The Autobiography of Santa Clause, Jeff Guinn

The Autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff Guinn is a book that I picked up from the Greenbelt Labor Day book sale several years ago and happened to catch my eye in the pile of books today.  I thought it was worthwhile to jump it to the top of the list as it is appropriate seasonally.  This book is supposed to be a mix of history and the fiction it inspired written by a journalist.

Started:  12/10/2016

Completed: 12/12/2016

Recommendation: Not Recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

So, it turns out that Santa Claus is a horrible name-dropper.  His "band of merry elves" is composed of Leonardo Da Vinci, Attila the Hun, and Ben Franklin (among others).  The history is an elementary skate through important figures with a repeated position that each would really be happier making children happy than doing whatever it is that they are currently doing.  While it is a nice sentiment, it becomes repeatedly hard to enjoy.  It would also make a much easier read if one were a strong Catholic (but not so strong that "miracles" being characterized as "lies" is a problem).  This book just got more boring the further I got into it.

Tides of War, Steven Pressfield

Tides of War:  A Novel of Alcibades and the Peloponnesian War by Steven Pressfield is a book that I picked up at the Greenbelt Labor Day Festival book sale.  This is the same author who wrote, "The Legend of Bagger Vance," although I didn't know that when I picked up the book.  The line across the top which said that his battle scenes were the "most convincing ever written" caught my attention and led to my picking up this book.

Started:  5/29/2016

Completed: 12/10/2016

Recommendation: Recommended, good read

Recommended By:  Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

circumvallate -- to surround with ramparts

encomiast -- a person who publicly praises or flatters someone else

gimcrack -- a cheap and showy ornament; a nick-nack

importunity -- troublesomely urgent or persistent in requesting; pressingly entreating.

miscegenate -- to breed with someone of another race

panygeric -- a public speech or published text in praise of someone or something

penteconter -- a ship with fifty oars

probity -- the quality of having strong moral principals, honesty, and decency.

Review:

For the most part, I found the battle scenes to be pretty basic--though clearly carefully well conceived.  I am not certain that they are the "most convincing ever written."  The book as a whole, however, is a much easier read than Thucydides and does offer insights into the working man's life in a Greek army.  I enjoyed the book and found it to be something of great interest.  I think it is likely that the book was rushed at the end as it felt as though there were two to three more books of equivalent size that were briefly summarized in the last 50 or so pages.  Linking the book to Socrates and his days in jail awaiting the hemlock was a good device and made the book even more interesting to me.

The Finish, Mark Bowden

The Finish:  The Killing of Osama bin Laden by Mark Bowden read by James Lurie is an audio book that I picked up at the library book store because the librarian thought "I'd definitely like it."  It came free with another audio book that I actually wanted.  It has been sitting in my pile of audio books until it is the only one on hand.

Started: 11/31/2016

Completed: 12/9/2016

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Recommended By:  a nearby librarian

Review:

OK, the librarian was right.  I don't know what I expected--I guess gratuitous violence.  This book was a great balance between the logistics, the decision making, and the actual events.  It offered analysis, resolution of conflicting accounts, and mechanical details of the whole operation over the course of many years.  It was remarkably well written and I am glad that I heard it.  Anyone wondering what decisions were made or how the operation was accomplished would be interested in this book.  There is enough detail to make the description complete without so much detail as to make the work boring or nauseating.  It is probably worth every American reading.

The Evolution of Useful Things, Henry Petroski

The Evolution of Useful Things:  How everyday artifacts--from forks and pins to paper clips and zippers--came to be as they are by Henry Petroski struck me as just the collection of eclectic things all wrapped together that might be interesting.

Started: 11/18/2016

Completed: 12/8/2016

Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

FORM DOES NOT FOLLOW FUNCTION argues this author at every turn.  Petroski offers seemingly endless examples of how inventors seek to fix the flaws in previous inventions or solve some shortcoming in life.  Petroski demonstrates that solutions do not arrive fully formed and are almost always an incremental step from something that came before.  The argument is compelling.  The story of the invention of seemingly every day things (like the paper clip) is interesting on its own even if the narrative is frequently interrupted to restate the author's thesis.  The interruption becomes annoying over time, but the case is not lost on me.  This book is a good read and offers some insight into how inventors go about their lives for those of us who are not inventors.

The Silmarillion, J.R.R Tolkein

The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien is read by Martin Shaw.  I read this as a young man and saw this audio collection at the Greenbelt Labor Day Festival--I felt it was worth the listen to and from work.

Started:  10/25/2016

Completed: 11/30/2016

Recommendation: Only to die-hard Tolkien fans

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

The book itself is as remarkably boring as I remember.  It is the scale of the work and the attempt to tell such a "history" that is impressive.  The sonorous voice of Martin Shaw lends a gravitas to the work that goes well with some of the archaic phrases (e.g. in that hour, on that day).  I remember fighting my way through this book around the same time I was trying to read the Bible cover to cover and, so, I drew many parallels that probably were actually there.

I had forgotten that the Dark Elves were not evil, simply that they had not journeyed to the light with their other kin.  I had also forgotten that the Orcs were likely bread from tortured elves (and, thus, immortal as well), which is even more horrifying then believing that they are simply evil.  There are lots of stories that were referenced in the War of the Ring, that I had long forgotten and even forgotten the references.

There were some enlightening things about Sauron that I had forgotten.

