Bourgeois Book Club

The Milkweed Triptych (Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War, Necessary Evil) by Ian Tregillis

I thought it impossible that I'd never written about in the annals of Bourgeois Book Club. But, when I began to write about the climactic final entry of the series, I found to my utter shock that I had in fact not written about the two preceding volumes at all. This oversight must be immediately rectified. And perhaps it is for the best, since its recent completion allows for broader perspective, and also allows you, dear readers, to gain immediate gratification instead of having to wait between volumes.

The Milkweed Triptych is an alternate history of spies, magic, and mad science in World War II and the Cold War. Imagine that Hitler, the Holocaust, the Eastern Front, the firebombing of Dresden, the Blitz, all of the horror and death and destruction of World War II... was the lesser of two evils? That in order to save the world, it had to be condemned to one of its lowest and most dangerous eras? That condemning millions to suffering and death in order is required to save the human race from extinction at the hands of malevolent, omnipotent beings? Spy thriller, science fiction, Lovecraftian fantasy, supervillains and magicians, apocalypse and time travel, The Milkweed Triptych has it all.

The trilogy crackles with excitement, but overflows with pathos and human emotion. The heroes, an unlikely pair of British secret agents, and probably one of the best, and most diabolical, villainesses I've ever encountered, make it a thrilling, but still intelligent, read. I simply cannot recommend it enough.

A History of Ancient Egypt by John Romer

A History of Ancient Egypt is a history of hardnosed materialism. Romer's contention is that what we have are the debris of prehistory, and thus any "history" can only say what the objects tell us. All else is projection, often of the assumptions of 19th-century anthropological and imperialist ideology.

Using nothing but the artifacts of the Nile inhabitants themselves, Romer emphasizes the dynamism and contingency of prehistoric Egypt in contrast to the staid and conservative culture of later pharaonic history. Civilization did not emerge fully-formed, but was the natural consequence of developments centuries in the making. Kingship, the state, organized warfare etc. were all new innovations then; thus, we cannot necessarily project back onto them the ideologies and assumptions of empires and politics of later periods. Not splendid isolation, but intense contact and influence. Instead of grand wars of unification between Upper and Lower Egypt, for example, Romer sees simple cultural agglomeration. Instead of grand isolation, Romer sees an early Egypt very much plugged into the cultural ferment of the greater Fertile Crescent.

Though its committed materialism is a bracing contrast to more conventional treatments of early Egyptian history, A History of Ancient Egypt is Far inferior as a literary work to Toby Wilkinson's The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. Indeed, it has no real narrative force at all, and reads more like a report than anything. Romer is interested much more in specificity than in overview. He concentrates on specific archaeological sites and finds. To be fair, however, they are involved in different programs. Wilkinson's is a broader, more conservative, historiographical overview, while Romer is much more focused and a bit iconoclastic.

I'd recommend A History of Ancient Egypt for the committed amateur Egyptologist, if only as a bracing tonic to more familiar historical treatments, but not really for anyone interested in a good read.


The Daedalus Incident by Michael A. Martinez

Perhaps it says something about my reading tastes, or perhaps it says something about the inherent fluidity of genre, but you may have noticed over the years of Bourgeois Book Club, that a lot of the reviewed books don't fit neatly into just one genre category. One need not even look farther than the top of this very post to see an example of this. But nothing I've ever read before combines the strange and unexpected melange of genres that characterizes The Daedalus Incident.

Swashbuckling a la Patrick O'Brien. Lovecraftian horror. Burroughsian pulp adventure. Alternate history. Alchemy. Science fiction thriller. In one universe, a Royal Navy officer must struggle to discover how and why a supposedly dead Mars has suddenly come alive geologically. In another universe, a Royal Navy space ship, complete with masts, sails, and cannons, must race from the seedy ports of Mercury to the alien worlds of Saturn and the deadly sands of Mars on the trail of murderous alchemists. Conspiracy draws the universes together in a collision of science, alchemy, and ancient history that could shake the fate of both universes.

Martinez masterfully integrates all these strange elements into an entertaining yarn, while integrating what could have been two totally different stories together. It's a worthy accomplishment, and one I very much enjoyed.

Bourgeois Book Club

I'm so very, very behind, and very, very remiss in my Book Club duties.  This has been sitting in Draft for months waiting for me to give it the attention it deserves.  I've been reading a lot, and a lot of good stuff, but just haven't felt motivated to write about them.  But the time has come; I can no longer tolerate my own dereliction.

As you'll notice, I've been on a bit of a science fiction bender.  I've just read nothing noteworthy in fantasy or mystery.  Maybe late Fall will change that, but this edition of Bourgeois Book Club all about the sci-fi (and a little philosophical investigation).  

Why Does The World Exist? by Jim Holt

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" is either the most important question ever formulated, the fundamental question, or an absurd bit of metaphysical fiddlefaddle.  Either way, it is a powerful question, one that has confounded even the greatest minds.  To attempt to answer it is an audacious undertaking.  Some might even say a task verging on hubris.  But it is the question Holt adroitly and skillfully ponders in Why Does The World Exist?

If one is unafraid of the accusation of narcissism, the highest compliment that can be paid to a book is that it is the book one would have written.  Though I fancy myself to be a non-narcissist, I can't help but say that Holt has written the book I would like to have written.  I am glad that he was the one who wrote it, though, because he did a much better job of it than I ever could have.  Contemplation of Nothing and the problem of existence has occupied my mind many a night. 

The subtitle of the book is an "Existential Detective Story," and what detective worth his or her salt doesn't interview the suspects?  Holt crisscrosses the world interviewing theologians, philosophers, and scientists to survey a wide variety of viewpoints on the question.  They provide a broad survey of possible answers to the question, though I must purse my lips in disapproval that all of Holt's interviewees and historical characters are white men, most of them of an eminent age as well.  (This lack of diversity is perhaps my only real disappointment in the book.)

Of course, Holt doesn't actually answer the question.  No one can.  But he does at least consider the possibilities.  And the personal reflections provide an emotional perspective that grounds a book about often extremely abstract, even abstruse, concepts. It is appropriate, too, because why is the question of why the world exists so compelling?  It is because it is emotional.  Just think of the great nonexistence: death.  We worry about Nothing because we fear that it is just another name for Death.  I recently lost my father in a way fairly similar to the loss of his mother as described in the penultimate chapter of the book.  It is the sort of time where these questions come up, when existence seems most fragile and inexplicable.  To face it head-on, intellectually, unreservedly, exuberantly, can be a great comfort.

I really can't recommend Why Does The World Exist? enough.  Even if you're not much one for philosophy or physics, it's still a worthwhile and engaging read.  It is also surprisingly accessible; though many of the ideas are hard, the prose never is, written with clarity and a great deal of (often nerdy) humor.  It's what a book about Ideas should always strive to be. 

Champion of Mars by Guy Haley

Set in the same universe as his Richards and Klein books, this is the "future" "history" of Mars through the eyes of its champions and guardians as they battle first to tame and shape the world and then defend it from mind-bending horrors.  Excellent, Burroughsian (quite intentionally, I presume) adventure, though with that Burroughsian-ness comes a slightly... retro role for the women, I thought, which was disappointing.  Still, great read.

Existence by David Brin

A clever and intriguing look at alien contact and its effects on humanity.  Its effect is diminished somewhat by what, in my opinion, was an abrupt and unsatisfying jump in the final third of the book farther down the timeline, leaving a lot of the characters we grew to care about basically dangling.  But regardless, a very thought-provoking and interestingly speculative read.

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

An interesting blend of what I guess you would call "environmental science fiction" and mystery set in a future where humanity has spread throughout the solar system. It is marred a bit by the underwhelming resolution of the mystery, but an interesting read nonetheless.  I oddly appreciated that the main character is actually not always terribly sympathetic.  At times, she's downright unbearable, but in a believable way.  She's human.

The Fractal Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi

The sequel to last year's The Quantum Thief, it continues the story of a thief navigating the far-future politics of a Solar System divided between literally god-like entities.  Instead of the Mars of The Quantum Thief, this time we travel to a post-Apocolyptic Earth, where wild nanites and code made anything outside of the Arabian Nights-esque (complete with "jinn") city of Sirr dangerous, and the intrigues of the other Solar System powers threaten everyone, including the prostitute/storyteller daughter of the city's greatest family.  

Tales within tales, storytelling as literally a matter of life and death, and "magic" all makes this a tale worthy of Scheherazade, if Scheherazade was a quantum physicist.  As with The Quantum Thief, I think it would take more than one read to understand a lot of it (in fact, some things in The Quantum Thief are spelled out in The Fractal Prince that caused me to pause with a "Wait, what?!" because I didn't pick up on them there), but it doesn't matter, because it's still a damn good adventure, laced with tragic love, futurist speculation, and heroism. 

The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks

The latest Culture novel from Iain M. Banks explores the last days of a civilization on the brink of, for all intents and purposes, apotheosis.  But secrets from the past, and the ambitions of younger races, threaten what is supposed to be a peaceful and joyous transition, and the super Minds of the Culture and a four-armed musician race to uncover the past.

Yet another ambitious and absorbing adventure from Banks.  It is not my favorite of the Culture novels, but it is still in the top tier (which is really anything other than Matter, honestly).  I particularly liked how Cassont, the aforementioned four-armed musician, is really not a terribly extraordinary person (at least when compared to the androids, super-AIs, and ten-thousand-year-old hermits that surround her), but just a fairly average, quite pleasant person thrust into extraordinary circumstances through a mere chance acquaintanceship from her youth.  And she doesn't become a superhero or anything by the end, either, just someone coping with an unlooked-for adventure, and finding hidden reserves of character along the way.  I just found that part relateable. 

As ever with Banks, there are other, more weighty things lurking, about what the consequences of immortality are, the choices societies make, how far one will go to gain the truth or cover up a lie and what to do with that information once you get it, and the fragility of history and the profound effects it has.  But these weighty topics serve to enhance, rather than detract from, the story, which keeps up its pace and its twistiness throughout.

Also as always with the Culture novels, one need not have ever read one to pick up, enjoy, and understand this one.  While I urge you to read them all, and the pleasure of the books is enhanced by knowledge of the others, it is more a universe that Banks plays in than a serial narrative that must be approached chronologically.  So dive in and enjoy the ride!

Bourgeois Book Club

The Art Detective by Philip Mould

Art is fragile. Pigments chemically change, light fades, dirt obscures, overenthusiastic restorers of yesteryear overclean and overpaint. Then there are the hoaxes and forgeries, the misattributions and the mistakes, and just the plain occultation of time. This memoir of the art world by Antiques Roadshow (UK) valuer, British portrait specialist, and Dickensian-named Philip Mould takes us through the detective work, scientific and archival, necessary to take an ugly duckling picture in some dingy shed and turn it, through the magic of restoration and provenance, into a beautiful swan at auction. It's a treasure hunt through old churches, forgotten attics, and disused corridors to find the mislabeled and misidentified, the neglected and the damaged, for those rare birds.

The portrait of Mould painted by his writing is that of a tweed-jacketed, pipe-smoking good egg with a plummy accent; sadly, however, he doesn't have the moustache, mane of white hair, and stylish, but unstated, eyewear I had pictured. (I can neither confirm nor deny based on that picture whether he smokes a pipe or wears tweed jackets.) He's terrific at sketching out the oddballs and eccentrics of the art world, always with good humor and sympathy. Indeed, good humor is one of the most appealing aspects of the book, though often with a very British subtlety and wryness. Mould takes art seriously, but neither himself nor his fellow man thus.

Mould is particularly interesting when talking about the role of connoisseurship in art. All of today's high-tech analysis and readily available scholarly material, as important and fascinating as they are (and Mould goes into some detail about them), can't quite replace the in-depth knowledge of a painter or school. Sometimes, millions of dollars ride on nothing more than a gut feeling. But that's all part of the game that Mould so beautifully describes: the thrill of discovery, of winning over rivals, of uncovering neglected art.

An absolute delight and most highly recommended.

Farlander by Col Buchanan

The assassin Ash is an exile on the cusp of death. Nico is a homeless youth from a besieged and beleaguered island. After a robbery gone wrong, Nico agrees to become Ash's apprentice in the arts of killing.

