|
|
 From the back cover:
The Big Switch, Nicholas Carr’s best-selling look at the new computer revolution, makes a simple and profound statement: Computing is turning into a utility, and the effects of this transition will ultimately change society as completely as the advent of cheap electricity did. From the software business to the newspaper business, from job creation to community formation, from national defense to personal identity, The Big Switch provides a panoramic view of the new world being conjured from the circuits of the “World Wide Computer.”
This is a fascinating, and terrifying book. Anyone who blogs, and probably anyone who reads this blog, really should be reading it. Carr first outlines what computing as a utility really means. He explores the difference that our newest essential utility – electricity – had on our lives, and then extrapolates what happened there to computing and the internet, which has become an essential part of almost everyone’s life in the United States and in many other countries. I really enjoyed these historical sections and I felt like Carr laid everything out clearly enough to make fairly boring subjects sound really exciting and relevant. He makes it really clear that the development of electricity only seems linear in hindsight, and so we cannot really expect the development of the internet to seem the same way at the moment, or expect that all wild predictions about it will eventually come true.
Carr uses the second half of the book to explore what widespread use of the internet has done to society. He attempts to show that rather than widening our horizons, the internet narrows them as we can be more and more specific about who we associate with, what we look for, and what we contribute to. He cites an experiment which showed that even if people had only a mild preference to live around one or two people like them, they ended up with a neighborhood split between different races. He extrapolates this to the internet and it definitely had me thinking about the many splits in the blogosphere. There are definitely splits between just book bloggers, let alone the many other “types” of bloggers out there, so his analogy obviously isn’t far off. He also demonstrates how the great deal of culture happening on the internet for free is seriously degrading jobs, yet another event that has actually come to pass more so than when the book was written. People will now happily research, write articles, and make videos, among other things, and distribute their results for absolutely nothing, all taking away paid jobs. Another aspect of this was how few people are required to run businesses through the internet. There is a guy who runs a dating website in Canada all by himself, earning thousands per day. He shows how the internet is becoming essential and inevitable to our lives, and then how it’s already changing everything. He doesn’t offer any solutions to what he clearly is casting as a problem, but as he demonstrates how wrong predictions have been in the past, it would be almost hypocritical of him to suggest what should be done.
I don’t want to go into more of this book because it truly is fascinating and scary in many ways. As someone who uses the internet daily and often for hours, its relevance to my own activities was quite startling. I read this one for The Newsweek 50 Books for Our Times reading project hosted by My Friend Amy, and seriously, it is worthy of its spot on that list. This is very appropriate for our time. Of course, I suspect it will become outdated because not everything will happen as Carr implies, but The Big Switch is a thoughtful, absorbing, and somewhat terrifying read for 2009, and for 2010.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 As a young Norseman, it is Eyvind’s ultimate dream to become a Wolfskin, a warrior dedicated to Thor, his life sworn to do the warrior god’s bidding. As a strong, tall boy, with his older brother a Wolfskin, no one doubts that Eyvind’s dream will come true. One summer, Eyvind’s brother brings a boy, the younger brother of one of his friends, and asks Eyvind to make him more of a man. Reluctantly, Eyvind takes this small, strange boy under his wing, teaching him what he knows as he is startled by Somerled’s goals and questions. Eyvind is so unsettled by Somerled, and so pitying towards the friendless boy, that he even makes an oath of brotherhood to him, sworn in blood. The disastrous consequences of that oath only become clear on a journey to the Orkney islands, when Somerled’s ambition takes over and Eyvind must fight in a completely new way to save a woman he loves and her culture.
Readers of this blog will surely know that Juliet Marillier is one of my very favorite authors. This is one of her earlier works and I think lacks something of the polish that she’s acquired over the past few years, but I still loved it.
The beginning of the book was a bit slow and perhaps put me off initially racing through it like I had intended. The relationship between Eyvind and Somerled is complex and often frustrating; as a reader I wanted to hit Somerled and even Eyvind when he didn’t seem to see the truth of things. Moreover, the back cover told me that they were going to set off on a voyage, and I basically wanted them to go. Once they did, I felt the story really started, but also discovered that the slow beginning and building of Somerled’s character is really what made the rest of the book rich, understandable, and fascinating. Somerled is clearly the villain here, but he is also a multi-faceted character that reveals different aspects of himself to different people. His relationship with Eyvind is the only way to see what really goes on in his mind.
As ever with Juliet Marillier, I also fell hard for the love story. She always weaves them seamlessly into a larger plot, giving me virtually everything I want from a big fantasy novel. Eyvind doesn’t only fall in love. He also deals with the reality of his life as a warrior, betrayal by his best friend, and learns strength that he didn’t realize he had. He makes shifts in his thinking and develops as a character remarkably. Marillier has a wonderful touch with these developments and with character relations. She hasn’t let me down here. The plot feels as though it moves very quickly through the last three hundred pages, but it’s all woven up with precision and beauty. This one lacks the fairy tale feel of much of her other work, but doesn’t fail to be a great story.
Wolfskin was a lovely historical fantasy that I can definitely recommend. I’m very much looking forward to Foxmask, which picks up with the children of some of these characters some years on.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
In conjunction with my 2010 medieval reading challenge, A Tournament of Reading, I’ve come up with a list of books in each of the three categories that I recommend. First, here’s my list of potential reads, at the King level of course:
- Mistress of the Art of Death, Ariana Franklin (historical fiction)
- The Making of the Middle Ages, R.W. Southern (history)
- The Needle in the Blood, Sarah Bower (historical fiction)
- The Knight and the Rose, Isolde Martyn (historical romance)
- Lady of the Roses, Sandra Worth (historical fiction)
- Cluny: In Search of God’s Lost Empire, Edward Mullins (history)
- The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery Kempe (medieval literature)
- English Society in the Later Middle Ages, Maurice Keen (history)
- The Mabinogion, unknown author (medieval literature)
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, unknown author (medieval literature)
And the many books that you could read:
History
- The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer
- Blood and Roses by Helen Castor
- Eleanor of Aquitaine by Alison Weir
- Queen Isabella by Alison Weir
- The Perfect King: The Life of Edward I by Ian Mortimer
- The Making of the Middle Ages by R.W. Southern
- The First Crusade: A New History by Thomas Asbridge
- The Crusades by Jonathan Riley-Smith
- The Making of England to 1399 by C. Warren Hollister
- Chivalry by Maurice Keen
- English Society in the Later Middle Ages by Maurice Keen
- The Crusades by Hans Eberhard Mayer
- The Anglo-Saxons by James Campbell
Historical Fiction
- Elizabeth Chadwick
- Sharon Kay Penman
- Nicole Galland
- Susan Higginbotham
- Sandra Worth
- Helen Hollick
- Bernard Cornwell (Agincourt, Saxon Chronicles series, Grail Quest series, Arthurian series)
- Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
- Katherine by Anya Setton
- Company of Liars by Karen Maitland
- The Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower
- Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
- The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follett
- Flint by Margaret Redfern
- Twilight of Avalon by Anna Elliott
- Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross
- The Founding by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Medieval Literature
- The romances of Chretien de Troyes
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (and really anything else that Chaucer wrote or translated)
- Gawain and the Green Knight by Gawain-poet
- Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
- Beowulf
- The Mabinogion
- The Memoirs of Margery Kempe
If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments for others (and for me)!
Took me long enough, didn’t it?
This challenge is designed to get us all reading a little more medieval literature in 2010. The challenge will run from January 1st to December 31st, 2010, and will be hosted right here at Medieval Bookworm. Challenge genres include history, medieval literature, and historical fiction. Medieval, for simplicity of definition, will be from 500-1500, and literature from all over the world is welcome, not just western Europe. There are 3 levels:
- Peasant – Read 3 medieval books of any kind.
- Lord – Read 6 medieval books, at least one of each kind.
- King – Read 9 medieval books, at least two of each kind.
You’re not required to make a list or stick to one, but it would be fun if you did! A recommendations post will also be up today, to help you make choices.
When you finish a book, pop your link onto this page.
To sign up, just click below and add your name and sign up post to the McLinky below. Sick of writing sign up posts? Just put your blog URL, so I know who’s planning on doing the challenge. You can sign up at any time.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! I’m probably not taking a blogging break over this holiday season, but I doubt I’ll be around much today – and that’s how it should be. I hope you’re all having a fantastic time with family and friends. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a fantastic weekend anyway and a wonderful start to 2010 next week.
 Leopard Bloom King is an awkward, ugly 18-year-old with few friends. His life has been a mess ever since his brother, Stephen, killed himself at only ten years old. After spending years in mental institutions and later caught with cocaine in his pocket, Leo’s life has been anything but normal. In the summer before his senior year of high school, he meets the people who will influence the rest of his life, forming friendships and bonds that will prove stronger than anything Leo has known previously. Years later, their friendship will remain of primary importance to Leo as he and they must endure extraordinary hardships brought on by nature, the human mind, and a terrible disease.
My only previous experience with Pat Conroy was The Water Is Wide, a memoir that I just adored in high school, and I’ve meant to read more by him ever since. So when I opened this book, it was with a great deal of anticipation. And I enjoyed this story; the beginning feels slow and meandering, accustoming readers to the feel and the flow of South Carolina and the beginning of teenage friendships that are meant to last. The second section is more exciting and begins to encompass the troubles that these friendships have wrought even as they have brought blessings. The third section gives us another peek into the origin of the group, and the final section includes their pivotal struggle against a madman and a hurricane.
The story is indeed big and sprawling as the back cover promises, but I still wanted more. Largely, I wanted more of the origins of these friendships. I still found it hard to understand why they all coped with Chad, a member of the arrogant Southern aristocracy determined to put everyone down, or some of the other members of the group. I saw how they came together, but I suppose I didn’t understand how it lasted for all of the members of this group. Their conversations were entertaining, but rang somewhat untrue for me, and I just couldn’t believe anyone like Sheba Poe actually existed. Who stage manages their entry into a house party of close friends? The later sections were powerful, but without that essential basis, at times I couldn’t believe in the story.
And that’s a shame, because the story is quite a wild ride through almost every issue you can name. The friends go in search of a missing member of the group and have to deal with death, rape, adultery, and murder among their ranks. They even have a natural disaster pitted against them. The book resonates with the strength and feel of Charleston, a place I’ve never been to but would quite like to visit now. Conroy is an excellent writer and can make the words on the page simply come alive, even as he packs the story full with almost too much trauma.
South of Broad is a good book that, I think, has unfortunately missed being great. Still, I am encouraged to read more of Conroy’s works, as I think he is an excellent writer and is still worth my time.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review here.
 The first crusade is one of history’s most peculiar moments. Inspired by a speech that will probably never be known in its entirety, hoards of western Europeans embarked on a crusade to “save” their fellow Christians, the Greeks, from Muslims and recapture Jerusalem. Against all the odds, the crusaders succeeded in a way that was never repeated, and changed relations between religions in ways that still affect behavior to this day. Thomas Asbridge takes this familiar story and recasts it, considering again the evidence that historians have always relied upon and offering up new ideas for consideration.
I really enjoyed this detailed look at the first crusade. I’ve read a number of books on the crusades, but they largely covered the whole of the crusading movement. This narrative brought my favorite professor’s voice right back to me while still questioning some of the theories that historians have relied upon. Perhaps my favorite of these was the way Asbridge explored, in detail, the motives behind the crusade. He postulates that Pope Urban wasn’t the first to come up with the idea of a papal army and that the papacy desperately needed a way to assert their own strength in an age of weakness and poor communication. He could not have truly expected the vast response to his call for a crusade.
