Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach: I’m not a forensics enthusiast so I hadn’t read Roach’s Stiff despite it being highly recommended to me by several people. However, my curiosity was piqued when I heard that Roach and her husband volunteered to be the first individuals recorded having sexual intercourse by MRI. One always admires a writer for going the full length to do her research—even if the publicity helps her too—and that impression was certainly not diminished as I read the book. Roach adopts a casual, first-person tone: this nonfiction book, while full of interesting trivia as well as valuable information about the physiology of sex, is really a narrative. It’s a story about her investigation into the challenges surrounding the scientific research into sex, as well as the characters of the researchers themselves; she draws compelling portraits of the people she meets. I admit that I’m not used to reading popular nonfiction, so perhaps Roach’s style has become the norm, but I found it very engaging. Similar in approach, although completely different in style from Victoria Finlay’s Color, which I enjoyed for its narrative form. Roach is of course much more chatty and prone to tangents—she uses footnotes enthusisatically—but she never fails to treat her subject seriously, despite her lighthearted tone. I wish I’d made a list of all the “fun facts” I learned while reading the book (am still strangely fascinated, for example, by the account of a woman who can reach orgasm without any physical stimulation but merely by breathing).

The Annotated Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (annot. Alfred Appel): I make a particular point of describing this book as The Annotated Lolita because reading an annotated text is different from reading the text in isolation. And I did make the choice (or was it a mistake?) to read the annotations as I read the story. I doubt that it would have been possible to do that if Nabokov weren’t so obviously a master of his craft; despite my constant mental interruptions, I never felt that I lost the flow of the story. On the other hand, my reading experience was spoiled because the annotations were meant for a reader who had already finished the book. I didn’t realize, for example, that it would have come as a surprise to most readers who Humbert Humbert actually killed; though in retrospect I can appreciate how Nabokov manipulated reader expectations throughout the story. Yet I didn’t directly experience that manipulation, and I wonder if the impact of the story was somehow lessened because of that. I also realized while reading the novel that many paragraphs in it sounded quite familiar—in high school, I had edited a classmate’s rough draft of a term paper on Lolita, and I’ve of course seen quotes and excerpts almost everywhere—and I had the decidedly odd feeling of déjà vu, as if rereading a book that I had not actually read before.

All that being said, the book was completely different than anything I expected. I suppose I was already prepared for the aesthetic pleasure of Nabokov’s prose style (though it’s clear that The Defense, the only other Nabokov novel I’ve read, was one of his earlier ones and didn’t show the same level of mastery that Lolita does). I was not so prepared though for the fact that it doesn’t read at all like a psychological novel; I’ve always assumed that it would somehow feel claustrophobic to read from Humbert Humbert’s “confessional” perspective, but in fact he keeps us at a distance with his wordplay and seemingly flippant tone. The lack of any titillating scenes also made me wonder why it’s so often condemned as a “dirty” book. True, its subject matter is probably as controversial as it gets, but the sexual content is minimal and almost never described explicitly. (I had an amusing conversation with my mother, where she tentatively asked me what Lolita was about—”Isn’t it about a stepfather…with his daughter?”—and why I was reading it. I had to laugh because she had recommended André Gide’s books to me—Gide, who celebrated homosexual pederasty—and I find the implicit sexual relations in The Counterfeiters much more likely to offend my mother’s morals than anything in Lolita.

In any case, I do suspect that reading the annotations made me a little emotionally detached from the novel; much of the pleasure was academic, in following the numerous allusions to Poe, the puns hidden in character names, the sheer control of language that Nabokov exhibits. I think the only moment that really gave me pause was when Humbert Humbert begs Lolita to return with him. Though I do think it isn’t meant to be an emotional novel; there’s too much self-mockery and hidden contempt for the reader in Humbert’s memoir that jerks you away from any attempts at pitying sympathy for the narrator.

What really impresses me over and over is the artifice—in all its nuances—of Nabokov’s writing. He makes no pretense at realism, even when he draws the most incisive portrait of motels in Midwest America. He presents his art as art, not as an imitation of life. Now there are writers who emphasize their writing to the point where they stop engaging the reader and merely indulge in the equivalent of artistic masturbation (I am harsh only because I recognize this failing in myself), but Nabokov makes his writing the centerpiece that communicates with the reader. It’s as if…he makes no attempt to hide the puppet strings, but instead of it being an ugly intrusion on the reader’s consciousness, those very strings are incorporated into the show. Rather like (to use a similarly theatrical example) having visible stagehands change sets during a play as part of the performance. It seems immensely difficult to me, and I am all the more blown away by how Nabokov does it faultlessly. I am watching a virtuoso perform.

Arabella, by Georgette Heyer: I never did get around to logging that Heyer reading spree in which I indulged last fall. I burned out after a while and decided to hold off on reading the last two Heyer novels I had obtained. I finally got around to reading them, and perhaps my dissatisfaction with Heyer’s male romantic interests (with the exception of Freddy from Cotillion, who may never be equaled) has mellowed because I didn’t dislike Mr. Beaumaris at all. I suppose it helped that although he was perilously close to being yet another rake (I dislike rakes immensely, and so many of Heyer’s versions happen to be misogynists at the same time), he managed to show some self-awareness. A cynic, but one with a sense of humor. Also, while his “prank” was irresponsible and could have seriously ruined Arabella’s life, he did his best to make up for it. I guess what also helped the dynamic was that Arabella remained self-possessed and calmly encouraged his meaningless flirtations for her own ends while mostly assuredly not falling in love with him. Actually, I think I mostly liked Arabella, especially with her social justice crusades.

Sylvester, by Georgette Heyer: Well, I didn’t like Sylvester at all, but he didn’t actively annoy me. It took me a while to start liking Phoebe; I still can’t understand how such an unconventional girl could be such a doormat to her stepmother. I mean, I do understand the fear of invoking displeasure or disapproval, but in my experience, those sorts of girls actively try to remain as conventional as possible. I mean, I’m not saying that those personality characteristics are mutually exclusive, but I do wish Heyer had put a little more effort into completing her characterization of Phoebe. She felt like two characters mashed into one. That being said, how delightful is it that Phoebe published a novel parodying the ton! That was what made me like her in the end.