The Empire of Mann is an expansionist theocracy dedicated to a Nietzschean religion based on conscienceless cruelty, debauchery, and butchery. When the son of the Holy Matriarch kills a girl under the protection of the Roshun assassin order, Ash and Nico, along with Ash's great rival and his apprentice, are dispatched to assail the very heart and stronghold of the Empire and take lethal revenge. Meanwhile, the war between Mann and Nico's homeland, the Mercian Free Ports, the last remaining free nation around the Midere sea, enters what could be its final, catastrophic phase and signal Mann's final triumph.

A shocking ending, compelling characters, and a host of varied viewpoints make this a well-above-average fantasy. Bits of steampunk, such as dirigibles and gaslights, seem a bit tacked-on and cosmetic more than integral, but they don't really detract, either. The exploration of the psychological and sociological tolls of war, especially what it means to be brave and survive, is thought-provoking and something you don't often see in fantasy. Definitely worth a read.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Diana Bishop is the heir of two magical lines, but determined to lead a normal, human life as a historian of sciences, specifically seventeenth century chemistry, without the burden or crutch of magic. Unfortunately, an alchemical manuscript pulled from the shelves of the Bodleian for her latest research project blows the carefully constructed wall of separation between her heritage and scholarship clear away. Her discovery attracts the attention of Michael Clairmont, vampire biochemist and neuroscientist, and a host of other daemons, witches, and vampires, as these things incidents invariably do.

Honestly, though it sounds like I read the whole book, I couldn't get past the first hundred pages. As if I didn't feel like enough of a misogynist this week, I find that the book by a female in this edition of Bourgeois Book Club is the one I'm going to pan. I'm all about the infodumps, but something about Harkness's exposition just grates. I found I had no connection to the characters, and surprisingly little interest in the world. The romance was a little too Twilighty for me. Michael, who like all vampires just happens to be devastatingly attractive, just finds her instantly irresistible and Diana finds him mysteriously alluring and it all just is unconvincing. He actually breaks into her house and watches her sleep! Way to be creepy!

It's a book I expected to enjoy, and it's getting good notices, but somehow, despite being right in my remit, it turned me right cold. Maybe if I did my full duty as a reviewer and finished the book, I'd find it ultimately satisfying, but I just can't summon the energy to continue with a book that I'm disliking. I'm just a bad, baaaaaaaad reviewer, I guess. I'll put it away for a while, though, and maybe if I come back to it I'll be able to enjoy it more and finish it.

On a more positive, but shallow, note: it has an absolutely gorgeous cover. Really, one of the prettiest I've ever seen. And it smells really good, too, with thick, creamy paper that's a delight to touch. (Long-time readers know I have a bit of a fetish for book texture and smell.)

Added 3/3/11: Nice to know I'm not totally crazy. It doesn't sound like I missed much by stopping.

Diversity and Review

As the annual "Year in Books" posts begin to take form in my head, and with it the realization that once again my VIDA score for this year will be rather less than ideal, this conversation about reviewing and gender is of great interest.

I honestly do take into consideration the author's background (gender, mostly, because the issue of pseudonyms aside, it's usually hard to tell sans author pictures and in-depth bios things like race or sexuality) when considering both what books to read and what to review on Bourgeois Book Club. I'm a white male, but by virtue of being gay not quite the "default," as well as being what I hope is a strong feminist and believer in racial justice, I like to think I'm committed to diversity and allowing all people's voices be heard. I'm far, far from perfect, however. We live in the society we live in, and it can't help but influence us, often unconsciously. The fact is that despite being aware of the issue, I continue to read and review male authors to a disproportionate degree.

Because of the usual lack of time resources, I've become incredibly picky in what I buy. Using various "Upcoming Releases" sources, especially that of Tor.com, I go into bookstores with a list of books already filtered and vetted. (Of course, I look at more than just the books on my list, but in general it determines what I'm looking for.) If a book doesn't grab me in the first chapter in the bookstore, it just doesn't get picked up. Is this a problem with my tastes? Am I too narrow in my reading habits and unwilling to range beyond them? Are the compilers of upcoming release posts too narrow in their own reporting? Is it a failure of the book industry that fewer women are published in my favored genres than men? Probably a whole lot of "all of the above," all of which is directly related to the persistence of systemic sexism in our society.

As for reviewing: writing Bourgeois Book Club is an ultimately extremely rewarding, but, frankly, torturous, activity. As I've stressed before, what I write about is not all I read, or even all I read that I enjoy, but only what I, for one reason or another, feel I have something particularly to talk about. Even then it sometimes takes me literal months between reading a book and the review being posted (due to perfectionism, preference to review several books in one post). Therefore, due to the previously mentioned "all of the above" filters that seems to skew my reading towards the male side, my reviews are weighted towards male authors.

This topic has particular resonance for me at the moment because I've recently noticed that  I've grown disenchanted with urban fantasy/paranormal romance, a genre that is actually female author-dominated. The genre has developed various tropes and forms that I simply do not care for, particularly in regards to romance and sex, that I can't help but fear are my gender-biases showing. Writers such as Laurell K. Hamilton, Kim Harrison, and Karen Chance, who I once enthusiastically read, have fallen by my wayside as their series have continued, and developed in these "womanly" ways. It makes me disappointed in myself.

In the end, I like what I like, and since it's not goat snuff scat porn involving trafficked children, there's nothing "wrong" with it. And I admit I'm weak, and lazy, and shy of venturing from my comfort zones. Therefore, I'm not sure how much, despite all this soul-searching and occasional writing, I'm going to change my reading habits, certainly not to the gender-swapping extreme of those in the Tor post. And that's "fine," but it isn't anything to be proud of, either. When the Revolution comes, I'm not sure how much mercy "But I wrote some blog posts and felt really bad about it!" will get me, but I suppose it's better than nothing. Not very much, though. I can only hope I can somehow at least contribute to the conversation, try to do better, and perhaps spark others to look at and evaluate their own reading habits.

Bourgeois Book Club

The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones

From the Baghdad of Harun al-Rashid to the Empty Quarter of Arabia, Desert of Souls is a rousing Arabian Nights adventure filled with stalwart warriors, clever scholars, beautiful women, dastardly magicians, capricious djinn, and fearsome monsters.

Like the Arabian Nights tales themselves, it's fully and satisfyingly-concluded but with an open end that leaves room for further adventures, which I very much look forward to reading. It's even got a nice bit of metafiction in it, in that it's a story being retold in the "future," with stories built into it, and a lot of discussion of the art of storytelling. Really stellar debut and highly recommended.

Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell

The latest quirky trip through American history by Sarah Vowell, this time exploring the story of the annexation of Hawaii.

In some ways, this book is a continuation of her last book, The Wordy Shipmates. The general story is the same: Puritan New Englanders go to a new land to settle and "civilize" and "help" the natives. It's just two hundred years later and in a tropical climate. The "help," of course, was cultural and political annihilation, as well as lethal, though on all scores the native Hawaiians fared better than the Native Americans. (That's a rather low bar to jump over, of course.) Yet, even as she skewers the fantastically condescending and drearily prim missionaries, she never demonizes them. These people were fanatical, hypocritical, and tedious, but they were moved to do what they thought was saving people, literally, from eternal torment. They left their homes and endured great hardship and danger in order to do it, too. Hawaii may be one of the top tourist spots in the world these days, but it sure wasn't back then, and just getting there was an ordeal. These were tough New Englanders, and if nothing else they do inspire a grudging respect.

And as Vowell discovers, the native Hawaiian power elite were not passive victims but gung-ho enthusiasts for Americanization and the missionaries. In just a few decades, Hawaii become one of the most literate nations in the world, the Hawaiian language got a written form, and books, newspapers, and pamphlets in Hawaiian came flying out of the presses. The first newspaper west of the Rockies was printed in Hawaii. It just doesn't boil all down to "white man bad, native good." White man is, indeed, bad, much of the time, but Kamehameha only became King of Hawaii after a brutal war in which he chased men over cliffs and dammed rivers with corpses, and he sat atop a rigidly hierarchical society that threw people off cliffs for eating the wrong snacks.

Eventually, the missionaries' descendants became sugar planters and big businessman who preferred, for both economic and cultural-imperialism reasons, American annexation to even a constitutional monarchy headed by native Hawaiians. So they couped and proceeded to depose the queen and disenfranchise most of the natives (they took post-Reconstruction Mississippi's constitution as a model for that of their own "Republic"). The U.S., on its part, was caught up in imperialist fever and the need for Pacific coaling stations. But a formal treaty of annexation, strongly opposed by the former Hawaiian Queen and her countrymen, didn't get enough votes in Congress. It was only through a series of shady legal maneuvers during the Spanish-American War that U.S. annexation came about. Far from our greatest hour.

I enjoy Vowell because of her sardonic tone, but also because I feel we share a similar attitude towards America and Americanness, at once fiercely proud, almost naive in our belief in its ideals, while also soberly aware of its dark sides. She feels that, to quote Diderot, "All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings." I also love how she loves history, in all its circuitous, absurd, astonishing, tangential glory. She's not afraid of digression.

A funny, breezy, but informative book about a little corner of American history we should know more about.

Embedded by Dan Abnett

On a faraway world known only as Eighty-Six, journalist Dan Falk gets psychically linked to a US solider in a Cold War that is about to get very, very hot. What pushed hundreds of years of wary peace into all-out combat? More importantly, how is Falk going to survive in the body of a mostly-dead solider without getting himself killed?

Abnett creates a momentum to the story that is just compellingly page-turning, with genuinely exciting action. To me, much military science fiction is nothing more than lists of weapons specs, dull descriptions of tactics, and rightwing politics (I'm looking at you, Baen), but, while there are certainly bits of future mil-porn sprinkled in, Embedded is about character and mystery and survival and seeing how a civilian sees and deals with violence. Also, not to spoil anything, but you don't realize until fairly late in the book that this is not only military-inflected science fiction, but actually alternate history, too. That revelations puts an interesting color on other aspects of the book.

I applaud Abnett's attention to linguistics, and the fact that hundreds of years in the future people will undoubtedly speak differently, but the use of made-up future slang is more interesting in theory than in practice. Most of it is annoying and clunky. But it is more or less ignorable, and you get used to some of it. One or two neologisms are even oddly plausible.

Periodic Tales by Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Regular readers of Bourgeois Book Club may have noticed that I have a bit of a fondness for books about the chemical elements, such as Oliver Sacks' Uncle Tungsten and Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon. There is something to me, even as someone who did not enjoy chemistry class and has forgotten most of what I learned there, nevertheless fascinating about the elements which constitute our world.

Periodic Tales is different from the aforementioned books in that it's less interested in chemistry, either in service to a personal memoir such as in Uncle Tungsten (though there are personal anecdotes) or in describing the fascinating adventure of elemental discovery as in The Disappearing Spoon (though several of those stories are related) than in what the elements mean, their cultural, economic, and social values. He goes beyond chemistry to plumb history, art, architecture, design, medicine, alchemy, poetry, literature, linguistics, economics, pop culture, and even politics and cosmetics for broader elemental insight. The elements aren't just arcane symbols on a weird graphic; they're literally all around us, both physically and metaphorically.

Aldersey-Williams lacks the charming eccentricity of Sacks or the infectious enthusiasm of Kean, but he's a perfectly serviceable writer with the easy erudition of a Renaissance man and an admirably gung-ho attitude to getting his hands dirty. Indeed, the book's genesis comes from his attempt as a boy to collect all the elements (a logical, and apparently reasonably common, pasttime, that it seems there's even a small industry for), some of which he obtained by smashing and smelting household items. Over the course of the book, he distills his own urine to recreate the discovery of phosphorus, tromps around English forests with charcoal burners, burns kelp for iodine, explores the ailing British fireworks industry, stomps around Cornwall looking for the Cassiterides, tells his fortune using molten lead, and treks through Sweden to figure out how its chemists came to discover and name nearly a fifth of all the naturally occurring elements.

My one gripe about the book is in the pictures. Instead of captions, there is a "List of illustrations" at the front of the book. Perhaps organized this way in an effort to save space, it's rather annoying and takes away from the illustrative power of the pictures, since you don't know what you're looking at, necessarily, without having to stop, flip back to the front, and find the right page.

That nitpick aside, however, it is a wonderful book that gives a wholly different perspective on the very stuff of creation.