More interesting is the way in which Muslims actually treated Christians fairly before the crusade. There is no record of any of the cruelties Urban accused them of (according to witnesses after the crusade had already happened; the speech itself has been lost), but rather fairness and freedom of worship. The crusaders abolished this, but he goes on in later chapters to write about dealings between Christians and Muslims, making it clear that eradicating Islam was not the crusaders’ goal, even if they succeeded in earning enmity from all Muslims because of their barbaric cruelty. Asbridge doesn’t spare the details.
For a history which was clearly done with effective scholarship in mind, this book is not at all dry, and the action sequences can be quite exciting. I often found myself feeling strong emotions towards the crusaders, generally disgust and irritation at their behavior towards the Muslims. Mostly, I was amazed that this happened, and reading the history again only confirmed that for me. This is the sort of history that is almost unbelievable, but it happened, and it’s very worth reading about. Not only does it make for a fascinating story, but it even sheds light on the complex issues which Christians and Muslims still struggle with today in regards to their relations with one another. This is an essential part of the development of the world and Asbridge’s book is a wonderful place to start thinking about it.
I highly recommend The First Crusade and I’m very much looking forward to Asbridge’s overall look at the crusades, which is publishing next year. I will be reviewing that in 2010, so if this review has interested you at all, stay tuned.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book from the publisher free for review here.
 Today is my very first Classics Circuit tour review. I’m loving all these posts, and have been very excited to host Elizabeth Gaskell on my blog today. I’ve read and enjoyed three books by her, and today I’m featuring Ruth, a book to which I had a very different reaction.
When Ruth Hilton’s parents died, she was left one of many apprentices to a seamstress by her guardian, a man she only ever saw once. Ruth, who is beautiful and kind, cannot help remembering and missing her parents, not to mention her country rambles and freedom. When she gets to attend a ball as an amateur maid, she meets Mr Bellingham, a gentleman who is compelled by her beauty and asks her to call him friend. Ruth’s inexperience with the world means that she accepts his friendship and somehow finds herself becoming his mistress. His mother disapproves, and when Mr Bellingham falls ill, she seizes her opportunity and Ruth is left alone and pregnant in a Victorian world that is almost unbearably harsh on fallen women.
I am of two minds on Ruth. The first is that I admire Gaskell’s plan for her novel. She sets out to in a sense rescue the virtuous, repenting fallen woman from her sin. The double standard in nineteenth century England was far more damaging and prevalent than it is today, when it seems impossible that anyone could really hate a woman simply because she was with a man before they were married, let alone torment the poor illegitimate child based on something that was not his or her fault. I enjoyed the social commentary that this novel certainly was, and I went into it knowing that in its time Ruth had had a surprisingly strong welcome. I knew it was exposing a crack in a changing society and in that way it was very interesting for me.
As a story, however, it wasn’t the most compelling book I’ve ever read, and I actually hope it will become increasingly less relevant as the double standard for men and women in terms of sexual activity fades away. Most of the book really seems centered on the idea that Ruth is a perfect, virtuous woman and mother. Had her parents lived longer and educated her on the dangers of men, it’s implied that she might have suspected what was coming when she went to London with Mr Bellingham, but as it was she’s completely blameless, not even realizing what she’s done until she is mocked on the street in Wales after she’d been living in sin for a while. This also seems strange because her son, much younger than she was at the time of her folly, cannot have experienced the same level of education yet but is fully cognizant of Ruth’s mistake and what it means for him. Things don’t add up. I think the book would have been vastly more interesting had Ruth been fully aware of what she was doing, rather than seeming just a victim of a harsh society and an opportunist gentleman.
In other words, Ruth is just too perfect, and perfect in a very Victorian way, for a modern reader to sympathize with. I even wound up liking Jemima Bradshaw better, despite the fact that she’s rich, sulky, and is jealous of a poor woman, simply because she has more layers as a character and actually believably repents of her negative emotions by the end of the novel, albeit after she is in a position of security. I admire the fact that Gaskell was showing how a woman could make a mistake and still remain the woman she was before, that premarital sex didn’t make a woman into a despicable immoral creature, but Ruth did little else for me.
