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Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "araken" journal:[<< Previous 10 entries]
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09:15 am
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Book List 2011 Wrap Up
I read 46 books in 2011, two more than in 2010. While it's nice that I'm moving in the right direction, I'm actually a little disappointed that with all the long highway trips I took this year, I didn't amass more from audiobooks. (I started dating Amy in February, and she lives 300 miles away from me.) In large part, this is because I often chose long novels to listen to on those car drives, such as rereads of WOT's The Gathering Storm, and GRRM's A Storm of Swords.
I made a pretty good dent in the list of books I've been meaning to read or finish, finally polishing off The System of the World by Stephenson and Gardens of the Moon by Erikson. Both were worth the effort.
Unfinished novels carrying over into 2012:
1. Initiate's Trial by Janny Wurts. (my current read.)
2. All Clear by Connie Willis (my current audio listen)
3. Kushiel's Justice by Jacqueline Carey (audiobook I got irritated with because the hero hadn't learned anything from his first book. I'm sure I'll finish it eventually.)
4. Black Ships by Jo Graham.
Things I started in previous years that I haven't yet gone back to finish, but I will I promise:
5. The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherynne Valente
6. The Darknesss that Comes Before by R Scott Bakker
7. The Burning Stone by Kate Elliott
8. The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes
Tags: 2011 summary, book list, books, wrapup
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08:55 am
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Book List
46. Working Effectively With Legacy Code by Michael Feathers. Another book I read for work, full of good tips about refactoring code bases which have become overgrown and disorganized. As most of them are.
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08:11 am
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Book List
Finishing up 2011...
45. Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
Finally! I bought this book over five years ago (actually, it was accidentally shipped to me when I forgot to say "No" to the monthly selection at the Science Fiction Book Club, and it looked interesting enough not to send back.) Yet over those years I'd tried three different times to read it, each time only getting through the first chapter.
This isn't because of the quality of the writing, or the world. Erikson is a gifted stylist and storyteller (a rare combination), and his world is one of the most complex and intricate I've seen. However, while all first books of fantasy series have high learning curves, as the reader adjusts to a new world, characters, and laws of magic, Erikson's is higher than most. The reason why is simple: Erikson eschews exposition. The reader is on his own.
The tone is also dark and grim, leavened by moments of gallows humor that made me smile but not laugh. Erikson has been inspired by previous authors such as Glen Cook, whose Black Company series about a mercenary company in an Evil Overlady's army has great influence here.
Erickson, however, chooses to tell the story from both sides, and makes us love characters from both. As the expansionist Malazan Empire, led by a usurper empress and wracked with internal strife, tries to conquer the last free city on the continent of Genabackis, we follow both the covert team sent to take it, and the conspiracy of wizards and thieves who are trying to defend it. This description robs the book of much of its intricacy and invention: Erickson has created a world in which gods both meddle and are used as pawns in imperial stratagems. All the complex plots and counterplots build to a satifsying conclusion, but it's clearly just the beginning of a larger tale.
I'm glad I finally made myself read Gardens of the Moon, and I will likely read the rest of the Malazan series. But perhaps not just yet.
Tags: erickson, gardens of the moon, malazan
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03:43 am
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Book List
42. The Evolutionary Void by Peter F Hamilton. A fine finish to Hamilton's Void trilogy, though they still suffer a little in comparison to the excellent Pandora's Star series which preceded. Over the past several years Hamilton has become one of my favorite science fiction writers. He does space opera mixed with convincing, surprising worldbuilding extraordinarily well, which gives his universes a sense of versimilitude. Unlike many space operas, the world isn't just there for the author to play wargames in. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...)
43. Clean Code by Bob Martin. Programming book read several months ago for work. I'm pretty sure that most programmers will agree with 70% of the book and think the other 30% is flat out insane. I'm also sure that no two programmers will agree on what parts are the 70 and what are the 30. A valuable book that made me think about the way I work. Even if parts of it are crazy.
44. GRE Test Prep. (Kaplan and the Princeton Review). Princeton Review was far better test prep; Kaplan was useful mostly for the online practice tests.