2012 Year in Books (Qualitative)

First, the year in Bourgeois Book Club: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.  Second, because one of the "honorees" is "new," just a reminder that not every book I read gets reviewed.  I try to only write about books that strike me in some way, or I feel call out for discussion.  Many books that I enjoy or loath or had no particular reaction to do not make it into the Book Club. 

Favorite Book

Always a toughie, but I'd have to say Why Does The World Exist? by Jim Holt.  It just hit squarely at my metaphysical preoccupations, and it's just beautifully written.

Honorable mentions go to The Barbarous Years, The Hydrogen Sonata, and The Rook. 

Worst Book(s)

Artemis/Version 43 by Philip Palmer.  Interesting, but ugly books with an ugly worldview.  Palmer is a quite competent writer, but the bleakness just disgusted me.  

Most Surprising Book

Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright.  So, so many problems with this book, and yet I still liked it.

Most Boring Book

Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt by Rosalie David.  Good God was it dull.  It why I didn't even bother writing about it.  I've always had an interest in Ancient Egyptian history and culture, so I thought this would be interesting, but man, talk about dry.  Not terribly well-constructed, either. 

"Honorable" mention goes to Carthage Must Be Destroyed.  

Bourgeois Book Club

The Birth of Classical Europe by Simon Price & Peter Thonemann

The Classical world of Ancient Greece and Rome is the foundation of Western civilization. The Birth of Classical Europe, then, is the story of that foundation's construction, from the Minoan civilization circa 2000 BC to the late Roman Empire of the fifth century AD, from the Nile to Scotland.

Written in an engaging style, the authors stand out in their engagement with material culture and archaeology in the narrative. Often, historians are prejudiced towards written material, but Price and Thonemann take great pains to incorporate both kinds of sources. Ancient peoples, Herodutus notwithstanding, had a very different conception of history and historicity. Myth blended into legend blended into actual history. Lack of unified timekeeping made accurate chronologies difficult. Political agendas distorted the past to their own ends. Primary sources weren't always, or even often, readily available to large groups of scholars. Thus, their history is not empirical Truth (and, really, it isn't today, either), but memory, with all the complications that entails. People had to "make" their history out of half-remembered oral traditions, the needs of the powerful, and the beliefs of the day. Much of their (and ours, of course) history, then, is constructed, but pot sherds don't lie. On the other hand, though archaeology is good at revealing long-term trends and developments it is terrible at shedding light on specific historical events. A balance of sources is needed, and Price and Thonemann largely succeed in doing so.

Plenty of good maps and illustrations help in contextualizing the narrative. For the breadth of the subject, it's not a ponderous or over-long book, either. Recommended for readers looking for a good overview/grounding in Greco-Roman history, or just those looking for a slightly different take on Classical history.

The River Kings' Road by Liane Merciel

I don't review all the books I read. For one thing, I read a lot of them. For another thing, not all of them, even if I enjoy them, are really interesting enough to merit a review. To conserve Bourgeois Nerd's incredibly valuable blogging space (?!), I try to chose for discussion books I think are important, interesting, or deserving of wider attention. And I'll admit that I try to stay a bit "high-brow" in keeping with my carefully constructed "sophisticated intellectual" persona (?!). In other words, I want y'all to think I'm smart or something.

On first glance, The River Kings' Road didn't really meet the criteria for Bourgeois Book Club attention. But as I read, I found in it an interesting mix of conventionality and subversion that merits discussion. That it's written by a woman (and we all know I'm still trying to combat sexism in book reviewing) from my almost-hometown of Philly only added to the impetus to review.

The frame of the story is fairly traditional. A village is brutally massacred. The survivors have to journey to safety while dodging the attempts of the villains to stop them. There's a brave knight, an evil sorceress, war-like lords, and a fairly standard medieval/feudal setting. Where Merciel departs from the conventional, however, is in the characterization. The brave knight is black, his companion is a female archer, one of the "heroes" is a mercenary who is, frankly, a violent bastard, the dastardly lord is actually a competent and just ruler, and the henchman is honorable man grappling with moral dilemmas. And, to my mind at least, the most unconventional character is an unattractive, unwed mother peasant woman who shows quiet strength and dignity without being secretly magical or a prophesied Savior. The only character with an entirely standard character is the eeeeevil sorceress, who, not coincidentally in my opinion is the only major character without a POV, is eeeeeeeeeeeeevil from a nation of eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil.

The River Kings' Road is an enjoyable read that injects some much-diversity into the same old, same old of sub-Tolkienian high fantasy.

Here's Looking at Euclid by Alex Bellos

I have a confession to make: I have a guilty love of groan-worthy puns. Something about an absolutely terrible pun amuses me. Thus, what immediately attracted me to Here's Looking at Euclid was the punny title. But beyond the amusing title is an fun, interesting look at the world of mathematics.

Bellos is a great writer, with a journalistic past that is evident. Instead of simply reading a lot of sources, he gets himself intimately involved in the subject, traveling, interviewing, and even experimenting. Visits to Japanese abacus clubs, anthropologists researching Amazonian tribal counting methods, a chimpanzee mathematician, an Arizona numerologist, pi hunters, an origami guru, and a hyperbolic crocheter, as well as a months-long study of baguette weight, enliven the story and help connect abstract mathematical principles to concrete reality while entertaining the reader.

He's funny in a British sort of way, and his enthusiasm for the subject is infectious. As he explains in his Preface, his goal is to show that math is not dull, dry, and difficult, but also exciting and wondrous and possibly humanity's greatest achievement. Math is astounding and weird and just plain awesome. Thus, rather than a mere tome of formulae and proofs, instead of just abstract mathematical formalism, he draws from such disparate disciplines as history, ethnography, animal behavior, neuroscience, anthropology, and psychology to explain the origins and uses of such topics as man's number sense, counting systems, geometry, the number zero, pi, algebra, probability, the bell curve, infinity, and non-Euclidean geometry (though no Cyclopean horrors from beyond space and time). Each chapter is a self-contained exploration of one of a mathematical topic, allowing for buffet-style reading about subjects that interest you and easy skipping of stuff that doesn't.

A fun, engaging tour of the mathematical world that can appeal to even the most mathphobic among us, Here's Looking at Euclid is superb educational entertainment.

