The Philosopher and the Druids, Philip Freeman

The Philosopher and the Druids:  A Journey Among the Ancient Celts by Philip Freeman.  This is a non-fiction account of a Greek Philosopher travelling among the Celtic tribes of his time.  I picked this up off a discount book rack.

Started:  11/18/2012

Completed: 12/30/2012

Recommendation: Mild recommendation

Recommended By: Nobody

Words I looked up:

quern -- A simple hand mill for grinding grain, typically consisting of two circular stones, the upper of which is rotated or rubbed to and fro on the lower one

Review:

The author does a lot with a little.  The actual philosopher who did the travelling wrote a book about it, but the book has since been lost.  The author of this book uses references to the Greek Philosopher's book from other ancient texts to try to reconstruct what can be reconstructed.  Those references amount to about a page of text, and the author of this books builds that into almost 200 pages.  Of course, lots of other material is included, but generally from other ancient texts.  In short, there is not a lot here that I haven't already seen with the exception of the druids being distinct from the bards and the vates.  Freeman does a good job of presenting the material and integrating with other semi-original sources.  I recommend this book mildly because much of it is spent dispelling the notion that human sacrifice was a major part of Celtic life.  It seems that such an assertion can be made rather quickly in a couple of pages and then let go.  Well, because, there should be much more to discuss.  Sadly, there isn't much more because the source material is so thin.

The Education of Robert Nifkin, Daniel Pinkwater

The Education of Robert Nifkin by Daniel Pinkwater is a high school coming of age book.  It is a comedic Novel aimed at teenagers.  I know Pinkwater from the Tooth-Gnasher Superflash which I read with relish to my youngest son for many a hilarious evening.  My wife saw this book as Vertigo book store was closing and pointing to the author suggested I pick it up.  So I did.

Started:  11/18/2012

Completed: 11/21/2012

Recommendation: Funny, short, good bathroom read

Recommended By: My wife

Review:
The book is conceived as an essay for college admission.  The story is a coming of age event for a fat immigrant new kid going to highschool in the 50s.  It is funny enough to make you laugh out loud.  It is a pretty straightforward book that seems hell bent on making fun of everything it touches (including itself).  It is a good read and I enjoyed it.

Once a Hero, Michael Stackpole

Once a Hero by Michael A. Stackpole is a book that has been on my read pile for so long that I don't remember the circumstances under which I came to it.  It was published in 1994 and was an early book by the author who has since risen to fame largely on the back of Star Wars books (which don't interest me in the least).  The front cover is far from mesmerizing, the author must have been unknown to me (he didn't ring any bells when I picked this book up off the stack), and the summation on the back is ho-hum.  I do not know Jennifer Roberson (who has a blurb on the top of the front cover) and, had I known who she was (I researched her) I doubt seriously that her comment would have been enticing in any way.  My guess is that I was waiting for someone else and picked up the book and started thumbing through it largely because it was nearby.  I must have read something gripping, because this book (when judged by its cover) doesn't seem like the kind of thing I would ever read.  In fact, when I've been choosing books to read, I've skipped this book many times although I try to choose from the 8-10 oldest in the pile and work to keep the pile in some kind of chronological order from acquisition (with sequels and "must reads" screaming to the top).

Started: 10/31/2012

Completed: 11/18/2012

Recommendation: Good read, a little long

Recommended By: Nobody

Words I looked up:

devoir -- an act of civility or respect
mangonel -- a military device for throwing stones and other missles (e.g. catapult)
nimiety -- excess or overabundance
pennoncel -- a small pennant borne on a lance
peregrination -- travel from one place to another, especially on foot
revetment -- a barricade of earth or sandbags set up to provide protection from blast
sanguineous -- of, pertaining to, or containing blood
sartorial -- of or relating to tailoring, clothes, or style of dress

Review:
Yes, I enjoyed it.  The sappy love story of true love denied, the hero who wasn't quite all he was cracked up to be, but was the hero nonetheless, the genocide...woah, genocide?  Yeah, pretty heavy topic for a casual book, but this one takes on genocide while also addressing issues like slavery, racial discrimination, and even takes a swing at how societal decline happens.  Pretty impressive little romp.  There is plenty of action, made up creatures, familiar made up creatures (elves, dwarves, etc), golems, sorcery, and travel.  Yeah, travel is pretty cool.  They don't teleport around but the means of travel is pretty inventive and it ties in well with the overall theme.  I was a little unhappy with the cop-out, "magic you do, magic I am" that seems to show up way too often for my liking, but given that is the only really outstanding fault, I think this book is pretty well put together.  Oh, and the main characters are set 500 years apart in time.  That kind of sucks and you know something has to happen (heck, they talk about reincarnation on the back cover), but the journey is worth the read.  The author does a good job of weaving the story lines together and I especially enjoyed the way the point-of-view flipped around in chapter increments.

People of the Lakes, Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear

People of the Lakes by Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear is a novel of the pre-columbian people in the Americas.  This couple has written a huge number of books about American Indians and their forebears.  I think that the first one of their books in this category that I read was People of the Mist and I read it many years before I started this blog.  Later, I noticed a bunch of the "People" books for sale at a library sale and picked them up.  I think that I've read one or two others and have a decent size pile remaining in the basement that will likely make this blog at some point.

Started:  9/25/2012

Completed: 10/31/2012

Recommendation: Mildly recommended

Recommended By: Part of a series

Words I looked up:

cadging -- begging or getting by begging

syncretically -- reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion, especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous.

Review:

This story feels like a modern Indian myth:  the story of the mask of Many-Colored Crow.  It feels modern to me because a love story is intertwined with the sexual tension typical of a modern drama and less typical of an Indian myth.  That may not be fair (I'm not familiar with a ton of Indian myths, but of those with which I'm familiar sexual tension is markedly absent).  It feels like an Indian myth because the Gods play a role, though they are periphery players who none the less seem to be driving the action.  In the other books by these authors, the stories have felt like cultural explorations.  In this tome the cultural issues seem to take a back seat to the action embedded in the story.

The primary love story has an undercurrent driven by the love between friends that pervades this novel in both positive and negative ways.  To my taste, these authors are better suited at describing the culture then they are at crafting a love story, so the love story seems stilted and almost comical in some ways (misunderstood actions and such).

The mask itself, becomes a character in the story rather then a symbol and the story is oddly punctuated by its role.  This drifting in and out of what is a main character in the story is disconcerting and troubling particularly as the story progresses.  To the reader, this interaction interferes with the effort to suspend disbelief and while it seems reasonable that the characters in the story would imbue the mask with a certain (if alien) humanity, it is difficult as a reader to experience that aspect of the mask directly.  It is oddly disconcerting and feels "wrong."

The story is gripping and drags the reader along as any good race story should.  The large number of plot lines that converge near the end of the book (as expected throughout) cause momentary confusion as the reader inhabits each plot line intimately and the transitions are both frequent and abrupt.  There was one excellent transition between plots in the book and I remember admiring the finesse with which it was built and enjoying that moment.  Otherwise, the prose was unremarkable and actually felt awkward at times.  The plot lines intermixed and rubbed against each other without jarring.  The combining of the plot lines was largely expected and the effort to join them felt very rushed, but, in fairness, that could be intended.

I would mildly recommend this book because, in the end, it is a good story.  It would be strongly recommended if the story was more inherently one of the people it is intended to portray (this story could quite simply be moved to any people at any time).  I had read this book in part to understand the prehistoric Indian culture a little better and feel that I got little understanding.  Again, that may be fair--we don't have a lot beyond burial plots with which to interpret these people.  The book is a daunting 800 or so pages which had most of the family gasping, but don't be put off by the size.

The Importance of a Piece of Paper, Jimmy Santiago Baca

The Importance of a Piece of Paper by Jimmy Santiago Baca is a collection of short stories that my wife happened to see at a huge book sale and thought I might like.

Started: 9/22/2012

Completed: 9/25/2012

Recommendation: Please don't waste your time

Recommended By: My Wife

Review:

I read the first two stories.  Some of the images were beautiful.  The stories were both mournful and predictable.  I don't know enough about the author to comment more, but I simply couldn't read more of this book.

