Megatheriums for Breakfast

Just a quick note first before I discuss what I’ve been reading: I’m not much into social networking, perhaps being too old to “get it”. I tried Facebook but found it pointless, and I’ve tried Twitter and I can’t see why on earth anyone would want to use it. Clearly I’m in the minority here!

However, I have been having fun recently with a book-oriented social network site called Shelfari, which is owned by Amazon.

It enables you to catalog all your books in a really easy manner, and to join in discussions about them. I rather like it. Mind you, I’ve so far only catalogued about 10% of my collection of around 3,000 books (!) but I’ve found it far easier than with comparable sites like LibraryThing, and the Shelfari site is more fun to use.

Anyway, on to the recent books!

World Without End by Ken Follett

Ebook on my iPad

I have to say that I was disappointed by this. I rather enjoyed the previous book in this series, Pillars of the Earth, but World Without End seems to lack something that the earlier book had going for it.

Several things annoyed me about the book.

One of the things I expressed a concern about after reading Pillars of the Earth was that I felt that the thought-patterns of the 12th Century characters seemed far too modern. I could accept that Follett has translated how people would speak but I couldn’t quite accept that he had accurately depicted how people thought and felt back then.

This concern becomes much stronger in reading World Without End. The characters just seem way too modern in their attitudes. For example, the heavy emphasis on sex in this book. Now I’m sure that mediaeval people enjoyed sex just as much as we do, but I’m not convinced that in those times they would treat and speak of sex quite as casually as we do now. The dismissive attitude of the main characters to the aristocracy, to religion and the church seems also to be a very modern, rather than a credible mediaeval view.

The other problem is with the plot. It’s a long book, but it seems to be filled out with repetitions of the same set of events with minor variations. Merthin and Caris come up with an idea; the prior of the cathedral blocks them; they come up with a way to work around the block. And it happens again, and again. Richard, the stupid bully, carries out some vile act; he comes close to punishment; he escapes punishment. Again and again. Gwenda and her husband suffer at Richard’s hands; they suffer some more; and then some more. It all becomes very predictable; and Richard is just a replay of the character of William Hamleigh in the earlier book.

And there are some just plain silly parts to the plot. The unlikely journey of Caris and Mair to France seems there just so that Follett can eventually place them at the Battle of Crecy for no good reason other than that he wants to talk about the battle. (A much better treatment of this battle is to be found in Bernard Cornwell’s book The Archer’s Tale (Harlequin), by the way).

Another is the supposed breakthrough that Caris makes in dealing with victims of the Black Death. Wearing a facemask and washing your hands makes all the difference, apparently, in preventing you getting infected. Except that it is generally agreed that the Black Death was caused by bubonic plague. Which is spread by infected fleas. A facemask would make no difference whatsoever.

So, although the book isn’t exactly bad, I couldn’t suspend my disbelief, and it was a struggle to finish.

Running from the Law by Lisa Scottoline

Audiobook on my iPhone

Pleasant enough thriller, lifted out of the ruck by the smart, sassy character of the narrator, Rita Morrone, and the sly humour of her interactions with her extended family (her father, uncle, and a bunch of his poker-playing cronies)

A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane

Ebook on my iPad

I bought this because I had enjoyed Shutter Island by the same author so much. This is a thriller set in modern Boston, and the first of a series starring the two main characters, who have a private investigations agency. I enjoyed it a lot, and look forward to reading the rest of the series.

Dark Matter by Philip Kerr

Ebook on my iPad

Ho-hum mystery set in the 17th Century, with Sir Isaac Newton as the Sherlock Holmes of the time. While it’s true that Newton did carry out investigations into coining while he was at the Mint, I didn’t find this novel rang true. What turned me off immediately was the almost obligatory little scene along the lines of “Oh ho, I see that you are a good man with a rapier and a keen shot besides!” “My goodness Holmes Sir Isaac, however did you guess that?”…. you know the kind of thing. And the big slabs of familiar Newton quotes delivered as speech.

The one good thing about the novel is that it has been handsomely treated in its ebook conversion and looks really good, with nice chapter illustrations.

Starcross by Philip Reeve

Hardcover, my collection

More fun in the sequel to Larklight. Steampunk SF for teens.

My fortnightly summary of what I’ve been reading and listening to.

Boy, a fortnight comes around quickly! Never mind, let’s see what’s been going on.

The Pillars of the Earth  by Ken Follett.

E-book on my iPod.

See here for my take on what it was like to read such a long book on the iPod Touch.

Setting aside how I read this book, I should say that I found this long historical novel very entertaining and enjoyable. Certainly a departure for an author formerly known as being the writer of best-selling thrillers.

It follows a small cast of characters who become involved in the building of a new cathedral in England during the 12th Century. The historical backdrop is the civil war between the supporters of the rival contenders for the throne, Stephen and Maud. Those who are familiar with the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters will be familiar with the bones of this part of English history.

Follett succeeds in bringing out how uncertain and dangerous life was during this time. We follow the fortunes, among others, of a mason and his family; the daughter of an ousted earl; the prior of a monastery; and the sullen, violent son of a nobleman. There are terrible, violent crimes; two or more love stories; betrayals and reversals of fortune. Yet they all knit easily together in the story, which is gripping.

Follett makes no attempt to suggest the use of the language which would have been in use at the time; everyone speaks and thinks in essentially modern English. That’s all fine, and to be expected (think of it as a translation no less than would be a translation from French to English). But there are times when the reader wonders if the thinking patterns of the characters would be quite so recognizably modern as the author makes them out to be.

There’s also the occasional outright anachronism. For example, I doubt whether anyone at the time would have described the shape of a castle’s fortifications as being like ‘a figure eight’ – Arabic numerals (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) weren’t adopted in the West until well after this date. But this is mere pettifogging pendantry on my part.

Well worth reading. I plan on tackling the equally long sequel, World Without End, set two centuries later, sometime soon.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom  by Cory Doctorow.

E-book on my iPod.

This is a free e-book, made available by the author under a Creative Commons license. (Though, interestingly, you can still buy it from Fictionwise for $13.95 if you want to support the author).

It’s quite a short novel – Doctorow’s first – but fizzing with ideas, and an enjoyable read.

I read it specifically to find out about the respect-based economy he postulates, because I’m intending to research and write about such systems here in the future. I was a little disappointed in this goal, since the book really doesn’t explore much about how such a system would work in practice, or how it would evolve – it’s merely a fait accompli when the book opens.

I enjoyed much more the concept of the end of death by means of the ability to save a complete “back-up” of one’s mind at any time, and then have this backup restored into a new, cloned body, at a later time if your current body dies. It throws a whole new importance on the dictum “back up often“, since, obviously, you lose that whole part of your memories experienced since the last back-up. Fascinating idea, and used very well as part of the plot. But it’s perhaps a pity that Doctorow didn’t explore some of the same territory as Algis Budrys in Rogue Moon about whether identity would truly be preserved by such a process.

But these are quibbles. The story was engaging, the locale amusing (the historically preserved Disneyland in Florida), and the characters, though a little shallow, worth following. As a first novel, it is really very impressive, and I’ll go looking for Doctorow’s other works.

Full points to Doctorow, by the way, for campaigning against the corporate lock-up of copyright as a legal tool, and for putting his money where his mouth is and making many of his works available under Creative Commons licenses.

Current Reading

I’m currently part way through:

• The Great War – Walk in Hell by Harry Turtledove (audiobook)
• Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks (hardback, from library)
• A Sleeping Life by Ruth Rendell (e-book)

I’ve just finished reading Ken Follett’s massive historical novel, The Pillars of the Earth, and enjoyed it greatly. It’s a gripping saga of love and hate, emnity and friendship, ambition and humility surrounding the building of a cathedral in 12th Century England.

As I say, it’s a massive book: 973 pages in the hardcover version, two and a half inches thick, weighing about three pounds. Pretty hard to hold in the hand, or even to read in bed. A real pain to lug around on the train or the bus.

That’s the hardcover, of course, but the paperback isn’t much better, still weighing over two pounds, and two inches thick.

Yet the version that I read weighed only about four ounces and was so small that I could slip it into my pocket, carry it everywhere and could read it any time I had a few minutes to spare.

I read it as an e-book on my iPod Touch, of course.

I must confess that I hesitated a long while before buying The Pillars of the Earth from Fictionwise; it seemed slightly insane to attempt to read a nearly 1000-page book on the small iPod screen. But after a while, I gave in. After the “Micropay Rebate” which Fictionwise offers, it cost me less than $5. Half a cent a page seemed a pretty good deal!

After it was installed on my iPod it looked even more daunting. At the font size which I find comfortable, eReader told me that the book was some 3,332 pages (screens?) long. I was going to have to tap my iPod screen at least that many times. Wouldn’t that get exhausting?

The iPhone / iPod Touch is often denigrated as an e-book reader (particularly by Kindle fans) because of the small form factor of the screen. They certainly have a point when discussing newspapers and magazines or textbooks with formulas, illustrations and diagrams. But I think they miss the point when it comes to novels or even general non-fiction books. The fact is that for such books the form factor is close to irrelevant.

All that is needed for comfortable reading is an easily readable font size and style and enough words on the screen that you can read and grasp a typical paragraph or two at a time. Once immersed in the story, your brain stops paying attention to how the story is being delivered to it. Well, that is what I have found, anyway.

The Pillars of the Earth has been treated well in the conversion by Fictionwise. The structure of prologue, parts and chapters is all respected; and each major part has an attractive illustration which displays neatly on the iPod screen. It was, really, a delight to read. I wasn’t counting screen taps – after all, who counts the number of page turns you make when reading a hardcopy book? And I could take it with me all the time and read it whenever I had the urge and the opportunity.

Then I thought of an interesting connection in reading this particular book – much of it set in a mediaeval monastery where monks labour over their copying desks. I remembered an exhibition I went to last year at our State Library – a collection of beautiful mediaeval manuscripts. These gorgeous books came in all sizes – from the huge Bibles intended for use on a lectern, to the tiny Book of Hours which could be easily slipped into a sleeve or pocket.

While the screen of the iPod Touch in the eReader application doesn’t look as splendid as the beautifully illustrated Book of Hours, in terms of the number of words per page, it does pretty well, as the following comparison shows.