The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi

The Quantum Thief is a terrible book to review. Not because it is a terrible book, but because it really is almost impossible to describe. I'm not even sure I understand it all; it might be something you have to read twice to get fully. But I'm bringing it up anyway because it is SO GOOD!

Set in an unspecified future where humanity has settled the solar system from Venus to the Oort cloud, diversified from winged posthumans to strings of code floating in the cloud, and settled walking cities on Mars and computer-worlds made of diamond. A master thief is sprung from the ultimate prison to retrieve his memories from a Mars where privacy is fiercely protected and Time is a literal commodity. Meanwhile, an architecture-student-cum-detective is embroiled in conspiracy and revolution is in the air.

It's told in first person present, which is a narrative style I generally hate, and filled with a dizzying array of jargon and futuristic physics and undigested backstory that is never really explained. (You can tease much of it out, eventually, in dribs-and-drabs, and I know that it's generally considered superior to worldbuild in this way than to have some character towards the beginning give a short lecture about the fictive world the book exists in, but I have to say that to my mind, sometimes a good info dump is a welcome thing. That might just be my anal-retentive/OCD talking, though.) And yet... it's compulsive reading. The worldbuilding is amazing, even if at times overwhelming. The characters are interesting, especially because many of them are convincingly posthuman.

Really, this is just a superior science fiction adventure, and judging by the ending first in a series, which makes me happy because I'm definitely on-board to see more of Rajaniemi's world. Maybe by the time the next book comes out, I'll even have fully figured out this one!

Bourgeois Book Club

The Bourgeois Nerd Summer 2010 Book Club continues with three more non-fiction works.

God Is Not One by Stephen Prothero

Books about religion that aren't "inspirational" or doctrinal tend to divide into two camps: the polemics of believers (and non-believers) and the earnest exhortations of ecumenicists. A professor of religion, Stephen Prothero wrote this book specifically as a counter to the latter, the hippy-dippy "all religions are one" writers, such as Joseph Campbell or Karen Armstrong. No, he argues, in fact all religions are not the same, and to insist that they are isn't helping to alleviate the interreligious strife rife in the world or leading to greater understanding of other faiths.

Exhortations of religious unity make us feel good, like all the religious conflicts and arguments that have so long plagued us can be brushed aside and all of us join together in amity and harmony. That's very nice, but it's dangerous and naive. Religions are incredibly powerful, and we need to actually understand them, their differences and similarities, their good and their evil. Therefore, Prothero examines what he considers the eight great, most influential world religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Yoruba religion, with a brief coda on atheism. Prothero posits that each religion has a unique take on the central problem of life with a concomitant method of solving that problem. For instance, for Christianity the problem is sin and the answer is salvation through Jesus Christ. Much misunderstanding is engendered by using the framework of one religion when talking about another.

One of Prothero's strengths is he's not afraid to talk about his own thoughts and feelings regarding religion. He's also short and concise. His goal was the promote basic religious literary, to give us some idea of what the big world religions are about, not to put a whole semester's worth of a religious studies course into print. It's a reasonable length, with each religion getting its due without overloading.

Religions are all the same and religions are all different, just as humans are. Religions are about humanity, about becoming human and living with other humans. Being human is a problem for most of us, and the religions are some of the most powerful and diverse programs we've devised to solve this problem. It behooves us to know, then, what they are, and God Is Not One is a good primer.

The Bucolic Plague by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Two successful, well-off gay white men in New York City move to the country and learn Valuable Life Lessons after a series of hilarious misadventures adjusting to country living. That's what the cover jacket would have you think, and it isn't wrong, but it's much more than that. Basically, an ex-drag queen, ex-alcoholic ad exec and his anal-retentive, overachieving doctor/MBA who works for Martha Stewart partner have a mid-life crisis and buy a mansion/farm in upstate New York. They parlay a barn full of goats, chickens, turkeys, and five barn cats led by Bubby the Bionic Cat, a garden full of tomatoes, cucumbers, and other produce, the crafts and skills of their neighbors, and their own journey into making Beekman1802 a success, with a kick in the ass from Oprah and a benediction from Martha Stewart.

Yes, it's a bit of the "the problems of rich white people" genre. But it's funny, and honest, and you half-know that they know how cliche it is. It quickly loses its romantic luster as their relationship turns into one long bitchfest at all the work it takes to keep the farm up, plus their high-powered NYC jobs. As the economy implodes, the business suffers and they lose those high-powered jobs. Financial hardship and the pressure of Perfection(TM) slowly implodes their relationship. They learn that farming isn't The Simple Life, but a vanishing one and two gay buys ain't gonna save it. But, at least for now, there's a happy ending. A New York Times story revives the soap business and brings a reality show, and they realize that Beekman really does make them happy, and if they have to sacrifice a bit and their life isn't Perfect, then so be it. It's a lesson we all could use.

How The Universe Got Its Spots by Jenna Levin

As I believe I've mentioned before, I have collected rather a large and extensive considering my relative poverty and lack of shelf space library on popular science books, particularly those concerning cosmology, astronomy, the history of science, and modern theoretical physics. How The Universe Got Its Spots, published in 2002, is an old favorite in this genre and a long-time component of my library. It's been several years since I've read it, so I thought it might be time to take it down off the shelf.

It's an unusual example of the genre, for several reasons. For one, it is epistolary, consisting of about a year or two's worth of unsent letters from cosmologist Janna Levin to her mother Sandy in which she tries to explain her work. It's also intensely personal, not just in its recounting of her work, but in its discussion of her loneliness, her fears, the dissolution of her relationship, and the peripatetic life of an academic.

The main thrust of the book is her defense of her belief that the universe is actually finite, not infinite as most scientists believe. To get there, she first takes us through the basics of Newtonian, Einsteinian, and quantum physics and their relation to astronomy in preparation of discussing her work: finding the topology of the universe and if that topology means the universe is finite.

Geometry is the way a surface curves, while topology is the way the shape connects to itself. A cylinder and a torus have the same geometry, but a different topology. There are donuts and handles and stuff, too. I admit, a lot of this all goes over my head. It's not Levins' fault, I don't think, it's just tough to think about, especially for someone who often has difficulty with high-level math (though I do seem to keep reading and enjoying books that involve said math).