The volume also included Beckett’s Act Without Words, which indeed has no dialogue. The whole pantomime seems rather like a post-existentialist satire of Camus’ assertion that the only philosophical question of any importance is the question of suicide. The lone actor, in confronting the futility of his actions, tries to commit suicide but even this option is denied him. Camus at least gives us the will to choose suicide if we so wished, but Beckett seems to be saying that we aren’t even permitted that escape. The actor ends up on the floor, paralyzed and unresponsive. What I would dub the modern nightmare.

The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, by David Shenk: The book calls itself a history of chess, but it doesn’t simply relate the development of the board game alone but frames it in the context of why people have obsessed over this game for centuries. Chess as metaphor, chess as cultural phenomenon, chess as a mirror of sociopolitical and intellectual history (e.g. the rise of “courtly love” under Eleanor of Aquitaine, the French Enlightenment and subsequent revolutions), chess as rational system. The book describes myths and legends associated with chess (the caliph who did not evacuate his burning palace because he was engrossed in a game of chess), as well as famous games (the “Immortal Game” of the title describes a match between Anderssen and Kieseritzky in the nineteenth century) and grandmasters (the personal history of Bobby Fischer). It also talks about the evolution of game rules and strategy over time–I was fascinated by the four historical “stages” in chess style–and the appearance of chess in literature and computer science. All in all, an excellently written book. Shenk likes to dwell on the implications of chess as a game representing the power of free will (versus games of chance, like backgammon) and by extension, the triumph of civilization and rational thought, which he freely admits carries a personal meaning for him in the wake of 9/11. I’m not sure if the more memoirist parts of the book strengthen or weaken it (after all, he also talks about how the obsession with chess can be all-consuming and how chess geniuses lose their sanity), but I did like reading about his own attempts to improve his chess game.

Vita Brevis: A Letter to Saint Augustine, by Jostein Gaarder (trans. Anne Born): In the introduction, Gaarder purports to have found and translated a letter written to Augustine from the “concubine” whom he mentions in his Confessions. I actually took him at his word at first, but if you read the book, it becomes clear that the letter is a fictional vehicle in which Gaarder can criticize Augustine and his influence on Christian theology. Despite Gaarder’s conceit of including “footnotes” citing the original Latin phrases, it’s clear that Floria, the supposed letter writer, sounds like Gaarder (or at least like Gaarder’s usual English translator) and has surprisingly modern ideas that coincide nicely with Western liberal opinions largely held today. I’m no classics expert, but I doubt that a letter originally written in Latin would ever “translate” into the style that Floria adopts. I suppose I’m annoyed because if Gaarder was going to make the pretense of having found a letter to Augustine as some sort of metafictional device, he could have done a much better job of it. It would have been brilliant if he executed the writing well enough to really make the reader believe his framing story of buying the manuscript at a book fair in Argentina. (Choice of country a nod to Borges?) As it is, all it becomes is a tiresome rant on Augustine’s extreme Platonism. Floria basically says (over and over again, while quoting extensively from Confessions) that believing in a Creator God who loved his creation means not denying the physical world and the facts of our physical existence; in fact, it is as much a sin to hate the world as it is to love it too well. Chesterton made the same point in his biography of Aquinas much more eloquently and with much more subtlety. Also, like most poor arguments, the whole book started making me sympathize with Augustine. I mean, I think Augustine’s conception of religion as divorcing oneself completely from the material world as much as possible is a little ridiculous, but I also think that he was genuinely trying, in his own fashion, to devote himself completely to God. And honestly, do we really need to blame all the excesses and mistakes of the Church on Augustine? As Chesterton points out, there are historical reasons for why Augustine’s brand of Platonic Christianity had such great appeal. Then again, I suppose we don’t like to accept that theology can have relativity without being untrue. (Oh, the poststructuralist paradox.)

The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity, by Martin Palmer: The subject matter of the book is quite fascinating since it traces the history of early Christianity in China centuries before any Jesuit missions. It describes a Christian tradition that developed separately in the Middle East, India and central Asia and is hence not continuous with the history of Catholic church (and subsequent Protestant denominations) in the West. It’s unfortunate though that the writing wasn’t very compelling and used phrases like “the Church of the East”, which implied an orientalist attitude that grated on my nerves. I think the book was also extremely disorganized: Palmer kept jumping from his personal account of discovering the ruins of an indigenous Christian monastery in Western China, to recounting the history of how Christianity entered China and merged with Taoist and Buddhist doctrines, to summarizing and translating the “Jesus Sutras” (Chinese texts that refer to Christian scripture and liturgy) without providing an overarching flow to his argument. I wish he had chosen a more academic tone and stripped the personal commentary from his book. I also wish he didn’t analyze the Sutras prior to providing the translated text; it seems to be dodgy academic practice to try to bias the mind of your reader with a particular interpretation of a text (given that he can’t exactly assume that his reader is already familiar with the texts in question). Mostly, what I found most irritating was that he built up my expectations with his claims that the Sutras were an important contribution to spiritual literature. Granted, I have no idea how the original Chinese reads, but the English translation sounded awkward and uninspiring to me. Also, I didn’t find the blending of Christian theology with Buddhist and Taoist (more Buddhist than Taoist, in my opinion, despite the title) philosophy to be all that radical. It’s easy to find common points among all religious doctrines; the question is at which point do you end up generalizing so much that you end up becoming nondenominational. If Palmer had seriously addressed whether or not this “adulteration” of Christian theology can still be called Christian, I would have liked the book a lot more. (Are you still Christian if you diminish the historical existence of Christ and turn him into an abstract Savior? Conversely, are you still Christian if you emphasize the humanity of Christ and overlook his divinity? I don’t know the answer. To be honest, I don’t think I’m capable of grasping the dual nature of Christ; instead I slip into the fallacy of believing in two different Christs, one human and one divine.)

I should add that of course, one could say that Catholicism (and the Protestant sects which it spawned) is the adulterated form–and I think to a certain extent, that is Palmer’s contention. The Christian message has become distorted and politicized in “the West”, and hence we ought to look to “the East” to revive Christian spirituality and return to a more original form. But I find that whole attitude aggravating: Buddhism and Taoism have been equally subject to distortion, and I would presume a “Taoist Christianity” would be no different. No matter where you go, religion has been a tool for power.

