Undulating Ungulate

Barely read on the road. What I did read was

 

Babylon Babies – Maurice Dantec
Dense, complex, harsh, hilarious, fascinating, hallucinatory, bugfuck. One of the few fictions I have read which grapples with the complex interconnectedness and brutality of the contemporary world. Reading it feels like the closest thing I can think of to what reading Neuromancer when it was first released must have been like. Recommended. Bizarrely was adapted into a movie starring Vin Diesel, which is such a staggering piece of miscasting that I am kind of fascinated to see it.

Phantastes – George MacDonald
Published in 1857; a gorgeous dream of fantasy and myth, one of the founding books of modern fantasy. What inspired a whole generation, once, that then inspired the next… A real treasure. Beautiful and mysterious and extremely inventive; also a bit overwrought stylistically.

Babur Nama
Autobiography of Babur, the founder of the 15th Century Mughal Dynasty. Apparently the earliest example of autobiographical writing? And generally bizarre, as he moves from discussing the finer points of poetry to stacking heads in pillars without blinking. Idiosyncratic, evocative, otherworldy.

 RUR – Karel Capek

Just remembered I read this on the bus on the way to Scotland. Play by the Czech writer, in which the word “robot” is coined. Bleak parable about automatism and the essence of humanity. (Title stands for Rossum’s Universal Robots – I wonder if Rossum corporation in Dollhouse was a tenuous shout-out to that?)

And since returning:

Pitch Yourself – Faust & Faust

Basically a process to deconstruct your life, find your actual skills, and how to present them with evidence. Useful.

The Personal MBA – Josh Kaufmann

Basic pitch is you are better off learn business fundamentals and doing stuff than doing an MBA. Solid, useful coverage of what goes into making a business work. A couple of the financial things are beyond its scope.

a bunch of Ramit Sethi‘s stuff on business and finance

Dude seems on to it.

Schrodingers Cat Trilogy (The Universe Next Door, The Trick Top Hat, The Homing Pigeons) – Robert Anton Wilson

Entertaining and mindbending extrapolation of quantum physics, more or less demonstrating multiple worlds theory in the novel’s structure, as well as teaching the other main interpretations of quantum physics. Some characters act like particles, too. Along with the usual RAW stuff on consciousness, history, and what is going on, though in an early formulation. So the kind of book I read with a pencil handy to make notes.

My edition was published in 1979. Thing is, I am familiar with most of his schtick, and his interests, and generally prefer his more mature non fiction renderings; so lots of this was like a light refresher, with him feeling freer to show certain applications in fiction than he does in non-fiction. But man, this book was still a total crazy weirdout. And must have been a total mindfuck in the late 70s. Also, he explains fractional reserve lending in under a page, not calling it that, in explaining the process by which money is created out of nothing. Just tucked in there. Picked it up unexpectedly, really enjoyed plowing through it.

Currently pecking away at:

ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age – Andre Gunder Frank

Legendary analysis of the global economy as a world system over the past 500 years, arguing that a global economy has existed for longer than that, it has always been centered on Asia, and the last couple of hundred years are an aberrant bubble that is being corrected. Amazing book, also for its meta-historical commentary and method. Have only scratched the surface, after meaning to read it pretty much since it came out in ’98.

and Lilith by George MacDonald, which is so far lovely, magical, and deeply weird. Fast becoming one my favourite authors. Unique.

 

Have read less this year than in many many years. Did a lot of stuff though.

 

Filed by billy at 1:01 pm under reading
2 Comments

(I am going to split this review into three parts, since, somewhat alarmingly, it keeps getting longer.)

In part 1, I will start with a grab-bag of general/meta comments, then an authorial analysis of it as a fantasy; in part 2 I will go through the episodes comparing and contrasting the books and films; in part 3 I will discuss the last episode, and end on some spoilerific comments. Parts 1 and 2 will be largely free from substantive spoilers.

In general I will be talking about the movies as much as the books, since I watched the movies first, and read the books to catch up, and very much the cycle as a whole, hence the title. (My process: read first book when it became a phenom, watched first film, ignored it for most of a decade. Watched films 2 – 6, skimmed books 4-6 after watching the films for detail that was omitted, watched 7a, read book 7. Started rewatching the films, read book 3.)

General meta grab-bag of comments

On the whole, somewhat surprisingly after having ignored it so totally, I approve.