Levin has, since this book, gone on to write a very well-reviewed novel, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, and it's not at all surprising. The prose in How The Universe Got Its Spots is wonderfully lyrical. And, really, the thing that makes the book interesting for someone like me who has read a lot in the genre and thus pretty much knows all the basic information is her personal story. Her fascination with the mental illnesses and deaths of famous mathematicians and physicists. Her worries about free will and determinism. Her obsession with the fragility and utility of memory. As you're well aware from previous posts, I have many of the same concerns, so naturally I love it. Her interests are wide: art and music, literature. She's a bit of a bookworm. What's not to love?

Bourgeois Birthday Bash

Yes, there was last year's anniversary meditation and another anniversary post, and still other anniversary posts, too. But this year it's the FIFTH anniversary of Bourgeois Nerd! Such a momentous event cannot go un-noted, so prepare yourself for FIVE YEARS LATER: A BOURGEOIS NERD EXTRAVAGANZA!

It all began with this first post on New Year's Eve 2004. From small seeds grow... small plants? Or something.

My greatest blogging triumph, perhaps, is the Cartoon Nostalgia series. Nostalgia's fun. And damn I watched a lot of cartoons!

Shocking for a blog called Bourgeois Nerd, I've talked a whole hell of a lot about Star Wars. I'm also prone to going meta about nerds and geeks and what it all means. It's all so self-reinforcing, not to mention cliche.

Glade Lady is my muse. My crazy, commercial character muse.

Pathetically enough, this is the last time I had almost-sex. *sigh* That was when I still had my lost youthful looks (before I got fat and ugly); now, I'm just thoughtful. This is one of the many reasons I'm not a very good Gay, except that I am. Makes me worry about love.

I'm nothing if not a bibliophile (I know, you're shocked), so there are more posts about books and libraries than is even possible to number! A few of the highlights: I like the smell of books; Bourgeois Book Club; I was in a book and then proceeded to shill it endlessly.

I was once briefly famous in the academic blogosphere. Fame, alas, is elusive on the blogosphere. I don't regret the conclusion not to go into academia, though.

Thi post that has perhaps gotten me the most traffic, due to its placement on Google Images. I've since gotten to see her in person, and let me tell you it's even more amazing!

I recently took a walk down Memory Lane to reminisce about Blogs That Aren't There Anymore.

I didn't think the new Star Trek movie would work at first, but then I changed my mind.

I'm obsessed with polar bear hybrids, as well as pugs, pandas, unusual white animals, gay birds, interspecies amity, and just about anything cute.

I can be amazingly thick sometimes.

Christmas is over, but holiday nostalgia and The Spirit of Christmas lasts all year 'round at Bourgeois Nerd!

As hard as it is to believe, I can get even more pensive and existential than usual. Heck, I doubt I'm real sometimes!

I like fall, and like the turning of the leaves each year, I repeat this fact every autumn.

I find that confession is good for the soul, and blogs are the new confession booths, without all that pesky priest and the Hail Marys and such.

Spam is the artform of our age.

I was obsessed by the Beijing Summer Olympics (for the menz, natch)!

For a certain subset of readers, my main claim to fame is the GH TWoP FAQs.

Finally, I know why you all really come here: Skimpy Sundays. Pervs!

Five years and 2,694 posts later, here I am! It's all rather amazing. I've outlasted so many worthier and more popular blogs. It's humbling. And what's next? Well, hopefully at some point this year I'll be able to get the new look going. This place definitely needs a facelift. Otherwise, I just hope I can continue to grow and improve as a blogger, whatever that means.

But regardless of what the future brings, right now I want to thank all the fantastic bloggers who I shamelessly rip off for content draw inspiration from and who have linked to me over the years. Thank you most of all, though, to all my readers. My readership isn't the biggest out there, but it's definitely one of the best! I love you all! Happy New Year!!!

Bourgeois Book Club

The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherynne M. Valente

What better setting for a fantasy (or, as the author insists, science fiction about first contact with an alien world working on different laws of physics) than the fabulous Kingdom of Prester John, full of strange, immortal beasts, a dream for Europe all through the Middle Ages? And as brought to life by Valente, it is a dream-like place, where buried beds bloom into bed-trees, animals talk, and everyone lives forever from drinking mountain-juice. The entities that inhabit this fabulous land are innocent, the endless years governed only by the Lottery that assigns new lives every so often to keep away the ennui and entropic decay of eternity with the power of chance, until John comes and things are forever changed.

Five narrators tell the tale of John and his land: John himself; his headless wife, the scribe Hagia; the large-eared storyteller Imtithal; Hoib von Luzern, the monk who plucks the latter three's stories from a tree, driven mad by his desperation to record their stories even as they crumble before him; and Alaric of Rouen, Hoib's protege who must continue the recording in Hoib's place. The language is beautiful. Almost too beautiful, in a way; everyone is a poet, apparently. Yet, why not? It is a dream-land, after all. It's really hard to complain about a book with beautiful language after all.

Somewhat surprisingly, it is an often quite funny book. Watching people of totally different cultures interact often is. Yet it is also sad and wistful and melancholy, a dirge, as the subtitle calls it, for a land that never was. Though it is billed upfront as the first book of a trilogy, somehow I don't want it to be. I usually like my endings conclusive and my loose ends, if not tied off, than at least very net, and hate ambiguity. Yet ambiguity suits this tale well; you can fill in the blanks on the rest of the story without two more book laying it all out. I think it's more powerful knowing what happens, but not quite why or how.

Depending on one's spiritual status, one could either be offended or invigorated by Valente's demolition of Christian thought, how mean and small and petty it is. Even the main Christian in the book, John, is a damnable heretic! And there's sure as hell some other heresy going on, too. This is not for the spiritually faint-of-heart. But for who love tales of far-off lands and stranges creatures told lyrically told, The Habitation of the Blessed is for you.

Jane and the Damned: A Novel by Janet Mullany

Jane Austen and vampires fight the French in occupied Bath. What more, exactly, need I say?

Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love by Andrew Shaffer

Fun, pithy love (well, "love") stories told with a dry, ironic sense of humor and sprinkled with wry footnotes (my favorite kind!), Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love is a breezy, humorous look at the juicy, tawdry romantic foibles of some of history's greatest thinkers.