Mike at Wrykyn, by P.G. Wodehouse: The prequel to Mike and Psmith, although I don’t know if it can rightly be called a prequel since I believe the two books were originally published together as Mike. The book talks about Mike’s first year at Wrykyn as he makes his mark through his superlative cricket skills, while juggling relations with his brother, an overbearing head of house, his roommate (an upperclassman known for getting into trouble) and the Wrykyn cricket captain. Schoolboy pranks included, although not as many as I expected, since the book is in fact mostly about cricket. I wish I knew more about cricket but the book is still enjoyable without any knowledge of the sport.

Leave It to Psmith, by P.G. Wodehouse: Switched from reading about Jeeves and Wooster to reading about Psmith, who is absurdly and delightfully verbose. He is able to get away with anything by simply never losing his composure; in the stickiest situation, he always makes everyone else feel that he has the upper hand. That’s the charm of a thoroughly arrogant character, of course. I suppose the trick is that he never irritates the reader with his arrogance, although other characters certainly find it infuriating. I liked that Wodehouse also finally created a strong female character, who is assertive and independent, without including any criticisms that come off as subtly sexist. (Female characters that are as spunky as Eve in the Jeeves and Wooster books come off as irresponsibly mischievous or domineering or scheming to entrap Bertie in marriage. Along the same lines, the weepy poetic female character in this story turned out to be a thief, whereas in a Jeeves and Wooster book, she would simply have remained soppy all the way through.) I also hadn’t realized that Freddie Threepwood was such an idiot; I read a later Blandings short story where he becomes much more competent.

But once I’d managed to get my bearings, the book became one of those compelling reads that keep you up late into the night because you simply can’t put it down. Dunnett’s prose is intricate and dense but beautifully descriptive; I’ve read few authors who could write such detailed action scenes while preserving the suspense. (The swordfight between Lymond and his brother, for example.) Her characters are vivid, almost to the point of being larger-than-life, and speak with an eloquence that probably would only have worked in historical fiction. E.g. Lymond, on patriotism:

Into the silence, the Master spoke gently. “These are not patriots, but martyrs, dying in cheerful self-interest as the Christians died in the pleasant conviction of grace, leaving their example by chance to brood beneath the water and rise, miraculously, to refresh the centuries. The cry is raised: Our land is glorious under the sun. I have a need to believe it, they say. It is a virtue to believe it; and therefore I shall wring from this unassuming clod a passion and a power and a selflessness that otherwise would be laid unquickened in the grave.” [...]

“And who shall say they are wrong,” said Lymond. “There are those who will always cleave to the living country, and who with their uprooted imaginations might well make of it an instrument for good. Is it quite beyond us in this land? Is there no one will take up this priceless thing and say, Here is a nation, with such a soul; with such talents; with these failings and this native worth? In what fashion can this one people be brought to live in full vigour and serenity, and who, in their compassion and wisdom, will take it and lead it into the path?”

Would you see such gifts of oratory in a modern-day character? It’s not just Lymond’s gifted tongue that moves the stage to silence either; Mary de Guise’s heartfelt speech in the last chapter was also amazing.

Lymond does edge dangerously close to being a little too ideal: he is charismatic and accomplished, speaks at least a half-dozen languages, is gifted with the sword and bow, charms women, possesses an ironic wit, is both a debauched scoundrel and a man of honor. But I still ended up liking his character nonetheless (six years ago, I would have fallen in love with him). Perhaps I’m just weak to protagonists who can quote at the drop of a hat. Lymond speaks in quotes as much as Wimsey does, although I recognize far fewer of his sources.

I’m no expert on this historical period of course, but Dunnett does seem to have done her research thoroughly. I did notice a few anachronisms, such as a reference to Shahrazad from 1001 Nights, which (Wikipedia confirms) was not translated into any Western European language until the eighteenth century. (Or perhaps we are to assume Lymond read it in the original Arabic? But then why would other characters even recognize the reference?) But these anachronisms are only occasional, and given the length and scope of this book, I think a few mistakes are entirely forgivable.

Flaubert’s Parrot, by Julian Barnes: My first exposure to Julian Barnes, and I’m completely smitten. Initially, the book sounds like the sort of narrative nonfiction that I enjoy reading; the first-person narrator being a sort of companion in the exploration of the life of Flaubert, masquerading as an observer but not as a character or subject of the novel. But of course, Geoffrey Braithwaite is a character in his own right, though he tries to avoid it, and we see him let slip maddening little details, which don’t fully cohere into a complete picture even when he gets drunk and grows unusually candid with the reader. We do piece together the story, Braithwaite’s story, in between his recounting and retelling of Flaubert’s life, but there’s always that lingering uncertainty from receiving a story through apocrypha. Of course, there’s also a peculiar sense of satisfaction in it as well—like constructing an image glimpsed through the cracks or between the bars—which appeals to the postmodernist within me.

It soon becomes clear that Braithwaite’s fascination with Flaubert is more than literary appreciation or enthusiasm; his obsession has a focus on adultery, on that most notorious Flaubertian creation, Emma Bovary, on authenticity, on the two parrots. Asking who is the real Flaubert is really asking who is the real Braithwaite (and perhaps also who was the real Ellen as well). I loved the three different chronologies of Flaubert’s life: one recording his achievements and successes, one recording his tragedies and failures, and one last one made up entirely of quotes from his writing. How chameleon a single individual can be! Our image of them perhaps no more authentic than a parrot’s imitation of their voice.

But all such lofty thoughts aside, the simple fact of his fixation on Flaubert is what makes the book appealing to me. Who knew that Flaubert was such an interesting individual? In corollary, if I’d realized before just how wonderful his prose was, I would have made more effort to finish reading Madame Bovary from where I left off so many years before. (I’ve since been inspired to check it out from the local library.) Also, I had especial sympathy for Braithwaite’s emotional defensiveness of Flaubert, his dissection of the writer’s flaws and his equally careful defense of them. I spend a lot of time criticizing books and authors in writing and in conversation, but I am equally prone to jump to their defense when they are criticized by others. Perhaps it’s because no book I’ve read has been entirely worthless: even those I’ve hated or despised have left their imprint on me and have become touchstones for my opinions and reactions, and of course, the most frivolous novel still provides a few hours of pleasure, if nothing else.

Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton: What a clever twist on the mannerpunk novel! It seems to be the fashion to write fantasy set during the Regency or Victorian period (or perhaps I’ve just gravitated towards those novels), but I don’t think any author’s gone so far as to write about Victorian dragons before. I’m reminded not so much of Jane Austen but of Charles Dickens (e.g., the casual cruelty of Daverak to his servants and social inferiors, young Avan trying to make his way in the city, the pseudo-industrial setting of a countryside being overtaken by railroads, the seeds of socialist consciousness). Walton cites Trollope for her inspiration, which makes me think that I ought to read Framley Parsonage someday. Some particularly interesting twists: Victorian prudishness being biologically enforced by female dragons changing color after they’ve been in close contact with a male, the Old Religion (equivalent to the Catholic Church, I suppose) being a vehicle of socialist reform, body size as equal measure of prosperity as wealth, and of course, that beginning scene that I’ve heard mentioned in every review of this book, children and other relatives devouring their dead father’s body as part of their inheritance. Strangely, the eating of dragonflesh—should I call it cannibalism?—didn’t shock me that much, partly because the dragons themselves thought it perfectly natural. (A testament to how well Walton thought out this society.)

Faces Under Water, by Tanith Lee: I was bemused once I started reading Faces Under Water, which is the first book in the quartet, to find that the book was riddled with grammatical mistakes and ungainly prose. The lush, almost gothic descriptions that I remembered from Lee’s other writing were there, but I also saw missing periods, misuse of parentheses, half-finished sentences, and a fondness for repeating sentence fragments, all of which occurred too often to be excused as a writer’s liberty to break the occasional rule. On the other hand, A Bed of Earth, which was written four years after Faces Under Water, doesn’t show such egregious errors, so I’m inclined to chalk them up to a bad editor.

As for the story itself, the book focuses on the more sordid side of Venus, with descriptions of orgies, alchemist-magicians, and corpses. Even the beautiful is also slightly horrific, like the paralyzed face of Eurydiche, whom the protagonist falls in love with. I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I’d hoped; some of more grotesque moments were just grotesque enough to make the book fall short of being the indulgence that I expected it to be. My impatience with Furian, the main character, didn’t help: in Siddharta-like fashion, he abandons the life of wealth and ease to which he was born and chooses to live in the gutters of Venus instead. I imagine Tanith Lee wanted to evoke the usual dualities inherent in the element of water (each book is based on an element): beauty and corruption, life and death, purity and filth, etc. But mostly I just felt irritated at Furian’s lack of personality and Eurydiche’s passiveness.

Hangman’s Holiday, by Dorothy L. Sayers: I seem to be reading a lot of short story collections these days. Although the choice was inadvertent; I thought Hangman’s Holiday was a full novel. The first four stories feature Wimsey, two of which I’d already read before from Lord Peter; six focus on Montague Egg, another amateur detective whose profession is traveling salesman to a wine and spirits firm; and the last two are not properly mysteries at all and describe instead the crime as it takes place. Of the latter category, “The Man Who Knew How” came off as darkly ironic, but the very last story, “The Fountain Plays”, sent a shiver up my spine. As for Monty Egg, he’s a very different character from Peter Wimsey, and his stories seem to have a much more lighthearted quality although the crimes are no less severe. It’s surprising how much social class makes a difference in the character. Both Wimsey and Egg seem comical on first impression—Wimsey with his flippancy, Egg with his earnest devotion to selling his product—but have keen, observant minds and good insight into human character. Both are also always ready with an apt quotation, although where Wimsey cites a classic or a poem, Egg has his Salesman’s Handbook memorized by heart instead. In the end, I find Wimsey the more thoroughly developed character, which is only natural given that Sayers gave him several novels’ worth of development, while Egg (as far as I know) only gets a handful of short stories. The Montague Egg mysteries are self-contained “drawing-room murders”; the solutions are deft and clever but the setting is still everyday. Wimsey, even in short story form, seems to encounter more bizarre and more complex crimes.

World of Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse: I think I started reading this omnibus before because I recognized the first half of the stories compiled in this volume. They’re organized in more or less chronological order too, providing a nice survey of Jeeves and Wooster’s literary lives. Wodehouse never fails to make me laugh. Each story also has a predictable pattern: Bertie has a falling-out with Jeeves, usually over a matter of fashion or proposal of vacation; he then ends up pledging to help a friend out of a (often romantic) predicament; Jeeves eventually saves the day and by the end, Bertie gives in, no matter how strongly he made up his mind to not be managed by his valet. It really is amazing how manipulative Jeeves can be: several times, he actually engineers an unsuccessful outcome but convinces Bertie that it was for the best.

What an artificial life Bertie leads! In an artificial time and artificial society. But it’s comforting to look at this rarefied bubble of time: when “going to school together” meant one could rely on the obligations of friendship, when young bachelors of a certain class had nothing better to do than to dress well and enjoy themselves (at least until their allowance was cut off by an irate relative) and fall in love every other week, when the most terrifying prospect that one could imagine is the visit of a tyrannical aunt. I’m certain that even in Wodehouse’s time, the world was nowhere near so simple. But isn’t it pleasant to imagine that it was, for just one short moment?

Yet if these stories demonstrate nothing else it is the appalling unpreparedness of the average nineteenth-century gentleman when he accidentally stumbled into Faerie. The Duke of Wellington is a case in point. Women do seem to have fared somewhat better in these perplexing circumstances; the heroine of “Mrs. Mabb”, Venetia Moore, consistently demonstrates an ability to intuit the rules of Faerie, which the older and more experienced Duke is quite without.