Hearing, as opposed to reading, this work was worth it.

The End of Work, Jeremy Rifkin

The End of Work:  The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era by Jeremy Rifkin.   This book was recommended to me by a friend who heard I was interested in trying to work on poverty.

Started:  08/06/2016

Completed: 11/18/2016

Recommendation: N/A

Recommended By:  Dr. Amen

Review:

I have been struggling to read this book, but I have been frustrated with the claims and it just seems like, in light of the recent election, it is simply unrealistic.  I'm not saying it is fantasy, but trying to implement the reforms this book recommends seem so incredibly unlikely as to convince me that we will need to derive a different solution then that proposed.

Lucifer: Book One, Mike Carey

Lucifer: Book One by Mike Carey is a graphic novel which continues the story of Lucifer (the fallen angel) who leaves Hell behind in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics.  This series of comics is the inspiration for the Lucifer television series.  I was surprised to see that a comic book series was the inspiration, but I felt that if I was ever going to make a foray into graphic novels, this was a good place to start.

Started:  09/09/2016

Completed: 10/30/2016

Recommendation: Not Recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

So, I picked up the comic because I enjoyed the television series.  The two have little in common.  The wit and humor that suffuses the television series is darkly lacking from the comic book.  It was uncomfortable to have so many conflicting pantheons of gods, goddesses, and creatures interacting.  The idea of angels "waging war" just doesn't meet my concept of what angels do.  The part of the television series that I really enjoy is seeing how surprising Lucifer can be.  In this comic book I found no such surprises.  In short, it wasn't my thing.  I also missed thought bubbles.  There is no way to get inside the heads of these characters, all you see is what they say or do.  There is no sense of communion with them and their inner worlds are opaque.

About Time, Adam Frank

About Time:  Cosmology, Time, and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang by Adam Frank read by David Drummond is a book about the first moments of time.  I don't know why I chose this audio book, nor do I remember from where I got it.  

Started:  10/11/2016

Completed: 10/24/2016

Recommendation: Mild Recommendation

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

The first half of the book is a cosmologist lecturing on all of human history (basically stone age forward).  It was almost entirely old hat to me and seemed wildly inappropriate in a book about cosmology.  The central thesis for the author, however, is that time and culture are "braided" together.  He took a long time developing this thesis and concluded that we would only come to understand our cosmology in general in terms of our own cultural development (ranging from relatively new theories to doom and gloom accompanying peak oil and climate change).  The author felt comfortable, from this vantage, offering morality lessons.  The only reason for the recommendation is that the second half of the book is a pretty good, fairly complete, introduction to cosmological thinking and analysis.  It isn't terribly detailed, but it does a good job of putting things together for the lay audience (no math).  I found the description of pocket universes particularly lucid and helpful to me.

Perlmann's Silence, Pascal Mercier

Perlmann's Silence by Pascal Mercier (pseudonym for Pete Bieri) is an audio book read by Mel Foster. This is a book originally published in German and is a study in character by a modern philosopher disguised as a novel.

Started:  9/11/2016

Completed: 10/10/2016

Recommendation: Not Recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Words and Phrases for which I needed help:

mendacity -- untruthfulness

Review:

In order for a novelization of philosophical principals to be meaningful, the characters in the novel need to be compelling.  These characters are not.  At no point does one feel inclined toward the protagonist and his bizarre series of behaviors are not terribly understandable.  One might be inclined to say the same of Kafka and I think that is a fair critique, but the guise is much thinner with Kafka and mercifully shorter.  I did not get a lot from the book.  The characters left me cold.  The tendency to leave dialog half undone (while stylistic) is maddening--particularly in the audio version.  I just cannot recommend this book to anyone.

1434, Gavin Menzies

1434:  The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance by Gavin Menzies is an audio book that I picked up when looking for another book that was titled with a number.  This book claims that China inspired the renaissance and suggests that Da Vinci was really a decent draftsman, but not inventor.  Reviews of this book pretty consistently label it as fiction (as here in the Telegraph) or at least an effort by the author to willfully misconstrue "evidence."  This perception is not helped by his subsequent publication of a book on Atlantis.  Menzies is not taken seriously by any established historian.

Started:  09/09/2016

Completed: 09/10/2016

Recommendation: Not recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

I stopped listening to this book part way through.  I enjoy history.  I have noticed that books that purport to be history, but are not, tend to give very detailed information about undisputed things and then make casual assertions about highly debatable things.  In this book, exhaustive analysis was provided for the location of certain islands (lat/long down to the the second) which is easily found numerous places.  Exhaustive analysis was given on plausible ways to calculate lat/long from information given by the star charts available to the Chinese in the 12-1400s.  No evidence was given, however, that any of the methods of calculation were actually used (the assertion that something could be done implied that it must have been done in that way).  I overlooked the assertion that because the Chinese used some method of calculating something like lat/long, then they must have known that the Earth was spherical, that they must have assigned lat/long, etc.  I also overlooked obvious non-correlations like the Chinese word for the distance of a star from Polaris being called "ascension."  The actual word is 入宿度 and I have no idea how to seek out the etymology of this word in Chinese, but I doubt seriously that it corresponds to "ascension" and it seems more likely that the word is simply translated to "ascension."  The author claims that the current European understanding of "ascension" comes from the Chinese which just seems remarkably unlikely given that the concept of "ascension" predates interaction between the cultures.