Helliconia Spring, Brian Aldiss

Helliconia Spring by Brian W. Aldiss is the author's attempt to make a real statement about humanity through a world that has a truly alien set of inhabitants and life cycle.  I really enjoyed  Greybeard which was a story that Aldiss wrote in the 1960's about a nuclear end-time.  The author is remarkably detailed and really took a lot of effort to understand the potential world of Helliconia, though he freely admits that he departed from physics when it suited the story to do so.  Here is a an audio discussion of this book by the author in an interview.

Started:  9/2/2012

Completed: 9/22/2012

Recommendation: Highly recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Words I looked Up:

ancipital - Flattened and having two heads
apastron - That point in the orbit of a double star where the smaller star is farthest from its primary.
cataplexy - A medical condition in which strong emotion causes a person to suffer sudden physical collapse though remaining conscious.
cerise - A bright or deep red color
ecrythmous - out of tune
eddre - The English is serpent (the author seems to use this word to mean "spirit").  As Marco pointed out in the comments, this word does mean "spirit" in Olonets (it took me a while to find the reference, but it seems that Olonets is a Finnish language also known as Livvi-Karelian).  The language, Olonets, is mentioned in the book, but I simply thought it was a made-up language and did not realize it was a true, existing language.
imagos - The adult stage of an insect
mesentery - A fold of the peritoneum that attaches the stomach and other organs to the posterior wall of the abdomen
necrogene - This word does not exist, it is made up by the author to describe a class of animals that give birth through death.
noctiferous - Bringing night.
ostler - Someone employed in a stable to take care of the horses
pelage - the fur, hair, or wool of a mammal.
penumbral - The partial or imperfect shadow outside the complete shadow of an opaque body, as a planet, where the light from the source of illumination is only partly cut off.
prod - a poke with a finger, foot, or pointed object.  The author used it to refer to a penis.
pudendum - A person's external genitals, esp. a woman's
sang-de-boeuf - a deep red color
scumble - The application of a very thin coat of color over the surface of a picture.  The author used it to mean manure.
scut - A stubby erect tail, as that of a hare, rabbit, or deer.
spatch-cock - To interpolate (usually words) inappropriately.  The author used it with inappropriate color in a landscape.
sporran - A small waist pouch (like what is worn with a kilt)
sybaritic - Fond of sensuous luxury or pleasure; self-indulgent
queme - pleasant or attractive.  The author used it to refer to a vagina.
verdiagris-hued - The color of a bright bluish-green encrustation formed on copper or brass by atmospheric oxidation.
viscera - The internal organs of the body especially those of the abdomen.
zygomatic - The arch of bone beneath the eye that forms the prominence of the cheek.

Review:

Epic.  Bold.  A vision of another place that is, at least a bit, a reflection of our own, viewed by ourselves.  Pretty tough description, huh?  So this book is rather clearly an allegory for our own lives, but it is more than that...a multi-generational trip to places so alien that they become acceptable.  Suspension of disbelief is easy in this rich, consistent world.  The turn of phrase is often beautiful and the language, though esoteric, is comprehensible within context.  One might think that the author let loose with a thesaurus, but it seems that he must think with these words and have them ready at hand for just the right moment to unleash them on the page.  It would seem that there is an inexhaustible supply of new words for both new and old concepts that trip off the lips of the author and rush about the page looking for their perfect place.  Having established the setting over and over with colorful descriptions and populating it with complex characters, the race is on for the setting of the season that must come with Helliconia Fall.

Longitude, Dava Sobel

Longitude:  The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time by Dava Sobel is the story of John Harrison and his effort to solve the calculation of the longitude aboard ship.

Started: 8/18/2012

Completed: 8/27/2012

Recommendation: Strongly recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

I had no idea that calculating Longitude was largely a matter of carrying time around.  While other methods were developed over the 50+ years of John Harrison's pursuit of the longitude prize, having an accurate clock was the easiest and best.  With GPS we all take for granted that it is easily within anyone's grasp to know their exact location, but in the 18th century navigation on the high seas was truly a guessing game with outrageous methods competing with methods that had some merit.  Galileo was the first to come up with a reliable means of finding longitude (using the Jovian moons), but it wasn't until John Harrison that longitude could be reliably calculated on the sea.  Keeping a telescope focused on Jupiter was more than anyone could do on a ship on all but the calmest of nights and then the calculations to determine longitude were non-trivial and required substantial tables of predicted locations of the moons.  Most clocks of the time were pendulum clocks which were horribly effected by the rolling of the deck.  John Harrison invented a clock that was not effected by changes in heat, humidity, and rolling of the ship and that, eventually, won him the longitude prize (literally a king's ransom).  What a great book!