What really charmed me about the book was how authentic all the stories sound, as if they were really taken from actual folklore passed by mouth to mouth in the countryside until recorded into writing by an eager amateur researcher. They’re all slightly different too: you can see the direct fairy tale inspiration for “On Lickerish Hill”, which draws on “Rumpelstiltskin”, but “The Ladies of Grace Adieu” sounds vaguely Gothic, while “Mr Simonelli or The Fairy Widower” is in the form of diary entries. It’s mindboggling to think how much Clarke must have read, from all periods of English history, to carry off such different voices so effortlessly. But her talent for imitation doesn’t mask her style: each story exhibits that unique touch of whimsy mixed with a slightly sinister twist, much like the fairies themselves. Like a prism in the window, casting a shadow next to the insubstantial rainbow: an imperceptible shiver down one’s spine to accompany each charming phrase.

Empire of Ivory, by Naomi Novik: I read this book without having read The Black Powder War, which breaks my usual rule of reading series in chronological order whenever possible. I still enjoyed the book though. Where Throne of Jade reimagined imperial China in Novik’s alternate world history with dragons, Empire of Ivory takes us to Africa, where certain tribes consider dragons to be reincarnations of heroic ancestors. Isn’t that such an interesting idea? Of course, Laurence is held prisoner by the African dragon-king so I suppose he didn’t exactly share my fascination with the culture, but nonetheless, it’s funny to think that the Europeans, and the English in particular, seem to be in the minority in their insistence on treating dragons as “beasts”. The ending is, alas, another cliffhanger, but I’m glad to see Laurence doing what he believes is right, even though he has to betray his country to do so. For someone like Laurence, it must have been one of the most difficult decisions of his life: choosing between honor and loyalty.

Making Money, by Terry Pratchett: The return of Moist von Lipwig! Who turns from the Post Office to the Royal Mint. I didn’t like this novel quite as much as I liked Going Postal—the book was, to put it simply, not as funny—but it was still clever and entertaining. Dropping the gold standard, printing paper bills, fighting off the machinations of the Lavish family who owns the Bank…Moist manages to juggle it all with his natural instincts for charlatanry. I was a little surprised at the ending (the subplot with the golems felt a little like deus ex machina), and I’m still not sure what Pratchett intended with Mr. Bent. But I was very amused by Hubert (whose model of the Ankh-Morpork economy uses water to represent money and not only predicts but causes economic change), and if I understood economics or finance better, I’m sure I’d find even more amusing references to laugh at. Probably not going on my list of most memorable Discworld novels but still a good sequel, which makes me look forward to Moist von Lipwig’s next change of career. (I’m still waiting for Ankh-Morpork to build its subway system!)

Idoru, by William Gibson: I suppose I should simply resign myself to being perpetually confused by the ending of Gibson’s novels. I think Idoru was more coherent than Neuromancer, but it still ended abruptly for me: I still don’t quite understand what Rez and Rei were aiming to accomplish. What is the Project? What is the island that the idoru owns? I like the atmosphere of Gibson’s cyberpunk novels—the creatively imagined technology, the densely urban settings, even the eccentric characters he creates—but I’m always left with a feeling of dissatisfaction at the end. Did I not read carefully enough? Am I missing something important? In any case, I kind of wish I had Laney’s talent for intuiting “data nodes”—we could certainly use that sort of talent in genomics research, what with all the eye-glazing massive datasets we have to deal with and essentially no good method for determining signal from noise—but of course without the traumatic past as an involunatry experimental subject in an ethically dubious orphanage.

The Birthday of the World, by Ursula K. Le Guin: Almost all of the short stories in this collection focus on the worlds of the Ekumen, the loose universe in which The Left Hand of Darkness, Rocannon’s World and many of Le Guin’s other stories are set. It includes one of my favorite short stories by Le Guin, “Solitude”, which is as compelling on rereading as it was the first time I read it. For several days afterwards, I kept thinking of the end, when the narrator goes back to the planet as an adult and how she lived there, how she could go back to being alone again.

The rest of the short stories were new to me. A few were set in worlds that I had already read about, e.g. “Coming of Age in Karhide”, which was set several years after The Left Hand of Darkness. (Interesting to read about the helplessness and rage that the young Gethenians feel about the onset of kemmer; how like our own puberty despite all the biological differences Le Guin posited.) There was also a short story about Werel, which Le Guin had explored previously in Four Ways to Forgiveness, although I thought it was a little unfocused. “The Matter of Seggri” was much more interesting, containing multiple “primary source” excerpts concerning a world where there is a large gender imbalance, and women run most of the civilization, while men are kept in castles where they engage in violent games to show their physical strength while women choose the ones they like to father their children. The boys are treasured and pampered as children then sent off to the castles when they reach puberty. An interesting inversion of gender prejudices: men are not educated, they are not expected to know about technology or art, they do not form families. Le Guin writes about the effect that contact with the Ekumen has on the society as well; there are rebellions, both physical and intellectual. I was struck by the short story, purportedly written by an avant-garde author on the planet, where a man, who becomes the favorite of a particular woman, falls in love with her and is devastated when she finds his attachment unnatural and ultimately rejects him. Also by the first-hand account of a boy who escapes the castle and goes to the university for education: when asked what he wants most, he says he wants to be a wife, to be able to love another person and create a family, rather than be the breeding tool that his society expects him to be. Another interesting set of stories is set on a world where marriage occurs between four people, two couples of opposite gender and different moiety. I’ve been informed that the moieties actually do exist among Australian aborigines and certain tribes in South America, which is unsurprising given Le Guin’s extensive anthropological background. The difficulty in meeting a single person suitable for marriage…imagine how much more complicated it would be to meet three!

The best story in the collection though wasn’t part of the Hainish universe at all. “Paradises Lost” is set on a spaceship that has been traveling to colonize a new planet. It’s been several generations since the spaceship left Earth, so that all the inhabitants have only known the world of the ship. They have no knowledge of what it’s like to live on Earth and are not expected to live long enough to see the new planet. A new religion denies that the destination even exists; only the Journey is important. They have slowly started to erase records of the old Earth and alter curricula so that the younger generations are receiving less and less education about how to live on ground. Thus, the ship is caught unprepared when an unexpected acceleration schedules their arrival several decades ahead of the expected date. Life on the ship: sterile, peaceful, without danger. Everything is provided and recycled in a near perfect closed system. You never really think about how different it would be for people who were born and lived and died on that ship, and how strange, even frightening, the natural world of a planet would be.

The story traces the lives of two friends, Hsing and Luis, in excerpts over the span of their lives: it’s as much a wonderful portrait of their relationship as it is a commentary on religion and community. I loved the last line, when they have landed on the new planet and grown old together:

Swaying, she lifted her bare feet from the dirt and set them down again while he stood still, holding her hands. They danced together that way.

Most of all, you can really tell she’s British; the book conveys an English atmosphere that’s more convincing than the most well-researched books. Of course I’m not an expert in what’s authentically “English” or not; my impressions are only due to certain similarities to other books by British writers. A convincing sense of place as well as clear class distinctions that American writers can only really pretend to understand.

I wasn’t too absorbed by the mystery of the missing Fuyun Plate, but I did love her characters, especially Horatio Lyle, the amateur scientist and sleuth. It’s such a whimsical idea, and I hope to find the sequel so I can see where she goes with it.

The Lions of Al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay: About two years ago, Sai compiled a beautiful, haunting fan soundtrack for this book, and to this day, it’s probably the second most-played playlist on my iPod. I’d been meaning to pick up this book ever since, although I wasn’t sure what to expect since I had mixed feelings about the Fionavar Tapestry (Kay’s four-volume, classic high fantasy series), which I thought had excellent prose, interesting plot points, and really boring characters.

Well, I finally got around to reading The Lions of Al-Rassan, after buying a used copy at a local bookstore, and I can attest that it most definitely does not have boring characters. Granted, the main female protagonist, Jehane, isn’t particularly compelling (I mostly ignored her except for the moments when her know-it-all attitude grated on my nerves), but the story isn’t really about Jehane at all. She just happens to be the principal witness, so to speak, of the momentous meeting between Ammar ibn Khairan (”the man who killed the last khalif of Al-Rassan”) and Rodrigo Belmonte (”Scourge of Al-Rassan”). Although they come from opposing kingdoms and belong to different faiths, their friendship becomes the stuff of legends and ultimately, of tragedy. I kept going back and reading the scenes about the two of them together.

“Are you in love with this man?” she’d asked her husband once in Fezana that winter—more than half jealous, if truth were told.

“I suppose I am, in a way,” Rodrigo had replied after a moment. “Isn’t it odd?”

The line seems a little trivial out of context, but what does it mean, after all, to be in love? Ammar and Rodrigo are both great men, but they discover, probably for the first time, their only true equal in each other. Kay describes them as fighting together as fluidly as if they were two bodies controlled by one mind. How bewildering, how amazing to realize that you are not alone but have a counterpart in another human being…and how tragic to know that this one person—perhaps the only person—capable of knowing you entirely must inevitably end up as your enemy. For this book is tragic and ended up breaking my heart as surely as the music originally did. Perhaps it’s the theme common to so many great fantasy novels: the ending of an age, the passing of the ephemeral present into history. This book is about the fall of Al-Rassan, which will never live again except in memory, and I think it’s that awareness that makes Ammar’s poetry so compelling. Another layer of tragedy right there: after all, one could say that the decline of Al-Rassan began with Ammar’s assassination of the khalif and continued with his assassination of Almalik.

What Ammar says to Rodrigo who asks him to join the Jaddites in their Reconquest of the peninsula:

“What would I have you do? What you cannot do, I suppose. Go home. Breed horses, raise your sons, love your wife. [...] Teach your people to…understand a garden, the reason for a fountain, music.”

Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl: My college roommate recommended this book to me because she knew I was fond of intertextual references and allusions in my fiction. (I usually like clever books, even when they are too clever.) Anyway, the New York Times review made the character sound a little like Nancy Drew (perky, too smart for her own good, crime-solving, with gang of less-clever sidekicks who willingly tag along—please note that I’ve never actually read Nancy Drew and am stereotyping). But I started reading the book anyway since I generally trust my roommate’s judgment, and much to my surprise, Blue van Meer (the book is written from her first-person perspective) is actually very morose and is prone to overextended analogies and theorizing. A voice that I could very much sympathize with. The textual references were not nearly as impressive as I’d been led to believe. Every chapter is titled after a literary work, and Blue obsessively uses parenthetical citations for nearly any assertion she presents (very good academic habit, in my opinion), but the actual references themselves are mostly incidental and not necessary to understanding the book itself. They’re more to convey character than actual thematic meaning, i.e. not meant to be intimidating.

As much as I liked Blue herself, I found myself getting increasingly irritated with her in the latter half of the book. Why on earth did she continue hanging out with the Bluebloods when it was clear that she didn’t fit in with them and that they didn’t like her? The fascination of Hannah Schneider is one excuse, but Blue spends so much time analyzing how fake Hannah was, for all her fascinating ways, so I kept wondering why did Blue continue even when she knew better. Actually, that’s my problem with the whole book: Blue knew better, admitted she knew better, and yet still wound up in a situation that could only make her unhappy. (Was it just hindsight that made it seem that she should have known better? Was it adolescence?) In any case, the Bluebloods were intolerable. As for the explanation that Blue arrives at…well, it felt too overblown to be believable. Oh, it holds together very well because Pessl carefully sets up clues throughout the book to make the Nightwatchmen conspiracy theory watertight. But the tone of the book was so much about, well, ordinary high school life with an idiosyncratic twist on all the usual conventions, so the whole political radicalism kind of hit me from left field. Perhaps it was meant to leave that impression; maybe you weren’t supposed to completely believe Blue. But I closed the book feeling really dissatisfied, although I’d quite enjoyed the first half of the book, especially when it focused on her relationship with her father. Anyway, that general dissatisfaction also may be why I completely failed to sympathize with Blue over the clear psychological trauma that she must have received on discovering Hannah’s corpse.

(Oh, and Blue might be attending Harvard, but Pessl clearly has never gone to school there. Wish she bothered to do a little more research on that aspect of the book, since she clearly did a lot of research on everything else.)

Criticisms aside, I still think it’s an impressive first novel, and I liked Blue, even if I got frustrated by her. Which in itself is probably a testament to how much the novel engaged me.

Three Kingdoms, vol 1, by Luo Guanzhong (trans. Moss Roberts): Almost six years ago, I read the abridged one-volume translation by Moss Roberts and thought it was the most amazing epic I’d ever read. I finally got around to purchasing the full four-volume translation, by the same translator, and finished the first volume this summer. Many of the chapters that had been skipped in the abridged version were in this first volume, it seems, since I remember the scene where Cao Cao and Liu Bei drink tea together in the capital (Cao Cao makes his little speech about the heroes of the age) happening fairly “quickly” after Liu Bei gains renown in helping quell the Yellow Turban rebellion, while here, there are chapters and chapters of constant political and military maneuvering, as alliances are made and broken every ten pages. Hard to keep track of, but fun to read about. I was surprised to find how often Liu Bei runs away or pragmatically switches sides because the author of Three Kingdoms is supposed to be biased in favor of Shu but despite this bias, Liu Bei comes off as no more virtuous than Cao Cao. I mean, the author does insert moralizing statements on why Liu Bei is good and Cao Cao isn’t, but when it comes to actual actions, the bias is not apparent at all. Actually, more of the moralizing statements (and awkward justifications for why Liu Bei is a paragon of all Confucian virtues) come from later commentators, who are mentioned in the footnotes, rather than from the author himself. The footnotes are worth reading; Moss Roberts often includes some of the more elaborate interpretations from well-known commentaries, which I found very entertaining.

Zhuge Liang doesn’t appear in this volume at all; he’s introduced early on in the next volume. But despite his absence, there’s a lot of excitement in this first volume. Since the three kingdoms haven’t been established yet, there’s a lot of backstabbing going on. Plus, it’s nice to get more backstory for all of the characters; I didn’t pay that much attention to Wu when reading the abridged volume (being too enamored of Zhuge Liang, of course), so this time, I’m doing a more careful job of keeping track of all the characters.

The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco (trans. William Weaver): I received this book as a graduation gift from the post-doc who supervised my senior thesis. It’s been on my reading list for a while, especially after I read and enjoyed Foucault’s Pendulum. Eco won me over right away by drawing parallels between his protagonist, the Franciscan monk and ex-inquisitor, William of Baskerville, and Sherlock Holmes, what with the physical description, the style of deductive reasoning, and the tendency to slip into periods of lassitude while intaking certain herbs. And of course, Adso, the first-person narrator, sounds rather like Watson, not only in name but in their admiration of their respective detective companions. The solution to the crimes was a little disappointing, although I do think as a nemesis, Jorge is similar to Moriarty in that he only really dirties his own hands at the very end. That final confrontation with both William and Jorge loathing each other as much as they admired each other rather reminded me of the Holmes-Moriarty dynamic. I was surprised though because I had suspected Jorge at times through the novel and had discarded the possibility as being too obvious. In any case, The Name of the Rose isn’t a very satisfying mystery, but it’s still a brilliant book. I liked the intentional anachronistic moments—William’s justification of democracy through theological arguments, the “quotations” in Adso’s writing that would of course only be apparent to a modern reader—and I also thought Eco was very clever in the whole layout of the library. I managed to get through the untranslated Latin without too much trouble as well, although I hope I didn’t miss anything essential in some of the longer passages. I was surprised to discover how much it had in common with Foucault’s Pendulum: in fact, I would say that it is even more “metafictional” than Foucault’s Pendulum, being after all, about books. I could also identify with William, even in his less strictly Holmesian aspect: in the end, for me, the central question of the book was whether it was possible to be both a person of faith and a rationalist…and whether it was even possible to be just one without the other, as paradoxical as that seems. William’s belief in the importance of making knowledge accessible, his desperation to save the forbidden book and the rest of the library (to the point of allowing Jorge to die), and most of all, his crisis of faith after the library has burned down. The whole story tied together well, what with all the philosophical discussions about laughter and comedy, the masses versus the educated elite, heresy as the other side of holy mysticism, the theological question of poverty…I suppose I found the theological arguments in the book easier to read through because of my own Catholic background, although I still found some of the political in-fighting between the orders and the Pope a little difficult to get through.

A tangent: William Weaver seems to be responsible for translating both Eco and Calvino. I wonder if he’s some sort of master translator for contemporary Italian authors.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling: I don’t consider Rowling to be a great author, which may be why I was able to enjoy this last book so much without feeling any disappointment. People have been complaining about the epilogue, the treatment of Slytherins, and various “out-of-character” scenes, but I was actually surprised by how well-written the rest of the book was. I liked the quest for the Horcruxes, the temptation of the Deathly Hallows, Dumbledore’s backstory, and most of all, the way Harry ended up defeating Voldemort. I probably have a much higher tolerance for derivative adventure fantasy than I do for derivative boarding-school stories, but I think she’s also improved in her writing. The pacing was a little rushed sometimes, but at no point did it stall, which I thought was a relief. The only real complaint I have is that I completely missed the fact that Lupin and Tonks were dead until Harry saw Lupin’s spirit when using the Resurrection Stone. Surely it’s not asking too much to devote more than a sentence to a supporting character’s death. Also, Neville is awesome.

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace: Wallace is one of those authors who walk perilously close to the line of being a little too clever, which is probably why he gets slapped with the label of being pretentious from those who are fed up with postmodernist (post-postmodernist?) literature. Of course, since Wallace was the first postmodern author I’ve ever read, I think he’s quite brilliant, so I didn’t exactly bring an objective perspective to this novel: I went in prepared to like the book. I also rather like Wallace’s stylistic flourishes (excesses?)—his love of footnotes, his verbose and overly technical jargon, the way his narrative streams-of-consciousness skip and start and circle back (much the way minds actually think)—and authorial voice. But my bias aside, I really do think that Wallace shouldn’t be dismissed as pretentious because he (1) is clearly self-aware of exactly what he’s doing to a microscopic level, (2) has a brilliant and absurd sense of humor, and (3) writes emotion sincerely, despite knowing that it isn’t fashionable anymore to be genuinely emotional.

Infinite Jest is strangely epic in scope, although its subject matter is really (yet again) the spectrum of dysfunctional and neurotic individuals in modern America. It’s told chronologically out-of-order and jumps around from place to place and from character to character, although it seems to focus primarily on Hal Incandenza (junior tennis champion and lexical prodigy) and Don Gately (recovering narcotics addict). Both live in Enfield, which is located on the outskirts of Boston, and having just spent the last four years in Cambridge, the whole setting felt disturbingly familiar. The characters are often walking through neighborhoods that I’ve physically visited; I’m so used to simply imagining places in books that it felt almost surreal to be reading about places I actually knew. What’s interesting is that Wallace wrote the book ten years ago and set it in the post-millennial future, which means that the book is roughly taking place around now. The future he imagined is clearly meant to be unrealistic and ridiculous—what with NATO being dismantled and replaced with an Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.), whole U.S. Northeast being forcefully given to Canada to serve as a waste-dumping ground, cable and broadcast TV being replaced by a new system of customizable mass entertainment monopolized by a company called InterLace—but it’s a little disconcerting to realize that some parts ring surprisingly true, including anti-American terrorism and a rather idiotic president who may or may not be a lame duck. (Well at least Bush isn’t a former lounge singer.) Of course, there are some things that have changed in the past ten years that Wallace wasn’t able to predict, such as the degree to which the Internet has taken over our lives.

I’m a little disconcerted by the ending. We never find out what happens chronologically after the first scene of the novel, and Hal was the character I felt the most invested in reading about. Probably because I could relate to the whole experience of attending a high-pressure school. I keep wondering if the ending is supposed to leave you feeling at a loss—it really seems to just cut off, as if someone flipped a switch on the television—or if Wallace just ran out of steam after a thousand pages. Despite how fragmented the narrative is, the novel is incredibly coherent (even the most seemingly inconsequential details turn up again, if you are an attentive reader, which is why I recommend reading the novel in a continuous stretch if possible). And as silly as it sounds, I really did find the novel meaningful, what it said (or what I thought it said) about freedom and compulsion, pleasure versus happiness, addictions. There are accounts of abuse and dysfunctional family relations, not to mention a thousand ways in which people ruin their lives and reach new points of psychological and physical degradation, all of which I find to be repulsive and depressing in most other contemporary American novels but not this one. I never felt mired, so to speak, in the “filth” of the book, perhaps because Wallace treats all of his characters, even the unsympathetic ones, with a sort of honesty that is kinder than compassion. It’s not a cheerful book but still a funny one. I mean, who wouldn’t laugh at the idea of a militant Quebec separatist group called the Wheelchair Assassins?

His Majesty’s Dragon, by Naomi Novik: Dragons in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. The main character being a Royal Navy officer, Laurence, who stumbles across an egg of a rare Chinese breed, originally promised to Napoleon himself, and finds himself chosen by the newly hatched dragon, whom he names Temeraire. The charm of the book for me was the way we were slowly introduced to aviator culture, with its freedoms and unorthodoxies that come as a shock to Laurence with his strict Navy discipline. Still, Laurence is not so inflexible that he cannot adapt, and both he and Temeraire undergo training to become members of the Royal Aerial Corps. Temeraire, by the way, is an adorable character, an inquisitive and precocious child at first and later an intelligent companion. It’s his relationship with Laurence that really ties this book together.

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro: Another one of those books that I find it difficult to write about. This book really shook me—I went to sleep when I was halfway through the book and had nightmares about it—in much the same way that Oryx and Crake did, although in a more subtle way. I think it has to do with the insidious way in which Ishiguro makes you (that is, through Kathy’s first-person perspective) realize that you are not considered human. There is something horrific about the thought of human clones, about manufacturing people without acknowledging their personhood…and Ishiguro doesn’t force the issue on you but instead lets the feeling of wrongness eat away at the back of your mind until the truth is revealed. Also, the usual Ishiguro theme of might-have-beens, all the missed opportunities of the past. Except before, it always seemed that there was still some way for his protagonists to correct their mistakes—some possibility of reconciliation, however slight—but there doesn’t seem to be any such hope for Kathy and Tommy. They can never go back. That hit me like a sledgehammer when I finished the book, and I could have cried and cried at their quiet resignation, their very lack of regret.

Throne of Jade, by Naomi Novik: Sequel to His Majesty’s Dragon, which I read rather hurriedly at the Coop right after my last final. I found the voyage to China rather long—although I did enjoy the description of the festival-at-sea, with all its delicious foods—but it was interesting to perceive the East-meeting-West encounter from British eyes instead of the other way around. I’m very much used to the anti-imperialist rhetoric criticizing the Europeans for their arrogance and cultural insensitivity, so it was a bit of an eye-opener to see the same criticism applying to the Chinese, who show just as much arrogance and insensitivity to the British in the book. That isn’t to say that Novik portrays Chinese characters or culture in an unflattering light; quite the opposite since she portrays China with the grandeur of an old and sophisticated civilization (while avoiding the mistake of exoticizing it). The reconfiguration of the human society to accomodate dragons was particularly well thought-out.

In the Beginning…was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson: The fact that Neal Stephenson could keep me endlessly entertained while writing about operating systems is a testamonial to how compelling his authorial voice can be. The clever metaphors (he starts off, I believe, by comparing operating systems to cars sold by different types of dealerships), the philosophical asides (the almost metaphysical dichotomy between the command line and the user interface), and the smart commentary on the subcultural differences behind each of the operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Unix, etc.) made it a swift and smooth read. The book was released before the advent of Mac OSX, so it’s a bit outdated, but the book’s essential points are still valid. Stephenson went to some lengths to make the technical aspects comprehensible to the lay reader, and I especially liked the descriptions of how the earliest computers worked (my first computer was a 286 IBM-compatible, so I had no conception of the pre-DOS computing world). I’m also enamored by his descriptions of what some of the Unix-based GUIs can do, and if I had the luxury of owning several up-to-date computers, I’d set up a Unix machine right away.

Unexpected Magics, by Diana Wynne Jones: I was more than a little disappointed to find that I had read all of the short stories in this anthology because they had all previously appeared in Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories, Hidden Turnings and Firebirds Rising. The only new story was the novella Everard’s Ride, which seems to be one of her earliest works. The writing was unsteady, without the characteristic authorial voice that I’ve growned accustomed to, and there seemed to be several missing scenes. The ending was also unusually tidy (her endings tend to have few loose ends but they normally leave you with the feeling that the story could be continued, but I can’t imagine a sequel to Everard’s Ride).