The Yank's Adventure

Well, I finally finished A Connecticut Yankee and I must say it was an enjoyable book, though a bit chaotic at times. There was a lot of satire in it besides a pretty decent story; Twain makes fun of some very serious issues, chief among them slavery. Though it was over by the time the story was published in 1889, Twain was no doubt still seeing slavery's deplorable after-effects and lamenting man's inhumanity to man.  Though I must say, his character Hank Morgan was certainly far from perfect and subject to many of man's worst flaws.

I recommend the book, especially if you haven't read it since high school, but you'll have to tolerate a little bit of old fashioned writing.  One of these days I want to see the movie with Bing Crosby again, as I remember very little of it.

I'm on to another "T" book next, though I don't know which one yet.  Maybe a non-fiction this time . . .  I'll keep you posted!

A Humorous Sojourn

This week I began my "T" books, starting with a popular book about punctuation (!) by Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves.  It was very funny and very well written!  I had been given it as a gift years ago (since it came out in 2004, it was probably 9 years), and never gotten around to reading it.  Its audience seems to be puncto-philes (I'm making that word up) or even puncto-fanatics, which means I'm the perfect person to read it.  Fortunately for the publisher, it was, as they claim on the book's jacket, "a runaway bestseller," much to the author's astonishment.

I enjoyed reading about her exasperation at the signs we see every day--supposedly to communicate an important message--that are atrociously punctuated, and at the alarming increase in poorly punctuated emails and other such published writings that should be more carefully composed and proofread. It was heartening to realize I'm not alone!

But if someone were reading it just to learn about punctuation, I think the book would be less than ideal. The author tends to get into the weeds about how words should be punctuated, ending up discussing all the exceptions to the rules, something that, I've learned, confuses puncto-phobic people to the point where they throw up their hands and say, "Well, it doesn't really matter, then, does it?" That's not exactly the result Ms. Truss and I are looking for.

But if you just want a laugh about how language is constantly evolving and sometimes stumbling on its way to communication, you'll enjoy this book as I did.

Since that was a short book, I was able to start another on the "T" list, this time a novel by Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  I had read the book many years ago, but don't really remember it.  I've also seen the movie starring Bing Crosby, but don't remember much about it, either, other than that there was singing, as there always is with Bing Crosby movies.  The story involves a factory worker in late-nineteenth-century Hartford, CT who is hit on the head with a crowbar, and when he comes to, finds himself in King Arthur's court. Since the character, Hank Morgan, is a pragmatic sort of fellow, he makes the most of his time-travel.  And since Twain is telling the story, he does it in a very comical way.

In the years since reading the book the first time, I've studied the history of the middle ages, so I'm enjoying the book in a different way this time, appreciating how Twain is making fun of that era as well as his own.  It's a funny thing about Twain: I always forget what a good writer he was! Once I get used to the late nineteenth-century style of writing (rather full and florid, as a rule), I find myself thoroughly entertained by Twain's clever way of looking at the world and its people.

So, two humorous books in a row ain't a bad thing!  I'll let you know how our Connecticut Yankee fares in the next installment.

Detour Abroad

Well, after a short detour to mystery and other fiction I finally finished the letter A with Of Love and Shadows, by Isabel Allende.  It was a good book, but towards the end I think she went overboard a little bit with describing the atrocities of the military junta that dominated Chile for so many years.  It pretty much stopped the narrative, which is not what a writer should do in a work of fiction.  I think Allende should go ahead and write a non-fiction book about that era (if she hasn't already done so), and get it over with.

During my detour I read one of Ruth Rendell's mysteries, Tigerlily's Orchids.  It was quite good and a fast read, fortunately.  Following that, I read J.K. Rowling's latest book, this time for adults, The Casual Vacancy, which reminded me quite a lot of Ruth Rendell, especially in the way Rowling writes of the class warfare that is endemic in English society. It was a very good book, well written and fast paced, if a bit disturbing and sad, especially at the end. Rowling seems to have a mission of presenting the world from an adolescent's point of view.  Not knowing any adolescents in today's society, I can't attest to her accuracy in portraying them, but I do admire her desire to do so.

I will now get back to reading my book collection, starting this time with the letter T.  There are a number of books in this group, some fiction, some non-fiction.  I'm not sure yet which I will begin with, but I'll be sure to report on it here.

Stay tuned . . .

From Molecules to Magic

Well, I finished The Year of the Flood this week and I must say I was somewhat disappointed.  I never did understand all that was happening to the people in scientific terms.  Who perpetrated the "flood"?  I think it was done deliberately, but I'm not sure, because Atwood did not really make it clear.  The story surrounding the characters was interesting, and I did care about what happened to them.  But the rest of it was pretty incomprehensible. 

I don't know if Atwood researches the science before she writes a book like this, but I found the descriptions and explanations for how things got the way they are kind of vague and sometimes confusing.  It reminded me of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, where the information about how the not-so-good doctor managed to bring his patched-together person to life is never provided.  (Movies made from the book simply make up that part.)  Since Shelley's was one of the first science fiction novels, I suppose Atwood is in good company.  But today's readers expect more realism in their sci-fi, or at least more plausibility, and that comes from being specific about how the science works (or could work in the future).

I don't recommend this book unless you must know what happened to the characters in Oryx and Crake.

After Atwood, instead of leaping into the "T" collection, I decided to finish off the "A"s with the second novel I have by Isabel Allende, Of Love and Shadows.  It was made into a movie, apparently, starring Antonio Banderas.  It takes place in Chile, as most of her novels do, during the rule of Pinochet.  As usual, there is the spirit world familiar to magic realism fans, as well as the super-real world of life under a ruthless dictator. 

In contrast to Atwood, Allende doesn't leave you guessing about anything.  Her lush description is legendary and always compelling.  So far I'm enjoying it.

In between the two novels, I read a short book, John A. Roebling, about the man who designed both the Cincinnati and the Brooklyn bridges.  It was somewhat informative, but lacking information about the building of the bridge, I thought, especially of the deaths of the workers.  It was a quick read, though, and was written by Don H. Tolzmann, which satisfies the "T" requirement of my next list.

Until next time . . .

Another Devastating Flood Wrecks the Earth

I'm about 2/3 the way through The Year of the Flood, and I'm enjoying it, pretty much.  I get annoyed at times by all the new words I'm forced to learn, mostly the names of gene spliced animals like rackunk (combination of raccoon and skunk). I guess that's a problem with all science fiction--a long list of new terms.  But the basic story seems pretty traditional--man's inhumanity to man and their bad decisions with respect to nature.

Told mostly in flashback, the main characters describe how they got to the point where they are in the present time of the story, that is, the year of the flood.  The flood is called "waterless" because it is a flood of microbes, I think.  But they haven't really detailed that yet.  I guess I'll find out eventually what has happened to the earth to make most of the people disappear.

Atwood is a great writer and she manages to get me involved in the lives of all these not-too-distant future women and men.  I can barely remember the novel to which this is a sequel, Oryx and Crake, so I may have to go back to it eventually so I can connect it with this book.

I'll report my findings in the next post.

From a Troubled History to an Uncertain Future

I spent the week reading and skimming Making Waves, an anthology of mostly non-fiction writing by and about Asian American women, edited by the Asian Women United of California (hence its inclusion in the "A" books).  It was published in 1989, and for that reason it's a bit dated, but there were many interesting articles, some poems and a few stories to keep me reading or at least perusing the book over the course of the week.

I got out of it as much as I wanted, I think, though I didn't read most of the more scholarly articles as they were a bit too dry for bus reading.  If I were trying to gain information to write a paper for a course, this book would be just the thing.  I believe that was my original intention when I bought it years ago, but I'm no longer moved to write about the subject.  I may keep it, though, in case I need to learn something in the future about Asian American women, as it is quite thorough in its coverage of their somewhat troubled history and (then) current situtation in the U.S.

So, having finished Making Waves, I'm turning once again to fiction, this time a novel by Maragaret Atwood (the famous speculative fiction writer who is one of my favorites) entitled The Year of the Flood.  This book continues the saga begun in Oryx and Crake, which I read back in 2004.  The story takes place in a future world that has been all but destroyed by humankind's neglect of the environment.  It should be interesting, and moreover, will complete my sojourn through the "A" books in my collection.

Stay tuned . . .

From Welsh to Asians

Well, after having read most of A Hiding Place, and not having discovered the reason for the title yet, I'm putting it aside.  It's just too depressing.  So far nothing has gotten better and everything has gotten worse, even to the present time of the story, towards the end, when the girls have a reunion at their old house.

So it's on the the Asian American Women's collection of fiction and non-fiction, which should prove interesting and hopefully less depressing than the last book.

I'll let you know how I fare.

Ordinary Maltese

I don't have much more to say about Telling the Truth About History.  The authors spent the final chapters detailing what they believe to be a better approach to teaching and studying history. I didn't retain much of that, but it did get me thinking about why people enjoy reading about history.

Since this book was published in 1996, there has been a trend in publishing historical accounts that are more like fiction than scholarship.  Since they are meant for the general public, this is appropriate, I think.  I've enjoyed reading quite a few of those popular histories, despite their sometimes lack of documentation. 

People do like to learn about the past, and I think the authors of Telling the Truth are right in saying that we want to know about past lives in order to give meaning to our own present existence.  The authors also warn, though, that accounts of what happened in the past can be used to manipulate perceptions of people in power and their decisions.  For instance, the westward migration of European immigrants in 19th century America can be characterized as heroic or as horrific, depending on how the stories are told, and who tells them. 

It has been said that the victors of conflicts are the ones who write the histories, but that doesn't mean that stories about the events of the past are erased.  As long as some people remember and pass along what that time was like for them, then the complexity of the past can be preserved and perhaps brought to light at some future time.

I guess that's one reason I like genealogy research.  What I can find out about my forebears is interesting because they are related to me, however distantly, but also because they are ordinary people and what they thought about or did is a small piece of the fabric of the past and gives meaning to it, even if only in that small way.  Imagining what it was like for them to live in 1864 or 1910 or 1795 allows me to see the past as connected to the present and their lives as connected to mine.  How were they affected by the Civil War or the Industrial Revolution or the coming of the railroad?  Those are answers I may never get, but knowing the people a little allows me to at least imagine their responses.

I've now moved on to the next "A" book, this time a novel by Trezza Azzopardi, a Welsh writer or Maltese descent, entitled The Hiding Place. It is about a Maltese family who live in Cardiff, Wales.  There are five daughters, one of whom is the main character in the story. So far I find it interesting and well written, but a bit depressing because the people are so dysfunctional, especially the father who has a gambling problem that causes financial ruin for his family. I am enjoying it, however.

The book is Ms. Azzopardi's first novel, published in 2001; it was shortlisted for the Booker prize. I found a little bit of information about the name Azzopardi in an article which also tells a bit about the history of Malta; I also found an article about the migration of the Maltese people to Britain here.

Well, there are only three "A" books left unread.  But once I'm done with this letter, instead of going on to "B" books, I plan to mix things up by picking the next letter from a hat!

Until next time.

Truth, Justice, and the American Way

I did decide to stop reading the Shakespearean Whodunits.  Alas, they just aren't well written enough! But I may go back to them in the future, so I'm hanging on to the book.

I'm about 2/3 done with Telling the Truth about History, and so far it's pretty interesting, though a bit slow-going for the bus because it requires more concentration that the typical narrative. It's argument is that history as a subject has undergone changes over the centuries, especially since the 18th century in Europe (and by transfer, America), where the "Enlightenment," as it was called, made it possible for people to study the world around them without the restrictions of (mostly Christian) religious doctrine, and that those changes have brought us to a place where unchecked relativism (this was in 1994) is undermining the power of science to help us understand our world and ourselves.

The Enlightenment's promotion of empiricism developed science into what the authors call Hero-Science, a discipline that rescued learning and knowledge of the universe from the dark ages of the past when people were not encouraged to describe the physical world as it was, when people like Galileo could not publish his findings about the true nature of the heavens without serious consequences from the religious establishment.

The belief in science as heroic continued to dominate Western thinking well into the fifties, when nuclear science and its terrifying power started to change people's attitude toward science.  Perhaps science wasn't as heroic as they thought; maybe the applications of scientific inquiry and experimentation and discovery required intervention from humans, some restrictions placed on how far and how fast science could progress. According to the authors, how this relates to history is this: at the turn of the 19th century, when history was becoming a legitimate subject for school study (along with English), Hero-Science was also predominant, so scientific principles and the scientific method were applied to the study of history, with the result that history became the search for factual truth rather than a collection of stories about the past.

You may think that this is how history has always been taught--it's certainly the way I learned it in school--but it is in fact an invention of the 19th century.  Dickens' character Thomas Gradgrind is only a slightly exaggerated figure--many a teacher of the past believed that memorizing the dates and places and "facts" of battles, territorial conquests, and political contests was the proper way to study history. A great example of that is in one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books: as a high school student trying to get a teaching certificate in 1880s South Dakota, young Laura is expected to memorize a long, fact-filled account of American History and recite it in front of her classmates. Even today, though we no longer go in for recitation, this fact-digesting-and-regurgitating method of studying history is employed by public school teachers.

Since the 1960s, however, that approach to pedagogy has changed.  Now there is a much more skeptical eye trained on the past; the civil rights era taught us how many people's stories had been left out, how many facts of the past (some sad, some sordid) had been ignored or actively obliterated. The drive to include those stories and facts changed the discipline of history to something more akin to social history.  And once included, the voices of some of those previously left out of the official history (minorities and women, for instance) made for a much less heroic account.  The standard, monochromatic story of our nation's founding, development, and attainment of greatness slowly becomes a bit tarnished, disappointing and, in some instances, frightening. 

Multiculturalism remains controversial, but there's no mistaking its impact on how we see ourselves and our past as a country. One result, for instance, is that we are now ambivalent about Columbus Day: once seen by many as a celebration of the founding of our country, it's now also seen as marking the beginning of the end for indigenous Americans.

According to Appleby et al, all this has brought us to where we were in 1994, the year Telling the Truth About History was published.  The understanding that the history we all learned in school is incomplete and therefore wrong led us to think that all history heretofore written by the dominant groups of our society--mostly white, male, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class folk--must be discarded as biased and even harmful.  The authors believe this sea-change has happened, but they also believe that this new way of looking at mainstream teaching has gone too far, that truth can still be obtained from scientific inquiry, even considering the biases of those who do the investigations and tell us about them.  This is where I am in the book right now.  I'm looking forward to learning about how we can have it both ways: both truth and justice, if you will, in the American way of learning.

I'll let you know how it turns out.  Until next time . . .

History Writ Large and Small

I finished Julie Andrews' autobiography (with some judicious fast-forwarding) this week and found it to be quite entertaining for the most part. I'd recommend it for light reading.

After Ms. Andrews' book, I decided to start reading one of the volumes of short stories entitled Shakespearean Whodunits. The premise is interesting (as I pointed out in my last post), but the writing is only so-so. I've read several of them now, and I must say I'm not overwhelmed. I may decide to cut this adventure short and move on to the next book.

The next book on my list is one I've had a while: Telling the Truth About History.  It's a scholarly work, apparently, by a team of historians, the first of whom is Joyce Appleby (one of the "A" team).  It got a pretty good review in the NY Times when it came out in 1994: "Truth by Consensus."

I think it will be interesting, but I'll let you know.