What really got me, however, was the discussion of the attire of students at Al-Azhir University in Cairo, Egypt being the ancestral source of the clothing worn at Oxford, England.  There is little doubt that the 11th century University predates Oxford (founded in 1326).  But the similarity in attire is surface only and it seems highly unlikely that a Muslim practice which originated at the same time as the crusades started would be adopted by a Christian nation.  Moreover, the Oxford attire is characterized by a hood (worn for warmth) which is not present at all in the attire of Al-Azhir.  The assertion that one derived from the other was thrown off as a casual comment in the work, but it stopped me cold.  If it were true, then it would suggest an enormous influence over education between the Muslim and Christian world.  While such a link is clearly possible (they had in common the works of the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans), to suggest such a strong link that the English even don the style of the Muslim's dress seems to suggest an intimate relationship and even a paternal relationship which simply does not exist.

That this was casually thrown out by the author with none of the detailed certification linked to the obvious facts and the nonsensical use of a translated word to imply derivation suggested to me that this author was no historian at all.  Further research bore this out.  I wish I could enjoy whatever portion of his work is genuine, but it is so entwined with what can only be described as fanciful that I cannot figure out how to resolve one from the other.  I'd rather not have such a combination lingering in my subconscious, so I stopped listening to the book.

John Adams, David McCollough

John Adams by David McCullough won the Pulitzer Prize among other awards and receives rave reviews.  This is the audio version which I got for the commute.

Started: 8/28/2016

Completed: 9/9/2016

Recommendation: Slow Read, but good history

Recommended By: Everyone

Review:

Our first vice-president and second president manages to fall under the radar of most.  I was unaware of his role in the Declaration of Independence, though I was aware that he and Jefferson had an on-again off-again relationship most of their lives and that both died on July 4th in the same year.  I new that Adams was a plain man who viewed the role of the Founding Fathers within a proper historical context even if he was unsure whether it would be fame or infamy.

I learned a lot about his role in relationships with foreign countries and though I had a passing knowledge that he was involved at one point as a French ambassador (I read about this in the book 46 pages) but I did not realize the scope and length of his foreign travels.  On some level I thought that he had been more active in the Revolutionary War than he actually was and I was unaware that he was the lawyer who defended the British troops after the Boston Massacre.

Adams was truly an interesting man who lived his convictions.  I admire him in this way and also share his love of books.  I have several more books about Adams and about the difficulties between Adams and Jefferson so I am inclined to reserve judgement on this book without having learned more about him.

It would seem that Adams and Aaron Burr had little or no relationship given what I have read here and in Gore Vidal's Burr but it seems odd to me that the two would not have interacted.  It also seems odd to me that Adams and Hamilton did not interact much more than the book describes.  Perhaps this is a want of space or perhaps it is because the book clearly uses the letters between Adams and his wife Abigail as a primary source of information.  It could also be that both Burr and Hamilton were young, ambitious, and rude--the latter two characters would certainly have rubbed Adams the wrong way.

I was inspired by Adams' position on slavery and found his attempts to address this with Jefferson (who seemed conflicted at best) interesting and insightful.  I also was not surprised to find that a large part of Adams' success as a man of the world could be attributed to Abigail who supported him unquestioningly.

Anathem, Neal Stephenson

Anathem by Neal Stephenson  is a book that has been on my to-read list for a while and has been ponderously progressing through the pile.  It is a HUGE book and I have to admit that I have grown tired of moving it from stack to stack and shelf to shelf.  I checked to see if it was on Audio and, indeed, all 28 discs can be had from the library.  So, I picked it up and I have something new to which I can listen in the car.  This novel received the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2009.  Discouraging, Michael Dirda (whom I respect) found the book "pretty darn dull."

Started:  7/24/2016

Completed: 8/28/2016

Recommendation: Well worth the volume

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

It is easy to think that this is a work of science fiction.  It isn't.  This is a book about physics and, in particular, the Many World's Theorem of Physics.  I finally get it.  It finally makes sense to me.  Thank you, Neal Stephenson.

As a novel this book is pretty good.  Stephenson does a very good job of building a consistent, completely alien, world.  It is different enough from our world to be clearly alien, yet familiar enough that most of the behaviors and technologies only need cursory explanations.  The audio version has lots of music that really makes the world seem more real.

As a love story, this book is a flop.  Boy ignores girl, boy finds girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.  C'mon Stephenson, you can do so much better.  The romance between Fra Leo and Valore (not a character, but a kind of loving history of martial technology) is so much better then the romance between Fra Erasmus and Sur (sp?) Aela.  Even Cord (sp?) has a better romance then "Ras."

The world building is second to none, the basic plot that carries the story forward, however, is physics.  The physics sort of falls apart at the end, but it needs to be a novel for some reason.  I'm comfortable with that.  The relationships between the main character group collapses and sort of drags as the story moves forward and I'm completely unclear about the extensive side trip in the snow (it doesn't seem to forward the story, but does offer a little foreshadowing) and so, I found that hard to enjoy.  The end product, however, and the clear explanation of the Many Worlds Theorem was excellent.  It was completely worth the time and there is a need to build up a lot if one is going to make an incomprehensible theory understandable.  Thank you, Neal Stephenson.

The End of Work, Jeremy Rifkin

The End of Work:  The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era by Jeremy Rifkin.   This book was recommended to me by a friend who heard I was interested in trying to work on poverty.

