Just look at that comma lurking there, ominously...

The movie‘s just around the corner, and I just so happen to have a copy of the book lying around, so I thought I’d give it a quick read so that I can do one of those movie vs. book comparisons. The Tomorrow series rates amongst Australia’s top young adult fiction, as well as being a common school text, so I have no idea why I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Cultural cringe, possibly.

As the blurb describes, John Marsden wrote Tomorrow, When The War Began to address “a complete lack of interest in reading among his Year 9 students” while teaching English at a school in the Australian bush. Looking at it from a critical perspective, I’d put it in a similar category as Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code – deeply flawed writing yet with an unputdownable quality of storytelling.

Tomorrow is written from the perspective of Ellie, a well-rounded, level headed young farm girl, who organises a camping trip with a small group of her friends in a deep, secluded area of bush named Hell. While there the town of Wirawee where they live is invaded and occupied by an unknown military force. The group is plunged reluctantly into war, and become guerrillas fighting to free their friends and family, and to save their town.

Whether consciously or not, Marsden created a cast that represents the multicultural melting pot that is Australia – both ethnic and social class – and worked in several slightly preachy episodes of moralising. If you can look past these contrivances, Marsden does otherwise produce a fairly convincing depiction of both an idyllic rural lifestyle (not hard for him I guess, seeing as he actually lives in the bush), and the fear and terror of finding yourself suddenly in the midst of a war.

And so the movie. It comes out on Thursday, 2nd September (although I’m a lucky enough to have scored tickets to a preview screening on the Monday prior) and from the trailers, it seems that the producers have taken the safe route and stuck very closely to the book. Practically every scene is accounted for exactly as I remember them. Check it out for yourself:

Look out for part 2 of this review soon…

It’s a 1923 Tauchnitz Edition of H.G. Wells’ A Short History of the World (it was first published a year before in 1922). I’ll say beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it is older than anybody that will ever read GeekReads (but happy to be proved wrong, if there are any 87+ year olds out there reading this please drop me a line).  If you’re like me, which is to say a complete and utter ignoramus when it comes to history, then here’s some context: it is 9 years after World War 1 ended, 6 years before the Great Depression, blues and jazz music was starting to become popular, and sliced bread wasn’t invented yet.

Despite the terrible inconvenience of having to carve his own baked goods, the time in which H.G. Wells lived was much like ours – there was electricity, television, cars, skyscrapers and planes. And if you thought that atheism was a recent development:

Over a large part of the civilized world it was believed and taught that the world had been created suddenly in 4004 B.C., though authorities differed as to whether this had occurred in the spring or autumn of that year. [...] that the universe in which we live has existed only for six or seven thousand years may be regarded as an altogether exploded idea.

Anyway, enough marvelling – I feel like a kid in awe of how old his grandpa is, and how much he knows. But that’s exactly how I felt reading A Short History, that I was being taken on a grand tour of history by somebody much older and wiser than I. Wells’ style may not be as affable as Bill Bryson, who undertook a similar effort in the similarly titled A Short History of Nearly Everything, but the book reflects his skill as a writer with the occasional poetic turn (this is where I wish I took notes like a proper reviewer, so that I could quote something that illustrates what I mean).

Although the book helped me to better understand the reason behind why the world is the way it is today (basically, the whole world is just made up of various outposts of a few European countries) it hasn’t cured my ignorance of geography. The book comes “WITH TWELVE MAPS” as it states on the title page, but they were all reproduced in such a way as to be largely indecipherable (particularly the ones that rely on various shadings).

Finally, I found that because his perspective on history is not too far removed from our own, the comments he made about his own time, towards the conclusion of the book, are still a valuable message to us today:

[...] we are still in the stage of the first-fruits in [humanity's mastery over matter]. We have the power, but we have still to learn how to use our power. Many of the first employments of these gifts of science have been vulgar, tawdry, stupid or horrible. The artist and the adaptor have still hardly begun to work with the endless variety of substances now at their disposal.

It’s a message that some of the more prideful members of our time should heed well.

—-

If you were to update this book to include the achievements between H.G. Wells time and the present day, what would you include? I can think of: World War 2, space exploration, computers and the Internet (obviously) and nuclear power.

Can you believe that this book is over a decade old?

Non-fiction books, especially science ones, have a terrible tendency to become dated very quickly, as the march of progress continues at an ever-increasing pace. Now consider that Visions, by Michio Kaku, was published in 1998 – over a decade ago. In that time, computers have gone from megabytes to gigabytes (and fast approaching terabytes), and we’ve gone from chunky mobile phones like the old brick of a thing that I used to own (an Ericsson GA628) to svelt smart-phones like the Apple iPhone that I’m now using – which is to say that things have changed. A lot.