The books are aimed at young people, so it is a mark of something that I could find it as absorbing as I did, exposed to it in my early thirties. Certainly kidult stuff is not my metier; overall I was probably looking for something darker.

In general though, the Harry Potter cycle is really fun. Like, really fun. It took a while to get into it. Watching the films was the right move for me, as I would not have read the books. The first did not grab me enough. But by about the fourth film I was digging the characters and engaging with the world in the specific way I do with fantasy, entering into it imaginatively, though albeit due to my frustration with it.

Harry Potter works best as a whole. I would argue it needs to be understood as a whole, constructed out of seven uneven parts. Rowling apparently spent 5 years plotting before writing; this is readily apparent by the end. Things and people are also excellently named, another sign of gestation.

The strength of the overall structure means the cycle is less successful as individual parts. They are best seen as episodes in a cycle rather than individual works. The early episodes are also a lot better when you know where it is going; in hindsight, early interactions are telling and funny. This is why I am covering it in one go, rather than separately.

It is probably the Star Wars of its generation, both in the scale of its success, the way it is loved, and in the way that lots of Star Wars is kind of naff when you think about it honestly, but it is forgiven because the overall arc is awesome (eg Harry is as gormless as Luke.) And I can only imagine how much more awesome it would have been to be a young teen growing up with those books.

Watching the kids grow into decent actors is fun, particularly Hermione/Emma (Emma Watson has an incredible natural smile that Hermione rarely gets to use) and Harry/Daniel. Ron/Rupert much less so, though there are some very fun moments later on. Luna is a delight. And Neville’s arc is excellent, and reveals really inspired casting at a young age. Watching the old hands settle into their roles is pretty excellent. There is certainly something to be said for having an unlimited budget and the ability to cast all of England’s best actors. Alan Rickman is inspired, and Maggie Smith gets better and better. Helena Bonham Carter chews the scenery most wonderfully. Kenneth Branagh’s turn is devastating. Emma Thompson is unrecognisable. Coltrane’s Hagrid gets annoying; the series outgrows him.

Fantasy/structure/archetypes

Fantasy relies on the world; in a sense, the world is the main character. (Good fantasy often takes a bigger creative investment than other genres – eg Tolkien creating languages, Erikson/Esslemont spending 10 years creating the world.) The world of fantasy is not given; by definition, it is not the real world. Every deviation from that real world must be explained. This takes up space, and can come at the cost of revealing character, and the ease of delivering the story. When the world is given, you can focus on style more easily.

Harry Potter works because of two pieces of formal structural brilliance, after which I am tempted to say it essentially could not fail. (Not in the sense of guaranteed massive success, rather that of being really good.)

First, setting it in a boarding school, which is essentially a genre of its own, and second, by pacing a coming of age tale over seven years. By stapling the arc to things so well known, enough of the world is given for the fantasy to be overlaid – a school of magic, but held together by being school, and the familiar coming of age rites – so we sacrifice none of the character or emotional depth.

The school angle grounds everything that follows in something familiar. We don’t get this from the Muggle world – the Dursleys are so shockingly unreal and awful that nothing is real there. Hogwarts is excellent, especially the castle of the movies. Weaker by far is the rest of the world – for example, the Ministry, and what little else we see of the wizarding world.

(School is the last common experience we have in many ways – jobs have similarities but greater differences; relationships and marriages are similar patterns but devilishly divergent and unique; raising children is the next commonality, but even that, I suspect, is limited to the infant years, beyond which the complexity of a family will win out over the panic of dealing with immediate demands. We can identify with the process.)

Overlaid on this is an old-fashioned good vs evil motif, with the sins of the fathers to be excavated and reconciled. Harry is an exemplary selfless hero. Voldemort is alright as a villain. Like most monsters he works best when unseen, as potential. When revealed, he is a little one dimensionally evil. He could be smarter. Giving him 30 page expository chunks doesn’t help.

The characters are the other main strength, expanding the world. Harry suffers as most heroes do from a near-terminal lack of interestingness – he is perfect and pure and interesting things happen to him, and he drives them from his selfless heroic nature, but he himself is not especially interesting, since he must always act as the hero must act. He has no flaw to make him human, just challenges to overcome. This is where the coming of age angle steps in – the growing pains and awkwardness of adolescence provide travails we can identify with, as does again the school structure.

(Interesting to compare Buffy here – in Buffy, the strength and interest resides in the supporting cast. The true hero goes through shit but has to decide as the hero must decide. Yet compare Sunnydale High and Hogwarts – there is no comparison. Sunnydale barely registers on memory, it is a backdrop; Hogwarts feels real.)

(Next: book v films)

Filed by billy at 2:53 am under culture,reading  Tagged harry potter review
Comments Off

Have been meaning to do this for a while.

I have had the privilege of reading widely and in depth during a prolonged period of self-education. This is a rare thing, and I am very grateful for it.

So: here is a list of the non-fiction books that are most highly recommended by the moose.

This is a really hard list to make. I want to get a sense of what has most influenced me, and what would be most useful for others to read. The real challenge is what amazing mind-blowing stuff to leave off; what entire disciplines don’t even get a mention.

I could rant at length about each of the books listed, and someday mean to, but for now the list and a brief precis will suffice.

Over time I have found the one of the most important laws of scholarship to be “always read the original”. Reading these volumes will repay truly great dividends. In some cases I am picking authors rather than books, as it is difficult to fit many thinkers into one volume.

-=-=-

Robert Anton Wilson: Quantum Psychology.

Wilson is like the Irish Buddha. Compassionate, funny and wise, with an uncanny ability to explain complex things in ways that make you feel much smarter than you are, as he teaches you how to think for yourself. His books are wide ranging and profound, and totally unique.

QP deals with quantum physics, language, the mind, and how we make ourselves a reality tunnel to live in; it is gentle and funny and unspeakably brilliant, and will free up your view of things by stealth with its mix of theory and practice.

Prometheus Rising, and Cosmic Trigger Vol 1, are the other two must reads of his non-fiction. They are both also pretty indescribable, but totally worthwhile. (Also recommended is the audio set Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything, particularly the 2nd and 3rd lectures.)

His humour, and staggering originality and clarity of communication, make him the best entry point into the world of ideas that interests me.

David Bohm: Wholeness and the Implicate Order; Thought as a System.

Quantum physicist and philosopher whose thought touches on the most fundamental questions of existence. Bohm is much more than a physicist. In my eyes he is quite possibly the most important philosopher of the late 20th century.

WATIO is about his take on quantum physics, and relativity, and their implications for everything else. There is one long chapter with many equations that will be over most people’s heads (sure was over mine), but it is interesting to read along the development of the logic. Also discusses language and philosophy, putting forward fascinating and brilliant stuff as he grapples with the deepest issues of meaning and existence.

TAAS is much easier going, taking the form of a weekend long dialogue he led, and covers analagous material in a completely non-technical fashion. Both are very brilliant.

(I often feel much of my own work is covering ground that Wilson and Bohm covered better.)

PD Ouspensky: In Search of the Miraculous; Tertium Organum.

Russian philosopher from the early 20th century. Genius in his own right, while perhaps best known as a disciple of Gurdjieff.

ISOTM introduced me to the best, most lucid, most grounded and practical model of human psychology and spirituality I have encountered; a genuinely life-changing experience.

The first ten pages of TO are still probably the most comprehensively mindshattering thing I have ever read; in fact, in many ways that is where my journey began, and the return was being able to say what had already been said, but from myself, in my own words.

Buckminster Fuller: Critical Path

Visionary genius, design scientist, humanist; original thinker par excellence; world-system thinking at its finest; one of the most optimistic paradigm shifting thinkers of all time.

Want to save the world? Start here. Not easy reading, but off-the-charts brilliant. Written the year before he died; a summation of his life’s work. Almost impossible to communicate just how powerful, joyous, and uplifting this work, and Fuller’s vision, is. (Actually, we wrote a – frankly awesome – song about Bucky in Idle Faction: right click to download Go Bucky Go, which maybe captures some of how rocking this stuff really is )

-=-=-

Those four, in particular, are giants whom I am standing sheepishly on the shoulders of, feeling out of place.

Now two which are just things any intelligent person in the West should have read, or the equivalent thereof, in answer to the basic questions of where did we come from, and how our current world and ideas about the world came about:

Richard Tarnas: The Passion of the Western Mind

The best one volume history of western thought I have encountered. A truly incredible performance, weaving together the many strands of thought into one amazing narrative.

(An excellent Eastern complement to this is Heinrich Zimmer’s “Philosophies of India”.)

Arnold Toynbee: Mankind and Mother Earth

The best one volume history of the world I have encountered. Written the year before he died, and after his mammoth 12 volume history of the world, here Toynbee brings it all together, revealing the patterns of things across time.

History, in general, is vital for any understanding of what we are. Though also a highly problematic, impressionistic art. A discipline I wish I was better read in.

-=-=-

While I could go on and on listing many great books, with vital insights, I am also aware they form part of my process, and may or may not be essential to anyone else.

Honestly, the above would keep most people going for quite a while, and would gird you well to take on the world; the first four in particular feel essential, and have done a lot to shape my thinking and experience.

Filed by billy at 12:49 am under consciousness,culture,reading,the moose,utopia
2 Comments

Wow. Forgot about these a bit. But then I haven’t been reading much.

Paul Bowles, Magic and Morocco – Allen Hibbard

Odd little volume examining Bowles as a North African magician. Part exploration of different literary evocations of Morocco, part travelogue, part biography (almost hagiography), part autobiography; on the whole feels like it is dancing around a mystery that cannot be spoken of, aided by a stellar supporting cast of glittering fame who appear in fragments, move on and off-stage to an unheard beat. A mysterious little book to exist.

The Art of Memetics – Wes Unruh and Edward Wilson

Breathlessly excited hyper-intellectualised fun romp through memes, mind, and the magic of systems. Signs of occasional brilliance amidst lots of gibberish.

Fight Club – Chuck Pahluniak

Finally got around to reading the novel which birthed one of my favourite movies. It is darker and more nihilistic than the film, and the ending is substantially less feel-good. The film remains such a strong imprint in my mind that the book’s impact was inevitably lessened. There were few surprises left. Some cracking lines though.

The Neuroscience of Religious Experience – Patrick McNamara

Skimmed. What it sounds like.

Darwin, God, and the Meaning of Life – Steve Stewart-Williams

Clever, accessible, and well written, but ultimately the way he defines god renders all the evolutionary arguments against god irrelevant if you have a more eastern conception of god. Parallels aspects of my own arguments in C&R in interesting ways given our philosophical differences.

Herzog on Herzog.

Skimmed. Book of interviews with Werner Herzog. What more could you want?

The Crippled God – Steven Erikson

Tenth and concluding volume (at least of Erikson’s sequence) of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. This is the series that has kept me interested and engaged as an adult returning to fantasy.

Fuck knows what to say at the end of a 3.5 million word journey. This the longest sustained work I have ever read. I guess it was worth it. Definitely, encountering these characters, these races, these vistas, has enriched my life in some way. The one time I actually encountered someone else who had read all of what was then out, we didn’t really talk about it at all, just sat with a kind of knowing silence filled with shared experience between us.

The defining work of modern epic fantasy, certainly. Vast, extraordinary, and wonderful, definitely. Funny, dark, cunningly plotted, and all too human? Yup. Apparently they are at work on an encyclopedia of the Malazan world, which will bloody well help. (The scale of the thing cannot be exaggerated.)

One of the few works of fantasy capable of changing the way you see the world purely through an appreciation of impermanence and historic time. Plus a tonne of philosophical asides to keep you busy, a thousand tangled perspectives. Apparently he gets some flack for being too nihilistic – the series goes some dark places, and the last two books were hellishly bleak and grinding – but that is a very thin reading of what he puts across.

Anyway. In this book, a lot is tied up, but many questions remain unanswered. There are three more books to come from Esslemont, and some sense Erikson will write some kind of distant past prequels.

Not sure if/when I would reread the set, just because it is so colossal. More likely to browse it, as it repays browsing; many interactions and conversations are pieces of the puzzle that are scattered across the many years covered, and will read differently knowing the shape of the whole; and are frankly wonderful in themselves.

Report on Experience – John Mulgan

Somewhere between a war diary and psychological observation on NZ, England, politics, life, etc. The first few chapters are brilliant and probably necessary for any Kiwis as the shrewdest observation of NZ’s national character I have read. The last chapters are about the most grounded perspective on humanity I have read.

In Arabian Nights – Tahir Shah

Sequel to The Caliph’s House, reviewed back here. Travel writing by a dude living in Morocco. This time he delves deep into the nature of story and storytelling and what they mean for us. (Crazily, this time I realised his father was Idries Shah, which throws a whole new spin on all the anecdotes, and the relationship he has to story. (Idries Shah published at least four books of Sufi teaching stories, among other things.))

