The Town and the City, by Jack Kerouac - new on Kindle
Saturday 26 March 2016
Wednesday 23 March 2016
Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley
Noah Hawley, creator of the TV show Fargo, is known for his engaging, complex, thrilling screen-writing, and he has now brought that skill set to a novel.
Before the Fall is an unputdownable book which I wished I had the time to read in one long sitting. It begins with a plane crash. Eleven people are on a small jet which crashes into the Atlantic Ocean. One of them, a down-on-his-luck painter, pulls a small boy to safety. The boy is the son of the wealthy family on board.
Where do we go from here? A huge plane crash and epic escape through icy waters seems more fitting for the end of a book...
But Hawley weaves a fascinating story that cuts to the core of modern life. This novel is set last year - 2015 - which still seems futuristic to me. Yet he paints a vivid picture of our modern society. Yes, the tender story the saviour and the child might be timeless, but for me that wasn't the key theme of the book.
While Hawley blends backstories with twists and turns in the days following the crash, only explaining why the plane crashed at the very end, what made the book interesting to me was the exploration of how we - as a society - deal with tragedies.
One thread of the book explores the fascination we have with celebrity, and comes at it from the conservative stand point. There is a TV channel in the book which clearly represents FOX News, and one of their bombastic hosts. These people doggedly chase our book's hero, trying to sully his name.
If that sounds unfair to conservatives, so be it. It could also have been about Gawker or any number of celebrity-obsessed modern media outlets. Eventually these onlookers come to dominate the story as they bugged phones and hack e-mails, essentially trying to make the news as much as cover it.
I also liked the story of the co-pilot and flight attendant, which unfolds seemingly as an add-on later in the book, but whose importance becomes very clearly towards the end.
I seldom read novels these days but this one made me yearn for more thoughtful yet exciting modern fiction. I highly recommend it, and look forward to more from Noah Hawley.
Tuesday 15 March 2016
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, by Matt Ridley
I liked the sound of this book when I read its synopsis on Amazon and so I bought it a month ago. Indeed, I agree with the author in most respects and many of his arguments, I feel, are correct - the world is getting "better" in most measurable ways and when people talk about the doom and gloom of coming decades, they're typically misguided.
However, I found the author insufferable and struggled to reach the end of his book.
In The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley is writing from the perspective of the financial crisis. He obviously wrote this book as a reaction to the panic that was caused by that particular event. As such, he looks back through human history, nearly to the dawn of time, and then very laboriously describes how everything has just gotten better and better and better, and thus how it's inevitable that things will keep getting better.
He makes some good arguments, but he labors the point endlessly and sounds like an awful curmudgeon. He makes petty attacks on nameless people and seems out to set the world to rights based on his own trivial dislikes. He takes breaks from describing human history to attack proponents of organic farming, his son's teachers, and the like. He seems childish and condescending.
One of his central ideas is that economics - the market - is responsible for absolutely every single positive thing that ever happened. In fact, it's what caused humans to change from animals to people. I'm not saying he's necessarily wrong, but he drives this point home throughout the book, even offering petty insults to the biologists and economists who refute him, yet remain nameless. At a certain point you just wish he would stop creating little parables to describe each stage in human development and how trade suddenly made everything great.
"Exchange is to technology as sex is to evolution," he claims. Indeed. Perhaps he should've left it at that.
He argues that kindness comes from interdependence - ie capitalism. "There is a direct link between commerce and virtue," he says. ... "Where commerce thrives, creativity and compassion both flourish."
This is one of his better arguments, and I must say I agree with him wholly. He also asserts that people like to think of themselves as self-sufficient, but it has been humanity's mixing and mingling and trading that has lead to our rise as a species.
Unfortunately, throughout the book, as I've said, the author sounds like a horrible person and one gets the feeling, reading the book, that one's sitting in the corner of a room at a party being lectured by a terrible bore. It's not that he's wrong but he's just awful to listen to... Moreover, although I agree with him, his arguments do seem very cherry-picked, and his research seems to have the depth of a rather hollow Wikipedia page. Matt Ridley, it seems, is a man who never considered for a moment that he might not be correct about something.
However, I found the author insufferable and struggled to reach the end of his book.
In The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley is writing from the perspective of the financial crisis. He obviously wrote this book as a reaction to the panic that was caused by that particular event. As such, he looks back through human history, nearly to the dawn of time, and then very laboriously describes how everything has just gotten better and better and better, and thus how it's inevitable that things will keep getting better.
He makes some good arguments, but he labors the point endlessly and sounds like an awful curmudgeon. He makes petty attacks on nameless people and seems out to set the world to rights based on his own trivial dislikes. He takes breaks from describing human history to attack proponents of organic farming, his son's teachers, and the like. He seems childish and condescending.
One of his central ideas is that economics - the market - is responsible for absolutely every single positive thing that ever happened. In fact, it's what caused humans to change from animals to people. I'm not saying he's necessarily wrong, but he drives this point home throughout the book, even offering petty insults to the biologists and economists who refute him, yet remain nameless. At a certain point you just wish he would stop creating little parables to describe each stage in human development and how trade suddenly made everything great.
"Exchange is to technology as sex is to evolution," he claims. Indeed. Perhaps he should've left it at that.
He argues that kindness comes from interdependence - ie capitalism. "There is a direct link between commerce and virtue," he says. ... "Where commerce thrives, creativity and compassion both flourish."
This is one of his better arguments, and I must say I agree with him wholly. He also asserts that people like to think of themselves as self-sufficient, but it has been humanity's mixing and mingling and trading that has lead to our rise as a species.
Unfortunately, throughout the book, as I've said, the author sounds like a horrible person and one gets the feeling, reading the book, that one's sitting in the corner of a room at a party being lectured by a terrible bore. It's not that he's wrong but he's just awful to listen to... Moreover, although I agree with him, his arguments do seem very cherry-picked, and his research seems to have the depth of a rather hollow Wikipedia page. Matt Ridley, it seems, is a man who never considered for a moment that he might not be correct about something.
Friday 11 March 2016
The Pornography Industry, by Shira Tarrant
Pornography is obviously an extremely controversial topic, and like so many controversial topics, the information you get depends largely on who you're talking to. As such, getting the truth can be surprisingly difficult. Speak to an anti-porn conservative or feminist and you'll get a plethora of statistics about its supposed dangers; speak to those inside the industry and you'll get a run-down of the benefits of porn alongside the unfair actions to target actors and directors.
Porn, then, is a tricky subject. Even simple questions like, "What is porn?" will elicit different responses from different people. Luckily, Shira Tarrant's new book addresses a wide array of questions in a disarmingly neutral fashion. Reading this book, from beginning to end I was stunned by just how balanced her discussion was. At no stage did she stray from the role of a moderator in a debate.
If that makes the book sound at all boring, it's not. It is relentlessly informing, yet well-written enough that it isn't just hundreds of pages of dry fact. It is a well-structured and meticulously researched compendium of otherwise surprisingly elusive details. She documents porn's history, its legal status, the ins and outs (pun intended) of day-to-day filming, the financial aspect, and its impact on society and health.
I read a lot of books these days about science and society, and I'm sick of reading biased opinions - even if the author shares my own viewpoint. That's why it was so refreshing to read Shira Tarrant's book and feel that every detail was open to criticism and interpretation. This should not be so surprising, but in today's environment, a book like this is a rare and valuable thing.
*
The Pornography Industry will be out on April 1st, 2016.
Porn, then, is a tricky subject. Even simple questions like, "What is porn?" will elicit different responses from different people. Luckily, Shira Tarrant's new book addresses a wide array of questions in a disarmingly neutral fashion. Reading this book, from beginning to end I was stunned by just how balanced her discussion was. At no stage did she stray from the role of a moderator in a debate.
If that makes the book sound at all boring, it's not. It is relentlessly informing, yet well-written enough that it isn't just hundreds of pages of dry fact. It is a well-structured and meticulously researched compendium of otherwise surprisingly elusive details. She documents porn's history, its legal status, the ins and outs (pun intended) of day-to-day filming, the financial aspect, and its impact on society and health.
I read a lot of books these days about science and society, and I'm sick of reading biased opinions - even if the author shares my own viewpoint. That's why it was so refreshing to read Shira Tarrant's book and feel that every detail was open to criticism and interpretation. This should not be so surprising, but in today's environment, a book like this is a rare and valuable thing.
*
The Pornography Industry will be out on April 1st, 2016.
Tuesday 8 March 2016
Currently Reading - aka upcoming reviews
Right now I'm reading a few books on my Kindle and also on paperback. The paper back is a collection of Allen Ginsberg interviews called Spontaneous Mind. I probably won't be reviewing that here.
On Kindle I'm reading:
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, by Matt Ridley
The Pornography Industry, by Shira Tarrant
In the "to-read" pile:
Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13000 Years, by Jared Diamond
iGuerilla, by John Sutherland
The Kingdom of Rarities, by Eric Dinerstein
Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley
Mary Shelley: The Dover Reader
Billy and the Devil, by Dean Lilleyman
On Kindle I'm reading:
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, by Matt Ridley
The Pornography Industry, by Shira Tarrant
In the "to-read" pile:
Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13000 Years, by Jared Diamond
iGuerilla, by John Sutherland
The Kingdom of Rarities, by Eric Dinerstein
Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley
Mary Shelley: The Dover Reader
Billy and the Devil, by Dean Lilleyman
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