The nameless feline narrator is the best thing in Sōseki’s first novel by a mile. Witty and sarcastic, he is a scathing observer of the humans with whom he shares the world. His thoughts on trousers as a measure of human achievement provide an excellent example of his opinions:
Had mankind been created with an inborn readiness to be content with inequality, I cannot see why, born naked, they should not have been content to live and die unclothed. However, one of these primeval nudists seems to have communed with himself along the following lines. “Since I and all my fellowman are indistinguishably alike, what is the point of effort? However hard I strive I cannot of myself climb beyond the common rut. So, since I yearn to be conspicuous, I think I’ll drape myself in something that will draw the eyes and blow the minds of all these clones around me.” I would guess he thought and thought for at least ten years before he came up with a stupendous idea, that glory of man’s inventiveness, pants…
I’ve heard that it took Descartes, no intellectual slouch, a full ten years to arrive at his famous conclusion, obvious surely to any three year old, that I think and therefore I am. Since original thought is thus demonstrably difficult, perhaps one should concede that it was an intellectual feat, even if it took ten years, for the wits of proto-rickshawmen to formulate the notion of knickers. (p245)
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0 comments 2008-04-15 19:53 Categories: Books, Cats, Reviews
Liza Picard’s Victorian London, her fourth book on the capital, is readable, interesting stuff, but it seems to lack focus. Perhaps unavoidably for a book seeking to provide as much context as this does, lots of the information is not actually specific to London, and the overall approach is general. But what we lose in detail we gain in range, and a huge amount of subject matter is covered despite the fact that the book only deals with the first half of Victoria’s reign, from 1840 to 1870. The chapters on servants, the working classes, transport, and crime stand out in particular, and the sections on poverty put modern life into perspective. Victorian London will probably serve as a pretty good starting point for further exploration of the period, although it would have been nice to see a further reading section to save dredging the notes section for other more detailed treatments of areas of interest.
Oh, and apparently the old story about Victorians covering up the legs of pianos was made up, a rumour put about by some American bounder or other, shocking.
0 comments 2008-03-28 19:55 Categories: Books, Reviews
I found this my third attempt at Villette considerably easier going after reading Jane Eyre. Things start slowly but the tale gathers momentum once we reach the city of the title, and whilst the story never reaches the Gothic heights of its more famous sibling, it has own more subtle appeal that many readers will find preferable. The main attraction is the narrator, Lucy Snowe, a more interesting character than Jane Eyre, sharper and less idealised, occasionally given to vicious sarcasm and very single-minded. Villette is reputedly semi-autobiographical, and if the narrator’s character reflects the author’s then it must have been a rewarding and entertaining experience to incur her displeasure. One imagines afternoon tea punctuated by pithy remarks scathing enough to curdle the currant buns.
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2 comments 2008-03-20 19:09 Categories: Books, Reviews
In response to a previously related incident involving the security of our postal delivery arrangements, I recently invested in a Y-Cam Black. I have had suspicions regarding the moral integrity of some of the regular users of the footpath that runs past our house for a while now, but the theft of sixteen Chuck Ds worth of train tickets confirmed them. In an effort to thwart any further attempts at stealing my possessions via this particular method, I moved our postbox inside our front porch, and affixed the Y-Cam Black in a suitable position to monitor both the box and any parcels placed on the floor inside. Triggered by the motion activation feature built into the camera, it uploads still pictures to an FTP server whenever anyone enters the porch. This arrangement allows me to see any activity related to postal deliveries to my property, and, potentially, any criminal efforts on the part of the mentally subnormal, mail-bothering yokels that frequent our lane.
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2 comments 2008-03-01 22:00 Categories: Computers, Consumerism, Geek Stuff, Reviews
Jane Eyre is another one of those classics that I should have read before now. It is an entertaining novel of great depth, and worthy of its status. It is also one of those books about which literal acres have been written, so I’m not going to attempt to say anything new about it.
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2 comments 2008-02-14 21:10 Categories: Books, Reviews
I’ve had this on my to-read list for years and years, since I read High Fidelity, which must have been in about 1997 or so. The main character in Nick Hornby’s novel cites it as his favourite book, as I recall, and for some reason that stuck with me, and made me think that this must be a definitive work of rock’n'roll literature, and that I must, some day, get round to it. My sister-in-law and her husband bought it for me this Christmas, so I finally have. (more…)
0 comments 2008-02-02 18:10 Categories: Books, Music, Reviews
Bill Watterson’s review of David Michaelis’s biography of Charles “Sparky” Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, is a fair representation and, written as it is from the viewpoint of another brilliant comics artist, is probably the best introduction available. That review dates from before the controversy kicked up by Schulz’s family called Michaelis’s account into question, however, and therefore makes no mention of the alleged problems with the book. Shortly after publication the New York Times printed a brief article detailing the family’s main objections, and more remarkable still is this thread of comments on Cartoon Brew, in which four members of the family (Monte Schulz, Amy Schulz Johnson, Jill Schulz, and Jean Schulz) appear to lay into Michaelis for numerous errors and omissions, and for the overall tone of his portrayal of the artist. Michaelis indirectly addresses a few of these issues in one interview conducted before the Schulzes went on the warpath, but the NYT article presents his best response:
Mr. Michaelis said that he was surprised to hear how upset some members of the family were, but that “to their children fathers are always heroes, and very few families can see beyond that paterfamilias.” After interviewing hundreds of people, going through every one of the 17,897 comic strips Schulz drew and doing extensive research, Mr. Michaelis said, “this was the man I found.”
“Did I get the story right?” he asked. “Absolutely. No question.”
The fact that one of Schulz’s children, Amy, actually calls her father “Christ-like” in response to perceived slights in Michaelis’s book would seem to bear out the idea that her assessment, at least, may not be entirely accurate. The biographer naturally dwells on the interesting, but the interesting stuff in a life is precisely what people personally associated with that life will try to hide or revise after the fact, so we should expect a strong reaction to any account that isn’t entirely positive. Minor factual errors aside, the main complaints seem to be mostly unfounded. (more…)
0 comments 2008-01-03 11:12 Categories: Books, Comics, Reviews
Jason Shiga’s Bookhunter is one of the best comics I’ve read in ages. You can read it online at that last link, but it’s so good that everyone should go out and buy the lovely print copy, it’s even better in dead-tree format. I picked it up because I loved Fleep, and like Fleep it’s a geeky masterpiece, but Bookhunter is much funnier and, not being set completely inside a phone box, is naturally more expansive. It’s basically a crime-solving procedural, but set in a world where books are accorded a status more normally reserved for works of art and bits of shiny rock, and where librarians hold rank in the police force. It also has 1970s mainframe hacking and high-speed action sequences, and beyond that I’m not going to say any more because I don’t want to spoil the story. Read it now.
0 comments 2007-12-08 11:31 Categories: Books, Comics, Geek Stuff, Reviews
If you want a proper review of Leopard you’re in the wrong place. I’m not qualified enough or enthusiastic enough to bash out thousands of words about the latest version of OS X, so instead I’m just going to list a few of my initial impressions.
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0 comments 2007-11-03 13:28 Categories: Computers, Geek Stuff, Reviews
According to Adam Roberts, Jules Verne really needs the help of some good translators to enable monolingual clods like me to appreciate his works properly. I’m unable to comment on the accuracy of the translation of A Journey to the Center of the Earth that I just read, but even so, assuming that the plot is intact, I have to confess that I think this rather famous early work of Verne’s has not aged well at all. The introduction in this edition claims that the hollow-earth theory had some weight in the nineteenth century, and if that was the case then a contemporary reader may well have been entertained by the story, but for anyone aware of the most basic concepts of plate tectonics and planet formation the whole tale is completely preposterous, and I write that as a sincere fan of some fairly preposterous fiction.
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2 comments 2007-09-26 13:21 Categories: Books, Reviews