Anyone who wants to grasp my fascination with Morocco – an oriental minded world of Arabs living amidst a desert, mountains, the sea and a decaying European facade with a native history and belief system that still rules – would be rewarded by picking either of these books up as exceptional evocations of the modern Moroccan mind. Plus they are awesome and funny.

Filed by billy at 1:34 am under reading
Comments Off

Came across a copy of Pilgermann by Russell Hoban in a second hand store. Opened it at random. Read the following paragraph.

No. We assume always too much, we assume what cannot be assumed. We see dots so we connect them with lines and we claim to know what the lines and dots signify. There is a marching, there is a galloping, there is a hissing of arrows, a clashing of swords; or it may be that there is simply a stretching forth of the neck to the sword, there is a wrapping in the Torah scroll, there is a burning alive and we assume (always the assumptions) that these things are happening to different people. We assume that the Frank is distinct from the Jew who is distinct from the Turk but I cannot now think of it as being like that. It seems to me now that that busy line, that motion in the circuitry, did not leap from one dot to another: from the leap of its original impulse its being continued on its way to flash into Christian, Jew, Muslim, fortresses, rivers, dawns, full moons, battles, crows, the wind in the trees, anything you like. Mountains in the dawn; the shock of Thing-in-Itself, the enormity of Now. So it is that although my being is in one way or another continuous I cannot present to you Pilgermann as continuous, only flashes here and there.

That book, man. That book.

Filed by billy at 2:27 am under quotes,reading
3 Comments

Over the past few days I reread my first novel, Eidolon. I hadn’t looked at it for maybe five years. Eidolon took several years and many drafts to get to its current state of abandonment. (Novels are never finished, only abandoned.)

Reading it was fascinating. Recognising every reference, every line, every piece which came from somewhere, was just a staggering ride through the kaleidoscope of my past self, now gone. More intimate and magical – and jarring – than a diary.

It needs a completely new first chapter. And about 10% of it cut. Other than that it holds up pretty well. Very little of the prose needs anything; some surface tweaking to situate conversations and dialogue better the main consideration. One the whole it is wild and mad and brilliant and uncomfortable and uncompromising.

Odd things to note: I had always felt description was a weakness in my writing. Perhaps I had overcompensated, because the description was dense and amazing. Some huge paragraphs. And the vision of how it would feel to be in a changed society, and both how close that is to what draws me in to burning, and how different; though I had not been to a burn when I wrote Eidolon, I was aware of it, and it influenced my thinking.

Most of what needs cutting is ranting the result of it being my first novel and putting in everything I had to say about anything. And while what I had to say was pretty sharp, it doesn’t always need to be said right there – yet more distance allowing me to kill some more darlings. In many ways it probably should have been a non-fiction book (or two). One on politics and economics, social organisation, technology and social change; and the other about consciousness.

I have since written about consciousness at length. A large part of what inspired the reread was realising I should pull out the stuff on politics, economics, technology, social organisation etc, and bash it into some sort of shape as ideological freeware. We have just about hit the technological substrate required for my ideas to be put into practice, and people may be readier for the vision now than a decade ago when it formed.

I may do some slashing and surface tinkering, then sling it online, maybe as a free pdf, maybe as a very cheap ebook (will probably comment more on that angle later; thoughts on the publishing game in general at the moment).

But yeah. It was awesome to revisit these characters, and this vision. So much of what I think, and the seeds of my later non-fiction books, are all there. Confronting the energy, passion, and rage of my earlier self was humbling, and revitalising.

Much as I loved it, I doubt I will read it again for a long long time. It is part of the process I went through to get here, now, and my attention needs to be here, now.

Filed by billy at 12:16 pm under reading,the moose
2 Comments

What Technology Wants Kevin Kelly

Pretty interesting, there is lots in it, not sure it is essential though.

