Category: Reviews

Review – The Particle at the End of the Universe

Posted January 8, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean CarrollThe Particle at the End of the Universe, Sean Carroll

I know I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction lately; yet another example of my whims, I think. There’s a few more physics books on my list to get to, too, though I might give them a bit of a rest right now. The problem with me reviewing all of these is, of course, that I wouldn’t know a Higgs boson if it came up and introduced itself. All I can say is how well I understand what the writers offer. In Sean Carroll’s case, I felt my understanding was pretty good: the chapters are relatively short and build slowly toward a sketch of the full picture, and he doesn’t use technical terms that’re too hard to understand or anything like that.

And while I don’t think I could explain much of this to anyone (except maybe the basic ideas about symmetry breaking, and fields), at least I’ve retained some of the information, which has always been my problem when it comes to math and physics. (That and my tendency to go, “Yeah, I can parrot back to you what you want me to say, but why is it that way?” until my teachers resorted to “because I said so!”)

Of course, this was published over a year ago now, so it’s probably out of date in new and exciting ways. I’m content to trail behind the leading edge, I think… One of my big hopes about my Open University course is that I’ll start to understand physics a bit more, but even then I think string theory and its ilk will be beyond me.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Reluctant Yogi

Posted January 7, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Reluctant Yogi by Carla McKayThe Reluctant Yogi, Carla McKay

Quirky? Not quite, I think. Overall, this came across as a relatively non-mystery-making, level headed look at practicing yoga, with a sceptical eye toward stuff like chakras and the like, but an attempt to understand the roots of the practice. There are obvious things that make the author an unusual yogi, at least: I’m pretty sure getting your fat lasered away is not something yoga really encourages. Working towards a better body, yeah; hating the one you’re in and going for drastic measures to change it, not so much.

So for quirky, read ‘sceptical and very Western’, but there is useful information here about the types of yoga. For example, from what she says here I’m inclined to avoid Bikram yoga, but encouraged to look into Iyengar yoga — there is some advice on what might suit you and how to choose a teacher.

Overall, you can get the same information from looking online, really; certainly none of it was really new to me. I’m not entirely sure why I bought it, since the last thing we need is another Western woman extolling the virtues of taking what you want from other cultures… Curiosity, partly, I guess; what the heck makes a quirky yogi? I still don’t really know the answer to that, but at least she’s not a ‘holier than thou’ yogi.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Graven With Diamonds

Posted January 6, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Graven with Diamonds by Nicola ShulmanGraven with Diamonds, Nicola Shulman

I wasn’t really aware of Thomas Wyatt before I read this, and all I really know about him now is that he was a courtier and a poet, sometimes a diplomat. Overall, though, this book is less a biography of Thomas Wyatt and more an examination of the role poetry (including, and chiefly, his) had in the court of Henry VIII. I felt like I learned more about Anne Boleyn (whom the author frankly admires for her skill in dealing with her paramours and navigating the court) and Henry VIII than I did about Wyatt. Which is, to an extent, what the author promises in the introduction.

But, and you knew there was a ‘but’ coming, I found it hard to take the analysis entirely seriously given that the knowledge it was based on is faulty in basic ways. The author of The Romance of the Rose was not Chrétien de Troyes, but Jean du Meun and Guillaume de Lorris. In fact, The Romance of the Rose was completed ca. 1270; Chrétien de Troyes’ work was done before 1200. If you’re going to muck up a basic fact like that — you don’t have to know it by heart, but you do need to actually look it up — I’m not sure I trust you to steer between fact and fiction when it comes to the Tudors, who excelled at their own myth making.

So it was kind of interesting to read this author’s speculations, but I gave her pretty much no credence, as she didn’t earn it. Courtly literature isn’t just a throwaway thing here, but something which is important to how she discusses the Tudor court. Do your research.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Hawkeye: My Life As a Weapon

Posted January 6, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Hawkeye vol 1 by Matt FractionHawkeye: My Life as a Weapon, Matt Fraction, David Aja, Javier Pulido, Alan Davis

Reread this ’cause I couldn’t remember much about it, and I have volume three to read now and volume four to read as soon as they stop procrastinating and actually bring it out. I love the consistency of most of the art in this series, which suits the tone perfectly, though it makes the included bit from Young Avengers Presents look particularly out of place (and man, had I ever forgotten that Tommy’s crush on Kate was obvious even there).