Dava Sobel, as always, is evocative and careful with her prose.  At points, her sentences even take on a tick-tock sing-song picked up by the actor who read the book.  It is a joy to hear this book, but I'm certain that reading it would be excellent as well.

Sword Song, Bernard Cornwell

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell is the fourth book in the Saxon Stories.

Started: 6/20/2012

Completed: 7/27/2012

Recommendation: Oh, yeah, still enjoying this series!

Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

The story of Uhtred continues with a foray into London.  During this book it is easy to see the skills of leadership being developed (through both success and failure).  Despite the title, it seems to me that in this book Uhtred starts to find that war is not all its cracked up to be and though he still participates with relish, it seems that the character is slowly growing tired of the mayhem.  He is, however, a fierce Lord who seems to relish in the argument that, "a man is hard to kill."

The Lords of the North, Bernard Cornwell

The Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell is the third novel in the Saxon Stories.  This story follows Uhtred's trip to the North as Uhtred, having served Alfred well, looks for an opportunity to return home.

Started: 5/20/2012

Completed: 6/16/2012

Recommendation:  Still hooked by this series

Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

In this book, we get some of the "action tension" that a romantic comedy uses as "romantic tension."  There is action and it seems to be constant.  It is clear by this book that Uhtred is going to get in a scrape and come out victorious.  This is the first book, however, in which Uhtred really takes a hard loss from his action and it is a harbinger of things to come.  This book mostly seems to set the stage for some future work where the events of this book were critical to some future plot twist.  With little surprise, the plot in this book moves as expected with one surprising (though constantly foretold) event.  I don't want to give away the plot, but it did throw me.

I did not realize that there were several audio version of this book and leaving Jamie Glover (I think to listen to Richard Armitage) hurt the book in my ears.  The phrase "Uhtred of Bebbinburg" no longer had the ring of longing associated with it.  The names of characters and places were pronounced differently and it took a little bit of a recovery to once more suspend my disbelief.

The Pale Horseman, Bernard Cornwell

The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell is the second in the Saxon Stories and picks up after the last kingdom.  I couldn't wait to hear more about Uhtred.

Started: 4/26/2012

Completed: 5/11/2012

Recommendation:  Loved it!

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

The story of Uhtred continues in this gripping saga of England under Danish control.  Uhtred becomes more human and parts of his character are fleshed out in this book.  To show that Uhtred is not a one shot wonder, he goes on to take a prominent role in helping Alfred restore the kingdom of Wessex from under Danish control and lays the foundation for the concept that Uhtred could actually be a leader himself one day.  The battles continue and this story will not disappoint anyone looking for action scenes.  While it seems that time spent in a swamp simply can't have much action beyond a lost boot, Bernard Cornwell handles it well. 

Wired Love, Ella Cheever Thayer

Wired Love:  A Romance of Dots and Dashes by Ella Cheever Thayer was a Project Gutenberg book that caught my eye.

Started: 10/19/2011
Completed:  5/10/2012
Recommendation:  Not recommended
Recommended By:  I read a magazine article about love via email while doing some research on one of my son's efforts to find a Russian bride.  It mentioned this book as the first description of remote romance, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Words I looked up:

inamorata - A person's female lover

Review:

This is a book that is typical of pulp fiction at the time.  It isn't quite as dramatic as there are only one or two fainting scenes and there aren't any conversions to God.  It has the mild air of a comedy (mistaken identities and such) but one poorly drawn as I never found myself laughing out lout and the mistaken identities seemed to be generally painful to the characters.  The romance via Morse Code is definitely over played though it seems to have been semi-auto biographical.  The constant "restraint" exercised by the characters literally overshadows their ability to interact in almost any way and the book dissolves to some kind of constant cat and mouse played by characters who seem to always do the wrong thing for questionable reasons.

The Last Kingdom, Bernard Cornwell

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell is a book that I picked up to hear during my commute.  I was browsing the CDs in the library and saw his most recent in this series.  This book, the first, was not on the shelves so I ordered it and listened.

Started:  3/1/2012
Completed:  4/22/2012
Recommendation:  Loved it!  The audio version is awesome and the actor who does the reading takes me to a whole other level.
Recommended by:  Nobody
Review:


This first book in a substantial series follows the life of an English Lord from his earliest years as a prisoner of the Danes through his first major battle as an Englishman.  The cadence and pace of the story has a visceral quality that, when combined with the unflinching description of the times, brings the reader to a new place in an old time.  The stench of unwashed bodies follows each scene and the horror of hand-to-hand combat leaps from the page.  The romance that is present (it is rare) is not gushy, but has more of a hard edge to it and throughout the book in any circumstance, we don't live every moment as the first person narrative might.  There is a certain distance that is maintained with an occasional glimmer of the person inside the narrator in both predictable and unpredictable ways.

If you can get past all the death (and there is plenty of it) the book has a certain desperate liveliness to it.  There is a hunger for life that helps carry the imagination and the little details that the author has added from scraps of actual history help build a scaffolding for the story that makes it believable.  This is no sword-and-sorcery tale, more of a fleshing out of a nasty story that could possibly have been (but certainly wasn't).  The hard-edge story telling reminds me of Morgan Llewellyn.

Alexandria, Lindsey Davis

Alexandria by Lindsey Davis is a Marcus Didius Falco novel.  Part of a series of novels about an informer in the court of Vespasian.

Started:  1/10/2012
Completed:  2/15/2012
Recommendation:  If you are only going to read one historical novel about a Roman investigator I prefer the Roma Sub Rosa series by Steven Saylor.
Recommended By:  A librarian at the local library
Review:


As a mystery this book fails.   There are a series of deaths and a series of clues, but it is simply impossible to solve the "mystery" with the information given in the book before the detective, Marcus Didius Falco, does.  In fact, it seems that he stumbles on the solution just as the rest of us do.

As a character study, this book fails.  The protagonist is not terribly interesting (this is the 19th in a series of books, so his character is probably as well developed as it is going to get).  His wife, Justina, is equally undeveloped.  The potential here is to develop the uncle, but that character is wildly neglected and serves largely as a mildly sinister foil to the good nephew.

Alexandria is an interesting city, but it is used as a backdrop and the library itself is used as a cavity into which the story is placed.  There is the occasional step into historical information (I guess), but nothing that caught my attention.  The zoo that was associated with the library was interesting, but so little was told of the nature of it that the simple fact of its existence was all I was able to garner.  Perhaps the source material is lacking.

In short, if you are not a fan of Marcus Didius Falco already, this book should not compel you to read more.  If you are a fan, then I don't know whether this book is consistent with the series or an aberration.

Leonardo, Michael White

Leonardo: The First Scientist by Michael White is a biography of Leonardo da Vinci that makes the argument that he is not only an artist and architect, but also a scientist.  The claim that he was the first scientist is loose.

Started:  2/15/2012
Completed: 3/18/2012
Recommendation: A good read, even a good first introduction
Recommended by:  Nobody, I just needed a book to listen to during the commute.
Review:


I have a special interest in Leonardo largely because of his interest in flight.  I loved his study of birds and it wasn't until I started studying how patterns of flight for flocks of birds for computer science that I learned he had even contributed to the study of birds.  I have long been fascinated by his inventions.  This book gave me good background on his life and it was interesting to examine how a pacifist vegetarian became the creator of war engines.

The argument that Leonardo was the first scientist is really not made.  He is not truly compared to others before him who might have been considered scientists except in the most general way.  In fact, comments on his predecessors really did not address the possibility  that they may be considered scientists at all. The author focuses on the argument that Leonardo should be considered a scientist.  The broad argument goes that despite the "scientific method" being devised long after Leonardo's death, Leonardo showed enough of what we consider the "scientific method" that his practices fit the description though they predate the actual definition.  Leonardo's scientific work was also never really published (certainly not in his lifetime), so some considerable time is spent explaining why it was not and how this is largely not Leonardo's fault.  It seems likely to me that the argument of his being a scientist in some way also hinges on the publication of his work.

From a practical point of view, the argument over whether he was or was not technically a "scientist" is overshadowed by his amazing work.  The author does a good job of helping us understand Leonardo and his work culturally and in terms of its potential scientific value.