Started:  08/06/2016

Completed: 11/18/2016

Recommendation: N/A

Recommended By:  Dr. Amen

Review:

I have been struggling to read this book, but I have been frustrated with the claims and it just seems like, in light of the recent election, it is simply unrealistic.  I'm not saying it is fantasy, but trying to implement the reforms this book recommends seem so incredibly unlikely as to convince me that we will need to derive a different solution then that proposed.

Riddled with Life, Marlene Zuk

Riddled with Life:  Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites that Make Us Who We Are by Marlene Zuk is a book that I picked up due to a book review in Science News.

Started:  5/27/2016

Completed: 8/6/2016

Recommendation: Very interesting, worth the time

Recommended By:  Science News

Words for which I sought help:

facile -- easily achieved, effortless

Review:

Yuk.  OK, so that is out of the way.  Parasites are gross and this book digs into them.  There is no doubt that there is a tremendous amount of cross-fertilization between animals and parasites.  This book makes that remarkably clear.  Parasites are not all bad, however, as some of the stuff they do actually helps us out.

The author would pretty much have you believe that evolution is simply the story of this interactive battle between animals and parasites.  This is a strong conclusion to draw and, when faced with it directly, the author demurs.  The scale of data, however, and the arguments in the book say otherwise.  This is timely information as well.  The author makes a strong argument for infection in general causing some other ancillary long-term illnesses.  The author does not extend to the likelihood that vaccinations could induce these long-term illnesses, but the argument is a logical extension.

So, there is a huge amount of information involved here and the reading is rather dry.  The argument is made clearly, however, that bacteria in particular and parasites in general aren't going to go away no matter what we do.  They will adapt to the environment we present for them.  We are simply irresistible and they have evolutionary capabilities that facilitate adaptations to deal with everything we can throw at them.  To some extent, in the end, we are going to have to figure out how to live with them--this will be particularly true when antibiotics are no longer effective.

In the meantime, it makes sense to pay attention to the stuff that grows in you and lives on you.  Should you eat dirt?  Maybe, it probably should have clay in it if you do.  This book is not a big cautionary tale, it is more of an effort to just let all of us know a little more about stuff that most microbiologists know really well.  Should you eat sushi?  Those in the know simply don't take the risk, even if it is small.

The book is well worth reading, the material is interesting, there is, however, a yuk factor.

The Information, James Gleick

The Information:  A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick is a book I've had sitting on the shelves for a bit.  It was not next on my list, but I went looking for some books that I could pick up in an audio format to hear in the car and this was the first one that was available in a nearby library.  So, I have the book and the audio.  I enjoyed Gleick's book, Chaos, a few decades or so ago and I really respect his ability to use his journalistic talents to make science understandable.

Started:  6/25/2016

Completed: 7/23/2016

Recommendation: Mild recommendation

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

I would never have thought it would be necessary to describe what the nature of "information" is to anyone.  It seems a ubiquitous and well-understood term.  On the other hand, there are a variety of types of information (as well as methods of conveyance) that would never have occurred to me.  The exhaustive look at language as a method of conveying information and the implications thereof had, frankly, not occurred to me although it was obvious the instant he mentioned it.  Moreover, the implications of the printed page on the way in which we think, forget how we communicate, is a complication I would not have realized without careful thought.

It is also worth noting that I would have been inclined to find definitions for a whole bunch of words if they had not been either explicitly defined in the book or used with great pains to provide meaningful context.  Since the book is about information and a fair portion of the early part of the book revolves around defining words, this makes sense.

The book is a trip down memory lane for most of those familiar with the history of computing and certainly those familiar with crypto-analytics.  For me, the revelation surrounded the role of Claude Shannon, so it must be clear that while I am conversant with Information Theory, I am not a student of its history.  In that sense, this book was good for me because it opened up some more avenues of research of which I had not been aware.

This is a mild recommendation because I fear that if someone is not interested in Information Theory, Cryptography, and/or Computer Science, this book swiftly becomes much too technical.  For those with interests in these areas, this book is unlikely to provide a lot of new information.  If you know Babbage, Turing, and Shannon, this book will fill you in on a few more details.  If you know Wiener, Ada Lovelace, and Clement, then the odds are good that you already have a strong sense of this material and it is highly unlikely, to my eye, that you will learn much more.

Ready Player One, Ernest Cline

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a book recommended to me by two friends, Joe and Mike.  I picked up the audio version from the library (the bulk of the books on my shelf are not in audio format) and found that it was read by Wil Wheaton.  I had a bit of a Sheldon moment when I noticed that, so I should probably amend the sentence to read my friend Wil Wheaton.  I looked at Wil Wheaton's blog which I linked above and it looked mildly interesting.  Much better than this blog, but not something to which I would turn all that often.  Of course, I don't turn to my own blog very often.  So, anyway, if you are reading this, please go look at Wil Wheaton's blog.  He'd like that.  And, of course, he's my friend.  Feel free to remind him if you find yourself talking to him.  He, uhm, might need a reminder...

This book received the Alex Award from Young Adult Library Services which should tell you something about my friends Joe and Mike.  It also won the Prometheus Award from the Libertarian Futurists Society which is a higher honor and a bit more off kilter.  The book has been picked up for a movie that is apparently going to be directed by Steven Spielberg.  Oh yeah, and it is a New York Times Bestseller.

Started:  6/1/2016

Completed: 6/23/2016

Recomendation:  Highly Recommended.  Excellent.  Go get it.  Don't put it on a shelf.  Go get it and read/listen to it.

Recommended By:  Mike and Joe (who should go look at my friend, Wil Wheaton's blog)

Review:

An audio book you can't put down?  Are you kidding me?  So I thought until I sat in the driveway listening to "just a little more" over and over.  This book is AWESOME!

The "Tomb of Horrors" is easily my favorite D&D module and it brought back a huge stream of memories when I ran into it in this book.  It is truly sad that I remembered it so well after not playing in well over 30 years, but that is the kind of impact the module had on this geek.  To wrap it into another book is simply awesome.  The way the author related all of the events reminded me of the first time I "stepped" into the tomb as a player-character.  All of those traps!  It truly took forever to move through the first hallway.

The parallel story of a kid from the "stacks" and his actions within the Oasis blend nicely and appropriately.  The smooth transition back and forth reminded me of Tad Williams' Otherland series of books.  It is nice when the "real world" has consequences like having to go to the bathroom or eat.  It is also nice that this is explained without being constantly relived (so we know the characters are all busy taking care of basic bodily functions, but we aren't constantly exposed to it).

The pure love of 80s stuff is really nice and makes for a warm and homey return to the era when I was a geek and got all geeked out on stuff.  Oh, honestly, I didn't have the grasp of the material that the lead character does (but, really, who does?) but it is mostly familiar and some has caused me to go back and look at (or listen to) things I brushed by at the time (like most of Rush--it turns out that I was pretty familiar with their music even though I didn't realize it; there was one girl in college who used to drink Jack Daniels and listen to Rush like crazy, so I got a big dose of it without realizing it).  Mostly, it let me think of the 80s as a time when I did "cool" stuff instead of "on the outs" stuff.  It is a pleasant fiction.  I also preferred Tempest to other games back when I occasionally went to arcades.

For those of you who have read the book and are just reading this little blog post as a trip down memory lane, remember to keep your quarter in your inventory.  I think that will be a take-away from this book in the same way that always carrying a towel came from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  Or something else.  As you may have guessed, I'm not great with society.

Finally, I should note that it is worth getting the audio version.  My friend Wil Wheaton does a masterful job.  He isn't terribly good at making his voice into another person, but he is good enough that you know when the protagonist is speaking and when someone else is speaking.  It is like having a person read a book to you instead of a group of actors "voice act" the book.  It is nice.  In addition, I felt it only appropriate to plug the audio version, 'cause I heard that Wil Wheaton makes something like a nickle a book and it can't hurt to send him an extra nickle (of course, if you are a cheapskate--er, supporter of local access to information--like me, and get it from the library, then you are stretching that nickle pretty thin).

America's Undeclared War, Daniel Lazare

America's Undeclared War:  What's Killing Our Cities and How We Can Stop It by Daniel Lazare is a book that I picked up in the stairwell of a used book store.  I cannot remember the store, but I definitely remember the stairwell and this book on top of an unsorted pile.  I stood in that small stairwell and read the first chapter and was entranced.  While writing this introduction I did a little research on Lazare and found that he is about as left wing as they come.  I seem to be increasingly comfortable with the left wing and my youngest son and I have had long discussions about how we could conceive ways to help Baltimore--a city in trouble by any measure.  When I saw that this book had risen to the top of my reading list, I couldn't help but feel that this was no coincidence.

Started:  1/29/2016

Completed:  5/24/2016

Recommendation: Not Recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

bluenose -- a priggish or puritanical person

bosky -- wooded; covered by trees or bushes

burgher -- a citizen of a town or city, typically a member of the wealthy bourgeoisie

cerise -- a bright or deep red color

deracinated -- removed or separated from a native environment or culture

fin de siècle -- French for the end of a century

flivver -- a cheap car or aircraft, especially one in bad condition

Girondist Revolution -- a revolution of moderate republicans (based on the Gironde party in France which was overthrown by the Jacobins during the French Revolution)

Gresham's Law -- when a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, and the overvalued money will flood into circulation.

longue durée -- an expression used by the French Annales School of historical writing to designate their approach to the study of history, which gives priority to long-term historical structures over events.

parsimony -- extreme unwillingness to spend money or use resources

patroon -- a person given land and granted certain manorial privileges under the former Dutch governments of New York and New Jersey

preauto -- before the automobile

profligate -- recklessly extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources

quisling -- a traitor who collaborates with an enemy force occupying their country

rentier -- a person living on income from property or investments

rump legislature -- a legislature formed of a part, usually a minority, of the legislators originally elected or appointed to office

sansculotte -- a violent or radical extremist in politics

shibboleth --a custom, principal, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a group of people especially a long standing oneregarded as outmoded or no longer important

stolid -- calm, dependable and showing little emotion or animation

sumptuary -- relating to or denoting laws that limit private expenditure on food and personal items

teleology -- the explanation of things by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes

truculent -- eager or quick to argue or fight; aggressively defiant

truncheon -- a short, thick stick used as a weapon by police

yeoman -- a man holding and cultivating a small landed estate; a freeholder

Review:

The author has a distinct point of view and he has marshalled a strong evidentiary pool to support it.  The heart of his argument is that Henry Ford favored enclaves of workers who were isolated in small groups to break labor's power.  Additionally, Ford was racist and an anti-semite so he was in favor of the good life only for WASPs.

The author calls this Fordism and extends the argument across the USA claiming that everyone fell in line.  However, rather than arguing that Ford was a great influencer, he seems to make the case that everyone else thought like Ford.  This seems unlikely, although he is able to put forth quotations from a decent size set of people, it did not feel like this was a pervasive sense of people hating cities in general, it felt more like it was people who were bigots or anti-labor being linked together as anti-city.  If there was, indeed, a huge colection of highly influential people (including presidents) who were expressly anti-city from the 1700s onward, how could cities still exist?

Rather, I think there were people concerned about how to improve what they felt were the negative aspects of the city (consider parks as a play area for children, which the author feels is a waste of space because there would be plenty of space to play in the streets if Fordists weren't so insistent on having a place for environment destroying traffic jams).  The author also cites city planners who tried to make the city feel less claustrophobic as responsible for creating useless and unused spaces as Fordists trying to substitute suburban open spaces for city integration, thus creating barren areas of the city.

The author's arguments do hang together, but it feels artificial.  Even people who start out opposing the city, but come to love it are marked as hypocrites at best or spoilers who only appreciate the good once it is gone.  He does make some good recommendations in the end, although my eye suggests these are just good ideas in general and not simply good for the city.  Some of his recommendations go too far (I think he would get rid of cars entirely) but he is definitely on the right path with many of his ideas.  The problem is that once you get to the ideas, you are so jaded by the author's argument that everyone who does not completely agree with him is "bad" that you are loathe to agree with him.

World Order, Henry Kissinger

World Order by Henry Kissinger is supposed to be a seminal work on understanding United States' International Relations.  I read a review of the book by Hillary Clinton and decided that I should read it.  Her review was glowing and given her position as former Secretary of State as well as Kissinger holding the same office, I thought it merited attention.

Started:  2/8/2016

Completed: 4/26/2016

Recommendation: You have to really be interested in theories of why the world political order is the way it is

Recommended By:  Hillary Clinton

Review:
Kissinger is in a position to offer some unique insights into US foreign policy.  He has developed (and explained) a theory of why and how the world organizes itself.  He takes an essential Hobbsian argument that countries live in a combined anarchy where might is right and each country would gladly take out his neighbor to increase power.  He tempers this with an argument based on the Westphalian Peace Treaty of 1648.  Basically, this was the resolution to the 30 years war and was hammered out between a bunch of countries who wanted to stop the blood letting.  He argues that this is the model for how countries should interact with one-another in order to keep a stable world and further argues that this is how it was done, basically from 1648 onward.

Kissinger is not an idiot.  He doesn't suggest that China, for example, took a look at the treaty and rearranged governance based upon it.  Rather he points out that virtually every country has perceived itself to be the center of the world and offering enlightenment to the rest of the world.  This is brought to the fore when China basically rejects the concept of a British ambassador by saying that if they want to educate Britain in the fine art of governing, China will summon a British representative, but the thought of housing such a distant nation at court on a regular basis is rather silly.  China has had to operate within the concepts wrapped in the Westphalian Peace Treaty not because it agrees with them, but because it has been overwhelmed by European force.  Now that China is becoming a world super power, will the reverse occur and China exert its concept of governance on the rest of the world?

Kissinger does explain many different theories of governance (excluding, for the most part, all of Africa) and points out some really serious issues with the way in which Islam views the world and the way non-Muslims view the world being very incompatible.  This may well represent personal bias rather than an objective view, but, at the least, it highlights an issue which is very relevant today.  This book also forces one to realize that there are serious and substantial cultural divides that make it very difficult for different governments to interact in a productive manner.

One thing that I gained from the book was a perspective on why other countries are upset about America exporting its philosophy.  I was one of the Americans who takes the concepts of freedom and liberty as givens and perceives those concepts as something of value to everyone in the world when that is not particularly true.  It is useful to come to an understanding of how these fundamental tenets of our government can be perceived as being forced down the throats of those who do not share them as values.  In a sense, I can relate only by analogy.

Our system of marriage seems free and respectful of the intelligence of individuals to me.  To someone used to arranged marriages, however, I can see how our system of marriage can be perceived as repudiating the family (instead of fostering ties between families, our marriages seem to be all but random), fostering lust (most marriages end in divorce in the US and there must be a reason for that--maybe lust is part of that), and harming children (while the parents pursue true love they could leave children in the wake twisted and turning looking for someone to love them).  While I don't agree with the assessment of marriage that I have put up as a straw man, I can see where someone used to arranged marriages might look at our free and equal concepts of marriage and recoil in horror (kind of like I do when I think about my parents selecting a bride for me).  While Kissinger does not involve marriage, he does point out that cultural divides make it difficult to communicate with common understandings and I think that the marriage example I have given illustrates that point.

I'm not comfortable with Kissinger's pessimistic Hobbsian view of countries (though, I understand how he came to it and his arguments are well reasoned).  I think I have a fundamental wish to view countries as innately good (until proven otherwise) rather than innately evil (until proven otherwise).  I also don't like the idea that there is true anarchy between countries.  Surely we recognize Britain as our sire and while there was a period where relations were cool, it feels like that has been left well in the past and our relations have matured to the point where we can look fondly on all of the United Kingdom.  There is a familial relationship there, in my opinion, not just an opportunistic quelling of general anarchy.

I do worry about Kissinger's admonitions against the concepts of alliance that led to both WWI and WWII.  Clearly, we are backing into an increasingly rigid alliance structure (particularly when looking at NATO) which is perceived as threatening to non-NATO countries and especially to Russia.  I don't know how to define a place at the table for governments that are as cruel to their citizens as North Korea or Syria, but I also don't know how to address the concept of human rights when America puts so many of its citizens in prison and has a death penalty.  America does not seem to have a concept of right and wrong that is consistently applied, but we seem to be a country of compromises struggling to find a path between right and wrong.  Given that, are we really ready to step up on the World stage and lead by decree rather than find a way to consensus that is deeper than a simple beauty contest?

Kissinger doesn't answer these questions even with his carefully considered approach, but his book offers some insightful issues and some reasons to question ourselves and our direction.

It is hard to recommend this book.  I'm not sure what is right and what is wrong in the book, but there is so much content that I'm uncomfortable becoming a follower of Kissinger's theories as presented (the breadth of this work is staggering and yet, at the same time, wildly incomplete--I fear that some really important things have been glossed over because they are not consistent with his theories, but I don't know enough details about all of this to be able to identify where this may have happened).  It worries me that a potential leader like Hillary Clinton read this book and concluded, "No other nation can bring together the necessary conditions and provide the necessary capabilities to meet today's complex global threats."  I read this book and think, "Holy crap, there are a whole bunch of things we aren't considering and if we don't change our approach from one of fear to one of compassion, really bad things are going to happen."  I worry that there are tons of misunderstandings (some intentional, like the explanations for the Iraq war and Putin's invasion of Ukraine) and that there needs to be some voice of reason that tries to link the narratives of diverse cultures into a broader sense of the common good.  While I love and respect my country, I question whether this is an area at which America excels.  I'm really worried about Clinton's suggestion that, "Sustaining America's leadership in the world depends on renewing the American dream for all our people."  I find it hard to believe that looking inwardly is going to lead to fruitful international leadership and I think this is something that Kissinger cautions the reader not to do.

The War of the Flowers, Tad Williams

 

The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams is a book about which I knew nothing when I bought it.  I had recently met Tad Williams at a book signing and had enjoyed his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorne series.  The dude is awesome.  Even his cat books.

Started:  2/17/2016

Completed: 5/23/2016

Recommendation: strongly recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

chirurgeon -- archaic form of surgeon

dobber -- a person who secretly tells someone in authority that someone else has done something wrong.  It is also slang for male anatomy.

Review:

Early in the book is a simile that suggests hospitals are like T.S. Eliot poems.  I was not able to find a poem that embodied this imagery, but I did not look very hard. 

This book is truly an epic tale and a short review of a few paragraphs seems trite.  I like the general idea that magic has rules at that concept is explored in this book.   I also like the unwitting or anti-hero.  Finally, the idea of effectively the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object also peaks my interest.  This book has all that and the most delicious character, Applecore.  

Amongst concepts and imagry that frequently exceeds  imagination, the author exposes the gritty underbelly of Fairy in a journey to a place that is impossibly real with issues just as horrifying as those in the mortal realm.  

It is a good read with well crafted prose, some fantastic story lines, and a glimmer of hope for those who cannot imagine the hero within.

Arms of Nemesis, Steven Saylor

Arms of Nemesis: A Novel of Ancient Rome by Steven Saylor is part of the Roma Sub Roma series which I have enjoyed.

Started:  2/6/2016

Completed: 2/17/2016

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Recommended by:  Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

desultory --lacking a plan, purpose, or enthusiasm

encaustic -- using pigments mixed with hot wax that are burned in as an inlay

Review:

Great, just great.  I could hardly put this book down.  Each evening as I sat and read this book, I had to decide it was time to stop.  There was no good stopping point, no good pause, nothing.  Just a great book all the way through.  I usually don't like mysteries because they are almost impossible to decipher, but all the data was there all the time.  It was fantastic.

I also enjoyed the detail (both good and bad) about ancient Rome that littered the book like the detritus of a triumphant battle.  What a great author.

The Tale of Genji, Lady Murasaki

The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki as translated by Arthur Waley is traditionally identified as the world's first novel.  It was written in the 11th Century.  I have no idea why I picked it up.  The cover and back cover do not encourage me to read it now, so there must have been some other reason I chose it.  Perhaps it is a revisiting of classical literature that one might have expected to have read in high school.  I have no other explanation.

Started:  1/29/2016

Completed: 2/6/2016

Recommendation: Not Recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

augue -- malaria or some other illness involving fever and shivering

blue-stocking -- a derogatory term for an intellectual or literary woman

censorious -- severely critical of others

coquetry -- flirtatious behavior or a flirtatious manner

effacement -- to wipe out; do away with; expunge

loggia -- a gallery or room with one or more open sides, especially one that forms part of a house and has one side open to the garden

lugubrious -- looking or sounding sad and dismal

parlous -- full of danger and uncertainty; precarious

plashing -- splashing

postilion -- a person who rides the leading left-hand horse of a team or pair drawing a coach or carriage, especially when there is no coachman

preponderant -- predominant in influence, number, or importance

prosody -- the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry

viand -- an item of food

Review:

This is a story of court intrigue and basically follows Genji's effort to bed every woman of beauty in the land.  There are a few interesting sub-plots but the structure of the story is more of x happened then y happened without a lot of insight into the how or why behind it.  There was a huge amount of poetry exchanged (which must have titillating in its time), but, for the most part, the story was rather base.  At some level there seems to be a deeper meaning that love (or lack thereof) can kill, but that meaning is so well concealed in allusion and secondary reference that it is not well substantiated.  I read the book, but I did not enjoy it.  It was not so horrible that I had to stop reading, however.  The prose was interesting, stilted and yet somehow poetical as well.

Buddha's Brain, Hanson, Mendius, and Siegel

Buddha's Brain:  The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, & Wisdom by Rick Hanson, Richard Mendius, and Daniel J. Siegel is a book that talks about the neuroscience behind the practice of meditation (as well as some other aspects of being a Buddhist).  I picked this up at the library (and later bought it) because I wanted something to hear in the car and I am beginning to understand the value of meditation.

Started:  November 2015

Completed: 2/1/2016

Recommendation: Highly recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

It is great to see some of the science that is trying to understand meditation as a practice.  In particular, some of the principal foundations of Buddhist practices (such as sitting straight while meditating) are supported by straight-forward scientific explanations.  The Buddhists have known to do these things for thousands of years and here is an effort to start to understand why some of the practices work the way that they do.  It is very interesting and this book is going to require several visits.  I don't usually reread books, but this one is more of a manual and the volume of material that is presented is substantial.  I have this on audio so that I can listen to it while driving (a practice broadly discouraged by the author as one should focus on one thing), but it is nice to have something that I can start to absorb in the car and then think intensively about when walking to work or waiting in line or some other task.

The Barsoom Project, Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

The Barsoom Project by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes is a sequel to Dream Park which I read as a kid.  This is the second book in the Dream Park Series.

Started:  1/16/2016

Completed:  1/29/2016

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

Fimbulwinter - From Norse mythology.  The "mighty winter" that precedes the end of times (the Ragnarok).

fugue state - A rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of individuality.

Review:

What a truly enjoyable read!  I loved the mix of science fiction and fantasy that Dream Park brought to the game and The Barsoom Project does not disappoint.  Mixing together a fantasy theme park that caters to all wishes (sort of a mass holodeck for the Trekkies who read this) with the science fiction that makes it happen, this book takes the reader back and forth with ease and pleasure.  Either of the stories could stand on their own (mix in the whole Barsoom Project which is a bit of a red herring) and the read is both fast and pleasurable.  The characters are poorly developed, but one does not crack a scifi or fantasy novel looking for character development--there is enough to carry the story and that is enough for me.  I love the way scientific ideas are explored and enough is left to the concept of "magic" that one really doesn't want to go down and see all the nuts and bolts.  Very enjoyable!

The Eight, Katherine Neville

The Eight by Katherine Neville is a book I picked up in response to a list of "best books."  I can't remember which list or why this one stuck out, but on some list somewhere this book is recommended.

Started:  6/23/2015

Completed: (stopped reading) 1/16/2016

Recommendation:  Not Recommended

Recommended By:  Some list, somewhere.

Words I sought help to understand:

macchia - An Italian word that literally means "stain or spot" but it is also a term in artwork that emphasizes a sketchy way of applying the initial color to a drawing or painting.  I think that within context  it was intended to emphasize a landscape with vigorous growth so verdant that the plants overlap and blur into a sense of color rather than a collection of individual plants.  Pretty cool.

Review:

Despite the occasional turn of phrase that was nice, this book was very difficult to read.  The series of premises required in order for it to be even near believable pressed my considerable ability to suspend disbelief.  I finally just gave up when the heroine in one time period ran into Napoleon after sleeping with Talleyrand.  Frankly, this is just too much.  The initial premise is weakly presented and the current day heroine is portrayed from moment to moment as courageous and weak and ineffectual.  I just finally reached a point where I had to realize that attempting to continue to read this book was more annoyance than pleasure.

Forty Nine, Bruce Holand Rogers

Forty Nine:  A Square of Stories by Bruce Holand Rogers is a book that I helped Kickstart.  Rogers has won several awards and his story samples looked promising, so I thought it made sense to help the author get some of his stories that publishers weren't publishing out into the wild.

Started: September, 2013 (?)

Completed: January 9, 2016

Recommendation:  Mildly recommended

Recommended by:  Nobody

Review:

This book of short stories was supposed to only grace my bedside table for a few days as the stories represent some pretty light reading.  Unfortunately, the book slipped off the bedside table (I wish I could write some great story about how that happened, maybe it was in the throws of passion or perhaps the book felt unappreciated or maybe the dust bunnies got lonely) and was lost beneath the bed until it was moved, about a week ago.

The stories are broadly inventive and the character of Donat Bobet is a masterpiece.  There were seven stories about stories (sort of along the lines of the book feeling unappreciated).  I found these self-referencing stories the kind of thing that might be submitted for a high school English class (the quality is better, but it felt like that kind of assignment).  They did not help the book.  There were two stories that had me laughing out loud to such a degree that I was compelled to read them to my wife.

The author's intent, I think, is to transport the reader to another place or another idea.  There were seven stories about hotels that were quite good and did this rather effectively.  I enjoyed several of the stories in this section, and found one in particular quite insightful into human character (this hotel allowed guests to deny amenities to others,  for a price).

I was hoping for some fantasy or science fiction themed stories as this was the area in which the author has received most renown, but was disappointed in that regard.