This is a pretty relaxed comic. It’s not really about the superhero, Hawkeye, one of the Avengers; it’s about Clint Barton and Kate Bishop and all the trouble they can get into when they don’t have their teams backing them up. It’s about Clint being a dummy and Kate being really awesome and all the weird and wonderful arrows Clint has, some of which I’m sure refer to other comics (that you don’t have to know about it to make it funny). I love the generally irreverent tone of this: however much I adore Steve Rogers, and however much of a snarky little shit he can be, Clint Barton’s something else when it comes to doing stupid stuff and being an idiot about it.

Still not my favourite comic ever (hello, Captain Marvel) but pretty awesome all the same.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Confronting the Classics

Posted January 5, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Confronting the Classics by Mary BeardConfronting the Classics, Mary Beard

I enjoyed Mary Beard’s book on Pompeii, and I think I’ve read a couple of others, or at least seen her work cited. She’s always struck me as pretty level headed, unlikely to get carried away with conjectures, so I wasn’t really surprised by the fairly sceptical tone of most of these reviews (though I did begin to wonder if anyone, anywhere, could produce work she’d give the green light). It’s a little odd reading a book of essays that are adapted (I’m not sure how much they’ve been changed) from reviews of particular books: some of them seemed very disconnected from the books they purportedly reviewed, which worked fine in this context, but seemed a bit odd when she did start discussing the books.

It’s not just criticism of other people’s theories, although there’s a lot of it there: there’s a general survey of the literature, some discussion of issues that the study of the classics faces in general, some windows into little bits of history.

Mostly, though… it is a book about other books; a rather disparate collection, however much I might want more. The essays are fine, and I did enjoy reading it, but I didn’t feel like I really learned anything new. Just what not to believe!

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Sins of the Fathers

Posted January 4, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence BlockThe Sins of the Fathers, Lawrence Block

It’s not that often I delve into the noir-ish side of crime, though it’s not because I have anything particular against it — the whole class of casually drinking, smoking and screwing detectives with cynical attitudes don’t repel me, whether it be Brandstetter, Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade. Or, in this case, Matt Scudder. It comes down to the individual detective, and in that sense, Scudder probably comes out neck and neck with Brandstetter. He’s involved in a case that seems sordid, yet he avoids making obvious conclusions and follows the facts; he’s straight, but he ends up in gay bars, talking to gay people, etc, and yet Block doesn’t seem to need to overhype Scudder’s masculinity in compensation. And despite the cynicism, Scudder tithes to local churches, keeps an open mind about people, and doesn’t judge. There’s an honesty about him, too: he takes money, but he admits it, he knows when to take it, and there’s times he’d say no.

There are things about the whole treatment of gay people that don’t come off so well, but most of it seems to be a genuine attempt to let people do their own thing and not get stuck on judging what that is. Unless you’ve killed someone, of course.

In terms of the writing, it’s not Raymond Chandler: there’s no gems where Lawrence Block wrote something in a way no one else has. It’s clean and it works, without unnecessary verbiage or prevarication. Most of the clues are given to us, though there’s one point where the thinking process is based on proper detective work in old records and stuff, and that’s less easy to bring across to the reader in a way that’s at all interesting, so that aspect was a little smudged.

Overall, I actually really enjoyed this. There are some noir detectives I don’t want to spend a minute more with — Mike Hammer, for example — but Matt seems basically decent, and never too convinced that that’s the case.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Posted January 3, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean Dominique BaubyThe Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby

When reviewing a book like this, do you consider the sheer effort that went into this? Every word of this was written by dictation — by Bauby blinking when the right letter came up, one letter at a time. We’re told he could only blink one eye (though that seems odd when elsewhere he mentions that he can move his head a little). Every word of this is from a strange world where the speaker can no longer move, no longer do anything physical voluntarily. All he had were his thoughts: were they worth all this effort? Can you talk about it being worth it?

I was actually recommended this when I did a Coursera course about neurobiology, and the lecturer was quite enthused. Certainly, it’s an interesting window into what it would be like to be locked in: sometimes, Bauby’s descriptions are perfect, both of the world only he can know and of the world that he lost. The feelings, the gamut of expectations, fears, depression…

At other times, the writing does seem stilted, self-pitying, or just plain away with the fairies. That’s not to belittle Bauby’s achievement, or speak ill of the dead, or anything like that. In part, I suspect some of that is because I can’t see how he could possibly have edited the book effectively. That would have to be done by others, or not done at all — where do you risk cutting a word, trimming a sentence? How could you add something he didn’t say?