For a classic, however, this is a very easy read, and my edition was under 400 pages. Things seem to move along at a brisk pace for the most part and it’s an interesting look at a society that has gone but still leaves its mark on our lives. Regardless, I think I’d recommend North and South or Cranford above Ruth, if one is trying out Gaskell for the first time.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Born right in the midst of the Renaissance, Michelangelo is a brilliant artist living through turbulent times in Italy. Though he impresses his first painting master, Michelangelo longs to be a sculpter, only feeling at home with a hammer and chisel in his hand as he brings to life the being inside the stone. Intertwining his life with the influential first family of Florence, the Medicis, Michelangelo does learn to sculpt, but that is only the beginning of the life of one of Italy’s greatest artists.
This massive book is subtitled “a biographical novel of Michelangelo” and it certainly attempts that feat. From his teenage years, before which I’m assuming very little is known, right up to his death, Irving Stone does his very best to cover it all in detail. I learned more about sculpting, painting, and the many other things that Michelangelo gets up to than I’d ever really expected to. We even hear about the particular types of stone in Italy and how they are quarried. I was astounded by the sheer amount of information Stone appears to have gathered on his subject. He has a more extensive bibliography in the back than I’ve seen in some popular non-fiction books.
As for the book itself, I will admit that sometimes its prose drags. Stone is a bit of an old-fashioned writer, as the book is from 1961, and it takes a little adjusting to his style. It doesn’t help that he includes every detail about everything you could possibly imagine. I think, however, that its epic scope and immersion in Michelangelo’s life are totally worth it. I spent days with this book and I really enjoyed those days. I know a little about Renaissance Italy, and it was fascinating to see it from his perspective, particularly because his family wasn’t hugely wealthy. I felt like I was experiencing both the life of the rich and the life of the ordinary, even though Michelangelo himself was truly extraordinary.
More so, this book somehow made me long to actually see Michelangelo’s sculptures for myself. I’m glad I live in the UK now, because I can plan a trip to Italy and see all of his existing sculptures and paintings. The Agony and the Ecstasy has made me appreciate just what it took to produce such art, and as a result I expect my admiration of it will be far greater. This is a wonderful book, and I do recommend it.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Even though he lives in a world where happiness – and mindlessness – is the central focus, Bernard Marx is unhappy. Because he was born an intelligent alpha, but has the physical stature of a much lower-classed citizen, he has never been the focus for women, has often been mocked, and finds himself discontented with everything around him. He decides to go to New Mexico, where he can meet savages, people who exist as they did before the World Controllers took over. Perhaps the people he discovers there will teach him to be happy and cure him of his mindless existence.
I’m a big fan of dystopias like this. I loved The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and 1984 by George Orwell, among others. I didn’t have the exact same reaction to this book, and I found my answer in the introduction.
This world is eerily creepy; genetic engineering is certainly better than it was when Huxley was writing, and so his opening sequence, where guests are taken through a child-making factory as the embryos are divided and conformed to certain expectations, then brainwashed to love their status in life, is extraordinarily effective. I had a lot of hope for the rest of the book as I was reading it, but almost as soon as we were introduced to the characters, my hopes virtually fizzled.
For one thing, Huxley hasn’t decided whether or not it’s capitalism or communism that is horrible, and this is what the introduction clarified for me. Neither of the two theories portrayed in the book is highlighted as more prominent or more satisfying. Both existences are virtually meaningless, and so rather than making me worried about the future of the world, I just ended up conflicted and dissatisfied with what has been created here.
Worse, I didn’t have anyone to root for. The characters wind up unhappy wherever they are. The worst part is when Bernard comes back from the reservation and becomes totally content; in other words, he’s just shallow. He doesn’t have any real dispute with his world except that a mistake meant he didn’t fit in properly. So there is no real focal point for the reader to target, no one to sympathize with and hope for their escape. As a result, the world, which could have been so affecting, falls totally flat.
As a result, I definitely didn’t like Brave New World as much as I’d hoped. I’m glad I borrowed it from the library and didn’t spend money on it. I am an Amazon Associate.
|
|
Recent Comments