As someone who has not so much failed as yet to really get started in love, I'm frankly a bit afraid of relationships, of it all going terribly wrong. But as the Neal Pollack quote that begins the book says, "It's always nice to know that no matter how badly you've screwed up your love life, someone else has done far, far worse." And, hey, since I don't plan to accidentally (?) strangle my partner or get castrated, I think I'm safely out of contention for Worst Love Life Ever forever.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason

Forty variations of the Odyssey, some almost science fictional, some fabulist, some in first person, some in third person, some barely a paragraph, some pages long comprises this collection of postmodern, metafictional sketches. Each story is an exploration of one particular image, character, or theme of the Homeric epics, challenging us to see the epics in new and unusual ways. An interesting and enjoyable meditation on the foundational texts of Western literature, it's a great thought-provoker for any student or admirer of Greek mythology. (And, guess what? It even has the snarky footnotes I so love!)

Bourgeois Book Club

Been on a bit of a nonfiction kick lately, specifically books about math and time and silly stuff like that. I've been very lucky, and all three have been absolutely excellent, so I thought I'd share, in case anyone is in the market for frivolous fare.

Infinite Ascent: A Short History of Mathematics
by David Berlinski

Really more a sketch than even a true short history, it can be occasionally a bit heavy-going for the math-phobic, and it can lose you if you haven't even thought of algebra or geometry since ninth grade, but a still enjoyable and quick read. The author is also a novelist, and it does show, in a good way. I don't agree with some of his interpretations of history (like I'm some sort of expert), and the fact that he's a creationist is appalling to me, but it really doesn't and shouldn't take away from the book. The cover is one of my absolute favorite of any book I've ever seen. It's simply spectacular: crisp, clean, and evocative.

In Search of Time by Dan Falk

A wide-ranging look at that most mysterious of dimensions from the point of view of myth, physics, philosophy, psychology, and more from one of the best science writers around. (Falks's previous book, The Universe on a T-Shirt, is a highly recommended favorite of mine.) The only real annoyance is the layout. Whoever laid this book out, and the person who signed off on it before sending it to the printer even more so, should be fired. It's not even just nitpicky stuff from a nerd who has done some layout, there are serious problems, including one-word lines force justified across the page, bad spacing, footnotes on the wrong pages, and evenfootnotes that cut off in midsentence. Really a travesty. Hopefully these issues will be corrected by the paperback edition, though.

Is God A Mathematician? by Mario Livio

Another hit-and-run survey of the history of mathematics (though more thorough and far-ranging than Berlinski's), don't let the title fool you: this isn't a religious polemic or apologia. It's much more about the struggles with the meaning of mathematics and the question of the origins of mathematics and its "unreasonable effectiveness" (basically it comes down to whether math is something intrinsic in the universe that we discover or whether its something we create somehow). Clear, lucid, and witty, it's an enjoyable ride without a lot of actual math. The blue of the cover, by the way, is really beautiful and inviting, even strangely soothing. Kudos to the cover designer who picked it! Also, the paper has this oatmealy smell to it that's really nice. (But, then, you know all about my fetish for book smells.)

Bourgeois Book Club

I've been reading a lot of nonfiction lately, and extremely fortunate to have read some really, really good nonfiction, so I thought I'd share in case anyone was headed to the beach and wanted to pick something up to read.

A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz

A book about the early European explorations and attempts at the colonization of America, with particular attention paid to the period between 1492 and 1620 that is so often ignored or glossed over in conventional American history. Alternating between colorful travelogue and primary-source-grounded history, it's a humor-filled trip through the country's early days, warts and all. It's also a fascinating meditation on the construction and propagation of myth. What collective we's choose to remember, and to forget, and why is really as interesting as the history itself.

Happy Endings by Jim Norton

You may know Jim Norton from his many appearances on the late night talk shows, the Opie & Anthony radio show, or from the show I first saw him on, the late, lamented (by me about five other people) Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. As one website I read put it, Jim Norton is at the forefront of the "cringe comedy" movement, and I find that a pretty good description of his style: un-PC, shocking, and a little gross. It's also incredibly insightful, intelligent, and poignant. The poignancy comes from its confessional quality: Norton makes vicious fun himself and his friends more than anyone, gleefully regaling readers with stories of his insecurities and sexual proclivities. Written as a series of short diary-like entries, Norton mines his past days as a teenage alcoholic, his stand-up career, his insecurities about his body, his celebrity encounters, his disasters with women, and his propensity for hookers and happy-ending masseuses to leave you alternately laughing uproariously and cringeing uncomfortably.

The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong is a British ex-nun, well-known and respected for her writing on religion, particularly the history of religion. This book deals with the historical epoch some call the "Axial Age," a period of intense religious and philosophical effervescence that formed all the major religions and philosophies that dominate the world today. The book basically examines some of the great themes Armstrong sees among the different Axial traditions and their formation during this time. The historical and religious background is fascinating, and the writing superb and backed by prodigous research, but I did find Armstrong a bit too strong in emphasizing what she believed was the "spirit" of the Axial Age and what wasn't. Frankly, at times it felt like she was repeatedly hitting you over the head with a large frying pan to make her points and argue her theses, particularly her constant call for the world to go back to the "authentic," and in her view almost entirely tolerant and peaceful, traditions of the Axial Age as a way to deal with some of the sectarian strife, particularly between Islam and Christianity, going on today. It's a nice thought, but I think she oversimplifies things a bit, and emphasizes too much the peaceful, conciliatory aspects of the Axial traditions, with everything warlike and intolerant being later excrescences added by people who she thinks just didn't get it. Still, it's a great read, and extremely educating.

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

I actually bought and started this book about a year ago, but only just picked it back up and finished. A well-deserved Pulitzer Prize winning book, it tells the story of the Pilgrims and Plymouth, going far beyond the old "shoebuckle-hats and turkey" song and dance we learn in grade school, and paying particular attention to the complicated interactions with the Native tribes. Relations with the tribes were marked by a remarkably high level of cooperation and friendship for decades, but even from the beginning there were currents and strains that ultimately blew up into the bloody (and almost completely forgotten) King Philip's War that decimated the New England tribes and signaled the triumph of English settlement.

God, I'm such a nerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd!