![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Lots of beautiful overcast, occasionally rainy days means I've continued to plow through books this week.
What I Just Finished Reading
Wise Child – Monica Furlong
In another author’s hands, this story of a young girl adopted by the village witch in medieval Scottish would focus on the spells! The accusations of devil worship! The family drama!
These elements—and more—are certainly part of Wise Child’s narrative, but only part. Furlong spends just as much time describing the mundane rhythms of Wise Child’s life, but somehow makes these passages as captivating as the traditional “action” elements. Her depiction of Wise Child’s psychology is understated and perfectly true to an eleven-year-old’s understanding of the world. This is just a beautifully written book and I will never grow tired of reading it.
Also, that Leo and Diane Dillon cover.
Opium – John Halpern & David Blistein
Opium is the older guy who corners you at a work function and subjects you to a rambling, drunken monologue about a subject on which he thinks he knows far more than he actually does. The book is filled with factual and usage errors. The information in the chapters on opium’s history is seemingly chosen at random and incomplete. The chapters on modern drug policy could have been written by a pharmaceutical company sales rep. This one is a solid "no" non-recommendation.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Quantum Astrologer’s Handbook – Michael Brooks
This volume bills itself as a “history of the Renaissance mathematics that birthed imaginary numbers, probability, and the new physics of the universe.” Well, yes and no. It’s mostly the life story of Gerolamo Cardano, a 16th century astrologer and mathematician intertwined with passages detailing later developments in the fields of mathematics and quantum physics. Oh, and all of the above is interspersed with passages in which Brooks claims to have traveled back in time to communicate directly with Cardano as his “guardian spirit” and relayed to him scientific theories that will help Cardano break new mathematical ground in the 1500s.
I suspect I’m heading toward a big reveal in which Brooks explains this is just a literary device to illustrate the mysteries that modern day quantum physicists grapple with, such as how something that happens to one particle can affect another particle separated from the first by centuries or astronomical distances. It’s cutesy either way, but the book is just interesting enough that I keep reading despite it.
Brooks is also a little too enamored of his subject, whom he paints as a misunderstood, socially maligned genius, but whom he could just as easily depict as a whoremongering gambler who managed—barely—to keep his family afloat by opportunistically glomming on to whatever rich and influential statesmen happened to be passing by. But Brooks is already asking readers to accept time travel, so, eh. I'll know how well this all ultimately works out by next week, when I'll have finished the book.
Greenwitch – Susan Cooper
I bought this book and the two preceding volumes in the Dark Is Rising sequence precisely 25 years ago yesterday. Of the three, Greenwitch holds up the least well. There are some charming scenes of bucolic country life in Cornwall but they don’t entirely compensate for a plot that relies too heavily on the “young protagonists must save the world from EVIL with naught but the cryptic guidance of an inscrutable Gandalf-figure or two” narrative crutch. It’s one thing if clear rules govern these interactions, but here whether Cooper’s “Old Ones” are able or incapable of using their awesome supernatural abilities depends on whether the narrative needs them to be omnipotent or impotent at any given point in time, and not any sort of established internal logic. Having said all that, Greenwitch is still better than a lot of recent YA fantasy, for all that it’s possibly the weakest novel in Cooper's series.
What I'm Reading Next
I've got a ton of Thor volumes I need to tackle and return to the library.
これで以上です。
What I Just Finished Reading
Wise Child – Monica Furlong
In another author’s hands, this story of a young girl adopted by the village witch in medieval Scottish would focus on the spells! The accusations of devil worship! The family drama!
These elements—and more—are certainly part of Wise Child’s narrative, but only part. Furlong spends just as much time describing the mundane rhythms of Wise Child’s life, but somehow makes these passages as captivating as the traditional “action” elements. Her depiction of Wise Child’s psychology is understated and perfectly true to an eleven-year-old’s understanding of the world. This is just a beautifully written book and I will never grow tired of reading it.
Also, that Leo and Diane Dillon cover.
Opium – John Halpern & David Blistein
Opium is the older guy who corners you at a work function and subjects you to a rambling, drunken monologue about a subject on which he thinks he knows far more than he actually does. The book is filled with factual and usage errors. The information in the chapters on opium’s history is seemingly chosen at random and incomplete. The chapters on modern drug policy could have been written by a pharmaceutical company sales rep. This one is a solid "no" non-recommendation.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Quantum Astrologer’s Handbook – Michael Brooks
This volume bills itself as a “history of the Renaissance mathematics that birthed imaginary numbers, probability, and the new physics of the universe.” Well, yes and no. It’s mostly the life story of Gerolamo Cardano, a 16th century astrologer and mathematician intertwined with passages detailing later developments in the fields of mathematics and quantum physics. Oh, and all of the above is interspersed with passages in which Brooks claims to have traveled back in time to communicate directly with Cardano as his “guardian spirit” and relayed to him scientific theories that will help Cardano break new mathematical ground in the 1500s.
I suspect I’m heading toward a big reveal in which Brooks explains this is just a literary device to illustrate the mysteries that modern day quantum physicists grapple with, such as how something that happens to one particle can affect another particle separated from the first by centuries or astronomical distances. It’s cutesy either way, but the book is just interesting enough that I keep reading despite it.
Brooks is also a little too enamored of his subject, whom he paints as a misunderstood, socially maligned genius, but whom he could just as easily depict as a whoremongering gambler who managed—barely—to keep his family afloat by opportunistically glomming on to whatever rich and influential statesmen happened to be passing by. But Brooks is already asking readers to accept time travel, so, eh. I'll know how well this all ultimately works out by next week, when I'll have finished the book.
Greenwitch – Susan Cooper
I bought this book and the two preceding volumes in the Dark Is Rising sequence precisely 25 years ago yesterday. Of the three, Greenwitch holds up the least well. There are some charming scenes of bucolic country life in Cornwall but they don’t entirely compensate for a plot that relies too heavily on the “young protagonists must save the world from EVIL with naught but the cryptic guidance of an inscrutable Gandalf-figure or two” narrative crutch. It’s one thing if clear rules govern these interactions, but here whether Cooper’s “Old Ones” are able or incapable of using their awesome supernatural abilities depends on whether the narrative needs them to be omnipotent or impotent at any given point in time, and not any sort of established internal logic. Having said all that, Greenwitch is still better than a lot of recent YA fantasy, for all that it’s possibly the weakest novel in Cooper's series.
What I'm Reading Next
I've got a ton of Thor volumes I need to tackle and return to the library.
これで以上です。
Tags: