vakkotaur | Entries tagged with books

During our Christmas travels, jmaynard read one of the Monk books, based on the TV show, and then I did. I've also been watching Monk on the USA network when on the treadmill. While reading the books I wondered how much I'd like the TV show. Would the stuff that seemed funny to hear about or be skipped over be annoying to see on TV? Last night I got the answer: Yes.

Last night I watched Monk and overall it was fairly good for a TV show. But the dwelling on Adrian Monk's foibles got to be grating to the point I used the mute button for quite a bit of the show. Some of the commercials managed to be less annoying. That particular show might have been something of an extreme case as it involved Monk having been shot and how miserable he acts and makes others afterward.

One thing did strike me while reading the books. Monk has this thing about even numbers. He takes issue with the movie The 39 Steps for not going to 40. He dislikes a baker's dozen of things as 13 is odd. Yet his favorite cleaner is Formula 409. That seems a bit strange. Perhaps that's been addressed, but I'm coming in late on things so haven't seen that.

Chances are you've heard of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and maybe have read it. Almost certainly you've seen some variation of it on TV at one time or another. Most such variations are pretty unimaginative, barely doing anything more than Twain had already done, if even that much.

Over a year ago I saw a mention of 1632 by Eric Flint, and bought it as it was a variation that sounded truly interesting. Instead of only one person or even a tiny party of time travelers, an entire town gets thrown across time and space. A small town, but still a whole town. It's the small town of Grantville, West Virginia, and around April 2000 something happens. This something transports the town to Germany in the 1630s, where the 30 Years War is going on. It takes a while for folks to work out just what happened (or rather, just what was the result of whatever happened) and then decide how to deal with it all. Returning to West Virginia in 2000 is out because they simply don't know how.

This has become a series of books, dealing with succeeding years and various events of those years. There are at least three books just for 1634 as that much is going on. As Eric Flint says, "History is messy" and it's not all cut and dried as many history texts might indicate. There are other books, the Grantville Gazettes and a couple others that are collections of shorter stories by other authors, filling in background on some characters and events.

I have not read all of the books, but I have read a number of them. They are interesting not only for the story itself, but for revealing some historical characters. Before I started reading these, Oliver Cromwell and Cardinal Richelieu, as just two examples, were just names of historical characters but I really didn't know anything about them. Also there is the matter of how to do things with 1630s technology. Even with 2000 know-how (and not all of that made the trip - Grantville is a small town, and not a major industrial or research center) there is the matter of materials. It's going to be a while before there's any significant amount of new aluminum, stainless steel, or plastics. The Gazettes are not all fiction. There are separate articles on various aspects, ranging from the problem of getting good draft horses to what it would take to make telecommunications work at just 19th century levels.

I've just finished reading 1635: Cannon Law (that's not a typo) and found it good except that it feels like it just ended and it should have been marked 'Part One'. I expect there will be a book along eventually that picks up where this one leaves off, but I don't know when I'll get to it.

That aside, I really like the series. Eric Flint said he had two objectives in writing 1632 beyond just making a good book. One was that the story would not make out small town or rural inhabitants as idiots. Real people, with their flaws, yes. But not fools who don't know any better than to do foolish things. That includes the people of the 1630s as well, not just the transplants from Grantville. Yes, there are some fools, but everybody around them recognizes that. The other was that it would not be yet another depressing dystopian story. There would be hope for the future, though it would not be easy and would experience setbacks, the general mood is that people can and will overcome problems and overall things will improve. I like both of these objectives and I think the 1632 series succeeds in meeting them.

Current Mood: good

"I don't try to predict the future. I try to prevent it." -- Ray Bradbury

That line explains why I find many of Ray Bradbury's works to be depressing. He's not describing a future he hopes for, but one he hopes against. It's certainly useful to have such warnings as Ray's own Fahrenheit 451 and Orwell's Animal Farm (I haven't read 1984 having not done so by 1984 and then hearing of it almost endlessly such that even without having read it I am quite sick of the thing.) and others. Some futures do need to be prevented.

Yet it seems that somewhere along the time, the dystopian future became the default. Rather than the somewhat hopeful futurism of, say, Star Trek and such, we got the hopelessness of Mad Max and Max Headroom. At the last Penguicon there was even a panel, "How We Learned to Love the Dystopia." Yes, it's good to have warning signs and know where not to go, but it's also good to have an idea of where we might want to go. Dystopias are depressing and a lousy default. I'm not asking for Utopian stories as that has the two problems of being rather dull and of being plainly unrealistic. It's very easy to poke holes in a Utopia. But there is the idea of a generally brighter future, or at least one where things haven't become horrendously worse.

I am not sure of the cause of the depressing trend. Is it that many editors only tend to go for dystopias? Is it that authors find it easier to write for dystopian worlds? Is it a backlash against futures perceived as too bright and so there is a nasty over-correction? And this is just actual fiction or science fiction, not the Hollywood error of claiming something to be science fiction when it's really just a horror movie set in space or such.

Maybe I do want some escapism. But I don't enjoy seeing dark futures. The "Hey, it's not me." effect doesn't work for me. I tend to empathize, so it's more "great, just what I need, more crap happening." It's the future, yes? We're all going there, all the time. How about a future that can we feel good about going to? Not perfection, not utopia, not heaven, just something that doesn't make the trip seem pointless.

[A bit of amusement: The spell checker I use evidently does not know of 'dystopia' and suggests 'dustpan' -- a substitute I find rather apt.]

Current Mood: blah

There used to be a store in Fairmont, On Cue. This was part of a chain of stores. The main attraction was the music collection, a good number of CDs. But not just CDs. On Cue had video, a small selection of electronics, maybe a couple guitars, a fair number of books, and the smattering of tee-shirts and posters.

It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. It was a music store first, and a book store not so much, but it wasn't bad for a town of 11,000. I bought a good number of CDs from On Cue. I bought some books from On Cue. What they didn't have they generally could order - or would be honest enough to say they couldn't get it.

On Cue went away a while ago when the chain was taken over by Sam Goody. The Sam Goody folks, who weren't doing so well themselves, said they wanted to keep On Cue's strengths. They should have studied them more and discovered what those strengths were.

When the On Cue became a Sam Goody the town may have gained a name everyone knew, but lost a store that was good. The music collection changed, and the more eclectic (okkay, strange) stuff I liked disappeared. The bookshelves shrank and what was on them was disappointing. There were more video games and a wider selection of electronics. Nobody bought the electronics because they could find the same thing for much less at K-Mart or Shopko, and that was just in town, never mind what could be found in, say, Mankato. While they could order things, they seemed to be less capable about it than On Cue was.

The obvious eventually happened. Somewhere a decision was made and it was being stuck to, despite evidence it was the wrong one. Had things reverted to like they were in the On Cue days, without overpriced electronics that wouldn't sell, with a good selection of books, and a less standardized one size fits all music selection, it would probably still be in business. Instead, it plowed on right into closing for business.

And that's how Fairmont lost a music and book store. It wasn't that the town (and surrounding area) couldn't support such a thing. It was that the town (and surrounding area) wouldn't support a bad one.

Now I either deal with ordering stuff over the net, or driving to some other town to get a CD or book. And that way, it becomes a problem. I only place an order or go to a store if I'm looking for something specific and want it bad enough. I don't just pop into the local store to see if there might be something of interest. There isn't a place I can do that. Through really, there hadn't been a place worth doing that since Sam Goody appeared.

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: none

Via jmaynard,

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.
6. Get people to guess the book, if they want to. No googling!

"Notice this phrase in the inner loop: I J * "

I expect this will either be hopelessly obscure, or blindingly obvious with not much if anything in-between. As far as I'm concerned, go ahead and Google around. I suppose I should say this was the nearest book with more than 123 pages. Besides, there wouldn't be much chance of anyone getting "Railweight X-line: Dynamic Rail Weight Systems, Configuration Instructions." Hrm, I should get the Railweight books off my desk since I've finished with that project at least for now.

As a kid, I once started to look at a book on how to draw things. It was probably filled with reasonably good advice, but I didn't keep looking at it for very long. Maybe I looked at it as a possible purchase (or to ask for...) but the information didn't make sense to me. What it did was start off with drawing lines and circles and ovals to rough out a shape of a person or animal. But that wasn't the shape of the thing being drawn! It had all this extra crap. What good was that? And since it didn't make sense, back on the shelf it went.

Of course, those construction lines weren't a real problem. They were meant to be a framework for later lines. The later lines would be inked and after the ink dried, the construction lines could be erased. The problem was that I did not know that and the text did not explain that right off. So, to me, not aware of the sequence of events, it looked like so much nonsense. Had there been even a short summary of procedure right off, the results might have been a bit different.

It's not just books on drawing that have this problem. When I first looked at electronics, at the very basic part, there were endless exercises using groups of resistors. These don't seem to do much. They limit current. They generate heat. But they're not exactly exciting and a circuit of a battery and a bunch of resistors just seems wasteful. It wasn't until I read a book my grandfather had given me that I got something of an explanation. It brought up the question I had, "Why all this fuss with resistors?" and answered it by saying they represented loading, and were just easier to consider than, say, motors or lights and the more interesting would be coming along soon enough. Elements of Radio started off differently and introduced each new component as a need for it was explained. This made even more sense.

I am not blaming the flaws of one book for my not drawing things. Had I been as determined about that as I had been about other things, one poorly explained text would not have mattered. It's just an example that getting into the fiddly details of how to do something, without explaining the why, can cause confusion and with it a loss of interest.

Current Mood: calm

A day or two ago there was a radio interview with an author who had risen out of poverty by his effort and writing. This was not what struck me. Effort will accomplish that sort of thing. What struck me was when he described his early affinity for reading he said something about stealing books from a library. I know it happens, but it has has always puzzled me a bit. There might be some market value (especially for rare books) but this was just to read. A strange mindset, that. The whole purpose of a library is allow the reading of books. Almost all of the libraries I've encountered are "free libraries." That is, you go in, and with not much hassle, get a card and can borrow stuff. The card itself tends to be free. The borrowing is free. All you have to do is promise to bring an item back on or before a certain day. What's more, if you bring a borrowed item back on or before the specified day, you can often renew the withdrawal and borrow that item for another week or two! The only time there is a charge is if the borrowed item is not returned, not returned on time, or damaged. And often, the late fee is even waived if it has been only a day or two.

Stealing books from a library makes no sense to me. What other place allows you, nay, encourages you to borrow what it has and asks only that you bring it back by a certain day? It could be said that libraries are the one great communistic or socialistic institution in this country. Public funds and private philanthropy keep libraries going, for the benefit of anyone who cares to use them. About the only limit might be one of location, and interlibrary loaning goes quite a way to eliminate even that barrier. And yet people steal books from libraries. Not just occasionally, but often enough to make it worth the money to install anti-theft devices. Ponder that. Money that could have been spent on the collection, on heating or cooling, on lighting, on the librarians themselves - but instead goes to buy and run an anti-theft system for a place that will freely lend what it has.

Need proof that communism would never work? Or anarchy, or any system utterly and completely dependent on all people being decent would fail? Here it is: library theft.