And then there’s the fact that this was made into a film, and the book I read was the movie tie-in edition. That seems to make light of the whole situation, and makes me wonder things like: who gets the profits? I hope it was the charitable endeavours Bauby himself got involved with.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Wolf Hunt

Posted January 2, 2015 by in Reviews / 5 Comments

Cover of The Wolf Hunt by Gillian BradshawThe Wolf Hunt, Gillian Bradshaw
Review from 1st February, 2013

I was initially excited when I saw that this was based on the Breton lai ‘Bisclaveret’. I studied that lai in my first year of university, and I’ve had cause to go back to it fairly often since, and I rather like it. Perhaps especially because of the inevitable LGBT reading of it: it’s homosocial at the least, and then the other details make it very easy to read it as a homosexual love story. Bisclaveret is betrayed by his wife, and ultimately everything is set to rights by the king, who loves him very much — and the story includes a scene where Bisclaveret sleeps in the king’s bed… If you want to read more about that analysis, I suggest William Burgwinkle’s Sodomy, Masculinity and Law in Medieval Literature.

Anyway, so I was very disappointed when I looked closer and found that this story de-queers the original lai. It invents a whole new character, Marie, to be Bisclaveret’s ‘real’ love interest. I was much less inclined to let myself enjoy this, at that point.

But Gillian Bradshaw has a way of coaxing me along anyway, and I found myself reading big chunks at once. She really is a good writer, and ultimately I found it just as compelling as the other books I’ve read by her, despite my initial resistance. The lai still limits her, in some ways — Marie Penthièvre would be a wonderful heroine, but often we’re limited to Eline and her paramour Alain, neither of whom exactly fill me with warmth. I felt like there was an attempt to understand Eline, at times, but what she did just made it impossible to like her — and Marie’s understanding of her made Marie seem ridiculously saintly.

But for the most part I loved the characters: Marie, the duke, the duchess, Tiher… Even minor characters. Tiarnán, less so, because he makes a silly mistake of judgement when it comes to women. But he does learn from what happens to him, it seems.

Looking forward to the other Gillian Bradshaw books I’ve got on my to read pile.

Rating: 5/5

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Review – Unnatural Death

Posted January 1, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. SayersUnnatural Death, Dorothy L. Sayers

Starting the New Year with a Sayers review? Yes, please.

So Unnatural Death is maybe not the best in terms of the convoluted plot, the number of characters, etc, because it’s not one of the most personal stories for Lord Peter. On the other hand, you do get to see Peter again treating it a little like a hobby, a curiosity, and then having to face the consequences of his ego. And there’s a lot of Miss Climpson, too; not as much as one of the later books, but enough to show that she’s a really great character — her letters with their underlinings and italicising are hilarious.

The murder method is pretty good for this one, though, really: I wouldn’t guess it if I wasn’t familiar with an NCIS episode where there are a couple of killings done the same way, and yet it’s simple and obvious once you know what it is.

So not my favourite, but it does work and come together beautifully.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

Posted December 31, 2014 by in Reviews / 6 Comments

Cover of The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillipThe Forgotten Beasts of Eld, Patricia A. McKillip

Somehow, from the midst of feeling dreadful because of this cold, I realised that what I really wanted to read was something by Patricia McKillip. It’s so strange how I disliked the first book of hers I read; I feel like I appreciate her work more with each book I do read. And this one… it’s fairytale-like, mythic — a review on GR said ‘parable like’, and yes: that too. It’s full of epic fantasy elements but the real struggle is between taking revenge and being true to who you really are and those you love. (The phrase “being true to yourself” sounds annoyingly cliché, but I can’t think of another way to put that without quoting the whole book.)

McKillip’s writing is gorgeous, and works well with the character she’s chosen — a girl who has not been loved, does not know how to love; who hasn’t been among people to be drawn into loves and hatreds. And in the course of the book she does learn, and she struggles with it… There’s a coolness to the book, like a mountain stream; an aloofness that you can get with distance from something, but toward everything. I can understand why some people disliked it for that very thing, but for me it perfectly matched the subject.

I like high fantasy, but since so much of it draws from the same well as Tolkien, there’s something all too real about it sometimes. This book, the character of Sybel, are closer to real magic for me, in the same way that the contemplative parts of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books (the sleeping man with the thistle growing by his hand…) come closer to real magic for me than all the magic rings and restless shades in the world.

And one last thing to love: I adore the way that the relationship between Coren and Sybel works out. That it has to be worked on, from both sides, that it’s not always matched.

Rating: 4/5

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