Argues all sorts of things, but essentially that there is a “technium” – the totality of culture and technology – which can be considered an evolving entity in itself. More interesting for the specifics of the data he brings together than the thesis itself, as he pulls pretty gnarly stuff in from all over the show. The chapters on the Amish and the Unabomber were both fascinating, and not for the usual reasons one might expect. Particularly, the Amish come across not as Luddites but very conscious of the effects of technology on them, individually and socially, and choose only to adopt technologies, which, after testing, prove to enhance their values and goals; which strikes me as about the sanest approach. However, most of us do not have such a strongly defined group with shared values, so we get dragged along into adopting technologies with no thought for the effects, because everyone else does, and we need them to stay in touch, conform and function. But the idea of selective adoption of technologies comes through really strongly, and I have nattered on about the need for this elsewhere, a la McLuhan; and indeed in Kelly’s own life.

The Knife of Never Letting Go – Patrick Ness

Ripped through this in a few hours. Young adult SF novel, set on a pioneer world where, so it seems, a disease has killed all the women, and the men can all hear each other’s thoughts. From there it goes in pretty consistently unexpected directions. Tight, gripping, fun.

Cults of Unreason – Christopher Evans
Excellent history of early Scientology, and other cultish stuff. I can see why they try to suppress it.

Counting Heads – David Marusek
Debut novel from a guy to watch. A SF future world with virtual immortality, mucho AI, clones, crazy nano, and fabbing, all happening all at once, and really well integrated into a fairly dizzying experiential ride of what living in that would be like on a regular human level, while dealing satisfactorily with humanity and emotions. Impressive. Biggest gripe: it feels like an episode of something larger, rather than a really complete entity in itself. (Which, to be fair, it is.)

Michael Moorcock – The Warhound and the World’s Pain
Years back I bought a bunch of Moorcock omnibus editions and never read them. Read this novel after snooping around the web and it coming up heavily recommended a lot. It was fun, diverting, and there was a lot I enjoyed in it, particularly its fluidity and narrative sweep, yet even with the philosophical resonance explored via its quasi-Faustian bargain, it felt sort of… empty afterwards. Like the depth of imagination that goes into creating a world is somehow lacking when you churn out books at 15000 words a day, maybe. (Any other strong Moorcock recommendations? I think I read the first Elric novel and didn’t think much of it, and one of the Jerry Cornelius novels (The English Assassin, I think), which was totally demented.)

The Possessed – Dostoyevsky
Felt I had been reading a bit too much genre insubstantiality, and prevailed upon my friend Brian for the Best Novel Ever Written; this got the nod. It is pretty remarkable how gripping a novel which is mostly people standing around chatting in polite society in 1800s Russia can be. Brilliant psychological observation, and in general brilliant; not sure it is the best novel ever, but it is pretty damn impressive. Left me wondering what its equivalent would look like if it were written now. Ultimately seemed to be arguing that we are lost without God, or some Idea on that scale.

Jan Fries – Visual Magick
Really good, grounded, experiential guide to creativity, magic, art, and presence in the moment.

Filed by billy at 11:04 am under consciousness,reading,technology
1 Comment

Okay, so once again I am culling a bunch of books from my collection. The list is below the cut. All sorts, some quality literary fiction, some random junk, some SF/fantasy, and an eclectic slather of non-fiction

How it works: if you want something, make an offer. (Email best: wisdomofthedancingmoose (at) gmail) If it is better than what a 2nd hand dealer would give (pretty easily done), and no one else bids higher, you get it.

(more…)

Filed by billy at 1:54 pm under reading,the moose  Tagged books for sale
5 Comments

READ

Psychomagic – Alejandro Jodorowsky

Woo-ha! The book I have always wanted from Jodorowsky but didn’t know I wanted. Two book length interviews, chronicling the intertwined development of his creative and spiritual lives, culminating in his development of a highly idiosyncratic style of therapy. Jodorowsky is larger than life in every way, and this is a massively entertaining account of an artist achieving enlightenment. Exactly the right book at exactly the right time; totally recommended. Fabulous, superb. As ever, his art seems tame compared to his life. And recall that Holy Mountain was decades ago, and he has been nonstop doing awesome crazy shit before and since. Works as more or less a companion piece to his bio The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Mystical Dimensions of Islam – Anne-Marie Schimmel

Classic study of Sufism, its history and development. Excellent.

Millennium – Felipe Fernandez Armesto

Never uses a simple word where a complex one will do. But yeah, a really exceptional study of the last thousand years of world history, with excellent human level detail and great sweeps. Particularly valuable as a comparative study of human empires, giving equal time to those who achieved much but fell by the wayside.

The Seven Basic Plots – Christopher Booker

Exceptional tome analysing why we tell stories. Identifies 7 basic forms of plot, and argues fairly convincingly from a Jungian archetypal perspective that they are really about providing models for achieving psychological integration of the Self. This is part one of four. Where it gets interesting is when he applies this, describing how things have changed, and why, in the past two hundred years, and how it applies to culture and identity and more.

Extremely stimulating. Will probably get a full post at some point. Recommended to all who have an eye on story as a profession, if only to work out why you disagree with him.

A thousand rooms of desire and fear – Atiq Rahimi

Short novel by afghani writer. Man, Afghanistan is fucked and in pain, and has been for a while. Beautiful and sad.

Who is Bugs Potter – Gordon Korman

Found this at the bach and ripped through it. Loved Korman as a teen. Man, these books go. Fun.

Tomorrow When the War Began – John Marsden

Found this on the street one day. Pretty solid, good grip on teen dynamics, really tight and tense. Can see how this is the start of a wildly successful series.

Endless Things – John Crowley

Final book in the Aegypt Quartet. Which is one truly colossal novel in four parts that took 20+ years to emerge.

Again, the sequence deserves a full post sometime. But in short: a while back I blogged Russell Hoban saying “The real reality, the flickering of seen and unseen actualities, the moment under the moment, can’t be put into words: the most that a writer can do – and this is only rarely achieved – is to write in such a way that the reader finds himself in a place where the unwordable happens off the page.”

Aegypt achieved more of those moments than anything else I have read. Just sublime. Effortlessly – well, subjectively – beats the living crap out of most fiction.

The speculative chapter about Giordano Bruno surviving his execution, and how, and what he did next, basically destroyed my mind in terror and exultation and opened a rent in space-time. Books are cool.

For the first time ever I am writing a fan letter to an author.

Aboriginal Men of High Degree – AP Elkin

Classic study from the early 20th century of aboriginal karadji and their powers. (Was a primary resource for Eliade’s Shamanism.) Fascinating, and stark; aboriginal culture lost a hell of a lot through contact with the west, and this study was from when living memory knew about what it had lost.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – JK Rowling

The Harry Potter cycle will get its own lengthy post soon. Oh yes.

The Call of Silence – Abdullah Dougan

Complete text of the Tao Te Ching, with a commentary on it by an NZ Sufi sheikh. Seriously amazing.

Our Life with Mr Gurdjieff – Thomas de Hartmann

Russian aristocrat and noted composer who, with his wife, followed Gurdjieff for twelve years, sticking with him closer and longer than anyone. Amazing account of working with a master, and life in Russia during wartime, and Europe, and the world.

When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World

The 200 years of the Abbasid Caliphate. Includes stuff about Haroun Al-Raschid, famous as the Caliph in the Arabian Nights, and his reign. Fun evocation of a fascinating time – a high point in culture in many ways not eclipsed until the Renaissance.

The Imperial Capitals Of China – Cotterell

China is seriously different than everywhere else. Geography and history are the same thing.

SKIMMED
the dragon reborn (robert jordan), the high king (lloyd alexander), several harry potter novels (4, 5, 6), how to win friends and influence people (dale carnegie), a book on Babylon: Myth and Reality by a museum, and Richard Bandler’s ‘Get the Life You Want’, which is really pretty brilliant, after 30 years of changing people’s brains.

Have started Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants, which looks as thought it has the potential to be truly brilliant. And The Conquest of Morocco, which looks interesting, if, say, you wanted to travel to Morocco soon.

Filed by billy at 1:10 pm under consciousness,culture,language,reading,research,technology
6 Comments

Sometimes lately I have been feeling like the practitioner of a dying art. (Of course, on a long enough scale, I surely am.) What with all the talk of publishing collapsing, attention spans fraying while the total amount of material vying for attention curves ever up, and the general dominance of other entertainment mediums – games and films – among the young (whose attention spans are apparently ever decreasing) it is all a bit depressing for the unknown authors out there.

The other day though, something occurred to me. People always say the book was better.

They don’t say, the film was an excellent rendition of the same story in another medium.

They say “the book was better”.

The experience of reading a book, as an immersive delivery medium, is actually awesome, and in some important sense, better, than other mediums.

The book is better.

Books can survive as they offer a tangibly awesome experience.

Filed by billy at 2:05 am under culture,reading,the moose
4 Comments