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Posted on 02.12.02 by ScottC @ 7:43 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.   Written by: John Berendt Ah, Savannah. You've got to love a town where the first thing the residents ask is "What would you like to drink?" If you visit this port city, you will see the garden squares in the historic district with their grand houses and their pre-Civil War architecture, walk the cobblestones of River Street and view the paintings at the Telfair Museum of Art. But this is only the surface of Savannah. Jim Williams, a main character in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil says to the author John Berendt, "You mustn't be taken in by the moonlight and magnolias. There's more to Savannah than that. Things can get very murky." And Mr. Williams knew this all too well. Jim Williams was an antique dealer, a restorer of historical buildings, and owner of Mercer House, one the finest mansions in a town known for its attractive houses. He was a pillar of Savannah society even though his wealth was recently acquired. His Christmas party was considered the social event of the year. And one night in his office Williams shot Danny Hanford, a young, violent, and highly desirable "acquaintance" of his. Williams said it was self-defense, but he was still charged with first-degree murder. While this true crime account and the unbelievable story of the murder trials is captivating, you only get to it halfway into the book. Categorized as: Books and Reviews
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Posted on 01.29.02 by ScottC @ 6:04 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  Written by: China Miéville In the front of the book Perdido Street Station, you are given a simple map of the city of New Crobuzon: its precincts, rail lines, and rivers. But it does nothing to illustrate the complexity of this city built under the rig cage of a gigantic skeleton. The architecture is a confusion of grand houses, billowing factories, crowded markets, and grimy rookeries. The population is an unruly mix of humans, khepri (women's bodies with insect's heads), vodyanoi (amphibians who shape water like clay), cactus-men (self-explanatory), and other more unusual inhabitants. Even science includes the psychic Remaking of flesh into bizarre and obscene forms, computers made of gears and sprockets, and alchemy is studied alongside atomic theory. New Crobuzon is a city always on the edge of crisis and all that is required to tip it over is a little push. This push originates from Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, a scientist whose controversial theories have gotten him shoved from the mainstream. So he takes jobs where he can find them. One job comes from Yagharek, an outcast member of the garuda (a noble race of nomadic birdmen from the desert). For the crime of 'choice-theft in the second degree', he had his wings cut off. Yagharek hungers for the sensation of flight and offers a lot of money to Isaac to make it possible. Isaac begins by getting all manner of birds and winged insects to study their modes of flight. One particular specimen is a multicolored grub that will only eat dreamshit, the newest drug on the street. What the grub becomes when it emerges from its cocoon will lead Isaac, his friends, and the city itself into a waking nightmare they might not awaken from. Categorized as: Books and Reviews
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Posted on 01.09.02 by ScottC @ 6:18 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  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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Posted on 01.09.02 by ScottC @ 6:00 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  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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Posted on 12.17.01 by ScottC @ 9:10 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own. 
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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