Tags: bob martin, booklist, books, gre, peter f hamilton, void
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03:35 am
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Book List
40. 1636: The Saxon Uprising by Eric Flint
41. Ring of Fire II edited by Eric Flint
I'd grown less interested in Flint's 1632 series over the past year or two; it seemed to be floundering under the weight of a thousand subplots and coauthors less capable than Flint. While David Weber and Andrew Dennis did fine jobs in their entries, the dominance of Virginia DeMarce (who's obviously a brilliant researcher but a flawed writer) in most of the recent volumes caused me to avoid anything with her name on it.
Thankfully, 1635: The Eastern Front and 1636: The Saxon Uprising are by Flint alone, and he brings the series back on track. Where previous books in the series have dealt with the time-shifted Americans' conflicts with external threats, such as Richelieu, Charles I, or the Borgias, these two books examine the internal contradictions of the new United States of Europe, and the costs and contradictions of the alliances that Mike Stearns has made. It asks the long overdue question, "How do you create a democratic nation based in part on aristocratic power?" There's also plenty of action and political maneuvering, and a few scenes that are just laugh out loud funny. Flint has a wry, understated wit when he wants to use it.
Ring of Fire II is an anthology from a few years ago of stories set in the 1632 universe. While they're mostly by authors other than Flint, they're fully canon, and characters from them recur in the mainline novels. With the exception of a few (most by Demarce), they were generally strong, and fun reads. Flint's a fan of social history, and these stories often deal with the cultural implications of the American's arrival into the 17th century. For example, there's a surprisingly good story by David Carrico about what happens when the "downtimers" are exposed to classical music.
Tags: 1632, booklist, books, flint, ring of fire
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08:58 pm
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Book List (and Politics)
39. Republic, Lost. By Lawrence Lessig.
I mostly know Lessig from the work he did on copyright in the late 90s and 2000s. (I don't go quite as far as he does, but I broadly agree with him that fair use and the public domain need strengthening.) A few years ago, however, he shifted to take on a new issue: campaign finance reform.
I've been supportive of the issue for a good while, since McCain championed it in the 90s. (Though I'm very uncomfortable with the way McCain-Feingold restricted speech in the time before an election--that aspect of Citizens United, which overturned much of what McCain built, I don't mind, though I think the Court went too far in the other direction.)
Lessig's approach to the issue is uncoventional, and I liked it. Using the metaphor of addiction, he chooses to show how the system distorts the actions and intentions of often good people--he maintains that while most politicians are not corrupt, the system that they work within is corrupt due to the influence of money. The key insight here is that the system actually stands in the way of both the left and the right.
Liberals, who want to curb the power of large corporations and reduce the inequality in the economy, are stymied by the influence that those same corporations have from their campaign contributions. This is not a new observation. Yet is is equally true, he points out, that this stands in the way of conservative aims as well.
Conservatives want to limit the power of government to interfere in the free market, believing that such interventions lead to inefficiencies and misallocated resources. Yet the current system stands in the way of this goal as well. It's in politicians' interest--even so-called conservative politicians--to make government as complex, rent-seeking, and interwoven into the economy as possible, because this will result in more contributions from companies seeking to capture wealth from government decisions rather than market decisions. (Witness, for example, the huge market-distorting farm subsidies, often championed by Republican politicians.)
I'm skeptical of Lessig's plans to enact solutions (for example, a constitutional convention.) But the one point of overlap between the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and well, me is fighting cronyism in our politics and economy. I just wish all sides could stop bickering long enough to accomplish that--because none of us will get what we want until that's done.
Tags: campaign finance reform, lessig, politics
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08:49 pm
[Link] | 35. How Firm A Foundation by David Weber. Book Five of the Safehold series.
Safehold returns to form here, which is a relief after the largely dull A Mighty Fortress. Big ideas, intrigue, infodumps about the history of firearms, and a fun mixture of science fiction and Age of Sail warfare.
36. The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Listened to the audiobook version on the long car trips to visit my girlfriend. It still remains one of my favorite WOT novels (especially the final chapter, "Veins of Gold".) Kate Reading and Michael Kramer do an excellent job of bringing voice to the many (many) characters.
37. 1635: The Eastern Front by Eric Flint. I'll talk about this more when I finish its sequel, since it's really the first half of a really long novel split for space.
38. Witchblade, Vols 3, 4, and 5, covering issues #93-#115. By Ron Marz. I'd never been much interested in Witchblade; from the covers and the original couple of beginning issues I read a year or two back it seemed a cookie cutter T&A-fest. Nothing wrong with that, but I like some plot and character to go with it. But a few months back I started reading from a Comixology freebie of issue #80, which featured a new writer, and was intrigued enough to keep reading. It's not Sandman, or even Birds of Prey, and the giant "Look at me! I'm scantily clad!" splash pages are still there. Yet it's also a surprisingly entertaining urban fantasy, and Sara Pezzini works well as a tough but flawed heroine. Not sure about the direction the series is taking as of the fifth volume though.
Tags: 1635, flint, jordan, sanderson, weber, witchblade
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03:47 pm
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Book List Catching Up
27-28. A Dance of Dragons by George RR Martin - Counts as two for length. I enjoyed the novel quite a bit, but it's time to admit that GRRM isn't really writing Ice and Fire novels anymore. Like Tad Williams and latter-day Robert Jordan, he's writing 1000-page chunks that end in cliffhangers.
There's a moment in chess when the queen starts to move, and that changes the nature of the game. This is that book in Ice and Fire. Much as Feast for Crows revolved around Cersei, this volume revolves around Daenerys. With the exception of the chapters following the North of Westeros (Jon Snow's and 's chapters), just about everyone's reacting to what Daenerys is (or isn't) doing. I understand now why Martin always referred to her plotline as "The Meerenese Knot"--the logistics of keeping all the plot threads straight is impressive.
Ultimately, the book's undercut by the fact that it's not a novel. Daenerys's own plot is in some ways the weakest of the bunch. It's striving for an incredibly powerful climax that should be there but isn't--because we reach 1000 pages before we reach her plot's resolution.
Martin's one of the finest fantasists writing, and Ice and Fire remains one of the best fantasy series ever made. Dance of Dragons is much improved from the largely disappointing volume that preceded it. Yet I can't help but think that with some prioritization--less emphasis on subplots that aren't yet carrying their own weight--this could have been a novel, and would have been far stronger.
29. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke
30. Sword of Fire and Sea by Erin Hoffman
31. The Temporal Void by Peter F Hamilton - Second book of the Void trilogy, and everything I needed to say about it, I said when reviewed book one here.
32. Several Hugo Novelettes and Novellas
33. Empire of Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky - A fun, intriguing debut and a different kind of epic fantasy. Tchaikovsky's created an unconventional world where the different races of man each identify--and have powers based on--different species of insect. In addition, half of the races are "Inapt"--able to use magic but unable to comprehend technology--and half are "Apt", and have the reverse.
The plot itself has been done plenty of times before. The cruel Wasp Empire is about to attack a relatively peaceful area of the world, and only a select few believe that the danger is coming, and are trying to prevent it. The characters are sympathetic and interesting, and Tchaikovsky does a great job in making his antagonist, a Wasp Empire secret agent, sympathetic enough to be fascinating, but not so much that you want him to win.
Several chapters into this book, I went out to buy books two and three.
34. Superman: New Krypton Volumes 1 -4. by Geoff Johns and James Robinson. When the Kryptonians released from the bottle city of Kandor decide to found their own homeworld, Superman goes with them to keep an eye on them and nudge them in a pro-human direction--and ends up working under a supposedly-reformed General Zod. Some interesting worldbuilding of Kryptonian society, but the plot moves somewhat slowly for a comic, and the writers' failure to mention Lois at all is quite odd.
Tags: book, booklist, clarke, george rr martin, grrm, hoffman, peter f hamilton, superman, tchaikovsky
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09:02 pm
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Geeky World Tour: Florence
In Which I See Stone Made Into a Man
Our high-speed train from Rome to Florence was half an hour late, during which time I made the strange discovery that the bathrooms in Termini station cost a Euro to use. I'd like to say that I spent the entire train ride studying the lush Tuscan countryside whiz by, but I was exhausted from the previous day's trek to and fro across Vatican City, so I slept for about half of the 90 minute trip.
When we reached Florence, I noticed right away how different the city felt after the hectic pace of Rome. We had no problem hailing a cab, and the cabbie didn't even try to cheat us. (Both times we'd used a cab in Rome, we'd regretted it.) Florence is far smaller than Rome, and still living in fond memory of past Medici glories. It's not one of the great metropolises of the world, but it was the one city we saw on the trip where I could actually visualize myself living there, rather than just visiting.
One reason for this is where we stayed: the Rosary Garden, a smallish bed and breakfast located several miles south of the old city, in a pleasant suburban neighborhood. It was the most pleasant place we stayed, with the most comfortable beds and the best service. While it wasn't close to the center of things, it had a bus stop just outside and many good restaurants nearby, including the best gelato we had in Italy.
After checking in, we took a bus into the old city--so blessedly free of overcrowding after the Rome Metro!--ate lunch, and then wandered around lost for about fifteen minutes until we found our destination: the Accademia. The Accademia is a small art school which dates back to the Renaissance, which has a distinctive claim to fame: it's the resting place of Michelangelo's David, as well as several other sculptures by the great master.
Over the past few years I've seen lots of beautiful famous things. Some of them, as one guide book says, "look the way they look". A picture does them justice. David doesn't. After Athens and Rome I was frankly sick of sculpture, but David made my jaw drop in awe at the artist's genius. It's huge, but with the details so delicately wrought that you can see the tension in his muscles. From every angle, the sculpture is subtly different. Look at it from one side, and you see stoicism written in the stone face, as David prepares to face Goliath armed with perfect faith. From another, you see uncertainty, a brave boy struggling to overcome his fears. That was the angle I liked best.
It's an honor to be of the same species as someone who could produce such a thing, and it captures the essence of so much that is noble and heroic in man.
A side note: there were signs everywhere warning us not to take pictures. There were docents everywhere warning us not to take pictures. Just about everyone there, no matter their language or nation, took a picture when the docents back was turned. It's too beautiful not to take a piece of it with you, however inadequate.
From there we wandered south, and came upon the Cathedral of Florence. From the outside, it was beautiful, one of the nicer cathedrals we'd seen on the trip (though of course, dwarfed by St Peter's from the previous day.) From the inside, it was disappointing: most of the Renaissance and Baroque-era decorations had been taken down centuries ago and were now in a museum behind the Cathedral; I went through the museum and enjoyed it, but I wished they'd been in the proper place. The highlight of the Cathedral Museum was another, unfinished Michelangelo: a Pieta in which the artist had given his own face to that of Nicodemus.
By this point, it was starting to drizzle, so we quickly headed back to the bus stop from which we'd come. We were wet and cranky by the time the bus arrived, but it didn't matter. It had been an incredible day.
Tags: accademia, david, florence, italy
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04:28 pm
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Geeky World Tour: Vatican Edition
In Which I Walk Across a Nation Twice
Now that the summer craziness has gone by, I want to finish the final four posts from the big trip last May, because I still regret not writing up Hampton Court, my last day in England in 2009, or Toledo, my last day in Spain in 2010.
On our last day in Rome, we went to the Vatican. We rose early, because we had an early appointment at the Vatican museum. Thankfully, the Rome Metro was less crowded going out of the main city than it was getting around within it; at one point there was actually room to sit down! Since the Vatican is its own nation, Rome's public transportation system doesn't actually go all the way there, so we had a decent hike from the Cipro station to the museum itself.
The collection of the Vatican Museum defies description. It's divided into distinct sections on different fields of human knowledge; any one of those sections, taken by itself, would be a world-class museum anywhere else.
First we went to the Pinacoteca, or painting collection. Aside from the magnificent "Tranfiguration" by Raphael, I actually found it sort of underwhelming. In part this was because the building it's housed in is a palace first and an art museum second; it has large windows which are draped, but which still let in too much light, and makes the paintings appear faded. I saw Leonardo Da Vinci's "St Jerome", adding yet another Ninja Turtle to my running count, but it wasn't shown to good effect. Other than Raphael, the bright point of the collection was actually a traveling exhibition of Faberge Eggs, which were just gorgeous.