This book is about the future, itself 10 years in the making as Kaku went around interviewing over 150 scientists from various disciplines. In other words some of the knowledge contained within this volume is probably over 20 years old! So the question is: does this book read like a misguided relic of the past, an accurate roadmap of our current journey, or the wild and crazy imaginings of a crack-pot? I’ll get to that presently, but first a quote:

By 2020, microprocessors will likely be as cheap and plentiful as scrap paper, scattered by the millions into the environment, allowing us to place intelligent systems everywhere. [...] Scientists also expect the Internet will wire up the entire planet and evolve into a membrane consisting of millions of computer networks, creating an “intelligent planet”.

If you work for IBM or are familiar with their recent advertising, then this will probably sound very familiar – it’s essentially the message of Smarter Planet. Launched in 2008 almost exactly a decade after this book, Big Blue’s current corporate mission of creating a world that is intelligent, instrumented and interconnected* is described with almost uncanny accuracy in the early chapters of Visions. Subsequent chapters are equally prescient, if at times a little US-centric, as when one scientist predicts that “by 2010 the number of electric cars could balloon to the millions, especially as foreign competitors begin to market their version of the electric/hybrid”. Sorry Americans, but you weren’t first no matter where in history you care to look.

Something else that I found fascinating about this book is how it put scientific progress into historical perspective. Since 1998 we’ve experienced two globally significant events: September 11, 2001 and the Global Financial Crisis (2008), both of which caused great socio-economic upheaval, which would have greatly impacted many institutions’ abilities to obtain funding. Reading about the state of science at the end of the 20th Century and comparing it to where we are now, it’s both saddening and maddening to think about the negative impact that these stumbling blocks have had on progress. From the treatment of genetic diseases to the technologies that help address the world’s energy needs, so much could have been, but fortunately it is only delayed, not destroyed.

I always enjoy taking a peek at what’s going on behind the intellectual curtain, getting glimpses through places such as New Scientist magazine, Space.com or the odd TED video. Kaku not only peels back the cloth, but gives you the whole backstage tour. He has a wonderful ability to communicate complex subjects in a palatable way, without resorting to contortions of language and metaphor. I promise this won’t be the last time I cover Kaku on GeekReads, although hopefully I’ll get to his most recent book – Physics of the Impossible (published in 2008) – a bit quicker than I got onto this one!

—-

* Disclosure: I work for IBM, which is why I’m so well versed in this. But the thoughts and opinions expressed here on GeekReads are entirely my own, not IBM’s. They’re not paying me to plug their message – if only!

I'm still a bit baffled by the title; it's like saying

I still clearly remember the day in high school English when my teacher decried the evils of formulaic writing, citing Stephen King as a prime offender. I’ve long since forgotten my teacher’s name but King’s popularity prevails, as does that of another serial offender, children’s author Brian Jacques. His Redwall series has been around since 1986 and the cover of High Rhulain, the 18th book in the series, proclaims “over 5 million Redwall books sold”.

So in spite of what I was taught in school, formulas seem to work well for both authors and readers. High Rhulain shows Brian Jacques at the top of his game: he seems comfortable with the elaborate animal world that he’s created, and the comfortingly familiar plot flows easily from his fingers. The usual elements are present: the Abbey and its peaceful-yet-feisty inhabitants, the comically militant hares and their solemn badger lord from the mountain fortress of Salamandastron, an evil race of vermin (in this case, wild cats) bent on oppression and destruction of their enemies, a group of oppressed innocents looking for a leader (otter slaves), and an unlikely hero in the guise of young otter maid Tiria Wildlough.

The animal races are a very simple and effective shorthand to help younger readers understand the various allegiances, and also make for affable characters, with different species identified by their accents. Like Terry Pratchett, Jacques has a great talent for representing these in text form. The battles are violent and young readers are not spared from both the horrors war and death, although bravery is rewarded and the forces of good prevails. (A quick aside: conservative political ideology resonates with kids, resulting in leftists worrying about a new generation of conservatives that will undo their efforts.)

I only wonder how much longer Jacques can keep his stories fresh – there are only so many animal species and so many types of accent. Having said that, 3 more Redwall books have been published since Rhulain, so if nothing else, it could just be that Brian Jacques has found a winning formula.

What goes in, must come out...

Purpose designed to be read on the bog, Trivia for the Toilet comes with a “splashproof, easy-wipe cover”, and offers amusing little tidbits of information for you to read while passing, er… time.

There’s enough to keep one entertained throughout many visits to the throne, with plenty of amusing anecdotes, fun stats, examples of nature’s quirkiness, and just plain randomness, such as a list of the many words that Eskimos have for different types of snow.

In the midst of these, I noticed a few that are based on popular urban myths, e.g. “A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no-one knows why” (debunked)* – so I was never 100% sure that the other “facts”, however funny or interesting, aren’t also incorrect.

If you can find it on the cheap, or need a gift idea and couldn’t be bothered thinking of something better (e.g. a Kris Kringle for a colleague you don’t know very well), Trivia for the Toilet is just the thing.

—-

* And on an unrelated note, the duck quack’s echo is also the topic of one of my favourite pictures – the duck looks so happy to be having a conversation with the researcher. It makes me laugh every time:

Testing to see whether a duck's quack echoes

Behind this plain cover lurks an immense wealth of information about language

Considering that I picked this up as a Penguin Classics edition from Borders for $10 minus the 40% discount, How Language Works is both a much more recent work (2007), and a heck of a lot more comprehensive than I thought it would be – hence you’ll have noticed that this title was my “Currently reading” title for at least the last several months.

Within 73 chapters across almost 500 pages, David Crystal crams in an overview of practically every single scrap of human endeavour relating to language. From where languages came from, how they’re structured and how we use them, no curiosity is left unsatisfied. If you had any question as to where your interest in languages might lie, by the end of this book you will be in absolutely no doubt.

Though biblically epic, and at times just as boring (the chapters listing out the languages and their families is about as riveting as the book of Numbers detailing the genealogy of the Abrahamic faiths) there is plenty to interest the casual reader. Maybe it’s the phase I’m at in life, but I found Crystal’s many insights into how children learn language to be especially interesting:

In the middle of the third year, there is a significant shift in procedure. Children start asking lots of questions about the names of things: What’s that?, What’s that called? Parents usually do quite well in replying to these opening questions, but they tend not to be so good in answering the follow-up ones, many of which begin with ‘Why?”: Why is it a jackdaw? Most people cannot answer, other than wearily and emptily: Because that’s its name, Because it is. We find it difficult to say such things as Because it’s a bird and it’s black, as that is not how we are used to using the word because. But it is precisely such details that the child is hoping to hear.

There are also many questions to pique the reader’s curiosity, although few are satisfactorily answered, e.g. How many syllables are in the word meteor?

Each chapter covers what must be an entire field of study, which makes for a mind-boggling exercise reading with any kind of speed. It brings to mind looking out the window of a bullet train as it passes by a train station. Endlessly fascinating, but you only get the merest glimpse – even if something catches your eye, it won’t pause for lengthier consideration, like this passage condensing the entire history of typography into a single paragraph:

In Europe, the main step forward came in the mid-15th century, with the invention in Germany of movable metal type in association with the hand-operated printing press – developments that are generally credited to Johannes Gutenberg (1390 – 1468). Metal type was set by hand  until the introduction of various systems of mechanized typesetting in the 19th century. The linotype machine was introduced towards the end of the century, and became standard in newspaper offices. Techniques of photo-composition became a commercial reality in the 1950s. Computerized typesetting began to be used from the late 1960s. The prototype of the typewriter was built in 1867 by the American inventory Christopher Latham Sholes (1819 -90), and rapidly achieved popularity. Modern developments include the electric typewriter, the word processor, the use of the telephone keypad to send messages, and the computer keyboard – now the preferred mode of graphic expression for most young people.

In case you didn’t catch it, he was talking about SMS text-messaging using mobile phones somewhere in there – phew!

In my day job as “Editor-in-Chief” and as a blogger, I tend to fall in with the crowd that loves pointing out whenever somebody has put an apostrophe wrong, or has spelt a word incorrectly. Given its nature, you’d expect this book to support this cause, but David Crystal is surprisingly critical of the emerging zero-tolerance attitude, and has an especially scathing message to those he calls “Trussians” (after Lynne Truss, the author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves) – in a section titled “Potato’s as a test case”, Crystal explains that there is little basis, historically or linguistically, for criticising what seems to be an incorrect use of the apostrophe since it represents a class of specific exceptions in the way that we pluralise words English, and also that it was a perfectly acceptable form until the 1700′s. He chides us by saying “to condemn someone for using such forms as potato’s is actually to display linguistic ignorance – an ignorance of the logic behind such forms which the modern users are unconsciously manifesting.”

