Cussedness
The natural cussedness of things in general.
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Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis
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…)
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Bookhunter by Jason Shiga
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.
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Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
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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A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
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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The Road Home by Rose Tremain
Sometimes the reading of a book is inextricably tied to the place and time in which it is read. Sometimes reality insists on throwing up events that will remain in the memory of the reader, permanently associating themselves with the story being read. It takes a special kind of book to override the reader’s feelings towards those events, to allow the reader to engage fully with the story separately from what is happening to and around them in the real world. The Road Home did that for me.
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The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien
Apparently there is some debate about which Tolkien was responsible for The Silmarillion; whether it is mostly genuine J.R.R. or made up by his son C.J.R. seems a rather boring question to me, a book is a book irrespective of who wrote it, but I suppose such fascinating discussions keep literature students off the streets and out of trouble.
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The Children of Húrin by J.R.R.Tolkien
There are those in this world who do not appreciate the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Should you self-identify as a member of this group, you should probably read no futher; I am a dork for Tolkien, and have been ever since, aged eight, I read The Hobbit far past bedtime, in a sliver of illumination from the landing light. I can appreciate that many cannot abide his writing, however, and I wouldn’t dream of trying to proselytise. He is an idiosyncratic writer indeed; I had to give up when attempting The Silmarillion for the first time, overwhelmed by the slew of genealogies and largely characterless warring individuals making up at least the first part of that intimidating book. I was, therefore, a little wary of this latest release from J.R.R Industries Incorporated, but am happy to say that whilst The Children of Húrin is not as readable as The Lord of The Rings, it is still an engaging and interesting tale, and I can recommend it to anyone who enjoys the more famous stories of Prof. Tolkien and would like to find a way into the history and mythologies that underlie those works. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I’ve returned to The Silmarillion for another attempt, and I am finding it much easier going this time around. It’s still a ridiculously large tome though, and this (in combination with digressionary re-readings of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) has resulted in the distinct lack of other reading-related posts recently.
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The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
McCullers is one of those authors I have seen frequently and reverently referred to, but who I have never actually read. I have to confess that The Member of the Wedding has left me rather nonplussed, probably because I am not sufficiently American to appreciate the scenery, and never having been a twelve year old girl I am unable to really relate to the protagonist, Frankie, who I found infuriating. McCullers captures the self-centredness of childhood very well. She may also have captured a picture-perfect snapshot of the deep south of the USA during WW2, but as everything is refracted through Frankie’s eyes it’s hard to tell. Berenice, the family servant, provides some relief, and allows us to see a little way beyond the claustrophobic bounds of Frankie’s universe; her commentary on life as a black woman in the 1940s south is compelling. The writing is similarly mixed, shot through by vivid imagery, but is hard to engage with, much like the novel itself.
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Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
I know, I can’t believe I’d never read it before now either. It’s great stuff, although the descriptive travelogue sections are a little eye-glazing. Overall I think I prefer 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, but the ending of Around the World in 80 Days is supremely well crafted.
You don’t look for complex characterisation in adventure stories like this, so I was unsurprised by the numerous similarities between Captain Nemo and Phileas Fogg, who are both of a rather fantastic type: silent, stong, deeply rational, and almost superhuman in their abilities. They both sprang to mind when I was, quite coincidentally, reading this article about psychopaths, found floating around on Reddit this morning. I couldn’t help thinking that Phileas Fogg has quite a few psychopathic character traits, so I decided to do an evaluation of his personality using a completely unscientific method based very loosely on the PCL-R checklist lifted from the Wikipedia page on psychopathy.
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Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland
Many of the chapters in Irrationality end with a succinct list of
morals
detailing how one should act when attempting to behave rationally. Here are three typical examples:Think carefully before announcing a decision publicly: you will find it harder to change.
No matter how much time, effort or money you have invested in a project, cut your losses if investing more will not be beneficial.
Don’t take important decisions when under stress or strong emotion.
Stated like this they appear stunningly obvious, yet throughout this splendid book Stuart Sutherland details numerous cases of people and organisations acting directly counter to these sorts of basic rational principles. Each moral is set out as a response to a particular flavour of irrationality demonstrated every single day by supposedly intelligent human beings the world over.
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