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01.09.02 by ScottC @ 6:18 pm   Written by: Connie Willis I've looked over the books I have reviewed so far, and found they are rather serious and somber. I'm going to lighten the mood with To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, a novel that tells the story of a temporal paradox that could destroy the space-time continuum. But this is not another Star Trek time travel rehash, trust me. In the mid-21st century, time travel has been developed, but Time doesn't like to be messed with. It is impossible to take anything from the past into the present. Because of this, time travel has become consigned to cash-strapped universities, such as Oxford. However when a researcher, Verity Kindle, returns from 1888 with a cat, this impossibility should have caused a huge uproar. Unfortunately, the wealthy and demanding Lady Schrapnell has commandeered Oxford to help her rebuild Coventry Cathedral, destroyed during a Nazi air raid. Since the cathedral is to be an exact copy (Lady Schrapnell's favorite saying is "God is in the details!"), everyone is working to exhaustion including Ned Henry. Ned has been traveling to 1940 and back so much looking for the "bishop's bird stump" (an ugly Victorian decoration), his brain has become addled with "time lag". To get him away from Lady Schrapnell's badgering, he is sent back to return the cat to 1888 and avoid the possible destruction of the universe. Ned's brain is so addled by the time lag he doesn't think to ask "How did the cat get to the present?" or "Where do I return the cat to?" or "How do I get out of this mess?" of which there are many in the book. Categorized as: Books and Reviews
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01.09.02 by ScottC @ 6:00 pm  Written by: Simon Winchester Professor James Murray was given a daunting task, to edit and compile The Oxford English Dictionary, the most complete and accurate dictionary ever. It took 70 years to complete the first edition (published in 1928); it contained 414,800 words and 1,861,200 quotations (the second edition published in 1989 contains 615,100 words and 2,436,600 quotations). While there were other dictionaries available (most notably Samuel Johnson's famous work), the OED was unique since it not only defined words, but also traced the history of words through quotations obtained from literature and non-fiction. Murray was helped by a Dr. William Minor, who like 2000 other volunteers, submitted appropriate quotations that showed the word's first appearance or illustrated the word's meaning. Dr. Minor's quotations were plentiful and well researched. So Professor Murray figured the doctor had plenty of free time. Since Minor was committed to Broadmoor Asylum for shooting a man he believed to be an assassin, he did. This is the odd relationship that frames The Professor and the Madman, a relationship between two very different men. Murray was a son of a tailor, a self-educated Scotsman who spoke 25 languages and was a pious Congregationalist; Minor was an aristocratic American, educated at Yale, a surgeon during the Civil War, an agnostic and libertine. But both were brought together by a love of language. Such was Murray's regard for Minor that it took years to see that the return address on his correspondence was from an asylum, not a county house in the area. Winchester delves into the lives and motivations of these two men, especially Minor's paranoid dementia; he also delves into the dictionary, the third member of this triangle. Categorized as: Books and Reviews
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12.17.01 by ScottC @ 9:10 pm 
Written by: Otto Bettmann Last year, there was a PBS miniseries called The 1900 House. A modern family in England went to live in a house where everything they did and everything they used was from the year 1900. You got to see them operate a coal burning stove, cleaning with a manual vacuum cleaner, and of course wearing a corset. The 1900 House effectively fractures the myth of the "good old days". If The 1900 House fractures the myth, The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible disintegrates it. The book briefly touches on the ills of the late 1800s, many that are still with us today: industrial pollution, the working poor, and inadequate public education, etc. Fortunately, many problems in the book are no longer with us or at least lessened in severity: child labor, adulteration of food, and the treatment of the mentally ill, to name a few. Each dilemma is only given about a page or two because the book relies on pictures to tell the story. Otto Bettmann founded the Bettmann Archives (now unfortunately owned by Bill Gates). It encompasses over three million prints and photographs of everything from important historical events to pictures of medical tools and sunglasses. It is used by magazines, newspapers, advertising, and textbooks. Many consider it the visual record of the 20th century. Categorized as: Books and Reviews
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12.10.01 by ScottC @ 6:06 pm 
Written by: Tim Powers One of the charms of the Harry Potter series is that it depicts a world of haunted, mysterious castles, boy wizards, and strange, magical beasts alongside our mundane, everyday world. A world out of reach of all the boring, unimaginative people, but where you can escape to and experience all its marvels. However, what J.K. Rowling has created is wonderful, it is still in essence, a children's story. If you like the concept of a secret and supernatural world, but want a more complex, adult read, there are the works of Tim Powers. Tim Power's latest work, Declare, is an excellent example of his work. Like most of his work, Powers gives us a historical landscape to start with, some familiar territory. In Declare it is Europe and the Middle East during WWII and the Cold War. Andrew Hale is a British spy of the John le Carre mold, his profession both stimulating and numbing. But while he is battling Nazis and Communists in the shadows, there are other far older and powerful entities he has been enlisted to fight. The ancient Arabs call them djinn, beings composed of sand and fire and wind and what they imagine is done. Centered on Mount Ararat in Beirut, Kim Philby, head of British counter-intelligence and Soviet double agent, is working to strike a terrible bargain with the djinn to ensure Russia's stability and power. Andrew Hale seems fated from birth to be part of this battle, but can he win it? Can he trust his fellow spy and lover Elena Ceniza-Bendiga and his supervisor and mentor James Theodora? Can Hale complete Operation Declare without losing his life and his soul? Categorized as: Books
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