action (i.e. nature) and  professed desires (the sum of education, environment, and upbringing) so well.

One scene that illustrates this is when Brad notices that his son flat out ignores him as soon as Mom (Kathy) comes home. That scene bundles the flash of Brad’s jealousy of the bond between son and mother, the fact that the boy and mother essentially enter their own world and exclude him, and the fact that he might be feeling both unmanly (for being a house husband) and his efforts not being recognized by his son or appreciated by his wife. Everything about this scene rings of authenticity. Again, without declaring whether there is validity in the perception (although one will be either sympathetic to Brad or not), the sum of all these minor events build up the case that Perrotta is interested in explaining (and thus looking past one’s view of the adulterers), but not excusing , Brad’s and Sarah’s behaviors.

I would guess the moral of the story is that communication only goes so far. Perhaps that is what love means: that a partner thinks enough of the other person to continue talking. If so, then Perrotta must think the world a loveless place.

How I read

August 27, 2008
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I am a big fan of e-books. I got my first personal digital assistant (PDA), a Visor Pro, with the express purpose of reading on it. I have since used countless PDAs and e-book reading programs. Currently, I find most of my reading time on my commute to work (by subway) and in “micro-moments.” With a PDA in hand, I can start reading at a moment’s notice, and I usually do, even with only a few minutes available to me at a time. The minutes add up. Currently, I use my iPod Touch for reading books. I must be one be a singleton, holding an iPod on the train, sans head phones, staring intensely at the screen.

I also find ludicrous that anyone would argue that there are clear advantages to paper or e-books; I absolutely love to read, and I cannot care less how I do it. I can point to several instances, in the past few months, where I made a conscious decision to avoid one or the other, for whatever reason. I prepare for air travel by borrowing a few books from the library. I have been purchasing more and more history and science works in e-book form. I occasionally by reference works, on paper, that can benefit from a persistent footprint (e.g. cookbooks, protocols, technical works, etc.) In other words, to hew so closely to one form of text over the other, to the point of making a philosophical to-do about it, is a senseless expenditure of energy. I am a big fan of the pragmatic; I read in the form that is most convenient for me at the time.

With that said, there is something about the smell and physicality of a book that appeals to me. No, I do not read or buy books for showing off; my bookshelves are in my wife’s and my bedroom. I love walking into a bookstore or library; I am comforted. It is my church. The downside of books is the physical aspect of it. There is a reason the bookshelves are hidden in the bedroom: we do not have another spot for them. Clearly, one difference that I found useful in e-books is that they don’t take up physical space. I have 500 e-books on my palm, and I love having my library with me.

At this point, I am thinking that you can guess that the title of the blog isn’t an excuse for why I am not reading, but rather a complaint about how little time I do spend reading. I suppose I cannot be doing so badly: I have a count for most of the books I have read in the past 5 or so years: 318. That includes the e-books and p-books I bought; it doesn’t include the library books I have borrowed and read. I guess it works out to about 5 books a month; it isn’t impressive, given the rate some other readers devour books, but since I have a day job that takes up way too much time (but it’s engaging work!), a wife, and a 3.5 year old, I get some slack, don’t I?

I have already posted a handful of reviews elsewhere on the web; sooner or later, I’ll reprint them here. I will add links to book stores as well as Fictionwise; that’s my vendor of choice for e-books, and they have recently gone from being a retailer to publishing partner. Fictionwise bought eReader, an e-book format and a reading software developer. There are “readers” available for PDAs, computers, and now the iPhone.

Try Umpteen

August 27, 2008
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This is my sixth blog. The others dealt with topics that are well-mined by everyone who blogs: a photojournal of my son (target audience: grandparents), contributions to other people’s, more well-known blogs (mostly of the tech variety), and personal observations (target audience: me).

I have flailed, trying to find a topic that engages me. Although I can write a fair amount my work (and I do believe there is something interesting to mine there), I spend my late nights working on book reviews. It seemed clear that if I wanted to feed, care, and grow a blog, writing about books should do the trick.

Well, they aren’t so much reviews as they are notes on what I have gained in reading the book. I think treating reviews as recommendations, or some referendum on the quality of the work, presumes that one can influence others. I take the view that if books are supposedly so dear to me, I should treat them with a little bit more respect. Thus, I will resist encapsulating reviews in some form of a ratings system. I hope that these reviews help pair books with readers, for whom the themes, characters, and ideas will resonate.

In addition to reviews, I will probably post notes and thoughts, as I am reading a book. I think the most interesting books should spur more than a single summation; I am already spending too much time thinking about what I read anyway. I hope readers find the posts interesting.