Overall, a very interesting if epic read. Plus, you seriously can’t argue the bang-per-buck, even at the full price of $9.95.

Another classic Paul Kidby Discworld book cover

Despite the tragic early onset of Alzheimers, Unseen Academicals shows that popular fantasy author Terry Pratchett is still in top form. He’s got the “diamond in the rough” schtick down to a T, but the difference is that at the end of each story, those polished diamonds don’t disappear off into obscurity – they sparkle on in subsequent novels, imbuing the Discworld with an extreme richness (pun intended).

The 37th novel in the Discworld series(!), Academicals continues the recurring theme of the modernisation of the capital city of Ankh-Morpork. Recent books have seen A-M gain a postal service, a telecommunications system known as “the clacks”, a shiny new banking system, its own currency, and now, football (soccer) and, er… a high-end fashion industry*.

Pratchett still has the touch, and the book offers unnervingly accurate insight into the human psyche, as the plot bores deeply into the inner workings of players, fans, and of course – because it’s soccer – hooligans. The British humour, Flintstones-style take on the modern world, and the satire of fantasy conventions are all exquisitely funny for sure, but beneath the veneer of slapstick he hits hard at issues such as taking the ambiguity of dwarven genders and putting them into the context of the high-end fashion industry, to explore ideas of sexual identity and individual choice, without speaking of sex whatsoever (although there’s more sexual innuendo than usual for Discworld novel as far as I can recall).

The "Jolly Sailor Tobacco Football Cards" depicting characters from Unseen Academicals, available separately and also illustrated by Paul Kidby

Rather than following the escapades of a single character, several plot threads weave their way in and around of each other:

• The wizards of Unseen University, who need to put together a football team or risk losing the significant financial benefits of a bequest that funds their lackadaisical academic lifestyle
• Trevor Likely, trying to grow out of the shadow of his late father Dave – a legend who scored a record number of goals the historical game of “foot-the-ball”
• Nutt, a genteel so-called goblin who discovers the truth about his enigmatic past
• Glenda Sugarbean, the homely head of the university’s Night Kitchen, and her ditsy, comely friend Juliet (“Jools”) Stollop whose modelling debut (heavily armoured and wearing a dwarf beard) leaves the fashion world abuzz and has them trying to find the mysterious “Jewels”
• The dwarf Madame Sharn, head of the fashion label Shatta, and her flamboyant assistant Pepe, at the launch of their new line of micromail.
• The ins-and-outs of the “Shove” – the collective of football followers, being that when they get together to watch a game, nobody can really see anything and all that happens is a lot of shoving.

… and of course the welcome appearance of recurring characters such as Havelock Vetinari, the seemingly omniscient Patrician of Ankh-Morpork; and brief cameos by Death, and Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler.

What I love most about Pratchett even more than the insights, is his mastery of the written form, and his ability to ignore the conventions of language that we take for granted, as when one of the characters in the book is described as being full of “charisn’tma”. And like most of the other Discworld novels, he pushes the boundaries of typography by using bolds, italics, font-sizes, Death’s dialogue ALWAYS IN CAPS and more, to eke every bit of meaning possible out of the words on the page.

To confuse my sporting metaphors, Unseen Academicals adds another home run to an already impressive scoreboard, and I seriously hope that Pratchett hits a couple more before the end of his innings.

—-

* For this reason, if you’re new to Discworld I don’t recommend starting with this book – check out the reading order in Wikipedia for more details.

Subsequently, butchers around the country took this to heart, aggressively marketing the BBQ as an Australia Day tradition, and the national holiday is under threat of becoming a national day of animal slaughter.

The book cover has this cool gimmick where the title and outlines over the cow are part of the clear plastic jacket.

Not that I’m complaining. I love my dead animal as much as the next guy, which brings me to the point of this post – GeekReads is supposed to be a book review blog after all (the fact that the vast majority of posts are about everything other than books notwithstanding). I’m talking about Meat. by Adrian Richardson, owner of “La Luna Bistro” in Melbourne. It’s a book that aims to educate Australians on the art of “how to choose, cook & eat [meat]“, and is divided into a couple of introductory chapters explaining the basics, chapters for each of the main animals (beef, veal, lamb, etc.), and a few chapters around meat-related types of cooking such as pies, charcuterie (preserving meat), and stocks and sauces.

Each of the chapters about meat starts off with a few pages detailing the various types and cuts available, what to look for, how and where to buy and tips on cooking, followed by a good variety of recipes that cover a wide range of styles and cultures. I haven’t had a chance to try any yet, but I definitely like the look of them – they mostly use common ingredients and have clear, easy-to-follow instructions.

Adrian Richardson, owner of La Luna Bistro and author of Meat.

The book is written in a personal and amiable style. Richardson coyly mentions in his opening sentence that he was a vegetarian as a child, but thereafter launches straight into his passion and love for cooking and eating meat, including a section dedicated to mapping out the journey that meat takes “from the farm to the fork”, and not glossing over the fact that it is, after all, a bunch of dead animals. For example:

The abattoir
There is nothing pretty about abattoirs, or about the slaughtermen (and they are mainly men) who work there, but they are an essential part of the journey. [...] I’m not denying it’s a confronting and even a brutal experience, but slaughtermen are skilled professionals and I’ve always been impressed by the pains that they take to give the animal as stress-free and comfortable a death as possible. It certainly seems no worse a way to go than any other more ‘natural’ end.

This is unlikely to appease animal activists, but Richardson is nothing if not respectful:

I’ve also discovered that the more one thinks about and understands the way animals live – and die – to feed us, the more it’s natural to want to give them back some sort of dignity. For me, this is not just about ethical farming practices and ensuring that animals have happy lives, but it’s also about valuing the animal by using its meat to the fullest extent you can.

I came across this book in the library, but will definitely get my own copy (the reason why I haven’t bought it already is because I’m waiting for a voucher or something, being the cheapskate that I am).

Happy meat-eating festiv… er, I mean Australia Day, readers!

Dunno why the carousel horse was significant enough to warrant being depicted on the cover

Reviewing a literary classic is fraught with danger, if only because there’s bound to be loads of stuff I miss – captured by decades of academic scrutiny – making me seem unlearned. Yet any serious reader, especially geeky ones, can’t ignore the classics… ahem… especially if you couldn’t be bothered going out to buy or borrow a book after you’d finished your previous one, and your wife just so happens to have a copy (no, I’m not reading Pride and Prejudice, er… again.)

This is my first time reading J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, a book relentlessly studied in high schools, but not one that I ever came across in my schooling. Maybe because I imagined that I’d have to turn in an essay after reading it (which this review is, in a way), I approached the book with an analytical eye, but unsure of what to look for exactly. This is most likely why I found it difficult to like when I first started reading – the language was too old-school for my tastes, the main character was particularly odious, and it seemed to be completely lacking in plot.

But there’s just something about Holden Caufield’s story, isn’t there? It’s not that the character himself is likeable per se, but in the glimpse that you get of the world through his eyes, you start to see a little of your own world – the ever-present malaise affecting society that’s bubbling just below the surface. Salinger doesn’t claim to have the answer, which is largely why I found the book so unsatisfying initially, but he does manage to impart some timeless wisdom to eternally disaffected youth through these words spoken by Mr. Antonlini:

‘Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – if you want to. Just as some day, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you.’

There’s something wonderfully recursive about that quote, given that the story is written in the first person from Holden’s perspective. And that seems to be the crux of it. The book isn’t so much a story as it is parable for misguided young persons.

If I was writing an essay, that would be my conclusion. What do you think… would I have passed?

You can't see it here, but the little holes around the eyes are cut-outs in the book cover.

By the time I picked up The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz, it had already spawned two sequels, earned the status of “New York Times bestseller”, and received a glowing review from one of my friends. Call me cynical, but I should have known better than to fall into the trap of expecting something transcendent.

Isabel “Izzy” Spellman is the middle daughter to a pair of private-eye parents. Most of the novel is spent detailing the family’s many peculiarities, mainly to do with stalking each other like suspected criminals. Surrounding all this is the mystery of what happened to Izzy’s younger sister, Rae, who has mysteriously disappeared.

Lutz writes in a convoluted style favoured by many recent authors, where straightforward linear narrative is deemed insufficient, and the plot has to be chopped up into little pieces and the order rearranged for maximum dramatic effect. While the story remains coherent, the flow is disturbed and the contrived tension makes for tiring reading, negating all compulsion to discover what happens next. If it’s any indication, I read most of the book over the course of a week and only had about 3-4 pages left to go before I departed for Hong Kong, but decided to leave it (I didn’t want to carry the book around with me for the entire trip for the sake of a few pages).

I guess the humour lies in the farcical nature of the Spellman family and their funny view of the world (where people are simply suspects for investigation), or maybe the neurotic way in which the characters deal with love and relationships. Either way, I didn’t quite fall under the spell of the Spellmans.