Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
No Logo.
Been reading this book by Naomi Klein. I’m only about 60 pages in with not having been able to read much for pleasure recently owing to college work (which I’m currently avoiding doing by blogging but anyway…). It’s quite interesting stuff, but one thing has struck me: the book is very ‘heard it all before’. Now, I will do a proper review of the book once I get it finished, but the question I have is; is the book familiar because she says nothing that original or has she just been so successful in spreading her ideas? Anyone?
‘I’m not the creator of your world, I’m just an art critic’
The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein.
Just finished this book, it’s a pretty eclectic, but very good mix. Of particular notice is the famous ‘All You Zombies’ - probably the best time paradox story I’ve encountered, ‘They’ - an enjoyable short piece of paranoia and ‘The Man Who Travelled In Elephants’, an absolutely beautiful piece about love and loss.
Well worth a look for all fantasy fans, short story fans and Robert Heinlein fans alike.
Inventing the flat earth.
This book was one I heard about last year when one of our lecturers for medieval history mentioned it in passing. Being rather bored during the week, I went looking for it. It’s by a guy called Jeffery Burton Russell and the edition I have dates from 1991. It’s well worth having a look for if your into medieval history or into how myths can spread - rather in the same way as the ‘wiped off the map’ comment from the Iranian president has spread despite the way it appearently never happened. The isbn for this edition is 027595904x.
But what’s the book about exactly and is it any good?
Well, the book itself deals with the idea that says that people in the ‘middle ages’ up until Christopher Columbus believed that the earth was a disk and that you could sail off the edge. In the telling of the story, the ’superstitious, cowardly Catholic Church’ forced people into believing this idea despite the fact that the Greeks and Romans had, centuries earlier pretty much proved that the earth was a sphere. This continued until Columbus sailed to America ‘proving’ that the earth was round.
And that’s appearently what everyone believes, even though there’s no actual documents or other evidence to show that people in the ‘middle ages’ actually believed this.
The point of the book is partly to deconstruct this theory, and secondly to show how these ideas can spread when there’s a group of people pushing the idea. In this book they show you the who and why - basically humanists and scientists and darwinists who pushed this idea when science and religion came into conflict - such as when teachers were prosecuted for teaching evolution.
Whats of most interest is how this became fact - namely people not checking sources. Or, in some cases accepting others assesment of sources as fact and not checking those.
As an aside, one of our lecturers pointed out that there’s a quote from a famous person he knows that person said, but he can’t find a book with the quote. He used it in one of his books and now references his own work when using that quote. He still dosen’t know where the quote originally came from. And basically, what this book is about is a large number of people doing the exact same thing but on a much bigger scale.
The book itself is only 80 pages long, with 20 of footnotes. Obviously, I haven’t checked whether the story is right (the cardinal sin the book warns against) and I’m accepting the word of my lecturer and the author of the book that whats said is actually the case. Shows that history repeats itself I guess.
Battle Royale
Just finished the novel of this last night, watched the film yesterday too. The book’s actually slightly better, which is unusual because I’d seen the film first, but even so… It makes more sense narrative-wise because (rather unsuprisingly) it can go into more detail on the world that the charachters inhabit.
Still dosen’t make complete sense as to how Shogo knew that he would be called up to the game again…
They’re both really good anyway, for different reasons and well worth the watch/read.
Anyway, here’s a clip from the movie, any of you that have seen Kill Bill will recognise the girl at the start of the clip…
Hunters of Dune
Just finished ‘Hunters of Dune’ by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. For those of you not in the know its the ‘missing 7th book’ from Frank Herbert’s Dune series. Apparently this book is written from only recently discovered notes that Herbert Sr. wrote before his death.
But, is it any good?
Well, yes.
The book picks up where the last book ended and manages to provide a reasonable explanation of the cliffhanger that Chapterhouse: Dune ended on.
However, there are minor problems. The main one of these is that it’s not enough to have read only Frank Herbert’s books in order, but that you also have to have read most (as I did) or all of the prequels that the two authors of this book have done.
It’s not the total rip-off that it sounds as if you just read ‘The Butlerian Jihad’ and ‘The Machine Crusade’ - (the only two I definately know I read) you get all the extra background info that you need.
However, one cannot but read the book and wonder how Frank Herbert himself planned to introduce the concepts that the other two have introduced in six other books in a single novel. On the other hand there is the fact that when these ‘new’ Dune books appeared the last Dune book had appeared something like ten years before and so a reintroduction had to be in order.
Anyway for those who are wondering whether to continue with these books - I would definately tell them to, the rest of you, if your interested in reading a very good sci-fi novel (and are willing to ignore the film version) read the first novel Dune and see from there..
Niall Ferguson review
Ment to do a review of this myself after the television programme ended - have the book but have yet to start it. Anyway Richard Waghorne has a very good review of it here
Sequels.
Was having a look at the matrix sequels again and while they have improved somewhat compared to my original assesment of them they’re still not great.
But could they ever have been?
Probably not. So in that case you have two real options when you do sequels - either try a direct continuation of the story or go for something similar but different and I think your better off with the second option.
No, I’m not being stupid.
What I mean by this are sequels which keep the bulk of the same charachters but change the focus and/or the style.
The two best example’s that come to mind are Bryan Talbot’s ‘Luther Arkwright’ and Rob Zombie’s ‘House of a 1000 Corpses/Devil’s Rejects’.
While I’m realy not sure how many of you will be aware of ‘Luther Arkwright’ I’ll start with that. The first book ‘The adventures of Luther Arkwright’ is a black and white, heavy line art science-fiction comic focused on the charachter of Luther. The second book ‘Heart of Empire’ is in colour, has a more traditionally ‘comic book’ style and focuses on the children and former lover of Luther instead with Luther himself only gradually coming into the series.
‘House of a 1000 Corpses’ is a grindhouse horror, with it’s main charachters being a group of teens, with little action (guns, fights etc.) and a focus on gore. ‘The Devil’s Rejects’ is more of a road-trip movie, focuses on the villians of the first film, has a fair bit of action (several shootout’s) and goes more for psychological horror than gore (though there still is gore - even so it’s a different type of gore)
What both of these things have in common is that you don’t realy need to have seen the first book/film to get the second one (though it helps) and they don’t realy keep the style consistent across the series. And yet in both cases the sequels work precisely because of that fact.
Which has me wondering.
Would the matrix sequels have worked better with their main focus being on Trinity and Morpheous rather than Neo? Prehaps pushing Neo into that subway station for the bulk of the two films? I mean a messiah isn’t realy that relateable to. And should they have had more of the type of fights with swords and blades etc. just to keep it from being too similar to the first one with all its gunfights?
But in general, with sequels (excluding series/franchises) are you not better off making something that’s quite different from it’s predecessor(s)?
Ken MacLeod…
I’ve enjoyed many of Ken MacLeod’s novels in the past and was quite interested to come across his blog here.
The article ‘against civilised warfare’ which is the most recent post is very interesting and well worth a look.
Anyway, enjoy.