The biggest surprise for me was the Vatican's collection of Egyptian artifacts--some mummies and sarcophagi in good condition, plus lots of lovely statuary and funerary goods. In the same exhibit was a small but wonderful Near and Middle Eastern exhibit with Sumerian cuneiform; I tried to explain to Mom why the little squiggles carved into stone were amazing, as among the first pieces of recorded human thought, but I'm not sure I succeeded.
The Greek and Roman sculpture exhibition had some fantastic pieces, but like the Capitoline Museum the day before, was almost too much. When surrounded by so much beauty all clamoring for its due, it's hard to appreciate any piece as it deserves. I'm glad I took so many pictures so I can admire them later.
From there we proceeded through the Map Room, a long hallway painted with intricately detailed maps of different lands all over Europe and the world, to come to stand to the threshold of the Raphael Rooms. (Before entering, we stopped for lunch at a convenient, if crowded, museum cafe.)
The Raphael Rooms, once the private chambers of the Pope, were designed by Raphael himself, though much of the painting was apparently done by his students. While somewhat faded with time, they've been restored well enough that you can still see them with no problem. I particularly loved his "School of Athens", which shows the great philosophers of antiquity painted as figures from Raphael's day. My favorite bit was Plato, pointing at the heavens, arguing with Aristotle, pointing at the earth.
The entire millennia-long debate between Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, captured in a single gesture. Genius.
Next came the climax of the museums: the Sistine Chapel. It's hard to find the words to describe something that everyone has seen in pictures, and that's universally considered one of the greatest accomplishments of human artistry. So all I will say is that I stood transfixed for about half an hour, staring up in awe at the ceiling, and not caring about the stiffness in my neck. It's all that was good about the Renaissance and humanism, condensed into one place.
My guidebook had claimed that there was a door from the Sistine Chapel that opened into St Peter's Cathedral, and that some days they let tourists go through it to save themselves the walk and the line. Alas, there was an official looking gentleman blocking that door, which left us to walk back through the museum, through hallways upon hallways of rich riches, just so we could leave the museum and walk back to St Peter's.
On the good side, I did find a jigsaw puzzle of the Sistine Chapel in the gift shop, which I bought as a souvenir for my girlfriend, who loves puzzles. (Because after all, what better gift from a Jewish man to his Protestant girlfriend than a picture of one of the holiest places in Catholicism? :-) )
So we left the museum, already a bit tired, but with St Peter's still to go. We walked across Vatican City...again...and arrived at St Peter's Square, still decorated from John Paul II's beatification a few weeks before. His visage looked down on the Square. After a 45 minute line in the hot Italian sun, a metal detector, and a "modesty checkpoint" (shorts and bare shoulders are forbidden), we entered St Peter's Cathedral.
It was gorgeous and magnificent and all you'd expect and more, filled with porphyry and marble and even jade. Brilliant sculptures abound, to the point where Michaelangelo's "Pieta", perhaps the greatest sculpture ever carved by human hands, is simply in a corner chapel, about as far away from the altar as you can get. (It's also behind protective glass now, after a crazy person tried to damage it years ago.)
In most of the great cathedrals of Europe, the architects are doing tricks to make the space look bigger, grander, more vast. In St Peter's, the space is so vast that the architects actually try to hide how big it is, to prevent your eyes from being overwhelmed. It's so large that there are markings showing how you fit, say, St Paul's in London within it.
And yet...I'd find it hard to pray there. My Jewish sense of what constitutes a sacred space is just too different.
It was a long walk again out of the Vatican to find a Rome Metro bus bound back for Termini and our hotel. I wouldn't miss the Rome transit system. In the end, the Vatican proved to capture the essence of our time in Rome: filled with beauty and grandeur, but almost too rich for any one human mind to take in at once.
It's a place I'll have to return to, and always find new things I missed.
Next time--onward to Florence!
Tags: italy, rome, st peter's cathedral, vatican
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